Project Management Learning in a Collaborative Distant Learning Context - An Actual On-going Experience

The goal of this paper is to show the results of an on-going experience on teaching project management to grade students by following a development scheme of management related competencies on an individual basis. In order to achieve that goal, the students are organized in teams that must solve a problem and manage the development of a feasible solution to satisfy the needs of a client. The innovative component advocated in this paper is the formal introduction of negotiating and virtual team management aspects, as different teams from different universities at different locations and comprising students with different backgrounds must collaborate and compete amongst them. The different learning aspects are identified and the improvement levels are reflected in a rubric that has been designed ad hoc for this experience. Finally, the effort frameworks for the student and instructor have been established according to the requirements of the Bologna paradigms. This experience is developed through a software-based support system allowing blended learning for the theoretical and individual?s work aspects, blogs, wikis, etc., as well as project management tools based on WWW that allow the monitoring of not only the expected deliverables and the achievement of the goals but also the progress made on learning as established in the defined rubric

Collaborative e-learning and Learning Objects

The Learning Object (OA) is any digital resource that can be reused to support learning with specific functions and objectives. The OA specifications are commonly offered in SCORM model without considering activities in groups. This deficiency was overcome by the solution presented in this paper. This work specified OA for e-learning activities in groups based on SCORM model. This solution allows the creation of dynamic objects which include content and software resources for the collaborative learning processes. That results in a generalization of the OA definition, and in a contribution with e-learning specifications.

Intelligent agent supported personalization for virtual learning environments

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are computer-based online learning environments, which provide opportunities for online learners to learn at the time and location of their choosing, whilst allowing interactions and encounters with other online learners, as well as affording access to a wide range of resources. They have the capability of reaching learners in remote areas around the country or across country boundaries at very low cost. Personalized VLEs are those VLEs that provide a set of personalization functionalities, such as personalizing learning plans, learning materials, tests, and are capable of initializing the interaction with learners by providing advice, necessary instant messages, etc., to online learners. One of the major challenges involved in developing personalized VLEs is to achieve effective personalization functionalities, such as personalized content management, learner model, learner plan and adaptive instant interaction. Autonomous intelligent agents provide an important technology for accomplishing personalization in VLEs. A number of agents work collaboratively to enable personalization by recognizing an individual's eLeaming pace and reacting correspondingly. In this research, a personalization model has been developed that demonstrates dynamic eLearning processes; secondly, this study proposes an architecture for PVLE by using intelligent decision-making agents' autonomous, pre-active and proactive behaviors. A prototype system has been developed to demonstrate the implementation of this architecture. Furthemore, a field experiment has been conducted to investigate the performance of the prototype by comparing PVLE eLearning effectiveness with a non-personalized VLE. Data regarding participants' final exam scores were collected and analyzed. The results indicate that intelligent agent technology can be employed to achieve personalization in VLEs, and as a consequence to improve eLeaming effectiveness dramatically.

Hand gesture recognition system based in computer vision and machine learning

"Lecture notes in computational vision and biomechanics series, ISSN 2212-9391, vol. 19"

Emotions in a Web-based Learning Environment

The aim of this thesis was to examine emotions in a web-based learning environment (WBLE). Theoretically, the thesis was grounded on the dimensional model of emotions. Four empirical studies were conducted. Study I focused on students’ anxiety and their self-efficacy in computer-using situations. Studies II and III examined the influence of experienced emotions on students’ collaborative visible and non-collaborative invisible activities and lurking in a WBLE. Study II also focused on the antecedents of the emotions students experience in a web-based learning environment. Study IV concentrated on clarifying the differences between emotions experienced in face-to-face and web-based collaborative learning. The results of these studies are reported in four original research articles published in scientific journals. The present studies demonstrate that emotions are important determinants of student behaviour in a web-based learning, and justify the conclusion that interactions on the web can and do have an emotional content. Based on the results of these empirical studies, it can be concluded that the emotions students experience during the web-based learning result mostly from the social interactions rather than from the technological context. The studies indicate that the technology itself is not the only antecedent of students’ emotional reactions in the collaborative web-based learning situations. However, the technology itself also exerted an influence on students’ behaviour. It was found that students’ computer anxiety was associated with their negative expectations of the consequences of using technology-based learning environments in their studies. Moreover, the results also indicated that student behaviours in a WBLE can be divided into three partially overlapping classes: i) collaborative visible ii) non-collaborative invisible activities, and iii) lurking. What is more, students’ emotions experienced during the web-based learning affected how actively they participated in such activities in the environment. Especially lurkers, i.e. students who seldom participated in discussions but frequently visited the online environment, experienced more negatively valenced emotions during the courses than did the other students. This result indicates that such negatively toned emotional experiences can make the lurking individuals less eager to participate in other WBLE courses in the future. Therefore, future research should also focus more precisely on the reasons that cause individuals to lurk in online learning groups, and the development of learning tasks that do not encourage or permit lurking or inactivity. Finally, the results from the study comparing emotional reactions in web-based and face-to-face collaborative learning indicated that the learning by means of web-based communication resulted in more affective reactivity when compared to learning in a face-to-face situation. The results imply that the students in the web-based learning group experienced more intense emotions than the students in the face-to-face learning group.The interpretations of this result are that the lack of means for expressing emotional reactions and perceiving others’ emotions increased the affectivity in the web-based learning groups. Such increased affective reactivity could, for example, debilitate individual’s learning performance, especially in complex learning tasks. Therefore, it is recommended that in the future more studies should be focused on the possibilities to express emotions in a text-based web environment to ensure better means for communicating emotions, and subsequently, possibly decrease the high level of affectivity. However, we do not yet know whether the use of means for communicating emotional expressions via the web (for example, “smileys” or “emoticons”) would be beneficial or disadvantageous in formal learning situations. Therefore, future studies should also focus on assessing how the use of such symbols as a means for expressing emotions in a text-based web environment would affect students’ and teachers’ behaviour and emotional state in web-based learning environments.

