Martin Llamas-Nistal

A component model for standardized web-based education

We present a layered component model to support Web-based collaborative applications. We show how this model lets programmers focus on the particular logic of their applications, avoiding most of the issues related to collaboration, access control, and network management. The proposed model is organized into three layers on top of a foundation composed of commercial-off-the-shelf services and standard Internet protocols. The service level provides a network-transparent communications layer, database access, and distributed data interchange. The component level offers typical collaborative services, like user management, auditing, user-oriented messaging, higher-level events, project management, and a bulletin board. The application level supports actual applications constructed using the services offered by the underlying layers. A Web-based educational application has been developed over this framework to illustrate the process. This tele-education system, which follows the recommendations of the main institutions involved in the learning technology standardization process, is the second contribution presented by the authors.

Blended e-assessment

Existing e-assessment tools may not be a panacea to address all assessment situations, as students might find the traditional pen-and-paper approach to provide their answers more convenient than typing them online. For example, constructed response or essay-based assessments will require the active participation of students and lecturers to demonstrate and grade knowledge acquisition, reasoning, evaluation or argumentation. We propose an e-assessment solution that combines mainstream e-assessment features with the classical assessment approach where students write down their responses in paper.This approach supports both grading and access to exams anytime and anywhere. Students attend assessment sessions and are tested the traditional way, but grading, reporting of results, and statistical analysis are performed in the digital world. The proposed approach also provides support to the automated generation of assessment reports, and the administrative management of student grades and their automated transfer to student files. This tool may also be seen as a cost-effective alternative to computer-supported e-assessment, in those cases where the use of computers to perform assessment is not convenient or possible. The tool enables both formative and summative assessment, and also facilitates the transition from classical paper-and-pen-based assessment scenarios to digital ones. The tool has been validated during the last three academic years at University of Vigo, Spain. Highlights? We present a tool combining the paper-pen exams and digital assessment and grading. ? It supports both grading and access to exams anytime and anywhere trough the web. ? It may be seen as a cost-effective alternative to computer-supported e-assessment. ? The tool was validated during the last three years at University of Vigo, Spain.

Use of E-Learning Functionalities and Standards: The Spanish Case

This paper shows the results of a survey performed in Spain on the different functionalities of e-learning platforms. This survey was filled in by a group of teachers, experts in engineering education from across Spain, within the scope of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society. This paper presents their opinions on several aspects of e-learning functionalities, such as knowledge levels, levels of use, and usefulness, as well as describing the most commonly used platforms. One of the objectives of this work is to create a debate in the international community about the use of e-learning platforms and their main functionalities, the most frequently used standards, the implications for and the levels of support by institutions in their use of e-learning platforms, and in general, their advantages and disadvantages.

eAssessment: Trends in content reuse and standardization

eAssessment saves human work by automating presentation and marking, but also enables new forms of testing of interest for engineering education. Authoring reliable, high quality assessment content is a difficult and costly task. Public content repositories populated with stand-alone items of assessment content enable authors and teachers to set up an exam by selection and ordering, with little additional effort. Reusable, shareable assessment objects require conformance to standards of packaging and transportability. After revising eAssessment tools and content creation standards, this article identifies some popular learning platforms, authoring tools and public repositories, and verifies their standards compliance. Most popular learning platforms support packaging standards, but not assessment content transportability. Though some outstanding examples exist, there is a need for more public objects repositories and a deeper engagement in standards compliance. Government agencies and educational organizations have a role to play as the most powerful driving forces towards standards adoption for reusable content creation and sharing. Research in tools to aid education practitioners will be always valued, and can be carried on with rough consensus and small funding.

