Automatized Generation of Personalized Learning Paths through Aspects in Multidimensional Spaces

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016

A conceptual model of personalized virtual learning environments

The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is one of the fastest growing areas in educational technology research and development. In order to achieve learning effectiveness, ideal VLEs should be able to identify learning needs and customize solutions, with or without an instructor to supplement instruction. They are called Personalized VLEs (PVLEs). In order to achieve PVLEs success, comprehensive conceptual models corresponding to PVLEs are essential. Such conceptual modeling development is important because it facilitates early detection and correction of system development errors. Therefore, in order to capture the PVLEs knowledge explicitly, this paper focuses on the development of conceptual models for PVLEs, including models of knowledge primitives in terms of learner, curriculum, and situational models, models of VLEs in general pedagogical bases, and particularly, the definition of the ontology of PVLEs on the constructivist pedagogical principle. Based on those comprehensive conceptual models, a prototyped multiagent-based PVLE has been implemented. A field experiment was conducted to investigate the learning achievements by comparing personalized and non-personalized systems. The result indicates that the PVLE we developed under our comprehensive ontology successfully provides significant learning achievements. These comprehensive models also provide a solid knowledge representation framework for PVLEs development practice, guiding the analysis, design, and development of PVLEs. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Towards an intelligent learning system for the natural born cyborg

We propose to design a Custom Learning System that responds to the unique needs and potentials of individual students, regardless of their location, abilities, attitudes, and circumstances. This project is intentionally provocative and future-looking but it is not unrealistic or unfeasible. We propose that by combining complex learning databases with a learner’s personal data, we could provide all students with a personal, customizable, and flexible education. This paper presents the initial research undertaken for this project of which the main challenges were to broadly map the complex web of data available, to identify what logic models are required to make the data meaningful for learning, and to translate this knowledge into simple and easy-to-use interfaces. The ultimate outcome of this research will be a series of candidate user interfaces and a broad system logic model for a new smart system for personalized learning. This project is student-centered, not techno-centric, aiming to deliver innovative solutions for learners and schools. It is deliberately future-looking, allowing us to ask questions that take us beyond the limitations of today to motivate new demands on technology.

ISE-SPL: Uma abordagem baseada em linha de produtos de software aplicada à geração automática de sistemas para educação médica na plataforma E-learning

E-learning, which refers to the use of Internet-related technologies to improve knowledge and learning, has emerged as a complementary form of education, bringing advantages such as increased accessibility to information, personalized learning, democratization of education and ease of update, distribution and standardization of the content. In this sense, this paper aims to develop a tool, named ISE-SPL, whose purpose is the automatic generation of E-learning systems for medical education, making use of concepts of Software Product Lines. It consists of an innovative methodology for medical education that aims to assist professors of healthcare in their teaching through the use of educational technologies, all based on computing applied to healthcare (Informatics in Health). The tests performed to validate the ISE-SPL were divided into two stages: the first was made by using a software analysis tool similar to ISE-SPL, called SPLOT and the second was performed through usability questionnaires to healthcare professors who used ISESPL. Both tests showed positive results, proving it to be an efficient tool for generation of E-learning software and useful for professors in healthcare

Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning

Today, Digital Systems and Services for Technology Supported Learning and Education are recognized as the key drivers to transform the way that individuals, groups and organizations “learn” and the way to “assess learning” in 21st Century. These transformations influence: Objectives - moving from acquiring new “knowledge” to developing new and relevant “competences”; Methods – moving from “classroom” based teaching to “context-aware” personalized learning; and Assessment – moving from “life-long” degrees and certifications to “on-demand” and “in-context” accreditation of qualifications. Within this context, promoting Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning, is currently a key issue in the public discourse and the global dialogue on Education, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Flipped School Classrooms. This volume on Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning contributes to the international dialogue between researchers, technologists, practitioners and policy makers in Technology Supported Education and Learning. It addresses emerging issues related with both theory and practice, as well as, methods and technologies that can support Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning. In the twenty chapters contributed by international experts who are actively shaping the future of Educational Technology around the world, topics such as: - The evolution of University Open Courses in Transforming Learning - Supporting Open Access to Teaching and Learning of People with Disabilities - Assessing Student Learning in Online Courses - Digital Game-based Learning for School Education - Open Access to Virtual and Remote Labs for STEM Education - Teachers’ and Schools’ ICT Competence Profiling - Web-Based Education and Innovative Leadership in a K-12 International School Setting are presented. An in-depth blueprint of the promise, potential, and imminent future of the field, Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning is necessary reading for researchers and practitioners, as well as, undergraduate and postgraduate students, in educational technology.

The Future of Ubiquitous Learning

This book explores emerging pedagogical perspectives based on the design of new learning spaces supported by digital technologies and brings together some of the best research in this field. The book is divided into three themes: foundations of emerging pedagogies, learning designs for emerging pedagogies and, adaptive and personalized learning. The chapters provide up-to-date information about new pedagogical proposals, and examples for acquiring the requisite skills to both design and support learning opportunities that improve the potential of available technologies.

Digital anthropology and educational eGames: learning through behavioural patterns in digital, game-based contexts

The selected publications are focused on the relations between users, eGames and the educational context, and how they interact together, so that both learning and user performance are improved through feedback provision. A key part of this analysis is the identification of behavioural, anthropological patterns, so that users can be clustered based on their actions, and the steps taken in the system (e.g. social network, online community, or virtual campus). In doing so, we can analyse large data sets of information made by a broad user sample,which will provide more accurate statistical reports and readings. Furthermore, this research is focused on how users can be clustered based on individual and group behaviour, so that a personalized support through feedback is provided, and the personal learning process is improved as well as the group interaction. We take inputs from every person and from the group they belong to, cluster the contributions, find behavioural patterns and provide personalized feedback to the individual and the group, based on personal and group findings. And we do all this in the context of educational games integrated in learning communities and learning management systems. To carry out this research we design a set of research questions along the 10-year published work presented in this thesis. We ask if the users can be clustered together based on the inputs provided by them and their groups; if and how these data are useful to improve the learner performance and the group interaction; if and how feedback becomes a useful tool for such pedagogical goal; if and how eGames become a powerful context to deploy the pedagogical methodology and the various research methods and activities that make use of that feedback to encourage learning and interaction; if and how a game design and a learning design must be defined and implemented to achieve these objectives, and to facilitate the productive authoring and integration of eGames in pedagogical contexts and frameworks. We conclude that educational games are a resourceful tool to provide a user experience towards a better personalized learning performance and an enhance group interaction along the way. To do so, eGames, while integrated in an educational context, must follow a specific set of user and technical requirements, so that the playful context supports the pedagogical model underneath. We also conclude that, while playing, users can be clustered based on their personal behaviour and interaction with others, thanks to the pattern identification. Based on this information, a set of recommendations are provided Digital Anthropology and educational eGames 6 /216 to the user and the group in the form of personalized feedback, timely managed for an optimum impact on learning performance and group interaction level. In this research, Digital Anthropology is introduced as a concept at a late stage to provide a backbone across various academic fields including: Social Science, Cognitive Science, Behavioural Science, Educational games and, of course, Technology-enhance learning. Although just recently described as an evolution of traditional anthropology, this approach to digital behaviour and social structure facilitates the understanding amongst fields and a comprehensive view towards a combined approach. This research takes forward the already existing work and published research onusers and eGames for learning, and turns the focus onto the next step — the clustering of users based on their behaviour and offering proper, personalized feedback to the user based on that clustering, rather than just on isolated inputs from every user. Indeed, this pattern recognition in the described context of eGames in educational contexts, and towards the presented aim of personalized counselling to the user and the group through feedback, is something that has not been accomplished before.

