GLUE!: an architecture for the integration of external tools in virtual learning environments

La integración de herramientas externas en VLE (Virtual Learning Environments - Entornos deAprendizaje Virtual) tiene como objetivo enriquecer las actividades de aprendizaje que los profesionales de la educación pueden diseñar y poner en marcha. Tradicionalmente, las herramientas externas han sido integradas mediante desarrollos ad hoc, siendo esta solución muy poco eficiente a medida que aumentaba el número de VLE y herramientas utilizados por estos profesionales. Además, aquellas aproximaciones genéricas que abordan la integración de múltiples herramientas en múltiples VLE no han conseguido obtener una amplia adopción, principalmente debido al alto esfuerzo de desarrollo necesario para integrar nuevas herramientas y VLE, y a las restricciones impuestas sobre los proveedores. Algunos trabajos recientes han intentado superar estas dos limitaciones proponiendo una integración ligera de herramientas. Sin embargo, estos trabajos no facilitan la instanciación y puesta en marcha de situaciones de aprendizaje colaborativo, lo que impide de forma significativa que se puedan emplear las propiedades colaborativas específicas que proporcionan los VLE para la gestión de usuarios y grupos. Esta tesis propone una arquitectura middleware de integración denominada GLUE! (Group Learning Uniform Environment - Entorno Uniforme de Aprendizaje en Grupo) que permite la integración ligera de múltiples herramientas externas existentes en múltiples VLE existentes, superando estas limitaciones. GLUE! fomenta esta integración imponiendo pocas restricciones sobre los proveedores de VLE y herramientas, así como demandando un esfuerzo asumible por parte de los desarrolladores. Además, GLUE! facilita la instanciación y puesta en marcha de situaciones de aprendizaje colaborativo desde los VLE, aprovechando las propiedades específicas de éstos para la gestión de usuarios y grupos. Por medio de GLUE!, los profesionales de la educación pueden utilizar herramientas externas como si fueran herramientas nativas de los VLE, y además sin tener que renunciar a los VLE a los que están acostumbrados. GLUE! ha sido evaluado con la ayuda de tres situaciones de aprendizaje colaborativo auténticas, las cuales fueron diseñadas para cubrir las necesidades pedagógicas de tres cursos de educación superior. Estas tres situaciones se utilizaron en cuatro experimentos diferentes con educadores y estudiantes reales. Los resultados de esta evaluación mostraron que GLUE! permite la instanciación y puesta en marcha de situaciones de aprendizaje colaborativo que requieran la integración de herramientas externas, reduce la carga asociada a la instanciación de actividades colaborativas complejas, y facilita a los estudiantes la realización de estas actividades en colaboración. Curiosamente, el esfuerzo de desarrollo necesario por el software de integración fue similar al de otras aproximaciones de integración genéricas que ofrecen un menor grado de funcionalidad.Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería Telemática2012-11-2

What can innovation in engineering education do for you as a student and what can you do as a student for Innovation in engineering education?

Innovation in education in general and innovation in engineering education in particular must be supported by properly collected and analyzed data to guide decisionmaking processes. Today it is possible to collect data from many more stakeholders (not just students), and also to collect much more data from each stakeholder. Nevertheless, low-level data collected by monitoring the interactions of the multiple stakeholders with learning platforms and other computing systems must be transformed into meaningful high-level indicators and visualizations that guide decision-making processes. The aim of this paper is to discuss some notable trends in data-driven innovation in engineering education, including 1) improvement of educational content; 2) improvement of learners’ social interactions; 3) improvement of learners’ self-regulated learning skills; and 4) prediction of learners’ behavior. However, there are also significant risks associated with data collection and processing, such as privacy, transparency, biases, misinterpretations, etc., which must also be taken into account, and require creating specialized units and training the personnel in data management.La innovación en la educación, en general, y la innovación en la educación de ingeniería, en particular, deben estar respaldadas por datos, debidamente recopilados y analizados para guiar los procesos de toma de decisiones. Hoy es posible recopilar datos de muchos grupos de interés (no solo estudiantes), y también recopilar muchos más datos de cada interesado. Sin embargo, los datos de bajo nivel recopilados al monitorear las interacciones de los múltiples interesados con las plataformas de aprendizaje y otros sistemas informáticos deben transformarse en indicadores y visualizaciones de alto nivel que guíen los procesos de toma de decisiones. El objetivo de este documento es discutir algunas tendencias notables en la innovación basada en datos en la educación de ingeniería, que incluyen: 1) mejora del contenido educativo; 2) mejora de las interacciones sociales de los alumnos; 3) mejora de las habilidades de aprendizaje autorreguladas de los alumnos; y 4) predicción del comportamiento de los alumnos. Sin embargo, también existen riesgos significativos asociados con la recopilación y el procesamiento de datos, que incluyen privacidad, transparencia, sesgos, malas interpretaciones, etc., que también deben tenerse en cuenta y que requieren la creación de unidades especializadas y la capacitación del personal en la gestión de datos

Educational Pyramids Aligned: Bloom's Taxonomy, the DigCompEdu Framework and Instructional Designs

There are currently numerous learning theories and methodologies that teachers can use in their classes, depending on their educational goal and the specific subject matter taught. In addition, there are numerous technologies and tools that can help in the implementation of these learning theories and methodologies. This article builds on the Blooms taxonomy for the cognitive domain for learners and the DigCompEdu framework of digital competences for educators and defines a classification that organizes instructional design methods with the aim to help educators find the right method for orchestrating their classes. This classification uses the analogy of the pyramid, climbing levels as the student has a more active role in his own learning. The pyramid proposed to organize instructional design methods contains six levels, from the base of the pyramid (lowest level) to the top of the pyramid (highest level): knowledge transfer, interactive knowledge transfer, challenged knowledge, analytic learning, experiential learning, and active learning. This pyramid is intended to put some order into the many learning theories and methodologies that exist

