Christian Glahn

Personalisation of Learning in Virtual Learning Environments

Personalization of learning has become a prominent issue in the educational field, at various levels. This article elaborates a different view on personalisation than what usually occurs in this area. Its baseline is that personalisation occurs when learning turns out to become personal in the learners mind. Through a literature survey, we analyze constitutive dimensions of this inner sense of personalisation. Here, we devote special attention to confronting learners with tracked information. Making their personal interaction footprints visible contrasts with the back-office usage of this data by researchers, instructors or adaptive systems. We contribute a prototype designed for the Moodle platform according to the conceptual approach presented here.

Smart indicators on learning interactions

Indicators help actors to organise, orientate, and navigate through environments by providing contextual information that is relevant for performing learning tasks. In this article we analyse the requirements, present a model and an initial prototype of a software system that uses smart indicators to support learners to be more engaged into the learning process. We argue that indicators need adaptation as learners develop on their learning paths in order to support interactions throughout the learning process. The learning interaction cycle of Garries, Ahlers and Driskel is used as a model for developing an architecture that supports the interaction between a learner and a learning environment. The technical feasibility of the architecture has been tested by implementing that is critically reflected on technical and educational concepts. This article concludes with an outlook on our future research, in which the model will be evaluated by applying the prototype in a learning community.

Activity-based learner-models for learner monitoring and recommendations in Moodle

In technology-enhanced learning, activity-based learner models can provide evidence for competence assessment. Such models are the foundation for learning and teaching support, such as: adaptation, assessment, and competence analytics, recommendations, and so on. This paper analyses how to construct activity-based learner models based on existing data in the Moodle learning management system. Based on the activity theory model and the actuator-indicator model, aggregators of learner activities for different activity types were implemented in Moodle. This requires the consideration of the social roles in a course, in order to enable adaptive views for learners and instructors on the stored activity information. The implementation showed that Moodle stores information about course activities that requires filtering before it can get used for higher level processing. The social planes in Moodle reveal a higher complexity than it has been previously described by theories of classroom orchestration, such as actors who are no longer present in a course.

A Software Suite for Efficient Use of the European Qualifications Framework in Online and Blended Courses

Since introduction of the European qualifications framework (EQF) as one instrument to bridge from learning institutions to competence driven lifelong learning, it remains a challenge for instructors and teachers in higher education to make efficient use of this framework for designing, monitoring, and managing their lessons. This paper presents a software suite for enabling teachers to make better use of EQF in their teaching. The software suite extends course design based on well-defined learning outcomes, monitoring performance and competence acquisition according to the EQF levels, assessment using scoring rubrics of EQF levels and competences in a 360-degree feedback, as well as visualizations of learning analytics and open student models in dashboards for different social perspectives in social planes. This paper includes a case study with 20 teachers who used the software suite in all phases of the course lifecycle for three programming courses. The results show that integrated applications for adopting the EQF in teaching practice are strongly needed. These results also show that the suite can assist teachers in creating contextual awareness, kindling reflection, understanding students and course progress, and inferring patterns of success and failure in competences development.

Smart indicators to support the learning interaction cycle

This paper focuses on the relevant information for collecting and presenting contextual information, its effects and impact on the learning interaction cycle and mechanisms of controlling it. The core principle of the learning interaction cycle is the interaction of learners with their learning environment. Previous research highlights that such interaction is important for the experience and progress of learners. However, we identified a conceptual gap between the learner actions within a learning environment and the responses that are provided to the learners. To bridge this gap we adopted a layered model of context-aware systems that meets the requirements for supportive responses. The model has four layers and describes the information processing of interaction footprints of learners in a learning environment: the sensor layer, the semantic layer, the control layer and the indicator layer. We applied this model to analyse the results as they were reported in the literature.

Beyond Delivery Modes and Apps: A Case Study on Mobile Blended Learning in Higher Education

Mobile learning has received an increasing attention by the TEL community since 2010. While much research is available on the effectiveness of individual apps and educational approaches and despite that many higher education institutions introduced special mobile learning apps, relatively little is known about the rationale of scaling up mobile learning in higher education institutions. It reports on a case study, in which a mobile app solution has been integrated into a lecture at a major Swiss university. The study analyses the student’s use of mobile media and the use of a smart-phone app in a mobile blended learning setting. The results indicate that today’s students live in a multi device environment and are likely to use mobile apps in new contexts and settings if this is supported by an app. They also show that mobiles will not replace other delivery modes or technologies. Instead, the findings indicate that students used the mobile learning solution for extending and enriching their learning environment. Therefore, this study suggests that mobile learning needs to blend into rich learning environments, in which they co-exist with paper books, classroom experiences, laptops, and tablets. The insights define new requirements for both, mobile apps and virtual learning environments, in order to meet the future challenges of TEL in higher education.

Using tag-clouds for supporting reflection in self-organised learning

This article reports on a qualitative study about the application of tag clouds for supporting meta-cognition in self-directed and incidental learning. Tag clouds are a popular and simple visualisation of the usage of free form keywords on the internet. The present study analyses the use of the ReScope system that provides a personal tag cloud visualisation of the tags that are used at a public social bookmarking service. ReScope is based on a reflection support use case developed by the TENCompetence project. The study focuses at the types of meta-cognitive control based on reflection notes of the learners. These notes were analysed regarding the contents of the reflections as well as regarding their meta-cognitive type. The study has two important outcomes. Firstly, a personal tag cloud can stimulate reflection on the tagging activity of a learner. Secondly, reflecting on the tagging activity is not built into the design of a tag cloud.

Mobile Blended Learning

Mobiles Lernen ist in Bildungsorganisationen in komplexe Lernprozesse eingebettet. Jedoch greifen einfache Funktionsanpassungen von Online-Lernumgebungen fur mobile Endgerate fur die didaktische Unterrichtsgestaltung von Mobile Blended Learning zu kurz. In diesem Beitrag wird das Blended Learning-Konzept um die mobile Dimension erweitert und der Einfluss von Kontexten auf Lehr- und Lernprozesse untersucht. Dabei werden Lernkontexte als eigenstandige und dynamische Faktoren berucksichtigt.

Awareness and Reflection in Mobile Learning Support

This chapter analyses contextual parameters for designing mobile information visualization for stimulating reflection on learning actions. We discuss the transformation process from a desktop centered web-application into a mobile web-information system. Such transformations are always required whenever desktop applications do not meet the fundamental requirements of mobile or – more precisely – hand-held technologies.