Daniel Burgos

Monitoring student progress using virtual appliances: A case study

The interactions that students have with each other, with the instructors, and with educational resources are valuable indicators of the effectiveness of a learning experience. The increasing use of information and communication technology allows these interactions to be recorded so that analytic or mining techniques are used to gain a deeper understanding of the learning process and propose improvements. But with the increasing variety of tools being used, monitoring student progress is becoming a challenge. The paper answers two questions. The first one is how feasible is to monitor the learning activities occurring in a student personal workspace. The second is how to use the recorded data for the prediction of student achievement in a course. To address these research questions, the paper presents the use of virtual appliances, a fully functional computer simulated over a regular one and configured with all the required tools needed in a learning experience. Students carry out activities in this environment in which a monitoring scheme has been previously configured. A case study is presented in which a comprehensive set of observations were collected. The data is shown to have significant correlation with student academic achievement thus validating the approach to be used as a prediction mechanism. Finally a prediction model is presented based on those observations with the highest correlation.

Modelling a stakeholder community via a social platform: the case of TELeurope.eu

Past attempts at creating stakeholder networks for specific fields of research or industrial sectors have shown to be a resource-consuming and time-consuming process, which requires continuous monitoring and political efforts, as well as the trial-and-error deployment of technological tools. Still, these networks are thought to be an efficient and essential communication instrument for addressing challenges and building capacities. The EU FP7 STELLAR Network of Excellence has the mission of establishing a network for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) stakeholders, and has decided to do so via an online social community called TELeurope. In this paper we provide an overview of some relevant experience in establishing collaborative networks in the fields of business sciences, learning networks and communities of practice and reflect on our experience thus far with TELeurope.