Towards efficient provision of feedback supported by learning analytics

Proceedings of: 2012 12th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2012). Rome, Italy, 04-06 July, 2012.Problem-based learning lab sessions shape a demanding environment, both for students as well for the teaching staff, due to the additional support required. This applies particularly to overcrowded classes. Under these conditions, some aspects do not perform well, like the efficiency of the provision of feedback and the orchestration of the session, jeopardizing the effectiveness of the learning activity. Based on empirical observation, a characterization of lab sessions has been carried out, integrating both qualitative and quantitative parameters describing the interactions that take place. Based on such characterization, a supporting tool is proposed to make use of the students' logs, learning analytics and visualization techniques for providing monitoring and awareness mechanisms for leveraging the detected problems and thus improving the learning and assessment processes.Research partially supported by the Spanish Plan Nacional de I+D+I projects “Learn3: Towards Learning of the Third Kind” (TIN2008-05163/TSI) and “EEE” (TIN2011-28308-C03-01), and the Madrid regional project “eMadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” (S2009/TIC-1650).Publicad

Enhancing Orchestration of Lab Sessions by Means of Awareness Mechanisms

Proceedings of: 7th European Conference of Technology Enhanced Learning: 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills (EC-TEL 2012), Saarbrücken (Germany), 18-21 September, 2012Orchestrating learning is a quite complex task. In fact, it has been identified as one of the grand challenges in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) by the Stellar Network of Excellence. The objective of this article is to provide teachers and students with a tool to help them in their effort of orchestrating learning, that makes use of awareness artefacts. Using this powerful mechanism in lab sessions, we propose four different aspects of orchestration as the target for improvement: the management of the resources in the learning environment; the interventions of the teacher and provision of formative feedback; the collection of evidences for summative assessment; and the re-design of the activity, adjusting some parameters for future enactments. The proposal has been tested in a real course of Multimedia Applications with junior students (3rd course), measuring the benefits for the orchestration.This research has been partially supported by the project “Learn3: Towards Learning of the Third Kind” (TIN2008-05163/TSI) of the Spanish “Plan Nacional de I+D+i", the Madrid regional project “eMadrid: Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” (S2009/TIC-1650) and the “EEE project” (TIN2011-28308-C03-01) of the Spanish “Plan Nacional de I+D+i"

Orchestration and Feedback in Lab Sessions: Improvements in Quick Feedback Provision

Proceedings of: 6th European Conference of Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2011, Palermo, Italy, September 20-23, 2011The benefits of formative assessment and the provision of quick feedback to the learners are unquestionable. A lot of effort needs however to be devoted by the teacher in order to assess the learner's status and providing quality and valuable feedback when actually implementing these techniques in real-world situations during active learning activities. The aim of this work is to offer teachers a tool that facilitates the quick provision of relevant feedback to the students, implemented as backchannel notifications in a lab session for ensuring scalability. Although being a work-in-progress, the aforementioned tool has been partially evaluated in a real course on programming multimedia applications.This research has been partially supported by the project “Learn3: Towards Learning of the Third Kind” (TIN2008-05163/TSI) of the Spanish “Plan Nacional de I+D+i" and the Madrid regional project “eMadrid: Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” (S2009/TIC-1650)

Managing Assessment Resources in the Open ICOPER Content Space

With the introduction of the Web 2.0 philosophy in the learning arena, the way learning actors interact has changed substantially. From a collaborative perspective, all the actors in the learning landscape could make use of a variety of tools for collaboration, making up what it is called: "collaborative learning 2.0." In this chapter, the discussion is focused on the open educational resources (OER), concretely open assessment resources, i.e., open resources used in the assessment process (formative and/or summative). The authors explore the way to create, share, search, manage, and access to these resources; all these actions are described from the context of collaboration inherited from the Web 2.0 paradigms: collaboration among teachers and course designers, teachers and learners, and any other factors that could arise in the assessment process. On the other hand, the approach to managing the open assessment resources is based on an outcome-based assessment process because of the great importance of the outcome-based learning.This work was partially funded by the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), the Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI, and the eMadrid network, S2009/TIC-1650, “Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid”Publicad

Course Evaluation Study in Europe: The Current Picture

Proceedings of: First International Conference on Reforming Education, Quality of Teaching and Technology-Enhanced Learning: Learning Technologies, Quality of Education, Educational Systems, Evaluation, Pedagogies (TECH-EDUCATION 2010). Athens, Greece, May 19-21, 2010.Course evaluation is one of the key processes in the educational context that is in charge of the assurance of quality of courses taught in an institution. Although it is an essential process realized in every institution, the procedure followed for course evaluation does not comply with any evaluation standard. The objectives of this document are: to define a course evaluation concept map to understand better the needs of this field; to analyze the course evaluation standard ISO/IEC 19796, the only standard for course evaluation; and finally, to carry out a study of European institutions evaluation processes to determine why anyone is using standards in this learning process.This work was partially funded by Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI and the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007).Publicad

