The OER FLOW and social media

This presentation introduces some strategies for producing, sharing and reusing OER through the OER Flow and social media. The aim of this investigation is to identify how colearners can apply the OER Flow and social media to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in the community to contribute. This work analyses, therefore, the interactions of “COLEARN” – an open community of research in collaborative learning technologies – who created and remixed diverse open media components for producing an open book about OER using the OER flow and Social Media. The outcomes show that educators and colearners can move from a passive position to a more active and informed network role when they are able to co-authoring OER

mLearning, development and delivery : creating opportunity and enterprise within the HE in FE context

This research project was funded by ESCalate in 2006-7 to support Somerset College in developing the curriculum, as well as widening participation via the use of mobile communications technologies such as mp3 players and mobile phones. The Project represents a highly topical and timely engagement with the opportunities for learning provided by the burgeoning use of mobile computing/ communications devices. Activities bring together colleagues from Teacher Education and Multimedia Computing in an innovative approach to designing for and delivering the curriculum. The Project addresses pedagogic issues and also vitally involves current and future learners, providing them with a new context for skills development and entrepreneurship. Anticipated outcomes include informed development of new HE modules and professional CPD activities which address the skills and context of this emerging approach to delivering the curriculum. The Project also intends to trial and evaluate the use of mobile technologies to support a blended learning approach to programme delivery and the development of a FD module which could be delivered via a mobile computing device. An interim report and a final project report are available as Word and PDF file

Ubiquitous computing and knowledge management

MOBIlearn is a large European research project to develop a mobile learning system to facilitate formal, non formal and informal learning. The project has two primary objectives: • Develop a methodology for creating mobile learning scenarios and producing learning objects to implement them. • Develop the technology to deliver the learning objects to users via mobile computing devices. This paper will concentrate the MOBIlearn health care domain. One of this applications main objectives is managing and sharing of tacit knowledge. Using the system participants discuss case studies and alternative approaches to specific problems are evaluated and documented. This is then used and extended in future case studies. In a mobile learning environment, individual health workers can use the system to either advanced their skills, or in a ‘live’ incident, use it for reference and indeed call for backup.</p

From Personalization to Adaptivity: Creating Immersive Visits through Interactive Digital Storytelling at the Acropolis Museum

Storytelling has recently become a popular way to guide museum visitors, replacing traditional exhibit-centric descriptions by story-centric cohesive narrations with references to the exhibits and multimedia content. This work presents the fundamental elements of the CHESS project approach, the goal of which is to provide adaptive, personalized, interactive storytelling for museum visits. We shortly present the CHESS project and its background, we detail the proposed storytelling and user models, we describe the provided functionality and we outline the main tools and mechanisms employed. Finally, we present the preliminary results of a recent evaluation study that are informing several directions for future work

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Recent development in multimedia e-learning technologies

Multimedia and networking technologies have significantly impacted on our daily activities, particularly in terms of how we learn. Nowadays, classroom teaching no longer simply relies on chalk and blackboard as the prime medium for course dissemination. E-learning technologies have made it possible to provide a virtual classroom environment on the Web through supporting teacher-student and student-student communications, course material distribution as well as online student assessments. They provide students with more control over their learning schedule and pace. On top of this, multimedia technologies further offer students different forms of media to match their learning styles, leading to enhancements of their learning effectiveness. This extended introduction discusses the latest e-learning specific multimedia technologies, their research challenges and future trends from both pedagogical and technological perspectives. We also summarize the papers included in this special issue

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

Some Research Questions and Results of UC3M in the E-Madrid Excellence Network

32 slides.-- Contributed to: 2010 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Madrid, Spain, 14-16 April, 2010.-- Presented by C. Delgado Kloos.Proceedings of: 2010 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Madrid, Spain, 14-16 April, 2010Universidad Carlos III de Madrid is one of the six main participating institutions in the eMadrid excellence network, as well as its coordinating partner. In this paper, the network is presented together with some of the main research lines carried out by UC3M. The remaining papers in this session present the work carried out by the other five universities in the consortium.The Excellence Network eMadrid, “Investigación y Desarrollo de Tecnologías para el e-Learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” is being funded by the Madrid Regional Government under grant No. S2009/TIC-1650. In addition, we acknowledge funding from the following research projects: iCoper: “Interoperable Content for Performance in a Competency-driven Society” (eContentPlus Best Practice Network No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), Learn3: Hacia el Aprendizaje en la 3ª Fase (“Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/ TSI), Flexo: “Desarrollo de aprendizaje adaptativo y accesible en sistemas de código abierto” (AVANZA I+D, TSI-020301- 2008-19), España Virtual (CDTI, Ingenio 2010, CENIT, Deimos Space), SOLITE (CYTED 508AC0341), and “Integración vertical de servicios telemáticos de apoyo al aprendizaje en entornos residenciales” (Programa de creación y consolidación de grupos de investigación de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).Publicad

Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

A Mobile Learning Support System for Ubiquitous Learning Environments

AbstractThis paper proposes a Mobile Learning Support System (MLSS) which enables students to access learning materials by utilizing 2D barcodes and GPS technology. As the pilot system of ubiquitous learning, we used camera-equipped mobile phones and 2D barcode tags to obtain learning information from online websites. By installing the MLSS on to their mobile phones, students can scan the tag attached to the corresponding object to display related multimedia materials on the screen of mobile phones. Furthermore, MLSS also applies GPS technology to develop a location-aware environment for students. GPS technology is used to detect the students’ location and identify which 2D barcode tags are in their proximity. Therefore, this paper provides the opportunity to develop for developers create ubiquitous learning environments that combine real-world and digital world resources