A survey of e-learning content aggregation standards

As e-learning gradually evolved many specialized and disparate systems appeared to fulfil the needs of teachers and students, such as repositories of learning objects, authoring tools, intelligent tutors and automatic evaluators. This heterogeneity raises interoperability issues giving the standardization of content an important role in e-learning. This article presents a survey on current e-learning content aggregation standards focusing on their internal organization and packaging. This study is part of an effort to choose the most suitable specifications and standards for an e-learning framework called Ensemble defined as a conceptual tool to organize a network of e-learning systems and services for domains with complex evaluation.

Integration of repositories in elearning systems

The wide acceptance of digital repositories today in the eLearning field raises several interoperability issues. In this paper we present the interoperability features of a service oriented repository of learning objects called crimsonHex. These features are compliant with the existing standards and we propose extensions to the IMS interoperability recommendation, adding new functions, formalizing message interchange and providing also a REST interface. To validate the proposed extensions and its implementation in crimsonHex we developed a repository plugin for Moodle 2.0 that is expected to be included in the next release of this popular learning management system.

Design a computer programming learning environment for Massive Open Online Courses

Teaching and learning computer programming is as challenging as difficult. Assessing the work of students and providing individualised feedback to all is time-consuming and error prone for teachers and frequently involves a time delay. The existent tools and specifications prove to be insufficient in complex evaluation domains where there is a greater need to practice. At the same time Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are appearing revealing a new way of learning, more dynamic and more accessible. However this new paradigm raises serious questions regarding the monitoring of student progress and its timely feedback. This paper provides a conceptual design model for a computer programming learning environment. This environment uses the portal interface design model gathering information from a network of services such as repositories and program evaluators. The design model includes also the integration with learning management systems, a central piece in the MOOC realm, endowing the model with characteristics such as scalability, collaboration and interoperability. This model is not limited to the domain of computer programming and can be adapted to any complex area that requires systematic evaluation with immediate feedback.

Akzeptanz und Motivation beim selbstregulierten Lernen unter Einsatz von neuen Medien in der berufsbegleitenden Weiterbildung

Das Ziel der Dissertation war die Untersuchung des Computereinsatzes zur Lern- und Betreuungsunterstützung beim selbstgesteuerten Lernen in der Weiterbildung. In einem bisher konventionell durchgeführten Selbstlernkurs eines berufsbegleitenden Studiengangs, der an das Datenmanagement der Bürodatenverarbeitung heranführt, wurden die Kursunterlagen digitalisiert, die Betreuung auf eine online-basierte Lernbegleitung umgestellt und ein auf die neuen Lernmedien abgestimmtes Lernkonzept entwickelt. Dieses neue Lernkonzept wurde hinsichtlich der Motivation und der Akzeptanz von digitalen Lernmedien evaluiert. Die Evaluation bestand aus zwei Teilen: 1. eine formative, den Entwicklungsprozess begleitende Evaluation zur Optimierung der entwickelten Lernsoftware und des eingeführten Lernkonzeptes, 2. eine sowohl qualitative wie quantitative summative Evaluation der Entwicklungen. Ein zentraler Aspekt der Untersuchung war die freie Wahl der Lernmedien (multimediale Lernsoftware oder konventionelles Begleitbuch) und der Kommunikationsmedien (online-basierte Lernplattform oder die bisher genutzten Kommunikationskanäle: E-Mail, Telefon und Präsenztreffen). Diese Zweigleisigkeit erlaubte eine differenzierte Gegenüberstellung von konventionellen und innovativen Lernarrangements. Die Verbindung von qualitativen und quantitativen Vorgehensweisen, auf Grund derer die subjektiven Einstellungen der Probanden in das Zentrum der Betrachtung rückten, ließen einen Blickwinkel auf den Nutzen und die Wirkung der Neuen Medien in Lernprozessen zu, der es erlaubte einige in der Literatur als gängig angesehene Interpretationen in Frage zu stellen und neu zu diskutieren. So konnten durch eine Kategorisierung des Teilnehmerverhaltens nach online-typisch und nicht online-typisch die Ursache-Wirkungs-Beziehungen der in vielen Untersuchungen angeführten Störungen in Online-Seminaren verdeutlicht werden. In den untersuchten Kursen zeigte sich beispielsweise keine Abhängigkeit der Drop-out-Quote von den Lern- und Betreuungsformen und dass diese Quote mit dem neuen Lernkonzept nur geringfügig beeinflusst werden konnte. Die freie Wahl der Lernmedien führte zu einer gezielten Nutzung der multimedialen Lernsoftware, wodurch die Akzeptanz dieses Lernmedium stieg. Dagegen war die Akzeptanz der Lernenden gegenüber der Lernbegleitung mittels einer Online-Lernplattform von hoch bis sehr niedrig breit gestreut. Unabhängig davon reichte in allen Kursdurchgängen die Online-Betreuung nicht aus, so dass Präsenztreffen erbeten wurde. Hinsichtlich der Motivation war die Wirkung der digitalen Medien niedriger als erwartet. Insgesamt bieten die Ergebnisse Empfehlungen für die Planung und Durchführung von computerunterstützten, online-begleiteten Kursen.

