Orchestration of learning activities through the integration of third-party services in IMS learning design

The range of applicable pedagogical models has increased with the adoption of the Information and Communication Technologies in the educational field. The so called educational modelling languages enable the orchestration of learning activities on distance education scenarios. It is possible, for example, to apply strategies that emphasise the relevance of an active participation of the subject and the interaction among the different actors of the learning process. Computer-mediated orchestration of learning courses can be extended beyong distance education scenarios to face-to-face experiences. The IMS Learning Design specification is the de facto standard educational modelling language. The application of the specification in the support of collaborative learning models or in the creation of adaptive learning material is a frequent topic in current research. However, the model has several limitations that hinder the practical adoption of the IMS Learning Design framework. Among these limitations, the lack of integration with thirdparty tools is an obstacle for the creation and deployment of student-centred learning courses, where the active participation implies the use of Web based tools. Distance and blended learning models are especially affected by this limitation. Another factor that prevents full adoption of the framework is the lack of flexibility of the model: the existing players play a previously created script and leave no room for teachers’ reaction to unexpected events. This dissertation proposes a solution for the previous problems without limiting the intrinsic benefits of the specification, such as interoperability and expressiveness. The adopted research methodology consists of three phases: characterisation of the problem, design and implementation of the solution, and experimental validation of the proposed model. The complete description of the problem has required a revision of the state of the art regarding IMS Learning Design and the design and deployment of several cases of study. The analysis of these cases has been centred in the study of the factors that affect the authoring, deployment and enactment phases of scripted learning courses. The documentation and publication of these experiences is one of the contributions of this dissertation. An extension of the IMS Learning Design framework is proposed as a solution of the described problem. The extension, called Generic Service Integration is platform independent and allows the integration of third-party tools in courses described by IMS Learning Design. The integration is enabled by the automation of administrative tasks such as the instantiation of external tools, and by the information exchange among the platforms that take part in the course. Thus, it is possible to include learning activities whose enactment requires the use of Web based tools without losing the intrinsic characteristics of IMS Learning Design. The framework proposed by Generic Service Integration has been implemented as an extension of GRAIL, the IMS Learning Design player in the .LRN Learning Management System. Such extension has allowed the design and deployment of cases of study in which tool integration played an essential role in the sequence of activities. The analysis of these experiences demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed model. Such feasibility tackles two facts: first, the expresiveness of the combination of IMS LD and GSI; second, the replicability and scalability with a high number of participants. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------La aplicación de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación al ámbito del aprendizaje tiene como resultado la ampliación del abanico de posibilidades en lo que a modelos pedagógicos se refiere. La aparición de lenguajes de modelado educativo permite la orquestación de actividades en entornos de educación a distancia. Esto hace posible la ejecución de cursos en los que priman la participación activa del sujeto y la interacción entre los diferentes actores del proceso de aprendizaje. La orquestación de cursos guiada por ordenador no es exclusiva de la educación a distancia. En escenarios presenciales, por ejemplo, puede suponer una importante reducción de las tareas administrativas del profesorado. La especificación IMS Learning Design es el actual estándar de facto en el marco de los lenguajes de modelado educativo. Es frecuente la aparición de la especificación en las investigaciones más recientes, explorando su uso en el ámbito del trabajo colaborativo o en la creación de material adaptativo. Sin embargo, son varias las limitaciones que impiden una adopción práctica del esquema de trabajo propuesto por IMS Learning Design. Entre estas limitaciones, la falta de integración con herramientas de terceros dificulta la creación y el despliegue de cursos en los que el papel activo del alumno se refleje en el uso de herramientas basadas en la Web, especialmente en entornos de aprendizaje a distancia o semipresencial. Otro obstáculo importante es la falta de flexibilidad del modelo, ya que las herramientas de despliegue y ejecución de cursos se limitan a reproducir un guión previamente establecido, dejando escaso margen de actuación al profesorado. Esta tesis caracteriza los problemas mencionados y propone una solución factible que no limite las características propias de la especificación, como son su interoperabilidad y expresividad. Para ello, se ha seguido una metodología de trabajo compuesta de tres fases: caracterización del problema, definición e implementación de la solución, y validación experimental del modelo propuesto. Para la caracterización del problema se ha llevado a cabo un estudio del estado del arte con respecto a IMS Learning Design que se ha visto complementado con el diseño y despliegue de casos prácticos reales. En análisis de dichos casos prácticos se ha centrado en el estudio de los factores que afectan a las fases de autoría, despliegue y ejecución de los cursos. La documentación y posterior publicación de dichas experiencias supone por tanto una de las contribuciones de esta tesis. Tras la caracterización del problema, se propone una arquitectura que extiende la especificacióon IMS Learning Design. La arquitectura propuesta es independiente de la plataforma software que se utilice en el diseño y despliegue de cursos. Dicha arquitectura, que recibe el nombre de Generic Service Integration, permite la integración de herramientas de terceros en cursos guiados por IMS Learning Design. Esta integración se basa en la instanciación automática de herramientas externas y el intercambio de información entre las plataformas que intervienen en el curso. Así, se permite la inclusión de actividades que requieran el uso de herramientas basadas en la Web, sin que ello suponga una pérdida de las características propias de IMS Learning Design. El modelo propuesto, Generic Service Integration, ha sido implementado como una extensión de GRAIL, el reproductor de IMS Learning Design en .LRN. Dicha implementación ha permitido la puesta en marcha de casos de estudio en los que la integración de herramientas ha sido un elemento primordial de la secuencia de actividades de aprendizaje. El análisis de dichas experiencias demuestra la viabilidad del modelo propuesto. Esta viabilidad se refiere tanto a la capacidad expresiva de la combinación de IMS LD con GSI, como a su alta replicabilidad y escalabilidad con un número alto de participantes

