Semi-automatic assembly of learning resources

Technology Enhanced Learning is a research field that has matured considerably over the last decade. Many technical solutions to support design, authoring and use of learning activities and resources have been developed. The first datasets that reflect the tracking of actual use of these tools in real-life settings are beginning to become available. In this article, we present an exploratory study that relies on these datasets to support semi-automatic assembly of learning activities and resources for specific contexts. Starting from learning designs and other online sources that describe well designed learning experiences as they were used in practice, we derive sequencing patterns that capture re-occurring patterns of activities. A semi-automatic assembly framework uses these patterns to support teachers in the design and authoring of course activities. We present a case study that integrates recommendation support for sequencing activities as well as associated resources in the LAMS learning activity environment. Results indicate that the perceived usefulness is high: both teachers with expertise in the use of learning design tools as well as teachers with no background knowledge in the area indicate that the recommendations helped them in the authoring process. In addition, they feel more confident using learning design tools when support is provided that is driven by best practice knowledge.     

Exploring teachers' perceptions on different CSCL script editing tools

Despite the apparent maturity of the learning design field, and the variety of tooling available to support it, adoption among the teacher community (one of its alleged main targets) is still low. There is a lack of research on teachers' perception and use of different technological learning design tools, as existing evaluations are often restricted to a single tool. In order to explore whether there are common factors hampering teacher adoption, and which tool features might appeal to different teachers, more studies involving multiple authoring tools are needed. This paper provides a first step in this direction, describing a mixed methods study performed around a professional development workshop with 18 university teachers from multiple disciplines. This workshop exposed teachers to two different authoring tools (WebCollage and EDIT2), as they learned to create computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) designs and implement them. The findings of our interpretive study (which included questionnaires, observations, or group discussion recordings) support the idea that there is no single tool or set of features that are globally perceived as better, although our evidence also highlights certain factors as important for participant teachers – amongst others, the integration of learning designs with the ICT platforms for enactment, as well as with other tools that they already use in their everyday practice.     

Mind the gap: Impact on learnability of user interface design of authoring tools for teachers

Few teachers include information and communication technology in the classroom, despite their potential for increasing attention and motivation for students. Educational authoring tools are intended to turn teachers into designers and deliverers of technology-enhanced educational content, and increasing the adoption of these tools is a key element for speeding up this transformation. This paper emphasizes the importance of learnability for preventing rejection or abandonment by of such an authoring tool, and how acceptance is deeply affected by the interaction paradigm and the creation metaphor used in the tool. We present an analysis comparing two design paradigms: the widespread menu-based and choice-guided interaction paradigm versus a consistent metaphor with direct manipulation. The latter was implemented in DEDOS-Editor, a novel authoring tool that allows the creation of diverse educational activities that can be performed on different devices, such as PCs, digital blackboards, tablets, and multitouch surfaces. An experimental study shows the tremendous impact that interface choices have on the tool's learning curve. The results provide the first mapping of the choice of a direct-manipulation interface and its effect on the learning curve's entry point, as well as a consistent interaction metaphor with smoother and fast-growing learning curves. This allows users to complete more tasks and gain more knowledge through experience, in contrast to menu-based interfaces. The initial use of the tool is thus made easier for users with no experience or information about the tool, and the advantages of experience and expertize in facing new challenges are facilitating. This work also highlights the appropriateness of learning curves as a tool for measuring learnability.     

