A systematic review and trend analysis of personal learning environments research

The concept of personal learning environments (PLEs) is relatively new and is continuously developing. Over the past decade, there has been a significant upsurge in the number of PLEs-related research. Nevertheless, there is a lack of recent systematic reviews and trend analysis covering many PLEs studies; to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, the current systematic review is significant and indispensable in reviewing journal articles that discussed PLEs between 2000 and 2020. We searched Web of Science, Scopus, Sciences Direct, JSTOR, Springer, Google Scholar, and IEEE Xplore for studies published in English without limit in location or time to retrieve accurate results. Trend graphics for the extracted themes were also analyzed using descriptive statistics in Excel. According to the defined inclusion criteria, one hundred forty-eight articles were selected for the analysis. This study reveals that literature on PLEs has progressed from 2000 to 2020; the majority of PLEs-related articles were published between 2011 and 2020, with the year 2013 having the highest number of published articles (17 articles), followed by 16 papers published in both years 2014 and 2017. We found that the published PLEs research originated from 46 countries; 26 (17.6%) were from Spain. The majority of the authors had education, computer science, information technology and engineering backgrounds. This review also showed that numerous platforms had been used in PLEs research, with Web 2.0 the most commonly used platform. We noted that the most common objectives of the included articles were PLEs custom system development, analysis of the PLEs, description of experiments, investigations, development of factor models, framework development, and examination. The most common theoretical perspectives in the published articles were self-regulated learning, self-directed learning, and constructivism. The current systematic review and trend analysis can become a guidance platform for researchers, educators, policymakers or even journal publishers for future research in PLEs research

Evaluating Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning: A Quantitative Survey

The increasing number of publications on recommender systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) evidence a growing interest in their development and deployment. In order to support learning, recommender systems for TEL need to consider specific requirements, which differ from the requirements for recommender systems in other domains like e-commerce. Consequently, these particular requirements motivate the incorporation of specific goals and methods in the evaluation process for TEL recommender systems. In this article, the diverse evaluation methods that have been applied to evaluate TEL recommender systems are investigated. A total of 235 articles are selected from major conferences, workshops, journals, and books where relevant work have been published between 2000 and 2014. These articles are quantitatively analysed and classified according to the following criteria: type of evaluation methodology, subject of evaluation, and effects measured by the evaluation. Results from the survey suggest that there is a growing awareness in the research community of the necessity for more elaborate evaluations. At the same time, there is still substantial potential for further improvements. This survey highlights trends and discusses strengths and shortcomings of the evaluation of TEL recommender systems thus far, thereby aiming to stimulate researchers to contemplate novel evaluation approaches.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Evaluating Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning: A Quantitative Survey

The increasing number of publications on recommender systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) evidence a growing interest in their development and deployment. In order to support learning, recommender systems for TEL need to consider specific requirements, which differ from the requirements for recommender systems in other domains like e-commerce. Consequently, these particular requirements motivate the incorporation of specific goals and methods in the evaluation process for TEL recommender systems. In this article, the diverse evaluation methods that have been applied to evaluate TEL recommender systems are investigated. A total of 235 articles are selected from major conferences, workshops, journals, and books where relevant work have been published between 2000 and 2014. These articles are quantitatively analysed and classified according to the following criteria: type of evaluation methodology, subject of evaluation, and effects measured by the evaluation. Results from the survey suggest that there is a growing awareness in the research community of the necessity for more elaborate evaluations. At the same time, there is still substantial potential for further improvements. This survey highlights trends and discusses strengths and shortcomings of the evaluation of TEL recommender systems thus far, thereby aiming to stimulate researchers to contemplate novel evaluation approaches.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Evaluating Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning: A Quantitative Survey

