UPGRADE is the European Journal for the
Informatics Professional, published bimonthly
at <http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/>
Publisher
UPGRADE is published on behalf of CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies, <http://www.cepis.org/>) by Novática
<http://www.ati.es/novatica/>, journal of the Spanish CEPIS society ATI
(Asociación de Técnicos de Informática, <http://www.ati.es/>)
Vo l. IX, issue No . 3, June 2008
UPGRADE monographs are also published in Spanish (full version
printed; summary, abstracts and some articles online) by Novática
UPGRADE was created in October 2000 by CEPIS and was first
published by Novática and INFORMATIK/INFORMATIQUE, bimonthly journal of SVI/FSI (Swiss Federation of Professional
Informatics Societies, <http://www.svifsi.ch/>)
UPGRADE is the anchor point for UPENET (UPGRADE European
NETwork), the network of CEPIS member societies’ publications, that
currently includes the following ones:
• Informatica, journal from the Slovenian CEPIS society SDI
• Informatik-Spektrum, journal published by Springer Verlag on behalf
of the CEPIS societies GI, Germany, and SI, Switzerland
• ITNOW, magazine published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
the British CEPIS society BCS
• Mondo Digitale, digital journal from the Italian CEPIS society AICA
• Novática, journal from the Spanish CEPIS society ATI
• OCG Journal, journal from the Austrian CEPIS society OCG
• Pliroforiki, journal from the Cyprus CEPIS society CCS
• Pro Dialog, journal from the Polish CEPIS society PTI-PIPS
• Tölvumál, journal from the Icelandic CEPIS society ISIP
Editorial TeamEditorial Team
Chief Editor: Llorenç Pagés-Casas
Deputy Chief Editor: Francisco-Javier Cantais-Sánchez
Associate Editor: Rafael Fernández Calvo
Editorial Board
Prof. Wolffried Stucky, CEPIS Former President
Prof. Nello Scarabottolo, CEPIS Vice President
Fernando Piera Gómez and Llorenç Pagés-Casas, ATI (Spain)
François Louis Nicolet, SI (Switzerland)
Roberto Carniel, ALSI – Tecnoteca (Italy)
UPENET Advisory Board
Matjaz Gams (Informatica, Slovenia)
Hermann Engesser (Informatik-Spektrum, Germany and Switzerland)
Brian Runciman (ITNOW, United Kingdom)
Franco Filippazzi (Mondo Digitale, Italy)
Llorenç Pagés-Casas (Novática, Spain)
Veith Risak (OCG Journal, Austria)
Panicos Masouras (Pliroforiki, Cyprus)
Andrzej Marciniak (Pro Dialog, Poland)
Thorvardur Kári Ólafsson (Tölvumál, Iceland)
Rafael Fernández Calvo (Coordination)
English Language Editors: Mike Andersson, David Cash, Arthur
Cook, Tracey Darch, Laura Davies, Nick Dunn, Rodney Fennemore,
Hilary Green, Roger Harris, Jim Holder, Pat Moody, Brian Robson
Cover page designed by Concha Arias-Pérez and Diego BlascoVázquez
"Abacus" / © CEPIS 2008
Layout Design: François Louis Nicolet
Composition: Jorge Llácer-Gil de Ramales
Editorial correspondence: Llorenç Pagés-Casas <pages@ati.es>
Advertising correspondence: <novatica@ati.es>
UPGRADE Newslist available at
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Copyright
© Novática 2008 (for the monograph)
© CEPIS 2008 (for the sections UPENET and CEPIS News)
All rights reserved under otherwise stated. Abstracting is permitted
with credit to the source. For copying, reprint, or republication permission, contact the Editorial Team
The opinions expressed by the authors are their exclusive responsibility
Monograph: Technology-Enhanced Learning
(published jointly with Novática*)
Guest Editors: Carlos Delgado-Kloos and Fridolin Wild
2 Presentation. Next Generation Technology-Enhanced Learning —
Carlos Delgado-Kloos and Fridolin Wild
6 Technology-Enhanced Learning: Supporting Learning in the 21st
Century — Pat Manson
8 Integrating Web-Based and 3D Learning Environments:
Second Life Meets Moodle — Daniel Livingstone and Jeremy Kemp
15 Game-Based Learning in e-Learning Environments — Pablo
Moreno-Ger, José Luis Sierra-Rodríguez, and Baltasar FernándezManjón
21 Use of Folksonomies in the Creation of Learning Experiences for
Television — Marta Rey-López, Rebeca P. Díaz-Redondo, Ana
Fernández-Vilas, and José J. Pazos-Arias
27 Fostering Open Sensemaking Communities by Combining Knowledge Maps and Videoconferencing — Alexandra Okada, Eleftheria
Tomadaki, Simon Buckingham Shum, and Peter J. Scott
37 Mobile Social Software for Professional Communities — Ralf
Klamma and Matthias Jarke
44 Applying "Scruffy" Methods to Enable Work-Integrated Learning
— Stefanie N. Lindstaedt, Tobias Ley, Peter Scheir, and Armin Ulbrich
51 Distributed Feed Networks for Learning — Fridolin Wild and Steinn
E. Sigurdarson
57 Contextualized Attention Metadata in Learning Environments —
Martin Wolpers
62 Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Communities as an
Example of Successful Open Participatory Learning Ecosystems —
Andreas Meiszner, Rüdiger Glott, and Sulayman K. Sowe
69 New Objects in Formal Professional Learning: Replaying Meetings
to Learn — Linda Castañeda, Eleftheria Tomadaki, and Peter J. Scott
76 UPC’s Moodle Platform: A Study on Architecture and Performance
— Marcos Montero-Torres
81 IFIP and TC 3 — Jan Wibe
UPENET (UPGRADE European NETwork)
84 From ITNOW (BCS, United Kingdom)
Ethics in Computing
Robosoldier — David Evans
CEPIS NEWS
ISSN 1684-5285
Monograph of next issue (August 2008)
"EUCIP: A Model for Definition and
Measurement of ICT Skills"
(The full schedule of UPGRADE is available at our website)
86 CEPIS Projects
Harmonise Outcomes — Peter Weiß
88 Selected CEPIS News — Fiona Fanning
* This monograph will be also published in Spanish (full version printed; summary, abstracts, and some
articles online) by Novática, journal of the Spanish CEPIS society ATI (Asociación de Técnicos de
Informática) at <http://www.ati.es/novatica/>.
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Presentation
Next Generation Technology-Enhanced Learning
Carlos Delgado-Kloos and Fridolin Wild
Learning is change and the field of education is one
which, by its very nature, has always been open to technological innovation. Today the emerging interdisciplinary
field of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) as a whole
can be seen to be moving forward rapidly. In recent years in
particular, major breakthroughs have been achieved, with
significant support from European Commission IST funding, major national initiatives, and the enthusiastic dedication of organizations and individuals alike.
Research and development in TEL takes place at the
boundary between education and technology to "provide
socio-technical innovations (also improving efficiency and
effectiveness) for learning practices, regarding individuals
and organizations, independent of time, place and pace" [1].
Rather than "e-Learning", it is about technology support
for learning activities.
Prolearn, the international network of excellence for
Technology-Enhanced Learning, has drafted six vision statements (see Figure 1) that define future directions in the field.
From the perspective of the individual, "everyone […]
should be able to learn anything at any time at any place"
to "increase [their own] employability", i.e. increasing jobflexibility through more competence and more professional
choice while at the same time ensuring job-security through
improved on-the-job performance. From the viewpoint of
businesses and industry, learning must be "a means to support and enhance work performance" and "innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship at work" need to be promoted.
To facilitate a competitive yet innovative market, take-up
needs to be "consumer-driven […], based on increased market transparency and the availability of a wider range of
offers". Finally, to extend the knowledge-based society as
such, "access to professional learning for all" must be secured (all statements cf. to [2]).
Novática and UPGRADE published special issues on
educational technologies five and ten years ago (and earlier
as well). Looking back at those issues, we believe that today the field is much more established and that exciting
recent developments promise a bright future. It will be interesting to see whether these promises will be fulfilled.
However, while in the last special issue (UPGRADE IV/5
and Novática 165, 2003) the focus was on platforms,
interoperability and standards, the view today has broadened further: within this issue we present a wide range of
contributions with which we aim to cover both recent advances and emerging future topics.
The Guest Editors
Carlos Delgado-Kloos received his degree in Electrical
Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 1978
and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technische
Universität München (Technical University of Munich) in 1986.
He is currently Full Professor of Telematic Engineering at the
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he is director of the
online Master’s programme in e-Learning <http://learn.uc3m.es>
and director of the Nokia Chair at the same university <http://
www.it.uc3m.es/nokia/>. He is also Associate Vice-Rector of
International Relations and Cooperation. Among his main
interests are Internet-based applications, such as electronic
publishing, e-Learning and e-Commerce. He has been involved
in more than 20 projects with European (Esprit, IST, @LIS,
eContentPlus), national (Spanish Ministry), and bilateral
(Spanish-German and Spanish-French) funding. He has been
the coordinator of the European funded project E-LANE <http:/
/www.e-lane.org> on e-Learning and is a member of the Board
of Directors of the .LRN Consortium <http://dotlrn.org>, an open
source educational platform. He has published almost 200 articles
in national and international conferences and journals. He has
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
also written one book and co-edited five. He holds or has held
various posts in national and international bodies. In relation to
e-Learning, it should be mentioned that he is the Spanish
representative at IFIP TC3 on Education. He has been programme
committee member or chair at more than 100 conferences and
workshops, including vice programme chair of the IFIP’92 World
Computer Congress, programme chair of DATE’2002, Telecom
I+D 2003, EduTech2004, and EUNICE2005 and reviewer for
several journals and research programmes (at a Spanish level, at a
European level, at an EU-USA level, etc.). <cdk@it.uc3m.es>.
Fridolin Wild M.A. is researching within ProLearn, the EU
Network of Excellence (NoE) for technology enhanced
professional learning, and additionally within the EU IST funded
iCamp project, where he is the technical manager and leads a
work package on interoperability of social software tools for
learning. Fridolin is the treasurer of the European Association
of Technology-Enhanced Learning (EATEL). He works as a
scientist at the Institute of Information Systems of the
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna University of Economics
and Business Administration). <fridolin.wild@wu-wien.ac.at>.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: Prolearn Vision Statements [2].
Issue Summary
This issue is framed by two invited contributions. It is
opened by a contribution from Pat Manson, Head of the
Unit of Cultural Heritage & Technology Enhanced Learning at the European Commission. Thanks go to both ERCIM
News, from which this contribution is reprinted with permission, and Pat Manson. As the person responsible for
the strategy of research projects on Technology-Enhanced
Learning at the European Commission, Pat Manson’s views
on where the subject should be heading are interesting to
read. The paper gives a definition to the concept of Technology-Enhanced Learning and therefore serves as a good
introduction to the issue as a whole. Jan Wibe’s contribution
closes this special issue. Jan chairs IFIP Technical Committee
TC 3, which is the TC devoted to education. In his article, Jan
explains the objectives and history of the Technical Committee, as well as some of its activities in the near future.
Occasionally advances in technology suddenly open up
possibilities to the public at large that were previously restricted to a closed group with specialized equipment. For
example, 3D visualizations are not new; there is a long tradition of immersive and 3D technologies. Now, however,
they are executable on anyone’s computer. And with this
subtle change new applications arise, ones that previously
no one dared to even think about. The paper by D.
Livingstone and J. Kemp entitled "Integrating Web-Based
and 3D Learning Environments: Second Life Meets Moodle"
presents the open source Sloodle project, which combines
Moodle, one of the most successful open source learning
management systems, with Second Life, the popular 3D
multi-user virtual environment that has attracted so many
headlines lately. We believe that this integration effort will
be just one of many to include 3D visualization in a virtual
learning environment. Watch out for many more interest-
© Novática
ing developments to follow.
Multi-user virtual environments have often been connected to games, but this is not (necessarily) an aspect pursued in Second Life. Nevertheless, for educational purposes,
games can be highly attractive. In fact, the so called serious games offer a high learning potential. P. Moreno-Ger,
J.L. Sierra-Rodríguez, and B. Fernández-Manjón have
studied this trend and identify in their paper "Game-Based
Learning in e-Learning Environments" two critical aspects
needed to achieve the integration of videogames and eLearning environments; namely the existence of adequate
authoring methodologies and the definition of integration
models that allow a bidirectional exchange of information
between videogames and e-Learning platforms.
In the future e-Learning will not only take place on a computer screen. There are many other devices that can deliver
digital learning experiences. By M-Learning we mean learning through mobile devices and by T-Learning we mean learning using television. Each device has its own advantages and
disadvantages and range of preferred application. In their paper entitled "Use of Folksonomies for the Creation of Learning Experiences for Television" M. Rey-López and co-authors
describe some algorithms that relate TV programs and learning objects by using folksonomies.
A. Okada, E. Tomadaki, S. Buckinham Shum, and P.
Scott report in "Fostering Open Sensemaking Communities
by Combining Knowledge Maps and Videoconferencing"
on how visual thinking technologies can be used to create
knowledge structures about and for conversations mediated
through videoconferencing. Their qualitative and quantitative investigation identifies the four generic scenarios in
the learning processes under examination: transmission, studio, negotiation, and assessment.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
3
Technology-Enhanced Learning
R. Klamma and M. Jarke outline how "Mobile Social
Software for Professional Communities" can be researched
and supported with the help of Web 2.0 enabled Social Software with a strong focus on highly mobile settings. In their
contribution they first define Social Software and Web 2.0
in the context of knowledge work and professional communities. In the next two chapters they outline the context
and current shortcomings. Following this, a research framework is outlined, consisting of social network analysis supported by visualizations on the basis of actor-network theory
and with the help of the high-level goal-oriented modelling
formalism i*. The accompanying application framework is
illustrated with the example of an international, professional
preservation community of a UNESCO world-heritage site
in Afghanistan which is supported by a social software package for mobile communities called Virtual Campfire.
S. Lindstaedt, T. Ley, P. Scheir, and A. Ulbrich delve
into new technological approaches for workplace learning
in their article "Applying 'Scruffy' Methods to Enable Workintegrated Learning". After defining their understanding of
learning at the workplace, the authors summarize the shortcomings and technological challenges of current training
approaches. They go on to argue in favour of hybrid approaches that combine "neat", coarse-grain models with
"scruffy", applied methods based on behaviour data and
natural language processing. This hybrid approach is demonstrated by three application examples taken from the
projects APOSDLE and DYONIPOS: automatic extraction
of user context information from behaviour data, automated
inferences about user competency profiles, and the automated matching of learning material based on their semantic similarity.
With their article "Distributed Feed Networks for Learning", F. Wild and S. Sigurdarson describe how modern social software technologies can be utilized in distributed
learning applications. Through an extensive analysis of existing blogging standards and their support in today’s applications, they spot a shortcoming in the support facilities
for active networking and networked collaboration which
can be filled by the proposed "Feedback" specification.
FeedBack provides easy-to-deploy feed management possibilities which allow learning networks to be built maintained efficiently. They illustrate their approach with a small
user trial that has been conducted within the iCamp project
on the basis of a blog learning network.
With "Contextualized Attention Metadata in Learning
Environments", M. Wolpers reflects on an important paradigm shift within the research on data about data: if it is
only usage behaviour and usage context that turns data into
information, learning objects consequently need to be annotated with situational information on attention to pave
the way for the adaption of learning applications, processes,
and materials. The article first provides a concise introduction into contextualized attention metadata (CAM) followed
by an overview of the state-of-the-art and current challenges.
This insight into recent advancements is illustrated by three
usage examples of how CAM can be deployed: in business
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
process execution, for metadata enrichment, and for ranking learning objects for retrieval.
In "Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Communities as an Example of Successful Open Participatory
Learning Ecosystems" A. Meiszner, R. Glott, and S.K. Sowe
explore whether the joint knowledge construction, learning, and support models of open-source software development communities can be transferred to an educational setting to create open participation-oriented learning ecologies.
Although the open educational resource movement strives
for inclusiveness, dynamics, heterogeneity, and the like (all
aspects that are significant characteristics of successful
FLOSS-communities), they have not yet achieved it. The
authors identify still predominant traditional teacher-producer / learner-consumer role models to be responsible for
this shortcoming while the underlying cause may be found
in the immediate visibility and testability of outcomes in
software development.
In "New Objects in Formal Professional Learning: Replaying Meetings to Learn" L. Castañeda, E. Tomadaki,
and P. Scott investigate how recordings of online
videoconferences can be used as learning objects in formal
learning processes.
In "UPC’s Moodle Platform: A Study on Architecture
and Performance" M. Montero-Torres gives an overview
on how the Learning Management System Moodle can be
deployed to give support to 30,000 students. Now that this
platform is becoming increasingly popular, this is certainly
an interesting experience to be shared.
Acknowledgements
Finally we would like to thank the Editorial Board of this
Special Issue: Ingo Dahn (University of Koblenz, Germany),
Yannis Dimitriadis (University of Valladolid, Spain), Alfredo
Fernández-Valmayor (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain),
Jesús González Boticario (UNED, Spain), Dai Griffiths (University of Bolton, UK), Gustaf Neumann (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria), Abelardo Pardo
(Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain), Peter Scott (Open University London, UK), Marcus Specht (Open University Netherlands, Netherlands), and Jan Wibe (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway). Also special thanks go to the
editor-in-chief Llorenç Pagés for the smooth interaction.
References
[1] Wikipedia: Technology-Enhanced Learning, online
at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_
Enhanced_Learning> (article initiated by M.
Wolpers and B. Kieslinger).
[2] Prolearn: A Roadmap for Technology-Enhanced Professional Learning (TEPL), the Prolearn Network of
Excellence in Professional Learning, online at <http://
my.confolio.org/portfolio/main? cmd=open&manifest
=Prolearn-NCSR&uri=urn%3Ax-knowgate. nada.
kth.se%3AProlearn-NCSR %3A100>.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Useful References on "Technology-Enhanced Learning"
For an overview on the European IST research projects
on Technology-Enhanced Learning, please consult the
overview provided by the responsible unit of the European Commission <http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ ict/telearndigicult/telearn-projects_en.html>. More information on
Canadian projects can be found here: <http://www.
canarie.ca/funding/elearning/projects.html>.
Books
J. D. Bransford. "How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school". National Academy Press, 2000.
L. Gilbert; V. Gale. "Principles of E-learning System
Engineering". Chandos Publishing, 2007.
R. Koper, C. Tattersall. "Learning Design: A Handbook
on Modeling and Delivering Networked Education and Training". Springer, 2005.
M. D. Lytras, A. Naeve. "Intelligent Learning Infrastructure for Knowledge Intensive Organizations". Idea Publishing, 2005.
Journals
British Journal of Educational Technology. <http://
www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0007-1013>.
Computers & Education. <http://www.elsevier.com/
locate/compedu>.
IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. <http://
www.computer.org/tlt>.
IJTEL, International Journal on Learning Technologies. <http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?
journalCODE=ijtel>.
Interactive Learning Environments. <http://www.
tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10494820.asp>.
Journal of Educational Technology & Society. <http://
www.ifets.info>.
List of advanced Learning Technology Journals. <http:/
/altjournals.notlong.com>.
World Conference on Educational Multimedia,
Hypermedia, and Telecommunications (ED-MEDIA). <http:/
/www.aace.org/CONF/EDMEDIA>.
Frontiers in Education. <http://www.fie-conference. org>.
IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT). <http://www.ask4research.info/
icalt/2008/>.
Software
.LRN. <http://dotlrn.org>.
Blackboard. <http://www.blackboard.com>.
Flashmeeting. <http://fm.ea-tel.eu>.
ILIAS. <http://www.ilias.de>.
Moodle. <http://moodle.org>.
SAKAI. <http://www.sakaiproject.org>.
Organizations
European Association for Technology-Enhanced
Learning (EATEL). <http://www.ea-tel.eu>.
Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). <http://
www.adlnet.gov>.
Ariadne Foundation. <http://www.ariadne-eu.org>.
Association for the Advancement of Computing in
Education (AACE). <http://www.aace.org>.
CEN Learning Technologies Workshop (CEN WSLT).
<http://www.cen.eu/isss/workshop/LT/>.
Education Network Australia. <http://www.edna.
edu.au>.
ELearning Industry Group (ELIG). <http://www.
elig.org>.
European Distance Education Network (EDEN).
<http://www.eden-online.org>.
IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee
(LTSC). <http://ieeeltsc.org>.
IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology
(LTTC). <http://lttf.ieee.org>.
Conferences
European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL). <http://www.ectel08.org>.
© Novática
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
5
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Technology-Enhanced Learning:
Supporting Learning in the 21st Century
Pat Manson
ERCIM, 2007. This article was previously published in ERCIM (the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) News No. 71, October 2007. It is reproduced with kind permission of ERCIM and the author.
Technology-Enhanced Learning may not flow readily off the tongue or be easily translated as a brand name, but it very
consciously reflects what it is: using Information Communication Technologies (ICT) to secure advancements in learning.
By taking advancements as the objective, we go beyond the attempt to reproduce classical ways of teaching via technologies. Technology-Enhanced Learning combines but places equal emphasis on all three elements: on technologies, on
learning and on enhancements or improvements in learning. This will help us in devising ICT-based solutions which
motivate and inspire learners and teachers, engaging them in meaningful learning and teaching experiences.
Keywords: e-Learning, European Commission, GameBased Learning, ICT Research Programmes, TechnologyEnhanced Learning.
The European Commission, in the framework of its ICT
research programmes, is supporting Technology-Enhanced
Learning. The context for this research continues to be
shaped by a number of trends, economic and educational
policy-related. First, in the workplace, learning technologies are becoming an integrated and critical component of
business processes, corporate knowledge management and
human resource systems. If learning can be delivered
seamlessly, providing knowledge without interruption to
people’s normal work and if time-to-competence can be
reduced, then organisations can better show return on investment in the learning systems. In this context, greater
emphasis is placed on informal and organisational learning.
The second noticeable trend is on the individualisation
of learning, i.e. the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and
learning support to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners, irrespective of ability, culture or social status. This is accompanied by the shift to assessing learning
outcomes and doing this not at set ages but according to the
progress and needs of the individual. Technologically, the
focus has moved from sequencing of content to sequencing
learning activities and pedagogical scenarios.
