Juan Peire

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.

Examples of distance learning projects in the European Community

The innovation brought by the introduction of new technologies in our modern society has also started to appear in education. The biggest efforts come from the institutions involved in distance education, partly due to the characteristics of the educational system they represent. In order to improve the technology development there are a large number of projects being developed inside the European Union. This paper discusses the current situation of distance learning and the technological resources available including e-mail, video conferencing, Internet and the World Wide Web and virtual teaching-learning environment. Some of the European Projects including new technologies in distance learning are also discussed.

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.

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.

Approaching hybrid wind-diesel systems and controller area network

High wind penetration hybrid wind-diesel systems have complex control requirements. The random nature of the wind, the cubic velocity to power relationship and the fast response of wind turbines make control goals like maintain system stability, and prescribed power quality levels, not easy to achieve. This paper deals with how to implement a distributed control system based on the controller area network (CAN) in hybrid wind diesel systems with high wind penetration. Firstly some introduction to hybrid wind-diesel systems is presented. Secondly two architectures for such hybrid systems are presented and studied mainly from the control point of view. This study concludes with a need of a distributed control, and the definition of some sensor and actuator nodes in the system. The CAN bus is used to close one of the several regulation loops presented. Some considerations about real time distributed control like clock synchronization among nodes when using CAN bus are presented. Finally some advantages of using CAN with such hybrid systems are outlined.

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.

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.