Activating Boxmind: an evaluation of a web‐based video lecture with synchronized activities

The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of synchronous computer‐mediated communication activities in a video e‐lecture. Previous research has reported that learning is facilitated when communication activities are added to a video lecture. Twelve postgraduate students participated in the study and they viewed a video e‐lecture on the perspective‐taking theory of communication. The lecture consisted of a video image of the lecturer, an audio track, slides, the transcript and a number of communication activities. They were given a pre‐test a week before the lecture and a post‐test a week after. They were also asked to rate the helpfulness of various aspects of the lecture. Students’ post‐test scores were statistically significantly higher than their pre‐test scores. They found the audio track, transcript, slides and activities helpful. The most helpful aspects were the communication activities. The implications of these findings are discussed

Education of Clinical Disciplines in Pre and Post-Graduate Study Oriented on Increasing of Newest Infectious Diseases Knowledge

AbstractModern information and communication technologies have reached immense grow over past decades. This also caused an improvement in the teaching abilities and forced many teachers to reevaluate their traditional forms of education. The primary aim of our starting work is to increase an educational level in the area of infectology. To realize such activity we stated two technological requirements. The first was the ability to distribute live education events to the almost unlimited number of users. The second one presented no technical requirements for users in the sense of the need to have any special and/or commercial equipment. Therefore, we prepare special and scientific sessions that will be periodically organized as live streamed education activities

noteEd - A web-based lecture capture system

Electronic capture and playback of lectures has long been the aim of many academic projects. Synote is an application developed under MACFoB (Multimedia Annotation and Community Folksonomy Building) project to synchronise the playback of lecture materials. However, Synote provides no functionality to capture such multimedia. This project involves the creation of a system called noteEd, which will capture a range of multimedia from lectures and make them available to Synote. This report describes the evolution of the noteEd project throughout the design and implementation of the proposed system. The performance of the system was checked in a user acceptance test with the customer, which is discussed after screenshots of our solution. Finally, the project management is presented containing a final project evaluation

Media Culture 2020: collaborative teaching and blended learning using social media and cloud-based technologies

The Media Culture 2020 project was considered to be a great success by all the partners, academics and especially the students who took part. It is a true example of an intercultural, multidisciplinary, blended learning experience in higher education that achieved it goals of breaking down classroom walls and bridging geographical distance and cultural barriers. The students with different skills, coming from different countries and cultures, interacting with other enlarges the possibilities of creativity, collaboration and quality work. The blend of both synchronous and asynchronous teaching methods fostered an open, blended learning environment, one that extended the traditional boundaries of the classroom in time and space. The interactive and decentralized nature of digital tools enabled staff and students to communicate and strengthen social ties, alongside participation in the production of new knowledge and media content. For students and lecturers, the implementation of social media and cloud platforms offered an innovative solution to both teaching and learning in a collaborative manner. By leveraging the interactive and decentralised capabilities of a range of technologies in an educational context, this model of digital scholarship facilitates an open and dynamic working environment. Blended teaching methods allow for expansive collaboration, whereby information and knowledge can be accessed and disseminated across a number of networked devices

Mobile and web tools for participative learning

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaThe combination of different media formats has been a crucial aspect on teaching and learning processes. The recent developments of multimedia technologies over the Internet and using mobile devices can improve the communication between professors and students, and allow students to study anywhere and anytime, allowing each student progress at its own pace. The usage of these new platforms and the increase of multimedia sharing applied to educational environments allow a more participative learning, and make the study of interfaces a relevant aspect of existing multimedia learning systems. The work done in this dissertation explores interfaces and tools for participative learning,using multimedia educational systems over Internet broadband and mobile devices. In this work, aWeb-based learning system was developed, which enables to store, transmit, search and share the contents of courses captured in video and its extension to support Tablet PCs. The Web system, developed as part of the VideoStore project, explores video interfaces and video annotations, which encourage the participative work. The usage of Tablet PCs, through the mEmLearn project, has the aim to encourage the participative work, allowing the students to augment the course materials and to share them with other students or instructors

Decentralization of multimedia content in a heterogeneous environment

The aim of this study has been the decentralization of multimedia content in a heterogeneous environment. The environment consisted of the research networks connecting the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Finnish University and Research Network. The European Organization for Nuclear Research produces multimedia content which can be used as studying material all over the world. The Web University pilot in the European Organization for Nuclear Research has been developing a multimedia content delivery service for years. Delivering the multimedia content requires plenty of capacity from the network infrastructure. Different content of the material can have different demands for the network. In a heterogeneous environment, like the Internet, fulfilling all the demands can be a problem. Several methods exist to improve the situation. Decentralization of the content is one of the most popular solutions. Mirroring and caching are the main methods for decentralization. Recently developed content delivery networks are using both of these techniques to satisfy the demands of the content. The practical application consisted of measurements of the network connection between the multimedia server in the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Finnish University and Research Network, planning and building a decentralization system for the multimedia content. After the measurements, it became clear that there is n o need for decentralization of the multimedia content for users that are able to utilise the Finnish University and Research Network. There could be double today's usage, and still there would be no problems with the capacity. However, the European Organization for Nuclear Research routes all traffic that comes from outside research networks through a gateway in the USA. This affects every connection that is made from Finland: users are not able to use the international connection offered by the Finnish University and Research Network. For these users I designed and built a simple, modular and portable decentralization system

A Web-based Information Space for University Education

This paper describes a research framework focusing on conceptual, marketing-oriented aspects of Web-based Mass Information Systems (WMIS) analysis and design with a special emphasis on the integration of adaptive system components for supporting negotiations, market segmentation, targeted direct marketing initiatives, and transaction processing. Methods to gather and analyze customer preferences and expectations as well as to visualize the actual behavior of WMIS users are identified in order to maximize the customer delivered value in global electronic markets

Designing postgraduate pedagogies: connecting internal and external leaders

Learning is the new resource driving the knowledge economy. Now everyone is expected to make themselves available to learn : un-learn : re-learn. Much has been written about new modes of learning, as well the new technologies that promise to deliver information 24/7. Paradoxically, however, in the field of educational sociology there has been little systematic theorisation of the pedagogies designed to facilitate learning in the knowledge economy. Nor have there been systematic efforts to connect macro economic, technological and social changes to state official policies and institutional pedagogic practices. The Bernsteinian theoretical corpus models the power and control relations generating pedagogic discourses, practices and identities from the macro level of policy formation to the micro level of pedagogic interactions. It is therefore useful in examining the new pedagogies designed to generate the learning resources of the knowledge economy. In this paper, we draw on and extend Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse and identities to analyse the design and implementation of a postgraduate unit in educational research. This unit aimed to be: rigorous in disciplinary knowledge, technologically innovative, cost efficient; and responsive to diverse student needs and market contingencies