Mobile Augmented Reality for Learning

Specht, M. (2012, April). Augmented Reality for Learning. Technical report for workshop at eLearning congress 2012. 's Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.Until recently, augmented reality (AR) applications were mostly available for powerful workstations and high power personal computers. The introduction of augmented reality applications to smartphones enabled new and mobile AR experiences for everyday users. Because of the increasing pervasion of smartphones, AR is set to become a ubiquitous commodity for leisure and mobile learning. With this ubiquitous availability, mobile AR allows to devise and design innovative learning scenarios in real world settings. This carries much promise for enhanced learning experiences in situated learning. In the present article, we will look at different dimensions of mobile AR and exemplify their potential for education. At the end, we want to report on a short experiment that we conducted, called Locatory. It exceeds the current state of art for common mobile AR applications by introducing interactive and collaborative elements as well as gaming mechanisms

Adaptive learning environment

Specht, M. (2012). Adaptive Learning Environment. Entry in TEL Thesaurus retrieved from http://www.tel-thesaurus.net/wiki/index.php/Adaptive_learning_environmentAdaptive Learning Environments are environments personalizing the instructional process on different instructional parameters as: sequence of tasks and task difficulty, time and type of feedback, pace of learning speed, reinforcement plan and others

Learning in a Technology Enhanced World

Specht, M. (2009). Learning in a Technology Enhanced World: Context in Ubiquitous Learning Support. Inaugural Address. September, 11, 2009, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands.In the following sections I will first outline what the current developments and trends in technology for the next five to ten years are and what their potential for enhancing learning is. OUN Second, I will describe how these developments and innovations already today influence the way we communicate, live, and learn. How the generation gap between digital natives and digital immigrants is leading to different perceptions of digital media and their use for learning and teaching. Third, I will outline some research on context and learning. I will describe examples of what I mean when I talk about context and I will give an overview of the usage of context in education and the key effects we can expect from contextualising technology enhancements for learning. What are the variables and design parameters we have to consider when we design contextualized learning in a technology enhanced world? In the fourth part I will introduce the model of ambient information channels that is a structuring metaphor for contextual learning technology. Last, I will highlight some key questions for a future research agenda in the field of contextual learning support and describe some research we are currently working on at the Centre of Learning Sciences and Technologies (CELSTEC) here at the Open University of the Netherlands

Enhancing learning with technology

Specht, M., & Klemke, R. (2013, 26-27 September). Enhancing Learning with Technology. In D. Milosevic (Ed.), Proceedings of the fourth international conference on eLearning (eLearning 2013) (pp. 37-45). Belgrade Metropolitan University, Belgrade, Serbia. http://econference.metropolitan.ac.rs/We are living in a technology-enhanced world. Also learning is affected by recent, upcoming, and foreseen technological changes. This paper gives a bird’s eye view to technological trends and reflects how learning can benefit from them

MACE: Deliverable 5.5 - Integration of Competence Metadata

The MACE infrastructure is a highly distributed system, currently being developed by several consortium partners at different locations and in principle open to everyone. The infrastructure is and will be developed with the interests of the following groups in mind: - the content providers, connecting their repository to MACE in order to make their contents more accessible, - the content consumers, in different situations who use MACE to get better results for their searches, and - the technical developers, creating new widgets and solutions on top of the existing infrastructure. For all these groups, good programming interfaces to MACE are an important concern. By defining clear, stable and easy-to-use application programming interfaces, MACE enables: - the content providers, to connect to MACE by implementing a Harvesting and a DirectLink interface, - the content consumers, to search for and acquire contents on the MACE portal, also by using provided compact, embeddable interface components (so–called ”widgets”) at other sites, - the technical developers, to create new solutions and widgets by supporting them with defined and documented web services, that allow access to the metadata collected

Adaptive e-learning methods and IMS Learning Design. An integrated approach

Please, cite this publication as: Burgos, D., & Specht, M. (2006). Adaptive e-learning methods and IMS Learning Design. In Kinshuk, R. Koper, P. Kommers, P. Kirschner, D. G. Sampson & W. Didderen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (pp. 1192-1193). July, 5-7, 2006, Kerkrade, The Netherlands.This position paper shows how several classical methods in adaptive learning can be addressed using IMS Learning Design. After a definition of four main questions to classify adaptive educational methods we describe a group of features in the Levels B and C of the specification that make possible diverse types of adaptation.ProLearn Projec

Ten-Competence:Life-Long Competence Development and Learning

Koper, R., & Specht, M. (2008). Ten-Competence: Life-Long Competence Development and Learning. In M-A. Cicilia (Ed.), Competencies in Organizational e-learning: concepts and tools (pp. 234-252). Hershey: IGI-Global.In most solutions for supporting learning today, one single approach is leading the selection, installation, and usage of information technology (IT)-based tools. Either content-based approaches lead to the creation of a content-based infrastructure with course management systems and content repositories, or a collaboration background leads to the usage of virtual classrooms and collaborative learning environments. The TEN-Competence project aims forward for integration of the different tools, perspectives, and learning environments in a common open source infrastructure based on today’s standards on the level of knowledge resources, learning activities, competence development programs, and learning networks. TEN-Competence will integrate tools in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and evaluate the approach in a variety of pilot applications for lifelong competence development.This work has been sponsored by the EU project TENCompetenc