EPM: un modelo para la caracterización y diagnóstico de procesos educativos

Los cambios sociales unidos a los avances pedagógicos y tecnológicos acon tecidos en los últimos años han provocado un aumento exponencial en la de manda de formación y una revolución en la forma de entender la educación. Estos cambios han obligado a todos los elementos que intervienen en el pro ceso, alumnos, profesores, contenidos y herramientas a adaptarse a esta nueva situación, y han aumentado considerablemente la complejidad del panorama educativo. Los modelos, que siempre han jugado un papel importante en la compren Sión de los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje, han pasado a ser una herra mienta imprescindible para el seguimiento y control de la práctica educativa. Uno de los principales problemas a los que se enfrenta hoy el modelado de la práctica educativa es la integración de los modelos existentes y la obtención de resultados cuantitativos. En esta tesis se propone la creación de EPIVI (Educational Practice Model), un modelo matemático para la caracterización y diagnóstico de procesos educativos. Este modelo surge del intento de resolver el problema de mode lado de la educación como un caso particular de un problema más general: la representación de sistemas dinámicos en interacción con un entorno. Este cambio de enfoque a un nivel de abstracción superior para resolver el problema se inspira en dos ideas fundamentales: el proceso de abstracción seguido por la física para obtener una representación unificada de las interacciones funda mentales y el concepto de meta-representación propuesto por Heylighen para la representación de sistemas dinámicos. Utilizando como base estas dos ideas se propone una meta-representación que permite generar representaciones distintas para describir la evolución de cada uno de los elementos de la práctica educativa: profesores, alumnos o recursos educativos. En este trabajo se presenta el desarrollo matemático para la representación de uno de estos problemas: describir la evolución del estado de conocimiento de un alumno a lo largo de un curso. La representación desarrollada permite caracterizar los diferentes elemen tos que intervienen en la práctica educativa, detectar problemas, identificar sus causas y proponer soluciones a los problemas detectados. El proceso de detección permite determinar el momento en el que se producen los proble mas, cuantificar su magnitud e indicar los objetivos involucrados. El proceso de diagnóstico y propuesta de soluciones permite discriminar si los problemas de efectividad del curso se deben a la heterogeneidad del grupo de alumnos, a la dificultad intrínseca de los objetivos involucrados, al diseño de los materiales didácticos o a la forma de impartirlos. El modelo propuesto facilita la reutilización y comparación no sólo de los elementos que constituyen el curso (acciones docentes, unidades didácticas y mecanismos de evaluación) sino también de la información recogida durante su impartición como son los resultados de evaluación o la efectividad de cada uno de los elementos utilizados. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Social changes and advances in technology and pedagogy during the last few years have produced an exponential increase in the demand for training and a revolution in the way education is understood. Ah the players invol ved in this process: students, teachers, contents and tools, need to adapt to this new situation. This fact has increased the complexity of the educational environment. Modeis, that have always played an important role in the understanding of the teaching-learning processes, are now a requirement to monitor and control the educational practice. One of the main problems faced by modeling is the integration of the pre-existent modeis and the ability of obtain quantitative results. In this dissertation, the Educational Practice Model (EPM) is proposed. EPM is a mathematical model for characterization and diagnosis of educa tional processes. This model arises from an attempt to resolve the problem of modeling education as a particular case of a more general modeling pro blem: representation of dynamical systems in interaction with their environ ments. This change of approach to a higher level of abstraction is inspired by two fundamental ideas: the abstraction process fohlowed by Physics to unify the representation of the fundamental interactions, and the concept of meta representation proposed by Heylighen to represent dynamical systems. Based on these two ideas, a meta-representation is proposed that aliows dif ferent representations to be generated in order to describe different elements of educational practice: teachers, students or educational resources. Tu this thesis, the mathernatical development to represent one of this elements is proposed: description of the evolution of the degree of knowledge of a student during a course. The representation developed here characterizes the elements involved in the educational practice for very practical purposes: detecting problems, diag nosis, and even proposing solutions. The detection process warns about probiems appearing and indicates about their magnitude (quantification of their importance), and location (discrimination of objectives involved). The diag nosis and proposal of solutions can distinguish if the problems of effectiveness are related to heterogeneity of the group of students, inherent difficulty of the objectives involved, design of the didactic materials, or the way they are used. The proposed model not only makes it easier to reuse and compare edu cational resources (teaóhing actions, didactic units and mechanisms of evalua tion), but also provides ways to reuse and compare the information obtained during the course itself, the effectiveness of the resources, or the results of the evaluation

