Vladimir Tomberg

Learning flow management and semantic data exchange between blog-based personal learning environments

The use of blogs as Personal Learning Environment is an emerging trend in higher education. While many teaching and learning tasks are easy to implement in a blog-based PLE, this type of tools still lacks some of the important features that made traditional Learning Management Systems efficient for both teachers and learners. This paper addresses the challenges of enhancing blog-based learning environments with two new functionalities: learning workflow management and semantic data exchange.

Applying Universal Design Principles to Themes for Wearables

Wearable computing offers new opportunities for technology to help us in many different contexts. Yet, it is important that designers of wearable devices take into account Universal Design principles to ensure that as many people as possible can benefit. We discuss the possible advantages of applying universal design principles to different themes that wearable technologies address. We use six themes that are driving wearable enhancements. These themes cut across industry and use cases; most wearable technologies will use at least one of these themes. We take each of the universal design principles and see how they apply to each theme and what advantages can be expected from such an application. The study shows that a balance needs to be achieved to the accessibility, usability, and general use of a wearable device.

Privacy Awareness of Students and Its Impact on Online Learning Participation – A Case Study

This paper is based on a survey that addresses two main hypotheses - that there is a positive correlation between students’ level of participation and their privacy awareness, and students with high levels of privacy awareness need to be assured that their open learning activities are protected from potential threats in order to achieve positive results. Results show that in fact there is a correlation between students’ awareness of privacy and their predisposition to share and to participate in open leaning contexts. This is especially evident when students share their school assignments, grading results and teacher’s feedback or even their comments with others.

Enhancing Learning Analytics in Distributed Personal Learning Environments

This paper describes LePress, a WordPress plug-in that enhances blog-based personal learning environment (PLE) with features and semantics that facilitate planning, implementation, and analysis of learning flows. The paper introduces learning flows in LePress, and then explains learning semantics the LePress supports. In order to demonstrate the advantages of LePress for learning analytics, we describe how it can facilitate explicit data collection and analysis of learning activities in blog-based PLEs. In order to demonstrate the advantages of LePress for learning analytics, we describe how it can facilitate explicit data collection and analysis of learning activities in blog-based PLEs.

Towards a comprehensive call ontology for Research 2.0

A Call for Papers (CfP) is a small, but well-structured and information-rich message with a relatively short lifespan. CfP plays an important role in academic life, not just as an advertisement format, but also as a trigger of and advance organiser for collaborative academic writing. This paper explores the possibilities to create a comprehensive ontology for CfP so that is would be relevant and useful in Research 2.0 context for two main target groups: authors involved in collaborative writing of academic papers, and conference organisers or journal editors. Our study is conducted in three phases. First, we identify existing ontologies and other representation frameworks, which could provide concepts relevant for CfP. Next, a sample of conference CfPs is analysed and compared, to find out the common structures and peculiarities, which could be used for extending the existing ontologies. Finally, we propose Call ontology together with two usage scenarios.

Supporting Learning Analytics for Informal Workplace Learning with a Social Semantic Infrastructure

This paper presents the potential of a social semantic infrastructure that implements an Actor Artifact Network (AAN) with the final goal of supporting learning analytics at the workplace. Two applications were built on top of such infrastructure and make use of the emerging relations of such a AAN. A preliminary evaluation shows that an AAN can be created out of the usage of both applications, thus opening the possibility to implement learning analytics at the workplace.

Making Sense of Bits and Pieces: A Sensemaking Tool for Informal Workplace Learning

Sensemaking at the workplace and in educational contexts has been extensively studied for decades. Interestingly, making sense out of the own wealth of learning experiences at the workplace has been widely ignored. To tackle this issue, we have implemented a novel sensemaking interface for healthcare professionals to support learning at the workplace. The proposed prototype supports remembering of informal experiences from episodic memory followed by sensemaking in semantic memory. Results from an initial study conducted as part of an iterative co-design process reveal the prototype is being perceived as useful and supportive for informal sensemaking by study participants from the healthcare domain. Furthermore, we find first evidence that re-evaluation of collected information is a potentially necessary process that needs further exploration to fully understand and support sensemaking of informal learning experiences.

Delivering QTI Self-tests to Personal Learning Environments Using Wookie Widgets

Although online tests are a quite popular form of assessing learning outcomes in traditional Learning Management Systems, it is quite difficult to deliver the wealth of existing re-usable QTI-compliant tests into Web 2.0 style Personal Learning Environments. This paper addresses both pedagogical scenarios and technical solution for using QTI self-tests in blogs, personal e-portfolios and social media platforms. The empirical part describes the development of the original QTI Assessment Proxy Service and QTI self-test player based on the Wookie widget engine.

Evaluating Pedagogy-Driven Design of IVA LMS with Activity Pattern Analysis

This paper discusses a pedagogy-driven approach to designing new online learning environments, illustrated by a case study on IVA LMS that was developed in Tallinn University. An empirical study was carried out on the seventh year of using IVA LMS, server log analysis revealed three different types of learning paradigm related activity patterns that were used by teachers and students in IVA environment.

Towards the Interoperability of Online Assessment Tools

The paper examines the opportunities for enhancing the interoperability of online assessment tools. The comparative analysis of different versions of specifications IMS Question and Test Interoperability is made; adaptation of new technologies in test systems are examined. Special focus is on the use of the Web services for quiz authoring, delivery and storage in connection with development of an open source Learning Management System IVA in Tallinn University.