Marcelo Maina

The Art & Science of Learning Design

We live in an era defined by a wealth of open and readily available information, and the accelerated evolution of social, mobile and creative technologies. The provision of knowledge, once a primary role of educators, is now devolved to an immense web of free and readily accessible sources. Consequently, educators need to redefine their role not just “from sage on the stage to guide on the side” but, as more and more voices insist, as “designers for learning”. The call for such a repositioning of educators is heard from leaders in the field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and resonates well with the growing culture of design-based research in Education. However, it is still struggling to find a foothold in educational practice. We contend that the root causes of this discrepancy are the lack of articulation of design practices and methods, along with a shortage of tools and representations to support such practices, a lack of a culture of teacher-as-designer among practitioners, and insufficient theoretical development. The Art and Science of Learning Design (ASLD) explores the frameworks, methods, and tools available for teachers, technologists and researchers interested in designing for learning Learning Design theories arising from findings of research are explored, drawing upon research and practitioner experiences. It then surveys current trends in the practices, methods, and methodologies of Learning Design. Highlighting the translation of theory into practice, this book showcases some of the latest tools that support the learning design process itself.

The Future of Ubiquitous Learning

eleed, Iss. 12 - This book explores emerging pedagogical perspectives based on the design of new learning spaces supported by digital technologies and brings together some of the best research in this field. The book is divided into three themes: foundations of emerging pedagogies, learning designs for emerging pedagogies and, adaptive and personalized learning. The chapters provide up-to-date information about new pedagogical proposals, and examples for acquiring the requisite skills to both design and support learning opportunities that improve the potential of available technologies.

A Digital Ecosystem for Digital Competences: The CRISS Project Demo

CRISS is a flexible and scalable cloud-based digital learning ecosystem that has the potential to allow the guided acquisition, evaluation and certification of digital competences. This demonstration will highlight some of the key activities under development, their underlying pedagogy and how the platform’s features support the acquisition, assessment and certification of digital competences.

Natural User Interfaces Is It a Solution to Accomplish Ubiquitous Training in Minimally Invasive Surgery

Dear Editor: Graphical user interfaces have evolved to become a standard in the interaction between man and computer. Touch screens have become popular but they require physical contact. Natural user interfaces (NUIs) or gesture-based user interfaces are designed to use human behavior to interact with computers. One behavior can be hand gestures. NUIs allow one to manage without the use of mechanical devices and physical contact with devices such as mouse and keyboards; this characteristic has remarkable importance in medical environments such as operating and autopsy rooms. The methods used for gestures acquisition can be divided in those that include a specific device that the user can physically hold or annex to the body and those that are hands-free/body-free, which do not require physical contact. In 2013, the Leap Motion Controller (Leap Motion, Inc, San Francisco, CA) was launched. It is a device to detect the position and gestures. The Leap Motion Controller, with its API (application programmer interface), detects the position of predetermined objects (hands, fingers, instruments, pens) in a Cartesian plane in real time and reports discrete positions, gestures, and motion. The system consists of 3 infrared light transmitters and 2 infrared cameras (optical tracking system based on stereo vision), which can be classified as an optical tracking system based on the stereo vision principle. Among its applications the manipulation of medical images in dental surgery, urology, orthopedics, and general and hand surgery have been described as well as for manipulation of images during the making of angiography procedures and autopsies. Vargas and Vivas were the first to publish the use of the Leap Motion for the manipulation of a virtual surgical robot. Currently within the framework of the PhD program in e-Learning at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, an interdisciplinary working group formed by a pediatric surgeon, engineers, and education experts is designing a virtual 3D online environment for learning basic motor skills in minimally invasive surgery, using exercises from the Minimally Invasive Surgery Trainer-Virtual Reality and an additional from the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery program. The environment is designed in Unity, and it is used as the device for interaction with the laparoscopic surgery forceps of the Leap Motion Controller. In the current phase, the metrics and the feedback to proceed to make the studies of subjective and objective validation are taking place (Figure 1). If it is possible to demonstrate that the 3D online environments mediated by NUIs allow the learning of motor skills in minimally invasive surgery, a new research field and development in the area of surgical simulation will be opened. On the other hand, the dream of learning motor skills everywhere anytime with low-cost devices 639145 SRIXXX10.1177/1553350616639145Surgical InnovationAlvarez-Lopez et al letter2016

Articulating personal pedagogies through learning ecologies

The digital revolution enabled by social and ubiquitous technologies is constantly transforming macro- and microlevels of society including industry, organizations, and government as well as ways in which we communicate, we work, and we carry on our daily lives. Education is therefore also being challenged to respond to evolving societal demands by supporting the development of competent and engaged citizens. In this context, individuals’ capability to get involved and exploit the affordances of networked environments for learning and development may condition their opportunities to cope with societal and labor demands. In this chapter, the metaphor of learning ecologies is proposed to provide a framework from which to analyze interactions between individuals and their environment, and the way their experiences across different contexts throughout life promote and shape learning processes. Learning ecologies allow us to explore frontier pedagogies connecting formal, non-formal, and informal educational contexts, acting as personal strategies that may orchestrate lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep learning. We start by defining and framing learning ecologies, providing the theoretical roots, and reviewing some recent studies in the field. Next, we propose constructs and models but also strategies and tools that may be of help to enhance and support personal ecologies for learning. Finally, the concept of personal pedagogies is proposed to refer to a set of autonomy and agency skills and attitudes that can be dynamically integrated by individuals to support an ecology for self-development and personal learning. We articulate from this perspective several trends in the area of self-directed learning located in the technological and pedagogical intersection: MOOCs, current awareness, e-portfolios, and social networks.