Ubiquitous Learning, Leren in een intelligente omgeving?

Deze studie naar de mogelijkheden van Ubiquitous Learning heeft als doel om antwoord te geven op de vraag welke rol Ubiquitous Learning kan spelen in het hoger onderwijs. Deze studie dient als inventarisatie van de mogelijkheden en zou kunnen dienen als handvat voor instellingen die met Ubiquitous Learning aan de slag willen. De studie start met een omschrijving van Ubiquitous Learning en factoren die bij Ubiquitous Learning van belang zijn. Hierbij wordt ook ingegaan op het verschil met bijvoorbeeld Mobile Learning en Wireless Learning, ontwikkelingen die onderdeel kunnen zijn van Ubiquitous Learning. Na het definiëren van Ubiquitous Learning wordt een overzicht gegeven van bestaande ervaringen en worden mogelijke scenario’s voor Ubiquitous Learning geschetst vanuit het perspectief van zowel de student, de docent als de instelling. Op basis van de bestaande ervaringen en mogelijke scenario’s wordt daarna ingegaan op de (on)mogelijkheden van Ubiquitous Learning op dit moment of in de nabije toekomst en wordt gepoogd om een voorspelling te doen van de mogelijkheden van Ubiquitous Learning in de wat verdere toekomst. Tot slot worden aanbevelingen gedaan met betrekking tot het gebruik van Ubiquitous Learning in het onderwijs

Reusability of telematics course material within a european network: the candle project

Reusability and standardization are issues that currently require a high level of attention in both journals and conferences in science of education (Wiley, 2002; Strijker, 2000). This is not only because of a need for higher efficiency but also a raise in quality is expected when course material and methods are used not only by the people who invent them but also by others being either in the office next door or at the other end of the world. Reusability in the context of this paper is perceived as the degree to which learning material can be used by third parties independent of the original author. Standardization in the context of this paper is seen as the supporting a method to exchange information to make learning material more accessible for a larger audience. Reusability has to deal with a number of problems. These are not only technical problems such as differences in infrastructures but also cultural differences (languages, learning styles) and organizational differences (credits, curriculum differences) do cause problems in reusing learning material (Downes, 2000). In a majority of cases compromises must be made to achieve an acceptable level of exchange of learning material. To maintain a level of order among a large set of reusable learning objects standardization is needed in characteristics to find the learning objects you are looking for. To achieve this goal learning objects are attached to metadata. Metadata describe learning objects on criteria defined to be important for using the objects in a learning network

Professional Communities of Practice: We Need Them, But How to Develop Them Successfully?

The Dutch education system is in a gradual transformation from standardised curriculum driven education to personalised education. Drivers are new media developments, future job transformations, recognizing the relevance of 21st century skills, and more. Dutch teachers increasingly acknowledge the continuous need for professional development, innovativeness, and continuous development of education in general. Therefore teachers and policy-makers increasingly unite in professional communities of practice (PCoP) in which the individual development and the development of the community is leading. In the PCoP, a group of educators meet each other on a regular basis to share expertise, and work collaboratively to improve teaching skills and the performance of students. In Education21 (Onderwijs21), a Dutch PCoP-initiative initiated to improve K-12-education, teachers and policy-makers from K-12-schools in the Northern and Eastern region of the Netherlands develop in a co-creation context the education of the twenty-first century. The network behind Education21 consists of primary schools, secondary schools, teacher education institutes, and education professionals, who recognise the importance of continuous professional development. The main goal of this PCoP is to contribute significantly to the success of the foreseen transformations. The first experiences in the PCoP show that participants acquire knowledge relevant to the transformation in their schools, by using an action-based research approach in a community-oriented environment. In this chapter we describe our approach, we give examples, and conduct a SWOT-analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threads of this approach. This results in a practical resource and method for regions to successfully develop a PCoP in a K-12-context

Experiential learning and affective computing for training soft-skills: Myself project

New trends in information technology are strongly influencing and shaping the growth of e-learning, and progressively resolving a number of critical issues currently limiting its dissemination to wider populations. The main goal of this chapter is to outline the MySelf Project, which aims to expand the potential of e-learning through the implementation of Affective Computing and training in soft skills. The chapter contents are therefore divided into two main sections: firstly, implementation of affective computing in the Myself project through the design and development of a 3D virtual tutor and research on possible implementations of multimodal recognition of user emotions; secondly, the development of 3D interactive simulations for soft skills training. Each section sets out the state of the art for the areas covered, outlines the Myself project objectives and possible operative applications, describes the work carried out to date, and discusses critical issues, open questions and future directions for the project