María Luisa Sein-Echaluce

Using Learning Analytics to improve teamwork assessment

The individual evidences are monitored in each phase of the teamwork process.Indicators to monitor the individual evidences in the teamwork process are presented.There is strong positive correlation between grades and student-student interactions.The Learning Analytics system reduces the time spent for the individual assessment.The Learning Analytics system facilitates decision making in the teamwork process. Acquiring the teamwork competency is fundamental nowadays, in order to guarantee a correct working performance for individuals. This means that a great deal of importance is being given to this activity in educational circles. Nevertheless, evaluating the development of teamwork individually is not simple, given that on many occasions there is no objective evidence to study. Information and Communication Technologies applied to educational contexts enable access to information that can help in this analysis. However, it is still complex due to the large amount of information that needs to be considered. This study proposes indicators based on the interaction between learning agents (student-student and active-passive). The exploration of these indicators contributes to the assessment of the individual development within the teamwork context. The analysis carried out in this study demonstrates that there is a direct relation between these interactions and final grading corresponding to individual assessment of teamwork activities by teachers. Additionally, a Learning Analytics system is introduced as support for the challenging task that teachers face in evaluating and monitoring individual progress within teamwork. The information provided by the Learning Analytics system and timely information extraction allow preventing problems, carrying out corrective measures and making decisions to improve the learning process of teamwork.

Learning services-based technological ecosystems

The gap between technology and learning methods has two important implications: on the one hand, we should not expect the integration of technological advances into teaching to be an easy task; and there is a danger that mature educational technologies and methods might not give an adequate answer to the demands and needs of society, underusing their transforming potential to improve learning processes. This study discusses the need for a new technological environment supporting learning services, and proposes the concept of the technological learning ecosystem as a solution to both problems. Educational ecosystems should be able to break the technological constraints of existing learning platforms and achieve an effective improvement in learning processes. Our proposed educational ecosystems pivot around five specific lines of action: 1) a framework architecture that supports learning service-based ecosystems; 2) learning analytics for educational decision making; 3) adaptive knowledge systems; 4) gamification of learning processes; 5) semantic portfolios to collect evidence of learning.

Epistemological and ontological spirals: From individual experience in educational innovation to the organisational knowledge in the university sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the development of a knowledge management system. It allows the creation of new knowledge, its consolidation, distribution and combination in the field of educational innovation, in such a way that the knowledge is transferred from individuals to the organisation and from the organisation to individuals. To achieve this, the knowledge spirals of Nonaka are integrated. The epistemological spiral is used to obtain the ontologies that feed the ontological spiral. Design/methodology/approach – More than 600 university teachers participated in the research and the development of the management system, in which more than 400 educational innovation experiences and 1,100 authors have been included. Findings – The epistemological spiral is used to obtain the ontologies that feed the ontological spiral. The result is a double spiral that allows the contribution of a conceptual model and the development of an innovative tool that enables and automates the effective...

Improving the MOOC learning outcomes throughout informal learning activities

The Massive Open Online Courses (hereafter referred to as MOOC) were born as a space where the university could offer training outside of the boundaries of the classroom and based on informal and social learning. The characteristics of the MOOC: massification, heterogeneity of profiles, professions, educational levels and origin, to encourage informal learning by means of social technology. Nevertheless, the current MOOC are based on methodologies and technology linked with formal learning, moving the university academic model to the so-called XMOOC. In this article, an XMOOC has been designed and imparted that integrates informal learning activities. The study demonstrates that people that have undertaken activities based on informal learning have a better perception of the result of their learning. Similarly, those activities break current boundaries of the MOOC as is the continuity of the learning once the MOOC has been completed. The study also deals with establishing variables that allow the identification of a profile with willingness to carry out informal learning activities.

A Knowledge Management System to Classify Social Educational Resources Within a Subject Using Teamwork Techniques

The traditional way to develop contents for a subject is based on the faculty perception and experience, however students should be taken into account. This work proposes a methodology that promotes the creation, classification and organization both teachers’ and students’ learning resources within the same subject scope in a timeless manner. Teamwork process is monitored by a proactive method that makes possible the generation of resources collaboratively. A knowledge management system allows to Classify, Search, Organize, Relate and Adapt the generated resources and includes a semantic search engine, based on ontologies, which provides a final product for users’ needs. A first iteration of an action-research allows answering questions such as the types of resources created during the teamwork (with academic, social and service orientation), how to stablish a common organization of the created knowledge for all potential users and improve educational resources of an academic subject with these collaborative resources.

Exploring Student Interactions: Learning Analytics Tools for Student Tracking

This paper presents four categories of learning analytics tools: dashboards, ad hoc tools, tools for analysis of specific issues, and learning analytics frameworks, and details the characteristics of a selection of tools within each category: (1) Moodle Dashboard and Moodle default reporting tool; (2) Interactions and Teamwork Assessment Tool; (3) SNAPP, GraphFES and Moodle Engagement Analytics; and (4) VeLA and GISMO. The study investigates how these tools can be applied to the analysis of courses by using real data from a course that made intensive use of forums, wikis, web resources, videos, quizzes and assignments. The discussion that follows points out how the different tools complement each other, and suggests the implementation of basic dashboards in learning platforms and the use of external frameworks for learning analytics.

Generalized Elliptic Anomalies

Regularizing and linearizing functions that generalize transformations of Szebehely and Bond, Nacozy, Belen’kii and Cid et al. are introduced.

Learning content management systems for the definition of adaptive learning environments

The most commonly used systems in e Learning (both in remote learning and in the support of face-to-face teaching) are the Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). The common feature to all of them is that both the teachers and the students must adapt themselves to the organizational structure of LCMS. The students depend on the organization of resources and activities established by the teachers, who must adapt themselves to the way that the LCMS has of storing the resources and to the type of activities permitted under a predefined sequence. Software engineering can break this scheme, making it possible to manage the learning process individually and adapting both resources and its organization to the profile and necessities of each student. This work is based on the integration of resources, generated by the teachers, the students and the sector, in subjects of different Engineering degrees. Over these resources a learning content management system has been created, so that the student specifies his circumstantial requirements (making a class work, preparing for a specific exam, etc.). The adaptive system presents an emergent window to the student with the most useful resources available. That window updates the contents continuously. The result of cooperation between students taking part in the experience has generated more than 500 learning resources.

iMOOC Platform: Adaptive MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs presents low completion rates, they are massive thus the participants’ profile is too much heterogeneous regarding origin, capacitation, motivation and learning aims. The number of studies that propose using adaptive techniques to resolve the problems above is increasing. This work presents the logistic, methodological and technological models of an adaptivity-based framework. This framework includes the basic elements of adaptive learning using a learning management system as core technology and expanding the adaptive possibilities in the logistics of the courses. The proposed model is implemented in an adaptive platform so called iMOOC that currently has a campus composed by four adaptive MOOCs. Also, a study about the participants’ perception of usefulness and their needs for the adaptive processes is presented.

Cooperative Micro Flip Teaching

This work integrates two aspects whose positive impact on learning has been tested flip teaching and cooperation among students. In this proposal the faculty/students of a subject use, throughout the flip teaching technique, the resources created by students of a different degree. The theme of the resources is about teamwork competence, topic in which students create and later use the resources. The paper describes how to use and organize the generated and shared resources by the students, using the proposed teaching/learning methodology that is so called Micro Flip Teaching. Also, the results of the students’ usefulness perception are presented.