The cloud hovering over the virtual campus

The Virtual Campus has been around for about 20 years. It provides an online environment that mimics the processes and services of the physical campuses and classrooms. Its adoption is almost complete in countries where Internet access has become ubiquitous. For a time seemed like the innovation in education was happening in the Virtual Campus, but this is no more. Personal Learning Environments, Life Long Learning, MOOCS, Open Educational Resources, Mobile Apps, Gamification, Social Networks, free Cloud based services... al of the above and even more hint that not all the learning today is happening at school or in the Virtual Campus.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Interoperability in eLearning Contexts. Interaction between LMS and PLE

The emergence of the Information and Communication Technologies and its application in several areas with varying success, implies the definition of a great number of software systems. Such systems are implemented in very different programming languages, using distinct types of resources, etc. Learning and Teaching is one of those application areas, where there are different learning platforms, repositories, tools, types of content, etc. These systems should interoperate among them to provide better and more useful learning services to students and teachers, and to do so web services and interoperability specifications are needed. This paper presents a service-based framework approach to facilitate the interoperability between Learning Management Systems and Personal Learning Environments, which has been implemented as a proof of concept and evaluated through several pilot experiences. From such experiences it is possible to see that interoperability among the personal and institutional environments it is possible and, in this way, learners can learn independently without accessing to the institutional site and teachers have information about learning that happens in informal activities

Dispositius i serveis mòbils contra la fractura digital

La fractura digital reflexa la diferència que hi ha entre països, comunitats o persones en l'accés a les TIC. Per tant, la fractura digital divideix les persones en dos grups: els que tenen accés a les TIC i els que no en tenen. En general, hi ha grans diferències entre països rics i pobres en l'accés a les TIC. Només una tecnologia trenca aquesta tendència: els dispositius mòbils, concretament els telèfons mòbils. Segons l’informe sobre la Societat de la Informació que publica la Unió Internacional de Telecomunicacions (Internacional Telecommunication Union o ITU), els països pobres estan experimentant des de fa uns anys un important creixement en l’us dels telèfons mòbils. Segons la ITU: "It is a technology that has permeated more widely than any other into new areas, and we must examine how we can utilize this technology going forward, to help narrow the digital divide." Per tant, els dispositius mòbils són una de les tecnologies que tenen gran potencial per lluitar contra la fractura digital i per aconseguir el desenvolupament sostenible. Però, per què s’han estès més ràpidament que altres tecnologies, els telèfons mòbils?. Hi ha diversos factors que hi han contribuït. Un dels més importants és el cost relativament baix dels terminals mòbils. A la majoria de països del món, és possible aconseguir un telèfon mòbil per un preu relativament baix, que pot oscil.lar al voltant dels 40$. Moltes vegades aquest cost és excediu per una sola persona, pel que membres d’una família o d’una comunitat es veuen obligats a compartir un telèfon mòbil. També hi ha tot un mercat de segona ma que permet aconseguir telèfons mòbils a preus més baixos. Altres factors que han ajudat a la difusió dels telèfons mòbils també seran analitzats. Als països rics, no ens plantegem, compartir el telèfon mòbil amb una altra persona. El telèfon mòbil és un aparell personal. Però, què passa quan la gent es veu obligada a compartir un objecte que ha sigut dissenyat per l’us personal?. Quins són els usos que se'n fan dels telèfons mòbils als països pobres?. En aquesta contribució s’analitzaran algunes pràctiques que es fan dels telèfons mòbils als països pobres, com per exemple, l’enviament de diners a un familiar que es troba lluny o el servei de recàrrega de la bateria dels terminals mòbils ambulants. La difusió dels telèfons mòbils als països pobres també ha permès l’aparició de serveis oferts a través de dispositius mòbils. Entre aquests serveis, destaquen el que es coneix com mobile-banking, el mobile-health i el mobile-learning. L’aparició d’aquests serveis és una mostra de la contribució dels dispositius mòbils per lluitar contra la fractura digital a indrets on aquests serveis no es podrien oferir a través d’altres tecnologies. La difusió d’aquests serveis pot ser una contribució important pel desenvolupament sostenible. En aquesta contribució ens centrarem en el mobile learning. Analitzarem les iniciatives en el camp del mobile learning realitzades als països pobres i com pot contribuir el mobile learning per lluitar contra la fractura digital.Peer Reviewe

Debates on tech-related moral dilemas usign ethical theories to teach engineering ethics

