Personalized Service-Oriented E-Learning Environments

6 pages, 4 figures.The social component of Web 2.0-related services is providing a new open and personal approach to how we expect things to solve problems in our information-driven world. In particular, students' learning needs require open, personal e-learning systems adapted to life-long learning needs in a rapidly changing environment. It therefore shouldn't be surprising that a new wave of ideas centered on pervasive systems has drawn so much attention. This article analyzes current trends in the evolution of e-learning architectures and describes a new architecture that captures the needs of both formal (instructor-led) and informal (student-led) learning environments.Spain’s Programa Nacional de Tecnologías de la Sociedad de la Información supported this research through projects TSI2005-08225-C07-01 and -02.Publicad

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Making Personal and Professional Learning Mobile: Blending Mobile Devices, Social Media, Social Networks, and Mobile Apps To Support PLEs, PLNs, & ProLNs

Mobile technologies have become an integrated, or inseparable, part of individuals’ daily lives for work, play, and learning. While social networking has been important and in practice in our society even before human civilization and certainly prior to the advent of computers, nowadays, the opportunities and venues of building a network are unprecedented. Currently, the opportunities and tools to build a network to support personal and professional learning are enabled by mobile technologies (e.g., mobile apps, devices, and services), web-based applications (e.g., Diigo and RSS readers), and social-networking applications and services (e.g., Facebook, Google+, and Twitter). The purpose of this chapter is to describe and propose how individuals use personal learning environments (PLEs), personal learning networks (PLNs), and professional learning networks (ProLNs) with mobile technologies and social networking tools to meet their daily learning needs. In our chapter, we consider categories of learning relevant to personal learning and professional learning, then we define and examine PLEs, PLNs, and ProLNs, suggesting how mobile devices and social software can be used within these. The specific strategies learners use within PLEs, PLNs, and ProLNs are then presented followed by cases that depict and exemplify these strategies within the categories of learning. Finally, implications for using mobile devices to support personal and professional learning are discussed

Implementing a mobile campus using MLE Moodle

Mobile learning is considered the next step of online learning by incorporating mobility as a key requirement. Indeed, the current wide spread of mobile devices and wireless technologies brings an enormous potential to e-learning, in terms of ubiquity, pervasiveness, personalization, flexibility, and so on. For this reason, Mobile Learning is attracting significant research efforts covering a fairly variety of learning settings, from schools and universities to workplaces and cities. This research has evidenced that mobile technology can offer new opportunities for learners to learn inside and beyond the traditional instructor-oriented educational paradigm. However, mobile technologies are still in its infancy and many challenges arise. In this paper we analyze, from both learning and technological perspectives, the development of learning applications using mobile devices. To this end, proxy and proxy less architectures are considered as way to extend traditional virtual campuses with mobile clients. The objective is twofold: to access learning materials and to support learning activities. A prototype of a Virtual Campus is developed using MLE-Moodle -the Mobile Learning module of Moodle. The proposed Virtual Campus enables mobile clients to perform online learning activities and is a step towards achieving the “anytime, anywhere” paradigm.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version