97 research outputs found

    Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012

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    As a Transversal Action under the European eLearning Programme, the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project carries out a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Europe and beyond.OER are understood to comprise content for teaching and learning, software-based tools and services, and licenses that allow for open development and re-use of content, tools and services.The OLCOS road mapping work was conducted to provide decision makers with an overview of current and likely future developments in OER and recommendations on how various challenges in OER could be addressed.While the results of the road mapping will provide some basis for policy and institutional planning, strategic leadership and decision making is needed for implementing measures that are likely to promote a further uptake of open educational practices and resources.OER are understood to be an important element of policies that want to leverage education and lifelong learning for the knowledge economy and society. However, OLCOS emphasises that it is crucial to also promote innovation and change in educational practices.In particular, OLCOS warns that delivering OER to the still dominant model of teachercentred knowledge transfer will have little effect on equipping teachers, students and workers with the competences, knowledge and skills to participate successfully in the knowledge economy and society.This report emphasises the need to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency-based educational framework. However, it is understood that a shift towards such practices will only happen in the longer term in a step-by-step process. Bringing about this shift will require targeted and sustained efforts by educational leaders at all levels

    Harnessing background knowledge for e-learning recommendation.

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    The growing availability of good quality, learning-focused content on the Web makes it an excellent source of resources for e-learning systems. However, learners can find it hard to retrieve material well-aligned with their learning goals because of the difficulty in assembling effective keyword searches due to both an inherent lack of domain knowledge, and the unfamiliar vocabulary often employed by domain experts. We take a step towards bridging this semantic gap by introducing a novel method that automatically creates custom background knowledge in the form of a set of rich concepts related to the selected learning domain. Further, we develop a hybrid approach that allows the background knowledge to influence retrieval in the recommendation of new learning materials by leveraging the vocabulary associated with our discovered concepts in the representation process. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on a dataset of Machine Learning and Data Mining papers and show it to outperform the benchmark methods. This paper has won the Donald Michie Memorial Award for Best Technical Paper at AI-2016

    Hybrid human-AI driven open personalized education

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    Attaining those skills that match labor market demand is getting increasingly complicated as prerequisite knowledge, skills, and abilities are evolving dynamically through an uncontrollable and seemingly unpredictable process. Furthermore, people's interests in gaining knowledge pertaining to their personal life (e.g., hobbies and life-hacks) are also increasing dramatically in recent decades. In this situation, anticipating and addressing the learning needs are fundamental challenges to twenty-first century education. The need for such technologies has escalated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where online education became a key player in all types of training programs. The burgeoning availability of data, not only on the demand side but also on the supply side (in the form of open/free educational resources) coupled with smart technologies, may provide a fertile ground for addressing this challenge. Therefore, this thesis aims to contribute to the literature about the utilization of (open and free-online) educational resources toward goal-driven personalized informal learning, by developing a novel Human-AI based system, called eDoer. In this thesis, we discuss all the new knowledge that was created in order to complete the system development, which includes 1) prototype development and qualitative user validation, 2) decomposing the preliminary requirements into meaningful components, 3) implementation and validation of each component, and 4) a final requirement analysis followed by combining the implemented components in order develop and validate the planned system (eDoer). All in all, our proposed system 1) derives the skill requirements for a wide range of occupations (as skills and jobs are typical goals in informal learning) through an analysis of online job vacancy announcements, 2) decomposes skills into learning topics, 3) collects a variety of open/free online educational resources that address those topics, 4) checks the quality of those resources and topic relevance using our developed intelligent prediction models, 5) helps learners to set their learning goals, 6) recommends personalized learning pathways and learning content based on individual learning goals, and 7) provides assessment services for learners to monitor their progress towards their desired learning objectives. Accordingly, we created a learning dashboard focusing on three Data Science related jobs and conducted an initial validation of eDoer through a randomized experiment. Controlling for the effects of prior knowledge as assessed by the pretest, the randomized experiment provided tentative support for the hypothesis that learners who engaged with personal eDoer recommendations attain higher scores on the posttest than those who did not. The hypothesis that learners who received personalized content in terms of format, length, level of detail, and content type, would achieve higher scores than those receiving non-personalized content was not supported as a statistically significant result

    ALT-C 2010 - Conference Introduction and Abstracts

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    Recursos educacionais abertos: mapeamento da comunicação científica

