mLearning, development and delivery : creating opportunity and enterprise within the HE in FE context

This research project was funded by ESCalate in 2006-7 to support Somerset College in developing the curriculum, as well as widening participation via the use of mobile communications technologies such as mp3 players and mobile phones. The Project represents a highly topical and timely engagement with the opportunities for learning provided by the burgeoning use of mobile computing/ communications devices. Activities bring together colleagues from Teacher Education and Multimedia Computing in an innovative approach to designing for and delivering the curriculum. The Project addresses pedagogic issues and also vitally involves current and future learners, providing them with a new context for skills development and entrepreneurship. Anticipated outcomes include informed development of new HE modules and professional CPD activities which address the skills and context of this emerging approach to delivering the curriculum. The Project also intends to trial and evaluate the use of mobile technologies to support a blended learning approach to programme delivery and the development of a FD module which could be delivered via a mobile computing device. An interim report and a final project report are available as Word and PDF file

Context-Aware and Adaptable eLearning Systems

The full text file attached to this record contains a copy of the thesis without the authors publications attached. The list of publications that are attached to the complete thesis can be found on pages 6-7 in the thesis.This thesis proposed solutions to some shortcomings to current eLearning architectures. The proposed DeLC architecture supports context-aware and adaptable provision of eLearning services and electronic content. The architecture is fully distributed and integrates service-oriented development with agent technology. Central to this architecture is that a node is our unit of computation (known as eLearning node) which can have purely service-oriented architecture, agent-oriented architecture or mixed architecture. Three eLeaerning Nodes have been implemented in order to demonstrate the vitality of the DeLC concept. The Mobile eLearning Node uses a three-level communication network, called InfoStations network, supporting mobile service provision. The services, displayed on this node, are to be aware of its context, gather required learning material and adapted to the learner request. This is supported trough a multi-layered hybrid (service- and agent-oriented) architecture whose kernel is implemented as middleware. For testing of the middleware a simulation environment has been developed. In addition, the DeLC development approach is proposed. The second eLearning node has been implemented as Education Portal. The architecture of this node is poorly service-oriented and it adopts a client-server architecture. In the education portal, there are incorporated education services and system services, called engines. The electronic content is kept in Digital Libraries. Furthermore, in order to facilitate content creators in DeLC, the environment Selbo2 was developed. The environment allows for creating new content, editing available content, as well as generating educational units out of preexisting standardized elements. In the last two years, the portal is used in actual education at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Plovdiv. The third eLearning node, known as Agent Village, exhibits a purely agent-oriented architecture. The purpose of this node is to provide intelligent assistance to the services deployed on the Education Pportal. Currently, two kinds of assistants are implemented in the node - eTesting Assistants and Refactoring eLearning Environment (ReLE). A more complex architecture, known as Education Cluster, is presented in this thesis as well. The Education Cluster incorporates two eLearning nodes, namely the Education Portal and the Agent Village. eLearning services and intelligent agents interact in the cluster

Mobile Learning: location, collaboration and scaffolding inquiry

Critiques of mobile learning pedagogy are concerned with whether such approaches are technology led. This chapter discusses how the particular features of mobile learning can be harnessed to provide new learning opportunities in relation to collaboration, inquiry and location-based learning. Technology supported inquiry learning is a situation rich with possibilities for collaboration. In particular, mobile learning offers new possibilities for scaffolding collaboration together with its other better-known features such as scaffolding the transfer between settings and making learning relevant by making use of the possibilities of location-based learning. These features are considered as part of mobile learning models, in particular mobile collaborative learning models

Security framework for mobile learning environments

Mobile learning is becoming popular among educators as academic technologies advance. Mobile devices used in mobile learning can potentially become vulnerable if the security aspects are neglected, thereby putting personal information of users at risk. Therefore, for mobile learning applications to work effectively as valuable tools, the security aspects must be given adequate consideration. This paper proposes a security framework for mobile learning applications which is the bedrock for designing and implementing a highly secured environment for mobile devices. The proposed framework is a generic one having capability to trap any attack or threat from any vulnerable points based on triad CIA dimensions identified in the framework. It also proposed solutions to security threats during or after development of mobile learning systems. The framework is best applied at different sub-framework levels of mobile client, server and network infrastructure vulnerability points in order to capture threats and prevent attacks that are unique to each attack route

Intelligent Car Parking Locator Service

This paper presents an InfoStation-based multi-agent system facilitating a Car Parking Locator service provision within a University Campus. The system network architecture is outlined, illustrating its functioning during the service provision. A detailed description of the Car Parking Locator service is given and the system entities’ interaction is described. System implementation approaches are also considered

System architecture, content authentication and digital right management (DRM) for eLearning

This thesis provides a frame for Personal eLearning System (PELS) with content security, authentication and Digital Right Management. It presents an efficient algorithm for eLearning problem-solution using graph partitioning and weighted bipartite graph. The research provides an eLearning Analytics Ecosystem using statistical methods for validation of Quality of Results (QoR).<br /

Presentation of the paper "Interaction design principles in WYRED platform" in HCII 2017

This is the presentation of the paper entitled “Interaction design principles in WYRED platform” in the Emerging interactive systems for education session at the HCI International 2017 Conference, held in Vancouver, Canada, 9 - 14 July 2017. This work presents the requirements elicitation phase for the WYRED platform. WYRED (netWorked Youth Research for Empowerment in the Digital society) is a European H2020 Project that aims to provide a framework for research in which children and young people can express and explore their perspectives and interests in relation to digital society, but also a platform from which they can communicate their perspectives to other stakeholders effectively through innovative engagement processes. The requirement elicitation is a basic step to design the interactive mechanism to build up the needed social dialog among the involved stakeholders. In order to set up the right interactive tasks, not only functional requirements are elicited, the non-functional requirements play a key role in this project, specially regarding to ensure the security and privacy of the underage people that will be presented in the development of this project

Enhanced mobile computing using cloud resources

Summary in English.Includes bibliographical references.The purpose of this research is to investigate, review and analyse the use of cloud resources for the enhancement of mobile computing. Mobile cloud computing refers to a distributed computing relationship between a resource-constrained mobile device and a remote high-capacity cloud resource. Investigation of prevailing trends has shown that this will be a key technology in the development of future mobile computing systems. This research presents a theoretical analysis framework for mobile cloud computing. This analysis framework is a structured consolidation of the salient considerations identified in recent scientific literature and commercial endeavours. The use of this framework in the analysis of various mobile application domains has elucidated several significant benefits of mobile cloud computing including increases in system performance and efficiency. Based on recent scientific literature and commercial endeavours, various implementation approaches for mobile cloud computing have been identified, categorized and analysed according to their architectural characteristics. This has resulted in a set of advantages and disadvantages for each category of system architecture. Overall, through the development and application of the new analysis framework, this work provides a consolidated review and structured critical analysis of the current research and developments in the field of mobile cloud computing