Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation

Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation

Modeling Digital Twin Data and Architecture: A Building Guide with FIWARE as Enabling Technology

The use of Digital Twins in the industry has become a growing trend in recent years, allowing to improve the lifecycle of any process by taking advantage of the relationship between the physical and the virtual world. Existing literature formulates several challenges for building Digital Twins, as well as some proposals for overcoming them. However, in the vast majority of the cases, the architectures and technologies presented are strongly bounded to the domain where the Digital Twins are applied. This article proposes the FIWARE Ecosystem, combining its catalog of components and its Smart Data Models, as a solution for the development of any Digital Twin. We also provide a use case to showcase how to use FIWARE for building Digital Twins through a complete example of a Parking Digital Twin. We conclude that the FIWARE Ecosystem constitutes a real reference option for developing DTs in any domain.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Computing Education Research Compiled: Keyword Trends, Building Blocks, Creators, and Dissemination

The need for organized computing education efforts dates back to the 1950s. Since then, computing education research (CER) has evolved and matured from its early initiatives and separation from mathematics education into a respectable research specialization of its own. In recent years, a number of meta-research papers, reviews, and scientometric studies have built overviews of CER from various perspectives. This paper continues that approach by offering new perspectives on the past and present state of CER: analyses of influential papers throughout the years, of the theoretical backgrounds of CER, of the institutions and authors who create CER, and finally of the top publication venues and their citation practices. The results reveal influential contributions from early curriculum guidelines to rigorous empirical research of today, the prominence of computer programming as a topic of research, evolving patterns of learning-theory usage, the dominance of high-income countries and a cluster of 52 elite institutions, and issues regarding citation practices within the central venues of dissemination.</p

From a National Meeting to an International Conference: A Scientometric Case Study of a Finnish Computing Education Conference

Computerisation and digitalisation are shaping the world in fundamental and unpredictable ways, which highlights the importance of computing education research (CER). As part of understanding the roots of CER, it is crucial to investigate the evolution of CER as a research discipline. In this paper we present a case study of a Finnish CER conference called Koli Calling, which was launched in 2001, and which has become a central publication venue of CER. We use data from 2001 to 2020, and investigate the evolution of Koli Calling’s scholarly communities and zoom in on it’s publication habits and internalisation process. We explore the narrative of the development and scholarly agenda behind changes in the conference submission categories from the perspective of some of the conference chairs over the years. We then take a qualitative perspective, analysing the conference publications based on a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. The outcomes include classification of important research clusters of authors in the community of conference contributors. Interestingly, we find traces of important events in the historical development of CER. In particular, we find clusters emerging from specific research capacity building initiatives and we can trace how these connect research spanning the world CER community from Finland to Sweden and then further to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. This paper makes a strategic contribution to the evolution of CER as a research discipline, from the perspective of one central event and publication venue, providing a broad perspective on the role of the conference in connecting research clusters and establishing an international research community. This work contributes insights to researchers in one specific CER community and how they shape the future of computing education.</p

Cooperación y resolución de problemas a través de escape rooms educativas

27 páginas. 2 versiones. Adobe Acrobat (pdf) / PowerPoint (pptx). Enlace a la grabación en: https://vimeo.com/715558666. Webinars sobre e-learning, innovación y competencias digitales. Plan de formación y apoyo al profesorado 2022-23. Área de Innovación (@uniainnova)/ Vicerrectorado de Innovación Docente y Digitalización Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.En este seminario virtual, enmarcado en el Plan de Formación de Profesorado de la UNIA de 2022-23, Sonsoles López Pernas, profesora de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid y experta en escape room y TICs aplicadas a la educación, compartió algunas claves para emplear este tipo de herramientas para promover la cooperación y resolución de problemas en el aula. CONTENIDO: 1.- Introducción a las "escape rooms" educativas; 2.- Diseño de las "escape rooms" educativas; 3.- Demo con la plataforma Escapp. DESCRIPCIONES. Las "escape rooms" son juegos en equipo en los que los jugadores descubren pistas y resuelven retos en un determinado escenario para lograr un objetivo específico (generalmente escapar de una sala) en un tiempo limitado. Las "escape rooms" educativas son escape rooms diseñadas específicamente con fines educativos, las cuales requieren a los estudiantes dominar conocimientos y habilidades específicas a fin de resolver los retos y superar con éxito la actividad

Desarrollo de un motor de creación de actividades autoevaluables con soporte del estándar de e-learning SCORM para una aplicación web de autoría de contenidos

En los últimos años ha comenzado a ganar popularidad un nuevo modelo de docencia basado en el aprendizaje electrónico, más conocido como e-Learning. Prueba de ello es la gran variedad de herramientas existentes para la creación y edición de contenido para este modelo docente. Este Trabajo Fin de Máster consiste en extender una herramienta de código libre de creación de contenidos web, llamada Ediphy, con el fin de incluir un motor de creación de actividades autoevaluables. El resultado es una aplicación de autoría de recursos educativos compatibles con SCORM, el estándar más empleado en la industria de e-Learning. De esta forma, todos los recursos creados con la herramienta podrán ser integrados en cualquier sistema de gestión de aprendizaje (LMS, por sus siglas en inglés) que soporte este estándar, como por ejemplo Moodle. Con el objetivo de validar el motor de ejercicios desarrollado en este trabajo, se han implementado una serie de plugins de creación de ejercicios a modo de prueba de concepto. Adicionalmente, parte del trabajo consiste en proporcionar una herramienta documentada para facilitar y promover el desarrollo futuro de plugins, especialmente en el ámbito de creación de actividades autoevaluables más complejas. Esta herramienta permitirá a otros alumnos de la ETSIT realizar su Trabajo Fin de Titulación desarrollando plugins para ampliar las funcionalidades de Ediphy