Towards Parallel Educational Worlds

Proceedings of: 2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON 2011): Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education. Amman, Jordan, 4-6 April 2011.Augmented Reality, 3D virtual worlds, etc.: the technology has evolved tremendously and so has its application to the field of education. Digital technologies have advanced to the point, where we are reproducing digitally more and more aspects of our life. We have parallel worlds: on the one hand the real world, and on the other virtual worlds, that can in fact be linked to the real one. They have different properties, but they can enrich and complement each other. In this paper, we explore the possibilities and challenges of these parallel worlds for educational uses.The eMadrid Excellence Network is being funded by the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid) with grant No. S2009/TIC-165. We wish to acknowledge stimulating discussions with our partners in the context of the network. Partial support has also been received from the Learn3 project (TIN2008-05163) and the SOLITE project (CYTED 508AC0341).Publicad

Sustainable technologies for older adults

: The exponential evolution of technology and the growth of the elderly population are two phenomena that will inevitably interact with increasing frequency in the future. This paper analyses scientific literature as a means of furthering progress in sustainable technology for senior living. We carried out a bibliometric analysis of papers published in this area and compiled by the Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus, examining the main participants and advances in the field from 2000 to the first quarter of 2021. The study describes some interesting research projects addressing three different aspects of older adults’ daily lives—health, daily activities and wellbeing—and policies to promote healthy aging and improve the sustainability of the healthcare system. It also looks at lines of research into transversal characteristics of technology. Our analysis showed that publications mentioning sustainability technologies for older adults have been growing progressively since the 2000s, but that the big increase in the number of research works in this area took place during the period 2016–2021. These more recent works show a tendency to study those factors that improve healthy aging, ensure the social inclusion of the elderly through technology and prolong the time in which they can live independent lives thanks to smart environments. Current research gaps in the literature are also discussed.: This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, (CSO2017-86747-R) and supported in part by the FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación, through the Smartlet and H2O Learn Projects under Grants TIN2017-85179-C3-1-R and PID2020-112584RB-C31, and in part by the Madrid Regional Government through the e-Madrid-CM Project under Grant S2018/TCS-4307

Understanding Learners' Motivation and Learning Strategies in MOOCs

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have changed the way in which OER (Open Educational Resources) are bundled by teachers and consumed by learners. MOOCs represent an evolution towards the production and offering of structured quality OER. Many institutions that were initially reluctant to providing OER have, however, joined the MOOC wave. Nevertheless, MOOCs detractors strongly criticize their high dropout rates. The dropout rate is a commonly accepted metric of success for traditional education, but it may not be as suitable when dealing with OER, in general, and with MOOCs, in particular, since learners' motivations to take a course are very diverse, and certain self -regulated learning strategies are required to tackle the lack of personalized tutoring and keep pace in the course . This paper presents an empirical study on the motivation and learning strategies of MOOC learners. Six thousand three hundred and thirty-five learners from 160 countries answered a self report 7- point Likert-type questionnaire based on the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) as part of a MOOC titled Introduction to Programming with Java. Results indicate that learners were highly motivated and confident to do well in the course. Learning strategies, however, can be improved, especially regarding time management.This work has been co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, projects MOOC-Maker (561533-EPP-1-2015-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), SHEILA (562080-EPP-1-2015-BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD) and COMPETEN-SEA (574212-EPP-1-2016-1- NL-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), by the Madrid Regional Government, through the eMadrid Excellence Network (S2013/ICE-2715), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project RESET (TIN2014-53199-C3-1-R) and fellowships FPDI-2013-17411 and PTQ-15-07505