INFO2009 - Computer Crime Learning Resource

An E-Learning Gateway for the latest news and information relating to Computer Crime for INFO2009

Institutional Personal Learning Environments – Paradise or Paradox? A Digital Literacies Perspective

This was my keynote presentation at Computer Supported Education (CSEDU) 2012, in Porto. It looks at the importance of digital literacies and how VLEs do not support their developmeng and looks at iPLEs as an alternative.

El trabajo en equipo en el Proceso Administrativo y de Compras en OPL Carga de Bucaramanga

El proceso administrativo y de compras de OPL Carga tiene algunas falencias entre ellas: fallas en la Comunicación entre el personal operativo, no se realizan llamadas internas usando con frecuencia el email, produciendo la saturación de solicitudes las cuales terminan sin ser resueltas en cuanto a roles se refiere, no hay enfoque de procesos en vista que no se tiene claras las tareas de cada cargo, adicionalmente no hay claridad en los subprocesos, perjudicando el proceso con el aumento de costos, pérdida de tiempo, las responsabilidades de los funcionario no todas las veces se ejecutan en el tiempo asignado, el liderazgo compartido presenta ambigüedades. Objetivos: Definir el trabajo en equipo en el proceso administrativo y de compras en OPL carga de Bucaramanga. La investigación que a realizar es de tipo descriptivo, busca descubrir las falencias o características que permiten diseñar y desarrollar un modelo de solución para los problemas del equipo de OPL Carga S.A.S. Materiales y métodos: La investigación efectuada es de tipo descriptivo, el objetivo es definir el modelo del trabajo en equipo y describir las falencias en el proceso administrativo y de compras en OPL carga de Bucaramanga, que permitan obtener un diagnóstico integral que conlleve a la implementación de estrategias de solución. Resultados: Se identificaron las falencias en los siguientes aspectos: Variable comunicación, rendimiento, destrezas complementarias, propósito significativo y meta específicas de los funcionarios en OPL carga sección administrativa. Conclusiones: El modelo de trabajo en equipo que OPL aplica es jerárquico, en el que se ofrece estabilidad, seguridad, se toman decisiones en forma piramidal, mediante la planeación de tareas, la colaboración, igualdad y respeto por los miembros, trabajando en pro de la solución de problemas. Se construyó un plano conceptual que permitió exponer la interpretación que la estudiante tiene de las teorías, investigaciones y antecedentes válidos para la comprensión del problema investigado. Área comunicacional: Coordinar acciones tendientes para que los funcionarios respondan a tiempo los emails atenientes a su trabajo. Área condiciones de trabajo: Clarificar y diseñar las reglas de comportamiento al interior de los equipos de trabajo que redunden en el mejoramiento del mismo y la búsqueda de soluciones oportunas. Área metas específicas: Procurar mediante auditorías el cumplimiento de las metas y objetivos propuestos por cada equipo de trabajo.

Facebook & BlackBoard: comparative view of learning environments

For several years, online educational tools such as Blackboard have been used by Universities to foster collaborative learning in an online setting. Such tools tend to be implemented in a top-down fashion, with the institution providing the tool to the students and instructing them to use it. Recently, however, a more informal, bottom up approach is increasingly being employed by the students themselves in the form of social networks such as Facebook. With over 9,000 registered Facebook users at the beginning of this study, rising to over 12,000 at the University of Reading alone, Facebook is becoming the de facto social network of choice for higher education students in the UK, and there was increasing anecdotal evidence that students were actively learning via Facebook rather than through BlackBoard. To test the validity of these anecdotes, a questionnaire was sent to students, asking them about their learning experiences via BlackBoard and Facebook. The results show that students are making use of the tools available to them even when there is no formal academic content, and that increased use of a social networking tool is correlated with a reported increase in learning as a result of that use.

Eye-tracking for avatar eye-gaze and interactional analysis in immersive collaborative virtual environments

Participants' eye-gaze is generally not captured or represented in immersive collaborative virtual environment (ICVE) systems. We present EyeCVE. which uses mobile eye-trackers to drive the gaze of each participant's virtual avatar, thus supporting remote mutual eye-contact and awareness of others' gaze in a perceptually unfragmented shared virtual workspace. We detail trials in which participants took part in three-way conferences between remote CAVE (TM) systems linked via EyeCVE. Eye-tracking data was recorded and used to evaluate interaction, confirming; the system's support for the use of gaze as a communicational and management resource in multiparty conversational scenarios. We point toward subsequent investigation of eye-tracking in ICVEs for enhanced remote social-interaction and analysis.