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    Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Educação, Programa Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação, Florianópolis, 2015.Recursos Educacionais Abertos são materiais oferecidos livre e abertamente para uso e reúso no ensino, na aprendizagem e na pesquisa e podem contribuir para a qualidade e o acesso à educação. Esta pesquisa identifica os artigos publicados em periódicos indexados na Web of Science, com o objetivo de caracterizar a produção científica sobre Recursos Educacionais Abertos, no âmbito do ensino superior. A metodologia, exploratória, descritiva e de abordagem quanti-qualitativa, utilizou-se de métodos mistos, constituindo o corpus da pesquisa por meio da estratégia de levantamento, cujos dados foram analisados descritivamente e por meio da técnica de análise de conteúdo. Como resultado, identificaram-se 115 artigos autorais de 243 pesquisadores, publicados em 43 periódicos, entre 2008 e 2014. Verificou-se que 76% dos periódicos provêm de países europeus, anglo-saxões e/ou de língua inglesa, os quais publicam em idioma inglês e ratificam a tradição editorial eminentemente comercial. 67% dos periódicos nos quais se publicou sobre REA é de acesso pago, concentrando 56% dos artigos em acesso restrito. As instituições no Reino Unido, na Espanha e no Canadá que mais concentram pesquisadores que publicaram sobre REA são todas especializadas em Educação a Distância: a Open University, a Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia e a Athabasca University, respectivamente. Predominaram os autores que atuam na área da Educação (48%), da Computação (22%) e das Engenharias (11%) em relação às demais áreas. Na etapa qualitativa, descartaram-se 6 artigos, de modo que a análise de conteúdo se centrou em 99 artigos em inglês, 8 em espanhol e 2 em português, totalizando 109 artigos analisados na íntegra. Os artigos foram categorizados em 7 categorias: 21% recuperação e repositórios; 19% desafios; 16% tecnologias; 14% produção; 13% políticas de incentivo e sustentabilidade; 10% adaptação e reuso; e 4% Open Courseware (OCW). Conclui que a comunicação científica sobre Recursos Educacionais Abertos de ensino superior iniciou em 2008 nos periódicos indexados na WoS. O núcleo das publicações se concentra em um periódico canadense e em 26 periódicos da área da educação. A distribuição dos autores pode ser interpretada a partir de três modelos: concentrados em universidades especializadas em Educação a Distância (Reino Unido e Canadá); distribuídos em universidades de ensino presencial (Estados Unidos e Finlândia), as quais podem oferecer Educação a Distância simultaneamente; e Misto (Espanha), onde ocorrem os dois casos.Abstract : The Open Educational Resources are materials offered freely and openly to use and reuse in teaching, learning and research, and they can contribute to education access and quality. The present research identifies articles published in journals indexed in the Web of Science to characterize the scientific production on Open Educational Resources, in the higher education area. Descriptive and exploratory methodology of a quantitative and qualitative approach used mixed methods, constituting the research corpus by a survey strategy whose data was analyzed descriptively and through content analysis technique. As a result, it was possible to identify 115 articles of 243 researchers, published in 43 journals between 2008 and 2014. It was found that 76% of the journals are from European, Anglo-Saxon and English-speaking countries that publish in English language and ratify the eminently commercial editorial tradition. 67% of the journals with REA publications are of paid access, concentrating 56% of the articles in a restricted access. Institutions in the UK, Spain and Canada with researchers who have published on REA are all specialized in Distance Education: Open University, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia and Athabasca University, respectively. There was a predominance of authors working in the fields of Education (48%), Computing (22%) and Engineering (11%) in comparison to other areas. In the qualitative stage, six articles were discarded so that the content analysis focused on 99 articles in English, eight in Spanish and two in Portuguese, totaling 109 articles analyzed in full. The articles were divided into seven categories: 21% of recovery and repositories, 19% of challenges, 16% of technologies, 14% of production, 13% on incentive policies and sustainability, 10% of adaptation and reuse and 4% on Open Courseware (OCW). It is possible to conclude that scientific communication on Open Educational Resources in the higher education began in 2008, in journals indexed in WOS. The publications core focuses on a Canadian journal and 26 journals about education. Authors distribution can be interpreted from three models concentrated in specialized universities in Distance Education (UK and Canada), distributed in classroom teaching schools (The United States and Finland), which can offer distance education simultaneously; and Mixed Education (Spain), where the two cases occur

    Tracing the creation and evaluation of accessible Open Educational Resources through learning analytics

