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

Mining for Culture: Reaching Out of Range

The goal of this paper is to present a tool that will sustain the development of culturally relevant computing artifacts by providing an effective means of detecting culture identities and cultures of participation. Culturally relevant designs rely heavily on how culture impacts design and though the guidelines for producing culturally relevant objects provide a mechanism for incorporating culture in the design, there still requires an effective method for garnering and identifying said cultures that reflects a holistic view of the target audience. This tool presents culturally relevant designs as a process of communicating with key audiences and thus bridging people and technology in a way that once seemed out of range

Implementing the theory of multiple intelligences in the junior secondary school

First published in 1983, the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) struck a chord with thousands of educators across the world, providing a philosophical and structural framework that helped them make sense of and cater for the vast range of individual difference they encountered daily in their classrooms. However, while MI theory has found a ready audience amongst early childhood and primary school educators, and has been associated with a wide range of positive outcomes across a variety of educational settings, it continues to have little impact on secondary school practice. The aim of this qualitative action research project was to establish a collaborative research group of four junior secondary school teachers, who were interested in exploring MI theory and its implications for learning and teaching. In documenting their experiences, the project aimed to find out whether an MI-based programme was feasible in a junior secondary school context, and to identify the difficulties and barriers that impeded the participating teachers' endeavours to implement MI in their classrooms. The following research questions provided the focus for the project: 1. Can an MI-based approach to teaching and learning be successfully implemented in a junior secondary school programme? 2. What are the issues that secondary school teachers face when implementing MI into their classroom programmes? 3. What are the best ways to address these issues? iii A multiple case study approach provided an effective means of illustrating the individual complexity of teachers' situations, as they interacted with their students, the curriculum, their colleagues and their school environment, and was also flexible enough to accommodate the open-ended and evolving nature of the investigation. The following outcomes for teachers as a result of the MI project were noted: (a) Increased awareness and understanding of student diversity. (b) Extended teaching practice and enhanced teacher creativity. (c) Improved planning framework. (d) Teachers' beliefs about learning and intelligence were affirmed and extended. (e) Teachers experienced improved confidence in their abilities as teachers. (f) The emergence of a cohesive student-centred curriculum. (g) Improved collegiality. As a result of the project, many barriers to implementing MI theory into junior secondary school classrooms were identified, under the following categories: (a) Barriers relating to teacher culture (b) Barriers relating to management requirements (c) Barriers relating to time (d) Barriers relating to personnel (e) Barriers relating to external pressures on the school The outcomes of this project confirm findings in the research literature, which suggest that MI theory can provide a valuable philosophical and structural iv framework that helps teachers develop a greater awareness of student diversity and enhanced teaching practice, as well as the understanding that a uniform approach to teaching and learning meets the needs of too few. However, a number of entrenched structural and cultural barriers characteristic of the secondary school context were also identified, which suggest that the adoption of MI-based teaching practices on a wider scale is unlikely without an in-depth school-wide professional development initiative

Career Recommendation System for Validation of Multiple Intelligence to High School Students

Career choice is a critical moment for any student. However, many students worldwide change of path during the first academic year. Vocational tests are tools to help students choose an upper education career by providing information about their abilities and interests. However, some of them are very difficult to apply high costs, availability, or not validated at diverse populations. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence test is a popular test that measures the brain’s performance abilities in nine areas. Unlike IQ’s test, Gardner Test is helpful to understand students’ strengths and learning styles. Vocational tests and Multiple Intelligence test measure students’ abilities and interests. This research shows the implementation of a recommendation system based on the Gardner test, we considering familiar variables and results of a basic knowledge test. For validation, we compare it with a standard vocational test. Our system recommends a top five of careers with 88.2% success and 93.3% for the top one. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Does Distance Matter? An IT Application

In the past decade several distance learning initiatives have been implemented in information technology curricula based upon the principles of natural learning. This paper examines the various ways in which distance learning may contribute to \u27natural learning\u27. The main research question is how distance learning provides support to natural learning processes. Our starting point is that students can learn with information systems instead of from the systems. The paper investigates the relationship between distance learning and natural learning. On this basis, the requirements for distance learning as well as the technologies that might make use of these requirements are identified and analyzed

The Logician Versus the Linguist- an Empirical Tale of Functional Discrimination in the Legal Academy

This paper, focusing exclusively on gender, asks whether male and female law students express different preferences for logic-based learning models. A wide variety of educational theories and other theories have been used to conceptualize different learning preferences among law students but until now, none has focused on logical intelligence compared with the other intelligences. Using Harvard educational psychologist Howard Gardner\u27s theory of Multiple Intelligences, this paper describes an empirical study establishing that male and female law students express differences in preferring logical intelligence over the other intelligences. This paper introduces the concept of functional discrimination, addressing the ways in which law school functionally discriminates against women by significantly favoring logical intelligence. Law School functionally discriminates against women (1) by not providing women access to the prime benefits of the institution an

Learning In A Distance Learning Setting

Distance Learning is an educational method that uses the Internet to support class discussions and activities. This paper presents a qualitative study that investigates the role changes that occur when classes go online or become “virtual”. We examine several distance learning initiatives that have been implemented in information technology curricula in the past decade. Our analysis is based upon the principles of natural learning. The findings suggest that the cognitive role of the learners, a role that relates to the mental processes of learning and thinking, shifts to one of deeper cognitive complexity when classes are given online. Overall, students reported a change in learning behaviour when classes went online. Those results indicate the importance of identifying and analyzing the requirements for employing distance learning as well as the technologies that make use of these requirements