Contribution to the understanding, creation and conduction of technology-enhanced educational escape rooms

In addition to being a well-liked form of recreation, escape rooms have drawn the attention of educators due to their ability to foster teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, and communication in a way that is engaging for students. As a consequence, educational escape rooms are emerging as a new type of learning activity under the promise of enhancing students’ learning through highly engaging experiences. These activities, which combine some of the key principles of game design with sound learning approaches, consist of escape rooms that require students to master field-specific knowledge and skills in order to solve their puzzles and succeed in the activity. Although several studies have reported on the use of educational escape rooms in a wide range of disciplines, prior research falls short of addressing whether these novel activities can be effective for learning computer science topics. This thesis examines the use of several educational escape rooms for teaching computer science topics in different scenarios, including computer science courses covering programming and software engineering fundamentals as well as face-to-face and remote settings. This thesis also encompasses the design, implementation and evaluation of Escapp, a software platform for aiding educators in the cumbersome task of conducting engaging and effective face-to-face and remote educational escape rooms, contributing this way to overcome some of the main barriers hampering the adoption of educational escape rooms. The results reported in this thesis contribute to the understanding of educational escape rooms by showing that these activities can be engaging and effective when used for teaching computer science topics, both when they are conducted face-to-face as well as when they are conducted remotely. In this regard, the results also suggest that, although remote educational escape rooms can be as engaging as their face-to-face counterparts, their learning e_ectiveness is somewhat lower. Finally, this thesis provides evidence that the proposed Escapp platform is a well-suited solution for conducting e_ective face-to-face and remote educational escape rooms. ----------RESUMEN---------- Además de ser una forma de ocio popular, las escape rooms han llamado la atención de los educadores por su capacidad para fomentar el trabajo en equipo, el liderazgo, el pensamiento creativo y la comunicación de una forma atractiva para los estudiantes. Como consecuencia, las escape rooms educativas han surgido como un nuevo tipo de actividad formativa bajo la promesa de mejorar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes a través de experiencias altamente atractivas. Estas actividades, que combinan algunos de los principios clave del diseño de juegos con sólidas teorías de aprendizaje, consisten en escape rooms que requieren que los estudiantes dominen conocimientos y habilidades de un campo específico para resolver sus retos y tener éxito en la actividad. Aunque varios trabajos han estudiado el uso de escape rooms educativas en una amplia gama de disciplinas, las investigaciones anteriores no han determinado si estas novedosas actividades formativas pueden ser efectivas para el aprendizaje de temas relacionados con la informática. Esta tesis examina el uso de varias escape rooms educativas para la enseñanza de temas relacionados con la informática en diferentes escenarios, incluyendo asignaturas de programación y de fundamentos de la ingeniería de software, así como entornos presenciales y remotos. Esta tesis también abarca el diseño, implementación y evaluación de Escapp, una plataforma de software que tiene como objetivo ayudar a los profesores en la árdua tarea de llevar a cabo escape rooms atractivas y efectivas tanto presenciales como remotas, contribuyendo así a superar algunas de las principales barreras que dificultan la adopción de estas actividades formativas. Los resultados presentados en esta tesis contribuyen a la comprensión de las escape rooms educativas al mostrar que estas actividades pueden ser atractivas y efectivas cuando se utilizan para la enseñanza de temas de informática, tanto cuando se llevan a cabo de forma presencial como cuando se realizan de forma remota. A este respecto, los resultados también sugieren que, aunque las escape rooms educativas realizadas a distancia pueden ser tan atractivas como sus homólogas presenciales, su efectividad instruccional es algo menor. Por último, esta tesis aporta evidencia de que la plataforma Escapp propuesta es una solución adecuada para llevar a cabo escape rooms educativas efectivas tanto en entornos de enseñanza presenciales como remotos

Desarrollo de un motor de creación de actividades autoevaluables con soporte del estándar de e-learning SCORM para una aplicación web de autoría de contenidos

En los últimos años ha comenzado a ganar popularidad un nuevo modelo de docencia basado en el aprendizaje electrónico, más conocido como e-Learning. Prueba de ello es la gran variedad de herramientas existentes para la creación y edición de contenido para este modelo docente. Este Trabajo Fin de Máster consiste en extender una herramienta de código libre de creación de contenidos web, llamada Ediphy, con el fin de incluir un motor de creación de actividades autoevaluables. El resultado es una aplicación de autoría de recursos educativos compatibles con SCORM, el estándar más empleado en la industria de e-Learning. De esta forma, todos los recursos creados con la herramienta podrán ser integrados en cualquier sistema de gestión de aprendizaje (LMS, por sus siglas en inglés) que soporte este estándar, como por ejemplo Moodle. Con el objetivo de validar el motor de ejercicios desarrollado en este trabajo, se han implementado una serie de plugins de creación de ejercicios a modo de prueba de concepto. Adicionalmente, parte del trabajo consiste en proporcionar una herramienta documentada para facilitar y promover el desarrollo futuro de plugins, especialmente en el ámbito de creación de actividades autoevaluables más complejas. Esta herramienta permitirá a otros alumnos de la ETSIT realizar su Trabajo Fin de Titulación desarrollando plugins para ampliar las funcionalidades de Ediphy

Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation