Identification of the Students Learning Process During Education Robotics Activities

This paper presents the design of an assessment process and its outcomes to investigate the impact of Educational Robotics activities on students' learning. Through data analytics techniques, the authors will explore the activities' output from a pedagogical and quantitative point of view. Sensors are utilized in the context of an Educational Robotics activity to obtain a more effective robot–environment interaction. Pupils work on specific exercises to make their robot smarter and to carry out more complex and inspirational projects: the integration of sensors on a robotic prototype is crucial, and learners have to comprehend how to use them. In the presented study, the potential of Educational Data Mining is used to investigate how a group of primary and secondary school students, using visual programming (Lego Mindstorms EV3 Education software), design programming sequences while they are solving an exercise related to an ultrasonic sensor mounted on their robotic artifact. For this purpose, a tracking system has been designed so that every programming attempt performed by students' teams is registered on a log file and stored in an SD card installed in the Lego Mindstorms EV3 brick. These log files are then analyzed using machine learning techniques (k-means clustering) in order to extract different patterns in the creation of the sequences and extract various problem-solving pathways performed by students. The difference between problem-solving pathways with respect to an indicator of early achievement is studied

HAPA: Harvester and Pedagogical Agents in E-learning Environments

In the field of e-learning and tutoring systems two categories of software agents are of the special interest: harvester and pedagogical agents. This paper proposes a novel e-learning system that successfully combines both of these agent categories and introduces two distinct sub-types of pedagogical agents helpful and misleading. Whereas helpful agents provide the correct guidance for the given problem, misleading agents try to guide the learning process in the wrong direction by offering false hints and inadequate solutions. The rationale behind this approach is to motivate students not to trust the agent’s instructions blindly, but to employ critical thinking. Consequently, students will be put in a "softly stressed" environment in order to prepare them for real working environments in their future work in companies. Nevertheless students themselves will decide on the correct solution to the problem in question

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Designs for Research, Teaching and Learning

This bookoffers a coherent theoretical and multimodal perspective on research, teaching and learning in different non-formal, semi-formal, and formal learning environments. Drawing on examples across a range of different settings, the book provides a conceptual framework for research on learning in different environments. It provides conceptual models around learning design which act as a framework for how to think about contemporary learning, a guideline for how to do research on learning in different sites, and a tool for innovative, collaborative design with other professionals. The book highlights concepts like multimodal knowledge representations; framing and setting; transformation, transduction, and re-design; signs of learning and cultures of recognition in different social contexts. The book supports innovative thinking on how we understand learning, and will appeal to academics, scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of education research and theory, learning sciences, and multimodal and social semiotics. It will also be of interest to school leaders, university provosts and professionals working in education

OnCreate and the virtual teammate: an analysis of online creative processes and remote collaboration

This paper explores research undertaken by a consortium of 10 universities from across Europe as part of an EU Erasmus Strategic Partnership project called OnCreate. Recent research and experiences prove the importance of the design and implementation of online courses that are learner-centred, include collaboration and integrate rich use of media in authentic environments. The OnCreate project explores the specific challenges of creative processes in such environments. The first research phase comprises a comparative qualitative analysis of collaboration practices in design-related study programmes at the ten participating universities. A key outcome of this research was in identifying the shortcomings of the hierarchical role models of established Learning Management Systems (such as Moodle or Blackboard) and the tendency towards evolving 'mash-up' environments to support creative online collaboration

Designs for Research, Teaching and Learning

This bookoffers a coherent theoretical and multimodal perspective on research, teaching and learning in different non-formal, semi-formal, and formal learning environments. Drawing on examples across a range of different settings, the book provides a conceptual framework for research on learning in different environments. It provides conceptual models around learning design which act as a framework for how to think about contemporary learning, a guideline for how to do research on learning in different sites, and a tool for innovative, collaborative design with other professionals. The book highlights concepts like multimodal knowledge representations; framing and setting; transformation, transduction, and re-design; signs of learning and cultures of recognition in different social contexts. The book supports innovative thinking on how we understand learning, and will appeal to academics, scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of education research and theory, learning sciences, and multimodal and social semiotics. It will also be of interest to school leaders, university provosts and professionals working in education

Development and Evaluation of a Software Product Line for M-Learning Applications

The popularity of mobile devices in all social classes has motivated the development of mobile learning (m-learning) applications. The existing applications, even having many benefits and facilities in relation to the teaching-learning process, still presents problems and challenges, es- pecially regarding the development, reuse and architectural standardization. Particularly, there is a growing adoption of the Software Product Line (SPL) concept, in view of research that investigates these gaps. This paradigm enables organizations to explore the similarities and variabilities of their products, increasing the reuse of artifacts and, consequently, reducing costs and development time. In this context, we discuss how systematic reuse can improve the development of solutions in the m-learning domain. Therefore, this work presents the design, development and experimental evaluation of M-SPLearning, an SPL created to enable the systematic production of m-learning applications. Specifically, the conception of M-SPLearning covers from the initial study for an effective domain analysis to the implementation and evaluation of its functional version. In this regard, the products have been experimentally evaluated by industry software developers, pro- viding statistical evidence that the use of our SPL can speed up the time-to-market of m-learning applications, in addition to reducing their respective number of faults