The focus on the individual is giving new prominence
to engagement and creativity. Here a number of different
technologies are creating opportunities for supporting motivation and empowerment of the learner. Recently, there
has been a dramatic increase of interest in game-based learning or "serious games". These games have defined learning
outcomes, and exploit video-game principles, such as selfpacing, built-in remediation, assessment and motivation, for
education and training. Immersive environments, advances
6
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
Author
Pat Manson is Head of Unit, Cultural Heritage and Technology
Enhanced Learning in the Information Society and Media
Directorate General of the European Commission. She has
worked with the Commission since 1991 in implementing
research projects in the application of technologies to the cultural sector. Currently the Unit is responsible for research in
the Information Society Technologies programme on
Technology-Enhanced Learning and on access to and
preservation of cultural and scientific resources. She had a
background in libraries before moving to the Commission.
<Patricia.Manson@ec.europa.eu>.
in narratives, virtual characters and storytelling are suggesting new ways to generate affective engagement and improving attention span. Visualisation, simulations and virtual
experimentation enable learners to explore problem spaces
in new ways. Information Technologies and creativity, with
cognitive models/processes inspiring computational models/processes, is an emerging trend in both education and
industry, supporting innovation and problem solving.
"Technology-Enhanced Learning" was coined to identify what the researchers working on ICTs and education
saw as a new perspective. Some six years ago, research results were helping to push the mainstreaming of e-Learning
in the form of learning management systems, remote access to electronic resources and courseware through virtual
campuses and brokerages, and training and simulations for
the workplace. The interests of research shifted then towards
looking at the learning process and the learner, at understanding the interactions between learner and systems, between groups of learners, and between learners and teachers/mentors. This was enabled by newer technologies that
better supported participation and interactivity. The focus
was less on integration of technological components but
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
rather on understanding learner behaviour in using the systems to learn.
Today we can move forward. We can look at how (or if)
the appropriate use of the technologies results in improvements in learning, making it more effective and more efficient. However, if technology-Enhanced Learning is to be
successful as a new model for research and for learning,
then there are a number of challenges for the research and
educational communities. First, the emphasis on learning
as the driver means that any approach must be
multidisciplinary, involving not only different strands of
technological research but also pedagogy, psychology and
cognitive sciences extending into neuroscience. Secondly,
if Technology-Enhanced Learning is defined as a factor for
improvement, then we need to be able to demonstrate where
and how improvements take place.
If technology is to enhance learning for the 21st century, it is critical that research builds a convincing scientific
body of evidence as to which approach works and under
which circumstances. From there, we can create showcases
and exemplars of what works, demonstrating how individuals are supported in learning and in developing competencies throughout life.
© Novática
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
7
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Integrating Web-Based and 3D Learning Environments:
Second Life Meets Moodle
Daniel Livingstone and Jeremy Kemp
There has been a recent explosion of interest from academics across a wide range of disciplines in the use of Multi-User
Virtual Environments for education, driven by the success of platforms such as Second Life. As these platforms are used
more often as environments for teaching and learning, there is increased need to integrate them with other institutional
systems, Web-based Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in particular. In this paper we outline the open source Sloodle
project, which is working on integrating learning and teaching across Second Life and Moodle, a popular open source
VLE. We review the history and current status of Sloodle, and present results from user surveys which highlight the
benefits educators hope to reap from this integration.
Keywords: Learning Management Systems, Multi-User
Virtual Environments, Virtual Environments, Virtual Learning Environments.
1 Introduction
Over the past decade web-based Virtual Learning Environments (VLE, sometimes known as Course Management
Systems, CMS) have become a standard part of teaching
and learning provision in further and higher education. Such
systems are now also increasingly to be found in secondary
schools (pupil ages 11-16) and even primary schools (ages
5-11) [1] [2]. These tools provide a wide range of features
for supporting teaching and learning, from simple document sharing to enabling online discussions and assessments
and integration with institutional information systems.
Meanwhile, Massively Multiplayer Online games
(MMO) (graphically rich games supporting many thousands
of simultaneous players) have also moved from being a
fringe activity favoured by "hardcore" gamers to a mainstream hobby attracting millions.
The degree of problem solving, communication and
collaboration required for success in these games has been
studied by a number of researchers who are interested in
informal learning [3]. Other researchers have looked to
Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE) which provide
graphical spaces for social interaction but omit explicit
game-systems and rules as platforms for learning [4] [5]. In
the last few years, the number of academics using some
form of MUVE as a platform for learning has experienced
particularly rapid growth on the back of the success of Second Life [6] [7]. Indeed, it has been shown that many of the
academics using Second Life (SL) have no previous experience of MUVEs [8].
An important feature for more widespread adoption of
virtual worlds as a tool for next generation TechnologyEnhanced Learning will be the ability to integrate learning
experiences with institutional VLEs and to share data with
academic information systems. In this paper we introduce
the open source Sloodle project which is aiming to do just
this. We briefly review the growth of MUVEs in education
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
Authors
Daniel Livingstone is a lecturer on Computer Game Technology
at the University of the West of Scotland (formerly University
of Paisley). His varied research interests include Artificial Life,
Artificial Intelligence and Games Based Learning.
<daniel.livingstone@uws.ac.uk>.
Jeremy W. Kemp is an instructional designer at San José State
University and started teaching online in 1999. He keeps the
official wiki for educators using Second Life <http://
www.simteach.com>. He is a doctoral student at Fielding
Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA working on
educational and social issues in immersive environments. Kemp
has master’s degrees from Stanford and Northwestern University.
<jkemp@slis.sjsu.edu>.
and the background of Sloodle, and outline some of the
challenges to be overcome and the potential for enriching
learning experiences through this marriage of 3D and Webbased technologies.
2 Formal Learning in Virtual Worlds
Two pioneering projects on the use of MUVEs for learning are based on the Active Worlds platform, originally released in 1995. Quest Atlantis [5] and River City [4] use a
game-based learning approach with customized environments in which school students are given game-like quests
to complete. Success in these quests require students to demonstrate knowledge which may be gained through exploration and experience of the virtual world, and which is related to parts of the existing school curriculum. Additional
reviews have shown that Active Worlds allows learners to
become "situated and embodied" within the learning environment and has very strong potential for "facilitating collaborations, community and experiential learning" [9].
SL, like Active Worlds, allows instructors and educational designers to create educational games and simulations,
but unlike Active Worlds and most alternative platforms,
content creation tools are available to all users, not just ad-
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: Sloodle Architecture.
ministrators or developers. This enables a wider range of
learning tasks, including those where students are required
to create artefacts themselves, allowing for a wider range
of constructionist activities.
MUVE platforms are not without weaknesses, however.
To understand these better we previously undertook a comparison of the facilities offered by Web-based VLEs and by
SL supported by a small survey undertaken in late 2006. A
number of weaknesses relate to the presentation and input
of text-based information, which Web-based platforms are
very well suited for.
Aside from this, VLEs bring to the web a range of tools
for course management and learning support and management: class lists, access controls, quizzes, gradebooks, asynchronous forums for discussion and so-on. With most of
these missing from SL, unsurprisingly the majority of respondents (86%) to the survey felt that integrating a VLE
and SL would be useful.
In part the demand for this may be driven by the rather
goal-less experience that awaits users trying-out SL for the
first time (with no game objectives, it is not clear what there
is to do). One complaint from educators is that for many
their most common activity in SL is "wandering aimlessly"
[8]. However, the possibility for enriching the educational
experience by integrating 3D and 2D worlds has also been
seen by respondents to other surveys: "The holy grail will
© Novática
be when we can link directly to e-portfolios and record assessments… integration of Second Life (which is synchronous) with other Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. wiki, forum,
etc) is critical." (Peter Twinning) [10, p. 20].
Choosing a VLE to try to integrate with SL was simplified by a single requirement: that for ease of access to the
underlying database and to the code implementing the database; thus determining the need for an open source VLE.
From the small number of mature systems meeting this requirement, Moodle was selected. Thus was born Sloodle –
where Second Life plus Moodle equals "Sloodle", the Second Life Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
[11].
3 Implementing Sloodle
SL "in-world" development tools include a scripting language, LSL1 , which includes several methods for creating
objects in which can communicate over the Internet with
external Web-servers: via email, XML remote procedure
calls (XML-RPC), and via HTTP-requests.
Moodle is implemented in the PHP scripting language,
and comprises a large collection of PHP scripts residing on
1
LSL stands for Linden Scripting Language. Linden Labs are
the creators of Second Life.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 2: Original Sloodle Concept: A 3D Moodle Classroom.
a Web-server with a database backend. A user is able to
access Moodle via their Web-browser, which communicates
with the server using HTTPS (HTTP-Secure). Server-side
scripts check whether the user has appropriate permissions,
and responds. In principle, the same happens when a user
interacts with data on the Moodle database using the SL
client, with the HTTP request sent from an object in SL and
handled by a Sloodle module on the server (see Figure 1).
There are a few issues which complicate development.
There are fairly strict limitations on the amounts of data
that can be sent in a single request and received in a response. LSL does not fully support HTTPS and does not
support cookies at all, which makes it difficult to maintain
sessions. Additional issues relating to authentication and
checking permissions which will be noted later.
But this simply outlines how it is possible to integrate
SL and Moodle. More interesting questions are what form
should this integration take, and what functionality should
it provide for teachers and learners.
4 From 2 Dimensions into 3
The original intention was to mimic the structure of a
Moodle course homepage with 3D objects (see Figure 2).
As the course designer repositioned Web content blocks, so
too would the corresponding objects automatically be repositioned on the plot of land in the virtual world. However, it soon became clear that this was limiting, both in
terms of restricting use to specified locations within the 3D
environment and in terms of conceptualizing ways of linking the 2D and 3D spaces.
Figure 3: The Sloodle Toolbar Allows Users to Update their Moodle Blogs from within Second Life. Classroom Gestures
Enrich Interactions within the 3D Virtual Environment.
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 4: Using the Sloodle Web-Intercom Adults Were Able to Join Teens for a Discussion on Game-Based Learning.
While we accept that there will be other situations more
explicitly visualising and modelling the spatial and semantic relationships between information on Web-pages [12],
the initial concept of directly mapping the location of objects to their respective Web blocks was not appealing to
educators and was abandoned for more data-centric initiatives.
One very different approach to integration is demonstrated by the Sloodle Toolbar (see Figure 3). The toolbar is
a "HUD" object (SL borrows the term "Heads-up-display"
from video games, which borrow the term from military
use2 ), a user-interface enhancement.
The initial features added to the toolbar were blogging
and classroom gestures. The former allows users to update
their Moodle blogs from within SL, as an aid to reflective
learning or as part of a class activity. Blog posts automatically link to the originating location in SL, allowing readers to easily go from reading a post to visiting the location
it was sent from. Classroom gestures enhance interactions
in SL by allowing users to animate their avatar in number
of ways relevant to class activities, from raising or waving
a hand to get attention, to "nodding off" to indicate disengagement.
2
The military use of HUD refers to any kind of display that allows the presentation of information to the user without
interferring his visual field. In video games, HUD refers to the
information permanently shown on screen, usually in the form
of icons or figures, like the current game score.
© Novática
One of the earliest functioning Sloodle tools was the
Web-Intercom, a device which mirrors typed-chat between
SL and a Moodle chatroom. This serves two key functions.
First, it provides access to a discussion in SL for users who
for some reason are unable to log into SL itself. One example of this when James Paul Gee was meeting with teenagers on the age restricted Teen SL. Adult educators were able
to participate in the discussion at this event quite naturally
via the Web-Intercom (see Figure 4).
The second use of the intercom is that it enables the use
of the Moodle database to archive and store discussions,
and to keep this archive in a secure password-protected
environment. Without this, additional manual intervention
is required to save chat-logs and to make them available.
Finally, while the intercom was intended as a tool to be
used in a fixed location, inventive users have found that
attaching it to their avatar allows it to record discussions
during virtual field trips.
5 Developing New Metaphors for 2D/3D Integration
A key challenge now appears to be finding proper metaphors and interface affordances that intuitively map features
in the Web content tools with SL objects. Selecting apt metaphors to enhance engagement and offer the simplest user
interfaces is a difficult problem and many of the tools in a
typical VLE have no existing 3D user interface correlate.
Web-based threaded messaging forums are one of the
most often used elements of the VLE toolset. They allow
students to create long threads of asynchronous discussion
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
and foster reflection and constructivist exercises where the
students summarize and synthesize course content within
their community of practice. How would students interact
with forums in SL? What metaphors and user interface tools
would best map this essentially asynchronous and text-rich
activity? Would threads be represented metaphorically as
tree limbs, as a village of connected with winding alleyways or as bulletin boards with pushpins and paper notes?
Having developers choose metaphors themselves (for
example a quiz chair that rises and falls as questions are
answered correctly or incorrectly) simplifies implementation. Creating objects which integrate with Moodle but
which allow end-users to customise and modify to suit their
own teaching and learning preferences is both more challenging and requires more effort and expertise from educators. This problem is part-solved by the open source nature
of the project. Developers can produce tools which realize
a particular metaphor and act as an exemplar for users who
wish to modify them, to create metaphors that are domainappropriate and to integrate Sloodle into their own personalized objects.
6 What Do Educators Want?
A current focus for the Sloodle project is to identify and
develop the features and tools that educators will find most
beneficial. To determine what these features are, a second
survey was undertaken in late 2007. Respondents were free
to skip any questions they did not want to answer, with 155
respondents completing at least the first page of questions.
In considering the responses, we need to bear in mind
the evolving expertise of potential users. Currently educators using SL tend to be innovators and early adopters. As
the technology matures and MUVEs are used in teaching
by more mainstream users, tools must become more polished and easier to deploy. Thus, the development strategy
must not simply address requests, but must also consider
the needs of future users.
A brief review of responses follows. Fuller results are
available online at the Sloodle web site <http://
www.sloodle.org> (registration required).
The majority (71%, n=155) had been using SL for less
than one year, and only a very small minority were using
3D environments other than SL for educational purposes
(8.5%, n=153). This finding reflects the observation made
earlier that the success of SL itself is bringing many educators into 3D virtual worlds for the first time.
The majority of respondents are existing Moodle users
(70.7%, n=147), with smaller numbers using alternatives
such as Blackboard (27.9%). Given that Blackboard is the
current market leader in VLEs, it appears that Sloodle has
been successful in attracting Moodle users in particular probably driven in part by physical and online participation
at Moodle conferences and discussion forums.
Of more practical use were a number of questions
focussed on asking what potential features and enhancements respondents would find most useful.
The first question on this listed the standard Moodle
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
modules, and asked respondents to select those that would
be most useful for teaching if they were to be integrated
into SL. The first five most requested Moodle modules were:
Lesson tool (interactive lessons with branching structures).
Forum (asynchronous discussions).
Wiki.
Quiz (set questions and grade responses).
Assignment (assign tasks for grading).
Lesson and quiz type tools have previously been created in SL, but these have not been integrated with Websites, potentially making content changes and gathering feedback on individual student assessment outcomes quite timeprohibitive. Moodle Lesson and Quiz modules are also reasonably complex, with a large number of options and possibilities. However, a prototype quiz-tool (limited to multiple choice questions) has been demonstrated in SL already.
The forum and wiki tools present a much greater challenge, both for the interface metaphor issue addressed above
and because of the complexity of data structures in the VLE
tools underlying these, as well as the amount of text typically contained within.
The assignment tool presents a useful area of development. Current methods for gathering assignments SL in the
field are labour intensive and returning feedback is quite
difficult. Critiques are usually synchronous and oral or are
sent to students as asynchronous text completely separated
from the artefact itself. A Sloodle assignment "dropbox"
has already shown promising results by allowing students
to submit assignment objects, which can then be reviewed
and modified by an instructor. Students can then read feedback and obtain copies of edited objects and this process is
further supported by recording submission details on
Moodle.
When asked how useful different methods of accessing
Moodle content from within SL would be, responses indicated
demand for the following (again, showing the percentage of
responses indicating either "very useful" or "vital"):
Name translator (see Moodle user names for avatars
while in SL) (62.7%, n=126).
Quiz (multiple choice answers via clicking on images/objects) (60.7%, n=127).
Interactive calendar with Moodle data (58.3%,
n=127).
A name translator is useful as SL avatars generally do
not have the same name as their user (avatar names have to
be unique, with surnames restricted to a small list which
changes over time). With even a moderately sized class of
oddly named avatars, teachers may struggle to recall who is
who.
From subsequent questions, significant demand was also
seen for features, like the gestures, that have no Moodle
correlate. Pre-prepared 3D content for a SL orientation
(83.1%) and recording details of visitors to a virtual classroom (71.3%) just two features which ranked very highly.
A final set of questions provided images to outline possible future scenarios or examples of use for Sloodle (see
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 5: MetaGloss (Currently Available) Example of Use.
example in Figure 5). Some of the results here contrast a
little with earlier responses (Lesson content as a maze, in
particular, ranked lower than previously). The highest ranking scenarios were:
1. SL to Web Collaborative Whiteboard (85.4% "very
useful" or "vital", n=130)
2. Automated classroom builder (78.8%, n=132)
3. Dropbox for objects (76.5%, n=132)
The first of these is under development, and the second
was something of a surprise (another example of demand
for teaching tools which exist solely within the 3D environment). The dropbox has been mentioned already.
The next four highest ranking responses are all ones
which have already been implemented and are part of the
current Sloodle release: intercom for integrating SL chat
and Web-based chat-room; classroom gestures tool; blog
tool; and glossary access. This was a positive result for the
project, in supporting our decision to implement these features first.
7 Using Sloodle with Teaching Activities in Second Life
We can group teaching activities in SL into four categories, and very briefly note how Sloodle may be of benefit.
The categories are:
Roleplays and simulations.
Groupwork and team building.
Events and presentations.
Constructive activities such as building 3D objects
and developing properties.
For all of these, the VLE portion of the Sloodle systems
might serve to frame the activity in pre and post reflective
activities and during the activities by prompting the student
with guiding questions or instructions that help him stay on
task and heighten his attention.
© Novática
For role playing and simulations, the system might manage logistics such as distributing objects and costumes and
managing scarcity items such as a timer or disbursing scrip.
In this case it’s essential that the tools be domain-neutral
and empower the curriculum designer and teacher to connect their own metaphors to the data coming from the VLE.
Groupwork and team building are interesting areas where
VLE tools are particularly adept in an asynchronous setting, such as group sections in message boards and groupmanaged email and wikis. SL adds a large degree of embodiment and potential for play to the facilities offered in
the typical VLE.
Constructive activities such as building can also be supported by discussion within a VLE, even where the acitivities
take place within SL. Reflection, communication and even
group-owned drop-boxes are ways in which Sloodle might
further enhance this.
We already have experience from several events and
presentations where Sloodle has been able to broaden participation and additionally serve to record the event for those
unable to attend. As Sloodle adds more 3D features, support for events may extend to being able to create the auditorium itself as well as tools to support the discussion occurring within it.
8 The Sloodle Community
A very important part of the Sloodle project which deserves specific mention is the community of developers and
users itself. As part of our adoption of an open source ethos,
supporting this community has been one of our key tasks
(one that has had dividends).
Community efforts have included the development of
video tutorials detailing how to install and set-up Sloodle
and an on-line conference, SloodleMoot, which ran successfully in January. We have active discussion forums,
where users can obtain support as well as regular meetings
and discussions inside Second Life.
The Sloodle tools themselves have been developed to
support internationalization efforts, and are already available in Spanish as well as English. A similar effort to provide Spanish support on the Sloodle forums and wiki is now
underway.
9 Conclusions
We have seen evidence from our own and other surveys
that educational use of MUVEs is not only rapidly growing, but that it is being explored by many educators with no
prior experience of MUVEs.
To be successfully adopted by mainstream educators,
MUVEs need to be able to share data and inter-operate with
existing information systems and we have demonstrated that
significant demand exists for integration with existing Webbased learning environments.
Sloodle represents the first serious attempt to achieve
this, and has already delivered a number of useful features
which have been adopted by a number of educators worldwide. As an open source project, Sloodle has been able to
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
effectively leverage community effort to support and drive
the project, with virtual conferences, support materials and
internationalization efforts all now underway.
A key challenge which remains for future developments
is creating innovative yet useful metaphors and concepts
for re-imagining 2D Web-based content for a 3D virtual
world. It is here where we see some of the greatest potential
(such that Second Life should not be seen as merely being a
3D client for Moodle, nor should Moodle be considered as
a database for Second Life). In bringing together these two
distinct environments we hope to be able to build something more, to enable learning experiences not possible with
either platform individually. And for this to succeed we will
need to build greater understanding how such integrated
environments may add value to teaching and learning or
how they may fit with existing and emerging pedagogies.
distance learning: two case studies of Active Worlds
as a medium for distance education". British Journal
of Educational Technology 36(3): 439-451. 2005.
[10] J. Kirriemuir. An update of the July 2007 "snapshot"
of UK Higher and Further Education Developments in
Second Life. September 30, 2007. Eduserv Foundation.
[11] J. Kemp and D. Livingstone. "Massively multi-learner:
recent advances in 3D social environments". Proceedings of the Second Life Education Workshop 2006, D.
Livingstone and J. Kemp (eds.), San Francisco, 13-18.
[12] J. Ibáñez-Martínez, C. Delgado-Mata. "Virtual Environments and Semantics". UPGRADE Vol. VII, No.
2, April 2006, p18-24.
Acknowledgements
Sloodle is funded and supported by Eduserv. The first author was supported in earlier stages of this work by the Carnegie
Trust for the Universities of Scotland. The authors would like
to also acknowledge the effort of Edmund Edgar <http://
www.socialminds.jp/>, in supporting Sloodle development.
References
[1] J. Cook. "Virtual Learning Environments: Making the
Web easy to use for teachers and learners". LTSS, University of Bristol. 1999. <http://www.ltss.bris.ac.uk/
publications/guides/vle/>.
[2] Learning Teaching Scotland. "What Glow will do for
teachers". 2007. <http://www.glowscotland.org.uk/
about/teachers.asp>.
[3] L. Galarneau. "Spontaneous Communities of Learning: Learning Ecosystems in Massively Multiplayer
Online Gaming Environments". Digra 2005: Changing Views - Worlds in Play. Vancouver, Canada. 2005.
