Stefaan Ternier

The Ariadne Infrastructure for Managing and Storing Metadata

Reusing digital resources for learning has been a goal for several decades, driven by potential time savings and quality enhancements. Although the rapid development of Web-based learning has increased opportunities for reuse significantly, managing learning objects and making them accessible still entails many challenges. This article presents and analyzes the standards-based Ariadne infrastructure for managing learning objects in an open and scalable architecture. The architecture supports the integration of learning objects in multiple, distributed repository networks. The authors capture lessons learned in four architectural patterns.

Mobile Augmented Reality with Audio

In this article the use of augmented reality with a smartphone for fieldwork of Cultural Sciences students is discussed based on two pilots in Florence. A tool named ARLearn developed to support different learning in different contexts using the multimedia capabilities and location based service on smartphones. In the pilots assignments were given in spoken messages and students collected notes by recording their own voice and taking pictures of artifacts in Florence. The use of the tool for fieldwork helped students with systematical collection of data for their essay. The educational design and ARLearn toolkit is developed further to enable individual fieldwork students and other educational scenarios.

The Simple Publishing Interface (SPI)

The Simple Publishing Interface (SPI) is a new publishing protocol, developed under the auspices of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) workshop on learning technologies. This protocol aims to facilitate the communication between content producing tools and repositories that persistently manage learning resources and metadata. The SPI work focuses on two problems: (1) facilitating the metadata and resource publication process (publication in this context refers to the ability to ingest metadata and resources); and (2) enabling interoperability between various components in a federation of repositories. This article discusses the different contexts where a protocol for publishing resources is relevant. SPI contains an abstract domain model and presents several methods that a repository can support. An Atom Publishing Protocol binding is proposed that allows for implementing SPI with a concrete technology and enables interoperability between applications.

Services for Knowledge Resource Sharing & Management in an Open Source Infrastructure for Lifelong Competence Development

Access to learning information is still restricted due to the lack of technical and semantic interoperability, locking knowledge resources in disconnected islands. This situation does not provide learners with a motivating environment in which to access and share learning information. In order to target emerging needs for lifelong competence development, a flexible and open source environment for management and sharing of knowledge resources must be built on top of an infrastructure that maximizes the amount of information available, therefore integrating centralised repositories and user desktop resources as well as emergent Web 2.0 applications. This paper describes the challenges and requirements that need to be addressed and presents a set of interfaces and our current implementation of the knowledge resource sharing and management service oriented architecture.

Designing a Mobile Learning Game to Investigate the Impact of Role-Playing on Helping Behaviour

Despite research in mobile learning games has intensified over the last decade, there is relatively little research about how individual game mechanisms influence or change behaviour. This article aims at understanding the influence of the game mechanism role-playing and investigates how it can be used to alter behavioural intention. In order to do so, we designed a mobile learning game to train Basic Life Support BLS and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation CPR. With the game we aim at improving laymens willingness to help in case of emergency. First, we illuminate the strand of research related to role-playing in the context of BLS and bystander CPR. Second, we describe the pedagogical framework of the mobile learning game that was designed to train BLS and introduce the game engine this development is based on. Third, we present the results from a first prototype testing, which we carried out with medical professionals as well as laymen in order to test game-play usability and interface. This article concludes by outlining the experimental setting of an upcoming study, which will use the mobile learning game to evaluate the influence of the game mechanism role-playing on the willingness to provide bystander CPR in case of emergency.

Implementing infrastructures for managing learning objects

Klemke, R., Ternier, S., Kalz, M., & Specht, M. (2010). Implementing infrastructures for managing learning objects. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(6), 873-882. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01127.x PrePrint Version. Original available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01127.x Retrieved October 20, 2010.

The Proof of the Pudding – Examining Validity and Reliability of the Evaluation Framework for Learning Analytics

While learning analytics (LA) is maturing from being a trend to being part of the institutional toolbox, the need for more empirical evidences about the effects for LA on the actual stakeholders, i.e. learners and teachers, is increasing. Within this paper we report about a further evaluation iteration of the Evaluation Framework for Learning Analytics (EFLA) that provides an efficient and effective measure to get insights into the application of LA in educational institutes. For this empirical study we have thus developed and implemented several LA widgets into a MOOC platform’s dashboard and evaluated these widgets using the EFLA as well as the framework itself using principal component and reliability analysis. The results show that the EFLA is able to measure differences between widget versions. Furthermore, they indicate that the framework is highly reliable after slightly adapting its dimensions.

Pervasive Interventions to Increase Pro-environmental Awareness, Consciousness, and Learning at the Workplace

This paper reports about pervasive interventions at a university campus to increase the pro-environmental awareness, consciousness, and learning of employees. Based on an assessment of the research gaps in this problem area we present results and design implications from three intervention iterations. While in the first intervention the focus was on increasing awareness through information distribution with ambient learning displays on the campus, the second iteration provided personalised feedback to employees with the help of a sensor network and different client applications. The third iteration then implemented a game-based learning concept. Results reveal that these approaches are effective on different levels and that a combination of these elements can lead to increased pro-environmental consciousness, learning and hopefully a sustained behaviour change of employees.

The dutch xAPI experience

We present the collected experiences since 2012 of the Dutch Special Interest Group (SIG) for Learning Analytics in the application of the xAPI standard. We have been experimenting and exchanging best practices around the application of xAPI in various contexts. The practices include different design patterns centered around Learning Record Stores. We present three projects that apply xAPI in very different ways and publish a consistent set of xAPI recipes.

A context-aware service oriented framework for finding, recommending and inserting learning objects

In this paper, we will propose a framework for finding, recommending and inserting learning objects in a digital repository, exploiting the user context that is captured from the Learning Management System (LMS). The framework we propose builds on top of the ARIADNE service oriented architecture for learning object repositories, abstracting from the technicalities of low level metadata and resource management. As a case study, the framework has been applied in a university learning management system (SIDWeb). The intent is to exploit contextual information from the learning management system in digital repositories.