Elio San Cristóbal

Middleware for the Development of Context-Aware Applications inside m-Learning: Connecting e-Learning to the Mobile World

This paper addresses the issue of the creation of context-aware applications inside the Mobile-Learning approach. It tries to clarify aspects like the most suitable environments of application; how new features of mobile devices, such as GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, motion sensors, etc., must be taken into account. It also addresses why most of the m-Learning applications do not make use of the existing services and knowledge of the Learning Management Systems, which are in fact the real pillars of the e-learning methodology. Finally, the architectural design of a context-aware framework created by the authors is described. The main contribution of this framework is to provide contextual information from different sources, including different kind of geographical sensors (allowing roaming among them) and external services. As result of the work, the middleware has been developed and it is being used in the development of several m-learning projects.

Shareable educational architectures for remote laboratories

The proliferation of remote laboratories in multiple disciplines of science has removed the cost and administration burdens that hinder the adoption of practical sessions in engineering education. Remote laboratories provide online workbenches unconstrained by neither temporal nor geographical considerations and allow an interactive learning that maintains student attention. Recently, remote laboratories have been developed at multiple universities and adopted in engineering education. Furthermore, some of these laboratories are replicated at many universities such as the electronic circuits remote labs: NetLab, VISIR, and labs based on NI ELVIS II. This was the commence of a new mainstream which advocates a better remodeling of those laboratories to allow their allocation, sharing among universities, and their communication with other heterogeneous systems, e.g., Learning Management Systems (LMS). In this context, numerous sharable educational architectures for remote labs integration have emerged such as LiLa, Lab2go, ISILab, DCL, WebLab Deusto, iLab (ISA), and Labshare (Sahara). This paper reports on the emerging solutions for remote laboratories implementation and deployment in engineering education in an efficient way. The paper discusses different integration scenarios pointing out features, limitations, and upcoming challenges.

A Context-Aware Application Based on Ubiquitous Location

Location tracking systems are becoming more relevant in many new environments, due to the fact they are the core of context aware applications. This new concept can improve the way organizations provide services and do business. Inside university area, users location (both students, teachers and staff) gives rise to a new kind of services based on their profile and on the area in which the user is in each moment, allowing a personalization of the offered contents. The present paper shows how context-aware applications based on location technologies can be developed thanks to a homogenizer middleware that offers contextual information from the different location methods, such as GPS, Wi-Fi and RFID.

Structured remote laboratory development

The use of remote laboratories has become a common technique in universities to provide educational services related to engineering. However, the development efforts of these laboratories have not been contemplated in a structured way, with no specific methodologies that allow the reuse of such laboratories or parts thereof. This problem of structured and methodological development is associated with a number of disadvantages which imply that the development of new labs or their integration with other services is a complex task. This paper shows how this goal can be achieved using RELATED (REmote LAboratories exTendED). It is shown the development model proposed by this methodology, as well as the services provided by this development framework. The article shows an example of application of this methodology, using a magnetic levitation system, which is prepared for “on-site” experiences. From this laboratory, and following specific methodological steps, is shown as is possible to reuse developed code and provide a set of remote experiments for the magnetic levitation system.

Educational games for improving the teaching-learning process of a CLIL subject: Physics and chemistry in secondary education

The use of educational games in an academic context seems to be a superb alternative to traditional learning activities, such as drill-type exercises, in order to engage 21st-century students. Consequently, this work tries to raise the following objectives: analyze the effectiveness of game-based learning, characterize game elements that may contribute to create playing experiences, comprehend how different player types interact with games and, finally, design interactive games which may create challenges, set goals and provide feedback on progress while motivating learners to study physics and chemistry in a foreign language in the second cycle of Secondary Education (4th E.S.O. that corresponds to the age of 15-16 years old). Specifically, we have used several Web 2.0 tools (Hot Potatoes, Scratch, What2Learn and SMART Notebook 11) and applications (Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel) in order to create the games; and these games are based on the successive contents: laboratory safety, laboratory equipment, stoichiometry, atomic structure, electronic configuration, the periodic table, forces, motion and energy.

Use of VISIR Remote Lab in Secondary School: Didactic Experience and Outcomes

VISIR remote lab, designed as a learning tool in subjects related with Electricity and Electronics in undergraduate and graduate courses, has unlikely been used in secondary school technology teaching up today. In the following document, a research work is presented in order to show the development, implementation and learning outcomes of an educational experience for secondary students, using VISIR remote lab as a means to carry out practices of measuring and introducing a methodology based on the features of Bloom-Anderson’s taxonomy. The experience have been guided by a work document in which explanations and didactic activities have been included, specifically designed under a cognitive skills development focus.

Poster: An Experience API Framework to Describe Learning Interactions from On-line Laboratories

Learning Analytics is an emerging field focused on analyzing learners’ interactions with educational content. One of the key open issues in learning analytics is the standardization of the data collected. This is a particularly challenging issue in online laboratories. This paper presents an implementation with one of the most promising specifications: Experience API (xAPI). The Experience API relies on Communities of Practice developing profiles that cover different use cases in specific domains. This paper presents the Online Laboratories xAPI Profile: a profile developed to align with the most common use cases in the online laboratories domain. The profile is applied to a case study (a windmill lab), which explores the technical practicalities of standardizing data acquisition. In summary, the paper presents a framework to track online laboratories and their implementation with the xAPI specification.

Cloud-based architecture for e-leaming

This paper presents our work on the developement of an architecture for e-learning that is based on cloud computing. This includes the creation of virtualized environments to be used in the field of networks and communications, and the development of techniques to predict the load of the technology infrastructures of the university. The main aim of this work is to improve the use of the resources of the technology infrastructure of the university and provide an easy to use environment for students.