Digitally enhanced assessment in virtual learning environments

One of the main challenges in teaching and learning activities is the assessment: it allows teachers and learners to improve the future activities on the basis of the previous ones. It allows a deep analysis and understanding of the whole learning process. This is particularly difficult in virtual learning environments where a general overview is not always available. In the latest years, Learning Analytics are becoming the most popular methods to analyze the data collected in the learning environments in order to support teachers and learners in the complex process of learning. If they are properly integrated in learning activities, indeed, they can supply useful information to adapt the activities on the basis of student’s needs. In this context, the paper presents a solution for the digitally enhanced assessment. Two different Learning Dashboards have been designed in order to represent the most interesting Learning Analytics aiming at providing teachers and learners with easy understandable view of learning data in virtual learning environments

Design and Evaluation of a Pervasive Coaching and Gamification Platform for Young Diabetes Patients

Self monitoring, personal goal-setting and coaching, education and social support are strategies to help patients with chronic conditions in their daily care. Various tools have been developed, e.g., mobile digital coaching systems connected with wearable sensors, serious games and patient web portals to personal health records, that aim to support patients with chronic conditions and their caregivers in realizing the ideal of self-management. We describe a platform that integrates these tools to support young patients in diabetes self-management through educational game playing, monitoring and motivational feedback. We describe the design of the platform referring to principles from healthcare, persuasive system design and serious game design. The virtual coach is a game guide that can also provide personalized feedback about the user’s daily care related activities which have value for making progress in the game world. User evaluations with patients under pediatric supervision revealed that the use of mobile technology in combination with web-based elements is feasible but some assumptions made about how users would connect to the platform were not satisfied in reality, resulting in less than optimal user experiences. We discuss challenges with suggestions for further development of integrated pervasive coaching and gamification platforms in medical practice

Multi-agent Architecture for Retrieving and Tailoring LOs in SCORM Compliant Distance Learning Environments

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A semantic approach implemented in a system recommending resources for cultural heritage tourism

In the last few years the tourism industry has profoundly changed. Today, a large number of tourists use the internet to find destinations, itineraries, services or travel packages, rather than asking experts in the field. For this reason, Information and Communication Technologies play an important role in tourism promotion. In particular, recommendation systems are interesting because they are able to offer more appropriate support than traditional search engines to the user seeking places to visit. Recommendation systems, in fact, are able to suggest a personalised set of options according to the user’s needs and preferences. But, as widely recognized in the literature, with these systems the quality of the recommendation is closely linked to the description of both resources and users. For them to become effective tools for promoting the knowledge, culture and traditions of a territory, it is necessary to integrate semantic information into the descriptions of resources, that can capture relationships among them. In this way, it is possible to enrich the list of recommendations by adding those resources which, although not explicitly related to the user’s request, have some semantic relationships with those included in the list. This can help to promote the discovery of new scenarios and the spread of knowledge about the cultural heritage of a territory. In this scenario, the paper presents a semantic approach amplifying cultural resources recommendations. This approach was used to enrich the list of recommendations of CulTuRek, a system that promotes the exploration of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the Apulia Region

Adaptive E-learning environments: Research dimensions and technological approaches

One of the most closely investigated topics in e-learning research has always been the effectiveness of adaptive learning environments. The technological evolutions that have dramatically changed the educational world in the last six decades have allowed ever more advanced and smarter solutions to be proposed. The focus of this paper is to depict the three main dimensions that have driven research in the e-learning field and the evolution of the technological approaches adopted for the purposes of building advanced educational environments for distance learning. Then, the three different approaches adopted by the authors are discussed; these consist of a multi-agent system, an adaptive SCORM compliant package and an e-learning recommender system

Smart learning environment per l'empowerment del paziente

L’ideazione di ambienti di apprendimento innovativi è vitale per rispondere alle emergenti sfide della formazione nel contesto della salute e del benessere. Gli Smart Learning Environment possono offrire esperienze di apprendimento coinvolgenti e motivanti per l’acquisizione di competenze e conoscenze anche in ambienti informali. L’articolo presenta uno Smart Learning Environment che coniuga gli approcci pedagogici del social learning e della gamification con quello tecnologico dei sistemi di raccomandazione per offrire un ambiente di apprendimento coinvolgente finalizzato all’empowerment del paziente

Artefatti cognitivi per l\u2019e-learning

Le potenzialit\ue0 formative assunte dalle nuove tecnologie dell\u2019informazione, di cui sono portavoce gli Adaptive hypermedia learning systems (AHLSs), prevedono l\u2019autonomia e la flessibilit\ue0 cognitiva dei soggetti. Obiettivo, questo, conseguibile con la creazione di condizioni che favoriscono i processi di autovalutazione attraverso l\u2019adattamento dei contenuti didattici agli stili cognitivi degli studenti. In questa prospettiva, la nostra ricerca ha analizzato la relazione tra stili cognitivi, motivazione e processi di apprendimento in ambiente SCORM. A tal fine 102 studenti, dopo esser stati selezionati in base al proprio stile cognitivo individuato con un appropriato questionario, sono stati suddivisi in due gruppi, di cui il primo, che ha lavorato in ambiente SCORM, ha usufruito dei contenuti di apprendimento adattati secondo gli stili cognitivi, mentre il secondo ha seguito lezioni impostate tradizionalmente. Dai risultati \ue8 emerso il chiaro ruolo positivo giocato dall\u2019adattamento dei contenuti di apprendimento allo stile cognitivo, anche in presenza di bassa motivazione intrinseca dei partecipanti