An instructional design model for constructivist learning

The emergent requirements for effective e-learning calls for a paradigm shift for instructional design. Constructivist theory and semiotics offer a sound underpinning to enable such revolutionary change by employing the concepts of Learning Objects. E-learning guidelines adopted by the industry have led successfully to the development of training materials. Inadequacy and deficiency of those methods for Higher Education have been identified in this paper. Based on the best practice in industry and our empirical research, we present an instructional design model with practical templates for constructivist learning.

Example uses of a learning object

A self study course for learning to program using the C programming language has been developed. A Learning Object approach was used in the design of the course. One of the benefits of the Learning Object approach is that the learning material can be reused for different purposes. 'Me course developed is designed so that learners can choose the pedagogical approach most suited to their personal learning requirements. For all learning approaches a set of common Assessment Learning Objects (ALOs or tests) have been created. The design of formative assessments with ALOs can be carried out by the Instructional Designer grouping ALOs to correspond to a specific assessment intention. The course is non-credit earning, so there is no summative assessment, all assessment is formative. In this paper examples of ALOs and their uses is presented together with their uses as decided by the Instructional Designer and learner. Personalisation of the formative assessment of skills can be decided by the Instructional Designer or the learner using a repository of pre-designed ALOs. The process of combining ALOs can be carried out manually or in a semi-automated way using metadata that describes the ALO and the skill it is designed to assess.

Integrating constructive feedback in personalised e-learning

When using e-learning material some students progress readily, others have difficulties. In a traditional classroom the teacher would identify those with difficulties and direct them to additional resources. This support is not easily available within e-learning. A new approach to providing constructive feedback is developed that will enable an e-learning system to identify areas of weakness and provide guidance on further study. The approach is based on the tagging of learning material with appropriate keywords that indicate the contents. Thus if a student performs poorly on an assessment on topic X, there is a need to suggest further study of X and participation in activities related to X such as forums. As well as supporting the learner this type of constructive feedback can also inform other stakeholders. For example a tutor can monitor the progress of a cohort; an instructional designer can monitor the quality of learning objects in facilitating the appropriate knowledge across many learners.

Building a Learning Architecture : e-Learning and e-Services

With the rapid advancement of the webtechnology, more and more educationalresources, including software applications forteaching/learning methods, are available acrossthe web, which enables learners to access thelearning materials and use various ways oflearning at any time and any place. Moreover,various web-based teaching/learning approacheshave been developed during the last decade toenhance the capability of both educators andlearners. Particularly, researchers from bothcomputer science and education are workingtogether, collaboratively focusing ondevelopment of pedagogically enablingtechnologies which are believed to improve theinfrastructure of education systems andprocesses, including curriculum developmentmodels, teaching/learning methods, managementof educational resources, systematic organizationof communication and dissemination ofknowledge and skills required by and adapted tousers. Despite of its fast development, however,there are still great gaps between learningintentions, organization of supporting resources,management of educational structures,knowledge points to be learned and interknowledgepoint relationships such as prerequisites,assessment of learning outcomes, andtechnical and pedagogic approaches. Moreconcretely, the issues have been widelyaddressed in literature include a) availability andusefulness of resources, b) smooth integration ofvarious resources and their presentation, c)learners’ requirements and supposed learningoutcomes, d) automation of learning process interms of its schedule and interaction, and e)customization of the resources and agilemanagement of the learning services for deliveryas well as necessary human interferences.Considering these problems and bearing in mindthe advanced web technology of which weshould make full use, in this report we willaddress the following two aspects of systematicarchitecture of learning/teaching systems: 1)learning objects – a semantic description andorganization of learning resources using the webservice models and methods, and 2) learningservices discovery and learning goals match foreducational coordination and learning serviceplanning.

