Gabriel Diaz

New technology trends in education: Seven years of forecasts and convergence

Each year since 2004, a new Horizon Report has been released. Each edition attempts to forecast the most promising technologies likely to impact on education along three horizons: the short term (the year of the report), the mid-term (the next 2 years) and the long term (the next 4 years). This paper analyzes the evolution of technology trends from 2004 to 2014 that correspond to the long-term predictions of the most recent Horizon Report. The study analyzes through bibliometric analysis which technologies were successful and became a regular part of education systems, which ones failed to have the predicted impact and why, and the shape of technology flows in recent years. The study also shows how the evolution and maturity of some technologies allowed the revival of expectations for others. The analysis here, which focuses on educational applications, offers guidelines that may be helpful to those seeking to invest in new research areas.

Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) for Remote Wiring and Measurement of Electronic Circuits on Breadboard

This paper reports on a state-of-the-art remote laboratory project called Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). VISIR allows wiring and measuring of electronic circuits remotely on a virtual workbench that replicates physical circuit breadboards. The wiring mechanism is developed by means of a relay switching matrix connected to a PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) instrumentation platform. The entire equipment is controlled by LabVIEW server software, in addition to a measurement server software that protects the equipment from hazard connections by verifying input circuit designs, sent by students, before being executed. This paper addresses other approaches such as remote labs based on Data Acquisition Cards (DAQs), NetLab, and RemotElectLab, comparing them with VISIR in order to emphasize its singularity. Topics discussed are as follows: the technical description, software, operation cycle, features, and provided services. In addition, the feedback received by students at several universities and the encountered drawbacks along with the proposed solutions are highlighted. The paper finally addresses the ongoing and future challenges within the VISIR community including its integration with Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and iLab Shared Architecture (ISA), its new hardware version release that is based on LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI), and its new open platform version that supports federated access.

State of the art of frameworks and middleware for facilitating mobile and ubiquitous learning development

The emergence of mobile and ubiquitous technologies as important tools to complement formal learning has been accompanied by a growing interest in their educational benefits and applications. Mobile devices can be used to promote learning anywhere and anytime, to foster social learning and knowledge sharing, or to visualize augmented reality applications for learning purposes. However, the development of these applications is difficult for many researchers because it requires understanding many different protocols; dealing with distributed schemas, processes, platforms, and services; learning new programming languages; and interacting with different hardware sensors and drivers. For that reason, the use of frameworks and middleware that encapsulate part of this complexity appears to be fundamental to the further development of mobile learning projects. This study analyzes the state of the art of frameworks and middleware devoted to simplifying the development of mobile and ubiquitous learning applications. The results can be useful to many researchers involved in the development of projects using these technologies by providing an overview of the features implemented in each of these frameworks.

Expanding the Boundaries of the Classroom: Implementation of Remote Laboratories for Industrial Electronics Disciplines

It is apparent that implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with instruments and, thus, with the industrial real world. In recent decades, the high cost and administration burdens of physical equipment have caused a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. This situation has fostered the development and adoption of remote laboratories as a replacement. Recently, remote laboratories based on a large variety of technologies have been developed at multiple universities and adopted in industrial electronics engineering education. Furthermore, some of these laboratories are replicated at many universities. This was the commencement of a new mainstream that advocates a better remodeling of those laboratories to allow their allocation, sharing among universities, and their interoperable communication with other heterogeneous educational systems, e.g., learning management systems (LMSs). This article, on the one hand, reports on the design of the state-of-the-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics disciplines along with the cutting-edge technologies adopted. On the other hand, the article sheds light on the outstanding interoperable educational remote laboratories architectures, classifying them with regard to their exclusive features and provided services, and pointing out the limitations of each.

State-of-the-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications

There is no doubt that the implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with the instruments and thus, with the industrial real-world. Moreover, they augment the learning outcomes by strengthening the understanding of scientific concepts and theories. Unfortunately, there exist a wide gap between the engineering educational curricula and the industrial real-world owing to the lack of experimentation availability. This is due to high cost and administration burdens that have hindered the adoption of practical sessions causing a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. Recently, with the advent and exploitation of computer and communication technologies, remote laboratories have broadly proliferated among many universities. Remote laboratories provide on-line ubiquitous workbenches unconstrained by neither temporal nor geographical considerations and allow an interactive learning environment that maintains student attention. In this context, hundreds of remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications have been developed and numerous technologies have emerged in order to facilitate their construction and implementation. This paper reports on state-of-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications. and their design stages. The paper addresses many solutions in the development and the design stages, along with cutting edge technologies involved. This is in order to foster remote laboratories adoption within industrial electronics disciplines and hence, increase the industrial competencies in engineering education.

Remote labs as learning services in the educational arena

Technology-enhanced learning is not just interacting with learning objects. Physical labs are another useful resource in education, especially for engineering and science education. They are confined to the physical location they are bound to. It is obviously interesting for any learning process to be able to open up this access from remote locations in the same effective way as learning objects are accessed through a Learning Management System, taking advantage of the provided services, such as authentication, group building, etc.

An automatic data mining method to detect abnormal human behaviour using physical activity measurements

Abnormal human behaviour detection under free-living conditions is a reliable method to detect disorders and diseases in healthcare applications. The problem with current methods to detect human behaviour changes is the use of supervised techniques that require human intervention. This work proposes an automatic data mining method based on physical activity measurements. Abnormal human behaviour is detected as an increase or decrease of the physical activity according to the historical data. Human behaviour is evaluated in real time grading its abnormality. The method has been validated involving users with a precision of 100% and a recall of 92%.

State of Art, Initiatives and New Challenges for Virtual and Remote Labs

Until a few decades ago, face to face classrooms and hand-on laboratories were the common solution for teaching theory and practice. But, new e-Learning tools have emerged and learning methodologies such as blended and distance learning have taken an important space in learning initiatives. Among them are virtual and remote Labs which provide student with a learning environment where can carry out the experiments through Internet and acquire the needed skills to develop his future jobs. This paper describes the importance of virtual and remote labs and their usage in learning scenarios.

VISIR deployment in undergraduate engineering practices

Practical sessions are the backbone of qualification in engineering education. It leads to a better understanding and allows mastering scientific concepts and theories. The lack of the availability of practical sessions at many universities and institutions owing to the cost and the unavailability of instructors the most of the time caused a significant decline in experimentation in engineering education over the last decades. Recently, with the progress of computer-based learning, remote laboratories have been proven to be the best alternative to the traditional ones, regarding to its low cost and ubiquity. Some universities have already started to deploy remote labs in their practical sessions. This contribution compiles diverse experiences based on the deployment of the remote laboratory, Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR), on the practices of undergraduate engineering grades at various universities within the VISIR community. It aims to show the impact of its usage on engineering education concerning the assessments of students and teachers as well.

State-of-the-art simulation systems for information security education, training and awareness

This paper describes state-of-the-art simulation systems designed for information security and information assurance education, training and awareness. Being people the weakest link in the implementation of any security policy, it is of paramount importance to strengthen that link before it gets broken. The best way of improving the reactions of any person when security is attempted to be compromised is by providing him/her with better education, attractive practical training and raising the general awareness on information assurance.