EduBridge social - bridging social networks and learning management systems

The exponential growth of social media usage and the integration of digital natives in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have been posing new challenges to both traditional and technology-mediated learning environments. Nowadays social media plays an important, if not central, role in society, for professional and personal purposes. However, it’s important to highlight that in the mind of a digital native, social media is not just a tool, it is a place that is as real and as natural as any real-life world place where formal/informal social interactions happen. Still, formal higher education contexts are still mostly imprisoned in locked up institutional Learning Management Systems (LMS), while a new world of social connections grows and develops itself outside schools. One of the main reasons we believe to be persisting in the origin of the matter is the absence of a suitable management, monitoring and analysis tools to legitimize and to efficiently manage the relationship with stud ents in social networks. In this paper we discuss the growing relevance of the “Social Student Relationship Management” concept and introduce the EduBridge Social system, which aims at connecting the most commonly used LMS, Moodle, and the most popular social network, Facebook.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Moodbile: A Framework to Integrate m-Learning Applications with the LMS.

[ES] Los Sistemas de Gestión de Aprendizaje (LMS) se han generalizado entre la mayoría de los centros de educación y formación. Ya se trata de una tecnología madura, han dejado la vanguardia de la innovación. Los usos educativos de la Web 2.0, los Entornos Personales de Aprendizaje, el aprendizaje basado en el juego y en particular la introducción de los teléfonos móviles y las tabletas en la educación están sucediendo fuera de los límites de los LMS. En este trabajo se propone una manera de integrar los dispositivos móviles y las aplicaciones educativas con el LMS a través de servicios web; Se presenta el proyecto Moodbile que proporciona una extensión de servicios web de Moodle 2.0 para la integración móvil y dos clientes móviles listos para utilizar en situaciones reales.[EN] Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become widespread among most centres for education and training. Being a mature technology, LMS have left the vanguard of innovation. Educational usages of the Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments, Game-based Learning and particularly the introduction of mobile phones and tablets in education are happening outside the boundaries of the LMS. This paper proposes a way to integrate mobile devices and educational applications with the LMS through webservices; introducing the Moodbile project that provides an extension of Moodle 2.0 webservices for mobile integration and two mobile clients ready to use on real courses

Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

The landscape of teaching and learning has changed in recent years because of the application of Information and Communications technology. Among the most representative innovations in this regard are Learning Management Systems. Despite of their popularity in institutional contexts and the wide set of tools and services that they provide to learners and teachers, they present several issues. Learning Management Systems are linked to an institution and a period of time, and are not adapted to learners' needs. In order to address these problems Personal Learning Environments are defined, but it is clear that these will not replace Learning Management Systems and other institutional contexts. Both types of environment should therefore coexist and interact. This paper presents a service-based framework to facilitate such interoperability. It supports the export of functionalities from the institutional to the personal environment and also the integration within the institution of learning outcomes from personal activities. In order to achieve this in a flexible, extensible and open way, web services and interoperability specifications are used. In addition some interoperability scenarios are posed. The framework has been tested in real learning contexts and the results show that interoperability is possible, and that it benefits learners, teachers and institutions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A case study for measuring informal learning in PLEs

The technological support for learning and teaching processes is constantly changing. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applied to education, cause changes that affect the way in which people learn. This application introduces new software systems and solutions to carry out teaching and learning activities. Connected to ICT application, the emergence of Web 2.0 and its use in learning contexts enables an online implementation of the student-centred learning paradigm. In addition, 2.0 trends provide “new” ways to exchange, making easier for informal learning to become patent. Given this context, open and user-centered learning environments are needed to integrate such kinds of tools and trends and are commonly described as Personal Learning Environments. Such environments coexist with the institutional learning management systems and they should interact and exchange information between them. This interaction would allow the assessment of what happens in the personal environment from the institutional side. This article describes a solution to make the interoperability possible between these systems. It is based on a set of interoperability scenarios and some components and communication channels. In order to test the solution it is implemented as a proof of concept and the scenarios are validated through several pilot experiences. In this article one of such scenarios and its evaluation experiment is described to conclude that functionalities from the institutional environments and the personal ones can be combined and it is possible to assess what happens in the activities based on them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Integrating personal learning and working environments

