Seamless support for lifelong learning with ubiquitous technology

This poster presents 3 years research on how to provide support for lifelong learners with mobile technology. The aim of this research is facilitating adapted feedback services to foster self-regulation in adult lifelong learners

Learning ecologies in online students with disabilities

E-Learning environments are enhancing both their functionalities and the quality of the resources provided, thus simplifying the creation of learning ecologies adapted for students with disabilities. The number of students with disabilities enrolled in online courses is so small, and their impairments are so specific that it becomes difficult to quantify and identify which specific actions should be taken to support them. This work contributes to scientific literature with two key aspects: 1) It identifies which barriers these students encounter, and which tools they use to create learning ecologies adapted to their impairments; 2) It also presents the results from a case study in which 161 students with recognised disabilities evaluate the efficiency and ease of use of an online learning environment in higher education studies. The work presented in this paper highlights the need to provide multimedia elements with subtitles, text transcriptions, and the option to be downloadable and editable so that the student can adapt them to their needs and learning style

Learning ecologies in online students with disabilities

E-Learning environments are enhancing both their functionalities and the quality of the resources provided, thus simplifying the creation of learning ecologies adapted for students with disabilities. The number of students with disabilities enrolled in online courses is so small, and their impairments are so specific that it becomes difficult to quantify and identify which specific actions should be taken to support them. This work contributes to scientific literature with two key aspects: 1) It identifies which barriers these students encounter, and which tools they use to create learning ecologies adapted to their impairments; 2) It also presents the results from a case study in which 161 students with recognised disabilities evaluate the efficiency and ease of use of an online learning environment in higher education studies. The work presented in this paper highlights the need to provide multimedia elements with subtitles, text transcriptions, and the option to be downloadable and editable so that the student can adapt them to their needs and learning style

Everyday patterns in lifelong learners to build personal learning ecologies

Tabuenca, B., Ternier, S., & Specht, M. (2012). Everyday patterns in lifelong learners to build personal learning ecologies. In M. Specht, J. Multisilta, & M. Sharples (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning 2012 (pp. 86-93). October, 16-18, 2012, Helsinki, Finland.This article presents the results from a questionnaire filled out by 147 lifelong learners. The primary aim of the questionnaire is to analyse learning practices of adults, and to recognize patterns of lifelong learners in order to support them with technology. These patterns capture the context in which lifelong learners are more willing to learn, that is, the day of the week, duration, location, activity being performed, type of device being used, way to interact with their devices and how these aspects can affect when an adult student takes the initiative to learn. Moreover, this article examines previous publications on surveys, questionnaires and information collected with the same objective, to corroborate and contrast the findings. The contribution of this paper is identifying and describing patterns in which lifelong learners are more willing to build personal learning ecologies when supported by mobile devices.Open University of The Netherlands, CELSTEC, NELL

Supporting lifelong learners to build personal learning ecologies in daily physical spaces

This article presents the results from a questionnaire filled out by 147 lifelong learners with the aim to analyse learning practices of adults, and to recognize patterns of lifelong learners in order to support them with technology. These patterns capture the context in which lifelong learners are more willing to learn, that is, the day of the week, duration, location activity being performed, type of device being used, way to interact with their devices and how these aspects can affect when an adult student takes the initiative to learn. Likewise, this article examines previous publications on surveys, questionnaires and information collected with the same objective, to corroborate and contrast the findings. Moreover, we present a literature review on augmented tangibles for learning identifying potential contexts to orchestrate tangibles depending on the physical space where they are normally used. As an outcome of this work, important research questions are risen to integrate smart learning objects in learner-centred ecologies of resource

ARLearn:Learning activities and interaction in augmented reality

Ternier, S., Tabuenca, B., & Specht, M. (2012). ARLearn: Learning activities and interaction in augmented reality. In M. Specht, J. Multisilta, & M. Sharples (Eds.), Proceedings of the Mobile Augmented Reality for Education Workshop (pp. 10-13). October, 16-17, 2012, Helsinki, Finland.ARLearn is a tool suite for educators and learners supporting different phases and activities during a field trip. Learners can use the ARLearn app to explore and annotate the real world, while teacher can monitor their progress in real time

Lifelong Learning Hub: A Seamless Tracking Tool for Mobile Learning

Lifelong learners’ learning activities are scattered along the day in different locations and they make use of multiple devices. Most of the times adults have to merge learning, work and everyday life making it difficult to have an account on how much time is devoted to learning activities and learning goals. Learning experiences are disrupted and mobile seamless learning tech- nology has to find new solutions to integrate daily life activities and learning in the same process. Hence, there is a need to provide tools that are smoothly inte- grated into adults’ daily life. The contribution of this demonstration is present- ing a mobile tool that leads the lifelong learning towards a self-regulated pro- cess: foster awareness on learning goals and learning moments; facilitates the user to keep track of learning time with frictionless interface; fosters engage- ment and motivation on the task providing useful statistics. The 3LHub project has been released under open access with the aim to foster adaptation to further communities as well as to facilitate the extension to the increasing number of NFC tags existent in the marke

Ubiquitous Technology for Lifelong Learners

Nowadays, most people change their career throughout their lives, many times independently on what they learned during their formal education period. Therefore, the necessity to continually keep our skills sharp and up-to-date becomes increasingly important in a rapidly changing job market. The European Commission stressed the importance of lifelong learning as a key challenge for the knowledge society to adapt to the pace in which digital technology is transforming every aspect of people’s lives. Later on, the Commission published a reference framework comprising eight competences to flexibly adapt to a rapidly changing and highly interconnected world. In this thesis, we aim at supporting learners to understand the way they can better learn in-context using technology, therefore we focus on two specific competences, namely, learning to learn and digital competence