Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This contribution examines how teaching and learning in schools can be enhanced by employing computer technology. For that purpose, a web based system was developed in an evolutionary and participatory design process to serve as a platform for knowledge management in schools and then developed further into a system that can be characterized as social software for schools. The development was carried out in three stages. A powerful content management proved too complex and thus too difficult to learn for most users and resulted in poor usage. After reducing the functionality and re-implementing the user interface, the system was successfully introduced in schools. An evaluation of this “electronic schoolbag” showed that while the system was very well received, additional features were demanded. The third stage of the development thus added support in particular for use of the system in class, so that cooperation, communication, and coordination are now supported by an integration of several components of social software.

There are specific sectors of the economy that can benefit from satellite-based tele-education. Areas, such as maritime and agriculture, share common needs for both broadband connectivity at remote geographical areas that cannot otherwise be covered, and for innovative content for tele-education purposes. Furthermore, each area has special requirements with regard to the type of content to be delivered. In this paper we propose a set of architectural designs and case scenarios that will realise such interactive end-to-end education systems based on satellite communications. Services requirements in this setting are also identified and discussed.

This paper reports on scientific experimentation activities conducted in the EU project COLDEX. Learning scenarios have been developed that allow students to carry out scientific experiments in various fields of science such as astronomy, probability etc. The activities were supported by a collaborative experimentation environment called “CoolModes”. The environment will be described in detail regarding its support for experiments from different areas of science. The focus of this study was evaluating the learning scenarios. Students’ motivation was assessed right after participating in the scenarios. Attitudes regarding computers and science in general were investigated to gain additional background variables.

Good teachers know their students, and exploit this knowledge to adapt or optimise their instruction. Teachers know their students because they interact with them face-to-face in classroom or one-to-one tutoring sessions. They can build student models, for instance, by exploiting the multi-faceted nature of human-human communication. In distance-learning environments, teacher and student have to cope with the lack of such direct interaction, and this must have detrimental effects for both teacher and student. In this paper, we investigate the need of teachers for tracking student actions in computer-mediated settings. We report on a teacher’s questionnaire that we devised to identify the needs of teachers to make distance learning a less detached experience. Our analysis of the teachers’ responses shows that there is a preference for information that relates to student performance (, success rate in exercises, mastery level for a concept, skill, or method) and analysis of frequent errors or misconceptions. Our teachers judged information with regard to social nets, navigational pattern, and historical usage data less interesting. It shows that current e-learning environments have to improve to satisfy teachers’ needs for tracking students in distance learning contexts.

L2C - Learning to Collaborate – is an ongoing research project addressing the design of effective immersive simulation-based learning experiences supporting the development of collaboration competencies both at the individual and organisational level. The key characteristic of such advanced learning tools consists in the integration of psychological, motivational, cognitive, organizational, cultural and technological factors affecting the success of collaboration into the modeling of a set of virtual characters with whom learners can interact dynamically within a challenging and realistic collaboration scenario (SmallWorld Simulations). This paper provides an overview of the project, the conceptual basis, key design principles and expected pedagogical impact of this new type of immersive simulation-based learning experiences.

Current trends from the Knowledge Management community, and particularly, toward learning organizations have been privileging collaborative work. When the considered organization is an academic institution, one might look at teachers as knowledge workers. In such a context, we see Technology Enhanced Workplace Learning as a process accounting for continuous development of teams’ skills. In this paper, we propose a learning environment for Teachers, relying on progressive improvement of Instructional Material, as feedback from classes are collaboratively taken into account. We focus on the environments’ design, founded on basis such as Experience Factory and Learning Objects Metadata.

Individuals interacting in a computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment produce a variety of information elements during their participation; these information elements usually have a complex structure and semantics, which make it rather difficult to find out the behavioral attitudes and profiles of the users involved. This work provides a model that can be used to discover awareness information lying underneath multi-user interaction. This information is initially captured in log files and then is represented in a specific form in events-databases. By using data mining techniques, it is possible to infer both the users’ behavioral profiles and the relationships that occur in a CSCL environment. In this work we combine different data mining strategies and a neural-based approach in order to construct a multi-layer model that provides a mechanism for inferring different types of awareness information from group activity and presenting it to the interested parties.

To provide personalization and adaptivity in technology enhanced learning systems, the needs of learners have to be known by the system first. Detecting these needs is a challenging task and therefore, mechanisms that support this task are beneficial. This paper discusses the relationship between learning styles, in particular the Felder-Silverman learning style model, and working memory capacity, a cognitive trait. Due to this relationship, additional information about the learner is available and can be used to improve the student model. An exploratory study is presented to verify the identified relationship based on the literature. The results of the study show that the identified relationship between working memory capacity and two of the four dimensions of the learning style model is significantly supported. For the two remaining dimensions further research is required.

This paper describes how we propose to assist trainers in their tasks of monitoring a distant group, in the context of learning situations exploiting interactive learning objects (simulations, micro-worlds...). We describe the conceptual model on which we base the monitoring of such learning situations. A scenario, created by the trainer, describes the goal proposed and the various controls to be made during the learner’s progression toward this goal. Our tools automatically use the scenario to control the learning object, to monitor the learners’ activities and to provide tutors with semantic and synthetic representations of these activities. We also provide automatic assistance to learners. The context of this work is the FORMID project, which has resulted in a computer platform implementing our proposals.

Using electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) to assist learning is an important component of future educational models. We show how to use the information contained in e-portfolios to initialize learner models for adaptive tutorials. E-portfolios become sources of evidence for claims about prior conceptual knowledge or skills. An experiment is designed for testing how accurate a model can be built and how beneficial this approach can be for reflective and personalized learning. Monitoring this process can also help tutorial developers and experts identify how initial learner models may automatically arise from e-portfolios.