Virtual pedagogical model: development scenarios

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Personalised Learning: Educational, Technological and Standardisation Perspective

The e-Learning paradigm shift capitalises on two main aspect: the elimination of the barriers of time and distance, and the personalisation of the learners’ experience. The current trend in education and training emphasises on identifying methods and tools for delivering just-in-time, on-demand knowledge experiences tailored individual learners, taking into consideration their differences in skills level, perspectives, culture and other educational contexts. This paper reviews the shift towards personalised learning, from an educational, technological and standardisation perspective.The e-Learning paradigm shift capitalises on two main aspect: the elimination of the barriers of time and distance, and the personalisation of the learners’ experience. The current trend in education and training emphasises on identifying methods and tools for delivering just-in-time, on-demand knowledge experiences tailored individual learners, taking into consideration their differences in skills level, perspectives, culture and other educational contexts. This paper reviews the shift towards personalised learning, from an educational, technological and standardisation perspective

Personalised Learning: Educational, Technological and Standardisation Perspective

The e-Learning paradigm shift capitalises on two main aspect: the elimination of the barriers of time and distance, and the personalisation of the learners’ experience. The current trend in education and training emphasises on identifying methods and tools for delivering just-in-time, on-demand knowledge experiences tailored individual learners, taking into consideration their differences in skills level, perspectives, culture and other educational contexts. This paper reviews the shift towards personalised learning, from an educational, technological and standardisation perspective.The e-Learning paradigm shift capitalises on two main aspect: the elimination of the barriers of time and distance, and the personalisation of the learners’ experience. The current trend in education and training emphasises on identifying methods and tools for delivering just-in-time, on-demand knowledge experiences tailored individual learners, taking into consideration their differences in skills level, perspectives, culture and other educational contexts. This paper reviews the shift towards personalised learning, from an educational, technological and standardisation perspective

The learning preferences of current generational groups

Today's computer literate students think in ways that are incompatible with current educational goals and practices. If one of the aims of learning is to provide lifelong benefits for all, then a substantial rethink on the learning needs of students and the goals of education has become paramount. This emergent imperative presents an unfamiliar challenge for educational institutions to examine their past assumptions and to facilitate success in meeting the needs of current and future generations of learners. The type of change proposed in this paper requires a comprehensive rethink not only to devise innovative alternatives to accepted methods and practices, but also to develop theories and pedagogies more attuned to the preferences, values, and attitudes of the technology and information proficient generations. The eventual outcome will be a dramatic transformation in the essential nature and purpose of the online learning environment. It is not just bridging the transition from 'traditional' to 'digitised' learning that is fraught with difficulties. Any attempt to accommodate the skills and learning needs of the current generation computer "literate" will compel education designers to think entirely "outside the box" and consider solutions previously thought impossible. Success in meeting the needs of learners will require radically new teaching methods and strategies. Such strategies may include for example: content interactive features that offer "intelligent" meaningful responses; the ability to annotate and record ideas as required; user generated (manually) and automatically (dynamically generated hyperlinks to alternative materials relative to the current context; and automated display of customised content such as interactive assessments and constructive feedback tailored to students' immediate learning needs. For these innovations to be truly effective, libraries must also be viewed as an essential component of a complex network of information resources. Thus, it is argued that the nature of the learning environment must change dramatically, in particular in relation to the choice of flexible delivery techniques that are supported by distributed computing networks, advanced educational software, and universal access to quality learning resources regardless of location and time

Motivation Modelling and Computation for Personalised Learning of People with Dyslexia

