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

Towards an institutional PLE

PLEs in their broader sense (the ad-hoc, serendipitous and potentially chaotic set of tools that learners bring to their learning) are increasingly important for learners in the context of formal study. In this paper we outline the approach that we are taking at the University of Southampton in redesigning our teaching and learning infrastructure into an Institutional PLE. We do not see this term as an oxymoron. We define an Institutional PLE as an environment that provides a personalised interface to University data and services and at the same time exposes that data and services to a student’s personal tools. Our goal is to provide a digital platform that can cope with an evolving learning and teaching environment, as well as support the social and community aspects of the institution

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

Mashing up Visual Languages and Web Mash-ups

Research on web mashups and visual languages share an interest in human-centered computing. Both research communities are concerned with supporting programming by everyday, technically inexpert users. Visual programming environments have been a focus for both communities, and we believe that there is much to be gained by further discussion between these research communities. In this paper we explore some connections between web mashups and visual languages, and try to identify what each might be able to learn from the other. Our goal is to establish a framework for a dialog between the communities, and to promote the exchange of ideas and our respective understandings of humancentered computing.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Web-Wide Application Customization:The Case of Mashups

Application development of is commonly a balancing of interests, as the question of what should actually be implemented is answered differently by different stakeholders. This paper considers mashups, which are a way of allowing an application to grow beyond the capabilities of the original developers. First, it introduces several approaches to integrate mashups into the services, or Web pages, that they are based upon. These approaches commonly implement ways to determine which mashups are potentially relevant for display in a certain Web page context. One approach, ActiveTags, enables users to create reliable mashups based on tags, which effectively, leads to customized views of Web pages with tagged content. A scenario that demonstrates the potential benefits of this approach is presented. Second, a formalization of the approaches is presented which uses a relational analog to show their commonalities. The abstraction from implementation specifics opens the range of vision for fundamental capabilities and gives a clear picture of future work

Interoperability in eLearning Contexts. Interaction between LMS and PLE

The emergence of the Information and Communication Technologies and its application in several areas with varying success, implies the definition of a great number of software systems. Such systems are implemented in very different programming languages, using distinct types of resources, etc. Learning and Teaching is one of those application areas, where there are different learning platforms, repositories, tools, types of content, etc. These systems should interoperate among them to provide better and more useful learning services to students and teachers, and to do so web services and interoperability specifications are needed. This paper presents a service-based framework approach to facilitate the interoperability between Learning Management Systems and Personal Learning Environments, which has been implemented as a proof of concept and evaluated through several pilot experiences. From such experiences it is possible to see that interoperability among the personal and institutional environments it is possible and, in this way, learners can learn independently without accessing to the institutional site and teachers have information about learning that happens in informal activities

Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mashup Personal Learning Environments

Wild, F., Kalz, M., & Palmér, M. (Eds.) (2008). Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mashup Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE08). September, 17, 2008, Maastricht, The Netherlands: CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073. Available at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-388.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project (funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org]) and partly sponsored by the LTfLL project (funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme, priority ISCT. Contract 212578 [http://www.ltfll-project.org

LMS openness perception in educational and technological areas

The application of the Information and Communications Technology implies changes in the means that support learning. This leads to the emergence of lot of tools that aim to improve students’ learning. One of the most relevant tools are learning management systems. However these tools are on the one hand, mostly focused on the institution and the course and not too much on the learner, and on the other they are very monolithic and closed environments. It is necessary to facilitate the evolution and openness of these platforms in a way they can fulfil students’ needs, and to do this a service-based framework is proposed. It has been validated through experiences in educational and technological areas and they were compared with each other. This allow to check that opening learning platforms is possible and not only in technological context but in other areas.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version