Inventing future schools

A group of Australian researchers and designers have been working on ways to imagine, demonstrate and accelerate the use of ICT that extend learning relationships and environments to include the classroom, home and local community. These learning projects aim to transform how students identify and interact with learning, subject areas, teachers, other students, family, organisations and more broadly how learning tools can create connections that permeate students' life worlds now and in the future.---------- It is our intention that such demonstrators must - Be simple, flexible, scalable and adaptive - Result in increased confidence in the use of ICT for both students and teachers - Offer opportunities for personalized learning - Promote new and effective learning partnerships between students, teachers and families. - Extend the learning experience to include other environments both local and virtual. - Inspire further innovation - Provide solutions to current limitations---------- Presenting Innovation in Practice - Innovative ICT projects currently being used by students in schools, at home and in the community - Stories of use from teacher, student, and other stakeholder perspectives - Lessons learnt so far: a design perspective - Surprising and inspiring opportunities

Meeting the Needs of Adult Learners in a Faculty of Education Careers Curriculum

Adult learners are a discrete population with specific needs and characteristics. The context of this project is a Career Services office in a Faculty of Education at a Local University [pseudonym]. The office serves a population of students from various programs within the Faculty, with the majority of students enrolled in the Bachelor of Education program. As a result of the current job market for teachers in Ontario and Canada, it is important to be able to communicate effectively with students to support them in their job searches. The purpose of this project was to identify the needs and characteristics of adult learners, and to identify ways that the current Career Services curriculum could be improved to better support adult learners. In order to engage this population of students, it is important to ensure that the content of the course addresses and meets their needs. To provide a more personalized learning environment, online resources were considered to allow students to participate more, providing a more convenient and suitable method of delivery for our intended audience, and a sample website was created to host the online resources. In addition, the entire Career Services curriculum was formalized by producing a curriculum document to outline the goals and outcomes of the program to ensure that the content will facilitate the achievement of those goals. What resulted is a hybrid, online and in-person program for Career Services, and a more robust curriculum that considers the needs of our adult learners.

A concepção de ensino sob medida na obra hygiene mental e educação (1927), de Luiz Antônio dos Santos Lima

This dissertation examines the concept of the personalized teaching proposed by the physician and educator from Rio Grande do Norte Luiz Antonio dos Santos Lima, in his doctoral thesis "Mental Hygiene and Education," published in 1927. To do so, we start from the assumption that this thinker appropriated part of the educational theory formulated by Èdouard Claparède - specifically, in the case of the teaching concepts of the personalized teaching and comprehensive education designed by the Swiss intellectual - and, considering the Brazilian social reality of early twentieth century, reframed these concepts, adapting them to the country context. To implement the proposed idea, the bibliographical study was the option chosen, and so was done through a theoretical research which had as a reference authors whose studies referred to the Brazilian historical moment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, our examined time frame. As for the understanding and the methodological analysis of discourse, seen as socially constructed, the Foucault postulations were studied under an analytical approach, in which the disciplinary society is analyzed from the relations of power and knowledge that exist in it. The main source of this research was the work of "Mental Hygiene and Education," published as a requirement to the obtainment of Luiz Antonio s medical degree by the Rio de Janeiro Medicine School. Thus, it was found that the conception of personalized learning to the comprehensive education of students, as proposed in the doctoral thesis of Luiz Antonio dos Santos Lima, was related to abnormalities of mental character that children could present. School education was thought in a way by the potiguar thinker that it could be applied as deep as the moral, intellectual and behavioral deviations of the individual were, making use of hygiene practices of the minds through a normalizing process towards a civilized and developed future of the Brazilian nation which would manage, watch and fix the thoughts of the school students

Construction of Structures I in Moodle: a new teaching methodology in the Degree of Building Engineer