The increasing development of e-learning systems in recent decades has benefited ubiquitous computing and education by providing freedom of choice to satisfy various needs and preferences about learning places and paces. Automatic recognition of learners’ states is necessary for personalised services or intervention to be provided in e-learning environments. In current literature, assessment of learners’ motivation for personalised learning based on the motivational states is lacking. An effective learning environment needs to address learners’ motivational needs, particularly, for those with dyslexia. Dyslexia or other learning difficulties can cause young people not to engage fully with the education system or to drop out due to complex reasons: in addition to the learning difficulties related to reading, writing or spelling, psychological difficulties are more likely to be ignored such as lower academic self-worth and lack of learning motivation caused by the unavoidable learning difficulties. Associated with both cognitive processes and emotional states, motivation is a multi-facet concept that consequences in the continued intention to use an e-learning system and thus a better chance of learning effectiveness and success. It consists of factors from intrinsic motivation driven by learners’ inner feeling of interest or challenges and those from extrinsic motivation associated with external reward or compliments. These factors represent learners’ various motivational needs; thus, understanding this requires a multidisciplinary approach. Combining different perspectives of knowledge on psychological theories and technology acceptance models with the empirical findings from a qualitative study with dyslexic students conducted in the present research project, motivation modelling for people with dyslexia using a hybrid approach is the main focus of this thesis. Specifically, in addition to the contribution to the qualitative conceptual motivation model and ontology-based computational model that formally expresses the motivational factors affecting users’ continued intention to use e-learning systems, this thesis also conceives a quantitative approach to motivation modelling. A multi-item motivation questionnaire is designed and employed in a quantitative study with dyslexic students, and structural equation modelling techniques are used to quantify the influences of the motivational factors on continued use intention and their interrelationships in the model. In addition to the traditional approach to motivation computation that relies on learners’ self-reported data, this thesis also employs dynamic sensor data and develops classification models using logistic regression for real-time assessment of motivational states. The rule-based reasoning mechanism for personalising motivational strategies and a framework of motivationally personalised e-learning systems are introduced to apply the research findings to e-learning systems in real-world scenarios. The motivation model, sensor-based computation and rule-based personalisation have been applied to a practical scenario with an essential part incorporated in the prototype of a gaze-based learning application that can output personalised motivational strategies during the learning process according to the real-time assessment of learners’ motivational states based on both the eye-tracking data in addition to users’ self-reported data. Evaluation results have indicated the advantage of the application implemented compared to the traditional one without incorporating the present research findings for monitoring learners’ motivation states with gaze data and generating personalised feedback. In summary, the present research project has: 1) developed a conceptual motivation model for students with dyslexia defining the motivational factors that influence their continued intention to use e-learning systems based on both a qualitative empirical study and prior research and theories; 2) developed an ontology-based motivation model in which user profiles, factors in the motivation model and personalisation options are structured as a hierarchy of classes; 3) designed a multi-item questionnaire, conducted a quantitative empirical study, used structural equation modelling to further explore and confirm the quantified impacts of motivational factors on continued use intention and the quantified relationships between the factors; 4) conducted an experiment to exploit sensors for motivation computation, and developed classification models for real-time assessment of the motivational states pertaining to each factor in the motivation model based on empirical sensor data including eye gaze data and EEG data; 5) proposed a sensor-based motivation assessment system architecture with emphasis on the use of ontologies for a computational representation of the sensor features used for motivation assessment in addition to the representation of the motivation model, and described the semantic rule-based personalisation of motivational strategies; 6) proposed a framework of motivationally personalised e-learning systems based on the present research, with the prototype of a gaze-based learning application designed, implemented and evaluated to guide future work

The integration of mobile learning app-based quiz-games in higher education teaching of anatomical sciences

Background: Mobile learning (mLearning) and gamification are two potential pedagogical tools that are continuously evolving in Higher Education. Their efficiency as learning tools is not fully understood and their use by staff is sporadic and sometimes viewed poorly compared to traditional methods. Aim: To determine a framework of best practice for the integration of mLearning app based quiz-games into the Higher Education (HE) teaching of anatomical sciences. This thesis presents three studies, which aim to 1) evaluate mLearning quiz-games as a revision tool for an anatomy online examination 2) and 3) investigate the effect of pre-seminar mLearning quiz gameplay on knowledge acquisition, retention and engagement in anatomy. Method: The data collection was performed over a two year period in a level 4 anatomy module for Sport and Exercise Science students. All three studies employed an experimental mixed methods approach within an action research framework to allow the development of the project in a naturalistic way. Study One was completed over two cohorts, 2014-15 (n=125) and 2015-16 (n=121). The module has four assessment points, A1, A2, A3, A4 where A1-3 are online assessments with a mixture of Multiple Choice Questions, labelling and matching questions and A4 is a viva voce. Students did A1, A2 and A4 as normal but at A3 they were offered a choice to revise as normal, the control group (n= 164) or to play mLearning games (n=87) for 15 minutes prior to the assessment on a tablet or smartphone device. All students completed a modified Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) post-assessment and then for triangulation of data online focus groups were completed (n=84) as well as extended semi-structured interviews (n=9). Study Two was completed in 2015-16 using the same module as Study One. Over two consecutive weeks students were videoed in a two hour seminar session where in week one they did 15 minutes of no formal class preparation (n=87) and in week two they did 15 minutes of mLearning games (n=87). Students did a plenary and recap class Socrative quiz every week where the plenary scores indicate knowledge acquisition and the difference between the plenary and recap scores of subsequent weeks indicates knowledge retention. Observational behavioural engagement analysis was completed using an adapted coding system and students completed the National Survey of Student Engagement following each seminar. Study Three was completed on the same cohort in semester two using a randomised repeated measures design for the knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention scores over three weeks with three 15 minute interventions; Games, Control and Games plus question generation before class. Results: Study One found that the Games group performed better at A3 with no difference at A2 or A1 (p<0.0.01) but no differences were found in the SPQ surface and deep learning motives and strategies. Students revealed reasons for using mLearning quiz-games were primarily the fun, visual stimulation, instant feedback and accessibility. Study Two found that playing quiz-games prior to class increased on-task behaviours and peer interaction and improved knowledge acquisition and retention scores (p<0.01). Study Three agreed but found no difference in the Games-plus questions group compared to the control or games groups. Conclusions: The studies reveal the positive effect that mLearning quiz-games can have on achievement and engagement both in class and as a revision tool prior to assessment. The results of all three studies have been used to inform the proposed Mobigames framework for the integration of mLearning quiz-games in HE teaching. The framework has four key aspects: Information, Facilitation, Learning and Timing

