Discovering the campus together: a mobile and computer-based learning experience

One of the most relevant difficulties faced by first-year undergraduate students is to settle into the educational environment of universities. This paper presents a case study that proposes a computer-assisted collaborative experience designed to help students in their transition from high school to university. This is done by facilitating their first contact with the campus and its services, the university community, methodologies and activities. The experience combines individual and collaborative activities, conducted in and out of the classroom, structured following the Jigsaw Collaborative Learning Flow Pattern. A specific environment including portable technologies with network and computer applications has been developed to support and facilitate the orchestration of a flow of learning activities into a single integrated learning setting. The result is a Computer-Supported Collaborative Blended Learning scenario, which has been evaluated with first-year university students of the degrees of Software and Audiovisual Engineering within the subject Introduction to Information and Communications Technologies. The findings reveal that the scenario improves significantly students’ interest in their studies and their understanding about the campus and services provided. The environment is also an innovative approach to successfully support the heterogeneous activities conducted by both teachers and students during the scenario. This paper introduces the goals and context of the case study, describes how the technology was employed to conduct the learning scenario, the evaluation methods and the main results of the experience.

Supporting the reuse of effective CSCL learning designs through social structure representations

Distance and blended collaborative learning settings are usually characterized by different social structures defined in terms of groups' number, dimension, and composition; these structures are variable and can change within the same activity. This variability poses additional complexity to instructional designers, when they are trying to develop successful experiences from existing designs. This complexity is greatly associated with the fact that learning designs do not render explicit how social structures influenced the decisions of the original designer, and thus whether the social structures of the new setting could preclude the effectiveness of the reused design. This article proposes the usage of new representations (social structure representations, SSRs) able to support unskilled designers in reusing existing learning designs, through the explicit characterization of the social structures and constraints embedded either by the original designers or the reusing teachers, according to well-known principles of good collaborative learning practice. The article also describes an evaluation process that involved university professors, as well as the main findings derived from it. This process supported the initial assumptions about the effectiveness of SSRs, with significant evidence from both qualitative and qualitative data.

Supporting life-long competence development using the TENCompetence infrastructure: a first experiment

This paper describes an experiment to explore the effects of the TENCompetence infrastructure for supporting lifelong competence development which is now in development. This infrastructure provides structured, multi-leveled access to learning materials, based upon competences. People can follow their own learning path, supported by a listing of competences and their components, by competence development plans attached to competences and by the possibility to mark elements as complete. We expected the PCM to have an effect on (1) control of participants of their own learning, and (2) appreciation of their learning route, (3) of the learning resources, (4) of their competence development, and (5) of the possibilities of collaboration. In the experiment, 44 Bulgarian teachers followed a distance learning course on a specific teaching methodology for six weeks. Part of them used the TENCompetence infrastructure, part used an infrastructure which was similar, except for the characterizing elements mentioned above. The results showed that in the experimental condition, more people passed the final competence assess-ment, and people felt more in control of their own learning. No differences between the two groups were found on the amount and appreciation of collaboration and on further measures of competence development.

A multicase study for the evaluation of a pattern-based visual design process for collaborative learning

Collage is a pattern-based visual design authoring tool for the creation of collaborative learning scripts computationally modelled with IMS Learning Design (LD). The pattern-based visual approach aims to provide teachers with design ideas that are based on broadly accepted practices. Besides, it seeks hiding the LD notation so that teachers can easily create their own designs. The use of visual representations supports both the understanding of the design ideas and the usability of the authoring tool. This paper presents a multicase study comprising three different cases that evaluate the approach from different perspectives. The first case includes workshops where teachers use Collage. A second case implies the design of a scenario proposed by a third-party using related approaches. The third case analyzes a situation where students follow a design created with Collage. The cross-case analysis provides a global understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the pattern-based visual design approach.

Free-and open source software for a course on network management: authoring and enactment of scripts based on collaborative learning strategies

This paper describes a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) case study in engineering education carried out within the context of a network management course. The case study shows that the use of two computing tools developed by the authors and based on Free- and Open-Source Software (FOSS) provide significant educational benefits over traditional engineering pedagogical approaches in terms of both concepts and engineering competencies acquisition. First, the Collage authoring tool guides and supports the course teacher in the process of authoring computer-interpretable representations (using the IMS Learning Design standard notation) of effective collaborative pedagogical designs. Besides, the Gridcole system supports the enactment of that design by guiding the students throughout the prescribed sequence of learning activities. The paper introduces the goals and context of the case study, elaborates onhow Collage and Gridcole were employed, describes the applied evaluation methodology, anddiscusses the most significant findings derived from the case study.

