INCORPORATING WEB TECHNOLOGY IN FACE TO FACE COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN AN ENGINEERING COURSE

Traditional and monologue type of teaching and learning environment has been at the saturated stage. The teachers and students have shown their indifferences toward teaching and learning process. New approach, which requires students’ involvement in learning process, was introduced. Peer based learning activities through face-to-face interaction have been introduced to students. Variety of learner centered learning activities was developed and it has contributed in developing new learning culture to the students, i.e. collaborative and shared out attitude towards each other. Applying the Web Technology to this cooperative learning environment promotes more active and personal learning experiences to each individual student. Through threaded discussion facility students are able to evaluate, comment, share and enrich other ideas, opinions and problems. Web technology supports the face-to-face cooperative learning, as students are able to keep their group and class learning activities on beyond their scheduled formal class meeting. Variety teaching-learning scenarios certainly play prominent role to this group activity

Competences for collaboration and knowledge sharing in digital society - a case study with an erasmus intensive programme

With the advent of social and collaborative environments, students became more active and participative - they not only have access to contents but also create and share them, becoming proactive. Communication has evolved, and with this evolution came the new media and the possibility of live conferencing, video sharing, social networking, collaborative tools, allowing the student to create, work collaboratively and communicate in a more direct way with their peers and their teachers. Instead of merely searching for information, applications such as bookmarking, feeds, tweeter and pinboards, digital portfolios, etc., along with the possibility of creating your own personal webpage, today’s Web gives students also the chance to create a PLE - A Personal Learning Environment. A PLE “recognizes that learning is continuing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning” (Attwell, 2007). The Individuals are responsible for the management of their own learning environment and for the selection of tools and contexts where learning will take place. Students need to acquire certain skills and competences, specific of a digital and connected society, in order to “effectively benefit from e-government, e-learning and e-health services, and participate actively in the knowledge society as co-creators, and not simply consumers, as highlighted by the European e-skills strategy” (McCormack, 2010). To only possess hard skills (that comes with experience and formal education) may not be enough to get someone a job. Besides e-skills and e-literacy competences, soft and social skills are also required. These can be practiced and enhanced in virtual environments. Digital literacy, and therefore e-skills, are transversal competences needed to every citizen. In this paper we will present the results of a case study carried out with attendees of an Erasmus Intensive Programme, which has promoted the development of digital literacies among participants. The Programme took place during 2013 summer and involved students and teachers (of teacher education and social service fields) from 3 different countries. The classes covered different tools and 12 tutors were involved. The main objectives were to provide students with information and communication technologies (ICT) skills for a digital society, namely: • Identification of students’ competencies in ICT; • Present students with different available collaboration tools by exploring the web 2.0; • Selection of specific tools to create students' personal learning environment (PLE); • Acquire necessary knowledge to master the selected tools; • Work collaboratively with the web 2.0 tools; • Establish methods for instruction and course design based on Web 2.0 (teacher education) with the goal to integrate technology enhanced learning and individual knowledge management in educational processes. At the end attendees were able to: • Master the different tools & services; • Be capable to use and select the most adequate web 2.0 tools & services; • Create and manage their PLE; • Share and to work collaboratively; • Be digitally skilled.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Designing for change: mash-up personal learning environments

Institutions for formal education and most work places are equipped today with at least some kind of tools that bring together people and content artefacts in learning activities to support them in constructing and processing information and knowledge. For almost half a century, science and practice have been discussing models on how to bring personalisation through digital means to these environments. Learning environments and their construction as well as maintenance makes up the most crucial part of the learning process and the desired learning outcomes and theories should take this into account. Instruction itself as the predominant paradigm has to step down. The learning environment is an (if not 'the�) important outcome of a learning process, not just a stage to perform a 'learning play'. For these good reasons, we therefore consider instructional design theories to be flawed. In this article we first clarify key concepts and assumptions for personalised learning environments. Afterwards, we summarise our critique on the contemporary models for personalised adaptive learning. Subsequently, we propose our alternative, i.e. the concept of a mash-up personal learning environment that provides adaptation mechanisms for learning environment construction and maintenance. The web application mash-up solution allows learners to reuse existing (web-based) tools plus services. Our alternative, LISL is a design language model for creating, managing, maintaining, and learning about learning environment design; it is complemented by a proof of concept, the MUPPLE platform. We demonstrate this approach with a prototypical implementation and a – we think – comprehensible example. Finally, we round up the article with a discussion on possible extensions of this new model and open problems

Персональные учебные среды в дистанционном обучении

Рассмотрены ключевые социальные сервисы Web 2.0, на базе которых создаются персональные обучающие среды и социальные сети. Предложены способы использования социальных сервисов, направленных на формирование персональных учебных сред в такой системе управления дистанционным обучением как Moodle.Key social services Web 2.0, which are based on personal learning environments and social networks, are considered. The ways are suggested to use social services, aimed at the development of personal learning environment in such learning management system (LMS) as a Moodle.Розглянуто ключові соціальні сервіси Web 2.0, на базі яких створюються персональні навчальні середовища та соціальні мережі. Запропоновано способи використання соціальних сервісів, спрямованих на формування персональних навчальних середовищ у такій системі управління дистанційним навчанням, як Moodle

