Facebook vs moodle : Surveying university students on the use of learning management systems to support learning activities outside the classroom

CISTI'2015 - 10ª Conferência Ibérica de Sistemas e Tecnologias de Informação, 17 a 20 de junho de 2015, Águeda, Aveiro, Portugal.

A bot spooler architecture to integrate virtual worlds with e-learning management systems for corporate training

Joining efforts of academic and corporate teams, we developed an integration architecture - MULTIS - that enables corporate e-learning managers to use a Learning Management System (LMS) for management of educational activities in virtual worlds. This architecture was then implemented for the Formare LMS. In this paper we present this architecture and concretizations of its implementation for the Second Life Grid/OpenSimulator virtual world platforms. Current systems are focused on activities managed by individual trainers, rather than groups of trainers and large numbers of trainees: they focus on providing the LMS with information about educational activities taking place in a virtual world and/or being able to access within the virtual world some of the information stored in the LMS, and disregard the streamlining of activity setup and data collection in multi-trainer contexts, among other administrative issues. This architecture aims to overcome the limitations of existing systems for organizational management of corporate e-learning activities.

Learning management systems usage on higher education institutions

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are used all over Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and the need to know and understand its adoption and usage arises. However, there is a lack of information about how LMSs are being used, which are the most adopted, whether there is a country adoption standard and which countries use more LMSs. A research team is developing a project that tries to fill this lack of information and provide the needed answers. With this purpose, on a first phase, it a survey was taken place. The results of this survey are presented in this paper. Another purpose of this paper is to disseminate the ongoing project.

Integration of e-portfolios in learning management systems

The LMS plays a decisive role in most eLearning environments. Although they integrate many useful tools for managing eLearning activities, they must also be effectively integrated with other specialized systems typically found in an educational environment such as Repositories of Learning Objects or ePortfolio Systems. Both types of systems evolved separately but in recent years the trend is to combine them, allowing the LMS to benefit from using the ePortfolio assessment features. This paper details the most common strategies for integrating an ePortfolio system into an LMS: the data, the API and the tool integration strategies. It presents a comparative study of strategies based on the technical skills, degree of coupling, security features, batch integration, development effort, status and standardization. This study is validated through the integration of two of the most representative systems on each category - respectively Mahara and Moodle.

Learning management systems in higher education

The use of Laptops and the Internet has produced the technological conditions for instructors and students can take advantage from the diversity of online information, communication, collaboration and sharing with others. The integration of Internet services in the teaching practices can be responsible for thematic, social and digital improvement for the agents involved. There are many benefits when we use a Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Moodle, to support the lectures in higher education. We also will consider its implications for student support and online interaction, leading educational agents to a collaborating of different learning environments, where they can combine face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction, blended-learning, and increases the possibilities for better quality and quantity of human communication in a learning background. In general components of learning management systems contain synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, management features, and assessment utilities. These assessment utilities allow lecturers to systematize basic assessment tasks. Assessments can be straightaway delivered to the student, and upon conclusion, immediately returned with grades and detailed feedback. Therefore learning management systems can also be used for assessment purposes in Higher Education.

Adapter module for self-learning production systems

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica, Sistemas e Computadores

Multidimensional Adaptations for Open Learning Management Systems

Our work is focused on alleviating the workload for designers of adaptive courses on the complexity task of authoring adaptive learning designs adjusted to specific user characteristics and the user context. We propose an adaptation platform that consists in a set of intelligent agents where each agent carries out an independent adaptation task. The agents apply machine learning techniques to support the user modelling for the adaptation process

Multidimensional Adaptations for Open Learning Management Systems

Our work is focused on alleviating the workload for designers of adaptive courses on the complexity task of authoring adaptive learning designs adjusted to specific user characteristics and the user context. We propose an adaptation platform that consists in a set of intelligent agents where each agent carries out an independent adaptation task. The agents apply machine learning techniques to support the user modelling for the adaptation process

An analysis of the moderating effects of age in the acceptance of Learning Management Systems. 'Análisis del efecto moderador de la edad en la aceptación de sistemas e-learning LMS'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

The use of learning management systems: A Longitudinal Case Study

In this article the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) at the School of Engineering, University of Borås, in the year 2004 and the academic year 2009-2010 is investigated. The tools in the LMS were classified into four groups (tools for distribution, tools for communication, tools for interaction and tools for course administration) and the pattern of use was analyzed. The preliminary interpretation of the results was discussed with a group of teachers from the School of Engineering with long experience of using LMS. High expectations about LMS as a tool to facilitate flexible education, student centered methods and the creation of an effective learning environment is abundant in the literature. This study, however, shows that in most of the surveyed courses the available LMS is predominantly used to distribute documents to students. The authors argue that a more elaborate use of LMS and a transformation of pedagogical practices towards social constructivist, learner centered procedures should be treated as an integrated process of professional development.