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    The adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) has been continuously growing and with it the need to addressing the diversity of students’ learning needs. Because of that, OER should meet with characteristics such as the web accessibility and quality. Thus, teachers as the creators of OER need supporting tools and specialized competences. The main contribution of this thesis is a Learning Analytics Model to Trace the Creation and Evaluation of OER (LAMTCE) considering web accessibility and quality. LAMTCE also includes a user model of the teacher’s competences in the creation and evaluation of OER. Besides that, we developed ATCE, a learning analytics tool based on the LAMTCE model. Finally, it was carried out an evaluation conducted with teachers involving the use of the tool and we found that the tool really benefited teachers in the acquisition of their competences in creation and evaluation of accessible and quality OER.La adopción de Recursos Educativos Abiertos (REA) ha ido en aumento y con ello la necesidad de abordar la diversidad de necesidades de aprendizaje de los estudiantes. Por ello, los REA deben cumplir con características tales como la accesibilidad web y la calidad. Así, los profesores como los creadores de REA necesitan de herramientas de soporte y competencias especializadas. La principal contribución de la tesis es el modelo LAMTCE, un modelo de analíticas de aprendizaje para hacer seguimiento a la creación y evaluación de REA considerando la accesibilidad web y la calidad. LAMTCE también incluye un modelo de usuario de las competencias del profesor en creación y evaluación de REA. Además, se desarrolló ATCE, una herramienta de analíticas de aprendizaje que está basada en el modelo LAMTCE. Finalmente, se llevó a cabo un estudio con profesores involucrando el uso de la herramienta encontrando que ésta realmente benefició a los profesores en la adquisición de sus competencias en creación y evaluación de REA accesibles y de calidad

    Interlinking educational data to web of data

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    With the proliferation of educational data on the Web, publishing and interlinking eLearning resources have become an important issue nowadays. Educational resources are exposed under heterogeneous Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in different times and formats. Some resources are implicitly related to each other or to the interest, cultural and technical environment of learners. Linking educational resources to useful knowledge on the Web improves resource seeking. This becomes crucial for moving from current isolated eLearning repositories towards an open discovery space, including distributed resources irrespective of their geographic and system boundaries. Linking resources is also useful for enriching educational content, as it provides a richer context and other related information to both educators and learners. On the other hand, the emergence of the so-called "Linked Data" brings new opportunities for interconnecting different kinds of resources on the Web of Data. Using the Linked Data approach, data providers can publish structured data and establish typed links between them from various sources. To this aim, many tools, approaches and frameworks have been built to first expose the data as Linked Data formats and to second discover the similarities between entities in the datasets. The research carried out for this PhD thesis assesses the possibilities of applying the Linked Open Data paradigm to the enrichment of educational resources. Generally speaking, we discuss the interlinking educational objects and eLearning resources on the Web of Data focusing on existing schemas and tools. The main goals of this thesis are thus to cover the following aspects: -- Exposing the educational (meta)data schemas and particularly IEEE LOM as Linked Data -- Evaluating currently available interlinking tools in the Linked Data context -- Analyzing datasets in the Linked Open Data cloud, to discover appropriate datasets for interlinking -- Discussing the benefits of interlinking educational (meta)data in practice

    Novel Datasets, User Interfaces and Learner Models to Improve Learner Engagement Prediction on Educational Videos

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    With the emergence of Open Education Resources (OERs), educational content creation has rapidly scaled up, making a large collection of new materials made available. Among these, we find educational videos, the most popular modality for transferring knowledge in the technology-enhanced learning paradigm. Rapid creation of learning resources opens up opportunities in facilitating sustainable education, as the potential to personalise and recommend specific materials that align with individual users’ interests, goals, knowledge level, language and stylistic preferences increases. However, the quality and topical coverage of these materials could vary significantly, posing significant challenges in managing this large collection, including the risk of negative user experience and engagement with these materials. The scarcity of support resources such as public datasets is another challenge that slows down the development of tools in this research area. This thesis develops a set of novel tools that improve the recommendation of educational videos. Two novel datasets and an e-learning platform with a novel user interface are developed to support the offline and online testing of recommendation models for educational videos. Furthermore, a set of learner models that accounts for the learner interests, knowledge, novelty and popularity of content is developed through this thesis. The different models are integrated together to propose a novel learner model that accounts for the different factors simultaneously. The user studies conducted on the novel user interface show that the new interface encourages users to explore the topical content more rigorously before making relevance judgements about educational videos. Offline experiments on the newly constructed datasets show that the newly proposed learner models outperform their relevant baselines significantly

    The Semantically Rich Learning Environments: A Systematic Literature Review

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    Purpose: The research is intended to extract repetitive themes in the field of semantic-rich learning and to express the basic opportunities and challenges therein. Method: The method applied was to review the articles published in the WOS database, during the years 2000 to 2020 by using the paradigm funnel technique; moreover the Nvivo software was used for document analysis and theme extraction. Findings: In the study, it was found that establishing access to appropriate educational content, proper analysis and representation of knowledge, human capabilities enhancement, personalization of learning, and improving the quality of assessment, are the most important positive effects of using STs in learning; Also, in this study, nine themes and seven major challenges in the field of semantic-rich learning were identified. Conclusion: personalization and adaptation, and the development of various ontologies, are the most cited themes; and access to learning content and concerns about the design and development of learning systems are the most important challenges facing semantic-rich learning environments. We believe that in order to overcome the enumerated challenges, the combination of STs with other emerging cognitive and communication technologies, such as IoT, is necessary and could be the subject of future research in this field
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