Samanta Cueva

A framework for improving web accessibility and usability of Open Course Ware sites

Since its inception, one of the primary goals of the Internet has been the open access of information and documents online. This openness aims to allow access to universal knowledge. The Open Educational Resources (OER) have promoted this goal in the context of education. The OER of higher education are supported by means of the Open Course Ware (OCW) initiative. OCW aims to provide access to the knowledge produced by universities. However, the level of access to and use of OCW do not meet expectations. For this reason, it is necessary to provide solutions to increase the accessibility and usability of OCW. As a result, this paper presents a methodology for the evaluation of the accessibility and usability of OCW sites, as well as a framework for improving their accessibility and usability. This methodology and framework have been applied to evaluate and improve the accessibility and usability of a real case study, the OCW initiative of the Universidad Tcnica Particular de Loja (UTPL). This case study has allowed us to validate the methodology and the framework in a real setting in order to determine if they were able to identify and suggest improvement for the accessibility and usability of OCW when required. Quantification of accessibility and usability of websites that offer Open CourseWare.Integration of web accessibility and usability standards to the domain Open Educational Resources such as Open Courseware.Proposal and implementation of a methodology for assessing accessibility and usability in OER such as Open CourseWare sites.Proposal and implementation of a framework to increase the accessibility and usability OER such as Open CourseWare sites.

Accessibility and Usability OCW Data: The UTPL OCW

This data article provides a data description on article entitled “A framework for improving web accessibility and usability of Open Course Ware sites” [3] This Data in Brief presents the data obtained from the accessibility and usability evaluation of the UTPL OCW. The data obtained from the framework evaluation consists of the manual evaluation of the standards criteria and the automatic evaluation of the tools Google PageSpeed and Google Analytics. In addition, this article presents the synthetized tables from standards that are used by the framework to evaluate the accessibility and usability of OCW, and the questionnaires required to extract the data. As a result, the article also provides the data required to reproduce the evaluation of other OCW.

Improving Lifetime and Availability for Ad Hoc Networks to Emergency and Rescue Scenarios

A mobile ad hoc network is a temporary, self-configuring network composed of nodes that communicate through wireless interfaces that can change their geographic location randomly. It is ideal for emergency and rescue scenarios in which an immediate action is necessary and when it may be the first form of communication available. Therefore, it is necessary for the network to be active as long as possible. Additionally, the communication between network nodes must be efficient. The present research demonstrates, EBCHP, a proactive, hierarchical routing protocol in which, by using the association and support strategies of the main nodes, the performance of the mobile ad hoc network improves and its lifetime is extended compared with BCHP.

Implementation of social technologies for Open Course Ware OCW platforms

The present work focused on the inclusion of social components to the Open Course Ware (OCW) platforms, with this purpose was taken as case study the Technical University of Loja (UTPL), to demonstrate the level of knowledge and use social networks and platforms OCW identifying acceptance and feasibility of integrating social platforms this kind of functionality. Based on the results obtained are developed and implemented social features for OCW platform - learning.

Open Course Ware (OCW) as Support to the Social and Collaborative Learning

The Web 2.0 technologies have significantly increased the access and use of contents on the websites, in the field of Education OCW provide students, faculties and self-learners the opportunity to access the prestigious Universities in the world. The aim of this study is to propose the integration of social technologies in the cycle of production and publishing of OCW in order to enhance the social and collaborative learning. The proposal is based on the analysis of literature review and application of quantitative and qualitative methods in a case study, the level of acceptance and expectations of integrating social technologies in Open Educational Resources (REA). The obtained results are a social and collaborative production cycle (REACS) complemented by social technologies implemented to Educommons platform to promote access, use and collaboration of this kind of resources. The case study and its implementation conclude that it is possible to enhance the social and collaborative learning in Open Course Ware.

An Approach for Resilient Hierarchical Routing in Mobile Networks

We show a cluster based routing protocol, in order to improve the convergence of the clusters and the network it is proposed to use a backup cluster head. A event discrete simulator is used for the implementation and the simulation of a hierarchical routing protocol called the Backup Cluster Head Protocol (BCHP). Finally it is shown that the BCHP protocol improves the convergence, availability and resiliency of the network through a comparative analysis with the Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol and Cluster Based Routing Protocol (CBRP).

Framework for assessing the quality of sites Open Course Ware (OCW) by quality attributes

This paper proposes a framework to assess the quality of sites Open Course Ware (OCW) based on attributes, through an analysis of literature on quality Open Educational Resources (OER) and OCW, and analysis models and quality methodologies based on attributes, which allows theoretically substantiate the proposal, in addition, it will be validated by its application to a sample of OCW sites resulting in the quantitative assessment of their quality underlying the analysis and conclusions.