An analysis of the moderating effects of age in the acceptance of learning management systems

El presente estudio analiza las intenciones de los usuarios acerca del uso de sistemas de tele-enseñanza LMS (Learning Management Systems, basándose en un modelo que integra el Modelo de Aceptación Tecnológica (TAM, Technology Acceptance Model, la Teoría del Comportamiento Percibido (TPB, Theory of Planned Behavior) y la Teoría Unificada de la Aceptación y Uso de la Tecnología (UTAUT, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology), tomando la edad como variable moderadora. Así, este artículo estudia la influencia de la intención conductual, la actitud hacia el uso, la facilidad de uso percibida, la utilidad percibida, la norma subjetiva y la influencia social en la intención de utilizar sistemas e-learning LMS. Como antecedentes de estos factores de influencia se plantean las características del sistema y del usuario. El resultado de la revisión teórica es un modelo unificado que ha sido validado con datos recogidos de 94 estudiantes a través de un cuestionario en línea. Estos datos han sido analizados utilizando la técnica de mínimos cuadrados parciales, y los principales resultados confirman la relevancia predictiva del modelo para usuarios de entre 26 y 35 años y de entre 36 y 45 años.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) and e-learning management: an integrative review and research agenda

Information Technology (IT) can be an important component for innovation since enabling e-learning it can provide conditions to which the organization can work with new business and improved processes. In this regard, the Learning Management Systems (LMS) allows communication and interaction between teachers and students in virtual spaces. However the literature indicates that there are gaps in the researches, especially concerning the use of IT for the management of e-learning. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the available literature about the application of LMS for the e-learning management, seeking to present possibilities for researches in the field. An integrative literature review was performed considering the Web of Science, Scopus, Ebsco and Scielo databases, where 78 references were found, of which 25 were full papers. This analysis derives interesting characteristics from scientific studies, highlighting gaps and guidelines for future research.

Integration of e-learning systems with repositories of learning objects

This paper describes a communication model to integrate repositories of programming problems with other e-Learning software components. The motivation for this work comes from the EduJudge project that aims to connect an existing repository of programming problems to learning management systems. When trying to use the existing repositories of learning objects we realized that they are mainly specialized search engines and lack features for integration with other e-Learning systems. With this model we intend to clarify the main features of a programming problem repository, in order to enable the design and development of software components that use it. The two main points of this model are the definition of programming problems as learning objects and the definition of the core functions exposed by the repository. In both cases, this model follows the existing specifications of the IMS standard and proposes extensions to deal with the special requirements of automatic evaluation and grading of programming exercises. In the definition of programming problems as learning objects we introduced a new schema for meta-data. This schema is used to represent meta-data related to automatic evaluation that cannot be conveniently represented using the standard: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; or the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. In the definition of the core functions we used two different web services flavours - SOAP and REST - and described each function as an operation for each type of interface. We describe also the data types of the arguments of each operation. These data types consist mainly on learning objects and their identifications, but include also usage reports and queries using XQuery.

Integrating the LMS in service oriented e-learning systems

Learning management systems are routinely used for presenting, solving and grading exercises with large classes. However, teachers are constrained to use questions with pre-defined answers, such as multiple-choice, to automatically correct the exercises of their students. Complex exercises cannot be evaluated automatically by the LMS and require the coordination of a set of heterogeneous systems. For instance, programming exercises require a specialized exercise resolution environment and automatic evaluation features, each provided by a different type of system. In this paper, the authors discuss an approach for the coordination of a network of eLearning systems supporting the resolution of exercises. The proposed approach is based on a pivot component embedded in the LMS and has two main roles: 1) provide an exercise resolution environment, and 2) coordinate communication between the LMS and other systems, exposing their functions as web services. The integration of the pivot component in the LMS relies on Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). This paper presents an architecture to coordinate a network of eLearning systems and validate the proposed approach by creating such a network integrated with LMS from two different vendors.