Japan

I went to Japan in November 2008. This is a selection of the photos I took there.

I hope you like them! 

Holidays in Extremadura

This summer I’ve spent most of my holidays in Extremadura, the region of Spain in which I was born. The specific city is Plasencia.
It is situated in a wonderful place, part of “El Valle del Jerte” and very close to “La Vera”, “Las Hurdes”…

After months travelling around Europe, I’ve finally managed to discover again Extremadura: “Reserva natural de Garganta de los Infiernos” (or “Los Pilones”, in “El Valle del Jerte”), see this picture I took last week , Trujillo, Mérida or the “Parque Natural del Monfragüe“, see the picture that is now (temporarily) in the header and also this picture Isn’t it outstanding?

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

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!

ICALT 2008 Conference

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.

2008 European LAMS Conference

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.

Dialogic learning and interactive groups: an IMS LD template integrated in runtime systems

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.

GTI-UPF work on QTI

The research and development related to IMS QTI under work within the GTI group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra can be checked here.

Handbook of Visual Languages for Instructional Design

The “Handbook of Visual Languages for Instructional Design” edited by Luca Botturi y Todd Stubbs is already available. I am the author of one of its chapters:
Hernández-Leo, D., Villasclaras-Fernández, E.D., Asensio-Pérez, J.I., Dimitriadis, Y. Diagrams of learning flow patterns solutions as visual representations of refinable IMS Learning Design templates in Handbook of Visual Languages for Instructional Design: Theories and Practices, Botturi, L., Stubbs, T. (Eds.), IGI, pp. 394-412, 2007.

This is the abstract:

This chapter introduces the use of diagrammatic representations of learning flow patterns as a means of visualizing refinable IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) templates. It argues that the incorporation of pattern-based IMS LD templates in authoring tools, which graphically guide users to create their own learning designs, offers a solution to the problem of IMS LD constructs not being familiar to educators because of its technical nature and text-based notation. Furthermore, this solution facilitates the reuse of good practices formulated as patterns, permitting a design process that promotes potentially effective results. This issue is especially important in collaborative learning designs, in which elicitations of desired social interactions are planned beforehand. Based on these ideas, the chapter also presents Collage, an IMS LD editor which provides templates based on Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns (CLFPs), and includes an example drawn from a real scenario that show the feasibility and usefulness of the approach.

Latest “B” trips

I have been travelling (for “B”usiness) the last two weeks to two different cities whose names start with “B”. Birmingham and Berlin, both are really nice cities but I have to say that I feel special attraction to Berlin (it is an interesting city indeed).

In Birmingham I attended the JISC CETIS Conference 2007, Beyond Standards – Holistic Approaches to Educational Technology and Interoperability. It is well-known that there is a lot of activity in the UK regarding innovation in Technology Enhanced Learning and I could testify that participating in some of the interesting discussions that took place during the conference.

Because of the European Award in CSCL with which I was co-honored within the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence, I was invited to the Kaleidoscope Symposium in Berlin. It was really intensive and interesting (with demos, presentations, discussions, etc.) and there were more than 260 people from 35 different countries. Berlin also provided me with the opportunity to meet people from Valladolid, which made me happy during these days.

BTW, the photo that is now in the header shows a view of “Serra de Cabrera” (in Catalonia), where I also spent one of last weekends…

IEEE Transactions on Education paper

IEEE Transactions on Education has just published our paper:
Hernández-Leo, D., Bote-Lorenzo, M.L., Asensio-Pérez, J.I., Gómez-Sánchez, E., Villasclaras-Fernández, E.D., Jorrín-Abellán, I.M., Dimitriadis, Y. Free- and Open Source Software for a Course on Network Management: Authoring and Enactment of Scripts based on Collaborative Learning Strategies IEEE Transactions on Education. 50(4):292-301, November 2007.

Abstract: This paper describes a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) case study in engineering education carried out within the context of a network management course. The case study shows that the use of two computing tools developed by the authors and based on free- and open-source software (FOSS) provide significant educational benefits over traditional engineering pedagogical approaches in terms of both concepts and engineering competencies acquisition. The Collage authoring tool guides and supports the course teacher in the process of authoring computer-interpretable representations (using the IMS Learning Design standard notation) of effective collaborative pedagogical designs. Besides, the Gridcole system supports the enactment of that design by guiding the students throughout the prescribed sequence of learning activities. The paper introduces the goals and context of the case study, elaborates on how Collage and Gridcole were employed, describes the applied evaluation methodology, and discusses the most significant findings derived from the case study.