International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004 
The revision of the GITTA XML structure includes the change 
from XML DTD to XML Schema which gives some more 
flexibility in defining the model. However, the basic structure 
of lessons and units organised by the didactical model of 
ECLASS is maintained. ELML allows to describe content and 
structure of e-learning materials independently of a specific e- 
learning course management system. The affiliated metadata 
part including, for example, general information about the 
lesson, a bibliography and glossary section, facilitates the 
creation of self-contained e-learning lessons that are useable in 
different learning and teaching scenarios. 
S. RESULTS 
A number of GITTA lessons are now operational in varying 
courses at different institutes in up to four different languages. 
This demonstrates that the chosen approach is viable and the 
created e-learning materials are flexible and useable in different 
learning and teaching scenarios. 
  
   
scheme - which heip to und 
Exteinal Scheme 
A external data schemi 
sais and User Groups) 
     
  
  
B 121 Three Schemes 
Archaecture 
  
' 
OBS-dependent ! 
' 
  
  
  
D interet 
  
Figure 6. Screenshot of a GITTA lesson in HTML 
The GITTA project includes professional evaluation of the 
created material through a didactic specialist. The students are 
asked to fill in a questionnaire after they have finished learning 
with GITTA lessons. 
The evaluation shows that learning with GITTA materials is 
highly accepted. This is especially true for content that requires 
high interactivity and for practical and technical content. The 
main advantages mentioned are the possibilities to interact with 
software and tools and the student's ability to freely choose 
when to work with the material. On the other side, some critical 
comments refer to the student's time management and the 
discipline needed as being a nuisance. For learning mainly facts 
and theoretical aspects of a topic most students would prefer to 
have face-to-face lessons. 
110 
6. CONCLUSIONS 
GITTA is a big and heterogeneous consortium of different 
partners which imposes major challenges especially on the 
organisational level but also in terms of collaboration and 
curriculum definition. Nevertheless, the cooperation of the 
different partners results in valuable new experiences across 
borders of professions, languages or cultures. 
For the operation of the project it is important to have sound 
organisational structures and strict rules. Experience has also 
shown that regular face-to-face meetings are essential. The 
challenges posed by the multi-linguistic aspects of the project 
are not yet fully solved. Especially the maintenance of learning 
materials in up to four different languages might create some 
problems. 
The didactical schema and its realisation in XML has proved it 
selves as a suitable mean to decentrally create learning 
materials that look and feel all about the same. The structure is 
now revised and documented for Edutech and will be freely 
available for other e-learning projects to use. 
The future of GITTA is not yet fully decided. Certainly, all the 
project partner will use lessons, of the learning material pool 
that has been created, in their courses. Additional possibilities 
might include cooperation with other similar e-learning projects 
or opening up the materials for free use (OpenContent 
Scenario). However, these approaches will also pose some new 
challenges like, for example, the introduction of versioning of 
content and versioning control. 
REFERENCES 
BSCW, 2004. BSCW Basic Support for Cooperative Work. 
Bonn, Germany, http://www.bscw.de/index_en.html (accessed 
27 April 2004). 
Gerson, M., 2000, E-Class: Creating a Guide to Online Course 
Development For Distance Learning Faculty, Online Journal of 
Distance Learning Administration, III/IV, Winter 2000 
http://www. westga.cdu/~distance/ojdla/winter34/gerson34.html 
(accessed 27 April 2004). 
LMML, 2004, Learning Material Markup Language 
Framework, http://www.lmml.de, (accessed 27 April 2004). 
The Apache Cocoon Project, 2003, The Apache Cocoon 
Project, http://cocoon.apache.org/, (accessed 27 April 2004). 
m 
ec 
th 
ar 
gl 
al 
In 
Ww 
a 
dU 
th 
in 
ta