Smart Groups: A tool for group orchestration in synchronous hybrid learning environments

Smart Groups is a tool consisting of one mobile application for the teacher and another one for the student for group orchestration in synchronous hybrid learning environments, i.e. when there are both onsite and online students. The teacher application shows recommendations of Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns (CLFPs) when creating groups for collaborative learning, being the location of the student transparent to the teacher. Regarding group management, if the teacher selects a CLFP the change between the phases of the CLFP is done automatically or by following the steps indicated by the application. The application also serves for the communication between the teacher and students and for sharing resources (e.g., documents, external tools, webs...) with the whole class or with each group. The student application indicates the group the student belongs to. Moreover, if the student is in the classroom the application points to the location where the group members should gather, taking into account the current need for social distancing. The student can communicate with the group mates and the teacher through the application and have access to the additional resources provided by the teacher. Finally, both applications warn users that are in the physical location if their safety distance (1.5 m) with another user is not being respected for more than 10 s.This work was supported in part by the FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación, through the Smartlet Project under Grant TIN2017-85179-C3-1-R, and in part by the Madrid Regional Government through the e-Madrid-CM Project under Grant S2018/TCS-4307 and under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3M21), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Re-search and Technological Innovation), a project which is co-funded by the European Structural Funds (FSE and FEDER). Partial support has also been received from the European Commission through Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education projects, more specically through projects LALA, InnovaT and PROF-XXI (586120-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), (598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), (609767-EPP-1-2019-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP)

Keys to the University of the Future

This project has been funded with the support of Erasmus +. The contents are the responsibility of the author(s). The Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Project No. 598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-J

FLINN: A framework to characterize technology enhanced formal, non-formal and informal learning situations

Thanks to technology, people learn continuously, anytime and anywhere, and in multiple situations that combine formal, non-formal and informal learning. However, recognizing the type of learning taking place in such technology-enhanced learning (TEL) situations is a big challenge, since the boundaries between these three kinds of learning are blurred. In this paper we present FLINN (FormaL INformal and Non-formal), a framework that defines formal, non-formal and informal learning situations as a continuum of two factors: (a) how learning is achieved; and (b) the setting where the learning situation takes place. This framework helps systematically characterize TEL situations, and as a consequence understand the kind of learning taking place, and recognize the learning opportunities that may arise in these situations. To illustrate the FLINN framework the authors describe three different scenarios, all employing interactive tags combined with other technologies for supporting collaboration in different settings, and embracing a diversity of learning objectives.This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with the EEE project (TIN2011-28308-C03-01 and TIN2011-28308-C03-03), by the Regional Government of Madrid with the eMadrid project (S2009/TIC-1650) and by the postdoctoral fellowship Alliance 4 Universities.Publicad

Innovative strategies for technology-mediated teaching-learning

This project has been funded with the support of Erasmus +. The contents are the responsibility of the author(s). The Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Project No. 598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-J

Automated Driver Management for Selenium WebDriver

Selenium WebDriver is a framework used to control web browsers automatically. It provides a cross-browser Application Programming Interface (API) for different languages (e.g., Java, Python, or JavaScript) that allows automatic navigation, user impersonation, and verification of web applications. Internally, Selenium WebDriver makes use of the native automation support of each browser. Hence, a platform-dependent binary file (the so-called driver) must be placed between the Selenium WebDriver script and the browser to support this native communication. The management (i.e., download, setup, and maintenance) of these drivers is cumbersome for practitioners. This paper provides a complete methodology to automate this management process. Particularly, we present WebDriverManager, the reference tool implementing this methodology. WebDriverManager provides different execution methods: as a Java dependency, as a Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool, as a server, as a Docker container, and as a Java agent. To provide empirical validation of the proposed approach, we surveyed the WebDriverManager users. The aim of this study is twofold. First, we assessed the extent to which WebDriverManager is adopted and used. Second, we evaluated the WebDriverManager API following Clarke’s usability dimensions. A total of 148 participants worldwide completed this survey in 2020. The results show a remarkable assessment of the automation capabilities and API usability of WebDriverManager by Java users, but a scarce adoption for other languages.This work has been been supported in part by the "Análisis en tiempo Real de sensores sociALes y EStimación de recursos para transporte multimodal basada en aprendizaje profundo" project (MaGIST-RALES), funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI, doi 10.13039/501100011033) under grant PID2019-105221RB-C44. This work also received partial support from FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades - Agencia Estatal de Investigación through project Smartlet (TIN2017-85179-C3-1-R), and from the eMadrid Network, which is funded by the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid) with grant No. S2018/TCS-4307

Silent collaboration with large groups in the classroom

Synchronous collaboration with large groups in a classroom requires coordination and communication mechanisms that allow students to contribute towards achieving a common goal. This paper presents an application based on an Interpersonal Computer with a shared display that promotes synchronous, non-verbal (silent) collaboration with large groups in a classroom.This work was funded by CONICYT-FONDECYT 1120177, TIN2011-28308-C03-01, S2009/TIC-1650, and the postdoctoral fellowship Alianza 4 Universidades.Publicad

Research on ICT in K-12 schools e A review of experimental and survey-based studies in computers & education 2011 to 2015

International audienceWhat is the role of a journal? Is it to follow the research or lead it? For the former, it is to serve as an archival record of the scholarship in a field. It can serve to permit the research community to engage with each other via the written record. But, for the latter, it can serve the research community by pointing out gaps in the research based on the archival record. This review is intended to do just that