LdShake: learning design solutions sharing and co-edition

Two important challenges that teachers are currently facing are the sharing and the collaborative authoring of their learning design solutions, such as didactical units and learning materials. On the one hand, there are tools that can be used for the creation of design solutions and only some of them facilitate the co-edition. However, they do not incorporate mechanisms that support the sharing of the designs between teachers. On the other hand, there are tools that serve as repositories of educational resources but they do not enable the authoring of the designs. In this paper we present LdShake, a web tool whose novelty is focused on the combined support for the social sharing and co-edition of learning design solutions within communities of teachers. Teachers can create and share learning designs with other teachers using different access rights so that they can read, comment or co-edit the designs. Therefore, each design solution is associated to a group of teachers able to work on its definition, and another group that can only see the design. The tool is generic in that it allows the creation of designs based on any pedagogical approach. However, it can be particularized in instances providing pre-formatted designs structured according to a specific didactic method (such as Problem-Based Learning, PBL). A particularized LdShake instance has been used in the context of Human Biology studies where teams of teachers are required to work together in the design of PBL solutions. A controlled user study, that compares the use of a generic LdShake and a Moodle system, configured to enable the creation and sharing of designs, has been also carried out. The combined results of the real and controlled studies show that the social structure, and the commenting, co-edition and publishing features of LdShake provide a useful, effective and usable approach for facilitating teachers' teamwork.

Reusing IMS-LD formalized best practices in collaborative learning structuring

Designs of CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning)activities should be flexible, effective and customizable toparticular learning situations. On the other hand, structureddesigns aim to create favourable conditions for learning. Thus,this paper proposes the collection of representative and broadlyaccepted (best practices) structuring techniques in collaborative learning. With the aim of establishing a conceptual common ground among collaborative learning practitioners and softwaredevelopers, and reusing the expertise that best practicesrepresent, the paper also proposes the formulation of these techniques as patterns: the so-called CLFPs (CollaborativeLearning Flow Patterns). To formalize these patterns, we havechosen the educational modelling language IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD). IMS-LD has the capability to specify many of the collaborative characteristics of the CLFPs. Nevertheless, the language bears limited capability for describing the services that mediate interactions within a learning activity and the specification of temporal or rotated roles. This analysis isdiscussed in the paper, as well as our approaches towards thedevelopment of a system capable of integrating tools using IMSLDscripts and a CLFP-based Learning Design authoring tool.

On the computational security of a distributed key distribution scheme

In a distributed key distribution scheme, a set of servers helps a set of users in a group to securely obtain a common key. Security means that an adversary who corrupts some servers and some users has no information about the key of a noncorrupted group. In this work, we formalize the security analysis of one such scheme which was not considered in the original proposal. We prove the scheme is secure in the random oracle model, assuming that the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) problem is hard to solve. We also detail a possible modification of that scheme and the one in which allows us to prove the security of the schemes without assuming that a specific hash function behaves as a random oracle. As usual, this improvement in the security of the schemes is at the cost of an efficiency loss.

Learning design twofold strategies for teacher-led inquiry andstudent active learning

This workshop paper states that fostering active student participation both in face-to-face lectures / seminars and outside the classroom (personal and group study at home, the library, etc.) requires a certain level of teacher-led inquiry. The paper presents a set of strategies drawn from real practice in higher education with teacher-led inquiry ingredients that promote active learning. Thesepractices highlight the role of the syllabus, the importance of iterative learning designs, explicit teacher-led inquiry, and the implications of the context, sustainability and practitioners’ creativity. The strategies discussed in this paper can serve as input to the workshop as real cases that need to be represented in design and supported in enactment (with and without technologies).