AREA: A social curation platform for open educational resources and lesson plans

Content curation has emerged as a topic of interest in the last few years in the Internet. It aims at discovering and ordering interesting resources from the web, and sharing them with others. From the profile and past behaviour of users, new resources that may be of interest can be recommended to them. This paper discusses AREA, a content curation platform targeted at teachers, where they can aggregate into shareboards the resources that they find in the web. Those resources can be used in educational activities, which are the building blocks for composing sequences of activities, that are in turn the cornerstones of guides (lesson plans). The educational experiences that result from the use of guides are also contemplated in the platform. The key original feature of AREA is that it extends the concept of content curation, so that, not only contents, but also activities, sequences, guides, and experiences, in addition to other resources such as persons, events and tools, are first-class curable elements in the platform. Therefore, shareboards of teachers can include any of those elements; and all of them can be shared, commented, rated, and also recommended to other teachers.

Visualizing tags as a network of relatedness

We present a layout algorithm for grouping the users tags within a folksonomy, aimed at easing the visualization and exploration of a large set of tags and their complex relationships. We introduce the possibility of (i) labeling linking tags to construct a network of tags and (ii) defining the concrete meaning of a tag by choosing the right definition extracted from Wikimedia projects or by writing down a particular definition. This provides the context for disambiguating the semantic of tags and it can be used to refine searches and/or suggestions. Moreover, this leads to alleviate some of the problems regarding the use of a natural vocabulary in a faceted classification. We provide some definitions and show examples of the so-called second generation of tag-clouds. We conclude with some implications that make use of the layout algorithm for visualizing a set of more than 400 tags.

Towards a collection of gadgets for an iGoogle e-learning platform

Usually, e-learning involves dedicated platforms designed to support learning from static information and functionalities. We have been working towards a more dynamic e-learning platform following a decentralized approach based on iGoogle. Users are able to decide about the information and functionalities in the system through the management of gadgets (iGoogle widgets). In this way, iGoogle is transformed into a kind of Personal Learning Environment that can be controlled by final users. In this paper we introduce a set of gadgets to provide an appropriate learning support to different roles: student, author and teacher assistant. These gadgets can be combined with other existing iGoogle gadgets following the specifications of the iGoogle platform and the Open Social standard.

A Separation of Concerns Approach to Educational Modeling Languages

This paper presents a separation of concerns approach to educational modeling languages (EMLs). Basically, it proposes to structure these languages in a way different from the one proposed by the IMS learning design (LD) specification, currently considered as the standard EML. In our opinion the LD specification is very complex. It is difficult to develop design and runtime applications and to produce EML-educational materials. Therefore, our goal is to simplify the complexity under EMLs providing a more structured solution. The main idea is not to attain the modeling of educational materials as a whole problem, but to divide it in several separated concerns that could be solved part by part. Two different kinds of parts are proposed: perspectives and aspects. In addition, flexibility is considered to support modifications. The paper introduces the theoretical ideas of the proposal and a modeling example

Standardization in computer-based education

This paper presents the state of the art and current trends in the standardization of computer-based education, including recent approaches like virtual learning or distributed education. Equipment, communication protocols, multimedia content and formats, description and representation of educational resources, organizations, modeling languages and management issues are some of the key areas in this standardization process. The main institutions participating in the process and their roles are also identified. This survey may serve as a reference for the researcher or practitioner in this field.

A BDI-based intelligent tutoring module for the e-learning platform INES

INES (INtelligent Educational System) is an operative prototype of an e-learning platform, which counts with functionalities of Learning Management Systems, Learning Content Management Systems, and Intelligent Tutoring Systems. To achieve these functionalities, our system includes several tools and technologies, such as: i) semantic management of users and contents; ii) an conversational agent to communicate with students in natural language; iii) BDI-based (Believes, Desires, Intentions) agents, which shape the tutoring module of the system; iv) an inference engine; and v) ontologies, to semantically model the users, their activities, and the learning contents. At the present paper we will address the intelligent tutoring module, and more specifically, its BDI-based agents. Briefly, the tasks of these agents are to recognize each student (checking his/her system credentials) and to obtain information about his/her learning progress. So, it can be able to suggest to each one specific tasks to achieve his/her particular learning objectives. The student himself/herself will decide if he/she accepts these tasks or ask for other ones. These new requested tasks can be delivered or not by the intelligent tutoring module, taking into account its decisions, which are based in several parameters related to the existing learning paths and the students profile.