Juan Cruz-Benito

Evolution of the Conversation and Knowledge Acquisition in Social Networks Related to a MOOC Course

This paper presents a real case of tracking conversations and participation in social networks like Twitter and Google+ from students enrolled in a MOOC course. This real case presented is related to a MOOC course developed between January 12 and February 8, 2015, in the iMOOC platform, created as result of the collaboration by Technical University of Madrid, University of Za-ragoza and University of Salamanca. The course had more than 400 students and more than 700 interactions (publications, replies, likes, reshares, etc.) retrieved from the social both social networks (about 200 interactions in Twitter and 500 in Google+). This tracking process of students’ conversations and students’ participation in the social networks allows the MOOC managers and teachers to understand the students’ knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition within the social networks, allowing them to unlock the possibility of use this knowledge in order to enhance the MOOC contents and results, or even close the loop between the students’ participation in a MOOC course and the parallel students´ usage of social networks to learn, by the combination of both tools using adaptive layers (and other layers like the cooperation or gamification like in the iMOOC platform) in the eLearning platforms, that could lead the students to achieve better results in the Learning process.

Monitoring and feedback of learning processes in virtual worlds through analytics architectures: A real case

The application of techniques related to Learning Analytics, including the recovery and processing of data and evidences related with the learning tasks, might result capital to improve educational processes that occurs within the virtual worlds. This paper aims to show a real example of application of a learning analytics framework which supports a real case of practical learning in a 3D virtual environment, analyzing in depth the problems that arises there from. As remarkable outcomes, this paper shows a whole system that comprises several tools, which make possible the automatization of a learning process inside a virtual world with the subject of quality assurance in pharmacy laboratories.

Usalpharma: a cloud-based architecture to support quality assurance training processes in health area using virtual worlds.

This paper discusses how cloud-based architectures can extend and enhance the functionality of the training environments based on virtual worlds and how, from this cloud perspective, we can provide support to analysis of training processes in the area of health, specifically in the field of training processes in quality assurance for pharmaceutical laboratories, presenting a tool for data retrieval and analysis that allows facing the knowledge discovery in the happenings inside the virtual worlds.

Extending MOOC ecosystems using web services and software architectures

This paper present a research project that tries to extend the MOOC ecosystems by integrating external tools like social networks. This integration is developed by using a software architecture that mediate between the different systems and platforms establishing communication workflows and analyzing the information retrieved. This kind of system is applied in a real case, and it allows teachers and managers of the MOOC platform to get enhanced information and insights about users interaction with contents and MOOC tools, as well as some metrics impossible to retrieve or calculate manually in this kind of eLearning platforms with high amounts of users.

Analysis of knowledge management experiences in spanish public administration

Under the development of the Digital Society and with the aim of achieving a true transition from the Information Society to the Knowledge Society, ICTs play a capital role in educational and knowledge management processes in any kind of entity, from Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to the Public Administration. The Spanish Public Administration is composed by a huge amount of the heterogeneous public organisms that range from research centres to public companies. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis about the knowledge management in the Spanish Public Administration through several real study cases developed in different public organisms. The analysis shows how the case studies follow the Suricata Architecture in order to identify success factors to replicate them in other public contexts.

Developing win-win solutions for virtual placements in informatics: the VALS case

The placements and internships are one of the main paths to get professional background and some skills for students, especially in areas like informatics and computer sciences. The European-funded VALS project tries to promote the virtual placements and establish a new initiative in virtual placements called Semester of Code. This initiative binds higher education institutions, students, companies, foundations and Open Source projects in order to create virtual placements and solve needs that they have in relation with those placements. This paper introduces some projects about virtual placements that other institutions and companies perform, also the paper describes the needs, opinions and considerations about the virtual placements for each stakeholder involved in the placements, to finally explain the design decisions and actions behind the Semester of Code, and how they are intended to get better virtual placements and successful results.

Virtual placements for informatics students in open source business across Europe

VALS (Virtual Alliances for Learning Society) European Project has the aim of establishing sustainable processes to build knowledge partnerships between Higher Education and companies to collaborate on resolving authentic business problems through open innovation mediated by the use of Open Source Software. To achieve this, VALS builds knowledge partnerships between Higher Education and companies who work together on resolving authentic business problems through open innovation. The innovative approach is to leverage virtual placements of informatics students in companies in order to foster entrepreneurial skills and attitudes, and to make use of the results to establish new learning and teaching methods. This results in the Semester of Code initiative, a set of methods and processes for creating and managing a real virtual placement, and for integrating this into innovative teaching and learning strategy. To show these methods and processes, this paper describes the general methodology designed to perform the Semester of Code, as well as several guidelines on how to develop the software that will support this process. Also describes a real adaptation of theoretical approach of this whole process in the case of an Academic Institution, including comprehensively all the issues affecting the process implementation in a real context.

USALSIM: learning, professional practices and employability in a 3D virtual world

USALSIM is a project developed by the University of Salamanca as a response to the policy changes of learning and work placements in the new European Space for Higher Education, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and inscribed within an innovation programme regarding the employability of university students CAIE059. The contribution of USALSIM is concerned with how to face the increase in the number of students who will participate in the different university work placement programmes and the increasing number of companies and institutions necessary to host and train these students. This project uses a 3D virtual environment a work placement simulator that creates a virtual representation of different work environments and allows students to acquire professional skills. Representing a professional workspace such as a laboratory, for example, the student can simulate common tasks through active learning. This virtual world is focused on a constructive pedagogy, whereby students are directly involved in their formative development, establishing professional relationships, developing transversal and technical competencies, and evaluating their knowledge.

Software Architectures Supporting Human-Computer Interaction Analysis: A Literature Review

This paper presents a Literature Review on software architectures that support Human-Computer Interaction analysis processes. Despite of software architectures and Human-Computer interaction are not new research fields; there are not much scientific papers that cover the relation of both (at least in the Web of Science and Scopus databases used). The Literature Review presented covers the relationship between both fields, conducting the research using 3 questions proposed by the authors in order to discover the current state of art of this software architectures that supports HCI, to research about the different trends in the field of software engineering that help in the design, definition and exploitation of them and to find out if there is in the literature an application to the field of eLearning of these software complex systems that deal with HCI analysis. Regarding the results of the Literature Review, authors pre-sent a classification of the papers reviewed by 24 common features discovered, helping the readers and others researchers to know how these software architectures work with different kind of HCI analysis approaches, how are designed, what are the goals of applying this kind of system for the analysis, or what are the application contexts.

Defining Generic Data Collectors for Learning Analytics: Facing Up the Heterogeneous Data from Heterogeneous Environments

This proposes how to face up, from a technological point of view, the collection and storage of heterogeneous data coming from heterogeneous environments related to the Learning process in order to take advantage in tasks related to Learning Analytics. It introduces the problem with the heterogeneous data over the time and deals how to resolve this issue giving up a theoretical approach and a proof of concept.