Data analysis applied to the evaluation of a technological nature teaching model as a regional development tool

This paper presents the creation and development of technological schools directly linked to the business community and to higher public education. Establishing themselves as the key interface between the two sectors they make a signigicant contribution by having a greater competitive edge when faced with increasing competition in the tradional markets. The development of new business strategies supported by references of excellence, quality and competitiveness also provides a good link between the estalishment of partnerships aiming at the qualification of education boards at a medium level between the technological school and higher education with a technological foundation. We present a case study as an example depicting the success of Escola Tecnológica de Vale de Cambra.

Innovations in technology: a friendly math project and the learning analytics “challenge”

Currently the world around us "reboots" every minute and “staying at the forefront” seems to be a very arduous task. The continuous and “speeded” progress of society requires, from all the actors, a dynamic and efficient attitude both in terms progress monitoring and moving adaptation. With regard to education, no matter how updated we are in relation to the contents, the didactic strategies and technological resources, we are inevitably compelled to adapt to new paradigms and rethink the traditional teaching methods. It is in this context that the contribution of e-learning platforms arises. Here teachers and students have at their disposal new ways to enhance the teaching and learning process, and these platforms are seen, at the present time, as significant virtual teaching and learning supporting environments. This paper presents a Project and attempts to illustrate the potential that new technologies present as a “backing” tool in different stages of teaching and learning at different levels and areas of knowledge, particularly in Mathematics. We intend to promote a constructive discussion moment, exposing our actual perception - that the use of the Learning Management System Moodle, by Higher Education teachers, as supplementary teaching-learning environment for virtual classroom sessions can contribute for greater efficiency and effectiveness of teaching practice and to improve student achievement. Regarding the Learning analytics experience we will present a few results obtained with some assessment Learning Analytics tools, where we profoundly felt that the assessment of students’ performance in online learning environments is a challenging and demanding task.

E-Learning as a shared service in shared services centers

Book Subtitle International Conference, CENTERIS 2010, Viana do Castelo, Portugal, October 20-22, 2010, Proceedings, Part II

Defining and Classifying Learning Outcomes: A case study

Bologne came to globalize education in higher education, creating a unified architecture that potentiates higher education and enhances the continued interconnection of the spaces of education policy in higher education in the world, in particular in Europe. The aim of this work consists in the presentation of an identification model and skills’ classification and learning outcomes, based on the official documents of the course units (syllabus and assessment components) of a course of Higher Education. We are aware that the adoption of this model by different institutions, will contribute to interoperability learning outcomes, thus enhancing the mobility of teachers and students in the EHEA (European Higher Education Area) and third countries.

Informal learning recognition through a cloud ecosystem

Learning and teaching processes, like all human activities, can be mediated through the use of tools. Information and communication technologies are now widespread within education. Their use in the daily life of teachers and learners affords engagement with educational activities at any place and time and not necessarily linked to an institution or a certificate. In the absence of formal certification, learning under these circumstances is known as informal learning. Despite the lack of certification, learning with technology in this way presents opportunities to gather information about and present new ways of exploiting an individual’s learning. Cloud technologies provide ways to achieve this through new architectures, methodologies, and workflows that facilitate semantic tagging, recognition, and acknowledgment of informal learning activities. The transparency and accessibility of cloud services mean that institutions and learners can exploit existing knowledge to their mutual benefit. The TRAILER project facilitates this aim by providing a technological framework using cloud services, a workflow, and a methodology. The services facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge associated with informal learning activities ranging from the use of social software through widgets, computer gaming, and remote laboratory experiments. Data from these activities are shared among institutions, learners, and workers. The project demonstrates the possibility of gathering information related to informal learning activities independently of the context or tools used to carry them out.

TRAILER project overview: tagging, recognition and acknowledgment of informal learning experiences

The evolution of new technology and its increasing use, have for some years been making the existence of informal learning more and more transparent, especially among young and older adults in both Higher Education and workplace contexts. However, the nature of formal and non-formal, course-based, approaches to learning has made it hard to accommodate these informal processes satisfactorily, and although technology bring us near to the solution, it has not yet achieved. TRAILER project aims to address this problem by developing a tool for the management of competences and skills acquired through informal learning experiences, both from the perspective of the user and the institution or company. This paper describes the research and development main lines of this project.

Interoperability on e-learning 2.0: the PEACE case study

The confluence of education with the evolution of technology boosted the paradigm shift of the face-to-face learning to distance learning. In this scenario e-Learning plays an essential role as a facilitator of the teaching/learning process. However new demands associated with the new Web paradigm require that existent e-Learning environments characterized mostly by monolithic systems begin interacting with new specialized services. In this decentralized scenario the definition of a strategy of interoperability is the cornerstone to ensure the standardization communication among systems. This paper presents a definition of an interoperability strategy for an e-Learning environment at our School (ESEIG) called PEACE – Project for ESEIG Academic Content Environment. This new interoperability model relies on the application of several coordination and integration standards on several services, controlled by teachers and students, and included in the PEACE environment such as social networks, repositories, libraries, e-portfolios, intelligent tutors, recommendation systems and virtual classrooms.

Integrating rich learning applications in LMS

Currently, a learning management system (LMS) plays a central role in any e-learning environment. These environments include systems to handle the pedagogic aspects of the teaching–learning process (e.g. specialized tutors, simulation games) and the academic aspects (e.g. academic management systems). Thus, the potential for interoperability is an important, although over looked, aspect of an LMS. In this paper, we make a comparative study of the interoperability level of the most relevant LMS. We start by defining an application and a specification model. For the application model, we create a basic application that acts as a tool provider for LMS integration. The specification model acts as the API that the LMS should implement to communicate with the tool provider. Based on researches, we select the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) from IMS. Finally, we compare the LMS interoperability level defined as the effort made to integrate the application on the study LMS.