I’m currently at the TENCompetence Wintershool in Innsbruck.
These are the slides I used yesterday in my lecture:

Dec 2008: JIME Special Issue: Special issue on Comparing Educational Modelling Languages on the “Planet Game” Case Study

From the Introduction: “The aim of this special issue is to share and confront approaches (i.e., models, tools and methodologies) through modelling experiences of collaborative learning activities. There is a starting point focused on a common case study, called “Planet Game” or “Astronomy Game”, which is modelled and implemented with a very specific approach in every paper. ” This issue of 9 papers is edited by Laurence Vignollet, Christian Martel, and Daniel Burgos.

Thanks to Fiona King for pointing me to this very useful article “100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner”, which you can read at http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2008/06/10/100-helpful-web-tools-for-every-kind-of-learner/ Enjoy it!

Last week I attended the ICALT 2008 Conference in Santander. I have always enjoyed the nice environment of this conference which provides an opportunity for meeting many colleagues (now also friends) working aroud Technology-Enhanced Learning. Some of these friends attended also the LAMS conference in Cádiz, so that we could continue going out after the conference for dinner, etc. We really had fun! I still keep laughing because one of the (many) jokes by Lluis Vicent (U. Ramon Llull) talking about Ernie Ghiglione (LAMS project manager) when being in Cádiz: (for Spanish people) “¿Cuál es el colmo de dedicarse al eLearning? Llamarse “el’Ernie”

My contributions to the conferences have ranged from two full papers (“Supporting Distance Learning Activities and Social Interaction: a Case Study“, “InstanceCollage: a Graphical Tool for the Particularization of Role/group Structures in Pattern-based IMS-LD Collaborative Scripts“) and one short paper (“Social Structures Representations as aid for effective creation and reuse of CSCL scripts according to a problem-solving approach to ID“) to the participation in the workshop “Crafting didactic materials based on IMS LD: from requirements to evaluation” This is the presentation I used in the workshop:

Eloy Villasclaras (from Valladolid) completed the presentation with a demo of webCollage, a new version of Collage which is Web and includes new patterns (not only at the level of the learning flow, but also at the level of activities and resources) of assessment.

I’m now at the 2008 European LAMS Conference in Cádiz, Spain. I’m enjoying the presentations, the place (Cádiz is wonderful) and the community of people working around Learning Design that is participating in the conference. I’m looking forward to today’s conference dinner; we will be watching the European football Championship match Spain vs. Russia!

I’ve presented (in Spanish on Wednesday and English today) some innovations on which GTI is working with the support of the TENCompetence project.

This is our short paper: D. Hernandez-Leo, A. Moghneih, T. Navarrete, J. Blat, S. Gilabert, P. Santos & M. Perez-Sanagustin, From planning learning paths to assessment: Innovations to the practical benefits of Learning Design, 2008 European LAMS Conference, Cádiz, Spain, pp. 139-140. (Slides)

Abstract: The Interactive Technologies Group is working on several research lines (mainly in the context of the TENCompetence project) aiming at innovating and enhancing the technological support to Learning Design. In particular, GTI is working on three main topics: planning learning paths, flexibility in the enactment of learning designs and innovative forms of assessment. With the explosion of educational offers, keeping track and planning learning paths has become a real challenge. GTI’s approach to tackle this problem consists in a tool that visualizes educational units and enables the exploration of large datasets. It considers three levels of interaction (overview, planning, close up) with enables the user to converge on proper options. On the other hand, learning paths are composed of educational units which should be designed considering appropriate methodologies. GTI has selected the dialogic learning approach to study flexibility issues. This methodology entails that the learners are able to participate in the (on-going) design of the units. This situation demands a different approach to the current IMS LD implementations in which editors are not integrated in runtime systems and where the designs need to be planned in advance. To approach this problem GTI has developed an LD template (based on dialogic learning) that can be directly integrated in runtime systems. Moreover, IMS LD can be jointly used with IMS QTI to incorporate test-based assessment. GTI has extended the existing support for enacting QTI tests and is currently integrating this support into an LD system. Furthermore and with the aim of providing new forms of interaction beyond those provided by QTI, GTI has proposed to integrate Web 2.0 services with QTI items. As a first example, GTI has developed a QTI assessment engine enhanced with web maps from Google Maps, which enables the user to interact with the map to answer questions.

Next week (11.4.2008) our paper, Hernández-Leo, D., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Santos, P., Sayago, S., Griffiths, D., Blat, J., “Dialogic learning and interactive groups: an IMS LD template integrated in runtime systems”, will be presented at the TENCompetence Open Workshop in Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

Dialogic learning and interactive groups have proved to be a useful methodological approach appliedin educational situations for lifelong adult learners. The principles of this approach stress the importance of dialogue and equal participation also when designing the training activities. This paper adopts these principles as the basis for a configurable template that can be integrated in runtime systems. The template is formulated as a meta-UoL which can be interpreted by IMS Learning Design players. This template serves as a guide to flexibly select and edit the activities at runtime (on the fly). The meta-UoL has been used successfully by a practitioner so as to create a real-life example, with positive and encouraging results.

The paper is available at http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/1213.