Deploying Learning Analytics for Awareness and Reflection in Online Scientific Experimentation

Recent trends in online learning, most notably Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Learning Analytics, are changing the landscape in the education sector by offering learners with access to free learning materials of high quality, as well as with the means to monitor their progress and reflect on their learning experiences. This part presents FORGE, a European initiative for online learning and experimentation via interactive learning resources. FORGE provides learners and educators with access to world-class experimentation facilities and high quality learning materials. Additionally, the deployment of Learning Analytics in the FORGE learning resources aims at supporting awareness and reflection both for learners and educators

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Online experimentation and interactive learning resources for teaching network engineering

This paper presents a case study on teaching network engineering in conjunction with interactive learning resources. This case study has been developed in collaboration with the Cisco Networking Academy in the context of the FORGE project, which promotes online learning and experimentation by offering access to virtual and remote labs. The main goal of this work is allowing learners and educators to perform network simulations within a web browser or an interactive eBook by using any type of mobile, tablet or desktop device. Learning Analytics are employed in order to monitor learning behaviour for further analysis of the learning experience offered to students

Models of everywhere revisited: a technological perspective

The concept ‘models of everywhere’ was first introduced in the mid 2000s as a means of reasoning about the environmental science of a place, changing the nature of the underlying modelling process, from one in which general model structures are used to one in which modelling becomes a learning process about specific places, in particular capturing the idiosyncrasies of that place. At one level, this is a straightforward concept, but at another it is a rich multi-dimensional conceptual framework involving the following key dimensions: models of everywhere, models of everything and models at all times, being constantly re-evaluated against the most current evidence. This is a compelling approach with the potential to deal with epistemic uncertainties and nonlinearities. However, the approach has, as yet, not been fully utilised or explored. This paper examines the concept of models of everywhere in the light of recent advances in technology. The paper argues that, when first proposed, technology was a limiting factor but now, with advances in areas such as Internet of Things, cloud computing and data analytics, many of the barriers have been alleviated. Consequently, it is timely to look again at the concept of models of everywhere in practical conditions as part of a trans-disciplinary effort to tackle the remaining research questions. The paper concludes by identifying the key elements of a research agenda that should underpin such experimentation and deployment

Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Technology Enhanced Learning

Awareness and reflection are viewed differently across the disciplines informing Technology Enhanced Learning (CSCW, psychology, educational sciences, computer science and others). The ARTEL workshop series brings together researchers and professionals from different backgrounds to provide a forum for discussing the multi-faceted area of awareness and reflection. Through the last ARTEL workshops at EC-TEL the addressed topics are converging towards the usage of awareness and reflection in practice, its implementation in modern organisations, its impact on learners and questions of feasibility and sustainability for awareness and reflection in education and work. To reflect the growing maturity of research in ARTEL over the years the workshop particularly invited contributions that dealt with the application of awareness and reflection in practice. This is encapsulated in the workshop motto: 'Awareness and Reflection in Practice: How can awareness and reflection technology become common in work practice and how does it change work practices?

PT Anywhere: a mobile environment for practical learning of network engineering

The main challenges commonly associated with acquiring practical network engineering skills are the requirements for access to specialised and up-to-date network equipment, as well as the high costs associated with obtaining and maintaining this equipment. The PT Anywhere initiative addresses these challenges by offering a mobile environment for acquiring practical knowledge and skills of network engineering. PT Anywhere facilitates learner-centred anywhere/anytime learning and offers learners access to high-quality interactive learning resources. Additionally, PT Anywhere employs Learning Analytics in order to help learners and educators in understanding and improving learning. This paper presents the learning design and software design principles driving the development of PT Anywhere, as well as the outcomes of an evaluation session conducted with members of the Cisco Networking Academy. The results of this evaluation indicate that PT Anywhere holds the potential to engage learners in different ways inside and outside of the classroom, without the need for access to specialised equipment

Critical data studies, abstraction and learning analytics: Editorial to Selwyn’s LAK keynote and invited commentaries

© 2019, UTS ePRESS. All rights reserved. This editorial introduces a special section of the Journal of Learning Analytics, for which Neil Selwyn’s keynote address to LAK ’18 has been written up as an article, “What’s the problem with learning analytics?” His claims and arguments are engaged in commentaries from Alfred Essa, Rebecca Ferguson, Paul Prinsloo, and Carolyn Rosé, who provide diverse perspectives on Selwyn’s proposals and arguments, from applause to refutation. Reflecting on the debate, I note some of the tensions to be resolved for learning analytics and social science critiques to engage productively, observing that central to the debate is how we understand the role of abstraction in the analysis of data about teaching and learning, and hence the opportunities and risks this entails

Digital Transformation of Education and Sustainability-Review Based Study

Since 1990, the usage of internet as well as digitization has significantly increased. Digital transformation is the process of using, adoption of digital technology or information technology by an organisation to embed or digitalize products and services. A brief picture of types of learning, educational technology like Artificial intelligence, Metaverse, AR&VR, IoT, how digital transformation enables to meet UN SDG 4 is portrayed in this paper

Topics in Educational Cyber-Physical Labs:Configurations, Data Collection and Analysis

Recent advances in remote sensing and actuation technologies, coupled with the large reach of the internet, allowed for the emergence of applications such as cyber-physical labs. Cyber-physical labs are the digital and remotely-accessible equivalent of the lab equipment students use in school to experiment, through web-based interfaces such as web applications. Students, teachers and lab owners derive value from these systems, they are our stakeholders. Students are the intended users, teachers are the educational content curators and lab owners are the service providers. In this thesis, we take a close look at issues pertaining to cyber-physical labs and propose new approaches to address them. We also analyze the use of such systems in a MOOC, to detect the impact of the exherted experimental behavior of students on their academic performance. First, we tackle the case of the generation of web apps interfacing cyber-physical labs. It is the equivalent of preparing experiments for teachers by arranging the equipment for multiple experiments with the same equipment. We propose an extension to the Smart Device Specification for cyber-phyiscal labs, and a tool which generates these apps based on it. The automatically generated apps implement the necessary functions to use a cyber-physical lab, and are ready to be integrated in online learning platfroms. Next, we investigate issues related to the collection and retrieval of students' generated data through their interaction with cyber-physical labs. We consider the needs of students and lab owners. Through questionnaires sent to both parties, we elicit the requirements for an activity-tracking infrastructure composed of a vocabulary and an architectural model. The proposed vocabulary ensures deriving value from the recorded activity, and the proposed architecture addresses privacy and data access issues pertaining to students and lab owners respectively. We evaluate our proposal with two example cyber-physical labs. Last, we collect the interaction data with a cyber-physical lab used in a MOOC. We devise computational analyses on the students activity statistics, in search for indicators of academic performance. We find that high and low performing students show statistically different activity statistics. Then, we sequence the steps students did in an experiment, and don't find any statistically significant patterns for low and high-performing students. This analysis provides insights on the usage of installed facilities to service a potential massive access to limited resources (lab installations), and shed light on possible indicators for academic performance