The increasing number of publications on recommender systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) evidence a growing interest in their development and deployment. In order to support learning, recommender systems for TEL need to consider specific requirements, which differ from the requirements for recommender systems in other domains like e-commerce. Consequently, these particular requirements motivate the incorporation of specific goals and methods in the evaluation process for TEL recommender systems. In this article, the diverse evaluation methods that have been applied to evaluate TEL recommender systems are investigated. A total of 235 articles are selected from major conferences, workshops, journals, and books where relevant work have been published between 2000 and 2014. These articles are quantitatively analysed and classified according to the following criteria: type of evaluation methodology, subject of evaluation, and effects measured by the evaluation. Results from the survey suggest that there is a growing awareness in the research community of the necessity for more elaborate evaluations. At the same time, there is still substantial potential for further improvements. This survey highlights trends and discusses strengths and shortcomings of the evaluation of TEL recommender systems thus far, thereby aiming to stimulate researchers to contemplate novel evaluation approaches.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

E-Learning

Technology development, mainly for telecommunications and computer systems, was a key factor for the interactivity and, thus, for the expansion of e-learning. This book is divided into two parts, presenting some proposals to deal with e-learning challenges, opening up a way of learning about and discussing new methodologies to increase the interaction level of classes and implementing technical tools for helping students to make better use of e-learning resources. In the first part, the reader may find chapters mentioning the required infrastructure for e-learning models and processes, organizational practices, suggestions, implementation of methods for assessing results, and case studies focused on pedagogical aspects that can be applied generically in different environments. The second part is related to tools that can be adopted by users such as graphical tools for engineering, mobile phone networks, and techniques to build robots, among others. Moreover, part two includes some chapters dedicated specifically to e-learning areas like engineering and architecture

Les systèmes de recommandations pour soutenir l'agentivité des enseignantes et des enseignants au collégial dans leur développement professionnel

