Rory McGreal

Choosing MOODLE: An Evaluation of Learning Management Systems at Athabasca University.

Athabasca University—Canada’s Open University evaluated learning management systems (LMS) for use by the university. Evaluative criteria were developed in order to ensure that different platforms were tested against weighted criteria representing the needs of the university. Three LMSs (WebCt, LotusNotes, and Moodle) were selected for the evaluation. Moodle was chosen with 11 first place ratings and with only one third place rating. Lotus Notes was second with five first place ratings. Moodle garnered 40% of the total weighted score with Lotus Notes getting 32%, and WebCT 29%. The first place preferences within individual criteria show the following: WebCT 6; LotusNotes 7; and Moodle 58.

An Infrastructure for Developing Pervasive Learning Environments

This paper presents an infrastructure for developing problem-based pervasive learning environments. Building such environments necessitates having many autonomous components dealing with various tasks and heterogeneous distributed resources. Our proposed infrastructure is based on a multi-agent system architecture to integrate various components of the environments. The infrastructure includes a location- and context-awareness service, a question and answer service, an adaptive mechanism; problem based ubiquitous learning models, social networking issues, and the evaluation of multimedia inputs. Furthermore, student modeling issues among components are considered. The design of the infrastructure as well as its components is discussed. This paves the way towards the development of pervasive learning applications.

E-learning in Canada

Copyright

Learning object repository technologies for telelearning: The evolution of POOL and CanCore

Repositories provide mechanisms to encourage the discovery, exchange and re-use of learning objects. This paper describes Portals for On-line Objects in Learning (POOL), a consortium project of the TeleLearning NCE to build a learning object repository scalable to the national level. Funded in part by the Canarie Learning Program, POOL contributes to the development of two focal technologies: “POOL POND and SPLASH” a distributed architecture for a peer-to-peer network of learning object repositories, and CanCore, a practical metadata protocol for cataloguing learning objects.

Intelligent and Adaptive Learning Systems: Technology Enhanced Support for Learners and Teachers

Writing is a core skill that learners are expected to develop in their early school years and use effectively throughout their later school years. Historically, writing has been considered the purview of grade school education, yet there is evidence that learners seem to lack basic writing skills even at the university level. Unfortunately, the challenges posed by the volume of data created when students write have hampered writing researchers’ attempts to study the impacts of grade school writing initiatives in depth. This chapter introduces two novel approaches to academic writing activities that hold the potential to enhance writing competence and make it easier for researchers to understand the impact of writing interventions. The first uses mobile devices in a situated learning context, and the second uses a mixed-initiative writing system in the classroom.

Implementing mobile environments using learning objects: the Athabasca University digital reading room

This investigation determined some of the better strategies for delivering educational resources to mobile devices from the digital reading room (DRR) and the Athabasca University (AU) library catalogue using AirPac, making recommendations on the implementation of Mlearning as part of the AU e-learning strategy. The primary research question addressed in this short paper is: what are the limitations and difficulties in delivering course materials to mobile devices.

Implementing learning object metadata for mobile devices using CanCore

Pedagogical and other types of metadata are important in the implementation of learning systems for use by mobile devices. Metadata is key to the use of learning objects. Learning objects represent a means of rendering learning content interoperable on a wide range of devices in different formats using XML for usability on small and large screens. To ensure discoverability and repository interoperability, metadata is essential. CanCore is a metadata profile for implementing the IEEE LOM, thus advancing the use of learning objects. With enhancements to the profile and to the LOM, providing for location and time, as well as other contextual information, mobile devices can be used effectively as an extension of the global data infrastructure.

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Free Learning for All Students

In recent years, the term Open Educational Resources (OER) has emerged, aiming to promote open access to digital educational resources that are available online for everyone at a global level. This panel presents views from different countries on the development of open educational resource initiatives.

Facilitating E-learning with a MARC to IEEE LOM metadata crosswalk application

One of the difficulties of using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to estimate atmospheric temperature is the large number of potential input variables available. In this study, four different feature extraction methods were used to reduce the input vector to train four networks to estimate temperature at different atmospheric levels. The four techniques used were: genetic algorithms (GA), coefficient of determination (CoD), mutual information (MI) and simple neural analysis (SNA). The results demonstrate that of the four methods used for this data set, mutual information and simple neural analysis can generate networks that have a smaller input parameter set, while still maintaining a high degree of accuracy.

The SCAN programme: Bringing distance education to isolated native communities on the James Bay coast 1989–1991

SCAN was a unique programme to bring secondary school education to remote Native reserves on the James Bay coast of Ontario, Canada. Using audiographic teleconferencing, teachers based in Moosonee delivered courses to four odier coastal communities. The experience was not successful. A number of factors have been determined as contributing to the demise of the programme. Among these were the lack of community ownership of the programme and the lack of a clear understanding by the parties of their respective responsibilities.