Adaptive and cooperative model of knowledge management in MOOCs

One of the characteristics of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is the heterogeneity of their participants’ profiles and, for the most traditional MOOC model, this is an important cause of the low completion rate. The MOOC model presents two apparent antagonistic concepts, globalization and diversity. MOOCs represent globalization (participants have to be adapted to the course) and their participants represent diversity. The authors of this paper argue that both concepts complement each other; that is, a MOOC can adapt the contents and navigation to the diversity of participants; and in turn the participants themselves can increase and improve the contents of the MOOC, through heterogeneous cooperation, to encourage massive learning. To proof it, this paper presents a new model, called ahMOOC, combining the hybrid-MOOC (hMOOC) and the adaptive MOOC (aMOOC). The hMOOC allows integrating characteristics of xMOOCs (based on formal e-training) with cMOOCs (based on informal and cooperative e-training). The aMOOC offers different learning strategies adapted to different learning objectives, profiles, learning styles, etc. of participants. The ahMOOCs continues having a lower dropout rate (such as hMOOC) than the traditional MOOCs. The qualitative analysis show the capacity of participants, with heterogeneous profiles, to create, in a cooperative and massive way, useful knowledge to improve the course and, later, to apply it in their specific work context. The study also shows that participants have a good perception on the capabilities of the ahMOOC to adapt the learning process to their profiles and preferences

Flipped classroom insights after nine-year experience applying the method

Any new trend in Educational Innovation creates many expectations about its impact on the teaching context. This happens with the Flipped Classroom method, it presents numerous advantages: personalized learning, increased active participation, meaningful learning, autonomous learning, motivation, among others. This work collects the experience of applying the Flipped Classroom Method from 2012 up to the present. An analysis of the empirically demonstrated impact of this method on student learning is carried out. The outcome of this work is the real impact of this method in three educational environments: theoretical classes, practical classes, and teamwork competence

A guidance and evaluation approach for mHealth education applications

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. A growing number of mobile applications for health education are being utilized to support different stakeholders, from health professionals to software developers to patients and more general users. There is a lack of a critical evaluation framework to ensure the usability and reliability of these mobile health education applications (MHEAs). Such a framework would facilitate the saving of time and effort for the different user groups. This paper describes a framework for evaluating mobile applications for health education, including a guidance tool to help different stakeholders select the one most suitable for them. The framework is intended to meet the needs and requirements of the different user categories, as well as improving the development of MHEAs through software engineering approaches. A description of the evaluation framework is provided, with its efficient hybrid of selected heuristic evaluation (HE) and usability evaluation (UE) factors. Lastly, an account of the quantitative and qualitative results for the framework applied to the Medscape and other mobile apps is given. This proposed framework - an Evaluation Framework for Mobile Health Education Apps - consists of a hybrid of five metrics selected from a larger set during heuristic and usability evaluation, the choice being based on interviews with patients, software developers and health professionals

APFT: Active peer-based Flip Teaching

The Flip Teaching model1 (the lesson at home, the homework in class) has been used to actively engage students in their learning process during the lectures. In this method, passive learning (the lesson) is transferred to homework and the activity (exercises, debates, collaborative learning, etc.) to the class. More advanced Flip Teaching models carry out an intermediate phase in which the students can actively participate "at home", such as Micro Flip Teaching model. This model proposes an on-line activity composed by the learning of the lesson and the realization of an individual micro-activity on the same and then, in class, work on the obtained results in the micro-activity. In this work, the Micro Flip Teaching model has been adapted to carry out the online activity in a collaborative way in work teams. The main novelty of this proposal is that the active participation of the students generates resources that can be used as didactic material in future editions of the subject. To evaluate the impact of this proposal, an experimental group has been established that used resources generated by students from previous subject editions, while the control group used only resources generated by the teacher. The research shows that the resources generated by students are equally effective than those generated by teachers

Study of the flexibility of a learning analytics tool to evaluate teamwork competence acquisition in different contexts