L’objectif général de cette thèse est de contribuer au soutien du développement professionnel des enseignantes et des enseignants au collégial en investiguant leur agentivité avec le numérique. L’agentivité est définie ici comme la capacité à définir et à poursuivre des objectifs de développement professionnel. Cette recherche, qui met en œuvre une méthodologie d’expérimentation de devis, s’est déroulée en trois phases. Dans une première phase, nous avons investigué des besoins d’enseignantes du collégial en nous intéressant aux buts que devait soutenir une plateforme numérique soutenant l’exercice de l’agentivité. Pour y parvenir, trois ateliers de codesign ont été menés et analysés sous l’angle du modèle de l’expérience utilisateur de Hassenzahl (2003). Ces ateliers, inspirés des Future Workshop (Muller et Druin, 2012), ont permis d’identifier des buts motivationnels des participantes, c’est-à-dire ce qu’elles souhaitaient qu’une plateforme misant sur l’exercice d’agentivité puisse combler : faire du développement professionnel une priorité, poser un regard réflexif sur l’innovation, faciliter l’accès aux ressources, et faciliter les échanges et le partage. Les ateliers ont aussi permis d’identifier des buts fonctionnels et opérationnels, c’est-à-dire les fonctionnalités qui permettent de combler les besoins motivationnels. Parmi eux, plusieurs se sont révélés être liés aux systèmes de recommandations, qui sont des outils et techniques qui suggèrent les items les plus susceptibles d’intéresser un utilisateur (Ricci et al., 2015). C’est pourquoi une revue systématique de la littérature a été réalisée afin d’identifier notamment les techniques utilisées et les façons d’évaluer les systèmes de recommandations utilisés dans un contexte d’apprentissage. Dans cette deuxième phase de cette recherche doctorale, ce sont 56 articles scientifiques revus par les pairs, parus entre 2008 et 2018, qui ont été analysés sous trois grandes questions et une cinquantaine d’aspects. Ils ont permis d’orienter le développement de la plateforme, dont l’implantation et les améliorations ont constitué la troisième et dernière phase. Cette phase s’est déroulée en trois itérations de conception, intervention, analyse et amélioration. Durant chacune des itérations, les six participantes ont expérimenté la plateforme, répondu à un questionnaire et reçu une rétroaction personnalisée. Le questionnaire visait à analyser le potentiel de la plateforme pour répondre aux buts motivationnels identifiés à la première phase, à analyser la satisfaction à l’égard des ressources recommandées (Erdt et al., 2015), de même qu’à analyser l’expérience utilisateur (Hassenzahl, 2003). Pour des fins d’analyse, les réponses aux questionnaires ont été croisées avec les données entrées par le personnel enseignant dans la plateforme ainsi que les actions faites dans la plateforme et entrées au journal d’évènements. Cette analyse nous a permis d’observer une augmentation de la perception du soutien à l’agentivité des enseignantes, en particulier la capacité de la plateforme à faciliter l’accès aux ressources pour mieux connaitre les occasions de développement professionnel et pour accéder aux activités de développement professionnel les plus appropriées. Au fil des itérations, nous avons également observé une augmentation de la satisfaction à l’égard des ressources recommandées grâce à une approche basée sur le contenu. La variation de la moyenne globale des aspects hédoniques et pragmatiques est elle aussi positive à chacune des itérations. C’est dire que le codesign d’un environnement numérique dans le cadre d’une recherche avec des enseignantes a été une forme de développement professionnel, et le codesign en contexte de développement professionnel a favorisé l’exercice de l’agentivité des participantes. Le design itératif de cette recherche a contribué à faire du développement professionnel une priorité, un besoin identifié durant la phase de codesign. Cette étude a permis d’identifier et de mettre en œuvre des pistes permettant de faciliter l’exercice de l’agentivité des enseignantes et des enseignants.The general objective of this thesis is to contribute to supporting the professional development of college teachers by investigating their agency with the support of digital technology. Agency is defined here as the ability to define and pursue professional development goals. This research, which implements a design-based research methodology, was carried out in three phases. In the first phase, we investigated the needs of college teachers by looking at the goals that a digital platform supporting the exercise of agency should support. To achieve this, three codesign workshops were conducted and analyzed from the perspective of Hassenzahl's (2003) user experience model. These workshops, inspired by the Future Workshop (Muller & Druin, 2012), made it possible to identify the participants' “be-goals”, i.e., what they wanted a platform based on the exercise of agency to achieve: to make professional development a priority, to take a reflective look at innovation, to facilitate access to resources, and to facilitate exchanges and sharing. The workshops also made it possible to identify “do-goals” and “motor-goals”, i.e., the functionalities that make it possible to meet be-goals. Among them, several were found to be related to recommendation systems, which are tools and techniques that suggest the items most likely to interest a user (Ricci et al., 2015). For this reason, a systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify the techniques used and the ways to evaluate the recommendations systems used in a learning context. In this second phase of this doctoral research, 56 peer-reviewed scientific articles, published between 2008 and 2018, were analyzed under three main questions and about 50 aspects. They were used to help guide the development of the platform, whose implementation and improvements constituted the third and final phase. This phase took place in three iterations of design/implementation, intervention, analysis and improvement. During each iteration, the six participants experimented with the platform, answered a questionnaire and received personalized feedback. The questionnaire aimed to analyze the platform's potential to meet the motivational goals (“be-goals”) identified in the first phase, to analyze satisfaction with the recommended resources (Erdt et al., 2015), and to analyze the user experience (Hassenzahl, 2003). For analysis purposes, the responses to the questionnaires were cross-referenced with the data entered by the teaching staff in the platform as well as the actions taken in the platform and entries in the event log. This analysis allowed us to observe an increase in the perception of support for teachers' agency, in particular the platform's ability to facilitate access to resources to learn more about professional development opportunities and to access the most appropriate professional development activities. Over the iterations we also observed an increase in satisfaction with the recommended resources through a content-based approach. The variation in the overall average of the hedonic and pragmatic aspects is also positive in each iteration. This means that codesigning a digital environment in the context of research with female teachers was a form of professional development, and codesigning in a professional development context promoted the participants' exercise of agency. The iterative design of this research contributed to making professional development a priority, a need identified during the codesign phase. This study made it possible to identify and implement avenues to facilitate teachers' exercise of agency