This review paper part of a series of papers commissioned by the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick under the title of 'Beyond Current Horizons – Working and Employment Challenge'. In turn, in forms part of a larger programme of work under the banner of Beyond Current Horizons that is being managed by FutureLab on behalf of the UK Department for Schools, Children and Families. The brief was to cover: - The main trends and issues in the area concerned; - Any possible discontinuities looking forward to 2025 and beyond; - Uncertainties and any big tensions; - Conclusions on what the key issues will be in the future and initial reflections on any general implications for education. Given the wide ranging nature of the brief, this paper largely confines itself to trends and issues in the UK, although where appropriate examples from other countries in Europe are introduced. We realise that in an age of growing globalisation the future of work and learning in the UK cannot be separated from developments elsewhere and that developments in other parts of the world may present a different momentum and trajectory from that in the UK. Thus, when reading this report, please bear in mind the limitations in our approach

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Mapping web personal learning environments

A recent trend in web development is to build platforms which are carefully designed to host a plurality of software components (sometimes called widgets or plugins) which can be organized or combined (mashed-up) at user's convenience to create personalized environments. The same holds true for the web development of educational applications. The degree of personalization can depend on the role of users such as in traditional virtual learning environment, where the components are chosen by a teacher in the context of a course. Or, it can be more opened as in a so-called personalized learning environment (PLE). It now exists a wide array of available web platforms exhibiting different functionalities but all built on the same concept of aggregating components together to support different tasks and scenarios. There is now an overlap between the development of PLE and the more generic developments in web 2.0 applications such as social network sites. This article shows that 6 more or less independent dimensions allow to map the functionalities of these platforms: the screen dimensionmaps the visual integration, the data dimension maps the portability of data, the temporal dimension maps the coupling between participants, the social dimension maps the grouping of users, the activity dimension maps the structuring of end users–interactions with the environment, and the runtime dimensionmaps the flexibility in accessing the system from different end points. Finally these dimensions are used to compare 6 familiar Web platforms which could potentially be used in the construction of a PLE

Personalised privacy in pervasive and ubiquitous systems

Our world is edging closer to the realisation of pervasive systems and their integration in our everyday life. While pervasive systems are capable of offering many benefits for everyone, the amount and quality of personal information that becomes available raise concerns about maintaining user privacy and create a real need to reform existing privacy practices and provide appropriate safeguards for the user of pervasive environments. This thesis presents the PERSOnalised Negotiation, Identity Selection and Management (PersoNISM) system; a comprehensive approach to privacy protection in pervasive environments using context aware dynamic personalisation and behaviour learning. The aim of the PersoNISM system is twofold: to provide the user with a comprehensive set of privacy protecting tools and to help them make the best use of these tools according to their privacy needs. The PersoNISM system allows users to: a) configure the terms and conditions of data disclosure through the process of privacy policy negotiation, which addresses the current “take it or leave it” approach; b) use multiple identities to interact with pervasive services to avoid the accumulation of vast amounts of personal information in a single user profile; and c) selectively disclose information based on the type of information, who requests it, under what context, for what purpose and how the information will be treated. The PersoNISM system learns user privacy preferences by monitoring the behaviour of the user and uses them to personalise and/or automate the decision making processes in order to unburden the user from manually controlling these complex mechanisms. The PersoNISM system has been designed, implemented, demonstrated and evaluated during three EU funded projects

Leadership conversations: the impact on patient environments

Purpose – The aim of this study is to examine 15 NHS acute trusts in England that achieved high scores at all their hospitals in the first four national Patient Environment audits. No common external explanations were discernible. This paper seeks to examine whether the facilities managers responsible for the Patient Environment displayed a consistent leadership style. Design/methodology/approach – Overall, six of the 15 trusts gave permission for the research to take place and a series of unstructured interviews and observations were arranged with 22 facilities managers in these trusts. Responses were transcribed and categorised through multiple iteration. Findings – The research found common leadership and managerial behaviours, many of which could be identified from other literature. The research also identified managers deliberately devoting energy and time to creating networks of conversations. This creation of networks through managing conversation is behaviour less evident in mainstream leadership literature or in the current Department of Health and NHS leadership models. Practical implications – The findings of this study offer managers (particularly those in FM and managers across NHS) a unique insight into the potential impact of leaders giving an opportunity to re-model thinking on management and leadership and the related managerial development opportunities. It provides the leverage to move facilities management from the role of a commodity or support service, to a position as a true enabler of business. Originality/value – Original research is presented in a previously under-examined area. The paper illuminates how facilities management within trusts achieving high Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) scores is led.</p