Learning design approaches for personalised and non-personalised e-learling systems

Recognizing the powerful role that technology plays in the lives of people, researchers are increasingly focusing on the most effective uses of technology to support learning and teaching. Technology enhanced learning (TEL) has the potential to support and transform students’ learning and allows them to choose when, where and how to learn. This paper describes two different approaches for the design of personalised and non-personalised online learning environments, which have been developed to investigate whether personalised e-learning is more efficient than non-personalised e-learning, and discuss some of the student’s experiences and assessment test results based on experiments conducted so far

Improving Public Administration Performance through Electronic Government Applications

Electronic Government applications have been the focus of hundreds of local and national government administrations all over the world during the past decade. The emphasis of most of these applications lies in their effort to improve the experience of the user in interacting with public administration services and to minimise waiting times in completing transactions public services and citizens. Early applications were relying mainly on the speed and simplicity of submitting a request by the user while most of the work beyond the web based interaction was carried out as in the era before the introduction of the web based applications. The benefits from such endeavours have been short lived as citizens are looking for real enhancements in they way public administration serves their needs and responds to their requests. The authors argue that for e-government applications to succeed changes would have to be effected in the way public administration organizes itself and how it utilizes information management systems to respond to user / citizen requirements including and addressing the goals of all stakeholders involved. Currently the number of successful applications to that end is quite low when compared to the projects implemented so far. The authors propose steps that would maintain the focus of future implementations in doing so

Learning styles, personalisation and adaptable e-learning

Common Learning Management Systems (for example Moodle [1] and Blackboard [2]) are limited in the amount of personalisation that they can offer the learner. They are used widely and do offer a number of tools for instructors to enable them to create and manage courses, however, they do not allow for the learner to have a unique personalised learning experience. The e-Learning platform iLearn offers personalisation for the learner in a number of ways and one way is to offer the specific learning material to the learner based on the learner’s learning style. Learning styles and how we learn is a vast research area. Brusilovsky and Millan [3] state that learning styles are typically defined as the way people prefer to learn. Examples of commonly used learning styles are Kolb Learning Styles Theory [4], Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Styles [5], VARK [6] and Honey and Mumford Index of Learning Styles [7] and many research projects (SMILE [8], INSPIRE [9], iWeaver [10] amongst others) attempt to incorporate these learning styles into adaptive e-Learning systems. This paper describes how learning styles are currently being used within the area of adaptive e-Learning. The paper then gives an overview of the iLearn project and also how iLearn is using the VARK learning style to enhance the platform’s personalisation and adaptability for the learner. This research also describes the system’s design and how the learning style is incorporated into the system design and semantic framework within the learner’s profile

A Framework to Support Collaborative Software Development and Reusability

This paper motivates and sets out a framework for a high-level approach to software component integration. The approach provisions for smooth integration, management and scalability. It builds on the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) and the annotation of software components with formal specifications that instruct interoperability through a unified interface. This work is part of ongoing research on the Pandora project [http://www.pandoraproject.eu/]

The Pandora Project: Advanced Training Environment for Crisis Scenarios

This paper describes a technical framework for the development of near real-life training environments for collaborative learning activities suitable for various training scenarios in different domains. The context in focus here is workplace learning that requires the training of collaborative as well as independent decision making among crisis managers in potential crisis situations. The training takes into consideration both the pragmatic nature of responding to crisis and human-behavioural factors involved in dealing with situations of chaos and uncertainty. This work is part of ongoing research on the Pandora1 project, which aims to provide a near-real training environment at affordable cost

A Framework for Developing a Collaborative Training Environment for Crisis Management

This paper describes the technical framework of a near real-life training environment for learning activities suitable for training in crisis scenarios. The context in focus here is to make provision for a learning environment that requires the training of collaborative, as well as independent, decision making among strategic crisis managers in potential crisis situations. Modelling the training scenarios takes into consideration both the pragmatic nature of responding to crisis, as well as the human-behavioural factors involved in dealing with situations of chaos and uncertainty. This work is part of ongoing research on the Pandora1 project, which aims to provide a near-real training environment at affordable cost

Impact of metacognitive awareness on learning in technology enhanced learning environments

With the advent of internet technologies and the closer integration of mobile and ubiquitous devices, learning and teaching has changed the way we view the learning process. Indisputably, there are many ways of using technology to support students’ learning which enables them to manage the pace, time and place of their learning. Technology enhanced learning (TEL) can place students at the centre of the learning process, but this means that students need to take more responsibility for their learning. The literature refers to this as self-directed and self-regulated learning (Liu, Gomez, Khan and Yen, 2007; Nicol, 2006). Students can take more control over their learning and develop leadership of their own ‘learning curve’. Self-directed learning includes management of the learning materials, monitoring learning progress and regulating cognitive learning styles. However, this requires students to develop metacognitive strategies so they can identify their own learning styles in the appropriate formal and informal learning situations. This paper aims to investigate the impact of students’ metacognitive awareness on their learning outcomes within technology enhanced learning environments and concludes that the design of a TEL environment and the development of students’ metacognitive skills have a direct bearing on learning performance

A High Level Service-Based Approach to Software Component Integration

This paper motivates and sets out a framework for a high-level approach to software component integration. The framework builds on the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) and uses a service ontology for the annotation of software components with formal specifications. The ontology is used to instruct interoperability between software components through a unified API interface. The impetus for this approach is to provision for smooth integration, management and scalability in a collaborative and distributed development environment

Personalised mobile learning system based on item response theory

Rapid advancements in the design and integration of mobile devices and networked technologies in day to day activities are creating new perceptions about the exploitation of mobile technologies in teaching and learning. Consequently, there is growing demand for personalised, efficient and flexible systems for supporting learning in various settings. However, fulfilling learner demand for personalised support requires better understanding of activities, operational contexts and purposes for which mobile devices are deployed to support learning. Therefore, our position with regards to methods for researching mobile learning focuses on personalised learning. This paper presents an approach to designing a personalised learning system by analysing the ability of the learner based on Items Response Theory. Furthermore, in the proposed system user profile is modelled based on profile ontology

Predictive policing in 2025: A scenario

Law enforcement authorities (LEAs) have begun using artificial intelligence and predictive policing applications that are likely to raise ethical, data protection, social, political and economic issues. This paper describes application of a new scenario methodology for identifying issues that emerging technologies are likely to raise in a future six or seven years hence, but that deserve policymakers’ attention now. It often takes policymakers that long to develop a new policy, consult with stakeholders and implement the policy. Thus, policymakers need a structured, but concise framework in order to understand the issues and their various implications. At the same time, they also prefer policies that have stakeholder support. These considerations led the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the UK’s Trilateral Research to develop the scenario that follows. It is structured with several headings that policymakers need to consider in order to move toward a desired future and avoidance of an undesired future