Assessing text and web accessibility for people with autism spectrum disorder

A thesis submitted in partial ful lment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyPeople with Autism Spectrum Disorder experience di culties with reading comprehension and information processing, which a ect their school performance, employability and social inclusion. The main goal of this work is to investigate new ways to evaluate and improve text and web accessibility for adults with autism. The rst stage of this research involved using eye-tracking technology and comprehension testing to collect data from a group of participants with autism and a control group of participants without autism. This series of studies resulted in the development of the ASD corpus, which is the rst multimodal corpus of text and gaze data obtained from participants with and without autism. We modelled text complexity and sentence complexity using sets of features matched to the reading di culties people with autism experience. For document-level classi cation we trained a readability classi er on a generic corpus with known readability levels (easy, medium and di cult) and then used the ASD corpus to evaluate with unseen user-assessed data. For sentencelevel classi cation, we used for the rst time gaze data and comprehension testing to de ne a gold standard of easy and di cult sentences, which we then used as training and evaluation sets for sentence-level classi cation. The ii results showed that both classi ers outperformed other measures of complexity and were more accurate predictors of the comprehension of people with autism. We conducted a series of experiments evaluating easy-to-read documents for people with cognitive disabilities. Easy-to-read documents are written in an accessible way, following speci c writing guidelines and containing both text and images. We focused mainly on the image component of these documents, a topic which has been signi cantly under-studied compared to the text component; we were also motivated by the fact that people with autism are very strong visual thinkers and that therefore image insertion could be a way to use their strengths in visual thinking to compensate for their di culties in reading. We investigated the e ects images in text have on attention, comprehension, memorisation and user preferences in people with autism (all of these phenomena were investigated both objectively and subjectively). The results of these experiments were synthesised in a set of guidelines for improving text accessibility for people with autism. Finally, we evaluated the accessibility of web pages with di erent levels of visual complexity. We provide evidence of existing barriers to nding relevant information on web pages that people with autism face and we explore their subjective experiences with searching the web through survey questions

Video Augmentation in Education: in-context support for learners through prerequisite graphs

The field of education is experiencing a massive digitisation process that has been ongoing for the past decade. The role played by distance learning and Video-Based Learning, which is even more reinforced by the pandemic crisis, has become an established reality. However, the typical features of video consumption, such as sequential viewing and viewing time proportional to duration, often lead to sub-optimal conditions for the use of video lessons in the process of acquisition, retrieval and consolidation of learning contents. Video augmentation can prove to be an effective support to learners, allowing a more flexible exploration of contents, a better understanding of concepts and relationships between concepts and an optimization of time required for video consumption at different stages of the learning process. This thesis focuses therefore on the study of methods for: 1) enhancing video capabilities through video augmentation features; 2) extracting concept and relationships from video materials; 3) developing intelligent user interfaces based on the knowledge extracted. The main research goal is to understand to what extent video augmentation can improve the learning experience. This research goal inspired the design of EDURELL Framework, within which two applications were developed to enable the testing of augmented methods and their provision. The novelty of this work lies in using the knowledge within the video, without exploiting external materials, to exploit its educational potential. The enhancement of the user interface takes place through various support features among which in particular a map that progressively highlights the prerequisite relationships between the concepts as they are explained, i.e., following the advancement of the video. The proposed approach has been designed following a user-centered iterative approach and the results in terms of effect and impact on video comprehension and learning experience make a contribution to the research in this field

Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres

DEVELOPMENT OF A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING INTELLIGENT-PRODUCT STRUCTURES INTO A FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

Industrial Engineerin