Milos Kravcik

Adaptive Learning Environment for Teaching and Learning in WINDS

This paper introduces one approach to e-Learning describing the Adaptive Learning Environment (ALE). The system provides a new methodological approach to design education on the web. ALE will be used to build a large knowledge base supporting Architecture and Civil Engineering Design Courses and to experiment a comprehensive Virtual University of Architecture and Engineering Design in the project WINDS. Here we outline the system architecture and present its learning environment. The system combines classical structuring of learning materials based on reusable learning objects with an alternative structure - the course index.

Personalisation of Learning in Virtual Learning Environments

Personalization of learning has become a prominent issue in the educational field, at various levels. This article elaborates a different view on personalisation than what usually occurs in this area. Its baseline is that personalisation occurs when learning turns out to become personal in the learners mind. Through a literature survey, we analyze constitutive dimensions of this inner sense of personalisation. Here, we devote special attention to confronting learners with tracked information. Making their personal interaction footprints visible contrasts with the back-office usage of this data by researchers, instructors or adaptive systems. We contribute a prototype designed for the Moodle platform according to the conceptual approach presented here.

Flexible Navigation Support in the WINDS Learning Environment for Architecture and Design

The paper presents the knowledge structure of the WINDS system and shows the implementation of its learning environment, which is adaptive and adaptable. It supports different learning approaches and gives the learner guidance by coaching. The content of the WINDS virtual university is structured in SCORM compliant learning objects and connected with a semantic layer of learning concepts. The usage of this structure in the ALE learning environment is described and results from a first evaluation study are reported.

Evaluation of WINDS Authoring Environment

Authoring tools for adaptive educational hypermedia are still rarely available for a wider public. In the WINDS project, we have developed the Adaptive Learning Environment (ALE) for various European universities active in the area of design and architecture. Teachers without programming skills have created 21 courses in the ALE authoring environment, which simplifies the process providing learning object templates and enabling reusability of materials. This paper describes the WINDS authoring approach and presents some evaluation results.

A modelling approach to study learning processes with a focus on knowledge creation

In this paper, we present a modelling approach to study learning processes. We introduce the process/pedagogy/tools model and shown how its assembly-line style of process modelling can be used to describe which pedagogical aspects and which tools that support which parts of a specific learning process. We also review the SECI knowledge creation theory of Nonaka and combine it with process modelling to arrive at a SECI process framework for the study and analysis of knowledge-creating learning processes. Finally, we show that the different SECI modes of knowledge conversion are empirically supported by pedagogical research.

Serious Games for Personal and Social Learning & Ethics: Status and Trends☆

The blooming growth of interest in Serious Games (SG) over the last decade spread its applicational areas into an extremely wide and fragmented domain. As a consequence, it is extremely difficult to create a complete panorama snapshot regarding the application of SGs. With this work we contribute to the de-fragmentation of the domain Personal and Social Learning & Ethics(PSLE). We established a shared vocabulary with the creation of a detailed taxonomy based on which we carried out two surveys to analyze 1) the current status, trends and gaps and 2) the barriers and facilitators of SG adoption in PSLE.

Neurophysiological methods for monitoring brain activity in serious games and virtual environments: a review

The use of serious games and virtual environments for learning is increasing worldwide. These technologies have the potential to collect live data from users through game play and can be combined with neuroscientific methods such as EEG, fNIRS and fMRI. The several learning processes triggered by serious games are associated with specific patterns of activation that distributed in time and space over different neural networks. This paper explores the opportunities offered and challenges posed by neuroscientific methods when capturing user feedback and using the data to create greater user adaptivity in game. Existing neuroscientific studies examining cortical correlates of game-based learning do not form a common or homogenous field. In contrast, they often have disparate research questions and are represented through a broad range of study designs and game genres. In this paper, the range of studies and applications of neuroscientific methods in game-based learning are reviewed.

Social Software for Professional Learning: Examples and Research Issues

Social software is used widely in organizational knowledge management and professional learning. The PROLEARN network of excellence appreciates the trend of lowering the barriers between knowledge and learning management strategies for organizations and individuals. But, companies should not underestimate the needs for systematic support based on sound theories and technologies. We illustrate the requirements by examples and research issues for collaborative adaptive learning platforms for workplace learning in organizations.

Scaling Informal Learning at the Workplace: A Model and Four Designs from a Large-Scale Design-Based Research Effort.

Workplace learning happens in the process and context of work, is multi-episodic, often informal, problem based and takes place on a just-in-time basis. While this is a very effective means of delivery, it also does not scale very well beyond the immediate context. We review three types of technologies that have been suggested to scale learning and three connected theoretical discourses around learning and its support. Based on these three strands and an in-depth contextual inquiry into two workplace learning domains, health care and building and construction, four design-based research projects were conducted that have given rise to designs for scaling informal learning with technology. The insights gained from the design and contextual inquiry contributed to a model that provides an integrative view on three informal learning processes at work and how they can be supported with technology: (1) task performance, reflection and sensemaking; (2) help seeking, guidance and support; and (3) emergence and maturing of collective knowledge. The model fosters our understanding of how informal learning can be scaled and how an orchestrated set of technologies can support this process.

Leveraging the Semantic Web for Adaptive Education

In the area of technology-enhanced learning reusability and interoperability issues essentially influence the productivity and efficiency of learning and authoring solutions. There are two basic approaches how to overcome these problems - one attempts to do it via standards and the other by means of the Semantic Web. In practice, these approaches meet and many existing solutions are based on ontologies that take into account the available specifications and try to integrate them. Moreover, these ontologies can help us to achieve a certain kind of consensus and to contribute to the harmonization of the existing standards. This paper aims at addressing the issues of leveraging the Semantic Web to improve mechanisms for knowledge representation in the area of adaptive education. We attempt to view adaptive education from different perspectives and consider relationship of various aspects that often appear not to be connected. Editors: Daniel Burgos.