Authoring courses with rich adaptive sequencing for IMS learning design

This paper describes the process of translating an adaptive sequencing strategy designed using Sequencing Graphs to the semantics of IMS Learning Design. The relevance of this contribution is twofold. First, it combines the expressive power and flexibility of Sequencing Graphs, and the interoperability capabilities of IMS. Second, it shows some important limitations of IMS specifications (focusing on Learning Design) for the sequencing of learning activities

Authoring of Adaptive and Adaptable Hypermedia

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia has been long considered as secondary to adaptive hypermedia delivery. However, authoring is not trivial at all. There exist some approaches to help authors to build adaptive-hypermedia-based systems, yet there is a strong need for high-level approaches, formalisms and tools that support and facilitate the description of reusable adaptive websites. Only recently have we noticed a shift in interest, as it became clearer that the implementation-oriented approach would forever keep adaptive hypermedia away from the ‘layman’ author. The creator of adaptive hypermedia cannot be expected to know all facets of this process, but can be reasonably trusted to be an expert in one of them. It is therefore necessary to research and establish the components of an adaptive hypermedia system from an authoring perspective, catering for the different author personas that are required. This type of research has proven to lead to a modular view on the adaptive hypermedia

Virtual learning process environment (VLPE): a BPM-based learning process management architecture

E-learning systems have significantly impacted the way that learning takes place within universities, particularly in providing self-learning support and flexibility of course delivery. Virtual Learning Environments help facilitate the management of educational courses for students, in particular by assisting course designers and thriving in the management of the learning itself. Current literature has shown that pedagogical modelling and learning process management facilitation are inadequate. In particular, quantitative information on the process of learning that is needed to perform real time or reflective monitoring and statistical analysis of students’ learning processes performance is deficient. Therefore, for a course designer, pedagogical evaluation and reform decisions can be difficult. This thesis presents an alternative e-learning systems architecture - Virtual Learning Process Environment (VLPE) - that uses the Business Process Management (BPM) conceptual framework to design an architecture that addresses the critical quantitative learning process information gaps associated with the conventional VLE frameworks. Within VLPE, course designers can model desired education pedagogies in the form of learning process workflows using an intuitive graphical flow diagram user-interface. Automated agents associated with BPM frameworks are employed to capture quantitative learning information from the learning process workflow. Consequently, course designers are able to monitor, analyse and re-evaluate in real time the effectiveness of their chosen pedagogy using live interactive learning process dashboards. Once a course delivery is complete the collated quantitative information can also be used to make major revisions to pedagogy design for the next iteration of the course. An additional contribution of this work is that this new architecture facilitates individual students in monitoring and analysing their own learning performances in comparison to their peers in a real time anonymous manner through a personal analytics learning process dashboard. A case scenario of the quantitative statistical analysis of a cohort of learners (10 participants in size) is presented. The analytical results of their learning processes, performances and progressions on a short Mathematics course over a five-week period are also presented in order to demonstrate that the proposed framework can significantly help to advance learning analytics and the visualisation of real time learning data

Implementación de una herramienta de autor generadora de IMS-LD para diferentes pedagogías

La especificación IMS-LD proporciona un marco que permite describir un gran número de escenarios pedagógicos. Para ello hace uso de la metáfora del teatro en la que los protagonistas del proceso de formación van asumiendo roles a medida que se ejecutan los actos de la obra. Sin embargo, la especificación no realiza una taxonomía de todas las pedagogías existentes y su manera de realizarse en IMS-LD sino que proporciona un lenguaje flexible para su descripción. Existen diferentes herramientas de autor capaces de generar ficheros XML finales compatibles con la especificación IMS-LD. Algunas de estas herramientas son muy completas desde el punto de vista de la especificación y están basadas en términos próximos a esta, lo que las hace difíciles de utilizar por los creadores de cursos habituales. Otras de estas herramientas son más cercanas a los términos que habitualmente utilizan los profesores pero sin embargo no son tan completas y sólo abarcan modelos pedagógicos específicos. En este proyecto fin de carrera se ha implementado una herramienta de autor capaz de generar cursos compatibles con la especificación IMS-LD para un conjunto seleccionado de pedagogías. De este modo, un docente podrá utilizar la herramienta para crear cursos con una orientación pedagógica y generar un contenido IMS-LD válido para ser desplegado en una plataforma de educación online, bordeando las complejidades de la especificación. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The IMS-LD specification aims to provide a generic and flexible language to describe the largest number of possible educational scenarios. To do so, uses the metaphor of the theater, in which the protagonists of the training process are assuming roles as they perform the acts of the play. However, although the start point of the specification is a simple model, coding and structure in XML results in a learning curve too hard for teachers and professors. There are several tools available to create IMS-LD courses, some are powerful software tools which even cover the full specification, but all of them have interfaces based in terms of IMS-LD and this fact drives away potential new users of the specification. Other tools are closer to the vocabulary used by teachers but do not provide full coverage of the specification. This bachelor thesis is about implementing an authoring tool for generating IMS-LD based courses with an interface where it is possible to choose between different pedagogies. Thus, a teacher can use the tool to create courses with a certain pedagogical approach to be deployed in an online learning platform and avoiding the complexities of the specification.Ingeniería de Telecomunicació