A significant number of universities where engineering is taught acknowledge the influence on society and the environment of the scientific and technological practice, as well as the ethical problems it presents, and the need to provide their students with courses covering this as a subject. The accelerated pace of innovation in these fields amplifies the issue. Computer Engineering schools are no exception. So, the IEEE/ACM Computer Science Curriculum 2013, identifies social issues and professional practice as key knowledge areas that computer undergraduate students must learn. Students should be knowledgeable about the interplay of ethical issues, technical problems, and aesthetic values that play an important part in the development of computing systems. The authors have taught for many years an optional course about the social, and environmental aspects of ICT as well as ethics. In this paper, the authors propose an approach to study ethics in Computer engineering schools. The approach consists in providing students with general ethic frameworks to reason about moral dilemmas as well as providing the basics of deontology. The lessons are complemented with case studies where technology is a key factor. Students are assigned roles to work on the cases and in the end, a discussion is done in the classroom. After the lessons, the authors have observed that students are able to understand and use the tools provided by the teachers to reason about moral dilemmas.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de QualitatPostprint (published version

Coping with and addressing the risks of children TV and online devices usage: A review and proposal of guidelines for parents

Children start to be heavy users of media and connected devices as young as 5 years old. This widespread change of habits, while it is regarded as an opportunity for enhanced learning and acquisition of digital literacy, also raises concerns about the impact that is having and may have in the near future of children's health, development and exposure to risks. Parents have to cope with these concerns and address these risks as part of their duties. “Parental Mediation" is the management of the relation of children with media and online devices. Parental mediation is a form of socialization as parents influence their children’s behaviors and attitudes related to technology. This paper analyzes the risks and implications of the growing exposure of children to tech, goes through a number of studies on parental mediation, and proposes a set of guidelines for parental mediation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A case study for measuring informal learning in PLEs

The technological support for learning and teaching processes is constantly changing. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applied to education, cause changes that affect the way in which people learn. This application introduces new software systems and solutions to carry out teaching and learning activities. Connected to ICT application, the emergence of Web 2.0 and its use in learning contexts enables an online implementation of the student-centred learning paradigm. In addition, 2.0 trends provide “new” ways to exchange, making easier for informal learning to become patent. Given this context, open and user-centered learning environments are needed to integrate such kinds of tools and trends and are commonly described as Personal Learning Environments. Such environments coexist with the institutional learning management systems and they should interact and exchange information between them. This interaction would allow the assessment of what happens in the personal environment from the institutional side. This article describes a solution to make the interoperability possible between these systems. It is based on a set of interoperability scenarios and some components and communication channels. In order to test the solution it is implemented as a proof of concept and the scenarios are validated through several pilot experiences. In this article one of such scenarios and its evaluation experiment is described to conclude that functionalities from the institutional environments and the personal ones can be combined and it is possible to assess what happens in the activities based on them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

The landscape of teaching and learning has changed in recent years because of the application of Information and Communications technology. Among the most representative innovations in this regard are Learning Management Systems. Despite of their popularity in institutional contexts and the wide set of tools and services that they provide to learners and teachers, they present several issues. Learning Management Systems are linked to an institution and a period of time, and are not adapted to learners' needs. In order to address these problems Personal Learning Environments are defined, but it is clear that these will not replace Learning Management Systems and other institutional contexts. Both types of environment should therefore coexist and interact. This paper presents a service-based framework to facilitate such interoperability. It supports the export of functionalities from the institutional to the personal environment and also the integration within the institution of learning outcomes from personal activities. In order to achieve this in a flexible, extensible and open way, web services and interoperability specifications are used. In addition some interoperability scenarios are posed. The framework has been tested in real learning contexts and the results show that interoperability is possible, and that it benefits learners, teachers and institutions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Integration of M-learning and LMS: a sustainability approach

Mobile phones are widely used in both rich and poor countries, unlike what happens with other ICTs. The expansion of mobile telephony in poor countries presents an opportunity to fight against digital divide. In the latter countries, mobile phones are used to get information and services about agriculture, health, and education among other areas. Specifically in the area of education there are many who think that mobile phones are a useful tool to help achieve universal primary education, one of the Millennium Development Goals proposed by the United Nations. There are many educational experiences with mobile phones for development. But most of these experiences have serious limitations that affect their long-term sustainability. In this line, the current paper provides a set of guidelines to define more sustainable and long-term viable mobile-learning projects and presents its applications to a m-learning project: the Moodbile project.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The teaching involvement of the users, the units and the whole UPC measured through the Moodle indicators of the virtual platform Atenea. An extension proposal of Atenea’s BI platform

Atenea is the Moodle virtual platform of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) with about 31000 users and 5000 active subjects from 16 school centers. Atenea indicators give information on the teaching activity of the users and centers. This is specially relevant when teaching is online, as was the case in the Covid-19 period. The UPC already has a Atenea’s Bussines Intelligent platform (BI), which has recently been launched. In this 1st phase the Institute of Science of Education (ICE) has actively participated in the design of the application. Currently it shows basic indicators over a period of time where one can filter or compare by centers or type of users. The paper presents this design and make a proposal for the extension of the BI, for the future, with respect to: 1) the inclusion of some key indicators for measuring the subjects’ activity, 2) a proposal for cross-referencing data with academic performance