CHANGING LEARNING ENVIRONMENT THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Evolution of E-learning phenomenon exceeded all expectations in recent years.As a result of development of IT&C technologies and, on the other hand, due to support decision-makers at European level, the assimilation of virtual learning platforms in schools and universities hasbecome a normal phenomenon.The E-learning 2.0 concept seeks to revolutionize traditional learning methods and requires majorchanges in the perception of the educational process of teaching and learning.This article tries to create an overview of the main development directions and emphasizes the impactthat computer-assisted instruction technologies have on teaching and learning methods, with a directconnection to distance learning and blended learning concepts. Also, we have tried to open aperspective on the concept of e-Assessment and related technologiese-learning 2.0, computer based training, e-assessment, blended learning, distance learning

Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Using multimedia to enhance the accessibility of the learning environment for disabled students: reflections from the Skills for Access project

As educators' awareness of their responsibilities towards ensuring the accessibility of the learning environment to disabled students increases, significant debate surrounds the implications of accessibility requirements on educational multimedia. There would appear to be widespread concern that the fundamental principles of creating accessible web‐based materials seem at odds with the creative and innovative use of multimedia to support learning and teaching, as well as concerns over the time and cost of providing accessibility features that can hold back resource development and application. Yet, effective use of multimedia offers a way of enhancing the accessibility of the learning environment for many groups of disabled students. Using the development of ‘Skills for Access’, a web resource supporting the dual aims of creating optimally accessible multimedia for learning, as an example, the attitudinal, practical and technical challenges facing the effective use of multimedia as an accessibility aid in a learning environment will be explored. Reasons why a holistic approach to accessibility may be the most effective in ensuring that multimedia reaches its full potential in enabling and supporting students in learning, regardless of any disability they may have, will be outlined and discussed

Issues in Reusing Online Resources: Chapter 1

This is an era marked by rapid developments in three different educational arenas -- access, lifelong learning and e-learning. In both developed and developing countries there is a growing demand for access to education... Alongside this growing demand for access, increased numbers of adults are returning to colleges and universities for additional education and training (CIHE, 2002). Lifelong learning has come of age, brought about by changes in attitudes to learning and in employment patterns, where jobs and careers are recast many times during a lifespan. Permeating and supporting these first two developments, in access and lifelong learning, are developments in information and communication technologies (ICT). New technologies are beginning to transform how higher education is organized and delivered both on campus and at a distance. E-learning affords new opportunities to increase flexibility in time and location of study, in forms of communication (for example, asynchronous discussions) and types of interaction... Although e-learning has the potential to provide the kinds of flexibility required by wider access and lifelong learning there are some major obstacles. On the one hand, wider access and lifelong learning require vast increases in specially designed course materials to satisfy the greater range of demands for learning. On the other hand, creating the digital resources necessary for online course delivery requires considerable investment, a factor that makes resource development only viable for courses with large student numbers or sizeable budgets. In order to address this difficulty, numerous national and international initiatives have been funded to investigate ways in which digital learning resources might be developed, shared and reused by teachers and learners around the world (so as to benefit from economies of scale). Behind these initiatives lies a vision of a future in which reusable resources (or 'learning objects' as they are called) could comprise a new currency of exchange within a learning economy. Learning objects, produced by publishers, teachers, support staff and students themselves, would be stored in digital repositories, where they could be easily accessed, recombined and reused within online courses. However, despite this vision, the idea of reusing electronic resources is more complex than the object economy scenario, outlined above, may suggest. The next section identifies seven issues associated with the reuse and sharing of resources. These sections focus on educational design, the need for standards, and on the culture and organization that would be necessary in institutions (and across institutions) if reuse were to become a reality

Applying A Methodology For Educating Students With Special Needs: A Case Study

The introduction of innovative educational technologies opens up new ways of interacting with students. We propose to exploit this potential to help in the education of children with special needs. We analyze the state of the art of tools supporting the teaching process, focusing on the omissions of existing research. We propose a new framework to help throughout the whole teaching process and describe its application to Proyecto Aprender (Learn Project), an educational resource targeting children with learning difficulties. Finally, we outline some conclusions and current/future research lines

Holistic approaches to e‐learning accessibility

The importance of accessibility to digital e‐learning resources is widely acknowledged. The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has played a leading role in promoting the importance of accessibility and developing guidelines that can help when developing accessible web resources. The accessibility of e‐learning resources provides additional challenges. While it is important to consider the technical and resource related aspects of e‐learning when designing and developing resources for students with disabilities, there is a need to consider pedagogic and contextual issues as well. A holistic framework is therefore proposed and described, which in addition to accessibility issues takes into account learner needs, learning outcomes, local factors, infrastructure, usability and quality assurance. The practical application and implementation of this framework is discussed and illustrated through the use of examples and case studies

ICOPER Project - Deliverable 4.3 ISURE: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, embodied in the ICOPER CD&R

The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas and recommendations, within and beyond the ICOPER community, concerning the reuse of learning content, including appropriate methodologies as well as established strategies for remixing and repurposing reusable resources. The overall remit of this work focuses on describing the key issues that are related to extending effective reuse embodied in such materials. The objective of this investigation, is to support the reuse of learning content whilst considering how it could be originally created and then adapted with that ‘reuse’ in mind. In these circumstances a survey on effective reuse best practices can often provide an insight into the main challenges and benefits involved in the process of creating, remixing and repurposing what we are now designating as Reusable Learning Content (RLC). Several key issues are analysed in this report: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, building upon those described in the previous related deliverables 4.1 Content Development Methodologies and 4.2 Quality Control and Web 2.0 technologies. The findings of this current survey, however, provide further recommendations and strategies for using and developing this reusable learning content. In the spirit of ‘reuse’, this work also aims to serve as a foundation for the many different stakeholders and users within, and beyond, the ICOPER community who are interested in reusing learning resources. This report analyses a variety of information. Evidence has been gathered from a qualitative survey that has focused on the technical and pedagogical recommendations suggested by a Special Interest Group (SIG) on the most innovative practices with respect to new media content authors (for content authoring or modification) and course designers (for unit creation). This extended community includes a wider collection of OER specialists. This collected evidence, in the form of video and audio interviews, has also been represented as multimedia assets potentially helpful for learning and useful as learning content in the New Media Space (See section 4 for further details). Section 2 of this report introduces the concept of reusable learning content and reusability. Section 3 discusses an application created by the ICOPER community to enhance the opportunities for developing reusable content. Section 4 of this report provides an overview of the methodology used for the qualitative survey. Section 5 presents a summary of thematic findings. Section 6 highlights a list of recommendations for effective reuse of educational content, which were derived from thematic analysis described in Appendix A. Finally, section 7 summarises the key outcomes of this work

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program