CLFP intrinsic constraints-based group management of blended learning situations

When applying a Collaborative Learning Flow Pattern (CLFP) to structure sequences of activities in real contexts, one of the tasks is to organize groups of students according to the constraints imposed by the pattern. Sometimes,unexpected events occurring at runtime force this pre-defined distribution to be changed. In such situations, an adjustment of the group structures to be adapted to the new context is needed. If the collaborative pattern is complex, this group redefinitionmight be difficult and time consuming to be carried out in real time. In this context, technology can help on notifying the teacher which incompatibilitiesbetween the actual context and the constraints imposed by the pattern. This chapter presents a flexible solution for supporting teachers in the group organization profiting from the intrinsic constraints defined by a CLFPs codified in IMS Learning Design. A prototype of a web-based tool for the TAPPS and Jigsaw CLFPs and the preliminary results of a controlled user study are alsopresented as a first step towards flexible technological systems to support grouping tasks in this context.

An evaluation of new parsimony-based versus parametric inference methods in biogeography: a case study using the globally distributed plant family Sapindaceae

Aim  Recently developed parametric methods in historical biogeography allow researchers to integrate temporal and palaeogeographical information into the reconstruction of biogeographical scenarios, thus overcoming a known bias of parsimony-based approaches. Here, we compare a parametric method, dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis (DEC), against a parsimony-based method, dispersal-vicariance analysis (DIVA), which does not incorporate branch lengths but accounts for phylogenetic uncertainty through a Bayesian empirical approach (Bayes-DIVA). We analyse the benefits and limitations of each method using the cosmopolitan plant family Sapindaceae as a case study.Location  World-wide.Methods  Phylogenetic relationships were estimated by Bayesian inference on a large dataset representing generic diversity within Sapindaceae. Lineage divergence times were estimated by penalized likelihood over a sample of trees from the posterior distribution of the phylogeny to account for dating uncertainty in biogeographical reconstructions. We compared biogeographical scenarios between Bayes-DIVA and two different DEC models: one with no geological constraints and another that employed a stratified palaeogeographical model in which dispersal rates were scaled according to area connectivity across four time slices, reflecting the changing continental configuration over the last 110 million years.Results  Despite differences in the underlying biogeographical model, Bayes-DIVA and DEC inferred similar biogeographical scenarios. The main differences were: (1) in the timing of dispersal events - which in Bayes-DIVA sometimes conflicts with palaeogeographical information, and (2) in the lower frequency of terminal dispersal events inferred by DEC. Uncertainty in divergence time estimations influenced both the inference of ancestral ranges and the decisiveness with which an area can be assigned to a node.Main conclusions  By considering lineage divergence times, the DEC method gives more accurate reconstructions that are in agreement with palaeogeographical evidence. In contrast, Bayes-DIVA showed the highest decisiveness in unequivocally reconstructing ancestral ranges, probably reflecting its ability to integrate phylogenetic uncertainty. Care should be taken in defining the palaeogeographical model in DEC because of the possibility of overestimating the frequency of extinction events, or of inferring ancestral ranges that are outside the extant species ranges, owing to dispersal constraints enforced by the model. The wide-spanning spatial and temporal model proposed here could prove useful for testing large-scale biogeographical patterns in plants.

Web containers / portals integrating tools and accessing distributed services

En aquest projecte he avaluat un seguit de plataformes per veure quina era la millor pertal d’integrar les eines que proporcionen serveis del projecte TENCompetence.Per començar el projecte plantejaré el context del projecte. Com se situa al marc del projecte TENCompetence on he desenvolupat aquest treball fi de carrera. Tot seguit es veuen quines eines disposem per tal d’accedir als diferents serveis que ens proporciona el projecte.Comento els escenaris on s’aplicarà la tecnologia que triem i finalment comento les diferents plataformes web on integrarem les diferents eines.A continuació he realitzat un capítol per tal de comentar l’anàlisi de requeriments del’escenari d’aplicació de cada pilot. Per a cada escenari aplico unes determinades eines a un determinat context, i per tant hi han unes necessitats concretes que he de recollir. Per plasmar-ho en paper he realitzat l’anàlisi de requeriments. Un cop recollides totes les dades he pogut feruna selecció de la plataforma contenidora que més s’escau a cada pilot.Amb els requeriments i la plataforma seleccionada, he realitzat un disseny per a cada pilot. Després de refinar el disseny he realitzat la implementació per tal de cobrir les necessitats dels pilots. També he aprofitat per veure quina tecnologia es pot utilitzar per tal d’integrar leseines dins de la plataforma.Amb la implementació feta he realitzat un seguit de proves per tal de veure els resultats aconseguits. Tot seguit he iniciat un procés iteractiu per tal refinar el disseny i millorar la implementació.