Learning analytics tools and methodologies aim to facilitate teachers and/or decision makers with information and knowledge about what is happening in virtual learning environments in a straightforward and effortless way. However, it is necessary to apply these tools and methodologies in different contexts with a similar success, that is, that they should be flexible and portable enough. There exist several learning analytics tools that only works properly with very specific versions of learning platforms. In this paper, the authors aim to evaluate the flexibility and portability of a methodology and a learning analytics tool that supports individual assessment of teamwork competence. In order to do so the methodology and the tool are applied in a similar course from two different academic contexts. After the experiment, it is possible to see that the learning analytics tool seems to work properly and the suggested new functionalities are similar in both contexts. The methodology can be also applied but results could be improved if some meetings are carried out to check how team works are progressing with their tasks

Your Teammate Just Sent You a New Message! The Effects of Using Telegram on Individual Acquisition of Teamwork Competence

[EN] Students’ acquisition of teamwork competence has become a priority for educational institutions. The development of teamwork competence in education generally relies in project-based learning methodologies and challenges. The assessment of teamwork in project-based learning involves, among others, assessing students’ participation and the interactions between team members. Project-based learning can easily be handled in small-size courses, but course management and teamwork assessment become a burdensome task for instructors as the size of the class increases. Additionally, when project-based learning happens in a virtual space, such as online learning, interactions occur in a less natural way. This study explores the use of instant messaging apps (more precisely, the use of Telegram) as team communication space in project-based learning, using a learning analytics tool to extract and analyze student interactions. Further, the study compares student interactions (e.g., number of messages exchanged) and individual teamwork competence acquisition between traditional asynchronous (e.g., LMS message boards) and synchronous instant messaging communication environments. The results show a preference of students for IM tools and increased participation in the course. However, the analysis does not find significant improvement in the acquisition of individual teamwork competence.S

Your Teammate Just Sent You a New Message! The Effects of Using Telegram on Individual Acquisition of Teamwork Competence

Students’ acquisition of teamwork competence has become a priority for educational institutions. The development of teamwork competence in education generally relies in project-based learning methodologies and challenges. The assessment of teamwork in project-based learning involves, among others, assessing students’ participation and the interactions between team members. Project-based learning can easily be handled in small-size courses, but course management and teamwork assessment become a burdensome task for instructors as the size of the class increases. Additionally, when project-based learning happens in a virtual space, such as online learning, interactions occur in a less natural way. This study explores the use of instant messaging apps (more precisely, the use of Telegram) as team communication space in project-based learning, using a learning analytics tool to extract and analyze student interactions. Further, the study compares student interactions (e.g., number of messages exchanged) and individual teamwork competence acquisition between traditional asynchronous (e.g., LMS message boards) and synchronous instant messaging communication environments. The results show a preference of students for IM tools and increased participation in the course. However, the analysis does not find significant improvement in the acquisition of individual teamwork competence

Assessing the individual acquisition of teamwork competence by exploring students’ instant messaging tools use: the WhatsApp case study

[En] Nowadays, working in groups is very usual and popular in most professional environments. Thus, students, as potential workers, need to acquire teamwork competence in their educational institutions. However, when the students are working in groups, it is easy assessing their final result but not so much evaluating how each of them, individually, is developing teamwork competence. In this sense, there are several methodologies, and those with better results are the ones that explore students’ interactions in learning platforms when developing the activity/project. Taking into account the latter, students’ interactions do not only happen in a learning platform but also using other tools such as instant messaging tools. This paper explores the possibility to assess the use of instant messaging tools for the acquisition of teamwork competence, and specifically, it presents a case study about the use of WhatsApp. From the results, we can conclude that the students prefer to use instant messaging tools in teamwork activities than other interaction tools as forums; and that the employment of those tools has a positive impact in students’ grades.SIRoboSTEA

Revisión crítica del método de aula invertida desde una perspectiva basada en la experiencia

El método de Aula Invertida es una tendencia de innovación educativa que está en la fase de sobre-expectativas. Este trabajo recoge la experiencia de trabajar con el método de forma científica durante nueve años y aplicándolo a contextos docentes diferentes: clases teóricas, competencia del trabajo en equipo y clases prácticas de laboratorios. Toda la experiencia se aplica en asignaturas universitarias de varias titulaciones de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. El resultado recoge el impacto real del método de Aula Invertida