Formação combinada: reutilizando learning objects

O uso crescente da Internet (World Wide Web), e das suas potencialidades tecnológicas têm contribuído para uma proliferação de ambientes de ensino/aprendizagem, baseados em Tecnologia. A comunidade científica reúne consenso quanto às vantagens da reutilização de conteúdos de aprendizagem e à adopção de standards com vista à interoperabilidade entre conteúdos/objectos partilháveis e plataformas. Este artigo tem como objectivo reflectir sobre o desenvolvimento de uma metodologia de ensino combinada de aprendizagem com recurso a Learning Objects, no âmbito do trabalho de doutoramento.

Que learning objects (LOs) utilizam as instituições de ensino superior ?

O uso das tecnologias com base na Web, no processo ensino/aprendizagem, têm obtido excelentes resultados, onde a Internet é a plataforma base de comunicação e interacção entre estudantes e professores. Assiste-se, também, a uma partilha/reutilização constante de conteúdos educativos/Learning Objects, em diferentes formatos e diferentes tipos de plataformas, incrementada pela Web 2.0. Este artigo apresenta um estudo sobre o desenvolvimento, disponibilização e utilização de Learning Objects em instituições de Ensino Superior. Conclui-se que as instituições de Ensino Superior inquiridas não desenvolvem, não reutilizam nem promovem a reutilização de LOs, que utilizam as especificações SCORM e IMS, e apresentam-se observações sobre as vantagens e desvantagens da sua utilização.

Representations of gender in the writings of St. Francis Xavier: an interdisciplinary approach

Francis Xavier’s Letters and Writings are eloquent narratives of a journey that absorbed the Saint’s entire life. His experiences and idiosyncrasies, values and categorizations are presented in a clear literate discourse. The missionary is rarely neutral in his opinions as he sustains his unmistakable and omnipresent objective: the conversion of peoples and the expansion of the Society of Jesus. Parallel with this objective, the reader is introduced to the individuals that Xavier meets or that he summons in his epistolary discourse. Letters and Writings presents us with a structured narrative peopled by all those who are subject to and objects of Xavier’s apostolic mission, by helpful and unhelpful persons of influence, and by leading and secondary actors. What is then the position of women, in the collective sense as well as in the individual sense, in the travels and goals that are the centre of Xavier’s Letters and Writings? What is the role of women, that secondary and suppressed term in the man/woman binomial, a dichotomy similar to the civilized/savage and European/native binomials that punctuate Xavier’s narratives and the historic context of his letters? Women are not absent from his writings, but it would be naïve to argue in favour of the author’s misogyny as much as of his “profound knowledge of the female heart”, to quote from Paulo Durão in "Women in the Letters of Saint Francis Xavier" (1952), the only paper on this subject published so far. We denote four great categories of women in the Letters and Writings: European Women, Converted Women, Women Who Profess another Religion, and Women as the Agents and Objects of Sin, the latter of which traverses the other three categories. They all depend on the context, circumstances and judgements of value that the author chooses to highlight and articulate.

Learning objects recommendation in an adaptive educational hypermedia system

The aim of this paper is presenting the modules of the Adaptive Educational Hypermedia System PCMAT, responsible for the recommendation of learning objects. PCMAT is an online collaborative learning platform with a constructivist approach, which assesses the user’s knowledge and presents contents and activities adapted to the characteristics and learning style of students of mathematics in basic schools. The recommendation module and search and retrieval module choose the most adequate learning object, based on the user's characteristics and performance, and in this way contribute to the system’s adaptability.