[4] C. Dede, B. Nelson, D. J. Ketelhut, C. Bowman. "Design-based Research Strategies for Studying Situated
Learning in a Multi-User Virtual Environment". Proceedings 6th International Conference on Learning
Sciences, Santa Monica, California. 2003.
[5] S. A. Barab, M. Thomas, T. Dodge, R. Carteaux, H.
Tuzun. "Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game
without guns". Educational Technology Research and
Development 53(1). 2005.
[6] D. Livingstone, J. Kemp (Eds.). Proceedings of the Second Life Education Workshop at SLCC, San Francisco,
August 20th. 2006. San Francisco. University of Paisley Press.
[7] D. Livingstone, J. Kemp (Eds.). Proceedings of the Second Life Education Workshop at SLCC, Chicago, August 25th-26 th 2007.
[8] NMC 2007 Educators in Second Life Survey Results
Summary, Published by the New Media Consortium,
October. <http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007-sl-surveysummary.pdf>.
[9] M. D. Dickey. "Three-dimensional virtual worlds and
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© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Game-Based Learning in e-Learning Environments
Pablo Moreno-Ger, José-Luis Sierra-Rodríguez, and Baltasar Fernández-Manjón
The use of videogames as a part of educational processes is becoming one of the most progressive trends in the field of
educational technologies. In our opinion, the integration of videogames and e-Learning environments is a critical aspect
in the promotion of this trend, due to the importance of e-Learning in 21st century educational processes. In this article we
identify two aspects that are critical in bringing about that integration: (i) the introduction of authoring methods that will
cut development costs and help instructors take an active part in that process, and (ii) the development of models to
integrate videogames into e-Learning platforms that will facilitate a two-way exchange of information and dispel the
perception of games as mere black boxes. This article provides an example of these aspects with <e-Adventure>, an
environment for the authoring of educational graphic adventures and the integration of the resulting games into on-line
learning environments.
Keywords: <e-Adventure>, e-Learning, Educational
Games, Educational Content Authoring, Learning Management System.
1 Introduction
Society today is changing at a great pace, driven by the
growth rate of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Present day educational structures, put in place
in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, are based on the classical idea of encyclopaedic knowledge and a simplistic view of education as the mere direct
transmission of that knowledge [1]. But now the industrial
age has been overtaken by the information age, in which a
new model of society (the Information Society) requires
new skills and competencies. Learners today need training
that covers topics such as the development of cognitive
skills, problem solving skills, information retrieval and filtering, and the acquisition of knowledge in new domains.
And this not only requires the development of new skills,
but also calls for new ways of interacting with information.
Learners today are used to receiving information from various sources in parallel, in rich and attractive multimedia
formats, in a participative and interactive manner and always at great speed. The TV generation has given way to
the generation of the Internet, videogames, and mobile communications. In many cases the slower, more structured,
unidirectional approach of a class (or even of a digital document) is totally at variance with modern learners’ normal
way of doing things and arouses a sense of antagonism and
demotivation.
Meanwhile, videogames have been developing in recent
years until they are now one of the most important branches
of the entertainment industry, and the idea of using them
for educational purposes has been gaining more and more
ground [2]. The very elements that we blame for distracting
our learners may be the ideal vehicle to reach them. How-
© Novática
Authors
Pablo Moreno-Ger is a Doctor of Computer Engineering by
the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and currently works
as a full-time researcher in the e-Learning Technologies Research
Group of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (<e-UCM>).
His research is focused on the field of educational videogames
and simulations with game elements, with a special focus on its
deployment in virtual learning environments. He currently leads
the development of the educational platform <e-Adventure> and
participates in a number of different projects related to gamebased learning. <pablom@fdi.ucm.es>.
José-Luis Sierra-Rodríguez is a Doctor of Computer
Engineering by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He
has worked as a researcher at the Instituto de Automática Industrial (Institute of Industrial Automation) of the Centro Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research
Council) (1990-1992) and in the Department of Artificial
Intelligence of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (19931998). Since then he has been lecturing and researching at the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he has been an
Associate Professor since 2007. He is a member of the <e-UCM>
research group and his research interests include e-Learning
technologies, domain specific languages, and markup languages.
<jlsierra@fdi.ucm.es>.
Baltasar Fernández-Manjón is a Doctor of Physics by the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Between 1991 and 1993
he worked as lecturer in Telecommunications Engineering at
the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Since 1993 he has been
lecturing and researching at the Faculty of Computing of the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he has been an
Associate Professor since 1998. He is currently Vice-Deacon of
Research and External Relations of the Faculty of Computing.
He is co-director of the <e-UCM> research group and his
research interests include e-Learning technologies, educational
uses of markup techniques, the application of educational
standards, and user modelling. <balta@fdi.ucm.es>.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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ever, the arguments put forward by many academics in the
field for bringing games into education go beyond the simple idea that "if they like games and hate classes, let’s use
games to teach with". If we take such a simplistic view we
run the risk of merely reproducing traditional content under a multimedia wrapper instead of studying and taking
advantage of the new and exciting features of the medium.
This trend, commonly referred to as Edutainment, came to
prominence in the nineties, when multimedia computers
became widely available to households. Towards the end of
the same decade the term Edutainment began to lose much
of its credibility as the market became saturated with poorly
designed games (both in educational and entertainment
terms) [3]. Studies researching into which elements make
videogames appealing highlight factors such as mechanisms
for controlled and perceptible progress, immersion in an
abstractly represented world, multimodality and, especially,
a very short feedback cycle that allows players to develop
theories and put them to the test in such a way that they
receive an immediate answer from the game that allows them
to find out whether or not their theory was correct [4] [5].
All these elements are, at the same time, desirable characteristics of an effective learning process [6][7].
From our point of view games can be a powerful resource in education, but not if used indiscriminately. Therefore one of the first things to do is to determine what kind
of games have an educational value, in which cases the development costs are worth funding, who the target audience groups are, and what subjects they are to help teach.
In this respect, we believe that the field of e-Learning may
be an ideal proving ground due to its dynamism and technological infrastructure. At the same time, technology needs
to address other issues such as facilitating the development,
deployment, and maintenance of e-Learning. In this article
we aim to analyse the problems arising from addressing the
integration of educational videogames into e-Learning environments while keeping costs down and ensuring the active involvement of instructors and content developers. Thus,
in Section 2 we take a closer look at why we consider eLearning to be the ideal proving ground in which to explore the integration of videogames into the learning process, before going on to identify the obstacles that need to be
overcome from a technological viewpoint. Later, in Section 3, we describe the <e-Adventure> platform, which was
specifically developed to address these technological challenges. Finally, in Section 4, we discuss the impact that this
technology may have as a support for developing educational models combining videogames with e-Learning.
2 Educational Videogames in e-Learning Environments
One of the most salient issues to emerge in this field so
far is to find an answer to the question of how to incorporate educational videogames and simulations with game elements into the current educational system. In spite of the
fact that the inertia of the traditional educational system
makes it reluctant to adopt new educational methodologies,
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
if we look a little beyond the concept of the traditional
school, we can find fields that are already prepared for the
use of these innovative approaches. Perhaps the best example is e-Learning.
E-Learning environments went through a major crisis
in the late nineties when they became gigantic "graveyards"
of static content of very little educational value [8]. The
current trend, however, is towards the creation of complex
systems that include the tailoring of content to different user
profiles, detailed monitoring of the learning process, and
support for varied learning paths that go beyond linear learning models. In some cases, all this process is carried out
under standards and specifications intended to ensure the
interoperability of content or information about the learners, and even entire instructional designs [9]. Thus, the incorporation of educational games in modern Learning Management Systems (LMS) will allow us to make use of the
available technological infrastructure and to facilitate the
task of integrating games with the rest of the instructional
design and the assessment mechanisms available in these
learning environments.
However, videogames should be used in virtual learning environments with caution. The creation of educational
videogames is a much more complex and costly task than
the creation of other types of educational content. Also, the
integration of these games in such environments poses a
number of technological challenges in terms of reaping all
the potential benefits of videogames. For this reason we
view the authoring of content and its integration with existing e-Learning infrastructures as especially important problems.
2.1 The Authoring Factor
The first obstacle encountered when we begin to incorporate educational games in e-Learning environments is
their "economic viability". While it may be true that they
provide a quality educational experience, just how much
better is this experience compared with other content such
as HTML documents with explanatory graphics? Enough
to justify the enormous difference in cost?
The results of a survey conducted in a session on educational games during the Game Developers Conference
20051 , which included questions on the development costs
of projects running at that time, show that 26.23% of the
answers were in the $100,000 to $500,000 bracket, while
52.46% of the projects fell within the $100,000 to
$10,000,000 bracket [10]. Another study estimates the development costs of a "latest generation educational simulation" at between 15 and 30 person-years [11]. The development of quality educational videogames also requires experts in education and/or the target domain (for example,
History or Medicine) to be included in the design teams
1
<http://www.gdconf.com/>. The conference brings together a
number of professionals from the videogame industry and is one
of the most important events in this field.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
along with the usual designers and programmers. This cost
is too high for the budgets of most online educational initiatives, and so we need to create development methodologies capable of optimizing the process to adapt projects to
smaller budgets while taking into consideration the particular
characteristics of game development (e.g. the coordination
of heterogeneous working groups).
Also, as a rule a commercial videogame is fully designed,
distributed, and sold as a closed and finished product. Educational content requires greater flexibility to enable it to
be easily modified to tailor it to a number of different contexts. In the case of the traditional content of e-Learning
environments (based on static or low-interactivity content),
it is easy to adapt to these changes by updating the documents.
However, if the content consists of an educational game
which is a compiled unit, to modify that content requires
the involvement of the developers who created it, who may
not even still be available. To overcome this limitation, educational games must be easy to maintain and, in particular,
must be easily modifiable and adaptable, ideally without
the need for the original developers to be involved. This
will allow the educators to play an active role in the upgrading and adaptation of game content.
2.2 The Content Integration Factor
The easiest way to integrate educational videogames into
LMS systems is to develop games that can be distributed in
a Web environment. Games run on learners’ browsers so
that they can interact with the game. From the point of view
of the LMS, the game is just another document. If we draw
a parallel with traditional learning, this is like giving the
game to the learners for them to play at home without supervision from an instructor. In engineering terms, this is
known as black box behaviour as the game is a self-contained entity that behaves in a certain way, but we do not
have any details of its internal workings, neither is there
any way we can alter them. When the game finishes, the
only information the LMS has for the next sequencing decision is the time elapsed from when the game started running and, in certain cases, the final state of the game (see
Figure 1). The main advantage of this approach is that it
functions independently of the implementation of the game,
provided that the game meets the minimum requirement of
being able to be run from a browser. Any LMS, however
simple it may be, will be capable of displaying this type of
content.
However, with the black box model it is impossible to
carry out a detailed monitoring of the interaction between
learner and game, which is necessary if we wish the instructor to see whether the student is learning the right lessons by interacting with the game [12]. Rather than simply
observing the time elapsed in each game session and the
final state of the game, with videogames that do not behave
as black boxes it is possible to get the answers to such questions as: "What decisions did the learner make?", "In what
order?", and "What was the outcome of the action?". Allowing teachers to have access to such information may help
games be accepted in educational processes more readily,
especially by the teachers themselves. Therefore the aim is
to provide LMSs with a greater control over the internal
workings of the game and to achieve a more transparent
and flexible integration than with the black box approach.
3 An Example of the Creation and Integration of
Educational Games for e-Learning Environments:
<e-Adventure>
<e-Adventure> is a platform for the creation of digital
educational games intended for integration with e-Learning environments [13]. The platform focuses on the type of
games known as Graphic Adventures and was designed as
an authoring tool for this type of games. While there are a
great many tools and languages for the development of
Graphic Adventures, the <e-Adventure> platform was de-
LMS
Learning process
management system
Execution
Finalization
Game
Figure 1: Running an Educational Game under the Black Box Model.
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 2: The Educational Graphic Adventures Editor Included in the <e-Adventure> Platform.
veloped specifically for use in educational environments.
With regard to what was discussed in the previous section, <e-Adventure> provides mechanisms and
functionalities to facilitate the development process of educational games (by reducing the cost and making it easier
for instructors to take part in the process), and to achieve
the real (not black box) integration of the resulting games
into e-Learning environments.
3.1 Authoring of Educational Graphic Adventures
In <e-Adventure> the authoring process employs a language-based approach [14], making use of techniques regularly used in the development of content-rich applications
[15]. The game’s storyboard is considered to be the most
important element of the game and a specific language has
been designed to allow for the markup of the storyboard so
as to be able to generate the game by means of automatic
processing. The idea is to design an XML markup language
which will allow all the elements of the game (e.g. characters, scenes, objects, conversations) to be defined and referenced to the required graphic elements. This approach
makes it possible to organize and simplify the participation
of several experts (including the educators). To simplify the
authoring process and to obviate the need to know XML,
an editor for educational graphic adventures is provided (see
Figure 2), which enables this type of games to be created at
a low cost using a simple user interface.
3.2 Integration with e-Learning Environments
While games developed using <e-Adventure> can also
be run as stand-alone applications, they are designed to be
integrated into an e-Learning environment. When a com-
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
mon player developed with Java technologies is used, deployment in a browser is direct, and so games can be embedded in the same way as any other educational material
(e.g. a PDF document, a Flash animation, etc.) accessible
from an LMS. In the simplest case, games developed using
<e-Adventure> will follow the black box model described
previously. However, <e-Adventure> offers more sophisticated integration options. Throughout the running of the
game <e-Adventure>, the LMS has access to its internal
state (see Figure 3). This allows the LMS (and, therefore,
the instructor) to monitor the learner’s progress during the
game. Given that, in principle, all games may be conceived
as state machines, the task of the instructor consists of identifying the states of the game that are relevant from an educational point of view. Once these states are identified, the
LMS monitors state transitions as they occur during the
game. Activation of the relevant states is logged and presented to the instructor.
The description of games as state machines also allows
the instructor to influence the behaviour of the game from
the LMS. All that is required to be able to modify the behaviour of the game is to force the establishment of an appropriate initial state from the LMS.
Of course, this type of integration requires the LMS to
be capable of communicating with the content and providing the instructor with the mechanisms needed to interpret
and process this information. In the case of <e-Adventure>,
this communication process is integrated with environments
that are compatible with the IMS Learning Design3 specification [16], which allows the modelling of complex learn3
<http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/>.
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
LMS
Learning process
management system
Adaptation
Assessment
Execution
Termination
Internal
state
Game
Figure 3: Integration of Educational Games in LMS Environments2 .
ing experiences with multiple educational paths that can be
tailored to the needs of each particular learner [17]. The
games are run on the learner’s computer but there is always
a communication channel open with the LMS. This makes
it possible to connect <e-Adventure>’s internal monitoring
and adaptation mechanisms with IMS Learning Design’s
execution environment.
4 Conclusions
After several years of academic discussion and various
successful pilot initiatives, videogame-based learning is
becoming one of the most fashionable of educational trends.
The potential shown by existing initiatives points towards
some very interesting instructional models combining
videogames with other materials. But, as we have discussed
in this article, the potential shown up to now should be
viewed with a degree of caution. Videogames may be a very
powerful educational tool if used properly, but this does
not mean that anything remotely resembling a videogame
is going to have educational value, nor does it mean that we
should convert all our educational content into videogames.
The reduction of development costs is a key issue in
any debate regarding videogames and education. The use
of authoring tools is an interesting way of addressing this
problem, given the low development costs that tend to be
associated with such tools. But these tools will need to provide direct support to the special needs of the field of education. Among these needs we would highlight the need to
make it easy for instructors and game designers to cooperate in the development process in order to strike the correct
balance between educational value and entertainment. It
2
The management subsystem of the learning process is able to
monitor the interaction between learner and game. Also, by forcing changes in the internal state, it is possible to adapt the games
to different learning scenarios.
© Novática
should also be noted that the use of authoring tools such as
those provided by the <e-Adventure> platform has a naturally positive impact on content maintainability, thereby
meeting another of the basic needs of the field of educational.
It should be mentioned that this reduction in costs is
offset by having to limit ourselves to a single type of game,
since simplicity is achieved at the expense of flexibility. To
strike a reasonable compromise between educational potential and cost, the designers of <e-Adventure> chose to
focus on a single type of game: Graphic Adventures. This
type of game is often referred to in literature on the subject
as having the greatest educational potential, especially in
terms of the development of problem solving and planning
skills, as well as for learning and understanding processes
(as opposed to the learning of information "by heart")
[18][19].
With regard to the deployment of content, LMS environments provide an ideal platform. Given its technological nature, it is a field in which it is much easier to deploy
interactive digital content (in comparison with a school environment) and where designers are under pressure to find
mechanisms with which to overcome the classical concept
of e-Learning. But merely to place interactive content in eLearning environments does not make full use of the educational potential of games, particularly in terms of their
capacity for learning experience assessment. This, combined
with the possible reluctance of educators to use this type of
content, makes it essential to put in place learning process
assessment and monitoring systems to work in conjunction
with the assessment mechanisms of the various LMSs. The
<e-Adventure> platform described in this article is an example of this type of implementation. The combination of
IMS Learning Design with educational games developed
using <e-Adventure> delivers some very interesting learning patterns, as described in [20], although their application is limited to LMSs able to support the specification.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
The mechanisms provided by the <e-Adventure> platform for the creation and deployment of educational graphic
adventures are a step towards achieving a more or less generalized integration while allowing interesting learning patterns to be implemented by combining videogames with
other types of Web content. Developments carried out to
date using <e-Adventure> in fields such as medical training [21] have had affordable development costs and have
given rise to interesting initiatives in which games are deployed as part of complex learning experiences. It is our
belief that this integration model has all the necessary features to ensure the gradual integration of games into educational processes, at least in e-Learning environments. Given
the importance currently being placed on approaches combining traditional education with e-Learning environments,
commonly referred to as b-Learning (blended-learning) [22],
from here the next development could be the popularization of b-Learning as an entry vehicle for the deployment
of educational games in traditional learning environments
as well.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the Comisión
Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología through projects
TIN2005-08788-C04-01, FIT-350100-2007-163 and TIN200768125-C02-01. The Madrid Autonomous Community also supported this project through grant 4155/2005, as did the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid through the provision of
funding to recognized research group 921340, and through the
Santander/UCM project PR34/07-15865. The Centro Nacional
de Información y Comunicación Educativa (CNICE) collaborated in this work by contributing graphic resources and instructional designs for the development of educational games.
References
[1] J. P. Gee. "Good videogames and good learning: collected
essays on video games". New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007.
[2] R. Van Eck. "Digital game-based learning: It’s not just
the digital natives who are restless". EDUCAUSE Review, 2006. 41(2): pp 16-30.
[3] S. Papert. "Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, Learning". Game Developer Magazine, June 1998: pp 87-88.
[4] R. Koster. "Theory of Fun for Game Design". Paraglyph,
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[5] T. Malone. "What makes computer games fun?" Byte,
1981. 6(12): pp 258-276.
[6] D. I. Cordova, M. R. Lepper. "Intrinsic Motivation and
the Learning process: Beneficial Effects of
Contextualization, Personalization, and Choice". Journal
of Educational Psychology, 1996. 88(4): pp 715-730.
[7] L. S. Vygotsky. "Mind in Society: The development of
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Harvard University Press, 1978. ISBN: 0674576292.
[8] R. Zemsky, W. Massy. "Thwarted Innovation: what happened to e-Learning and why". A final report for The
Weatherstation Project of The Learning Alliance at the
University of Pennsylvania, 2004.
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[9] B. Fernández-Manjón, J. L. Sierra, P. Moreno-Ger, I.
Martínez-Ortiz. "Uso de estándares aplicados a TIC en
Educación". 2007, CNICE (National Center for Educational Information and Communication).
[10] D. Michael, S. Chen. "Serious Games: Games that Educate, Train, and Inform". Boston, MA: Thomson, 2006.
[11] C. Aldrich. "Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide
to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in eLearning and Other Educational Experiences". San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-7879-7735-1.
[12] S. de Freitas, M. Oliver. "How can exploratory learning
with games and simulations within the curriculum be most
effectively evaluated?" Comput. Educ., 2006. 46(3): pp
249-264.
[13] P. Moreno-Ger. "Una aproximación documental para la
creación e integración de juegos digitales en entornos
virtuales de enseñanza". Thesis presented to the Department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence
of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007.
[14] P. Moreno-Ger, J. L. Sierra, I. Martínez-Ortiz, B.
Fernández-Manjón. "A Documental Approach to Adventure Game Development". Science of Computer Programming, 2007. 67: pp 3–31.
[15] J. L. Sierra, A. Fernández-Valmayor, B. FernándezManjón. "A document-oriented paradigm for the construction of content-intensive applications". The Computer
Journal, 2006. 49(5): pp 562-584.
[16] P. Moreno-Ger, P. Burgos, J. L. Sierra, B. FernándezManjón. "A Game-based Adaptive Unit of Learning with
IMS Learning Design and <e-Adventure>". Lecture Notes
in Computer Science, 2007. 4753: pp 247 - 261.
[17] R. Koper, C. Tattersall, eds. "Learning Design - A Handbook on Modelling and Delivering Networked Education and Training". Springer Verlag: Heidelberg, 2005.
ISBN: 3540228144.
[18] E. Ju, C. Wagner. "Personal computer adventure games:
Their structure, principles and applicability for training".
The Database for Advances in Information Systems, 1997.
28(2): pp 78-92.
[19] R. Van Eck. "Building Artificially Intelligent Learning
Games, in Games and Simulations in Online Learning:
Research and Development Frameworks", D. Gibson, C.
Aldrich, and M. Prensky, Editors. 2007, Information Science Publishing: Hershey, PA.
[20] P. Moreno-Ger, P. Sancho-Thomas, I. Martínez-Ortiz, J.
L. Sierra, B. Fernández-Manjón. "Adaptive Units of
Learning and Educational Videogames". Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2007(05).
[21] P. Moreno-Ger, C. R. Blesius, P. Currier, J. L. Sierra, B.
Fernández-Manjón. "Rapid Development of Game-like
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Use of Folksonomies in the Creation of
Learning Experiences for Television
Marta Rey-López, Rebeca P. Díaz-Redondo, Ana Fernández-Vilas, and José J. Pazos-Arias
The use of digital television as a way of delivering distance courses may be a solution to the problem of how to bring
education to the less privileged classes. In previous articles we presented our solution to the creation of learning experiences for this medium, based on an appropriate combination of television programmes and educational elements via the
use of ontologies. In this article we aim to improve the algorithms responsible for establishing relationships between the
two types of content, by exporting collaborative tagging systems, successfully used on the Internet, to the field of digital
television, and using folksonomy-based reasoning to detect the above mentioned relationships.
