Adaption of Courses and Learning Environment to the User Context in dotLRN

The explosive growth of Internet during the last years has been reflected in the ever-increasing amount of the diversity and heterogeneity of user preferences, types and features of devices and access networks. Usually the heterogeneity in the context of the users which request Web contents is not taken into account by the servers that deliver them implying that these contents will not always suit their needs. In the particular case of e-learning platforms this issue is especially critical due to the fact that it puts at stake the knowledge acquired by their users. In the following paper we present a system that aims to provide the dotLRN e-learning platform with the capability to adapt to its users context. By integrating dotLRN with a multi-agent hypermedia system, online courses being undertaken by students as well as their learning environment are adapted in real time

Searching for and positioning of contextualized learning objects

Learning object economies are marketplaces for the sharing and reuse of learning objects (LO). There are many motivations for stimulating the development of the LO economy. The main reason is the possibility of providing the right content, at the right time, to the right learner according to adequate quality standards in the context of a lifelong learning process; in fact, this is also the main objective of education. However, some barriers to the development of a LO economy, such as the granularity and editability of LO, must be overcome. Furthermore, some enablers, such as learning design generation and standards usage, must be promoted in order to enhance LO economy. For this article, we introduced the integration of distributed learning object repositories (DLOR) as sources of LO that could be placed in adaptive learning designs to assist teachers’ design work. Two main issues presented as a result: how to access distributed LO, and where to place the LO in the learning design. To address these issues, we introduced two processes: LORSE, a distributed LO searching process, and LOOK, a micro context-based positioning process, respectively. Using these processes, the teachers were able to reuse LO from different sources to semi-automatically generate an adaptive learning design without leaving their virtual environment. A layered evaluation yielded good results for the process of placing learning objects from controlled learning object repositories into a learning design, and permitting educators to define different open issues that must be covered when they use uncontrolled learning object repositories for this purpose. We verified the satisfaction users had with our solution

Human-Computer Interaction with older people through ethnographical lenses: everyday interactions with ICT

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the School of Computing of the University of Dundee, United Kingdom, from 2010 to 2012. This document is a scientific report of the work done, main results, publications and accomplishment of the objectives of the 2-year post-doctoral research project with reference number BP-A 00239. The project has addressed the topic of older people (60+) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which is a topic of growing social and research interest, from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. Over a 2-year period (June 2010-June 2012), we have conducted classical ethnography of ICT use in a computer clubhouse in Scotland, addressing interaction barriers and strategies, social sharing practices in Social Network Sites, and ICT learning, and carried out rapid ethnographical studies related to geo-enabled ICT and e-government services towards supporting independent living and active ageing. The main results have provided a much deeper understanding of (i) the everyday use of Computer-Mediated Communication tools, such as video-chats and blogs, and its evolution as older people’s experience with ICT increases over time, (ii) cross-cultural aspects of ICT use in the north and south of Europe, (iii) the relevance of cognition over vision in interacting with geographical information and a wide range of ICT tools, despite common stereotypes (e.g. make things bigger), (iv) the important relationship offline-online to provide older people with socially inclusive and meaningful eservices for independent living and active ageing, (v) how older people carry out social sharing practices in the popular YouTube, (vi) their user experiences and (vii) the challenges they face in ICT learning and the strategies they use to become successful ICT learners over time. The research conducted in this project has been published in 17 papers, 4 in journals – two of which in JCR, 5 in conferences, 4 in workshops and 4 in magazines. Other public output consists of 10 invited talks and seminars.

Dialogic learning and interactive groups: an IMS LD template integrated in runtime systems

Dialogic learning and interactive groups have proved to be a useful methodological approach appliedin educational situations for lifelong adult learners. The principles of this approach stress theimportance of dialogue and equal participation also when designing the training activities. This paperadopts these principles as the basis for a configurable template that can be integrated in runtimesystems. The template is formulated as a meta-UoL which can be interpreted by IMS Learning Designplayers. This template serves as a guide to flexibly select and edit the activities at runtime (on the fly).The meta-UoL has been used successfully by a practitioner so as to create a real-life example, withpositive and encouraging results

A context-based methodology for integrating Web 2.0 services in learning scenarios

The emergence of the Web 2.0 technologies in the last years havechanged the way people interact with knowledge. Services for cooperation andcollaboration have placed the user in the centre of a new knowledge buildingspace. The development of new second generation learning environments canbenefit from the potential of these Web 2.0 services when applied to aneducational context. We propose a methodology for designing learningenvironments that relates Web 2.0 services with the functional requirements ofthese environments. In particular, we concentrate on the design of the KRSMsystem to discuss the components of this methodology and its application.