Objective and automated assessment of surgical technical skills with IoT systems: A systematic literature review

The assessment of surgical technical skills to be acquired by novice surgeons has been traditionally done by an expert surgeon and is therefore of a subjective nature. Nevertheless, the recent advances on IoT, the possibility of incorporating sensors into objects and environments in order to collect large amounts of data, and the progress on machine learning are facilitating a more objective and automated assessment of surgical technical skills. This paper presents a systematic literature review of papers published after 2013 discussing the objective and automated assessment of surgical technical skills. 101 out of an initial list of 537 papers were analyzed to identify: 1) the sensors used; 2) the data collected by these sensors and the relationship between these data, surgical technical skills and surgeons' levels of expertise; 3) the statistical methods and algorithms used to process these data; and 4) the feedback provided based on the outputs of these statistical methods and algorithms. Particularly, 1) mechanical and electromagnetic sensors are widely used for tool tracking, while inertial measurement units are widely used for body tracking; 2) path length, number of sub-movements, smoothness, fixation, saccade and total time are the main indicators obtained from raw data and serve to assess surgical technical skills such as economy, efficiency, hand tremor, or mind control, and distinguish between two or three levels of expertise (novice/intermediate/advanced surgeons); 3) SVM (Support Vector Machines) and Neural Networks are the preferred statistical methods and algorithms for processing the data collected, while new opportunities are opened up to combine various algorithms and use deep learning; and 4) feedback is provided by matching performance indicators and a lexicon of words and visualizations, although there is considerable room for research in the context of feedback and visualizations, taking, for example, ideas from learning analytics.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, 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 specifically through projects LALA (586120-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), InnovaT (598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), and PROF-XXI (609767-EPP-1-2019-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP)

M-learning will disrupt educational practices

Proceedings of: 2012 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) "Collaborative Learning & New Pedagogic Approaches in Engineering Education", Marrakesh (Morocco), 17-20 April, 2012.n this paper, an overview is given about the research carried out in the area of mobile teaching and learning by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a member of the eMadrid Excellence Network. Mobile learning is raising growing expectations and is considered by some authors the next disruptive revolution in education. Cognitive and pedagogical theories supporting this prospect are reviewed. How these theories can be translated into meaningful educational practices is analysed by exploring ways of usage of mobile devices for supporting learning and teaching. Finally, a portfolio of experiments and case studies carried out by the Gradient group of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid testing the application and effects of mobile learning are reported. These experiments show that the use of these devices is changing educational practices in a fundamental way.The eMadrid Excellence Network is being funded by the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid) with grant No. S2009/TIC-1650. We wish to acknowledge stimulating discussions with our partners in the context of the network. Partial support has also been received from the Learn3 project (TIN2008-05163) and the EEE project (TIN2011-28308-C03-01)

From software engineering to courseware engineering

Proceedings of: 2016 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 10-13 April 2016, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesThe appearance of MOOCs has contributed to the use of educational technology in new contexts. As a consequence, many teachers face the challenge of creating educational content (courseware) to be offered in MOOCs. Although some best practices exist, it is true that most of the content is being developed without much thought about adequacy, reusability, maintainability, composability, etc. The main thesis at this paper is that we are facing a "courseware crisis" in the same way as there was a "software crisis" 50 years ago, and that the way out is to identify good engineering discipline to aid in the development of courseware. We need Courseware Engineering in the same way as at those times we needed Software Engineering. Therefore, the challenge is now to define and develop fundamentals, tools, and methods of Courseware Engineering, as an analogy to the fundamentals, tools, and methods that were developed in Software Engineering.The eMadrid Excellence Network is being funded by the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid) with grant No. S2013/ICE-2715. This work also received partial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Project RESET (TIN2014-53199-C3-1-R) and from the European Erasmus+ projects MOOC-Maker (561533-EPP-1-2015-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) and SHEILA (562080-EPP-1-2015-BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD). The first author would like to acknowledge fruitful discussions with Martin Wirsing and his group from LMU München during his research stay at this university with a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport

La tecnología educativa en la era de las interfaces naturales y el aprendizaje profundo

Las herramientas son un soporte esencial en cualquier actividad humana. A medida que la tecnología avanza, podemos diseñar herramientas más avanzadas que nos ayuden a realizar las actividades de manera más eficiente. Recientemente, hemos visto avances en los dos componentes principales de las herramientas, la interfaz y el motor computacional que hay detrás. Las interfaces naturales nos permiten comunicarnos con las herramientas de una forma más adaptada a los humanos. En relación con el motor, estamos pasando del paradigma de la computación a otro basado en la inteligencia artificial, que aprende a medida que se utiliza. En este documento, examinamos cómo estos avances tecnológicos tienen un impacto en la educación, lo que conduce a entornos de aprendizaje inteligentes (smart learning environments).Los autores agradecen el apoyo de FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades - Agencia Estatal de Investigación a través del Proyecto Smartlet (TIN2017-85179-C3-1-R). Este artículo también ha recibido apoyo parcial de la Red eMadrid (e-Madrid-CM), financiada por la Comunidad de Madrid mediante el proyecto S2018/TCS-4307. Este último proyecto también está cofinanciado por los Fondos Estructurales (FSE y FEDER). También se ha recibido apoyo parcial de la Comisión Europea a través de proyectos Erasmus+"Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education", más específicamente a través de los proyectos COMPETEN-SEA, LALA e InnovaT (574212-EPP-1-2016-1-NL-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) (586120-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) (598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP

Towards a cloud-based university accelerated by the pandemic

Proceeding of: the 2021 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 21-23 April 2021, Vienna, Austria. P.: 642-1649.The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of society, and in particular of university teaching. Professors who were reluctant or unwilling to take advantage of what digital technologies offered suddenly were forced to teach with technologies. In this paper, we describe teaching during the two main phases during the pandemic at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M): the first phase during the complete lockdown and the second where students were allowed on campus with limitations. We also explain how the investment done during these two phases influences teaching in the future and how digital cloud-based technologies promote active learning at the university.The authors acknowledge the eMadrid Network, which is funded by the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid) with grant No. S2018/TCS-4307. 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). It has also received partial support from the European Commission through Erasmus+ projects LALA (586120-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), InnovaT (598758-EPP-1-2018-1-AT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) and PROF-XXI (609767-EPP-1-2019-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP).Publicad

Prensa en XML: el negocio de la personalización y la conquista de nuevos medios

Los periódicos electrónicos no han encontrado aún la forma de aprovechar completamente las posibilidades que les ofrecen los lenguajes de marcado, y en especial XML, así como la posibilidad de usar diversos medios de salida, con el fin de difundir a través de ellos una misma información (adaptando la profundidad de la misma a las posibilidades de cada soporte) consiguiendo que el producto sea rentable. El proyecto InfoMedia, que lleva a cabo un grupo de investigadores de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, se desarrolla sobre esta idea. Este texto expone los conceptos básicos (y algunas iniciativas ya desarrolladas) sobre los que gira el proyecto: la necesidad de contemplar los diversos medios (ordenadores, televisión, teléfono móvil...) accesibles mediante un mismo lenguaje, basado en XML; la posibilidad de establecer diferentes tipos de productos y, por tanto, diferentes formas de financiación y pago de los mismos; finalmente, la necesidad de determinar qué públicos distintos pueden existir y qué información necesitan.CICYT. Proyecto TEL99-020