The foundations of a theory-aware authoring tool for CSCL design

One of the most useful ways to enhance collaboration is to create scenarios where learners are able to interact more effectively. Nevertheless, the design of pedagogically sound and well-thought-out collaborative learning scenarios is a complex issue. This is due to the context of group learning where the synergy among learners’ interactions affects learning processes and, hence, the learning outcome. Although many advances have been made to support the designing of collaborative learning scenarios through technology, a more systematic approach is lacking. With the limitations of the current designing methods and tools, it is difficult to develop intelligent authoring systems that can guide users in order to produce more effective collaboration. One of the main difficulties with creating a more consistent (computer-understandable) approach to designing collaboration is the necessity of proposing better ways to formalize the group learning processes. In this paper, we present an innovative approach that uses ontologies and concepts from learning theories to create a framework that represents collaborative learning and its processes. Ontologies provide the necessary formalization to represent collaboration, while learning theories provide the concepts to justify and support the development of effective learning scenarios. Such an approach contributes to establish the foundations for the development of the next generation of intelligent authoring systems referred to as theory-aware systems. To verify the viability and usefulness of our proposed ontological framework in the context of systematic design, the development and use of an intelligent authoring tool for CSCL design is presented. This system is able to reason on ontologies to give suggestions that help users to create theory-compliant collaborative learning scenarios. We carried out several experiments with teachers in a geometry drawing course and the results indicate that the system helps teachers to create and interchange their scenarios more easily and facilitates the selection of important pedagogical strategies that influence positively the designing and effectiveness of group activities.     

A Semantic Web-based authoring tool to facilitate the planning of collaborative learning scenarios compliant with learning theories

When the goal of group activities is to support long-term learning, the task of designing well-thought-out collaborative learning (CL) scenarios is an important key to success. To help students adequately acquire and develop their knowledge and skills, a teacher can plan a scenario that increases the probability for learning to occur. Such a scenario defines pedagogically sound structures that prevent off-task behavior and engage students in more meaningful interactions. The main difficulty in designing effective CL scenarios is transforming the teacher's intentions into elements that constitute the learning scenario. This problem is frequently observed when novice teachers attempt to improve the quality of learning and instruction by blending collaborative activities with individual activities without careful planning. With the goal of helping teachers in planning collaborative scenarios, we have developed an intelligent authoring tool referred to as CHOCOLATO using Semantic Web technologies (e.g. ontologies) in order to represent knowledge about different pedagogies and practices related to collaboration. Through the use of this knowledge, CHOCOLATO can provide intelligent guidance that helps teachers to create theory-based CL scenarios which has proven to be effective in a variety of situations. We evaluated it by conducting two experiments. We were interested in verifying whether the recommendations given by CHOCOLATO help novice teachers to design pedagogically sound CL activities, and if these activities help students to learn collaboratively in real classroom settings. The first experiment had the participation of 58 pre-service teachers that created CL scenarios with and without our authoring tool and the second experiment was carried out in a Brazilian public school together with 218 students. The results suggest that the guidance provided by CHOCOLATO do help novice teachers plan, understand and share CL scenarios more easily. They also suggest that the continuous utilization of well-designed theory-based CL activities create favorable conditions for students (particularly less knowledgeable ones) to improve their overall performance throughout the school year.     

A study of building a resource-based learning environment with the inquiry learning approach: Knowledge of family trees

This study aims to provide teachers with ways and means to facilitate learners to develop nomenclature knowledge of family trees through the establishment of resource-based learning environments (RBLEs). It discusses the design of an RBLE in the classroom by selecting an appropriate context with the assistance of computer-mediated learning resources and tools and employing the inquiry learning approach as the pedagogy. This study reports on the creation of the RBLE within the learning context of family trees. The computer-mediated learning resources and tools comprise three components: an audio-visual database for guided and coupled inquiry, an interactive interface for conceptualising the nomenclature and a tool for learners to construct their own family trees. Scaffolds were designed for an inquiry mode of learning and teaching to support the use of the resources and tools in learning about family trees. The learning and teaching process, including the outcomes for learners, through the RBLE with inquiry learning approach are studied. The findings of an interview and a pre-test/post-test study indicate that the RBLE can assist learners to build knowledge of family trees. The role of teachers in such an environment is to guide and encourage learners to inquire during the learning process.     