Contextualização de “learning objects” no ensino da área da saúde. O caso do ensino da higiene oral

Com o crescimento das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação os métodos de ensino também foram evoluindo, verificando-se assim mudanças bastante significativas na forma como se adquire o conhecimento. O aparecimento do ensino à distância aliado aos meios digitais, que estão cada vez mais disponíveis e acessíveis, tanto a alunos como a professores, são um excelente complemento à actividade lectiva. Exemplo disso é mesmo o caso do e-learning que veio revolucionar todo o processo de aquisição de conhecimento, deixando para segundo plano pormenores como o local ou a hora de aquisição do conhecimento. Entre muitos tipos de recursos disponíveis, os OA’s (Objecto de Aprendizagem) têm uma utilização cada vez mais frequente. No levantamento do estado da arte e no estudo dos recursos educativos utilizados actualmente na Medicina Dentária, foi assinalado a utilização recorrente dos OA’s, que basicamente são pequenos pedaços de informação que podem ser reutilizados ou referenciados tecnologicamente. Seguidamente, iniciou-se a realização de um OA que pudesse servir de apoio ao ensino da Medicina Dentária, focando-se concretamente na higiene oral para as crianças entre os 7 e 12 anos. Finalmente, procedeu-se à sua validação conclui-se que no futuro será possível a sua reutilização em diferentes contextos de ensino e aprendizagem na área.

E-sharing: development and use of learning objects repository

— In the new learning environments, built width digital technologies, the need to promote quality of education resources, commonly known as Learning Objects, which can support formal and informal distance learning, emerge as one of the biggest challenge that educational institutions will have to face. Due to the fact that is expensive, the reuse and sharing became very important issue. This article presents a Learning Object Repository which aims to store, to disseminate and maintain accessible Learning Objects.

Antitumor activity of hierridin B, a cyanobacterial secondary metabolite found in both filamentous and unicellular marine strains

Cyanobacteria are widely recognized as a valuable source of bioactive metabolites. The majority of such compounds have been isolated from so-called complex cyanobacteria, such as filamentous or colonial forms, which usually display a larger number of biosynthetic gene clusters in their genomes, when compared to free-living unicellular forms. Nevertheless, picocyanobacteria are also known to have potential to produce bioactive natural products. Here, we report the isolation of hierridin B from the marine picocyanobacterium Cyanobium sp. LEGE 06113. This compound had previously been isolated from the filamentous epiphytic cyanobacterium Phormidium ectocarpi SAG 60.90, and had been shown to possess antiplasmodial activity. A phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene from both strains confirmed that these cyanobacteria derive from different evolutionary lineages. We further investigated the biological activity of hierridin B, and tested its cytotoxicity towards a panel of human cancer cell lines; it showed selective cytotoxicity towards HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cells.

Antitumor activity of hierridin B, a cyanobacterial secondary metabolite found in both filamentous and unicellular marine strains

Cyanobacteria are widely recognized as a valuable source of bioactive metabolites. The majority of such compounds have been isolated from so-called complex cyanobacteria, such as filamentous or colonial forms, which usually display a larger number of biosynthetic gene clusters in their genomes, when compared to free-living unicellular forms. Nevertheless, picocyanobacteria are also known to have potential to produce bioactive natural products. Here, we report the isolation of hierridin B from the marine picocyanobacterium Cyanobium sp. LEGE 06113. This compound had previously been isolated from the filamentous epiphytic cyanobacterium Phormidium ectocarpi SAG 60.90, and had been shown to possess antiplasmodial activity. A phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene from both strains confirmed that these cyanobacteria derive from different evolutionary lineages. We further investigated the biological activity of hierridin B, and tested its cytotoxicity towards a panel of human cancer cell lines; it showed selective cytotoxicity towards HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cells.

A semantic approach for learning objects repositories with knowledge reuse

In this paper we discuss how the inclusion of semantic functionalities in a Learning Objects Repository allows a better characterization of the learning materials enclosed and improves their retrieval through the adoption of some query expansion strategies. Thus, we started to regard the use of ontologies to automatically suggest additional concepts when users are filling some metadata fields and add new terms to the ones initially provided when users specify the keywords with interest in a query. Dealing with different domain areas and having considered impractical the development of many different ontologies, we adopted some strategies for reusing ontologies in order to have the knowledge necessary in our institutional repository. In this paper we make a review of the area of knowledge reuse and discuss our approach.

