Analysis of Digital Media: Supporting University-Wide Online Learning via Moodle

This report aims to provide an overview of a project which explores teaching and learning within a blended mode of study. Specifically, it looks to analyse the production of digital media and online social networking with a view to enhancing the learning experience. It was the overall aim of the project to contribute to the University’s Learning and Teaching Strategy by developing media content; exploring the production process, analyse digital participation and explore the challenges and opportunities locally within schools. The project has placed emphasis on the production principles which enhance our online courses whilst providing a consistent quality of experience – recognising that our students often access course material produced by staff from across schools and colleges

Programming assignments automatic grading: review of tools and implementations

Automatic grading of programming assignments is an important topic in academic research. It aims at improving the level of feedback given to students and optimizing the professor time. Several researches have reported the development of software tools to support this process. Then, it is helpfulto get a quickly and good sight about their key features. This paper reviews an ample set of tools forautomatic grading of programming assignments. They are divided in those most important mature tools, which have remarkable features; and those built recently, with new features. The review includes the definition and description of key features e.g. supported languages, used technology, infrastructure, etc. The two kinds of tools allow making a temporal comparative analysis. This analysis infrastructure, etc. The two kinds of tools allow making a temporal comparative analysis. This analysis shows good improvements in this research field, these include security, more language support, plagiarism detection, etc. On the other hand, the lack of a grading model for assignments is identified as an important gap in the reviewed tools. Thus, a characterization of evaluation metrics to grade programming assignments is provided as first step to get a model. Finally new paths in this research field are proposed

A web-oriented framework for the development and deployment of academic facing administrative tools and services

The demand for higher education has increased dramatically in the last decade. At the same time, institutions have faced continual pressure to reduce costs and increase quality of education, while delivering that education to greater numbers of students. The introduction of software systems such as virtual learning environments, online learning resources and centralised student record systems has become routine in attempts to address these demands. However, these approaches suffer from a variety of limitations: They do not take all stakeholders’ needs into account. They do not seek to reduce administrative overheads in academic processes. They do not reflect institution-specific academic policies. They do not integrate readily with other information systems. They are not capable of adequately modelling the complex authorisation roles and organisational structure of a real institution. They are not well suited to rapidly changing policies and requirements. Their implementation is not informed by sound software engineering practises or data architecture design. Crucially, as a consequence of these drawbacks such systems can increase administrative workload for academic staff. This thesis describes the research, development and deployment of a system which seeks to address these limitations, the Module Management System (MMS). MMS is a collaborative web application targeted at streamlining and minimising administrative tasks. MMS encapsulates a number of user-facing tools for tasks including coursework submission and marking, tutorial attendance tracking, exam mark recording and final grade calculation. These tools are supported by a framework which acts as a form of “university operating system”. This framework provides a number of different services including an institution abstraction layer, role-based views and privileges, security policy support integration with external systems

Learning from the learners' experience: e-Learning@greenwich post-conference reflections

This publication comprises papers from presenters who, having made a conference presentation, were invited to author an academic paper about their work

Implementing a resource list management system in an academic library

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the key components of the introduction of a new resource list management system (RLMS) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) using the Aspire application from Talis Education. It explains the key service goals; the implementation milestones; the main technical challenges which needed to be addressed; and the dynamic relationship between the rollout of the RLMS and existing selection, acquisition and resource delivery processes

iMOOC on climate change: evaluation of a massive open online learning pilot experience

MOOCs are a recent phenomenon, although given its impact, have been subject to a large debate. Several questions have been raised by researchers and educators alike as regarding its sustainability both economical and as an efficient mode of education provision. In this paper we contribute to this discussion by presenting a case study, a Portuguese MOOC about lived experiences in climate change which piloted the iMOOC pedagogical model developed at Universidade Aberta. The iMOOC is an hybrid model which incorporates elements from existing MOOCs but adds other features drawn from UAb's experience with online learning and aim at better integrate in the larger context of the institutional pedagogical culture. The iMOOC implied also an integration of platforms - Moodle and Elgg. The course had more than one thousand participants, and it was the largest MOOC course on Portuguese language delivered so far. We discuss the effort required to design and deliver the course, the technological solution developed, and the results obtained. We registered a moderate effort to create and run the course, ensured by internal staff from the University. The technological solution was a success, an integrated architecture combining well-established, well-tested open software. The completion rate was 3.3%, but the high success of this innovative learning experience is demonstrated by the active involvement of participants, almost 50% of the ones that followed the course until the end, and the satisfaction survey results, with 90% of approval. Lessons learned from this experience and future research on the field are also discussed

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Load balancing clustering on moodle LMS to overcome performance issue of e-learning system

In dealing with the rapid growth of digitalization, the e-learning system has become a mandatory component of any Higher Education (HE) to serve academic processes requests. Along with the increasing number of users, the need for service availability and capabilities of eLearning are increasing day by day. The organization should always look for strategies to keep the eLearning always able to meet these demands. This report presents the implementation of Load Balancing Clustering (LBC) mechanism applied to Moodle LMS in an HE Institution to deal with the poor performance issues. By utilizing existing tools such as HAProxy and keepalived, the implemented LBC configuration delivers a qualified e-learning system performance. Both qualitative and quantitative parameters convince better performance than before. In four months of the operation there is no user complaint received. Meanwhile, in the current semester has been running for two months, the up-time is 99.8 % of 52.685 minutes operational time