Factors mediating the routinisation of e-learning within a traditional university education environment

Technology-enhanced or Computer Aided Learning (e-learning) can be institutionally integrated and supported by learning management systems or Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to offer efficiency gains, effectiveness and scalability of the e-leaning paradigm. However this can only be achieved through integration of pedagogically intelligent approaches and lesson preparation tools environment and VLE that is well accepted by both the students and teachers. This paper critically explores some of the issues relevant to scalable routinisation of e-learning at the tertiary level, typically first year university undergraduates, with the teaching of Relational Data Analysis (RDA), as supported by multimedia authoring, as a case study. The paper concludes that blended learning approaches which balance the deployment of e-learning with other modalities of learning delivery such as instructor–mediated group learning etc offer the most flexible and scalable route to e-learning but that this requires the graceful integration of platforms for multimedia production, distribution and delivery through advanced interactive spaces that provoke learner engagement and promote learning autonomy and group learning facilitated by a cooperative-creative learning environment that remains open to personal exploration of constructivist-constructionist pathways to learning.

Students’ Role in Distance Learning

1. IntroductionMuch of the support that students have in a traditional classroom is absent in a distance learning course. In the traditional classroom, the learner is together with his or her classmates and the teacher; learning is socially embedded. Students can talk to each other and may learn from each other as they go through the learning process together. They also witness the teacher’s expression of the knowledge firsthand. The class participants communicate to each other not only through their words, but also through their gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice, and the teacher can observe the students’ progress and provide guidance and feedback in an as-needed basis. Further, through the habit of meeting in a regular place at a regular time, the participants reinforce their own and each other’s commitment to the course. A distance course must somehow provide learners other kinds of supports so that the distance learner also has a sense of connection with a learning community; can benefit from interaction with peers who are going through a similar learning process; receives feedback that allows him or her to know how he or she is progressing; and is guided enough so that he or she continues to progress towards the learning objectives. This cannot be accomplished if the distance course does not simultaneously promote student autonomy, for the distance course format requires students to take greater responsibility for their own learning. This chapter presents one distance learning course that was able to address all of these goals. The English Department at Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden, participates in a distance learning program with Vietnam National University. Students enrolled in this program study half-time for two years to complete a Master’s degree in English Linguistics. The distance courses in this program all contain two types of regular class meetings: one type is student-only seminars conducted through text chat, during which students discuss and complete assignments that prepare them for the other type of class meeting, also conducted through text chat, where the teacher is present and is the one to lead the discussion of seminar issues and assignments. The inclusion of student-only seminars in the course design allows for student independence while at the same time it encourages co-operation and solidarity. The teacher-led seminars offer the advantages of a class led by an expert.In this chapter, we present chatlog data from Vietnamese students in one distance course in English linguistics, comparing the role of the student in both student-only and teacher-led seminars. We discuss how students navigate their participation roles, through computer-mediated communication (CMC), according to seminar type, and we consider the emerging role of the autonomous student in the foreign-language medium, distance learning environment. We close by considering aspects of effective design of distance learning courses from the perspective of a foreign language (FL) environment.

Conditional reasoning: A key to assessing computer-based knowledge-building communication processes

This article describes a methodological approach to conditional reasoning in online asynchronous learning environments such as Virtual-U VGroups, developed by SFU, BC, Canada, consistent with the notion of meaning implication: If part of a meaning C is embedded in B and a part of a meaning B is embedded in A, then A implies C in terms of meaning [Piaget 91]. A new transcript analysis technique was developed to assess the flows of conditional meaning implications and to identify the occurrence of hypotheses and connections among them in two human science graduate mixed-mode online courses offered in the summer/spring session of 1997 by SFU. Flows of conditional meaning implications were confronted with Virtual-U VGroups threads and results of the two courses were compared. Findings suggest that Virtual-U VGroups is a knowledge-building environment although the tree-like Virtual-U VGroups threads should be transformed into neuronal-like threads. Findings also suggest that formulating hypotheses together triggers a collaboratively problem-solving process that scaffolds knowledge-building in asynchronous learning environments: A pedagogical technique and an built-in tool for formulating hypotheses together are proposed. © Springer Pub. Co.

Collaborative language learning in Teletandem: a resource for pre-service teacher education

This article presents some of the results of a qualitative research project about the influences of the pedagogic strategies used by a mediator (graduate student in applied linguistics) in the supervision process of a Teletandem partner (undergraduate student in languages) on her pedagogical practice. It was done within the project Teletandem Brazil: foreign language for all. Based on the reflective teaching paradigm and collaborative language learning, with special emphasis on tandem learning, we analyzed the contributions of the collaborative relationship established between the graduate student and the student-teacher in her first teaching experience. The results bring about implications for the field of language teacher education in a perspective of education within practice, evidencing the experience of collaborative learning in teletandem as an opportunity for reflective teacher education of pre-service teachers.