On Using the Cloud to Support Online Courses

The increasing interest of online learning is unquestionable nowadays, with MOOCs being taken by thousands of students. However, for online learning to go mainstream it is necessary that professors perceive that the effort required to prepare and manage an online course is manageable. Today, a myriad of inexpensive tools and services can be used to produce and manage online courses with unprecedented ease and without distressing the professor. For that, this paper proposes an architecture based on Cloud services that simplifies the process of managing an online course, from delivering on-demand fully customized remote laboratories to communication automation for student engagement and feedback gathering. This approach has been applied to produce, distribute and manage an Online Course on Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services. The paper describes the methodology, tools and results of this experience to point out that it is possible to deliver online courses with automatically provisioned labs, with minimal management overhead, while still providing a high quality learning experience to a worldwide audience.Moltó, G.; Caballer Fernández, M. (2014). On Using the Cloud to Support Online Courses. Frontiers in Education Conference. 2014:330-338. doi:10.1109/FIE.2014.7044041S330338201

A case study on cloud computing towards teaching and e-learning process among academicians in UiTM Segamat / Nur Khairunnisa Zamri...[et al.]

Due to the advancement of technology, the teaching and learning process are required to do some of the transformation persistence to the infrastructure available nowadays. The existence of e-learning has grown into a widely accepted learning model due to its flexibility, diversity, measurement, opening and so on ,most of the colleges and universities offer courses through distance education or in online format as well as use various teaching and learning models now. There is a growing trend of using similar models for lifelong learning (Zheng He, 2012). Cloud computing is one of the tools that are frequently preferred by academicians recently as one of the storage medium in their teaching process. The purpose of this research is to see in the helicopter view pretending to the employment of cloud computing among the academicians in UiTM Segamat. The objectives of this study are to discover the awareness of e-learning using cloud computing and to explore the effectiveness of e-learning using cloud computing. By using a quantitative research, a survey questionnaire was used as the instrument and Systematic Random Techniques as the Sampling Techniques. The researcher is able to collect 88 percent of the distributed questionnaires from the respondents. Findings show that the case study on cloud computing towards teaching and learning process among academicians in UiTM Segamat does exist. Thus, this study proposed changes in technology, training, top management support, awareness in using cloud computing and institution support in cloud computing as the recommendation to the organization

Using cloud computing for developing teachers’ information and communication competency (the experience of the Baltic States)

Стаття присвячена проблемам використання сервісів хмарних обчислень для розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів. Метою дослідження є визначення основних хмаро орієнтованих інструментів, що використовуються для розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів, та шляхів упровадження цих інструментів у навчання та професійну діяльність вчителів на досвіді науковців країн Балтії. Висвітлено досвід вчених країн Балтії у створенні Масових он-лайн курсів із використанням інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій, зокрема хмарних обчислень, для вирішення питань підвищення якості професійної діяльності вчителів. Зроблено висновок, що застосування можливостей хмарних обчислень дозволяє удосконалити навчальний процес загальноосвітніх навчальних закладів та сформувати цифрову навчальну екосистему, що забезпечить рішення педагогічних, соціо-культурних та технічних проблем розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної та інших компетентностей вчителів без відриву від їх роботи та в зручний для них час.The article deals with the problems of using cloud computing services for the development teachers’ information and communication competency. The article’s aim is to determine the main cloud oriented tools for the development of teachers’ information and communication competency and ways of implementing these tools in teaching and teachers’ professional work by the experience of scientists Baltic countries. The experience of the Baltic scientists to build a Massive online courses for the teachers, which are about using the information and communication technologies, including cloud computing, to solve issues improving the quality of teachers’ professional activity have been describe. Its focused on activities relating to ICT-facilitated education, in particular the use of cloud computing to support education, for example the project Online4EDU, which introduces online collaboration tools in education by providing a blended learning course for teachers. The objective of the project Online4EDU is to support teachers in applying information and communication technologies in everyday school life. The main aim of the project “Online4EDU” is to facilitate the development of teachers’ information and communication competency Online collaboration tools such as cloud computing can enrich teaching and learning in all school subjects, and help teachers to find, create and organize new learning materials. It is concluded that the application possibilities of cloud computing allows to improve the educational process of the schools and create a digital learning ecosystem that will provide a solution to educational, socio-cultural and technical issues of information and communication and other teachers’ competencies. Among the cloud-oriented tools used for creating digital learning ecosystem of teachers’ information and communication competency can highlight the following tools for data storage on the Internet (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, ICloud et al.), online platform for learning (Moodle, Lo-Net2 et al.), tools for online meetings (Skype, TeamViewer, Hangouts, AnyMeeting et al.), services for collaboration work with documents in different formats (Google, OneNote, Web application Microsoft Office , OneDrive, etc.), mobile applications (Google, maps, translators, calendar, E-Mail, WhatsApp, Viber, QR Code Reader and Creator, Wattpad et al.), additional tools (Padlet, Sway, Popplet, Kahoot, coggle .it, Trello, Prezi, TeamUp, MindMister, Youtube, Delicious and others.). It is determined that important role in the development of teachers’ information and communication competency play Massive online courses that facilitate teachers’ motivation to lifelong learning, as they provide flexible learning and resolve important issues of education and society

