Resource reuse in ie-TV

The convergence of communications and information technology within education, as well as more widely, means that concepts developed within ITS & AIED are now applicable to a wider range of wired, and more interestingly 'wireless', technologies. In [1] we outlined the educational rationale of a Broadband User Model (BbUM) that would support the individualisation of the interactions, both between the technology and a user and between collaborating users, for a system able to deliver a variety of resources in a range of media, including interactive TV. At the heart of any such system there needs to be a database of resources from which the user, the educational designer or the system itself, including the user model, can select. Some of these resources will be items that were developed for other purposes, such as self-contained TV programmes, books or simulation programs. Others will be resources developed with such a system in mind. In either case the use and reuse of these resources depends on careful tagging at a level of granularity that enables them to be used both in their entire original form as well as in parts. For example, imagine that a TV programme is being indexed and that it consists of a number of items, originally in a chronological sequence. The tagging might indicate that one item is analagous to another or generalises it. Labelling the items makes explicit some of the implicit pedagogic relationships that underpin the design of the original programme. This enables the possibility of recomposing the TV programme in some other sequence that reflects a different overall pedagogical structure to the original. Moreover, each item is also tagged in terms of its position in some domain scheme. A prototype system has been implemented that employed a database searchable in a variety of ways, including the keywords matched against video/TV captions and/or automatically transcribed speech. Metadata included such fields as ID, title, ownership, media type, format, and duration. Content categorisation included topic, target user group, and interactivity. Form categorisation included problem, concept, description, and explanation or example

A review of the research literature relating to ICT and attainment

Summary of the main report, which examined current research and evidence for the impact of ICT on pupil attainment and learning in school settings and the strengths and limitations of the methodologies used in the research literature

Ontology technology for the development and deployment of learning technology systems - a survey

The World-Wide Web is undergoing dramatic changes at the moment. The Semantic Web is an initiative to bring meaning to the Web. The Semantic Web is based on ontology technology – a knowledge representation framework – at its core. We illustrate the importance of this evolutionary development. We survey five scenarios demonstrating different forms of applications of ontology technologies in the development and deployment of learning technology systems. Ontology technologies are highly useful to organise, personalise, and publish learning content and to discover, generate, and compose learning objects

Evaluating Digital Libraries: A Longitudinal and Multifaceted View

published or submitted for publicatio

Accessing and understanding research in education

Introductory comments This chapter describes the range of evidence that exists relevant to educational studies, and discusses how to locate, read, and use such evidence. The evidence exists in publicly available datasets as well as in the writings of others. The chapter introduces some generic methods of assessing the quality and usefulness of evidence, including a key quality control principle. The chapter ends by outlining some ideas for future research

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Systematic techniques for assisting recruitment to trials (START): study protocol for embedded, randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials play a central role in evidence-based practice, but recruitment of participants, and retention of them once in the trial, is challenging. Moreover, there is a dearth of evidence that research teams can use to inform the development of their recruitment and retention strategies. As with other healthcare initiatives, the fairest test of the effectiveness of a recruitment strategy is a trial comparing alternatives, which for recruitment would mean embedding a recruitment trial within an ongoing host trial. Systematic reviews indicate that such studies are rare. Embedded trials are largely delivered in an ad hoc way, with interventions almost always developed in isolation and tested in the context of a single host trial, limiting their ability to contribute to a body of evidence with regard to a single recruitment intervention and to researchers working in different contexts. METHODS/DESIGN: The Systematic Techniques for Assisting Recruitment to Trials (START) program is funded by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (MRC) Methodology Research Programme to support the routine adoption of embedded trials to test standardized recruitment interventions across ongoing host trials. To achieve this aim, the program involves three interrelated work packages: (1) methodology - to develop guidelines for the design, analysis and reporting of embedded recruitment studies; (2) interventions - to develop effective and useful recruitment interventions; and (3) implementation - to recruit host trials and test interventions through embedded studies. DISCUSSION: Successful completion of the START program will provide a model for a platform for the wider trials community to use to evaluate recruitment interventions or, potentially, other types of intervention linked to trial conduct. It will also increase the evidence base for two types of recruitment intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The START protocol covers the methodology for embedded trials. Each embedded trial is registered separately or as a substudy of the host trial

Mapping the Evolution of "Clusters": A Meta-analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the “cluster literature” contained in scientific journals from 1969 to 2007. Thanks to an original database we study the evolution of a stream of literature which focuses on a research object which is both a theoretical puzzle and an empirical widespread evidence. We identify different growth stages, from take-off to development and maturity. We test the existence of a life-cycle within the authorships and we discover the existence of a substitutability relation between different collaborative behaviours. We study the relationships between a “spatial” and an “industrial” approach within the textual corpus of cluster literature and we show the existence of a “predatory” interaction. We detect the relevance of clustering behaviours in the location of authors working on clusters and in measuring the influence of geographical distance in co-authorship. We measure the extent of a convergence process of the vocabulary of scientists working on clusters.Cluster, Life-Cycle, Cluster Literature, Textual Analysis, Agglomeration, Co-Authorship