Keywords: Collaborative Tagging, Folksonomies, TLearning, Web 2.0.
1 Introduction
In recent years distance learning has gained a high degree of acceptance, especially in terms of continuous training courses. As examples we have the proliferation of distance postgraduate courses, continuous semi-face-to-face
or virtual courses, and even the widespread use of online
learning platforms as a support to face-to-face learning,
which all of which techniques are becoming increasingly
more common in Spanish universities.
This trend is mainly driven by the pace of modern life,
which makes it hard to find enough time to attend face-toface courses. Although distance learning has made use of
various media since its inception (such as the mail, radio,
and television), the preferred gateway used today is a computer connected to the Internet; what is known as e-Learning1 . However, Internet penetration is still relatively low;
50% in the European Union and 70% in the USA2 , and
much lower in underprivileged areas. The gap between those
with access to information technologies and those without
has become known as the digital divide and has prompted
1
Although this term encompasses any type of distance learning
which is transmitted by technological means, it is generally used
to refer to learning delivered over the Web, and so it would be
more correct to use the term Web-Based Learning.
2
Source: <http://www.internetworldstats.com>.
Authors
Marta Rey-López was born in Vigo, Spain, in 1981. She
received her degree in Telecommunications Engineering from
the Universidad de Vigo in 2004. She has been lecturing in the
Department of Telematic Engineering of the Universidad de Vigo
since 2004 and is a member of the Laboratorio de Televisión
Digital Interactiva (Interactive Digital Television Laboratory).
Her research interests are focused on personalized distance
learning via television, and the possible application of Web 2.0
technologies in this sphere. <mrey@det.uvigo.es>.
Rebeca P. Díaz-Redondo was born in Sarria, Spain, in 1974.
She received her doctorate in 2002 from the Universidad de
Vigo with a thesis entitled "Reutilización de Requisitos Funcionales de Sistemas Distribuidos utilizando Técnicas de Descripción Formal" (Reuse of Functional Requirements of
Distributed Systems Using Formal Description Techniques).
She lectures in the Department of Telematic Engineering of
the Universidad de Vigo where she holds the position of
associate professor and is a member of the Laboratorio de Televisión Digital Interactiva. Her main research interests are
interactive applications for television and their interaction with
smart home environments. <rebeca@det.uvigo.es>.
© Novática
Ana Fernández-Vilas was born in Vigo, Spain in 1971. She
received her doctorate in 2002 from the Universidad de Vigo
with a thesis entitled "Tratamiento Formal de Sistemas con
Requisitos de Tiempo Real Críticos"(Formal Treatment of
Systems with Critical Real-Time Requirements). Her lines of
research are focused mainly on Web Services technologies and
ubiquitous computing environments. She lectures in the
Department of Telematic Engineering of the Universidad de
Vigo where she currently holds the position of associate
professor and is a member of the Laboratorio de Televisión
Digital Interactiva. <avilas@det.uvigo.es>.
José J. Pazos-Arias was born in Bayona, Spain, in 1964. He
received his doctorate in 1995 from the Universidad Politécnica
de Madrid with the thesis "Transformación y Verificación con
LOTOS" (Transformation and Verification Using LOTOS). He
lectures in the Department of Telematic Engineering of the Universidad de Vigo where he currently holds the position of
associate professor and is the Director of the Laboratorio de
Televisión Digital Interactiva in which his involvement is
mainly centred on middleware projects and applications for
this medium. <jose@det.uvigo.es>.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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governments to look for alternative ways to access distance
learning and thus promote social inclusion (a good example of this are the efforts being made by the Brazilian government [1]).
Television plays a very important role in this scenario,
since it enjoys practically universal penetration in developed and developing countries alike. This is why efforts
have been made in this direction, in an attempt to take distance learning to sectors of society which otherwise would
find it difficult to access this method of learning [2] [3] [4]
[5]. But efforts are also being made to create learning experiences via television (T-Learning) that are not specifically
oriented towards promoting social inclusion, but rather serve
as a complement to formal education [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
[11] or to provide more informal learning [6] [12] [13] [14]
[15]. A full picture of the state-of-the-art in the field of TLearning may be found in [16].
In previous articles we explained our concept of learning experiences in the field of interactive digital television
(TVDI) [17] [18], that consist of relating television programmes and educational elements in such a way that the
former draw users towards education and increase its appeal and entertainment value, while the latter satisfy the
curiosity that may be aroused by television viewers concerning the topics covered in television programmes.
To establish a relationship between the two types of content, we proposed the idea of using ontologies based on
metadata accompanying those contents (TV-Anytime [19]
in the case of television programmes and ADL SCORM [20]
in the case of educational content), as well as a third ontology that we called a "gateway ontology", that described the
domain of the topic on which we were working and which
allowed us to establish relationships between the other two
ontologies. However, this method, besides proving to be
very costly in terms of computing capacity, depended on
the original content creators providing information about
the content; that is, the contents needed to reach the client
receiver correctly tagged, which was not always the case.
Also, this method only took into consideration the view that
the content creators had of the topics in question, probably
a very different view to that of television viewers.
With the aim of finding a solution to this problem, in
this article we present a new approach to the establishment
of relationships between television programmes and educational elements, based on social technologies that are gaining wide acceptance on the Web, Web 2.0 for our purposes,
and that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration and agile
exchange of information among users. In the new system,
we maintain the use of ontologies for the selection of content but we introduce a new reasoning algorithm for establishing relationships between educational content and television programmes based on reason-based folksonomies.
2 Collaborative Tagging and Folksonomies
Collaborative tagging systems are those which allow
users to tag contents and share them in such a way that they
can categorize not only content that they themselves have
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
added, but also content added by other users [21]. Sites commonly cited as examples of collaborative tagging are
Del.icio.us3 , for the tagging of Web pages, or Flickr4 , for
the tagging of photos.
In order to define the structures generated by this type
of classification, in 2004 Thomas Vander Wal coined the
term folksonomy [22], defining it as "the user-created bottom-up categorical structure development with an emergent
thesaurus". At the same time he established two different
types of folksonomies: broad folksonomies, constructed as
a result of tagging contents in systems in which any user
may tag all the content in the system (as in Del.icio.us),
while narrow folksonomies are the result of tagging systems in which only a small number of users may tag content (for example, Flickr, where only the author of the photos and users designated as friends of the author may assign
tags to them).
Folksonomies, whether wide or narrow, are structures
that can be represented as an undirected graph in which the
nodes are the various tags assigned in the system and the
transitions are the relationships between two nodes that are
joined. These relationships are assigned a weighting which
will depend on the number of times tags describing a content item appear together: the higher the frequency, the
higher the weighting [23].
A structure of this type lends itself to be used to establish relationships between elements of the system. In fact,
this is the approach that we use in our system, although
other related works have already been published. We go on
to take a look at some of these works.
The approach presented in [24] combines the use of
folksonomies and the semantic Web for recommending
films. To do this it uses a folksonomy generated from tags
assigned to films in the Internet Movie DataBase5 , together
with information about the films provided by the online
video club NetFix6 , and creates an ontology from them. To
determine whether is suitable for a user, a comparison is
made between the tag cloud7 of a specific user and the tags
assigned to the film in question.
The proposal in [25] makes use of users’ favourite Web
pages (obtained from a collaborative tagging system for Web
bookmarks such as Del.icio.us) and their tags to recommend
new Web pages. To do this it calculates the affinity between
users and Web pages, grouping related tags together and
finding out which Web pages are the most appropriate to
each group. Next it calculates the affinity of the user with
the tags of the groups to determine which Web pages are
the most appropriate to him or her.
3
<http:// del.icio.us>
<http://www.flickr.com>
5
<http://www.imdb.com>
6
<http://www.netfix.com>
7
A user tag cloud is the set of tags belonging to the films that the
user has rated, weighted by the rating that the user has assigned
to them.
4
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: System Architecture.
Folksonomies can also be used to calculate the relevance
of content shown in information retrieval systems; for example, the approach set out in [26][27] describes an algorithm known as FolkRank (based on the idea of Google’s
Page-Rank), whereby a resource tagged as important by
important users is considered to be important. The principle is applied to both users and tags.
[28] presents another work in which tags are grouped
together according to the relationship between one another.
In this case, in order to establish similarity between tags,
the system takes into account not only the number of times
that two tags appear together but also the number of times
that the first of the two tags is used together with tags that,
in turn, are used together with the second of the two. Finally, these groups are refined by searching for each pair of
tags on a number of different semantic search engines to
confirm the relationship between them.
3 Content Relationship Using Folksonomies
The idea of our proposal, as we explained at the beginning of this article, is to use data structures generated from
collaborative tagging systems to perform reasoning that will
allow us to relate educational content to television programmes, with the aim of creating hybrid learning experiences. In our first approach to this task that we present in
© Novática
this article, we will maintain the use of ontologies for the
selection of content suitable for the user, using folksonomybased reasoning solely for combining television programmes
and educational elements. The system architecture is shown
in Figure 1.
End users receive the television programmes and educational elements by means of metadata that the content
creators themselves have added (in accordance with the TVAnytime standard for television programmes and ADL
SCORM for educational elements). The educational content is filtered in the receiver using the semantic reasoningbased TV content recommender AVATAR8 , the workings
of which fall outside the scope of this article [29].
Television viewers are able to tag the content that they
see, whether television programmes or educational elements,
using the collaborative tagging interface shown in Figure
2. This interface was designed to be controlled by using the
remote control only. The green button allows the interface
to be accessed at any time for tagging the programme the
user is seeing or the educational element he or she is study8
As can be seen in the figure, because of the large computing
capacity required to perform them, these algorithms are run on
the server to which the local content recommender makes requests.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 2: Collaborative tagging interface.
ing. Once in the interface, users are presented with a virtual
keyboard where they can write the tags they want to use to
describe the content, by using the arrows and the "OK" button. The tags that the user has already assigned to the programme are displayed above this virtual keyboard. Television viewers are also provided with a set of aids to make
tagging easier, given the difficulties inherent in performing
this process using only the remote control. Users may use
popular tags to assign to the content (selected using the
number buttons): in top left hand corner the most popular
tags that the particular user has assigned to other content
are displayed, while below these are the most popular tags
that other users have assigned to the programme. The interface is also equipped with a predictive text system that
presents users with the most popular words matching what
they are writing (bottom left corner), which users can select
by using the coloured buttons. Finally, to escape from the
interface and return to the programme, the user only has to
press the "END" button.
The tags assigned by the users are sent to the server
where they are used for two purposes: (i) to store all the
tags for all the content items in the system and their weighting and (ii) to create a broad folksonomy with the tags assigned to all the content items in the system based on the
above mentioned data.
Once a content is tagged a number of times over the
predetermined threshold, the most popular tags are included
in the metadata accompanying that content to improve the
recommendation made by AVATAR.
The folksonomy created by this collaborative tagging
system is a graph in which the nodes correspond to all the
tags assigned to the system and the transitions are the relationships between them. The weighting of the relationship
24
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
between two tags is proportional to the number of times
that those tags describe the same content and the weighting
of the two tags in that content (i.e., the number of different
users that have described the content with the same tag).
Thus this structure allows us to establish relationships
between content items for the creation of learning experiences, which takes place on the server side. To do this we
use the set of tags that have been assigned to each content
item that we wish to relate. In order to calculate the degree
of similarity, a calculation is made not only of the number
of matching tags between the two contents, weighted according to their weighting in the two programmes, but also
of the relationships between the first content tags and the
second, also weighted according to the weighting of the tags
assigned to the two content items.
Once we have obtained the degree of similarity of the
central content with other content in the system, we establish a threshold over which we link additional content with
the central content, thereby generating the learning experience, by linking the additional content to the main content
by means of mechanisms provided for that purpose by the
TV-Anytime standard. These experiences are sent to the receiver, where AVATAR filters the additional content so as to
offer the user only content that is appropriate to him or her.
4 Conclusions and Flines of Research
In this article we have explored the basic principles Web
2.0 technologies, focusing on collaborative tagging systems
and the structures that they generate: folksonomies. After
describing some proposals in which folksonomies are used
for content recommendation, we conclude that they are appropriate for establishing relationships between content
tagged using this method. Making use of this characteristic,
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
we have introduced a system that relates educational content and television programmes in order to create personalized learning experiences for the latter medium. As we commented at the beginning of this article, this system does not
depend on a prior description of content provided by the
content creators, and will therefore work even though the
creators no longer exist.
The success of folksonomies, as described in [30], is
based on the small amount of effort required from users
compared to the benefits they obtain, since the fact that collaborative tagging systems have no structure of their own
means that there are scarcely no entry barriers to such systems. Also, as soon as the user tags a programme, he or she
can receive immediate feedback on other programmes described with the same tags. These factors are what make us
think that such a system could be successfully applied to
television, since content tagging will allow users to reach
content of interest easily and quickly, in return for the minor effort of tagging other contents that they have seen previously. However, to make access to these systems even
easier, it is necessary to provide mechanisms to help television viewers carry out this process; an example of such a
mechanism could be the proposed tagging interface presented above.
As we can see from the explanation of the algorithm
described above, it can be computationally very costly to
calculate the degree of similarity of content to be included
with all the other content in the system. For this reason we
are working to improve this algorithm so that it is able to
make use of the ontologies that define categories of television programmes and the concepts explained in educational
elements. In this new version of the algorithm, the tags assigned to a content item will be propagated to the latter’s
superclasses, as well as to other classes or instances related
to it by properties. Thus, when we wish to find television
programmes related to an educational content item, first of
all we need to establish the degree of similarity of the content item to the classes that define the different programme
categories, in order to be able to then focus on the instances
of the most related categories, thereby reducing the amount
of calculation required to search for related programmes.
This technique also allows us to search for new subcategories
based on the tags assigned to the instances and to establish
relationships between concepts and kinds of television; for
example, to conclude that sports programmes are related to
the concept of "injury".
Finally, taking advantage of the collaborative nature of
this approach, we thought it worthwhile to extend it to relationships, in order to obtain an "establishment of collaborative relationships", whereby feedback of the relationships
appropriate to the user would be sent to the server (relationship is considered to be appropriate to the user if the
user decides to make use of the corresponding link). Thus
the server incorporates this information (the relationship
between two specific content items is appropriate to users
with certain characteristics) into the recommender, which
will take it into account when filtering additional content.
© Novática
Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the Ministry of Education
and Science of Spain under TSI project 2007-65599.
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© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Fostering Open Sensemaking Communities by
Combining Knowledge Maps and Videoconferencing
Alexandra Okada, Eleftheria Tomadaki, Simon Buckingham Shum, and Peter J. Scott
In this paper, our aim is to investigate the role of Compendium maps for both learners and educators to share and debate
interpretations in FlashMeetingTM (FM) videoconferences in the context of OpenLearn, an online environment for open
learning. This work is based on a qualitative study of knowledge maps and web videoconferencing interactions, and
quantitative data presented in diagnostic reports about both tools. Our theoretical approach is based on the sensemaking
concept and an existing framework for three learning scenarios. Our findings describe four applications of knowledge
maps in videoconferencing: (i) Mind Maps for a FM virtual lecture (transmission scenario); (ii) Learning Path Map
which integrates a FM conference (studio scenario); (iii) Concept Maps during a peer-to-peer event (negotiation scenario) and (iv) Web Maps for a FM replay (assessment scenario).
Keywords: Knowledge Mapping, Open Learning, Open
Sensemaking Communities, Videoconferencing.
1 Introduction
The development of new technologies and the open content movement have been opening up new opportunities for
widening participation. The Internet, "as a new publishing
medium", provides its users with a considerable increase in
access and circulation of knowledge and offers a new world
of learning to those outside the academic realm ([1], p.33).
OpenLearn is an Open Educational resources (OER)
project developed by the UK Open University (OU), and
launched in October 2006, supported by the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation. As of March 2008, OpenLearn
has published 3371 hours in the LearningSpace and 5194
in the LabSpace of OERs designed specifically for distance
learning (the OU’s core business), and covers a range of
subjects from arts and history to science and nature. There
are more than 300 units at all study levels from access to
higher education, graduation and post-graduation.
Our current work is to investigate how knowledge maps
can be combined with a web videoconferencing tool to foster open sensemaking communities [2] around the OERs,
that is, the interpretative work that must take place around
any resource for learning to take place.
OpenLearn is published on the open source Moodle platform (<http://moodle.org>), augmented with sensemaking
support from knowledge media technologies. Compendium
is a software tool for visual thinking, used to connect ideas,
concepts, arguments, websites and documents. It is designed
as a sensemaking tool to link, interpret and annotate resources within the Open University site, as well as out to
any other resource on the web, with a default visual language of icons and connections designed to provoke reflection on the differences between questions, ideas, and challenging/supporting evidence and arguments. FM is a Web
© Novática
Authors
Alexandra Okada is a Researcher in knowledge mapping at
the Open University-UK Knowledge Media Institute (KMI)
and coordinator of the CPLP (Community of People interested
in OpenLearn tools from Portuguese Language countries)
community in OpenLearn. Her interests are knowledge media
tools, collaborative learning and open sensemaking communities.
<A.L.P.Okada@open.ac.uk>.
Eleftheria Tomadaki is a Researcher in collaborative media and
the impact of using synchronous tools in the process of learning
for the creation and maintenance of communities of practice at
the Open University-UK KMI. <E.Tomadaki@open.ac.uk>.
Simon Buckingham Shum is a Senior Lecturer at the Open
University-UK KMI and coordinator of knowledge media
technologies for the OpenLearn project. His interests are:
technologies for sensemaking and structuring discourse to assist
analysis. <sbs@acm.org>.
Peter Scott is the Director of the KMI at the Open UniversityUK. His research group prototypes the application of new
technologies and media to learning at all levels. His interests are:
telepresence, streaming media systems and agent research.
<Peter.Scott@open.ac.uk>.
videoconferencing tool designed to enhance community
awareness, by mapping the social interactions, as well as
the social impact of learning objects in communities [3].
Through FM and Compendium, participants can structure, acquire and reconstruct the knowledge shared during
the discussions and argumentations in online meetings. They
can use these tools to [4]:
plan meetings and map the discussion;
manage collective knowledge by mapping the most
important questions, ideas, and arguments as they arise;
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
27
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Learning scenarios
Learning goals
Requirements
Transmission
Acquire knowledge
from the expert
Studio
Develop
metacognitive skills
about learning how to
learn.
Learners have to understand
what experts mean through
clear demonstrations,
expositions, narratives,
arguments and examples
Learners have the ability to
understand given
information, focusing on
applying and extending their
understanding to different
tasks.
Negotiation
Create new
knowledge by sharing
and building on
meaning, making
practices and ideas the
focus of inquiry.
Learners must have the
ability to understand the
important debates and
problems and to use the
right language to examine
and influence ongoing
discussion.
Pedagogical strategies for
collaborative learning.
Collaborative activities may support
learners in trying to understand ideas
by sense making and argumentation
process.
Collaborative activities may support
learners in arriving at shared
understanding by integrating
different viewpoints, personal beliefs
and information from different
sources in a process of
argumentative learning.
Collaborative activities may support
learners in creating new knowledge
on the basis of what is shared,
argued and agreed.
Table 1: Pedagogical Scenarios Described by Andriessen et al ([6], p.15-22).
summarise important topics graphically;
reinterpret significant content discussed, reconstruct
maps and share new representations for next meetings;
visualise the process and plan interventions to improve learning.
2 Making Sense on the Web
In an open learning context, learners do not have ready
access to an expert tutor or cohort of peers, and may be
drawing on diverse other OERs, blogs, wikis, newsfeeds
etc., some of which may be superior, complementary, contradictory, or of dubious authority. So while there is strong
intra-unit structure embedded in the pedagogical narrative
of a given OER, which the learner must critique and internalise, the weaker inter-unit structure must be constructed
by the learner, or in conjunction with others, as they seek to
integrate understanding across OERs and the universe of
other information sources. What support for managing this
information ocean can we provide in the learning environment in which our OERs are embedded, in order to move
learners towards knowledge construction and negotiation?
Users need intuitive, powerful tools to manage, share, analyse and track information, ideas, arguments and the connections between them.
Our specific concern within OpenLearn is to investigate support for what we call Open Sensemaking Communities [2], a concept we are using to investigate designing
for sensemaking: embedding OERs in an environment that
supports end-users (both learners and educators) in engaging more deeply with the material and with each other in
self-organising communities of interest. The focus on
[sense][making] reflects Karl Weick’s formative work on
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
giving shape and form to interpretations, and the individuals/communities articulating them. "Sensemaking is about
such things as placement of items into frameworks, comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit of mutual understanding, and
patterning." ([5], p.6).
Weick points out that sensemaking comprises what people do in socially complex situations, when confronted by
incomplete evidence and competing interpretations. The
degree of uncertainty around learning will of course vary
depending on the learner’s ability, the learning objective,
the complexity of the material, and to a degree, the discipline (e.g. there are harder "truths" in the sciences than in
the humanities). However, the point is that when there is
uncertainty, what else is there to do but through discourse,
construct a narrative to fill in the gaps? "The point we want
to make here is that sensemaking is about plausibility, coherence and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts
that are socially acceptable and credible." ([5], p.61).
A primary challenge is to assist self-organising learners
and educators in assessing, extending and contesting. OERs.
This also requires access not only to the text, but to the context (e.g. annotations, argumentation, and the people behind them). This rationale shapes the selection of the social
and conceptual networking software tools that we are evolving, which are designed to make visible and manipulable
the connections between ideas, and between the people behind them. What will sensemaking infrastructures enable
us to do for intellectual landscapes over OERs?
Andriessen et al (2003) describe three learning scenarios
to analyse educational contexts under which specific learning goals can be achieved based on pedagogical strategies
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: The FM-OpenLearn Folksonomy of Public Meetings.
for collaborative learning. Based on the framework summarised in Table 1, we later analyse the uses of OpenLearn
tools to foster open sensemaking communities in section 5.