Course evaluation for technology enhanced learning: current status in Europe

Course evaluation is one of the key processes in the educational context that is in charge of the assurance of quality of courses taught in an institution. Although it is an essential process realised in every institution, the procedure followed for course evaluation does not comply with any evaluation standard. The objectives of this document are: to define a course evaluation concept map to understand better the needs of this field; to analyse the course evaluation standard ISO/IEC 19796, the only standard for course evaluation; to carry out a study of European institutions evaluation processes to determine why no institution is using standards in this learning process; and finally, to inform about the course evaluation support in two open-source well-known learning management systems (LMS) (Moodle and .LRN).This work was partially funded by the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), the Learn3 project, ‘Plan Nacional de I + D + I’ TIN2008–05163/TSI, and the eMadrid network, S2009/TIC-1650, ‘Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid.’Publicad

Learning Analytics @ UC3M

Proceedings of: 2013 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) 13-15 March 2013, Berlin (Germany).Feedback is important for any activity, and learning is no exception. Whereas assessment can give summative feedback about the proficiency of the learning, learning analytics can give a much finer level of feedback about the learning process. Learning analytics can help in identifying the effectiveness of learning elements, can help in engaging students, can guide teachers in the preparation and deployment of the teaching activity. In this paper, we present a number of different initiatives carried out at UC3M that include elements of learning analytics for different purposes.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 EEE project (TIN2011-28308-C03-01)

Management of Assessment Resources in a Federated Repository of Educational Resources

Proocedings of: Fifth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning Sustaining TEL: From Innovation to Learning and Practice (EC-TEL 2010). Barcelona, 28 September-1 October, 2010.This article tries to shed some light over the management of assessment resources in a repository of educational resources from an outcome-based perspective. The approximation to this problem is based on the ICOPER Reference Model, as a model to capture e-learning data, services and processes, addressing an interoperability approach. To demonstrate this proposal, a prototype has been implemented. This article also describes the design and development of this prototype that accesses a repository of educational resources (the Open ICOPER Content Space - OICS), the main features of the prototype, the development environment and the evaluation that is being performed.This work was partially funded by the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), the Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI, and the eMadrid network, S2009/TIC-1650, “Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid”.Publicad

Adapting an Awareness Tool for Massive Courses: the Case of ClassON

Abstract: In this paper we analyse the challenges posed to teachers and students in massive face-to-face classes and explore how existing solutions can be applied to these contexts. In particular, we focus on classON 1 , a tool that provides teachers and students with the appropriate information to make the most out of face-to-face sessions in the computer lab. classON has been well tested in small-medium face-to-face lab sessions and we discuss some of its characteristics (current ones and foreseen) to adapt it to massive courses. As a result, we provide a set of recommendations for adapting tools to support massive face-to-face learning activities

Análisis retrospectivo de la adopción de semillas de maíz híbrido en el estado de Tlaxcala

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural, SADER) continues the search for increased yields and profitability of corn. To achieve this, among other actions, it bets on the adoption and sowing of hybrid corn. In the market, there are transnational and national companies, and producer groups that produce these seeds. Transnational companies have taken theirs to different states. To Tlaxcala among others, where seeds were marketed since 1984 from these companies and others obtained by INIFAP. In 2011 with the MasAgro Program, work was done to obtain new seeds in the entity. However, the level of adoption is low. The objective of this study was to identify the characteristics of the farmers who show a willingness to sow them. The focus of this sociological study was fieldwork to obtain direct information from farmers in 17 municipalities in the state of Tlaxcala. The information was analyzed with the Chi-square statistic and a logistic regression. The results and conclusions show that farmers who know hybrid seeds and whose objective is to sell are willing to plant them. All of them (100%) prefer native seeds for family and animal consumption. Native corn today continues to be in demand in the Tlaxcala market.La Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural (SADER) da continuidad a la búsqueda del aumento de los rendimientos y la rentabilidad del maíz. Para lograrlo, entre otras acciones, apuesta a la adopción de maíz híbrido. El mercado de semilla se conforma de empresas trasnacionales, nacionales y grupos de productores. Las empresas transnacionales han llevado las suyas a diferentes estados. A Tlaxcala entre otros, en donde desde 1984 comercializaban semillas de estas empresas y otras obtenidas por Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP). En 2011 con el Programa MasAgro, se trabajó para obtener nuevas semillas en la entidad. No obstante, el nivel de adopción es bajo. El objetivo de este trabajo fue identificar las características de los agricultores que muestran disposición a sembrarlas. Este estudio tuvo como eje, trabajo de campo para obtener información de agricultores de 17 municipios del estado. La información se analizó con el estadístico Chi-cuadrada y una regresión logística. Los resultados y conclusiones apuntan que, los agricul­tores que conocen las semillas híbridas y cuya intención es vender, tienen disposición a sembrarlas. El 100% prefieren semillas nativas para consumo familiar y de sus animales