1. Customized Learning
Environment: A new approach
16-06-2016
Gran Canaria, Espanha
Anabela Mesquita
CICE –ISCAP / IPP, Portugal
Algoritmi RC, Portugal
sarmento@iscap.ipp.pt
Fernando Moreira
UPT, IJP, DEGI, Portugal
IEETA, UA, Aveiro, Portugal
fmoreira@upt.pt
Paula Peres
CICE – ISCAP /IPP, Portugal
pperes@iscap.ipp.pt
2. Authors
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Anabela Mesquita
CICE –ISCAP / IPP, Portugal
Algoritmi RC, Portugal
sarmento@iscap.ipp.pt
Fernando Moreira
UPT, IJP, DEGI, Portugal
IEETA, UA, Aveiro, Portugal
fmoreira@upt.pt
Paula Peres
CICE – ISCAP /IPP, Portugal
pperes@iscap.ipp.pt
4. Introduction
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Changes
Education system must address the
diversity of students’ backgrounds and
needs.
Educational equity
Learning should be personalized
Lack of interaction in traditional classes
– which is essential for learning
Assumptions
Adopting e-learning platforms
Effective in
connecting people
and resources
Facilitate
interaction
Promote
collaboration
Contribute to
critical thinking
Development of informal learning environments
5. Introduction
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Platforms designed for e-learning, open source or commercial -
more focused on the design of the needs of institutional progress
or activities concerning teaching and learning.
Personal Learning Environment - approach to integrate different
practices and resources to address individual learning needs - more
flexible and aims to focus on the needs of students.
Still relies on what teachers make at students’ disposal and
not empower student to create his / her own environment
6. Introduction
Model
To develop their CLE using a set of
tools and services that cover the
functions in their learning process and
customise their learning environment.
Learning and e-
learning elements
Student is the focus Decides what should be
included in this learning
environment
Customized
Learning
Environment
8. Background (1)
• Personal Learning Environments (PLE)
– “conceptual and technological frameworks that help
learners take control of and manage their own learning”.
• Providing support for learners to:
– Set their own learning goals
– Manage their learning (learning outcomes and
processes)
• Personal
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Related with engagement with other learners
and experts; consists of an assembly of
resources from various sources.
9. Background (1)
• PLE characteristics
– Support – environment planned to help students to
design and manage their learning environment;
– Educational component – all the resources that are
available in the learning environment;
– Social – environment developed take into
consideration the need to engage with other
(knowledge is something that is socially constructed);
– Technological component – design of the tools used.
All components should be tailored, student-centered
and driven.
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10. Background (2)
• Social network
– “… a web service that allow individuals to (1) construct a public
profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other
users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by others
within the system.”
• Social network can be:
– Horizontal - used for more general purposes; diverse users;
address a wide range of topics; reduced specialization; less
privacy, public – lot of users and information; no filter
– Vertical - highly segmented user base, addressing specific topics
in depth, high degree of specialization, generally more private
and closed.
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11. Background (3)
• Pedagogical Learning Theories
– Constructivism - all new knowledge and learning
is based on previous knowledge and past
learning.
– Main principles:
• 1) learning and understanding comes from interaction
with the environment;
• 2) learners encounter cognitive conflict which in turn
stimulates learning;
• 3) new knowledge develops through social interaction
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12. Background (3)
• Pedagogical Learning Theories
– Connectivist - learning occurs through the process
of a learner connecting to and transferring
information into a learning community.
• Characteristics related with PLE
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13. Related work
• Service-based framework
– Components:
• 1) Institutional context (include one or more LMS in which the
students carry out their academic activities, e.g. Moodle),
• 2) Personalized context (facilitates de integration of the different tools
that students use in their learning) and
• 3) Communication channels
• 4) Mediator elements (to facilitate communication between specific
instances of the LMS and the online tools included into the PLE) and /
or the representation of these elements in other contexts (such as
mobile devices).
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Learning
environment
Institutional
LMS
Facilitate
communication
15. Conclusions
• CLE
– Technological developments are bringing more
and more functionalities to this learning
environment while learning theories support and
are the basis for the conceptual principles of these
environments.
– Student is the center of all the learning process
– Learning does not occur only in the classroom
– LMS should also take into consideration informal
learning, valuing and assessing it.
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16. Conclusions
• Next step
– Test this customized learning environment
– Propose an integration of all the learning space -
formal and informal - in the LMS
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The model presented in this paper is service-oriented and enables the communication described above using web services and interoperability specifications. This structure facilitates the representation of institutional features in devices (fixed and mobile devices) using web services. Although the export functionality allows the representation of PLE in several contexts, this model needs a way to combine tools, social networks, a common environment and communication channels to return the results of learning activities to the LMS.
From an architectural point of view (Fig 1) the four core structural elements are: the institutional environment (one or more LMS), PLE (one or more tools), social networks (horizontal and vertical) and the channels and interfaces of communication. In this architecture the institutional environment includes one or several LMS. The PLE includes tools and devices, institutional and own tools. Social networks include some other horizontal and vertical, depending on the area Customised Learning Environment (CLE) apply. In addition, the model must include proxy tools to interact with, for example, Google tools, social networking, i.e., use the APIs provided by the various suppliers. An important issue for the use of these APIs is the need for evaluation of the activity performed in the external tools (not controlled by institutions) so it is necessary to integrate information (performed activity) for the assessment to be carried out “internally” so that evidences of assessment remain preserved, since it is a formal teaching-learning process. In this context, the components must be connected by interfaces based on web services and interoperability specifications.
The way to test this model is by implementing it as proof of concept. This implementation involves some restrictions of design that affect the technologies used in the components of the model. The first issue is the institutional point of view, that is, in this context there are many LMS available (commercial and open source) but the option is the use of multiple instances of Moodle LMS. This platform was selected because it is open source and has a very wide community of users, includes a web services layers that allows the inclusion of new technologies and facilitates the integration with other tools as well as the existing experience in national educational institutions (http://moodle.org/stats).
The second issue is directly related to the choice of the most appropriate social networks for training activities (hard skills or soft skills), with a natural tendency, in horizontal social networks to Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/), Twitter (https://dev.twitter.com/), etc., and in the vertical social networks, Stackoverflow (https://api.stackexchange.com/); Github (https://developer.github.com/v3/), Doximity (https://www.doximity.com/developers/home), etc. Finally, the communication channels can be implemented through the mechanisms of communication between the components of the model, for example Moodle web services (https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Core_APIs) and BLTI (http://www.imsglobal.org/developers) (an interoperability specification), to interact with the LMS to integrate the results of students in relation to activities carried out in other environments / tools.
The next step will be the testing of this customized learning environment in order to see if it works, and propose an integration of all the learning space - formal and informal - in the LMS and introducing knowledge management applied to learning repositories to the personalized management of the teaching-learning process of the student lifelong, resulting in Personalized Lifelong Learning Space (PL2S).
The next step will be the testing of this customized learning environment in order to see if it works, and propose an integration of all the learning space - formal and informal - in the LMS and introducing knowledge management applied to learning repositories to the personalized management of the teaching-learning process of the student lifelong, resulting in Personalized Lifelong Learning Space (PL2S).