The subject of Construction of Structures I studies, from a constructive point of view and taking into account current legislation, reinforced concrete structures used in buildings, through the acquisition of knowledge and construction criteria required in the profession of a Technical Architect. The contents acquired in this course are essential for further professional development of technicians and are closely related to many of the subjects taught in the same or other courses of the Degree in Technical Architecture at the University of Alicante. The aim of this paper is to present, analyze and discuss the development of a new methodology proposed in the mentioned subject, as it supposed an important change in the traditional way of teaching Construction and Structures I. In order to incorporate new teaching tools in 2013-2014, the course has been implemented by using a Moodle software tool to promote blended learning with online exercises. Our Moodle community allows collaborative work within an open-source platform where teachers and students share a new and personalized learning environment. Students are easily used to the interface and the platform, value the constant connection with teachers or other fellows and completely agree with the possibility of making questions or share documents 24 hours a day. The proposed methodology consists of lectures and practical classes. In the lectures, the basics of each topic are discussed; class attendance, daily study and conducting scheduled exercises are indispensable. Practical classes allow to consolidate the knowledge gained in theory classes by solving professional exercises and actual construction problems related to structures, that shall be compulsorily delivered online. So, after the correction of the teacher and the subsequent feedback of students, practical exercises ensure lifelong learning of the student, who can download any kind of material at any time (constructive details, practical exercises and even corrected exams). Regarding the general evaluation system, goals achievement is assessed on an ongoing basis (65% of the final mark) along the course through written and graphic evidences in person and online, as well as a individual development of a workbook. In all cases, the acquisition of skills, the ability to synthesize, the capacity of logical and critical thinking are assessed. The other 35 % of the mark is evaluated by a complementary graphic exam. Participation in the computing platform is essential and the student is required to do and present, at least 90% of the practices proposed. Those who do not comply with the practices in each specific date could not be assessed continuously and may only choose the final exam. In conclusion, the subject of Construction of Structures I is essential in the development of the regulated profession of Technical Architect as they are considered, among other professional profiles, as specialists in construction of building structures. The use of a new communication platform and online teaching allows the acquisition of knowledge and constructive approaches in a continuous way, with a more direct and personal monitoring by the teacher that has been highly appreciated by almost 100% of the students. Ultimately, it is important to say that the use of Moodle in this subject is a very interesting tool, which was really well welcome by students in one of the densest and important subjects of the Degree of Technical Architecture.

The background impact in HEI math lectures: an experience in math in the 1st year of Accounting and Management Degree

It is a fact, and far from being a new one, that students have been entering Higher Education courses with many different backgrounds in terms of secondary school programs they attended. The impact of these basic skills is a general and worldwide challenge, fundamentally when facing some specific “constructive” subjects like foreign languages and Mathematics. Working with students with an extensive variety of Math qualifications is an outrageous challenge when they enter an advanced Math course, leading to an almost generalized expectations’ failure - from students enrolled in course and from their teachers, who feel powerless in trying to monitor knowledge construction from completely different “starting points”. If teachers’ "haste" is average, more than half of the students do not “go along” and give up, even before experiencing any kind of evaluation procedure. On the contrary, if the “speed” is too low, others are discouraged (feeling not progressing at all) and the teacher runs the risk of not meeting the minimum objectives (general and specific) of its course, which may have a negative impact on students’ future training development. Failure in Mathematics, despite being a recurrent and global issue, does not have any “magical solution”, however, in general, teachers in this area seem untiring, searching, investigating, trying and implementing new and old “recipes” to tackle and demystify this subject. In this article we describe a project developed in a Math course, with the first year students from an Accounting and Management bachelor degree, and its outcomes since it was brought to practice, revealing its impact in students’ success, from approval to dropout rates, in this course. We will shortly describe students’ differentiated Math backgrounds, their results in a pre-assessment analysis and how we try to deal with these differences and level them up, having in mind the same “finish line”. One should never forget that all these students where officially accepted in higher education institutions, so they are ones’ reality, the reality of institutions whose name one should value and strive to defend.