Promoting self-regulated learning in web-based learning environments

Self-regulated learning with the Internet or hypermedia requires not only cognitive learning strategies, but also specific and general meta-cognitive strategies. The purposes of the Study2000 project, carried out at the TU Dresden, were to develop and evaluate authoring tools that support teachers and students in web-based learning and instruction. This paper presents how the authoring tools of the Study2000 project can implement psychologically sound measures to promote (a) active and elaborated learning activities and (b) meta-cognitive activities in a web-based learning environment. Furthermore, it describes a study involving 72 university students in the use of such a web-based learning environment in a self-regulated learning setting at the university level. Results show that students spent almost 70% of their study time with texts, 11% with learning tasks and 12% with the active and elaborated learning tools, whereas meta-cognitive aids where hardly used (<1%).     

LdShake: Learning design solutions sharing and co-edition

Two important challenges that teachers are currently facing are the sharing and the collaborative authoring of their learning design solutions, such as didactical units and learning materials. On the one hand, there are tools that can be used for the creation of design solutions and only some of them facilitate the co-edition. However, they do not incorporate mechanisms that support the sharing of the designs between teachers. On the other hand, there are tools that serve as repositories of educational resources but they do not enable the authoring of the designs. In this paper we present LdShake, a web tool whose novelty is focused on the combined support for the social sharing and co-edition of learning design solutions within communities of teachers. Teachers can create and share learning designs with other teachers using different access rights so that they can read, comment or co-edit the designs. Therefore, each design solution is associated to a group of teachers able to work on its definition, and another group that can only see the design. The tool is generic in that it allows the creation of designs based on any pedagogical approach. However, it can be particularized in instances providing pre-formatted designs structured according to a specific didactic method (such as Problem-Based Learning, PBL). A particularized LdShake instance has been used in the context of Human Biology studies where teams of teachers are required to work together in the design of PBL solutions. A controlled user study, that compares the use of a generic LdShake and a Moodle system, configured to enable the creation and sharing of designs, has been also carried out. The combined results of the real and controlled studies show that the social structure, and the commenting, co-edition and publishing features of LdShake provide a useful, effective and usable approach for facilitating teachers' teamwork.     

‘Don't forget to put the cat out’ — or why collaborative authoring software and everyday writing pass one another by!

Abstract

Hypermedia technology is seen as offering potentially innovative support for the process of writing as much as information access and reading. However authoring environments to date have had little impact in the real-world production of text. One possible reason is our poor conceptualisation of current writing practice. In the present paper, 31 adult writers kept diaries of their writing activities over the course of one week. The results indicate that for most people, real world writing is a short communicative act aimed at a limited audience and that technological support for such writing is less likely to resemble a hypermedia workstation than a portable personal communication device. Implications for work in the design of authoring tools are developed.     

From SCORM to Common Cartridge: A step forward

Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was proposed as a standard for sharable learning object packaging, delivering and sequencing. Several years later, Common Cartridge (CC) is proposed as an enhancement of SCORM offering more flexibility and addressing needs not originally envisioned, namely assessment and web 2.0 standards, content authorization, collaborative forums, outcomes reporting, accessibility. Educational policy makers, specialists responsible for learning systems deployment, educational content authors and teachers committed to the learning object paradigm must opt for or coexist with two different, partially overlapping proposals for content packaging. While SCORM was conceived for self-paced computer based learning, Common Cartridge attempts at providing support for all forms of teaching and learning with a stress on interactive and collaborative environments. Variety of content, distributed content, discussion forums, assessment, student’s tracking, interaction with external tools and authorization to access resources are listed as its main enhancements. This article reviews and compares SCORM and Common Cartridge from an educational perspective, seeking to provide some ground and guidelines on how to stand before these proposals. A simple process for authoring a Common Cartridge is described, as well as testing and conversion from SCORM. Suggestions are made to education practitioners on learning objects standards adoption in the most common scenarios.     