Creating an International Joint Certificate in IT Administration

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and the University of Agder (UiA), Norway, are collaborating on the creation of an undergraduate certificate in Information Technology Administration. The certificate is designed for students who are interested in managing the complex technical infrastructure of today\u27s organizations. The certificate will consist of approximately 15 credit hours of hands-on courses, covering such areas as systems administration, network administration, database administration, security administration, and distributed systems. All courses will be offered online, using a variety of collaboration tools and teaching techniques that reflect the best of current practice. Students will take courses taught by both UNO and UiA instructors and will have the opportunity to work with students residing in a country other than their own. The program is currently under development at both universities. Market research indicated that there is high current and future demand for the skill-set offered by the IT administration certificate. However, neither UNO nor UiA has the resources or capabilities of offering the full certificate on its own. By combining their resources, the institutions are able to expand their offerings not only to their own student population, but to those in other countries as well. By being a completely online offering, the certificate is available to students in multiple countries in delivery modes that are flexible and accessible. The online international collaboration behind this certificate will offer many opportunities for pedagogical research, blending teaching and research to create a learning environment in which students both learn from and participate in teaching and research processes. The courses are intensely technical, requiring hands-on access, often by teams of students, to sophisticated systems. Enabling the access and the real-time staff support that accompanies it is a challenge that must be met. Contemporary technologies of cloud computing, virtualization, and remote collaboration offer opportunities for creative solutions. Administratively, the two institutions have worked through issues of reconciling differences in credit production (student credit hours vs. European Credit Transfer System), course payment, semester schedule reconciliation, time zones, and teacher workloads

Використання хмарних обчислень для розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів

The article deals with the problem for development of techers’ information and communication competence and use of cloud computing for it. The analysis of the modern approaches to the use of cloud technologies and projects for professional development of teachers and development of teachers’ information and communication competence have been presented.There are the main characteristics of software as a service on the Internet for education leading companies Google, Microsoft, IBM. There are described some actions of these companies, which are conducted to help teachers to master cloud technology for improving the professional activities and development of teachers’ information and communication competence. The examples of ways of development of teachers’ information and communication competence and training teachers to use modern ICT in the professional activity are given in the paper. The Cloud based model for development of teachers’ information and communication competence has been proposed.Стаття присвячена проблемі розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів за допомогою використання хмарних обчислень. Здійснюється аналіз сучасних підходів до використання хмарних технологій та проектів для професійного розвитку вчителів та розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів. Пропонуються основні характеристики хмарних обчислень провідних компаній Google, Microsoft, IBM, з точки зори їх необхідності для здійснення навчального процесу в мережі Інтернет. Описуються дії цих компаній та інші навчальні проекти, метою яких є розвиток інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів за допомогою хмарних обчислень. Наводяться приклади шляхів рішення проблеми розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів за допомогою використання сучасних інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій. Запропонована модель розвитку інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності вчителів на базі хмарних обчислень, виділені основні вимоги та елементи цієї моделі

The Future Affordances of Digital Learning and Teaching within The School of Education

This report illustrates the discussion outcome on digital education within the University of Glasgow School of Education. It is not a strategy document but it does explore the conditions for nurturing digital culture and how these can be channelled into a strategy on digital learning and teaching. The report is based on a review of literature and on a number of local, national and international case study vignettes

Cloud services, interoperability and analytics within a ROLE-enabled personal learning environment

The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments, EU 7th Framework Programme, grant agreement no.: 231396, 2009-2013) was focused on the next generation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A ROLE PLE is a bundle of interoperating widgets - often realised as cloud services - used for teaching and learning. In this paper, we first describe the creation of new ROLE widgets and widget bundles at Galileo University, Guatemala, within a cloud-based infrastructure. We introduce an initial architecture for cloud interoperability services including the means for collecting interaction data as needed for learning analytics. Furthermore, we describe the newly implemented widgets, namely a social networking tool, a mind-mapping tool and an online document editor, as well as the modification of existing widgets. The newly created and modified widgets have been combined in two different bundles that have been evaluated in two web-based courses at Galileo University, with participants from three different Latin-American countries. We measured emotional aspects, motivation, usability and attitudes towards the environment. The results demonstrated the readiness of cloud-based education solutions, and how ROLE can bring together such an environment from a PLE perspective