3 Videoconferencing
3.1 The FlashMeeting Project (FM)
In an open learning environment, in addition to other
ways of communication, such as email, forums and instant
messaging, videoconferencing transforms synchronous
communication with the use of multimedia.
The FlashMeeting videoconferencing project (FM) has
been integrated with OpenLearn in a Moodle "block" and
requires no installation. OpenLearn account holders can
"book" a meeting, adding the meeting details, such as date,
time and duration, number of attendees, title and keywords
etc. and forward the meeting link to the meeting attendees
via email or posted in a forum. Up to 25 participants can
connect in a meeting.
The system forces only one person to broadcast at any
one time, while co-attendees can raise a symbolic hand or
© Novática
interrupt. The background channels of communication in
FM include a text chat facility, voting, indicating emoticons
and a shared whiteboard. The whiteboard can be used for
collaborative work, such as discussing or annotating
uploaded slides, brainstorming by adding text or drawing.
All meetings are recorded, and replays can be syndicated in a publicly accessible Web page, including a
folksonomy1 created according to the keywords added by
the users in the meeting booking page. The replays can be
easily browsed, edited and annotated (Figure 1). The replay
page also includes automatically generated links to the chat
transcript, and to linear and polar representations of the
communication channels used in the event.
3.2 Videoconferencing Use
Over four years of research, the FM application has been
1
Folksonomy is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. <http:/
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy>.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
offered to a range of industries, including schools, universities, companies and research institutes. At the moment, it
is used by over 40 European projects and numerous sensemaking communities worldwide.
Over 800 naturalistic meetings not including the word
"test" in the title have been recorded in the FM-OpenLearn
server. Over 80 recorded events are syndicated at the FMOpenLearn folksonomy, mostly including moderated project
meetings, webcasts, virtual seminars, interviews and peerto-peer meetings.
Our strategy involved in OpenLearn is to support
sensemaking communities to understand the power of "opening up" their learning with videoconferencing, focusing on:
Effective support for peer learning in a synchronous
Web 2.0 world.
Integration with OpenLearn units via the "related
meetings" link.
Social networking, facilitated in FM through the page
"My Events".
Re-use and syndication of meetings as shared content via the FM folksonomy.
Live attendance maps and replay reuse maps showing the importance of a public replay.
Meeting replay with knowledge maps, to show
knowledge transferred in the meeting.
4 Knowledge Mapping
4.1 Compendium
The Compendium software tool developed by the
Knowledge Media Institute at OU-UK provides a visual user
interface for users (e.g. learners, educators or software developers) to cluster, connect and tag icons representing issues, ideas, concepts, arguments, websites or any media
document. Through Compendium, learners can represent
their thoughts and reflections while they study or work on a
unit.
They can share their knowledge maps with others in
order to learn together. Knowledge maps can be very useful as a summary of a topic, collection of important resources
and as a learning path through the maze of the Web.
Knowledge Mapping [7] is a concept which comprises
techniques and tools for visualising conceptual models as
explicit structures graphically. Knowledge mapping techniques include:
Conceptual models of any subject such as concept
maps [8].
Personal plans such as mind maps [9].
Models of dialogue and argumentation such as dialogue maps [10] and argument maps [11].
Students can sketch these graphical schemes on paper
Figure 2: Compendium’s User Interface for Linking Issues, Ideas, Arguments and Documents.
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 3: Compendium Downloads by Month in the LabSpace.
or use a mapping software tool to create knowledge maps.
In this case, hypertext maps can be published on the web,
users can navigate in hyperlinks, download, edit and upload
it again [12].
This example in Figure 2 illustrates how students can
create a map in Compendium in order to study an open educational resource. They can use dialogue mapping technique
to record their thinking about the content represent their
internal conversation graphically. By dragging and dropfrom the palette onto the map, they
ping a question-icon
can type a key issue, problem, or question. They can then
create and connect new nodes such as
for answers, concepts or data;
for arguments, choices or possibilities;
for supporting arguments; for counterarguments. Pictures,
sites and documents from the web can be added into this
map also by dragging and dropping the media resource, for
instance FM URLs.
4.2 Knowledge Mapping
During fifteen months, from 25th Oct. 2006 launch to
st
10 Jan. 2008, the Knowledge Mapping reporting system
shows 3378 downloads of the Compendium tool, with coverage across the different internal OU communities, with
strong representation from elsewhere in the world:
5 Linking Knowledge Maps and FM for Open
Learning
In this section we analyse learning scenarios where knowledge mapping was integrated to FM webvideoconference to
© Novática
foster sense making. The examples analysed were produced
by the OpenLearn Community CPLP <http://labspace.
open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1456>.
5.1 Knowledge Maps for a Virtual Lecture:
Transmission Scenario
Figure 4 shows a Compendium map in the Portuguese
language created for an online lecture in FM given by a
Brazilian postdoctoral researcher. The map was used to
guide her lecture and engage participants to discuss its key
points in FM. This mind map shows new ideas about "Media Literacy in Education" which is also related to the
OpenLearn unit (U074_1: information literacy).
These key concepts were selected from her blog Educational Media which can be accessed by the icon
.
While she talks any participant can bring icons
either
to highlight what she is presenting or to connect a ques. Learners can extion that can be typed in the chat
change comments in the chat area in order to make sense
about the content presented.
This example can be analysed as a transmission scenario.
The Compendium map can be used to clarify and summarise the content of a virtual lecture.
In this case, the map indicates that the FM event focuses on a question "How can we develop skills to use diverse "grammar" from different areas such as linguistics,
discourse analysis, visual design, body language and spatial and audio interfaces?". In the chat, a participant asks
whether there is any issue or comments. Another partici-
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 4: Studying the Arts and Humanities Through a Knowledge Map.
pant then describes problems with her internet connection,
although after visualising the content of the presentation
her answer indicates that she is fine and later she will replay what was missed. In this case, the map which offers a
global picture of the lecture helps not only people who participate in this event but also attendees who arrived late.
Andriessen et al ([6], p.16) point out that "in transmission,
argumentation is mainly considered as a reasoning process
in which learners try to articulate strong and relevant arguments to arrive at an approved conclusion". The lecturer
can help learners visualise key ideas through a knowledge
map.
The more familiar learners are with the content presented, the more engaged they become in such a discussion.
5.2 Learning Path Map Integrating FM
Conference: Studio Scenario
Another kind of representation is a Learning Path Map,
a sequence of learning resources significant to a learner or
as a resource for educators to attend their specific needs. A
learning path may be an interesting sequence of reference
nodes hyperlinked to activities or content from OERs and
other resources. It may represent an organised structure
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
showing prerequisite knowledge, learning objectives and
estimated study hours.
The Compendium map below illustrates how learners
can extend their understanding about the content discussed
in a FM conference. They can add more resources, describe
connections, include more content and interesting media
resources such as movie clips (e.g. in YouTube <http://
www.youtube.com>), other presentations (e.g. SlideShare
<http//www.slideshare.net>), definitions about concepts
discussed (e.g. from Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org>
and blogs) and learning activities in OER (e.g. from
OpenLearn, MIT Opencourseware, …).
This example can be analysed as a studio scenario,
where, "learners use collection of tools and tasks to adapt
their learning to their needs and goals" ([6], p.17). The
Compendium map can be used as a visual authoring tool
for the rapid (re)sequencing of learning resources, a form
of high level "remixing" open educational resources. All
these different resources in diverse media formats mapped
in figure 5 can help learners to make sense of the main topic
discussed [5]. The sensemaking process is emphasised when
learners make retrospective sense of the situations in which
they may find themselves. In this case, by mapping different resources which they are familiar with might help them
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 5: "Creating a Learning Path Map": Information Literacy.
establish connections between what they are learning and
their previous knowledge or experiences.
5.3 Concept Maps during a Peer-to-Peer Event:
Negotiation Scenario
Figure 6 shows a Concept Map done on the whiteboard
created by all participants in a peer-to-peer discussion from
Brazil and Portugal. In this map, each attendee brings a
keyword which is meaningful for them in order to describe
the notion of "information literacy" using the FlashBoard
in FM and broadcasts the context by describing examples,
experiences and knowledge. They also add their names after their keywords (e.g. Information literacy means "culture of participation" by Ale Bujokas, "development of
competences" by Carla, "not only technical and scientific
ones, but also socio-cognitive and collaborative skills related to the ability of inquiry" by Paulo, and "critical thinking" by Leonel).
This example can be analysed as a negotiation scenario.
A collaborative concept map followed by oral narratives by
each FM participant can represent the collective
sensemaking process, in which the participants negotiate
their own meaning to describe the concept (e.g. "information literacy") together. As Andriessen et al ([6], p.21) ex-
© Novática
plain "negotiation may be about problem solutions, meanings of concepts, which fosters individual learning on specific meaningful exchanges between individual participants.".
5.4 Web Maps for a FM Replay: Assessment
Scenario
The FM Memos generate a set of metadata, available in
XML format. This XML can be imported into Compendium
and turned into knowledge maps as we can see in a virtual
meeting about digital games applied to education in the
example below. These Web maps can enhance the understanding of the event, as they include temporal and conceptual connections amongst all event elements, such as who
attended the meeting and who spoke when (top images of
Figure 7), the URLs visited and the whiteboard images or
interactions (bottom images of Figure 7), text chat logs,
annotations, votes and keywords. All these icons are nodes
automatically linked in a knowledge map, which can be used
to assist the replay users in structuring, acquiring and reconstructing the knowledge transferred during the discussions and argumentations in the meeting. The nodes are
actually links back to the original replay as well; therefore
a way of traversing the replay through different categories
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 6: Negotiating the Meaning of Information Literacy Through a Concept Map.
of indexed timestamps. The bottom-right image of Figure 7
is a map edited by a participant and represents the key points
of the whole discussion: key questions, ideas, arguments
counterarguments and conclusions reached by collective
sensemaking.
This example can be analysed as an assessment scenario,
suggested by the authors. In the learning process, it is essential to engage learners in self-assessment or formative
assessment, in which learners can reflect and develop a critical evaluation about the uses of OpenLearn Tools to enhance their learning and sensemaking process. Through
these Web maps, they can analyse and assess different kinds
of FM events which may differ in that they may present
different map structures. For example, seminars and peerto-peer meetings (negotiation scenario) can present richer
maps in terms of URLs, broadcasts and chat logs, as they
are more interactive events, involving the active participation of several attendees. In virtual lectures (transmission
scenario), on the other hand, with a main presenter broadcasting and his/her virtual audience interacting with chat,
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
there is less interaction between participants. The structuring of the FM replay information in maps allows the users
to browse the different parts of the event, based on the different event elements, such as individual broadcasts, annotations, URLs shared etc. These Web maps to navigate
though the webconference may also help researchers to
develop a qualitative analysis of the content in a FM conference.
Andriessen et al ([6], p.22) explain that "Scenarios focusing on meaning making practice rather than on product, and on collaboration and group processes rather than
individual knowledge were considered as better test-beds
for the study of learning from argumentation". Weick ([5],
p.192) complements "criteria for good sensemaking are not
obvious (…). Reflection is perhaps the best stance for both
researchers and practitioners to adopt if the topic of
sensemaking is to advance". In this sense, knowledge mapping can guide learners to clarify issues in a discussion,
extend their knowledge, negotiate meanings collaboratively
and also be applied to formative assessment.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 7: Web Maps for Better Event Understanding.
6 Conclusions
During one year of existence, the OpenLearn project
has engaged a critical mass of over 30,000 registered users
and over one million unique visitors, taking advantage of
the OERs to learn at their pace and time. So far, the knowledge media tools have been proved useful to help users connect with other open learners with similar interests and participate in online communities of practice. Our research
focuses on how knowledge media tools can improve communication and support the collective construction of knowledge. We wish to give some insights into fostering open
sensemaking communities and encouraging them to produce learning objects, especially in combination with the
available OERs.
Compendium has been used for studying, remixing and
developing OERs and has been integrated with the FM
videoconferencing tool not only to enhance peer-to-peer
collaboration amongst learners, but also to support virtual
seminars and presentations. Several of these resources produced in FM and Compendium have been reused world-
© Novática
wide by individuals from different corners of the world.
The combination of the media tools for knowledge mapping and videoconferencing indicates that further learning
scenarios, such as the assessment scenario introduced in this
work, may emerge in open formal or informal learning contexts.
References
[1] J. Willinsky. "The access principle: the case for open
access to research and scholarship". Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2006. ISBN: 0262232421.
[2] S. Buckingham. "From Open Content Repositories to
Open Sensemaking Communities". <http://cosl.
usu.edu/conferences/opened2005/docs/opened2005proceedings.pdf>, accessed August 10, 2007.
[3] P. J. Scott, E. Tomadaki, K. A. Quick. "The Shape of
Live Online Meetings". International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, Vol 3, 2007, Number
4, pp. 1-19.
[4] A. Okada, E. Tomadaki, S. Buckingham Shum, P. J.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
35
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Scott. "Combining Knowledge Mapping and
Videoconferencing for Open Sensemaking Communities". Open Education Conference, Logan, Utah, Sept.
2007. <http://cosl.usu.edu/events/opened2007>.
[5] K. Weick. "Sensemaking in Organizations". Sage Publications, 1995. ISBN: 080397177X.
[6] J. Andriessen, M. Baker, D. D. Suthers. "Arguing to
Learn: Confronting Cognitions en Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environment". Springer,
2003. ISBN: 1402013825.
[7] A. Okada, S. Buckingham Shum, T. Sherborne.
"Knowledge Cartography". Springer, 2008, in press.
<http://kmi.open.ac.uk/books/knowledge-cartography>.
[8] J. D. Novak. "Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools
and Corporations". Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1998. ISBN: 0805826262.
[9] T. Buzan. "The Mind Map book". London: BBC worldwide, 1993.
[10] J. Conklin. "Dialogue mapping: building shared understanding of wicked problems". Wiley, 2005: Chichester. ISBN: 0470017686.
[11] T. van Gelder. "Argument Mapping with Reason!Able".
<http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/reason/papers/arg_mapping_with_reasonable.pdf>, accessed
August 10, 2007.
[12] A. Okada, S. Buckingham Shum. "Knowledge Mapping With Compendium", in Academic Research and
Online Education. 22nd ICDE World Conference, 3-6
sept. 2006, Rio de Janeiro <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/
projects/osc/docs/KnowledgeMapping_ICDE2006.
pdf>, accessed August 10, 2007.
Links of Interest
Compendium Institute. <www.CompendiumInstitute.
org>.
Compendium (Open University). <http://compendium.
open.ac.uk>.
FlashMeeting. <http://flashmeeting.com/>.
OpenLearn Initiative. <www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/>.
Open Sensemaking Communities. <www.kmi.open.
ac.uk/projects/osc/>.
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Mobile Social Software for Professional Communities
Ralf Klamma and Matthias Jarke
Professional Communities start to make extensive use of Web 2.0 tools and platforms to enhance their knowledge work.
But, with the Web 2.0 and the new computing capabilities in the mobile ubiquitous Internet, the relationship between
professionals in their closed communities and amateurs in the Web 2.0 is debated again. We show here a living community
around the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage of the Bamiyan
Valley in Afghanistan which tries to find an intermediary position between highly trusted work in the cause of cultural
preservation and protection on the one side, and communication with a public audience and investors in the sustainable
development of the Bamiyan Valley on the other. Our mobile Social Software scenario Virtual Campfire assembles some
tools we developed for this community in a common research and development framework.
Keywords: Communities of Practice, Multimedia, Social Software, Ubiquitous Computing, Web 2.0.
1 Introduction
"Today I travel back to Kabul by plane together with the
Italian rock engineers who are to examine the condition of
the back wall of the Buddha niches. […] In a joint visit on
the site together with the ICOMOS restorer and the Italian
experts the success of the previous consolidation works is
confirmed. All of us are convinced that further security
measures have to be implemented in the next phase. A mayor
(sic) threat for the whole site is the permanent ongoing erosion process of the cliff, which weakens and washes out the
soft components of the conglomerate material." - Architect
Georgios Toubekis from RWTH Aachen University reports
his experiences and findings in his travel blog on
<www.bamiyan-development.org>.
The main difference between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 is
the idea that computers are more media than tools. The term
"Social Software" characterizes this best. Social Software
is well known by examples like the digital image sharing
platform Flickr <http://www.flickr.com>, the digital video
sharing platform YouTube <http://www.youtube.com> or
the social bookmarking platform del.icio.us <http://
del.icio.us> and can be broadly defined as environments
that support activities in digital social networks [1]. Digital
social networks are a connected social graph of human and
non-human (media) actor representations mainly realised
by means of computer-mediated communication. Because
of Social Software, professionals or knowledge workers [2]
face dramatic changes in the way they work. Knowledge
work can be defined as using your intellectual and social
capital to create new knowledge on some media. Knowledge work is not performed in isolation but in communities
where knowledge workers create, share, and deploy embedded in a social context.
Wenger et al. [3] defines: "Communities of Practice are
groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or
a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge
© Novática
Authors
Ralf Klamma is a senior researcher within the Information
Systems group at RWTH Aachen University. He has visited the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a substitute
professor at the universities of Chemnitz and Passau. He is a
project manager in the collaborative research center “Media and
Cultural Communication”, member of the Ultra High-Speed
Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC) Excellence
Cluster, and work package leader for “Social Software” in the
EU Network of Excellence PROLEARN for professional
training. His research interests include community information
systems, Social Software, and Technology-Enhanced Learning.
<klamma@dbis.rwth-aachen.de>.
Matthias Jarke is a professor of Information Systems at RWTH
Aachen University and Executive Director of the Fraunhofer
FIT Institute of Applied IT; he is also deputy vice president ICT
research within the Fraunhofer organisation. In his research, he
investigates information systems for cooperative applications
in engineering, business, and culture. Jarke is currently area
coordinator of mobile applications and services within the
Excellence Cluster UMIC at RWTH Aachen University. He has
served as president of the German Informatics Society, GI, from
2004-2007, and was scientific coordinator of the “Informatics
Year 2006” for the German Federal Ministry of Research.
<jarke@dbis.rwth-aachen.de>.
and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis". The current state of Social Software and its use for
knowledge work is at a very early stage. While it is quite
obvious to most observers that as mainstream knowledge
work uses Social Software, the consequences of using Social Software in professional communities has also impacted
on the relationships between amateurs and experts. A second observation is that Social Software is becoming mobile. Major research and development intitiatives are realizing mobile broadband access to the Internet, strengthening this significant trend. Mobile Social Software will be a
major topic for the near future. The citation from the travel
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Cultural and Technological Shift
by Social Software
Impact on
Knowledge Work
Impact on
Professional Communities
Web 1.0
Web 2.0
Personal website
and content
managements
Blogging and
wikis
User generated
content
Participation
Microcontent
Providing commentary
Personal knowledge publishing
Establishing personal networks
Testing Ideas
Social learning
Identifying competences
Emergent Collaboration
Trust & Social capital
Directories
(taxonomy) and
stickiness
Tagging
("folksonomy")
and syndication
Ranking
Sense-making
Remixing
Aggregation
Embedding
Emergent Metadata
Collective intelligence
Wisdom of the Crowd
Collaborative Filtering
Visualizing Knowledge Networks
Table 1: Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management
blog of our colleague which opened this paper shows that
knowledge work supported by Social Software has not only
to be designed for well equipped office workers but also for
road warriors, trippers, the new mobile "Digital Bohemia"
and for knowledge workers like our colleague who are trying to preserve our cultural heritage in Afghanistan.
In the following we discuss our observations in more
detail. After that, we describe very briefly some new research tools. A case study of the Bamiyan Development
Community will illustrate our approach as well as Virtual
Campfire, a scenario for realizing mobile Social Software
for professional communities.
2 Knowledge Work Goes Social Software
According to the McKinsey Global Survey of how businesses are using Web 2.0 [4] 75 % of the executives in companies believe that Web 2.0 technologies and business processes [5] help to manage collaboration internally in the two
equal areas of product development and knowledge management. After many years of experience with successful
and less successful organizational knowledge management
projects most experts are sure that knowledge management
failed not because of technology but because of the topdown and mistrust based management approaches of higher
management [6]. Why should the situation be radically different in the Web 2.0? In the debate on Web 2.0 most people agree that the technology behind Web 2.0 is neither new
nor very advanced. It is claimed that the mindset of people
has changed. We would argue that it is not the mindset which
has changed but the majority of the Web 2.0 users are very
different from the users of the Internet 10 years ago. Due to
the massive availability of broadband connections millions
of new users are using the Web 2.0 in a very different way
to users of the Web 1.0. One of the main drivers is Social
Software which allows users to do things online (like sharing digital images or digital videos) in a very convenient
way. Among these new users are also professionals who are
changing their work styles to use the new possibilities. Here,
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we want to summarize the impact of some Social Software
attributes on knowledge workers and on professional communities in general (cf. Table 1).
1. Projects like Wikipedia create knowledge prosumers,
who play a role of both producer and consumer, and participation become essential by replacing old-fashioned content management systems with wikis and blogs in organizations. Users play a significant role besides merely providing content in Web 2.0 and we have to identify their new
competences. Especially, through new media like blogs and
wikis, emergent collaboration of knowledge workers could
be encouraged with new functions like the creation and testing of not worked out ideas in personal knowledge networks.
2. Hard to maintain knowledge directories and
taxonomies in companies are now replaced by tagging
mechanisms creating so-called "folksonomies".
Interoperability between content and services is realized by
syndications tools (RSS) solving the old problem of "sticky"
data, that cannot be taken from one application to another.
But does Web 2.0 provide an effective approach to knowledge management among individuals, organizations and
communities?
Many knowledge management initiatives at the moment
are the mere transfer of Web 2.0 into existing knowledge
management strategies. Even worse, technically overambitious approaches which led to many failures in the first wave
of knowledge management of the 90s return in the guise of
the new king "Social Software". Why not discover the power
of multimedia story-telling for the Web 2.0? Why not combine the powerful concepts like communities of practice and
emergent metadata?
3 Social Software Stimulates New Debate about
Expert Cultures and Amateur Cults
The books "The cult of the amateur" [7] and "The Wisdom of the Crowds" [8] revived an old debate about the
relationship between true experts and ambitious amateurs
in scientific and professional disciplines. In spite of the valu-
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
able contributions of amateurs to the body of knowledge at
any time, e.g. palaeontology, professional communities define themselves often through high quality assurance entrance barriers for their communities. Professional communities tended to communicate within traditional media like
journals, magazines and dedicated Web 1.0 media like mailing lists. The advent of the Web 2.0 is challenging this relationship again. Old projects of the enlightenment movement
like encyclopaedias have been revitalized by wiki technologies like the Wikipedia project <http://en.wikipedia.org>.
