Formalization of teaching materials for a network‐based laboratory support system

As the information in society becomes more complex, the importance of advanced education and lifelong learning in universities and corporations is increasing. Since the current situation in general education at universities, for example, is group instruction of a large number of students, instruction that responds to the differences in ability of each student is becoming difficult. To improve this situation, the trend of the falling price of computers in recent years has been accompanied by energetic research on laboratory support systems. Although when considering the presentation of a superior user interface, the development support and management of the vast amount of teaching materials that accompanies the diversification of the learning objectives, and the implementation of ample teaching support functions, earlier computer‐based systems seem to have functional limits. Therefore, the transition to network‐based laboratory support systems that use advanced workstations is demanded. However, in building this type of laboratory support system, the formalization of the teaching materials suited for use in a distributed environment is required, but this kind of research has not been performed in the past. This paper introduces a new framework for formalizing the structure of teaching materials to be used in distributed environments. In addition, its efficiency is discussed as the model used for teaching materials in the implementation of a network‐based laboratory support system, which is being designed and developed.