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.

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.

Hierachy-based methodology for producing educational contents with maximal reutilization

Computer based training or distance education are facing dramatic changes withthe advent of standardization efforts, some of them concentrating in maximal reuse.This is of paramount importance for a sustainable -cost affordable- production ofeducational materials. Reuse in itself should not be a goal, though, since manymethodological aspects might be lost. In this paper we propose two contentproduction approaches for the InterMediActor platform under a competence-basedmethodology: either a bottom-up approach where content is designed from scratchor a top-down methodology where existing material can be gradually adapted tofulfil requisites to be used with maximal flexibility into InterMediActor.

Guiding students through competence-based educational material

Student guidance is an always desired characteristic in any educational system, butit represents special difficulty if it has to be deployed in an automated way to fulfilsuch needs in a computer supported educational tool. In this paper we explorepossible avenues relying on machine learning techniques, to be included in a nearfuture -in the form of a tutoring navigational tool- in a teleeducation platform -InterMediActor- currently under development. Since no data from that platform isavailable yet, the preliminary experiments presented in this paper are builtinterpreting every subject in the Telecommunications Degree at Universidad CarlosIII de Madrid as an aggregated macro-competence (following the methodologicalconsiderations in InterMediActor), such that marks achieved by students can beused as data for the models, to be replaced in a near future by real data directlymeasured inside InterMediActor. We evaluate the predictability of students qualifications, and we deploy a preventive early detection system -failure alert-, toidentify those students more prone to fail a certain subject such that correctivemeans can be deployed with sufficient anticipation.

From a pattern-language to a pattern ontology approach for CSCL script design

Collaborative activities, in which students actively interact with each other, have proved to provide significant learning benefits. In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), these collaborative activities are assisted by technologies. However, the use of computers does not guarantee collaboration, as free collaboration does not necessary lead to fruitful learning. Therefore, practitioners need to design CSCL scripts that structure the collaborative settings so that they promote learning. However, not all teachers have the technical and pedagogical background needed to design such scripts. With the aim of assisting teachers in designing effective CSCL scripts, we propose a model to support the selection of reusable good practices (formulated as patterns) so that they can be used as a starting point for their own designs. This model is based on a pattern ontology that computationally represents the knowledge captured on a pattern language for the design of CSCL scripts. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed approach is provided with two examples based on a set of meaningful interrelated patters computationally represented with the pattern ontology, and a paper prototyping experience carried out with two teaches. The results offer interesting insights towards the implementation of the pattern ontology in software tools.

Interpretarium: una propuesta de plataforma educativa Moodle para la enseñanza-aprendizaje en línea de la Interpretación

Dentro del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, las nuevas tecnologías se han convertido en la herramienta por excelencia del aprendizaje, como lo demuestra la multiplicación de los campus virtuales. Los programas informáticos para la formación en interpretación, si bien ofrecen recursos valiosos para la práctica, siguen siendo escasos y su acceso muy restringido. El propósito de nuestro proyecto es proponer un dispositivo que una todos los recursos necesarios para formarse en interpretación y saque mayor provecho del desarrollo reciente de plataformas educativas. Así, planteamos la creación de Interpretarium mediante la plataforma Moodle, cuyas funcionalidades permiten no sólo subsanar las carencias de los proyectos anteriores sino también potenciar una enseñanza-aprendizaje reflexiva y cooperativa en línea. El diseño de la versión test de Interpretarium constituye el primer paso de un proceso de innovación docente para el que la colaboración de sus usuarios (docentes, estudiantes y profesionales de la interpretación) es esencial.

La Alfabetización digital mediática y el reto de las TIC en Colombia : diagnóstico y análisis de las principales iniciativas educomunicativas en el escenario 2.0

Històricament la inserció de Colombia a les TIC i al desenvolupament que aquestes comporten va ser lenta. Tot i això, als últims anys s'han desenvolupat projectes de infraestructura i apropiació tecnològica a grans velocitats. En aquest escenari la educomunicació ha avançat de manera formidable i la web colombiana comença a nodrir-se de continguts abundants i de qualitat per a l'educació. Aquest treball examina les principals iniciatives 2.0 per a l'educomunicació i dóna un diagnòstic sobre la seva funcionalitat (progressos i carències). Finalment, dóna una serie de recomanacions per al correcte ús de les eines que ofereix la web 2.0