Editor’s Note

This special issue, Special Issue on Multisensor user tracking and analytics to improve education and other application fields, concentrates on the practical and experimental use of data mining and analytics techniques, specially focusing on the educational area. The selected papers deal with the most relevant issues in the field, such as the integration of data from different sources, the identification of data suitable for the problem analysis, and the validation of the analytics techniques as support in the decision making process. The application fields of the analytics techniques presented in this paper have a clear focus on the educational area (where Learning Analytics has emerged as a buzzword in the recent years) but not restricted to it. The result is a collection of use cases, experimental validations and analytics systems with a clear contribution to the state of the art

Generic service integration in adaptive learning experiences using IMS learning design

IMS Learning Design is a specification to capture the orchestration taking place in a learning scenario. This paper presents an extension called Generic Service Integration. This paradigm allows a bidirectional communication between the course engine in charge of the orchestration and conventional Web 2.0 tools. This communication allows the engine to configure external services so as to adjust their behaviour, and also retrieve information about their activity and use it to influence the orchestration process. This extension impacts all the phases of the life cycle of a learning activity: authoring, deployment and enactment. The paper analyses this impact and proposes appropriate adjustments. A pilot test was conducted and the obtained results show that learning experiences that adapt their flow-based on third party tools while maintaining interoperability, reusability and self-containment requirements are feasible.Work partially funded by the Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI, the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), the Flexo Project “Plan Nacional de Investigacin Cientfica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica” (Ref. TSI-020301-2008-19), and the “Emadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” project (S2009/TIC-1650).Publicad

Detecting Image Brush Editing Using the Discarded Coefficients and Intentions

This paper describes a quick and simple method to detect brush editing in JPEG images. The novelty of the proposed method is based on detecting the discarded coefficients during the quantization of the image. Another novelty of this paper is the development of a subjective metric named intentions. The method directly analyzes the allegedly tampered image and generates a forgery mask indicating forgery evidence for each image block. The experiments show that our method works especially well in detecting brush strokes, and it works reasonably well with added captions and image splicing. However, the method is less effective detecting copy-moved and blurred regions. This means that our method can effectively contribute to implementing a complete imagetampering detection tool. The editing operations for which our method is less effective can be complemented with methods more adequate to detect them

Addressing drop-out and sustained effort issues with large practical groups using an automated delivery and assessment system

The acquisition of programming skills specially in introductory programming courses poses an important challenge for freshmen students of engineering programs. These courses require students to devote a sustained effort during the whole course and a failure to do so may contribute to not passing the course. However, it is difficult for the teaching staff to deploy measures to enforce a pattern of continuous work without significantly increasing the required management tasks. A significant reduction of this workload can be achieved with the automation of time consuming tasks such as the delivery of activities or submission grading. This paper presents a case of study where a technology based orchestration of learning scripts was applied in a large enrollment course to promote student sustained effort through the course and keep the workload on teaching staff within reasonable margins. The orchestration system, based on IMS Learning Design and Generic Service Integration, automatically evaluated the student submissions and gradually unlocked the following activities depending on the received results. Such system was used during a semester supporting 425 students and 8 instructors. The analysis of the case of study followed a mixed method based on qualitative and quantitative data, and revealed a significant reduction of the orchestration workload on the teaching staff, allowing the strategy of continuous work to be applied in a course with high enrollment. Additionally, the application of these techniques show statistically significant differences in the drop out rate with respect to previous editions of the course.Work partially funded by the EEE project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I TIN2011-28308-C03-01” and the “Emadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” project (S2009/TIC-1650)

Towards the Grade’s Prediction. A Study of Different Machine Learning Approaches to Predict Grades from Student Interaction Data