Preservice and inservice teachers' pedagogical reasoning underlying their most-valued technology-supported instructional activities

We examined teachers' pedagogical reasoning for and the technological knowledge underlying their most-valued technology-supported activities for teaching and learning. Data from 140 preservice and 100 inservice teachers included open-ended, narrative responses to survey questions. Qualitative research methods guided analysis of the data that identified (a) the technology-supported activities and (b) the technical tools, target users, types of uses, rationales for use, and the TPACK underlying each activity. Preservice teachers described mostly teacher-focused and fewer student-focused techno-activities, and their reasoning for use focused on the technology's presentational and engagement effects. A majority of inservice teachers' techno-activities were student-focused, and their reasoning highlighted the technology's support for knowledge acquisition of higher-order cognitive skills and collaborative learning. The knowledge underlying all teachers' techno-activities was predominantly technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), but inservice teachers also evidenced technological content knowledge (TCK). These results may reveal differences in the teachers' respective learning experiences in teacher education and professional development or reflect a professional maturation process in that it takes teachers time in the field as professionals to broaden their techno-activity repertoires to prioritize student-focus. Sharing the reasoning patterns in this study with teachers may assist them in developing deeper justifications for their technological work in the classroom.     

Exploring the role of content knowledge in teacher design conversations

This study investigated the role of content knowledge in conversations of kindergarten teachers during collaborative curriculum design of learning material for technology‐enhanced learning. Two teams of teachers received support from an early literacy expert during these design activities. Resulting conversations were analyzed on technological pedagogical content knowledge, explicated reasoning, and the contributions of expert support. This study found that in explicating content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, teachers set goals and deliberated on strategies and activities that would be most appropriate for their students. Technological content knowledge and technological pedagogical content knowledge were explicated most during deliberations on practical concerns; these mainly revolved around optimizing the affordances of technology. This study contributes to understanding and supporting the pedagogical design capacity of teachers.     

Teacher-oriented adaptive Web-based environment for supporting practical teaching models: a case study of “school for all”

Web-based learning systems, if designed appropriately, offer many advantages over the traditional learning environments. This study addresses the design and development of new approaches and network technologies based on the newly induced pedagogical models to support collaborative teaching, knowledge sharing, lifelong learning opportunities for anyone to offer or participate in courses free of charge. The authors propose and implement a Web-based learning environment called “School for All” in the Web-based Educities. To satisfy the needs of individual instructors, adaptive Web-based authoring tools and methods of teaching have been proposed, including five adaptive modules – Curriculum Setting, Co-teaching and Privileges Setting, Reward Setting, Assessment Setting and Information Sharing Setting. Thirty representative courses that used this adaptive School for All system were under close observations and investigation. An additional questionnaire was also used to collect online teachers' perceptions of this Web-based learning environment. Online teachers reported that these adaptive modules could support their online teaching effectively. More results were presented and more issues regarding online teaching were discussed in this paper.     

