Mathematics and E-Learning: A conceptual framework
This paper starts from the study of the epistemological statute of the didactics of the
mathematics (Henry, 1991; D'Amore, 1999), which faces the phenomenon of
learning from the point of view of fundaments, in order to give useful and specific
considerations for e-learning environments. Investigations on how the triangle
teacher-pupil-knowledge changes are presented. Then the model of a-didactic
situations (Brousseau, 1997) is analysed in the context of e-learning platforms.
The Virtual Mobius Strip: access to and use of ICTs in higher education
This report is a regional study into the access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in five
higher education institutions in the Western Cape, South Africa. The investigation
surveyed 6577 students and 515 academic staff.
The framework for understanding access is based on a “thick” concept which understands access to four kinds of resource groupings: technological, personal agency, social and content. It considers how access is differentiated for different demogr
Learning complex domains and complex tasks, the promise of simulation based training
Computer simulations enable the realization of didactical concepts such as inquiry learning, collaborative learning, and situated learning. These didactical approaches are not novel in the sense that they have just emerged, but simulation learning environments help to realize these approaches in new type of contexts. The design of such simulation learning environments is a multifaceted endeavour. First, the processes and difficulties involved in inquiry, collaboration, and knowledge application
An Evolutionary Approach to Prototyping Pedagogical Agents: From Simulation to Integrated System
We have developed and integrated software agents with two educational groupware
systems (TeamWave Workplace and FLE), using evolutionary prototyping and empiricalbased
design as development techniques. The resulting prototypes of pedagogical agents
(CoPAS, SA-Agent and RuleEditor) provide learners and teachers with increasingly
domain-specific support for distributed collaborative learning activities. Employing the
evolutionary approach has enabled us to build and evaluate early prototypes of co
Introducing E-Learning in a Norwegian Service Company with Participatory Design and Evolutionary Pro
Over a 2-year period, we have participated in the introduction of e-learning in a
Norwegian service company, a gas station division of an oil company. This company has
an advanced computer network infrastructure for communication and information
sharing, but the primary task of the employees is serving customers. We identify some
challenges to introducing e-learning in this kind of environment. A primary emphasis has
been on using participatory design techniques during the planning stages and
ev
Clustering Students to help Evaluate Learning
In this paper we show how clustering techniques can be applied to
student answers generated from a web-based tutoring tool. In particular we
are interested in extracting clusters of students based on the mistakes
they made using the tool, with the aim of obtaining pedagogically
relevant information and providing this feedback to the teacher. The data we used comes from the Logic-ITA, a web-based tutoring tool to practice formal proofs currently in use in the School of Information Technologies at
Newton Rocket Car
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate Newton’s third law of motion — which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction — through a small wooden car. The Newton cars show how action/reaction works and how the mass of a moving object affects the acceleration and force of the system. Subsequently, the Newton cars provide students with an excellent analogy for how rockets actually work.
Generating reports of graphical modelling processes for authoring and presentation
Today's computer supported modelling environments could provide much
more information about the users’ actions and problem solving processes than they
usually store for later usage. Thus, relevant information about learning processes
which could be used for reflection and analysis is lost.
This paper describes an approach to tackle this issue by generating “reports”, in the
sense of augmented summaries of states and action traces from modelling processes.
This approach includes a) gatherin
Developing Self-Regulated Learning in ICT-based Narrative Environments
Based on the analysis of a plain narrative learning environment (NLE), in
this paper we discuss what features of NLEs can support the development of selfregulated
learning (SRL) abilities in primary school children. The analysis is
performed by means of a tool developed within the European project TELEPEERS,
aiming to evaluate the potential to support SRL of technology-enhanced learning
environments. We evaluate the considered NLE as granting an average support to
SRL. We spot several aspects wh
Designing to facilitate learning through networked technologies: factors influencing the implementat
Recent advances in computers and telecommunications have allowed networked learning to play a significant role to play across the complete spectrum of higher education teaching. One of the most significant UK government initiatives to date has been the development the Information Environment (IE) originally called as the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), which is aiming to create a managed environment for accessing quality assured information resources on the Internet (IE, 2004).