Ontology-based metadata for e-learning content

Nowadays, the popularity of the Web encourages the development of Hypermedia Systems dedicated to e-learning. Nevertheless, most of the available Web teaching systems apply the traditional paper-based learning resources presented as HTML pages making no use of the new capabilities provided by the Web. There is a challenge to develop educative systems that adapt the educative content to the style of learning, context and background of each student. Another research issue is the capacity to interoperate on the Web reusing learning objects. This work presents an approach to address these two issues by using the technologies of the Semantic Web. The approach presented here models the knowledge of the educative content and the learner’s profile with ontologies whose vocabularies are a refinement of those defined on standards situated on the Web as reference points to provide semantics. Ontologies enable the representation of metadata concerning simple learning objects and the rules that define the way that they can feasibly be assembled to configure more complex ones. These complex learning objects could be created dynamically according to the learners’ profile by intelligent agents that use the ontologies as the source of their beliefs. Interoperability issues were addressed by using an application profile of the IEEE LOM- Learning Object Metadata standard.

Objetos de aprendizagem e alfabetização: a proposição de um encontro

This study investigates the development of Learning Objects for the literacy of children. It aims to know based in the notion of literacy teachers the main factors of academic failure in literacy and researching in Brazil, as well as identify relevant activities in the literacy process of children to support the creation of a set of Learning Objects. Refers to an exploratory research, which is configured as a qualitative nature case study, inspired in part in an action-research described by Thiollent (2003), conducted with ten early grades elementary school teachers of a public municipal school in Parnamirim / RN. As methodological options for data collection uses questionnaires and focuses on the group of teachers, analyzing the data, referring back to the ideas by Szymanski (2001; 2008) and content analysis, guided by Bardin (2002). The development of Learning Objects, follows the steps of development suggested by Garrett (2000). Rules in its multidisciplinary theoretical reference and promotes a conceptual dialogue on: Literacy; Literacy School Failure; Pedagogical Practice in Literacy; Thoughts and Language; Multimedia and Hypermedia; Learning Objects. Perceives that the act of education in literacy as an act of love, courage and social interaction between individuals - educator and pupil, so there is ownership of the object of knowledge in the relations with the world and with the experience, through a pedagogical practice that assumes all different knowledges, the moral political ideal, the mindsets of the students, and can make use of teaching materials that supports the learning process and are consistent with the educational objectives (FREIRE, 1998; FREINET, 1976; VYGOTSKY, 1998; FERREIRO AND TEBEROSKY, 1985; JONASSEN, 2000; WILEY, 2001). Figures out, through the teachers' opinions, five reasons for school failure in literacy, three inside the school environment: teacher; academic assistant and principal; student, and two outside the school environment: parents/family; government and public management. Presents a set of Learning Objects, based on the constructivist thought, developed from the identification of activities considered relevant by teachers in literacy's teaching and learning process. Suggests the use of Learning Objects as pedagogical practice in literacy as a digital resource that supports learning and can trigger important cognitive processes for the acquisition of reading and writing skills in the school environment

Using virtual worlds in distance learning environments

This paper presents two tools developed to facilitate the use and automate the process of using Virtual Worlds for educational purposes. The first tool has been developed to automatically create the classroom space, usually called region in the virtual world, which means, a region in the virtual world used to develop educational activities between professors, students and interactive objects. The second tool helps the process of creating 3D interactive objects in a virtual world. With these tools educators will be able to produce 3D interactive learning objects and use them in virtual classrooms improving the quality and appeal, for students, of their classes. © 2011 IEEE.

Teaching and learning data structures supported by computers: An experiment using CADILAG tool

This paper aims to present the use of a learning object (CADILAG), developed to facilitate understanding data structure operations by using visual presentations and animations. The CADILAG allows visualizing the behavior of algorithms usually discussed during Computer Science and Information System courses. For each data structure it is possible visualizing its content and its operation dynamically. Its use was evaluated an the results are presented. © 2012 AISTI.

As multiplicidades espaciais na comunicação midiática digital

Pós-graduação em Comunicação - FAAC

Explorando a interatividade local em TV digital: uma metodologia para vídeo institucional de uma escola de nível técnico

Pós-graduação em Televisão Digital: Informação e Conhecimento - FAAC

Planejamento de um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem baseado em interfaces dinâmicas e uma aplicação ao estudo de potência elétrica

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Elétrica - FEIS