Constructing SCORM compliant course based on High-Level Petri Nets

With rapid development of the Internet, e-learning system has become more and more popular. Currently, to solve the issue of sharing and reusing of teaching materials in different e-learning system, Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is the most popular standard among existing international standards. In SCORM standard, the Sequencing and Navigation (SN) defines the course sequencing behavior, which controls the sequencing, selecting and delivering of a course, and organizes the content into a hierarchical structure, namely Activity Tree (AT). However, the structures with complicated sequencing rules of Activity Tree (AT) in SCORM make the design and creation of course sequences hard. Therefore, how to provide a user-friendly authoring tool to efficiently construct SCORM compliant course becomes an important issue. However, before developing the authoring tool, how to provide a systematic approach to analyze the sequencing rules and to transform the created course into SCORM compliant are our concerns.Therefore, in this paper, based upon the concept of Object Oriented Methodology (OOM), we propose a systematic approach, called Object Oriented Course Modeling (OOCM), to construct the SCORM compliant course. High-Level Petri Nets (HLPN), which is a powerful language for system modeling and validation, are applied to model the basic sequencing components, called Object-Oriented Activity Tree (OOAT), for constructing the SCORM course with complex sequencing behaviors. Every OOAT as a middleware represents a specific sequencing behavior in learning activity and corresponding structure with associated sequencing rules of AT in SCORM. Thus, these OOATs can be efficiently used to model and construct the course with complex sequencing behaviors for different learning guidance. Moreover, two algorithms, called PN2AT and AT2CP, are also proposed to transform HLPN modeled by OOATs into a tree-like structure with related sequencing rules in Activity Tree (AT) and package the AT and related physical learning resources into a SCORM compliant course file described by XML language, respectively. Finally, based upon the OOCM scheme, a prototypical authoring tool with graphical user interface (GUI) is developed. For evaluating the efficiency of the OOCM approach compared with existing authoring tools, an experiment has been done. The experimental results show that the OOCM approach is workable and beneficial for teachers/instructional designers.     

Preparation versus practice: How do teacher education programs and practicing teachers align in their use of technology to support teaching and learning?

Researchers have called for renewed efforts in exploring both what knowledge should be taught in preservice teacher education programs with regard to technology, and how to best prepare teachers to effectively use that knowledge to support teaching and learning. This study compared the importance of technology topics from teacher educators and teachers’ perspectives. A two-phase mixed-methods research design utilized surveys and multiple case studies (interviews, documents) to collect data from both teacher educators and practicing teachers. Findings indicate that teachers and teacher educators demonstrated similarities in their views regarding the use of technology for personal productivity, information presentation, and the access and use of electronic resources to support teaching and learning. Teacher educators and teachers differed with regard to their use of technology for communication, analysis of student data, documenting professional growth, and facilitating higher-order thinking skills. Recommendations for how teacher education programs can incorporate and address technology topics in order to increase relevance for teachers are discussed.     

Appropriating virtual learning environments: A study of teacher tactics

In research on Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), it has been shown that teachers often do not explore VLEs to their full potential and only adopt a limited set of the available tools. In this article, we approach teachers’ design of VLE learning activities as end user development. We describe a study of Toledo, a virtual learning environment used across several higher education institutions in Belgium. Using a combination of a semiotic, multimodal analysis and an in-depth user study with 24 respondents, we provide a detailed account of how teachers appropriate the learning environment to suit their needs. Combining the insights from the semiotic investigation and the user research, we analyze how user appropriations can be explained as practices emerging from both how the platform communicates, and contextual factors. The study showed that some teachers design very specific learning activities using the VLE - not by using the dedicated VLE tool, but by reinterpreting more generic tools. These appropriation tactics concentrate platform use in a limited number of tools, even when teachers do use more complex learning activities. These results have implications for the design of VLEs: rather than offering a wide range of tools targeted at specific learning activities, VLEs could concentrate on providing basic communication tools that are open for appropriation.     

Fuzzy ontologies-based user profiles applied to enhance e-learning activities

Nowadays, the impact of technological developments on improving human activities is becoming more evident. In e-learning, this situation is no different. There are common to use systems that assist the daily activities of students and teachers. Typically, e-learning recommender systems are focused on students; however, teachers can also benefit from these type of tools. A recommender system can propose actions and resources that facilitate teaching activities like structuring learning strategies. In any case, a complete user’s representation is required. This paper shows how a fuzzy ontology can be used to represent user profiles into a recommender engine and enhances the user’s activities into e-learning environments. A fuzzy ontology is an extension of domain ontologies for solving the problems of uncertainty in sharing and reusing knowledge on the Semantic Web. The user profile is built from learning objects published by the user himself into a learning object repository. The initial experiment confirms that the automatically obtained fuzzy ontology is a good representation of the user’s preferences. The experiment results also indicate that the presented approach is useful and warrants further research in recommending and retrieval information.