Nuria Oliva

Harnessing clouds for e-learning: New directions followed by UNED

In this paper, we present our work on enhancing the technological infrastructure at Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) with cloud computing principles. This includes the development of (1) virtualized environments to allow students to do practical exercises easily in the field of networks and communications; and (2) load forecasting techniques to improve on the usage of the technological infrastructures of UNED, so that the Quality of Service (QoS) experienced by users is kept and power consumption is minimized.

Packing and reusing virtual web laboratories as Sharable Content Object in wide range of educational fields

One of the key issues in the education field is the acquisition of skills. This practical knowledge was usually acquired through traditional labs or standalone simulation programs. The World Wide Web and the advance in web programming language have allowed teachers to create online learning applications, such as virtual web laboratories which can be displayed by Web browser, at any time and everywhere. Currently, a large amount of virtual Web labs can be found in the World Wide Web, and these are able to cover a wide range of educational fields such as physic, chemistry, electronic, medicine, mathematics and languages. This paper describes the process of searching of these laboratories and their packing in Sharable Content Object, following the e-learning standard called SCORM.

Applying a assessment tool in distance learning education

Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED) has a great number of students located in different places from Spain, Europe and South America. By this reason, it is necessary to use e-learning tools that make easier learning process of our students. Nowadays, there are many e-learning tools in the World Wide Web, for instance: Learning management systems (LMS), courseware or online laboratories. In this paper we are going to describe the design, implementation and use of an assessment tool developed by Electrical and Computer Engineering Department that is able to work along with other learning systems (for instance a LMS, online laboratories, etc.) with the objective of improving learning processes.

Work in progress - advanced programming through problem-based learning

The way people learn out of university has much more in common with self-learning and problems-guided learning than with the classical way of teaching, with a teacher speaking in a class and all the students listening with a passive attitude. This paper proposes an exercise to motivate students to learn and use some advanced programming concepts such as the use of well-formed and valid XML documents; how to transform these documents into ldquohuman-readablerdquo documents with XSLT style-sheets; communication protocols such as TCP/IP; application level protocols such as HTTP 1.1; and mash-up systems. The problem is intended to improve the mobility in universities with very spread and distributed campuses such as Universities for Distance Education, where this exercise is proposed. For that reason, this subject is especially motivating for these students, due to the fact they dasiasufferpsila the consequences of study in a university where mobility plays a relevant role. Through this exercise students will guide their own learning, constructing the mental structures and understanding the programming concepts needed to solve the future programming problems they will find in their careers.

Work in progress - new project “Internet-based Performance-centered Learning Environment for Curriculum Support” (IPLECS)

This project answers to the need of development of a complete master degree program at the point of intersection between information technology and communications. The innovative performance-centered approach has been developed, tested and implemented and our partnership experience returned strong positive results - it has been proven to be more effective than the traditional lecture-practice-test (expository inductive) in training higher order skills, for preparing learners for self-learning, improving and adapting for changing jobs.