Marc Jansen

Towards a Web-Based Framework to Support End-User Programming of Mobile Learning Activities

This paper describes the design and development stages of a web-based framework, aiming to support the creation of mobile applications within the context of mobile learning. The suggested approach offers the opportunity to deploy and execute these applications on mobile devices. This web-based solution additionally offers the possibility to visualize the data collected by the mobile applications in a web-browser. Despite previous research efforts carried out in this domain, few of the projects have addressed these processes from a purely web-based perspective. Currently, a prototype of an authoring tool for creating mobile data collection applications is already implemented. In order to integrate and validate this solution in everyday educational settings, we are collaborating with a network of high schools. On the basis of workshops with teachers we will carry out, refinements and requirements for further enhancements will be collected and will be used to guide our coming efforts.

mLearn4web: a web-based framework to design and deploy cross-platform mobile applications

This paper presents a web-based framework that allows the creation and deployment of mobile learning activities. We present an authoring tool that allows not-technically skilled persons to design mobile learning tasks and deploy them as a web-based mobile application. Since the presented approach is based exclusively on web-technologies, the deployed mobile application can be executed via a mobile browser and therefore is platform independent. Despite previous research efforts carried out in this domain, few of the projects have addressed this course of actions from a purely web-based perspective. Through the latest development of web technologies, mobile applications have access to internal sensors like camera, microphone and GPS and therefore allow data collection within web-applications. In order to validate whether the proposed framework can be applied in educational settings, we conducted a pilot study with experienced teachers and present the results of these efforts in this paper.

An Architecture for Supporting Heterogeneous Multi-Device Learning Environments

In recent years the diversity and the ownership of mobile devices steadily increased while the prices for this kind of devices decreased to a level that allows many students to own reasonably powerful devices. As mobile devices are also being used in learning scenarios, the challenge of today is the integration of multiple heterogeneous devices into existing and upcoming learning scenarios. This paper describes an architecture that allows easy integration of various kinds of mobile and non-mobile devices. The presented architecture will be exemplified by a group discussion scenario in a heterogeneous learning environment. The paper concludes with the description of a pilot study using the described system.

A Web-Based Framework to Design and Deploy Mobile Learning Activities: Evaluating Its usability, Learnability and Acceptance

This paper discusses the efforts carried out related to the design and development of a web-based framework that allows designing, deploying and executing mobile data collecting applications. Furthermore, it also allows analyzing and presenting the data that is generated during the mentioned process. The fact that the framework is completely web-based provides a platform independent execution of the mobile application on any mobile device with a web-browser. As a result that the whole life-cycle of creating, executing and discussing a mobile learning activity is implemented in pure web-based manner separates this work from similar efforts. In the course of this work, the current state of development of two of the components, the authoring tool and the mobile application is presented. This framework was introduced to teachers in an activity to follow up an initial study. On the basis of a workshop with teachers, we performed an explorative study regarding the technology acceptance and usability of two components of the proposed framework. The results are discussed and analyzed in this paper.

Flexible and Contextualized Cloud Applications for Mobile Learning Scenarios

This chapter describes our research efforts related to the design of mobile learning (m-learning) applications in cloud-computing (CC) environments. Many cloud-based services can be used/integrated in m-learning scenarios, hence, there is a rich source of applications that could easily be applied to design and deploy those within the context of cloud-based services. Here, we present two cloud-based approaches—a flexible framework for an easy generation and deployment of mobile learning applications for teachers, and a flexible contextualization service to support personalized learning environment for mobile learners. The framework provides a flexible approach that supports teachers in designing mobile applications and automatically deploys those in order to allow teachers to create their own m-learning activities supported by mobile devices. The contextualization service is proposed to improve the content delivery of learning objects (LOs). This service allows adapting the learning content and the mobile user interface (UI) to the current context of the user. Together, this leads to a powerful and flexible framework for the provisioning of potentially ad hoc mobile learning scenarios. We provide a description of the design and implementation of two proposed cloud-based approaches together with scenario examples. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of using flexible and contextualized cloud applications in mobile learning scenarios. Hereby, we contribute to this growing field of research by exploring new ways for designing and using flexible and contextualized cloud-based applications that support m-learning.

On the Detection of Influential Actors in Social Media

Detection of influential actors in social media plays an important role for increasing the quality and efficiency of work and services in many fields such as education, marketing, etc. This work aims to introduce a new approach for the characterization of influential actors in online social media, such as Twitter. We present on a model of influence of an actor that is based on the attractiveness of the actor in terms of the number of other new actors with which he or she has established relations over time. We have used this concept and measure of influence to determine optimal seeds in a simulation of influence maximization using two empirically collected social networks for the underlying graphs.

Towards a Multichannel Input Dimension in Learning Scenarios with Mobile Devices

This paper presents an approach towards a mobile learning environment, which is flexible in terms of supported scenarios, supported devices and input channels. The approach makes use of existing and commonly used channels like SMS, Twitter or Face book to increase acceptance and ease-of-use of mobile devices in learning scenarios. Envisaged application scenarios are described along with technical details for their realization.

Using a Rich Context Model for Real-Time Big Data Analytics in Twitter

In this paper we present an approach for contextual big data analytics in social networks, particularly in Twitter. The combination of a Rich Context Model (RCM) with machine learning is used in order to improve the quality of the data mining techniques. We propose the algorithm and architecture of our approach for real-time contextual analysis of tweets. The proposed approach can be used to enrich and empower the predictive analytics or to provide relevant context-aware recommendations.

Influential Actors Detection Using Attractiveness Model in Social Media Networks

Detection of influential actors in social media such as Twitter or Facebook can play a major role in improving the marketing efficiency, gathering opinions on particular topics, predicting the trends, etc. The current study aspires to extend our formal defined T measure to present a new measure aiming to recognize the actors influence by the strength of attracting new attractors into a networked community. Therefore, we propose a model of an actor influence based on the attractiveness of the actor in relation to the number of other attractors with whom he/she has established connections over time. Using an empirically collected social network for the underlying graph, we have applied the above-mentioned measure of influence in order to determine optimal seeds in a simulation of influence maximization.

Detection of strong attractors in social media networks

BackgroundDetection of influential actors in social media such as Twitter or Facebook plays an important role for improving the quality and efficiency of work and services in many fields such as education and marketing.Methods The work described here aims to introduce a new approach that characterizes the influence of actors by the strength of attracting new active members into a networked community. We present a model of influence of an actor that is based on the attractiveness of the actor in terms of the number of other new actors with which he or she has established relations over time.Results We have used this concept and measure of influence to determine optimal seeds in a simulation of influence maximization using two empirically collected social networks for the underlying graphs.ConclusionsOur empirical results on the datasets demonstrate that our measure stands out as a useful measure to define the attractors comparing to the other influence measures.