Jaime Muñoz

Using Design Patterns as Usability Heuristics for Mobile Groupware Systems

The objective of this research was to determine the capability of design patterns to find usability issues in mobile groupware interfaces. A particular collection of patterns was used for this purpose. Patterns were obtained by identifying essential activities and collaborative tasks in the communication process among members of working groups. A previous study on said proposal suggested that design solutions offered by the patterns foster communication, collaboration, and coordination through user interface elements. This new analysis evaluated virtues of the proposal from a user interface-assessment perspective. For this purpose 6 experts on design, usability, HCI and UCD validated the heuristics, which were then applied by 12 members of an educational support group called USAER. Results suggested that proposed heuristics could provide a reliable perspective of the usability level of mobile user interfaces for groupware applications.

Educational resources as learning Web services, an alternative point of view to learning objects.

The availability of educational resources on the Web is an efficient way of acquiring and sharing the knowledge through e-Learning. Nowadays there are hundreds of learning objects on the Internet; these objects are developed under e-Learning specifications and standards, such as SCORM and IMS Content Package. These standards allow the use of learning objects in learning management systems. However, learning environments and learning objects must have been built to the same standards. In this sense, there are several initiatives for e-Learning supported by services oriented architectures and Web services technologies. These initiatives pursue the integration of features that promote interoperability and thereby reusability of educational resources. The goal of this paper is to describe how educational resources can be dealt with as Web services in a learning management system, representing an alternative to learning objects. In this sense, learning Web services are software components that allow the use of educational resources. The employment of learning Web services allows the use and reuse of educational content in different learning environments, and other client applications. These learning Web services can be described, published, discovered and invoked using open standards over an Internet protocol backbone, such as SOAP, XML, WSDL, and HTTP. This can be achieved by extending a Learning Management Systems like Moodle, where integration, presentation, and management of learning Web services may be performed, as described in this paper.

Learning objects developing framework based on a knowledge management strategy known as Community Practice (CoP)

We propose a framework to create Learning Object based on the knowledge management model known as Community of Practice CoP, the frameworks elements are: technology, people and process, the technology is a Cloud Computing, people are the user or learning object creators, and the process is a knowledge management model that makes a better interaction between those elements. The principle of the framework is a better interaction between information and knowledge and its phases, both are different and do not exclude each other, both complements each other in order to create new knowledge, in the past knowledge management models were approached to infrastructure as a way to create knowledge today the approach is more toward to people, the knowledge is created basically by humans and their interactions, the proposal is to use a knowledge management model more approached to people because the knowledge is better created on a social interaction.

EndusCheck: Web application to optimize and automate the process to determine the satisfaction on learning objects

The main purpose of this study its to present a web application called EndusCheck as a solution to facilitate the process to determine end users satisfaction that uses learning objects mainly, but it can be used to measure satisfaction level in another educative modalities and technologies too. In fact, it can be used to determinate satisfaction to any product or service. In this document first it talks about Services Theory and its relation with educational services across satisfaction studies. Then it presents the main problem to determine satisfaction implementing the gap number 5 from Servqual Model. This document includes a Conceptual Model that its presented, as a theoretical fundament to develop EndusCheck. Besides are presented all the normal software development phases. Also this study, focus on the three main features that distinguish EndusCheck from another commercial applications. Finally, it intends EndusCheck as a solution that facing the gaps calculation.