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

Assistive tools towards personal learning environment in higher education

This study explores the tools and materials used in personal learning environment (PLE) by investigating the impact of embedding a mashup technology into learning environment. With Web 2.0 technologies, mashing up several materials into learning repository helps learners to form their own scope of learning. A PLE mashup model is suggested in determining suitable tools and materials. Based on the current trends in Web 2.0, another aspect of PLE that could be further investigated is the adoption of social media application for formal higher education level. A study on student perception shows a positive acceptance towards PLE in their learning activities. In order to serve as learning tool, how the technology could be implemented, and its limitation towards efficiency was highlighted

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

La enseñanza de la historia en el aula de ELE: construcción de un PLE adaptado al profesorado poco experto.

The difference between older and younger professors in the new age of the university education could be a problem for the improvement of the students that uses usually web 2.0 tools and a personal learning enviroment (PLE). The paper wants to show the research and testing process to validate a web 2.0 model in multidisciplinary areas in which the application is effective both in a classroom of Spanish as a Foreign Language, to which work has focused primarily, as in humanities studies, especially in studies of visual communication and contemporary history, studies where have been conducted the practices described. The result is proposes in a model of PLE (Personal Learning Environment or Personal Learning Environment) validated for use by both, teachers generationally closest to the Information Society as teachers of previous generations, thanks to a simple and integrated interface that allows the students work in the same context in all subjects of their studies, if necessary.La diferencia entre el profesorado más jóven y el de mayor edad en la nueva era de la educación universitaria puede ser un problema para la evolución de los estudiantes que utilizan herramientas 2.0 normalmente web y un entorno de aprendizaje personal (PLE). Aquí intentamos relatar el proceso investigador y las pruebas realizadas para validar un modelo web 2.0 en un ámbito multidisciplinar en el que la aplicación sea eficaz tanto en un aula de Español como Lengua Extranjera, hacia la que se ha orientado prioritariamente el trabajo, como en estudios de humanidades, especialmente en estudios de comunicación audiovisual y de historia contemporánea, estudios donde se han realizado las prácticas descritas en este artículo. El resultado es la propuesta de un modelo de PLE (Personal Learning Enviroment o Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje) validada para su uso tanto por profesorado generacionalmente cercano a la Sociedad de la Información como por docentes de generaciones anteriores gracias a una interfaz simple e integradora que permita al alumnado trabajar en un mismo contexto en todas las asignaturas de sus estudios, llegado el caso

Open Social Learning Network

This paper considers the affordances of social networking theories and tools to build new and effective e-learning practices. We argue that “connectivism” (social networking applied to learning and knowledge contexts) can lead to a reconceptualization of learning in which formal and non-formal learning can be integrated as to build a potentially lifelong learning activities to be experienced in “personal learning environments”. In order to provide a guide in the design, development and improvement both of personal learning environments and in the related learning activities we provide a knowledge flow model called Open Social Learning Network (OSLN) —a hybrid of the LMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)—is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to improve learning dramatically and  highlighting the stages of learning and the related enabling conditions. The derived model is applied in a possible scenario of formal learning in order to show how the learning process can be designed according to the presented theory. Keywords: Open Social Learning Network OSLN, Learning Theory, Connectivism, Networked Learnin, Collaboration Technologies, Collaborative Learning and Relationship Classification.

Critical factors influencing in service teachers’ satisfaction with an e-learning course, measured with a structural equation modelling

This research aimed at assessing the perceptions of 168 K 12 teachers about a b-learning course on ICT integration in the curriculum. The teacher trainees were asked to plan some class activities, using Web 2.0 technologies; they have also discussed several issues related to education in the knowledge society, such as new ways and strategies for infusing ICT in the national curricula. A learning environment supported by a communication platform was designed. At the end of the course, a satisfaction survey, which was the basis for this research, was applied to assess the different dimensions of the course. Variables such as ICT skills, course design, collaboration, instructor’s feedback, course usefulness and learners’ satisfaction were assessed. The majority of the trainees (83.3%) affirmed that, in the future, would easily choose a b-learning modality course. Three face-toface sessions – at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the course - have proved to be enough to provide support in technological issues, to organize teamwork, to develop stronger relationships within the community and to keep the trainees on track. The results indicate positive perceptions about the online learning environment and strong relationships with both endogenous and exogenous variables. The trainees pointed out, both in their personal reports and in the survey, that collaboration was one of the most valued components of the course. In fact, the trainees were provided a collaboration board where everyone could ask questions or for some kind of help with the web tools used in the course. The research will develop by using a larger and more diverse students’ sample and by surveying the tutors´ perspectives on eLearning, in order to provide the most convenient learning methodologies