But Wikipedia as an amateur project constantly seeks for
support from professional communities. On the contrary,
expert portals constantly seek for more attention among nonexperts for getting more metadata, since metadata in the
form of tags has turned out to be the coin of the Web 2.0
age. One very new example is the cooperation between the
digital image sharing platform Flickr and the US Library of
Congress. Everything labelled as "2.0" nowadays is facing
the same challenge of redefining the relationship between
experts and amateurs, e.g. Museum 2.0, Journalism 2.0, etc.
Even, if we have yet to test the sustainability of many of
those endeavours we have to define new forms of collaboration between amateurs and experts. Communities of practice have always been dealing with this. Why not scale the
concept of legitimate peripheral participation to social networks like Facebook <http://www.facebook.com> or
MySpace <http://www.myspace.com>.
4 Social Software Meets the Ubiquitous Multimedia Internet
More and more professional communities profit from
the growing access to high bandwidth Internet connections.
Even professions without any technical background are
transforming their professions based on the Web 2.0. Especially the support of fieldwork, knowledge work in underdeveloped countries with missing national communication
infrastructures and mobile multimedia have been neglected
so far in the discussion about Web 2.0 for knowledge work.
For many professions it is quite usual not to sit in a heated
office with a fully IT equipped work place, but to work
mobile. While road warriors or trippers were supported by
mainstream Social Software providers with at least basic
office functionalities like word processing and spreadsheets,
advanced communication and computing needs for mobile
communities are yet not addressed except for research prototypes. Further problems of context-aware computing communities are yet not addressed by the software. The ad-hoc
organization of collaborative work in a remote place needs
support for wireless transportation platforms and mobile adhoc networking solutions, for context-detection with mobile devices and a level of computing experience similar to
standard office desktops. Especially in underdeveloped
countries access to mobile services is complicated and therefore, we do not find good solutions there yet. The Aachen
based excellence cluster UMIC <http://www.umic.rwthaachen.de> tries to address these problems by providing
solutions for the following problems: mapping mobile Web
© Novática
services on mobile IP architecture especially designed for
underdeveloped countries, provision of context aware adaptive peer-to-peer information management and delivering
high quality mobile multimedia. Especially the latter is very
important to break the linguistic fixation of existing solutions for mobile context-aware computing.
5 Research Tools for Mobile Social Software
To understand the impact of mobile Social Software on
knowledge work and professional communities we have to
leverage existing knowledge management theories for communities into a Web 2.0 world. If computers are regarded
more as media in the Web 2.0 we have to address the new
forms of communications which are possible in the Web
2.0. As already mentioned this has already started by adding a "2.0" behind everything. But how can we go beyond
the too simple and boring idea of "Let’s do a wiki / blog on
XYZ"? What are the challenges raised by Social Software?
Here are some of the research challenges we want to address:
1. How can we handle the unfortunate situation that
behind many media artefacts on the Web 2.0 we find no
single authoritative authors, but sometimes complex structured or even anonymous groups of editors?
2. How can we measure the trace of the complex edit
history and the networked structure of many media artefacts against the goals and intentions we set in knowledge
management projects?
3. How can we support the static and dynamic analysis
of small mobile communities as well as large networks with
more than a million actors and several millions of realized
relations?
To give initial answers to the questions raised we have
developed a common analysis framework for Web 2.0 based
knowledge management. In addition to the above mentioned
theoretical works we introduce:
social network analysis (SNA) [9] as a set of measures for social relations,
static and dynamic visualization of graphs as a
way of creating evidence,
the actor-network theory (ANT) [10] as a way to
deal with complex agency,
and the high level goal oriented modeling formalism i* [11] for making Web 2.0 knowledge work goals and
intentions explicit.
Also, ethical and legal issues have to be addressed because of privacy and data protection. Our goal is the lightweight and flexible formalization of knowledge domains
and processes [1].
6 www.bamiyan-development.org: A Case Study
of a Professional Community
The joint aims of the Bamiyan Development Community is the preservation and development of the Bamiyan
Valley in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The valley,
in the heart of the Hindu Kush Mountains, is perhaps best
known for the tragic demolition of the two Buddha statues
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: Screenshot of the Community Website of the Bamiyan Community <http://www.bamiyan-development.org>.
which are listed among UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.
This part of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, and its preservation, can have a major impact on sustainable tourism and
economic development for the whole region. But destruction is deep and the destroyed Buddha statues are only the
visible tip of the iceberg. The civil war in Afghanistan for
more than 20 years, and the Taliban regime, destroyed among
others the national science structures and many archives
located in Afghanistan.
What happened in Afghanistan? Scientists and professionals who fled from the oncoming war took part of the
then paper-based archives with them, scattering those archives all over the world. The generation of scientists and
professionals trained and working before the war is now
reaching retirement age. Afghan scientists, and professionals trained in other countries, are coming to Afghanistan to
help rebuild scientific infrastructures and management of
the cultural heritage. While the older scientists and professionals have at least some archived knowledge about the
status quo of Afghan sites and monuments before the war,
young scientists and professionals use modern information
technology and new scientific methods to actualize the
knowledge about the sites and the monuments. In order to
bring both together, they need a channel to communicate
and cooperate among them. Thus, an international and
intergenerational cooperation was initiated, because no cul-
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
tural heritage management work was done over two decades on site in Afghanistan during the civil war. To address
the gap between the experiences accumulated by the prior
generations and those collected recently we have created a
community portal which is accessible via <http://
www.bamiyan-development.org> (cf. Figure 1).
With the community portal, and the related databases
and tools, the community members collaboratively produce
and consume different media including photos, videos, drawings, books, etc. supporting cultural heritage management
which consists of documentation of sites with significant
interest, evaluation of appropriate conservation measures
and the monitoring of the means applied. To support the
community and attract the public we have created various
advertising materials such as a trailer video and some expert interviews with community members which are taped
on digital video and shared via the portal.
Figure 2 is a social network visualization of the Bamiyan
Development community (persons are represented by rectangles and agencies by ellipses). Under the UNESCO
guidelines of the International Coordination Committee
(ICC) for the Safeguarding of Afghanistan Cultural Heritage, several governmental and non-governmental organizations around the world actively engage with national institutions and experts. Within this framework the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) coop-
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 2: Visualization of the Bamiyan Development Social Network.
erates with both the Aachen Center for Documentation and
Conservation (Prof. Dr. Michael Jansen) and the Department of Information Systems (Prof. Dr. Matthias Jarke) of
RWTH Aachen University, with funds from the German
Foreign Office. Together with local partners, such as the
Society of the Preservation of Afghanistan Cultural Heritage (SPACH), we organize professional training for the
Department of Archaeology and Historical Monuments of
the Afghan Ministry of Culture. These activities are supported by a new generation of scholars and students from
the Kabul University. Many community members with different tasks and levels of profession including fieldworkers,
researchers, project or campaign officers, cultural bureaucrats etc. work in a mostly distributed work setting world
wide.
The following example illustrates the professional work
of the communities. Researchers, engineers and other professionals document the status of the niches of the Bamiyan
Bhudda in the Bamiyan Valley during a campaign. They
© Novática
make use of special measurement equipment for 3D-stereometry and widely available devices such as Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled camera systems. All resulting materials, e.g. digital images with additional stored GPS
coordinates, will be requested by a mobile multimedia database on a laptop of a researcher. The international community can immediately access the materials by the community information system. They can tag the materials and
they can relate (re-mix, embed) information in other documents. But only after clearance of the images through community experts can some of the images can be released to
the public by sharing them with tools like flickr.com to raise
the interest of the public for the restoration work in the
Bamiyan Valley.
7 Virtual Campfire: A Mobile Social Software
In order to make knowledge sharing a success for any
kind of professional community, independent of size or
domain of interest, a generic community engine for Social
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Software is needed. After some years of experience, with
the support of professional communities two different products emerged: a new reflective research methodology called
ATLAS (Architecture for Transcription, Localisation, and
Addressing Systems) [12] and a community engine called
LAS (Lightweight Application Server) [13]. The research
challenge in ATLAS was to incorporate the community
members as stakeholders in the requirements and software
engineering process as much as possible. In the end, all
community design and engineering activities should be carried out by the community members themselves, regardless
of their technical knowledge. While this ultimate goal of
taking software engineers out of the loop is rather illusionary in the moment, we have targeted realizing a generic architecture based on the research methodology. It allows
community members to understand their mediated actions
in community information systems. In its reflective conception the community information systems based on ATLAS are tightly interwoven with a set of media-centric selfmonitoring tools for the communities. Hence, communities
can constantly measure, analyse and simulate their ongoing
activities. Consequently, communities can better access and
understand their community need. This leads to a tighter
collaboration between multimedia community information
systems designers and communities.
1
Multimedia Content Description Interface. It uses XML to store
metadata, and can be attached to timecode in order to tag particular events. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-7>.
Within UMIC we have developed this complex scenario
of a mobile community based on our real Bamiyan Development community, and the ATLAS/LAS approach. Virtual
Campfire is an advanced scenario to create, search, and share
multimedia artefacts with context awareness across communities. Hosted on the basic component the Community
Engine, Virtual Campfire provides communities with a set
of Context-Aware Services and Multimedia Processor Components (cf. Figure 3) to connect to heterogeneous data
sources. Through standard protocols a large variety of (mobile) interfaces facilitate a rapid design and prototyping of
context-aware multimedia community information systems.
The successful realization of a couple of (mobile) applications listed as follows has proved the concept and demonstrated Virtual Campfire in practices: MIST as a multimedia based non-linear digital storytelling system; NMV
as a MPEG-71 standard based multimedia tagging system;
(Mobile) ACIS as a Geographic Information System (GIS)
enabled multimedia information system hosting diverse user
communities for the cultural heritage management in Afghanistan; and finally CAAS as a mobile application for
context-aware search and retrieval of multimedia and community members based on a comprehensive context ontology modelling spatial, temporal, device and community
contexts.
All these applications employ the community engine and
MPEG-7 Services within the Virtual Campfire framework.
Other services and (mobile) interfaces are applied according to different communities’ requirements. Virtual Campfire is running on Wireless Mesh Networks to apply high
Figure 3: Virtual Campfire Scenario Architecture.
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
and stable network data transfer capability, and low cost, in
developing countries.
8 Conclusions and Outlook
The development of mobile information systems for
communities of professionals in different application domains is a challenging issue for several reasons. The community engine has to reflect the social learning processes
taking place, which differ from community to community.
Even more, the mobile information system has to cope with
the needs of the digital media and the related communication/collaboration tools. Furthermore, communities are usually not able to express their needs in the very beginning of
information system usage.
Thus, the communities themselves a learning experience
in specifying their needs usually also using Web 2.0 media
like blogs and wikis. In addition, multimedia technologies
and the Web 2.0 are rapidly developing, thus creating new
requirements on hardware and software. In combination with
a trend for multidisciplinary knowledge work and research
novel approaches for flexible, evolving, adaptable, and
interoperable community engines are required. Mobile Social Software for professional communities therefore needs
to reflect the nature of the underlying community processes
and their discourses but also open itself to an interested
public audience and passionate amateurs providing their
spare time for increasing the value of research significantly.
Consequently, the question is: How to design and orchestrate community information systems in order to fully
exploit the features of the Web 2.0? With the Virtual Campfire scenario we want to show an early example for mobile
Social Software serving both the needs of trustful community communication and collaboration on the one hand and
the use of community materials to communicate with a
greater audience. Therefore, we invite everybody to join
the Bamiyan Development Community and participate in
the protection and the development of our cultural world
heritage.
Business Models for the Next Generation of Software".
2005. Retrieved July 3, 2006 from <http://
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/
30/what-is-web-20.html>.
[6] T. Davenport, L. Prusak. "Working Knowledge – How
Organizations Manage What They Know", MA:
Harvard Business School. 1998.
[7] A. Keen. "The Cult of the Amateur". NJ: Doubleday.
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[8] J. Surowiecki. "The Wisdom of the Crowds". NJ:
Doubleday. 2004.
[9] J. Scott. "Social Network Analysis - A Handbook". 2nd
ed. Sage Pub., London. 2000.
[10] B. Latour. "On Recalling ANT". In J. Law, J. Hassard
(Eds.) "Actor-Network Theory and After". Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 15–25. 1999.
[11] E. Yu. "Modeling Strategic Relationships for Process
Reengineering". Ph.D. Thesis, University of Toronto,
Canada. Technical Report DKBS-TR-94-6. 1995.
[12] J. Jarke, R. Klamma. "Reflective Community Information Systems", in Proceedings of the International
Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS
2006), Paphos, Cyprus, May 23-27, 2006.
[13] M. Spaniol, Y. Cao, R. Klamma. "A Media Theoretical
Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning in Nontechnical Disciplines", in Proceedings of Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2007, Crete, Greece, September 2007,
LNCS 4753, Springer-Verlag, pp.307-321.
References
[1] R. Klamma, M. Spaniol, Y. Cao, M. Jarke. "PatternBased Cross Media Social Network Analysis for Technology Enhanced Learning in Europe". In Proc. 1st
European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2006), LNCS 4227, Berlin: Springer, 242256. 2006.
[2] P. F. Drucker. "Knowledge Work Productivity: The biggest Challenge". California Management Review, 1(2),
79-94. 1999.
[3] E. Wenger, R. McDermott, W.M. Snyder. „Cultivating
Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge". MA: Harvard Business School. 2002.
[4] J. Bughin, J. Manyika. "How Businesses are using Web
2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey". 2007. Retrieved April
2007 as <http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/
article_page.aspx?ar=1913&L2=13&L3=11&srid=9&gp=1>.
[5] T. O’Reilly. "What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and
© Novática
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
43
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Applying "Scruffy" Methods
to Enable Work-Integrated Learning
Stefanie N. Lindstaedt, Tobias Ley, Peter Scheir, and Armin Ulbrich
This contribution introduces the concept of work-integrated learning which distinguishes itself from traditional e-Learning in that it provides learning support (i) during work task execution and tightly contextualized to the work context, (ii)
within the work environment, and (iii) utilizes knowledge artefacts available within the organizational memory for learning. We argue that in order to achieve this highly flexible learning support we need to turn to "scruffy" methods (such as
associative retrieval, genetic algorithms, Bayesian and other probabilistic methods) which can provide good results in the
presence of uncertainty and the absence of fine-granular models. Hybrid approaches to user context determination, user
profile management, and learning material identification are discussed and first results are reported.
Keywords: Associative Retrieval, Competence-Based
Knowledge Space Theory, Learning On Demand, Technology-Enhanced Learning, User Context, User Profile.
1 Motivation
In current business practice and e-Learning research
projects, most spending is devoted to enhancing knowledge
transfer of formal training interventions. Haskell [1] informs
us that in 1998 US$ 70 billion were spent on formal training and Back [2] states that in 2000 US$ 78 billion were
spent on corporate training and continuing education. On
the other hand, studies have revealed that in today’s economy
only a small amount of knowledge that is actually applied
to job activities (learning transfer) comes from formal training. On average people only transfer less than 30% of what
is being learned in formal training to the professional
workplace in a way that enhances performance. This is independent of the kind and quality of the courses taught, but
mainly depends on too little consideration of work environment needs during and after formal training efforts [3].
80-90% of what employees know of their job, they know
from informal learning [4]. Initiatives aiming at enhancing
knowledge transfer of formal training try to answer the question: "How much does the learner know after engaging in
Authors
Stefanie Lindstaedt is Head of the Knowledge Services
division at the Know-Center in Graz (Austria) and is scientific
coordinator of the APOSDLE project. In these roles she is
responsible for the management of many large, multi-firm
projects and the scientific strategy of the division. Her research
interests are in Knowledge Management, TechnologyEnhanced Learning, and Software Engineering. For the last
five years she has focused on the issue of Work-Process
Integrated Learning, developing the APOSDLE concept and
the concept of AD-HOC Learning. She holds a PhD and a M.S.
both in Computer Science from the University of Colorado
(CU) at Boulder (USA). <slind@know-center.at>.
Tobias Ley is the Deputy Division Manager and senior
researcher in the Knowledge Services division at the KnowCenter in Graz. Since 2001, he has managed numerous industry
based research and development projects in the areas of
Knowledge and Skills Management and Technology-Enhanced
Learning. He is deputy to the scientific coordinator of the
APOSDLE project, has developed the learning goal and
competency models for this project and also leads the work
package on dissemination, exploitation and standardisation.
Tobias holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the
University of Graz. <tley@know-center.at>.
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
Peter Scheir is researcher and software developer at the
Knowledge Services division at the Know-Center in Graz. He
is responsible for the APOSDLE service-oriented software
architecture and leads the work package on the integrated
knowledge structure in the APOSDLE project. He has studied
Telematics at the Graz University of Technology, and graduated
with distinction. In addition, he is a PhD student and lecturer
at the Knowledge Management Institute of the Graz University
of Technology where his research interests include ConceptBased Information Retrieval and Semantic Knowledge
Services. <pscheir@know-center.at>.
Armin Ulbrich works at the Knowledge Services division at
the Know-Center in Graz as Head of the IT-Project Office. He
has managed numerous industry based research and
development projects in the areas of Knowledge Management
and Context-Based Information Delivery. He holds a Diploma
(M.S.) in Telematics from the Graz University of Technology.
His research interests include modelling and identification of
user characteristics based on user interactions, integration of
user profile information from diverse sources and Social
Semantic Web. <aulbrich@know-center.at>.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
the formal training?" Instead, as suggested by the above
numbers, the question which should be asked is: "To which
extent can the learner apply the newly acquired skills to her
work tasks?"
2 Work-Integrated Learning in Knowledge Work
Based on these insights, our concept of work-integrated
learning focuses on enabling a shift from the training perspective of the organization to the learning perspective of
the individual. Specifically, we are interested in exploring
how informal learning happens within the work environment today and how it can be supported in the future.
The kind of on-the-job learning and learning-by-doing
already takes place in companies. Otherwise people would
not have been able to learn the 80-90% of the things they
need to know on the job (see section 1). These questions
have been addressed by research focussing on informal
workplace learning [5]. However, much of what we know
today is based on research in educational settings (schools
and universities) or in formal workplace training. Much less
research has been conducted in informal workplace learning settings.
A large scale empirical study into how people learn at
the workplace has been conducted by Kooken et al. [6] who
used a multi-method approach. Based on in-depth workplace
observations, interviews, self reports in learning diaries and
a survey conducted in knowledge intensive companies, the
authors conclude that informal learning at the workplace is
very frequent. It consists mainly in searching in digitally
documented sources and contacting colleagues through faceto-face means. 63% and 70% of the learning episodes studied in this investigation involved these two kinds of learning strategies respectively.
With the work-integrated learning approach, we are especially seeking to support knowledge work. We follow
Kelloway and Barling [7] when they delineate four types of
knowledge work: (i) Creation of new knowledge or innovation, (ii) the application of existing knowledge to current
problems, (iii) the packaging or teaching of knowledge, and
(iv) the acquisition of existing knowledge through research
or learning. Typical knowledge workers may include engineers, analysts, consultants, researchers and the like.
What is key, is that a person conducting knowledge work
is likely to engage in all these activities intermittently and
thereby dynamically switch to different roles in the context
of their work. It is these different roles that a knowledge
worker typically employs which we seek to support with
the work-integrated learning approach. This is also the main
distinction to more traditional (e-)Learning approaches [8].
To work, learn and teach efficiently and effectively, a knowledge worker must be provided with optimal guidance to
manage the large variety of knowledge artefacts available
in the corporate information infrastructure.
Based on these insights from informal learning and
knowledge work research, work-integrated learning may be
described by the following characteristics:
Individuals are responsible for their own competency
© Novática
development and they learn autonomously: they set their
own learning goals, are responsible for time management
and results, and chose their own learning strategy.
Individuals are enabled to learn within their own
specific work processes and context: When a learning situation during work appears, the individual in general is empowered to satisfy the learning need at that time.
Individuals are enabled to learn within their own
computational work environment: Learners are not forced
to leave their familiar work environments to access learning material and contact relevant subject matter experts but
are enabled to do so using their familiar tools.
Organizations provide the work environment (also
including flexibility, time, etc.) to enable this competency
advancement and actively support it in their cultures.
Any guidance provided must be flexible to support
different knowledge work roles.
In the subsequent sections, we discuss some challenges
and how these can be accommodated for by the application
of advanced information and communication technologies.
As a conclusion, we present concrete approaches and implementations which illustrate the use of these "scruffy"
methods in organizational settings.
3 Technological Challenges
Typically e-Learning systems are a wonder of carefully
designed content, fine-granular models, interdependencies
and hand crafted metadata: The learning domain is broken
down into meaningful learning units or modules which encompass concepts, facts and processes. They entail fine
granular learning information, exercises, tests, etc. Each of
these units is carefully designed using a multitude of different media appropriate for the learning type and learning
purpose the unit is serving. A dependency structure identifies prerequisites and post-conditions. Based on the units,
learning paths (courses) can be created by instructional designers taking into account the target group as well as preferred didactical aspects. In order to allow for improved
personalization, a multitude of metadata is attached to the
units. A number of metadata formats have been developed
by different specification and implementation bodies, such
as IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS)1, the Aviation
Industry CBT Committee (AICC)2 and the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative (DCMI)3. Designers can specify how a
system should react upon certain conditions and which service facilities are to be invoked dynamically during learning
(e.g. start a conference, send emails to peer learners). In
addition, information on the learning resource’s type of
interactivity (active, expositive, mixed), semantic density
(very low, low, medium, high, very high) and difficulty (very
easy, easy, medium, difficult, very difficult) can be attached
to learning resources.
1
<http://www.imsproject.org/>
<http://www.aicc.org/>
3
<http://dublincore.org/>
2
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
45
Technology-Enhanced Learning
In addition to metadata describing learning resources,
e-Learning systems often provide detailed user models
which allow for the representation of different learning levels and competency portfolios in the different areas, learning preferences, etc. A learner’s peers, tutors and teachers
are represented in order to allow students access to expert
help.
