Engaging students in an e-learning experience : how to manage information resources through wikis and web blogs

The purpose of this paper is to describe the collaboration between librarians and scholars, from a virtual university, in order to facilitate collaborative learning on how to manage information resources. The personal information behaviour of e-learning students when managing information resources for academic, professional and daily life purposes was studied from 24 semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The results of the content analysis of the interview' transcriptions, highlighted that in the workplace and daily life contexts, competent information behaviour is always linked to a proactive attitude, that is to say, that participants seek for information without some extrinsic reward or avoiding punishment. In the academic context, it was observed a low level of information literacy and it seems to be related with a prevalent uninvolved attitude.

Wikis semàntiques : Què són? Com són? Com treballen? Quan calen?

En aquest treball s'analitza el funcionament de Semantic MediaWiki, que es basa en MediaWiki, una wiki tradicional mundialment coneguda per ser la base amb què es va desenvolupar Wikipedia. Abans s'identifiquen les principals tecnologies de la web semàntica i es defineix el propòsit de les wikis semàntiques.

Aplicación de las wikis semánticas como herramienta de gestión del conocimiento operativo en un departamento de TICs

En este proyecto se ha tratado de estudiar la viabilidad de las wikis semánticas para el registro informal (pero consultable) de información operativa de un departamento de una empresa.

Uso de wikis semánticas

En el presente PFC vamos a estudiar a fondo las wikis semánticas, para tratar de plasmar primeramente el estado del arte de éstas, su aprovechamiento y uso real, más allá de su concepción teórica o prototípica. Posteriormente utilizaremos una de ellas para realizar un ejercicio práctico, cargando una ontología nueva desarrollada para ésta y probando la potencia de las consultas sobre ésta.

Uso de wikis semánticas

En este trabajo se ha realizado una tarea de investigación con la finalidad de construir una ontología para cargarla en una wiki semántica y así analizar su funcionamiento.

Uso de wikis semánticas

Este es el producto obtenido del proyecto final de carrera sobre el uso de wikis semánticas en el que se describen lo que son ontologías, sus lenguajes, las wikis semánticas y un caso práctico.

Wikis semánticas

Introducción a las wikis semánticas: ¿Qué son? ¿Cómo son? ¿Cómo trabajan? ¿Cuándo hacen falta?

Una proposta d’ensenyament aprenentatge basada en l’aprenentatge cooperatiu i el wiki com a eina afavoridora del treball compartit en els estudis de magisteri.

Presentem una experiència que s'ha desenvolupant en la diplomatura de Magisteri de la FPCEE Blanquerna de la URL durant els cursos 2008/09 i 2009/10 en el marc del procés d'implantació dels crèdits ECTS en els futurs graus d'Educació Primària. Aquesta forma part dels projectes seleccionats i finançats per al disseny, la planificació i l’avaluació de mòduls docents i seminaris dels nous plans d'estudis de grau. L'objectiu principal del projecte ha estat organitzar i experimentar l’ensenyament i l’aprenentatge des de dues assignatures de tercer curs de l’especialitat d’Educació Primària amb un enfocament metodològic interdisciplinari basat en l’aprenentatge en equips cooperatius amb el suport TIC. Cada curs han participat uns 60 estudiants distribuïts en 12 grups de treball cooperatiu. Per a l’ elaboració i seguiment del treball, s'ha escollit utilitzar els Wikis com a eina que facilita el treball cooperatiu, i així tant el professorat implicat en el projecte com cada grup ha creat el seu wiki a wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers i GoogleDocs per a la implementació i recollida d'informació de les tutories de seguiment i avaluació del treball fet pels estudiants. Finalment, hem analitzat i valorat el grau de satisfacció dels estudiants i professorat que ha participat tant en el disseny com en el desplegament de l'experiència i la consecució dels objectius previstos.

A course on collaboration between social workers and general practitioners during their vocational training

The educational programme reported was an experiment in the vocational training scheme of the department of General Practice, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Holland, and is now part of the course. The programme focused on the training in team function (co-operation) given to trainee GPs and social workers. It became clear that both groups during their professional training develop markedly different attitudes and views about patient (client) care. These differences form a fundamental handicap in any discussion about teamwork. During the programme the students were made aware of this divergence of viewpoint and were taught how to handle these resulting handicaps and, if possible, to eliminate them.