There is currently an open problem within the field of Artificial Intelligence applied to the educational field, which is the prediction of students’ grades. This problem aims to predict early school failure and dropout, and to determine the well-founded analysis of student performance for the improvement of educational quality. This document deals the problem of predicting grades of UNIR university master’s degree students in the on-line mode, proposing a working model and comparing different technologies to determine which one fits best with the available data set. In order to make the predictions, the dataset was submitted to a cleaning and analysis phases, being prepared for the use of Machine Learning algorithms, such as Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, Random Forest and Neural Networks. A comparison is made that addresses a double prediction on a homogeneous set of input data, predicting the final grade per subject and the final master’s degree grade. The results were obtained demonstrate that the use of these techniques makes possible the grade predictions. The data gives some figures in which we can see how Artificial Intelligence is able to predict situations with an accuracy above 96%

Towards Flexibility on IMS Learning Design Scripts

Proocedings of: 41st Annual Frontiers in Education Conference: Celebrating 41 Years of Monumental Innovations from Around the World (FIE 2011). Rapy City, South Dakota, October 12–15, 2011.IMS Learning Design is considered by many authors the "de facto" standard in educational modeling languages. The versatility of the framework enables its use in very different situations. However, such versatile framework is usually hidden by its complex management. One handicap identified in practical experiences is the lack of flexibility of scripted courses during the enactment phase. The activity sequence and learning resources are rigidly defined during authoring. This fact makes difficult to react to unexpected events that may happen in live courses. Also, this rigidness does not allow instructors to give "their personal touch" to courses. This paper presents the improvements made on GRAIL - an IMS LD compliant player-aimed at the support of a flexible enactment phase. Two types of modifications are considered: the modification of the learning flow and the management of course content with a wiki engine. Finally, this paper discusses how the integration of third party services in the activity sequence relaxes the rigidness of scripted learning flows. Experiences deployed in real scenarios allowed analyzing how such integration offered flexibility in practical situations.Work partially funded by the project “eMadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el elearning en la Comunidad de Madrid” (S2009/TIC-1650) and the Spanish project “Learn3: Towards Learning of the Third Kind” (TIN2008-05163/TSI).Publicad

User Identity Issues in Mashups for Learning Experiences using IMS Learning Design

The combination of services that provide personal information in technologies such as educational mashups brings some issues in the management of users' identity and authorization. This article presents a scenario based on the fact that an IMS LD server requires information relevant to each learner, and this information is provided by external services. This scenario allows to describe the problems of user correspondence, authenticated data retrieval, and remote account creation; a solution using technologies currently available is provided for each, as well as recommendations to take into account in similar scenarios.This work has been partially funded by the Project Learn3 (TIN2008-05163/TSI) from the Plan Nacional I+D+I, the Spanish National Project FLEXO (TSI-020301-2008-19,www.ines.org.es/flexo) and ”Investigación y Desarrollo de Tecnologías para el e-Learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” funded by the Madrid Regional Government under grant No. S2009/TIC-1650.Publicad

Learning Analytics in the LMS: Using Browser Extensions to Embed Visualizations into a Learning Management System

Proceedings of: Workshop Towards Theory and Practice of Teaching Analytics 2012 (TaPTA 2012) Saarbrücken, Germany, September 18, 2012.The use of analytics has gained a relevant level of impor- tance in current learning environments. Due to its life-cycle of observa- tion, analysis and intervention, it is important to make learning analytics available to all the participants of a learning process. A Learning Man- agement System (LMS) is a very suitable platform to present results in the form of visualizations, but the development of custom modules usu- ally requires programming and administrative work. This paper presents a system architecture to embed learning analytics visualizations without having to develop a custom LMS module. Our approach is based on the modi cation of the LMS' web pages through a browser extension. The details of the implementation are presented, as well as issues that might arise and how to address them.Work partially funded by the EEE project, "Plan Nacional de I+D+I TIN2011-28308-C03-01" and the "Emadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid" project (S2009/TIC-1650).Publicad

Bayesian Knowledge Tracing for Navigation through Marzano’s Taxonomy

In this paper we propose a theoretical model of an ITS (Intelligent Tutoring Systems) capable of improving and updating computer-aided navigation based on Bloom’s taxonomy. For this we use the Bayesian Knowledge Tracing algorithm, performing an adaptive control of the navigation among different levels of cognition in online courses. These levels are defined by a taxonomy of educational objectives with a hierarchical order in terms of the control that some processes have over others, called Marzano’s Taxonomy, that takes into account the metacognitive system, responsible for the creation of goals as well as strategies to fulfill them. The main improvements of this proposal are: 1) An adaptive transition between individual assessment questions determined by levels of cognition. 2) A student model based on the initial response of a group of learners which is then adjusted to the ability of each learner. 3) The promotion of metacognitive skills such as goal setting and self-monitoring through the estimation of attempts required to pass the levels. One level of Marzano's taxonomy was left in the hands of the human teacher, clarifying that a differentiation must be made between the tasks in which an ITS can be an important aid and in which it would be more difficult