CrimsonHex: a learning objects repository for programming exercises

A repository of learning objects is a system that stores electronic resources in a technology-mediated learning process. The need for this kind of repository is growing as more educators become eager to use digital educa- tional contents and more of it becomes available. The sharing and use of these resources relies on the use of content and communication standards as a means to describe and exchange educational resources, commonly known as learning objects. This paper presents the design and implementation of a service-oriented reposi- tory of learning objects called crimsonHex. This repository supports new definitions of learning objects for specialized domains and we illustrate this feature with the definition of programming exercises as learning objects and its validation by the repository. The repository is also fully compliant with existing commu- nication standards and we propose extensions by adding new functions, formalizing message interchange and providing a REST interface. To validate the interoperability features of the repository, we developed a repository plug-in for Moodle that is expected to be included in the next release of this popular learning management system.

Towards comparable simulations of cooperating objects and wireless sensor networks

Simulators are indispensable tools to support the development and testing of cooperating objects such as wireless sensor networks (WSN). However, it is often not possible to compare the results of different simulation tools. Thus, the goal of this paper is the specification of a generic simulation platform for cooperating objects. We propose a platform that consists of a set of simulators that together fulfill desired simulator properties. We show that to achieve comparable results the use of a common specification language for the software-under-test is not feasible. Instead, we argue that using common input formats for the simulated environment and common output formats for the results is useful. This again motivates that a simulation tool consisting of a set of existing simulators that are able to use common scenario-input and can produce common output which will bring us a step closer to the vision of achieving comparable simulation results.

Localizing objects in large-scale cyber- physical systems

We use the term Cyber-Physical Systems to refer to large-scale distributed sensor systems. Locating the geographic coordinates of objects of interest is an important problemin such systems. We present a new distributed approach to localize objects and events of interest in time complexity independent of number of nodes.

Analyzing objects in images for estimating the delamination influence on load carrying capacity of composite laminates

The use of fiber reinforced plastics has increased in the last decades due to their unique properties. Advantages of their use are related with low weight, high strength and stiffness. Drilling of composite plates can be carried out in conventional machinery with some adaptations. However, the presence of typical defects like delamination can affect mechanical properties of produced parts. In this paper delamination influence in bearing stress of drilled hybrid carbon+glass/epoxy quasi-isotropic plates is studied by using image processing and analysis techniques. Results from bearing test show that damage minimization is an important mean to improve mechanical properties of the joint area of the plate. The appropriateness of the image processing and analysis techniques used in the measurement of the damaged area is demonstrated.

Using remote lab networks to provide support to public secondary school education level

The advantages of networking are widely known in many areas (from business to personal ones). One particular area where networks have also proved their benefits is education. Taking the secondary school education level into account, some successful cases can be found in literature. In this paper we describe a particular remote lab network supporting physical experiments accessible to students of institutions geographically separated. The network architecture and application examples of using some of the available remote experiments are illustrated in detail.

Integration of e-learning systems with repositories of learning objects

This paper describes a communication model to integrate repositories of programming problems with other e-Learning software components. The motivation for this work comes from the EduJudge project that aims to connect an existing repository of programming problems to learning management systems. When trying to use the existing repositories of learning objects we realized that they are mainly specialized search engines and lack features for integration with other e-Learning systems. With this model we intend to clarify the main features of a programming problem repository, in order to enable the design and development of software components that use it. The two main points of this model are the definition of programming problems as learning objects and the definition of the core functions exposed by the repository. In both cases, this model follows the existing specifications of the IMS standard and proposes extensions to deal with the special requirements of automatic evaluation and grading of programming exercises. In the definition of programming problems as learning objects we introduced a new schema for meta-data. This schema is used to represent meta-data related to automatic evaluation that cannot be conveniently represented using the standard: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; or the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. In the definition of the core functions we used two different web services flavours - SOAP and REST - and described each function as an operation for each type of interface. We describe also the data types of the arguments of each operation. These data types consist mainly on learning objects and their identifications, but include also usage reports and queries using XQuery.