Faculty-librarians collaboration in an e-learning experience : resources management and training in Open University of Catalonia (UOC)

The traditional model of learning based on knowledge transfer doesn't promote the acquisition of information-related competencies and development of autonomous learning. More needs to be done to embrace learner-centred approaches, based on constructivism, collaboration and co-operation. This new learning paradigm is aligned with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requirements. In this sense, a learning experience based in faculty' librarian collaboration was seen as the best option for promoting student engagement and also a way to increase information-related competences in Open University of Catalonia (UOC) academic context. This case study outlines the benefits of teacher-librarian collaboration in terms of pedagogy innovation, resources management and introduction of open educational resources (OER) in virtual classrooms, Information literacy (IL) training and use of 2.0 tools in teaching. Our faculty-librarian's collaboration aims to provide an example of technology-enhanced learning and demonstrate how working together improves the quality and relevance of educational resources in UOC's virtual classrooms. Under this new approach, while teachers change their role from instructors to facilitators of the learning process and extend their reach to students, libraries acquire an important presence in the academic learning communities.

Engaging students in an e-learning experience : how to manage information resources through wikis and web blogs

The purpose of this paper is to describe the collaboration between librarians and scholars, from a virtual university, in order to facilitate collaborative learning on how to manage information resources. The personal information behaviour of e-learning students when managing information resources for academic, professional and daily life purposes was studied from 24 semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The results of the content analysis of the interview' transcriptions, highlighted that in the workplace and daily life contexts, competent information behaviour is always linked to a proactive attitude, that is to say, that participants seek for information without some extrinsic reward or avoiding punishment. In the academic context, it was observed a low level of information literacy and it seems to be related with a prevalent uninvolved attitude.

Securing dynamic itineraries for mobile agent applications

In this paper we present a novel mechanism for the protection of dynamic itineraries for mobile agent applications. Itineraries that are decided as the agent goes are essential in complex applications based on mobile agents, but no approach has been presented until now to protect them. We have conceived a cryptographic scheme for shielding dynamic itineraries from tampering, impersonation and disclosure. By using trust strategically, our scheme provides a balanced trade-off between flexibility and security. Our protection scheme has been thought always bearing in mind a feasible implementation, and thus facilitates the development of applications that make use of it. An example application based on a real healthcare scenario is also presented to show its operation.

Coarse Global Visual Localization of a Mobile Robot

Localization, which is the ability of a mobile robot to estimate its position within its environment, is a key capability for autonomous operation of any mobile robot. This thesis presents a system for indoor coarse and global localization of a mobile robot based on visual information. The system is based on image matching and uses SIFT features as natural landmarks. Features extracted from training images arestored in a database for use in localization later. During localization an image of the scene is captured using the on-board camera of the robot, features are extracted from the image and the best match is searched from the database. Feature matching is done using the k-d tree algorithm. Experimental results showed that localization accuracy increases with the number of training features used in the training database, while, on the other hand, increasing number of features tended to have a negative impact on the computational time. For some parts of the environment the error rate was relatively high due to a strong correlation of features taken from those places across the environment.

Mobile ERP in the use of maintenance operations of forest industry

Toiminnanohjausjärjestelmien käyttö on muuttanut metsäteollisuuden kunnossapidon työntekijän toimenkuvaa kunnossapidon perustoiminnoista itseohjautuvampaan tietojen käsittelyyn ja jalostamiseen. Työn tavoitteena oliselvittää mobiilin työtilausjärjestelmän vaikutuksia metsäteollisuuden kunnossapidon kenttätyössä. Mobiilin työtilausjärjestelmän käyttö metsäteollisuuden kunnossapidossa mahdollistaa tärkeän kunnossapitotiedon keräämisen ja tarkentamisen kentällä, jossa se usein on ajanmukaisinta ja tarkinta. Haasteellisinta on oikeanlaisen teknologian löytäminen ja standardoiminen kunnossapidon toimintaympäristöihin. Myös organisaation toimintoprosessien on oltava selkeät ennen kuin prosesseja voidaan tehostaa teknologisin keinoin.

Some of the challenges and experiences of formal education in a Mobile-Centric Society (MCS) = Algunos retos y experiencias de la educación formal en la Sociedad Móvil-Céntrica (SMC)

The aim of the paper is to describe some of the challenges faced by schools, or by formal education in general, as a consequence of today"s mobilecentric society (henceforth MCS), the term we will use to denote the new, networked learning ecology that has arisen from the massive penetration of digital media in everyday life. After revisiting some of the ideas of McLuhan and Vygotsky in the light of this new technological scenario, we describe five traits of the MCS and the challenges illustrated through educational practices that we believe schools will face if they wish to preserve their function of individualization and socialization. We believe that despite the emergence of the MCS, the main function of the school is still to provide the"box of tools" (a set of psychological instruments, such as reading, writing, mathematical notation, digital literacy, etc.) that enables people to develop their learning skills and life projects and to become part of communities and groups. However, the complexity and mobility of the new learning environments means that the position held by schools needs to be reevaluated in the face of the informal learning paths and experiences both online and offline to which learners now have access. We also need to reevaluate the meaning of the school itself as an institution and the model of learner it should be training