In short, one is faced with a thoroughly designed network of interrelated pieces which need to be artfully concerted to deliver a meaningful learning experience to the
user. Reflecting on these properties, one can easily understand why e-Learning content is expensive to create, requires lots of (metadata) standardization, and also requires
a lot of organizational structure.
In contrast, new learning approaches such as work-integrated learning (see [8], for possible scenarios) and organizational learning put one requirement in the centre of attention: Flexibility. Being closer to the application of knowledge (rather than to the internalization of knowledge) such
approaches critically rely on providing always the newest
available content in ever changing learning situations. While
in traditional course-oriented e-Learning one could still
manage the large amount of design work (also because the
learning domains stayed rather stable), this is not the case
any more in these new settings. Here we have to strive for
the best possible available learning information instead of
striving for the best designed e-Learning content.
Thus, in such situations it is simply impossible to create
and maintain such a carefully crafted network of interdependent learning pieces and structures. Instead, we have to
move towards embracing approaches which enable us to
best deal with change (while at the same time accepting
their side effects such as a lower level of accuracy, likelihood of errors and not always optimal instructional design).
In the following section we discuss three functionalities
crucial for the implementation of work-integrated learning:
(1) user context determination, (2) user profile management,
and (3) identification of relevant learning material. We
present possibilities of moving away from the pure approaches of instructional design to the application of
"scruffy" methods (such as associative retrieval, genetic
algorithms, Bayesian and other probabilistic methods) to
enable work-integrated learning. The "intelligence" within
such systems may be "seen as a form of search and as such
not perfectly solvable in a reasonable amount of time" [9].
4 Hybrid Approaches
The approaches discussed in the following have been
developed within two ongoing projects: DYONIPS4 (Dynamic ONtology based Integrated Process Optimisation)
aims at providing a user context-aware personal information management system and APOSDLE5 (Advanced Process-Oriented Self-Directed Learning Environment) where
4
<http://www.dyonipos.at>
5
<http://www.aposdle.org>
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
the objective is to develop support tools for work-integrated
learning (following the vision introduced above). From
DYONIPOS we report results concerning user context determination. From APOSDLE we report results concerning
user profile management and identification of relevant learning material.
The foundation of our approach (within both projects)
is to not rely on specifically created (e-)Learning content,
but to reuse existing (organizational) content which was not
necessarily created with teaching in mind. We tap into all
the resources of an organizational memory which might
encompass project reports, studies, notes, intermediate results, plans, graphics, etc. as well as dedicated learning resources (if available) such as course descriptions, handouts
and (e-)Learning modules. The challenge we are addressing is: How can we make this confusing mix of information
accessible to the knowledge worker in a way that she can
advance her competencies with it?
A frequently travelled path (also within e-Learning systems) is the creation of fine-grained semantic models which
allow for the categorization and retrieval of such resources.
But as we discussed above, the creation of such models,
their maintenance and the annotation of resources with their
concepts prove prohibitive in a dynamic environment. Thus,
our approach is a hybrid one: complementing coarse grained
semantic models (maintained as much as possible automatically, see below) with the power of diverse scruffy methods, improved over time through usage data and user feedback (collective intelligence).
Here the models play two roles: serving as initial retrieval triggers and providing the basis for simple inferences
and heuristics to interpret user interactions. There is a tradeoff for accuracy here. However, users have become increasingly accustomed to this concept through their usage of
(Internet) search engines. Also, obsolete models do not provide any added value and additionally are in danger of providing a false sense of security.
The general course of action within both systems,
DYONIPOS and APOSDLE is: we employ a daemon running in the background to capture and analyze a user’s actions (e.g. mouse movements, keyboard entries, opening of
applications). User context data thus observed, and specifically work tasks recognized, are stored in the user profiles
and are improved via inference mechanisms and heuristics
which interpret the user context in relationship to the task
and domain models kept. This user profile data in turn is
used for adapting support to the users’ needs and interests.
Based on the user profile data, recommendations are computed within an associative network aiming at supporting
the users’ learning goal attainment, the preparation of the
retrieval of resources and acts of collaboration. In the following sections we describe three hybrid approaches to accomplish this.
4.1 User Context Determination
The determination of a user’s work context is crucial in
order to provide support for work-integrated learning.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: The Semantic Pyramid from a Knowledge Worker’s Perspective
Comprises the Event (E), Event Block (EB) and Task (T) Layers.
Within e-Learning systems the work context of the user is
typically ignored. Instead an artificial learning context is
created which is mainly based on the learning domain and
learning concept to be acquired.
The DYONIPOS approach to context determination involves two phases: a training phase and a run-time phase.
During the training phase task executions by a number of
different users are captured and labelled. These captured
execution logs are then utilized to train a classifier to distinguish between the different tasks. During run-time the
context determinator continuously monitors the interactions
of the user and tries to automatically classify the execution
logs. If an execution log is classified with a confidence value
above a certain threshold the task is recognized [10].
We use an ontology that describes the user’s context by
taking into account the user’s interactions, the resources on
which the user acts on and the corresponding (automatically extracted and manual generated) metadata relations.
The user’s context model can be seen as a semantic pyramid which describes the continuous evolution of contextual information through different, semantic layers (Figure
1). Starting at the bottom with events that are executed by
one knowledge worker and ending with processes where
many knowledge workers can be involved.
User interactions with the system and reactions from the
system to the user’s interactions represent events. Events
can be user inputs, such as mouse movements, mouse clicks,
starting a program, creating a folder, a Web search, or opening a file.
© Novática
An event block is defined by a sum of events which are
chronologically ordered. An example of an event block is
"editing a document on page 2". Event blocks are formed
using predefined static rules, which map a set of events to
an event block. Event blocks are combined into tasks by
grouping together similar event blocks into semantic sets.
The tasks obtained by this grouping are automatically
learned from low-level events and event blocks which are a
result of the sensor data aggregation.
The manual assignment of the event blocks to a task is
used to train a classifier. The training is based on the context features we observe. Some context features which provide valuable information, e.g. the window title or the application name, are used directly for training. Other context
features, e.g. user input or the content of a currently viewed
document or Web page, require pre-processing (e.g., stemming, stopword removal). A detailed analysis of an extended
experiment at the Austrian Ministry of Finance reports
achieved accuracy of up to 75%. Here only four out of 13
context features are utilized (application name, content,
window title, and semantic type) and five classification algorithms are compared.
This shows that the use of classifiers for user context determination is feasible and that the results can be the basis for
user profile management and identification of relevant learning material as discussed in the next two sections.
4.2 User Profile Management
APOSDLE stores user-related context information (see
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
47
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 2: User Profile Data Arranged in Layers as Implemented for the APOSDLE User Profile.
section above), specifically the identified tasks, in digital
user profiles. These profiles are used for maintaining the
user’s usage history and current context with respect to their
personal work, learning, and collaboration related experiences. The form chosen for representing user information
has been informed by approaches from related research on
user contexts (e.g. [11]) and user modelling [12]. The
APOSDLE approach differentiates between four forms of
user related data (see Figure 2): user data, usage data, inferred data, and environment data. This layering of user
profile information allows us to clearly separate factual information and assumed information about the user. The
outermost layer (environment data) is not directly related
to an individual user’s profile and is as such not stored within
the user profile. Nevertheless, environment data has a significant impact on the user profile: The user profile services operating on the user and usage data utilize the environment data for interpretation and computing inferences.
One example of how environment data can support the
interpretation of user profile data is the mapping between
tasks and learning goals. A learning goal describes knowledge and skills needed to perform a task. It is defined as a
discrete element of a cognitive activity (learning goal type)
connected with a domain concept. The formalisms employed
are based on competence-based knowledge space theory
[13]. One important advantage of this theory is that it allows the computation of learning goals through a learning
need analysis by comparing knowledge needed to execute
a task and the knowledge state of the user. Another one is
the possibility to infer a user’s learning history by examining the work task she has engaged with in the past (taskbased learning history).
The current APOSDLE prototype utilizes the number
of work task executions as a basis for predicting which learn-
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
ing goals have been mastered. A preliminary simulation
employing a cross validation technique resulted in moderate to high validity scores. In the future we plan to also take
collaborations concerning similar topics into account.
This shows that it is feasible to use user behaviour as
the basis for competency identification. Our goal is to automatically infer a variety of user characteristics through interaction analysis thus freeing the user from continually
updating her user profile. Clearly user feedback plays a
significant role here and we already are experimenting with
different possibilities.
4.3 Identifying Learning Material
In order to provide powerful, intelligent retrieval mechanisms for work-integrated learning support the APOSDLE
approach includes an associative network [14]. This associative network implements heterogeneous retrieval mechanisms: semantic retrieval (based on learning domain concepts) is seamlessly integrated with a variety of similaritybased retrieval mechanisms.
This has the advantage of on the one hand providing
services with exact matched materials for instructional design tools and on the other hand also providing more inexact similarity-based services for information delivery and
creativity tools. In addition, the fact that associative networks can "learn" based on changing the edge weights is
used by APOSDLE to incorporate implicit as well as explicit user feedback.
The associative network relies on both, information in
an ontology and the statistical information in a collection
of documents. The associative network is queried by a set
of concepts from the ontology and returns a set of documents. Documents in the system are (partly) annotated with
ontological concepts if a document deals with a concept.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 3: The Associative Network Exploits Two Different Forms of Similarity, that is Semantic Similarity and
Content-Based Similarity. Semantic Annotations Function as a "glue" between these Two Forms of Similarity.
For example, if the document is an introduction to use case
models it is annotated with the corresponding concept in
the ontology. The annotation process is performed manually but is supported by statistical techniques (e.g. identification of frequent words in the document collection) [15].
Concepts from the ontology are used as metadata for
documents in the system. Opposed to classical metadata,
the ontology specifies relations between the concepts. For
example, class-subclass relationships are defined as well as
arbitrary semantic relations between concepts are modelled
(e.g. UseCase isComposedOf Action).
The structure of the ontology can be utilized for calculating the similarity between two concepts in the ontology.
This similarity can be used to extend a query by similar
concepts before retrieving documents dealing with a set of
concepts.
After retrieval of documents was performed, the result
set can be extended by means of textual similarity. Different combinations of query and result expansion were evaluated against each other. We used data available in the first
release of the APOSDLE system which was built for the
domain of Requirements Engineering. The ontology contains 70 concepts and the document set consists of 1016
documents. 496 documents were annotated using one or
more concepts. 21 concepts from the domain ontology were
used to annotate documents. We compared eight configurations (including one baseline configuration). The results
© Novática
proved encouraging since the three configurations which
performed query expansion in combination with result expansion consistently performed best (see [14] for more details).
5 Conclusions
Our approach is to apply a battery of advanced "scruffy"
methods to bridge the gap between coarse grained, handcrafted semantic models and fine grained learning needs.
The ultimate goal of this research is to minimize or at best
fully eliminate the need for hand-crafted formal models.
This will also significantly reduce the amount of human
effort needed to create e-Learning systems.
Prototypes developed in the DYONIPOS and APOSDLE
projects have shown that the approach is feasible, and will
continue to be evaluated in detail using four different learning domains within four application partners.
Acknowledgements
APOSDLE is partially funded under the FP6 of the European
Commission within the IST work program 2004 (FP6-IST-2004027023). DYONIPOS is financed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (<http://www.ffg.at>) within the strategic objective FIT-IT. The Know-Center is funded within the Austrian
COMET (Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies) Program under the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport,
Innovation and Technology, the Austrian Ministry of Economics
and Labor and by the State of Styria.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
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© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Distributed Feed Networks for Learning
Fridolin Wild and Steinn E. Sigurdarson
Recent studies indicate that blogs are the breakthrough user application of this decade. Yet, the blogosphere in its current
form is suffering from various problems. The fuzziness of the audience, disconnectedness, fragmentation, and lack of
conversational coherence may have their roots not only in sociological factors but also in technological shortcomings of
the current infrastructure. These problems hinder an effective deployment of blogs in collaborative learning activities.
Within this contribution, an interface specification for user-centred distribution of feed aggregation activities is proposed
which is both a prerequisite and basic infrastructure for blog-based collaboration. By presenting an overview on the
current state of the art in feed and interaction standards, a clear lack of support for active network management will be
elaborated. The design requirements for a solution to fill this gap will be sketched and complemented by a step by step
description of the communication process of the proposed "FeedBack" specification. Preliminary results from a trial with
a reference implementation for WordPress provide a proof of concept.
Keywords: Feeds, Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT), Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL).
1 Learning with Blogs
The conglomerate of all blogs available online, the socalled "blogosphere", has been certified to show a bursty
evolution at least since 2001, where an eruptive rise can be
identified not only regarding metrics of scale but also with
respect to deepening community structures and higher degrees of connectedness [1] [2]. As of December 2007, for
example, the blog index and search site Technorati is indexing over 112 million blogs [3]. Blogging is obviously
an increasingly popular phenomenon, although meta-studies reveal that between one half and two thirds of all blogs
are abandoned within only two months after their creation
[4].
One of the reasons that blogs became so attractive is
their ease of use, removing barriers of technoliteracy from
Web self-publishing [5]. There is a plethora of Web-publishing tools, allowing the user to choose from a large variety of (non-)commercial hosting services (often available
free of charge). Moreover, users can set up their own Webapplications choosing from a rich portfolio of open- and
closed-source products. Learning Light’s eLearning Centre, for example, lists already back in 2006 more than 56
different products and online services in a vendor directory
for blogging tools [6].
Publishing rich content with weblogs does not require
any profound technical knowledge, such as language skills
in the HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) required to
create pages with a desktop HTML editor, or skills such as
those necessary to set up a fully-fledged Content Management System.
Other than virtual classrooms, wikis, or forums, blogs
inherently offer the option to build open networks for collaboration, without the need to establish a dedicated community engaging in communication first. A single blog may
© Novática
Authors
Fridolin Wild, M.A., is researching within ProLearn, the EU
Network of Excellence (NoE) for Technology-Enhanced
Professional Learning, and additionally within EU IST funded
iCamp project, there being the technical manager and leading a
work package on interoperability of social software tools for
learning. Fridolin is the treasurer of the European Association
of Technology-Enhanced Learning (EATEL). He works as a
scientist at the Institute of Information Systems of the Vienna
University of Economics and Business Administration.
<fridolin.wild@wu-wien.ac.at>.
Steinn E. Sigurdarson is a Technology-Enhanced Learning
researcher at the Vienna University of Economics and Business
Administration, working on interoperability and social software
tools for learning within the iCamp project. Steinn has a background in data integration projects in the corporate sector with
a focus on open-source developments. Since 2006 he has been
concentrating on social software development, among others as
phase leader in the software development of the Covcell
Minerva-funded project. <sesigurd@wu-wien.ac.at>.
be considered to be individual publishing; the blogosphere
as a whole, however, is participatory by nature [7].
It is not surprising then, that blogs became vehicles for
knowledge management to already often form an integral
part of teaching and learning processes. Blogs can be used
to organize lectures, seminars, and discussions both between
teachers and students. Herring et al. [8] found in their study
on blog genres that, from a random sample of 203 blogs,
57.5% of the authors were students on a secondary and tertiary level. However, at the same time, most of the blogs
(70.4 %) were personal journals reporting on the lives of
their authors. Clearly the minority of the blogs are deployed
for filtering, i.e. commenting on external content and knowledge sharing. Similar results are reported by Schmidt &
Mayer [9] in their end-2005 study among German speaking
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Figure 1: Functionality of APIs.
bloggers: users in education (pupils, students) are
underrepresented among the blog writers with the (primal)
aim for knowledge sharing (a.k.a. knowledge-bloggers =
k-loggers); the major share of k-loggers stems from a work
context.
The reasons why people create and maintain blogs vary to
a large extent, however, always also including community
building and social networking among the key motivations
substantiated through empirical studies [10] [11]. Besides the
obvious (group blogs), social networks were proven to exist
between individual but networked blogs [12].
However, when deploying blogs in collaboration, many
obstacles can be found that have not been overcome so far.
To facilitate "productive blog conversations" which are necessary in knowledge management and learning, "more carefully tailored socio-technical systems are needed", as De
Moor and Efimova claim [13]. They identify the problem
of notorious fragmentation of conversations to be responsible for difficulties in reconstructing discussions, even for
their own authors. Furthermore, they see (initial) response
times as a problem that may slow down dialogues, especially when comparing to push technologies such as mailing lists.
Another identified obstacle to productive conversations
in collaboration processes is the low number of links to
blog posts, "lower than often expected". Only 51.2 % of all
blogs link to other blogs, only 53.7 % link to other websites.
30.5 % of all blogs do not link to anything at all (besides
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
badges) [8]. Entries received an average of 0.3 comments,
with most of of entries receiving none. Multimodality poses
yet another problem: replies and comments are often distributed across comment fields, but can also be found in the
blogs of the repliers. Krause [14] identifies the fuzziness of
the audience as a problem that may be responsible for failing discussion in his course experiment (his article is titled
"When Blogging Goes Bad"), as it is unclear whether the
desired audience (course participants) will be reached in
time or at all.
To summarize, the fuzziness of the audience,
disconnectedness, fragmentation, and lack of conversational
coherence seem to be pressing problems that may have their
roots not only in sociological factors but also in technological shortcomings of the current infrastructure. Moreover,
blogs are rarely used for, although their users are most often in, education. They can be interpreted as clear indications of a lack of interoperability in the blogosphere.
The rest of this article is organised as follows. First, an
overview on the current state of the art regarding feed and
interaction standards is given, from which a clear lack of
support for active network management is elaborated. In a
next step, design requirements for a solution to fill this gap
are elaborated and complemented by a step by step description of the communication process in the proposed specification. Subsequently, preliminary results from a trial with a
reference implementation for WordPress are given. Finally,
open issues and future possibilities are explored.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
2 Feed and Interaction Standards
Blogs most commonly offer the possibility of data integration by sharing data in a common format: feeds are one
of the important building blocks on the road to
interoperability. The origins of these formats date back as
early as 1995, although today only a few of them are still in
use [14]. There have been various proposals for meta-data
standards. Wittenbrink counts eleven different standards in
altogether 30 different versions [14]. Today, however, there
are three main meta-data standards for content syndication:
RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. The basic mark-up vocabulary of these standards can be regarded as of similar expressiveness and all of them can be enhanced productively with
extensions. Out of 37 blog and aggregator software products studied in [15], 65% supported RSS 1.0, 97% were
RSS 2.0 compatible, and 70% had support for Atom.
When looking at the complementary building blocks,
i.e. interaction standards, developers as well as users are
confronted with an abundance of different standards. Current interaction standards can be grouped into functionalities
for publishing, referring, passive networking, and active
networking. Publishing subsumes functionalities with which
postings, media objects and structuring information can be
retrieved, added, updated, and removed remotely. Referring
embraces commenting and linking features. Passive networking refers to identifying friends and their blogrolls,
whereas active networking enables users to push feed offers, request update pings, and syndicate changes.
Looking more closely at Figure 1, today’s interaction
standards seem to concentrate primarily on publishing and
referring functionalities, while the areas of passive and active networking are clearly less supported. Active networking features even are missing completely.
To conclude, the current lack of conversational coherence we have outlined above is a result of absent active
networking support and limited passive networking facilities. An interaction standard directly addressing these
functionalities is needed. Without advancements in infrastructure, tight collaboration can be achieved only at the
users’ expense.
3 Feed Management Specification
The process of collaborating via blogs can be divided
into two independents sub-steps, i.e., the management of
feeds and communication channels including authorisation
and the exchange of items or item collections (the materialisation, the content transmission itself). The following
section describes the missing link, a specification for managing feed subscriptions in a distributed setting which complements existing standards as analysed above. This specification is subsequently addressed as "FeedBack".
Aggregation services are already "abusing" the pingback
specification in so far as they are using the pingback-derived
weblog.ping XML-RPC1 to inform about new and updated
1
XML Remote Procedure Call.
© Novática
items and no longer inform about replies to existing blog
postings. However, at the same time, there are no standardised
options to inform a system about the existence of a feed and
about updates to enable better synchronisation management.
This document proposes a set of XML-RPC to transport
blog management information from one system to another.
It is light-weight in so far, as implementation is made as
easy as possible and dependencies on other components are
reduced to a minimum. The whole communication process
imitates human behaviour and shifts control to the user
wherever possible.
The extensive performance analysis of push versus pull
described by Deolasee et al. (2001) shows that for small
temporal coherency requirements, pulling bears performance disadvantages [16]. Push-based data synchronisation
provides several advantages beyond pull-based ones, the
most important one being immediacy. Pulling requires two
steps of communication, while pushing maintains state information and sends data only when necessary: it preserves
information about clients’ interests and pushes only relevant
information. Pull interactions require many queries without effect, as weblogs usually do not change very rapidly
(but at different times).
As a consequence, pulling causes a larger communicative network load, especially with a larger number of clients. In a push approach, action is performed only when
needed. Yet in the inherent immediacy of a push-based approach may lie its greatest pitfall if deployed in a large,
distributed system. Depending on the volatility of data involved in a large distributed system, as well as on the number
of nodes requiring synchronisation, a push-based approach
may be affected by excessive overhead of minor notifications being generated and transmitted. This problem is generally solved by using an intelligent buffer system combining several update notifications in a given time window (a
"buffered push" approach).
The FeedBack specification dictates four distinct properties for a compliant system. First, for discovery purposes
a FeedBack-enabled system should be able to return a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to its respective FeedBackenabled XML-RPC-endpoint either using a HTTP header
called "X-Feedback" or by having a link element in every
FeedBack-enabled page, with the rel attribute set to
"FeedBack". The endpoint provided should support the following three methods:
feedback.offer: used for advertising a feed to
the owner of a particular URI at the endpoint.
feedback.request: used to register for update
notifications.
feedback.notify: used to inform about existence and content of updates.
Systems willing to communicate detect the endpoint first
via the HTTP header or the link element. Subsequently,
they enter a communication process using the three methods mentioned above. Using these four steps; discovery,
offer, request, notification, the specification provides the
means for simple, secure push-based feed subscriptions.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Figure 2: Communication Process with FeedBack.
4 Communication Process
In the following section, we describe data exchange,
interaction steps, and state-transitions between two blog
systems and their users, when communicating management
information about a particular feed and specific items in
this feed.
FeedBack can be used to facilitate two modes for entering into feed subscription. Subscriptions can be solicited,
where there has been an official offer of a feed from the
source system to the target system. However, subscriptions
can also be unsolicited, where the target system directly
sends a request for feed updates.
