Personalised trails and learner profiling within e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on personalisation and personalised trails. We begin by introducing and defining the concepts of personalisation and personalised trails. Personalisation requires that a user profile be stored, and so we assess currently available standard profile schemas and discuss the requirements for a profile to support personalised learning. We then review techniques for providing personalisation and some systems that implement these techniques, and discuss some of the issues around evaluating personalisation systems. We look especially at the use of learning and cognitive styles to support personalised learning, and also consider personalisation in the field of mobile learning, which has a slightly different take on the subject, and in commercially available systems, where personalisation support is found to currently be only at quite a low level. We conclude with a summary of the lessons to be learned from our review of personalisation and personalised trails

SEMANTICALLY INTEGRATED E-LEARNING INTEROPERABILITY AGENT

Educational collaboration through e-learning is one of the fields that have been worked on since the emergence of e-learning in educational system. The e-learning standards (e.g. learning object metadata standard) and e-learning system architectures or frameworks, which support interoperation of correlated e-learning systems, are the proposed technologies to support the collaboration. However, these technologies have not been successful in creating boundless educational collaboration through e-learning. In particular, these technologies offer solutions with their own requirements or limitations and endeavor challenging efforts in applying the technologies into their elearning system. Thus, the simpler the technology enhances possibility in forging the collaboration. This thesis explores a suite of techniques for creating an interoperability tool model in e-learning domain that can be applied on diverse e-learning platforms. The proposed model is called the e-learning Interoperability Agent or eiA. The scope of eiA focuses on two aspects of e-learning: Learning Objects (LOs) and the users of elearning itself. Learning objects that are accessible over the Web are valuable assets for sharing knowledge in teaching, training, problem solving and decision support. Meanwhile, there is still tacit knowledge that is not documented through LOs but embedded in form of users' expertise and experiences. Therefore, the establishment of educational collaboration can be formed by the users of e-learning with a common interest in a specific problem domain. The eiA is a loosely coupled model designed as an extension of various elearning systems platforms. The eiA utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology, which has been accepted as the knowledge representation syntax, to bridge the heterogeneous platforms. At the end, the use of eiA as facilitator to mediate interconununication between e-leaming systems is to engage the creation of semantically Federated e-learning Community (FeC). Eventually, maturity of the FeC is driven by users' willingness to grow the community, by means of increasing the elearning systems that use eiA and adding new functionalities into eiA

Investigating the learning transfer of genre features and conceptual knowledge from an academic literacy course to business studies: Exploring the potential of dynamic assessment

Academic literacy courses aim to enable higher education students to participate in their chosen academic fields as fully as possible. However, the extent to which these students transfer the academic skills taught in these courses to their chosen disciplines is still under-researched. This article reports on a study that investigated the potential of dynamic assessment (an assessment approach that blends instruction into assessment) in the transfer of genre features and conceptual knowledge among undergraduate business studies students in a UK public university. The data includes three students’ written assignments (N = nine), interviews (N = three) and business studies tutor (N = three) feedback. Drawing on Vygotskian sociocultural theory of learning and a genre theory based on Systemic Functional Linguistics, the data were analysed. The findings suggest that dynamic assessment may contribute to the transfer of genre features and conceptual knowledge to a new assessment context. Implications of this for academic literacy instruction and assessment design are presented

Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Developing computer-based assessment as a tool to support enquiry led learning

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (MSc) by ResearchThis research explores the possibility of developing Computer-based Assessment (CBA) as a tool to support enquiry-led learning. In this approach learners explore and unpack thoughts and ideas that help them to learn and solve problems. A critical feature of this is feedback and this research focussed on how to design and supply feedback in CBA. Two lines of research were sourced: Computer-assisted Assessment (CM) and Improving Formative Assessment (IFA). Specifically, performance data was collected, analysed and evaluated from the statistical results of 3 CSA tests (approximately 100 undergraduates per test) and from qualitative feedback, the dialogic question and answer responses of (approximately 30 learners x 100 responses) engaged on level 3 activity of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). The outcome of the research is the development of Kilauea exemplar, a theoretical model of an enquiry led item type applied in a subject specific domain

E2ML: A Visual Language for the Design of Instruction

The last decade has brought about a major change in higher education. Course design has developed from a craftsmanship-like process to a structured production, which involves interdisciplinary teams and requires more complex communication skills. This conceptual article introduces E2ML-Educational Environment Modeling Language-a visual language for supporting complex instructional design processes. E2ML can be used for visualizing the intermediate and final results of design, thus providing documentation in a shared language that can enhance team communication, improve design, and contribute to the development of high-quality instruction. The language and its formal features are presented from a conceptual point of view and illustrated by examples. The main results of a first evaluation study are reported, and the exploitation of E2ML in practice as well as its costs and benefits are critically discusse

An examination of the capabilities required by university tutors in online learning environments and the factors affecting the relative importance of these capabilities

The Internet is influencing some would say revolutionizing most aspects of our society, including distance education (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek,2003). There has been a worldwide movement to implement online education technologies in Universities. In Australia, use of these technologies has coincided with the development of pedagogics to improve the merging of distance education and asynchronous, anywhere / anytime learning (Cashion & Palmieri, 2002; Harper, Hedberg, Bennett, & Lockyer, 2000). However, using technology to teach at a distance requires different capabilities than traditional face-to-face teaching. In the revolutionary situation which distance education finds itself, online tutors find themselves acting as pathfinders in uncharted territory finding their way through the ether in the hope of discovering what works in this new environment. The purpose of this study was to examine the online learning milieu to identify what capabilities are required of online tutors. To do this, it was necessary to determine what environmental factors affect online tutor capabilities and what the relationship was between the capabilities and the factors. This was accomplished by exploring the perceptions of online tutors, students and unit coordinators to discover what they felt are the capabilities possessed by effective online tutors. This study was grounded within text-based tertiary online learning environments at a public University in Australia. The research employed an ethnographic design with the major methods of data collection being interviews of online tutors, students and unit coordinators in addition to electronic and face-to-face observation. Data was analyzed using techniques of qualitative analysi

Impact on the knowledge construction process of multimedia online interactions in audio-graphic conferencing systems: the case of adult distance learners of French

Online researchers suggest that synchronous audio-graphic corm encing systems provide different mediational tools that create different mediated educa nal interactions that support the collaborative process of meaning construction, However, the existing literature does not indicate whether the quality of multimodal online interactions as well as the affordances of the use of the synchronous medium can effectively enh ce this process. This thesis brings together two lines of research. The thesis develops a methodological framework for the presentation and analysis of multimodal online interactions that draws on socio-constructivist understanding that the process of meaning construction is social and individual. The second is concerned with the analysis of online multimodal discussions; it examines the interrelationship between the different tools of communication and the different affordances of their simultaneous and single use that may hinder or promote the collaborative process of meaning construction. The design of this research focuses on interaction patterns and examines the extent which online discussions, mediated by the different tools of communication, reach high levels of collaborative meaning construction.This study assumes the knowledge construction process to be empirically observable through analysing online interactions and students' perceptions of the learning experiences. It examines, through interviews, questionnaires and video recordings of online tutorials, the quality of online learning experiences of two different UK Open University tutorial groups learning French. Results show that: participants make different multimodal choices which lead to the creation of different patterns of multi modal interactions and on line exchanges that affect differently participants' engagement in the collaborative meaning construction process; the single and the simultaneous use of the different tools of communication create different affordances for participants to perform different interactive and communicative roles; the multi modal competencies of students and tutors, the tutors' styles and task design play an important role in supporting the collaborative meaning construction process