Covadonga Rodrigo

Accessibility assessment of MOOC platforms in Spanish: UNED COMA, COLMENIA and Miriada X

This article develops a methodology for the assessment of MOOC courses, focusing on the degree of accessibility of three Spanish MOOC platforms: UNED COMA, COLMENIA and Miriada X. Four different criteria have been used in this context: automatic tools, disability simulators, testing tools and educational content.

Accessible user profile modeling for academic services based on MOOCs

MOOCs are examples of the evolution of eLearning environments, it is a fact that the flexibility of the learning services allows students to learn at their own time, place and pace, enhances continuous communication and interaction between all participants in knowledge and community building, benefits people with disabilities and therefore can improve their level of employability and social inclusion. MOOCs are leading a revolutionary computer and mobile-based scenario along with social technologies that will emergence new kinds of learning applications that enhance communication and collaboration processes, for that reason a strategy of the use of metadata regarding the achievement of accessibility from content to user preferences is presented in this paper, in order to achieve a better accessibility level while designing new learning services for people with functional diversity based upon MOOCs.

Strategies for improving the level of accessibility in the design of MOOC-based learning services

Access to MOOC platforms has barriers: there is a lack of accessibility to educational resources, communications tools and even the personalisation of user interfaces. Added to this are difficulties such as the need to develop specific digital or even social skills for those students with functional diversity. Therefore, a vision of the different strategies in relation to the achievement of accessibility (from the content to user preferences) is presented in this work; strategies which must be tackled with the aim of achieving a better level of accessibility during the design of new learning services based on MOOCs.

Modelling ubiquity for second language learning

Distance second language learning is essentially practical and skill-based requiring personal, social and occupational language-mediated activities with other speakers using the target language. Computer technology has long been used to try to overcome the challenges of distance learning although with limited success. To improve this situation, the authors developed a theoretical framework for second language learning that combined a cognitive student model with a collaborative group model. As the underlying access to information and computational resources becomes more ubiquitous, the framework is less able to represent how a specific computing device and real-world context mediate the selection and structuring of materials and activities, therefore, limiting the frameworks effectiveness for second language learning. Hence, the existing models need to be complemented with a functional ubiquity model, which characterises the way in which the degree of ubiquity defines the types of learning activities and resources available in the framework.

Experiments in calibration and validation for medical content-based images retrieval

We present a CBIR system (Content-based Image Retrieval). The system establishes a set of visual features which will be automatically generated. The sort of features is diverse and they are related to various concepts. After visual features calculation, a calibration process is performed whereby the system estimates the best weight for each feature. It uses a calibration algorithm (an iterative process) and a set of experiments, and the result is the influence of each feature in the main function that is used for the retrieval process. In image validation, the modifications to the main function are verified so as to ensure that the new function is better than the preceding one. Finally, the image retrieval process is performed according to the ImageCLEFmed rules, fully described in [2, 5]. The retrieval results have not been the expected ones, but they are a good starting for the future.

Challenges while MOOCifying a HE eLearning course on Universal Accessibility

There are some similarities in developing a traditional Higher Education (HE) eLearning course and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), due to the use of the basis of eLearning instructional design. But in MOOCs, students should be continually influenced by information, social interactions and experiences forcing the faculty to come up with new approaches and ideas to develop a really engaging course. In this paper, the process of MOOCifying an online course on Universal Accessibility is detailed. The needed quality model is based upon the one used for all online degree programs at our university and on a variable metric specially designed for UNED MOOC courses making possible to control how each course was structured, what kind of resources were used and how activities, interaction and assessment were included. The learning activities were completely adapted, along with the content itself and the on-line assessment. For this purpose, the Gardners Multiple Intelligences Product Grid has been selected.

Enhancing authoring, modelling and collaboration in e-learning environments: UNED research outline in the context of E-Madrid excellence network

In the last years, authoring based on e-learning standards has been consolidated as a core factor of industry and development of interoperable and effective virtual learning environments. However, there is a need for further research on abstraction to provide a more instructional view in the context of authoring tools in a variety of ways, in order to avoid being driven by Learning Technology (LT) specifications, facilitate instructional knowledge aggregation, and to provide an appropriate level of clarity and semantics in the design of collaborative activities. We propose a combination of techniques to provide this instructional abstraction in the context of the new European educational model, combining instructional layers and collaborative scripts in authoring tools, and semantic web techniques for extending e-learning material in order to harness the wealth of existing web content and semantically labeled repositories.

Raising awareness of the accessibility challenges in mathematics MOOCs

MOOCs provide learning environments that make it easier for learners to study from anywhere, at their own pace and with open access to content. This has revolutionised the field of eLearning, but accessibility continues to be a problem, even more so if we include the complexity of the STEM disciplines which have their own specific characteristics. This work presents an analysis of the accessibility of several MOOC platforms which provide courses in mathematics. We attempt to visualise the main web accessibility problems and challenges that disabled learners could face in taking these types of courses, both in general and specifically in the context of the subject of mathematics.

Enrichment of Accessible LD and Visualization for Humanities: MPOC Model and Prototype

In this paper, it is presented how to enrich available linked data to facilitate the work of experts in the Musacces project (http://www.musacces.es/). First step has been implemented in the current version of a prototype MPOC1, that allows the access and visualization of information related with the Spanish Prado Museum (the target of the project). Main aim of the project is to work with semantic technologies in two ways: the management of available data from different resources creating in a first step a “local repository” for research purposes. The implemented functionalities are based on a crawler that extracts all the available metadata from an artwork and its artist, and on an enrichment component allowing the collaboration of the experts, in order to access and visualize the information guided by the user.