Learning personalized tag ontology from user tagging information

The cross-sections of the Social Web and the Semantic Web has put folksonomy in the spot light for its potential in overcoming knowledge acquisition bottleneck and providing insight for "wisdom of the crowds". Folksonomy which comes as the results of collaborative tagging activities has provided insight into user's understanding about Web resources which might be useful for searching and organizing purposes. However, collaborative tagging vocabulary poses some challenges since tags are freely chosen by users and may exhibit synonymy and polysemy problem. In order to overcome these challenges and boost the potential of folksonomy as emergence semantics we propose to consolidate the diverse vocabulary into a consolidated entities and concepts. We propose to extract a tag ontology by ontology learning process to represent the semantics of a tagging community. This paper presents a novel approach to learn the ontology based on the widely used lexical database WordNet. We present personalization strategies to disambiguate the semantics of tags by combining the opinion of WordNet lexicographers and users’ tagging behavior together. We provide empirical evaluations by using the semantic information contained in the ontology in a tag recommendation experiment. The results show that by using the semantic relationships on the ontology the accuracy of the tag recommender has been improved.

Personalized ontology learning for enhancing text mining effectiveness

Over the last decade, the majority of existing search techniques is either keyword- based or category-based, resulting in unsatisfactory effectiveness. Meanwhile, studies have illustrated that more than 80% of users preferred personalized search results. As a result, many studies paid a great deal of efforts (referred to as col- laborative filtering) investigating on personalized notions for enhancing retrieval performance. One of the fundamental yet most challenging steps is to capture precise user information needs. Most Web users are inexperienced or lack the capability to express their needs properly, whereas the existent retrieval systems are highly sensitive to vocabulary. Researchers have increasingly proposed the utilization of ontology-based tech- niques to improve current mining approaches. The related techniques are not only able to refine search intentions among specific generic domains, but also to access new knowledge by tracking semantic relations. In recent years, some researchers have attempted to build ontological user profiles according to discovered user background knowledge. The knowledge is considered to be both global and lo- cal analyses, which aim to produce tailored ontologies by a group of concepts. However, a key problem here that has not been addressed is: how to accurately match diverse local information to universal global knowledge. This research conducts a theoretical study on the use of personalized ontolo- gies to enhance text mining performance. The objective is to understand user information needs by a \bag-of-concepts" rather than \words". The concepts are gathered from a general world knowledge base named the Library of Congress Subject Headings. To return desirable search results, a novel ontology-based mining approach is introduced to discover accurate search intentions and learn personalized ontologies as user profiles. The approach can not only pinpoint users' individual intentions in a rough hierarchical structure, but can also in- terpret their needs by a set of acknowledged concepts. Along with global and local analyses, another solid concept matching approach is carried out to address about the mismatch between local information and world knowledge. Relevance features produced by the Relevance Feature Discovery model, are determined as representatives of local information. These features have been proven as the best alternative for user queries to avoid ambiguity and consistently outperform the features extracted by other filtering models. The two attempt-to-proposed ap- proaches are both evaluated by a scientific evaluation with the standard Reuters Corpus Volume 1 testing set. A comprehensive comparison is made with a num- ber of the state-of-the art baseline models, including TF-IDF, Rocchio, Okapi BM25, the deploying Pattern Taxonomy Model, and an ontology-based model. The gathered results indicate that the top precision can be improved remarkably with the proposed ontology mining approach, where the matching approach is successful and achieves significant improvements in most information filtering measurements. This research contributes to the fields of ontological filtering, user profiling, and knowledge representation. The related outputs are critical when systems are expected to return proper mining results and provide personalized services. The scientific findings have the potential to facilitate the design of advanced preference mining models, where impact on people's daily lives.

Designing personalized video-based crossmedia informal learning environments beyond iTV

Tese de doutoramento, Informática (Engenharia Informática), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2014