Online learning or online education is one of the significant features that the coming of the internet has facilitated and over the years, the growing popularity of e-learning has encouraged various prominent educational institutions into introducing their flagship courses online. These online educational courses not only assist learning, but also allow those who are unable to physically attend these institutions to pursue a course of their choice from home. While various software tools are responsible in facilitating the imparting of knowledge through these online educational courses, there have been introduced various educational projects which provide necessary guidance to these e-learning courses. In the year 2004, a similar educational project was launched in Switzerland known as the GITTA project and it was under the umbrella of this particular project that eLML was launched with enormous contributions from Joel Fisler and Susanne Bleisch. The term eLML is an acronym for eLesson Markup Language. The eLML is a significant tool meant to facilitate the functioning of online learning by aiding in creating eLessons by using the XML format. The eLML is actually an open source XML format platform. Sourceforge is the premier platform which hosts the eLML project and it contains the various features that are prevalent in Sourceforge like bugtracker, CVS, forum etc. The eLML was vital for online tutors as it is a very significant method which provided them with the necessary resources to prepare eLessons conforming strictly within the online educational guidelines. It is also important to point out at this juncture that since eLML supports the usage of standards like SVG, XSLT and XML, it is possible to observe the content of eLML on any web browser and its functioning is not at all dependent on the presence of any software applications. Moreover, it has also been revealed that eLML file contents can be transferred into a print or PDF version as well as online or XHTML version at the same time on a single click. The eLML supports the usage of SCORM and IMS Global standard formats and therefore it is quite feasible to include eLML into any of the prevalent Learning Management Systems like OLAT.



eLML applications usually comprise of an introduction section which precedes the actual lesson form. Summarized versions of the lessons are also provided along with about five self-assessment options. All the glossary terms relevant to the lesson are mentioned in the content with the aid of the XML Schema.