Student's modelling with a lattice of conceptions in the domain of linear equations and inequations
We present a student's modelling process in algebra which consists of two phases. The first phase is a local diagnosis where a student's transformation of an expression A into an expression B is diagnosed with a sequence of rewriting rules. A library of correct and incorrect rules has been built for that purpose. The second phase uses a lattice of conceptions built for modelling students more globally. Conceptions are attributed to students according to a mechanism using the local diagnoses as i
Improving access to further and higher education - via satellites (a review of the opportunities aff
The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the opportunities afforded by recent developments in satellite technology in meeting educational needs. It has been commissioned by JISC and was written by Mathy Vanbuel of ATiT, Belgium.,A report published by JISC.
Hot or Not
Students learn the purpose of a fever in the body’s immune system and how it protects the body against germs. The students continue to explore temperature by creating a model thermometer and completing a temperature conversion worksheet. They come to see how engineers are involved in designing helpful medical instruments such as thermometers.
Teaching Expertise is at The Core of ITS Research
To design efficient, flexible and user-adaptable learning environments, we need to embed a great deal of knowledge into them. This paper emphasises the teacher's knowledge, which encompasses all the expertise of the teacher or of the trainer. Thus it is broader than that which is usually called tutoring knowledge. We start with a description of several facets of teaching expertise and of various implementations that have been described in the ITS literature. Then we describe in more detail some
Towards a semantic learning model fostering learning object reusability
We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity, flexibility, integration and interoperability. Secondly, we introduce and describe our six-level Semantic Learning Model (SLM) designed to facilitate multi-level reuse of learning materials and search by defining a multi-layer model for metadata. Finally, after mapping dif
La evaluación social e individual en la era de la educación a distancia en la globalización
En la globalización tan ampliamente fomentada, especialmente por la educación a distancia, debemos cuestionarnos sobre los valores que vivimos en nuestras culturas locales. La evaluación que instauramos dentro de nuestros cursos puede también convertirse en otro mecanismo de homogenización. Para contrarrestar estas desventajas y poder construir juntos sociedades distintas pero solidarias, propongo un análisis de la evaluación como vehículo ideológico de perpetuación de la distribución
Quelques méthodes d'intelligence artificielle pour la modélisation de l'élève
This paper presents some of the artificial intelligence techniques which have been used for student modeling : planning, machine learning, diagnosis and belief revision. Each technique is brie y described, then its application to student modeling is presented and illustrated by a few examples. The advantages and drawbacks of these methods are discussed. We end this survey with some directions for further researches.
Instructional Engineering for Learning Objects Repository Networks
Knowledge management in organizations, the learning objects paradigm and the advent of a new Web generation, the "Semantic Web", are major actual trends that reveal a new potential for a renewed distance learning pedagogy, but at a certain number of conditions. The first and foremost is the use of education modeling languages and instructional engineering methods to help decide how to assemble learning objects in meaningful learning and knowledge management environment. This article proposes a s
Learning Object-Oriented Programming
Loud discussions concerning various ways of teaching object-orientation have taken place without much empirical evidence for any position. This paper reports qualitative observations of learning of object-ori-ented programming in an introductory course. The students were found to cope reasonably well with the object-oriented concepts, and they had learnt procedural programming first. However, they modeled the real world domain to be represented in the program by imagination and through coding. T
Exploiting distance technology to foster experimental design as a neglected learning objective in la
This article deals with the design process of a remote laboratory for labwork in chemistry. In particular, it focuses on the mutual dependency of theoretical conjectures about learning in the experimental sciences and technological opportunities in creating learning environments. The design process involves a detailed analysis of the expert task and knowledge, e.g., spectrophotometry as a method for the determination of the concentration of a compound in a solution. In so doing, modifications in