Below, the communication process is described in the
form of a full solicited FeedBack subscription and update
notification cycle. Note that the first step ("offer") is optional and can be left out. The description vocabulary should
be familiar from Figure 2, and refers to a fictional scenario
of two blogs: "My Blog" which will be the source of updates in this scenario, and "Your Blog" which will be the
recipient of the update notifications.
The offer and request calls executed between the two
systems are the ones necessary for such a relationship to be
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
established securely. Each step will contain a small block
of easily understood pseudo-code in order to clarify further
the mechanism. Since the FeedBack specification is a serverside Application Program Interface (API), all the functionality offered in this scenario is accessed from the control
panel of each respective system.
To ease understanding, the following description of the
communication process is phrased as if one of the authors
of this article was addressing you, the reader, directly.
4.1 Offer Subscription
If I want to use FeedBack to share my blog feed with
you, I go into the control panel of My Blog, and tell it to
offer Your Blog a subscription to the feed of My Blog. I do
this by entering the URI of Your Blog (ideally any dynamic
page belonging to Your Blog).
My Blog reads the source of the given URI, to try and
find either an X-Feedback HTTP header, or a link element
containing a URI with a valid XML-RPC endpoint supporting the FeedBack methods. Once it finds a valid URI, it
will proceed to creating an instance of Your Blog’s endpoint
and make a feedback.offer call.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
xrpc = new xmlrpc("http://your.blog.org/xmlrpc")
xrpc.feedback.offer(
"http://your.blog.org/uri",2
"http://my.blog.org/advertised_feed"3
)
The feed My Blog offers, must of course adhere to the
same conditions as any FeedBack-enabled system, and have
the X-Feedback HTTP header (or the above mentioned
link element) to provide a valid XML-RPC endpoint, for
Your Blog to interact with. Upon receiving the subscription
offer, Your Blog should fetch the offered feed, store some
of its metadata details to assist you in deciding whether or
not to subscribe, and save the XML-RPC endpoint URI provided for later interaction purposes in case you accept the
offer.
4.2 Subscription Request
Your Blog has displayed a pending subscription offer
from My Blog. If you decide to accept this offer, Your Blog
will make a feedback.request call to the XML-RPC
endpoint found in the feed offered. The request will tell the
XML-RPC endpoint of My Blog which feed is being requested, where (to which XML-RPC endpoint) to send update notifications, and Your Blog will generate a token to
securely identify the future update notifications as they arrive.
xrpc = new xmlrpc("http://my.blog.org/xmlrpc")
xrpc.feedback.request(
"http://my.blog.org/advertised_feed",4
"http://your.blog.org/xmlrpc",5
"098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6"6
);
In case of the feedback.request being made directly,
without the offer step, then the natural way for Your Blog to
handle it would be to first see if the feed you are requesting
supports FeedBack. If not, or if the endpoint provided does
not support the feedback.request method, it is recommended that Your Blog’s FeedBack implementation gracefully
degrades to pulling the feed at regular intervals.
4.3 Update Notifications
At this stage, Your Blog has made a
feedback.request to My Blog, and when I post a
new entry which should appear in the feed Your Blog has
requested, My Blog will send an update notification, via
2
The URI I entered in my control panel, which My Blog used to
find Your Blog’s XML-RPC endpoint.
3
The URI to the feed at My Blog which I wish to share with you.
4
In this case the requested feed is naturally the same one as My
Blog offered, and I wished to share.
5
My Blog has no way of knowing where to send the update
notifications without being provided a target XML-RPC endpoint.
6
The token generated by Your Blog to identify incoming update
notifications.
© Novática
the feedback.notify method:
xrpc = xmlrpc.server("http://your.blog.org/xmlrpc")
xrpc.feedback.notify(
"http://my.blog.org/post/data.xml",7
"098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6"8
);
Your Blog looks up the token received by the update
notification to find the corresponding subscription. If Your
Blog supports several ways of subscribing to updates via
FeedBack, it should look up based on the token how to handle this particular notification. Possible reactions would
include re-fetching the original feed, inserting, deleting, or
updating relevant entries found. This approach is the simplest to implement, and so it may be the most common.
Other reactions could include fetching the data pointed
to by the URL in the payload parameter, to find, for example, a transaction log of changes to the feed. In the case of
blogs, this could be a feed containing more detailed update
information as offered by Atompub [17].
5 Reference Implementation
To demonstrate the applicability of the missing link
"FeedBack", a reference implementation has been developed for the popular blogging environment WordPress. The
plug-in can be downloaded via SourceForge [18]. Currently,
the use of FeedBack is investigated in a field trial within
the EU funded research project ICAMP. So far, 17 blogs
have been registered using the FeedBack plugin resulting
in 68 offers reflecting in 45 accepted offers. A total of 469
update notifications were received by the blogs, whereas
504 notifications were sent by the blogs (also including
notifications to other sites).
A validation service to test compliance with the specification has been set up at [19] supporting developers in writing new implementations.
6 Conclusion and Outlook
FeedBack complements existing standards and specifications in the blogosphere to support articulation work for
managing offers, subscriptions, and update routines in collaborative learning processes. It is designed to be simple
and robust and can be applied for almost any data synchronisation task where systems are subject to dynamic usage
scenarios of social software, heterogeneity of systems is
common, and complexity is not required at the transport
level.
Future work needs to explore the applicability of
FeedBack in more depth for complex, cascading processes
and with different data formats.
7
The payload part should point to a URI containing the updates
which Your Blog should be aware of.
8
The token originally supplied to My Blog by Your Blog, identifying that this update is desired.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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References
[1] R. Kumar, P. Raghavan, J. Novak, A. Tomkins. "On
the Bursty Evolution of Blogspace". Proceedings of
the WWW2003, Budapest, Hungary, ACM Press, pp.
568 – 576. 2003.
[2] D. Sifry. "The State of the Live Web". April 2007.
<http://www.sifry.com/alerts/ archives/000493.html>,
last access: Jan 9th, 2008.
[3] Technorati: About Us <http://technorati.com/about/>,
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[4] D. Gurzick, W. G. Lutters. "From the Personal to the
Profound: Understanding the Blog Life Cycle". In: Proceedings of the CHI 2006, Montreal, Canada, ACM
Press. 2006.
[5] M. Tepper. "The Rise of Social Software". In:
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[6] eLearning Centre: Products & Services: Blogging
Tools, eLearning Centre, Learning Light. 2006. <http:/
/www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/vendors/
weblogging.htm>, last access: July 5, 2007.
[7] T. O’Reilly. "What is Web 2.0". 2005. <http://
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what-is-web-20.html>, last access: March 17, 2008.
[8] S. Herring, L. Scheidt, S. Bonus, E. Wright. "Bridging
the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs". In: Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences (HICSS-37), IEEE Computer Society Press. 2004.
[9] J. Schmidt, F. Mayer. "Wer nutzt Weblogs für collaborative Lern-und Wissensprozesse?", In: Dittler, Kindt,
Schwarz (Eds.): Online-Communities als Soziale
Systeme, Waxmann, New York/München/Berlin. 2007.
[10] B. Nardi, D. Schiano, M. Gumbrecht, L. Swartz. "Why
We Blog". In: Communications of the ACM 47(#2),
ACM Press, pp. 41– 46. 2004.
[11] D. Schiano, B. Nardi, M. Gumbrecht, L. Swartz..
"Blogging by the Rest of Us". In: Proceedings of the
CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria, ACM Press. 2004.
[12] A. Chin, M. Chignell. "A Social Hypertext Model for
Finding Communities in Blogs". In: Proceedings of the
Hypertext 2006 (HT’06), Odense, Denmark, pp. 11 –
22. 2006.
[13] A. De Moor, L. Efimova. "An Argumentation Analysis of Weblog Conversations". In: Aakhus, Lind (eds.):
Proceedings of the 9th International Working Conference on the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling (LAP 2004), New Brunswick,
USA, pp. 197-211. 2004.
[14] S. Krause. "When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary
Tale about Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction". 2004. <http://english.ttu.edu/KAIROS/9.1/
praxis/krause/index.html>, last access: January 11,
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[14] H. Wittenbrink. "Newsfeeds mit RSS und Atom", Galileo Press, Bonn. 2005.
[15] F. Wild. "An Interoperability Infrastructure for Distributed Feed Networks", Deliverable D3.3, iCamp Con-
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sortium. 2007.
[16] P. Deolasee, A. Katkar, A. Panchbudhe, K.
Ramamritham, P. Shenoy. "Adaptive Push-Pull: Disseminating Dynamic Web Data". ACM. 2001. <http://
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[17] J. Gregorio, B. de hOra. "The Atom Publishing Protocol". RFC 5023, IETF. 2007. <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
rfc5023>, last access: January 14, 2008.
[18] S. Sigurdarson, F. Wild, A. Soylu. FeedBack Wordpress
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[19] S. Sigurdarson. FeedBack validator. 2007. <http://
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© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Contextualized Attention Metadata in Learning Environments
Martin Wolpers
This paper presents the notion of Contextualized Attention Metadata (CAM) in learning environments. CAM describes
observations about the handling of digital information in relation to the context in which the respective activities took
place. The usage of CAM is exemplified in three scenarios: (i) using CAM to support the learning process of employees in
agile business process execution, (ii) enriching learning resource description with CAM and (iii) identifying usage patterns of architectural learning resources with CAM. CAM helps to individualize the learning experience by providing
detailed information about the learner’s way of dealing with digital information which can be used, for example, to target
the information provision to the learners needs by helping them to focus on the learning activities rather than on information management.
Keywords: Attention, Context, Contextualized Attention Metadata, Technology-Enhanced Learning.
Author
Martin Wolpers holds a PhD in electrical engineering and
information technology from the Leibnitz University Hannover.
He is leading the group "Context and Attention for Personalized
Learning Environments" at FIT ICON (Information in Context
research department at the Fraunhofer Institut für Angewandte
Informationstechnologie)1 , dealing with trend and user-goal
identification from Contextualized Attention Metadata streams.
Some of his stronger engagements in research projects are the
project management position of the FP6 EU/IST TEL NoE
PROLEARN and the leadership of the technical implementation
team of the EC eContent+ MACE2 project. His research focuses
on how to use metadata to improve Technology-Enhanced Learning
scenarios. In detail, he focuses on Contextualized Attention
Metadata and Knowledge Representation in education. His further
research interests deal with conceptual modelling, databases and
information extraction. <martin.wolpers@fit.fraunhofer.de>.
1 Introduction
Information is plenty today. New technologies like Web
2.0 mash-ups further accelerate the number of information
sources and the ways to interact with them. Learners spend
significant amounts of time on continuously managing digital information that is either found (information pull) or
provided (information push) through electronic means, e.g.
via the Internet. In consequence, learning is severely hampered through the continuous distractions of managing provided content that increases the cognitive load of learners
beyond meaningful states. New approaches are needed to
support the learner, for example by individualizing and personalizing and thus enhancing the learning experience for
each user. In order to facilitate such approaches, detailed
information about the learner beyond common user profiles, so called Contextualized Attention Metadata (CAM),
can be captured. One source of CAM is, for example, observations about the user’s handling of information within
digital learning and working environments. This paper describes in three scenarios how CAM can be used in different applications dealing with learning. The application of
CAM exemplifies how the usage of CAM in learning environments can improve refocusing the learner on the learning task rather than the information management.
Section 2 describes how learning and attention are related while Section 3 reflects on the importance of the relation of context and attention. Section 4 gives an overview
of the state of the art and outlines the identified challenges.
Section 5 exemplifies addressing the challenges in a number
of projects. The summary in Section 6 concludes the paper.
2 Learning and Attention
Learning in this context is seen as dependant on two
distinct processing mechanisms, namely the information
provision and the learning processes. The information provision is basically controlled by the information coming into
the human cognitive system. The learner is requested to
© Novática
process the information in a meaningful manner. Thus, in a
given learning environment the learning processes rely on
the person itself and which information and knowledge it
already posses. For example, what learners already know,
what they expect, their mental state, their previous experiences, their motivation, and so forth. All these information
have been quite neglected in the development of learning
technologies so far.
In order to deal with the incoming information, humans
use filters to select only relevant information to process and
disregard unwanted. The result of this selection is visible in
the attention a learner gives to information. Consequently,
being able to observe and measure attention enables a better tailoring of the information provision to the needs of the
learner. For example, observing his attention will enable
systems to help him in dealing with large amounts of incoming information by prioritizing and restricting them to
those needed for the current task.
1
<http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/profil/bereiche/icon_en. html>.
Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe, <http://
www.mace-project.eu/>.
2
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3 Context and Learning
The attention of the learner is the result of one of the
main selection processes of humans to reduce the amount
of information to what is needed for the learning process. A
further filter for the information provision is the learning
environment used by the learner. Thus, to support the learner
in his information acquisition process, the context in which
he operates needs to be explicit and captured. For example,
Learning Management Systems developed so far (e.g. Clix,
Blackboard, Moodle) are highly specialized in supporting
the user in specific tasks (e.g. acquiring a specific skill or
competence) in specific environments. Consequently, such
Learning Management Systems provide excellent sources
of contextual information on the learning environment of
the user, e.g. which course the learner is attending, which
learning resources are read, which still need to be read,
which communication is fostered with the other learners
and teachers, etc.
While all this already yields highly useful information
on the context of the learner, there is more information available: The learner usually operates in a much broader technical environment while learning, e.g. using non-learning
environment internal tools and means of communication.
Capturing such information extends the description of the
context of learner significantly. Combining the information
on the context with the observations about the attention of
the user (in terms of his activities), contextualized attention
metadata describes how a learner deals with specific information in specific contexts. Data about the information handling is captured from observations of user-driven activities like the handling of information on the computer and
its location, but also from physiological observations like
eye movement, skin-conductance and mouse-moving behaviour (mouse-gestures). The main focus is on utilizing
the observations about and context of the learner to facilitate application and task independent support of individualized learning experiences. This includes a sound definition of context and contextualized attention.
4 State of the Art of Contextualized Attention
Metadata
The current state of the art in user modelling is that data
mining systems are used to mine data of a relatively simple
nature (e.g. sequences of elements that are all of the same
type), and that the mined models aim at relating users to
predefined stereotypes [1]. This situation follows naturally
from the state of the art in data mining: most currently available data mining methods (i) are indeed limited to analyzing
data with a relatively simple structure, and (ii) work within
a fixed context: for classification, the classes are predefined;
for clustering, the similarity measure is predefined. There
are numerous approaches to capture observations about the
user attention; e.g. within the European projects Nepomuk,
Aposdle, Gnowsis as well as others [2] [3][4] [5] [6]. These
recent approaches attempt to observe and monitor the user
in specified and restricted environments, e.g. online shops
or learning management systems. The approaches make use
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of the a priori definition of possible user stereotypes, activities and contents. Consequently, the models that capture
contextual information are limited in terms of metadata about
the contexts, the users and the contents. They allow for the
correlation of captured information in their specific context. To address this shortcoming, approaches to broaden
the scope and validity of user models emerged which enable the continuous update and exchange of pre-defined user
models necessary to suite their fixed environments, e.g. [7].
Consequently, they are usually hard to adapt to changes in
the users environment, newly available information, etc.
Current research focuses on establishing interoperability
between adaptive systems, e.g. within the EU/IST Grapple
project.
Data about user experience with digital content (usage
or attention metadata) describes what the user likes, dislikes, reads, publishes and listens to whenever he pays attention to digital content. So far, this rich source of information has not been deeply explored.
Current logging services such as Apache or Digital Libraries logging services, track what information users access, which
errors users make while using systems, or from which countries users originate. This data provides limited information on
the intention of the user. Furthermore, several formats are proposed to represent attention metadata, e.g. AttentionXML or
Attention Profiling Markup Language (APML). All formats
are targeted to specific applications thus capturing only specific attention metadata and hindering interoperability across
applications and systems. Despite the fact that attention
metadata is highly personal, recent and emerging approaches
do not provide suitable means to ensure privacy and security
of the data. Research in this area indicates that an approach
like K-Anonymity [8] will yield the most secure results for the
storage of such data, while encrypted and secured transmissions, e.g. via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or secure Web services (e.g. proposed by the OASIS group) ensure privacy and
security for the possible exchange of attention metadata. For
example, track mechanisms for Web-browsing related attention metadata store the information in a way that other people
can access it without appropriate security measures (e.g.
AttentionTrust) while the owner cannot even modify or delete
the data.
CAM also provides the ability to capture information
from the content the user handles. Several approaches from
the Semantic Web community provide first results in the
area, mainly focussing on classifying information using
existing ontologies. Combined with information from a more
usage oriented point of view, e.g. at what times it was used,
when and in which activities it was used, how it was classified (file folder and email folder structures), such content
descriptions form an excellent source describing the context as well as the attention of a learner.
So far, no foundations have been formulated that describe the collection and processing of contextualized attention metadata (CAM) in total. Models exist that make
use of certain aspects of CAM, but no overall model strives
to capture all aspects to provide a holistic view on the user
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
and his activities. A first approach is described in [9] on
work about the contextualized attention metadata schema.
5 Application of CAM in Real-World Scenarios
This section describes three early examples for the application of CAM in learning scenarios. The first example
deals with the usage of observations about business process execution, the conclusions derivable from there and
appropriate actions to improve efficiency and effectiveness
of the business process execution. The approach outlined
provides a suitable measurement to detect learning needs
that occur through small functional or procedural changes
in workflows. Please see [10] for an extended discussion
(here we give a summative extract). The second example
describes the usage of CAM for the enrichment of learning
resource metadata. The third example briefly describes how
usage metadata will be used in the MACE project to facilitate ranking of architectural learning resources. The examples give an outlook on the current status in respect to employing CAM in scenarios related to education.
5.1 CAM in Business Process Execution
Existing business process, learning and knowledge management infrastructures work quite well in their specific
context. Despite this, such infrastructures are barely able to
present any precise information about the usage of knowledge in certain working conditions, occurring learning needs
or the identification of competency gaps and the detection
of appropriate learning objects to fulfil the needs. Thus, the
employees’ qualification as well as the enhancement of their
competencies constitutes an important precondition for an
effective and efficient business process execution, the accomplishment of change management and their ability to
anticipate cause-and-effect relations of process and market
changes better and faster. To address the identification and
provision of adequate (formal and especially informal) learning content in weakly structured or agile workflow environments, contextualized attention metadata can be useful.
A business process provides the context information
necessary to identify learning needs and propose suitable
learning resources respecting business and individual learning goals. The business process functions predefine the relevant information and supporting information systems as
well as organizational and individual skill/competency references needed to operate in given business contexts.
Learning goals can be derived and trainings provided to
ensure the (further) development of the employees' professional competencies and their process executing abilities
based on these explicit pre-conditions. Recent observations
indicate that most changes in workflows occur gradually.
Participating functions in business processes usually are not
completely exchanged but, instead, modified to suite the
new workflows. Such modifications lead to activities that
slightly change and therefore described as derivative functions. Business analysts from Aberdeen Group stated that
the major problems of intrafunctional or procedural changes
are the information of the employee involved respect the
© Novática
provision of re-designed trainings. Nevertheless, suitable
educational measures cannot be taken because, so far, no
measurement exists to pinpoint the exact causes of the malfunctioning workflow. Instead, the employee is given a
rather broad education to address the whole of the derived
function. The training is not efficient and probably not effective because the employee already knows most activities relevant for the derivate function. The employees' real
training need is embedded in the activities that change in
the execution of derivate function while taking their experience and knowledge into account. So far, no Information
and Communication Technologies tool exists to identify or
derive training needs in a contextualized manner. The comparison of the observations with the function (type) definition describes the difference between real activities and required activities. Consequently, the gap defines the individual learning needs and also taking his knowledge and
experience into account. Therefore, the combination of the
observations about the employee with tacit knowledge about
the workflow and function structure enables the deduction
of learning needs.
5.2 CAM-Based Learning Lesource Metadata
Enrichment
In this example, the combination of various types of
metadata is used to enrich the metadata of learning resources
to enable a more targeted and individualized provision of
learning resources and thus enhancing the learning experience. The example is based on a proof of concept implementation realized in cooperation with the German Research
Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Open University UK, the Ariadne Foundation and Fraunhofer Institute
for Applied Information Technology. The proof of concept
combines the social media platform ALOE with the Ariadne
learning resource repository and the FlashMeeting repository.
The Ariadne repository uses expert-generated Learning
Object Metadata (LOM) to describe learning resources.
Specifically, the metadata fields representing semantic values are of interest, e.g., title, description and keyword as
well as values representing educational information like
difficulty or the interactivity type.
The FlashMeeting repository provides descriptions about
recordings of FlashMeetings, including the title of the recording, a description, participants, keywords, a chatlog,
etc. The descriptions are partly created by the organizer of
the recording and partly captured automatically during the
recording.
The ALOE system [11] is a social resource sharing platform following Web2.0 design principles. It allows users to
share and organize bookmarks and arbitrary types of digital
resources. Furthermore, arbitrary metadata sets can be associated with each resource. Thus, ALOE realizes a socially
aware resource and metadata hub.
In this example, a user finds a specific learning resource
from the Ariadne repository and adds it to the personal portfolio of learning resources in the ALOE system. The user
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describes the resource through respective tags. Through the
usage of user generated tags and the metadata of the resource, a suitable recording of a FlashMeeting is automatically found and suggested to the user. After viewing the
recording, the user bookmarks the FlashMeeting and adds
some tags.
This example describes how learning resource metadata
can be enriched with valuable descriptions not available
before. On the one hand the user describes the resources
with tags that are added as personal keywords to his metadata
set. If a number of users use the same keywords for a resource, and applying some simple clustering and weighting
algorithms, such keywords can be clustered and weighted
to ensure an appropriate measure for their relevance which
enables better rankings.
On the other hand the user stores the resources in his
bookmark folder. This fact implies that the resources are
related with each other. If a number of users associate the
same learning resources in the same way, the respective relations are also added to the metadata set of the learning
resource and thus provide the bases for new relevancy measures.
Through the usage of CAM, the activities of the user
are fed back to the Ariadne and FlashMeeting repositories
to enhance the respective metadata descriptions. Furthermore, through the observations from all three systems, CAM
allows to derive conclusions on the behavioural patterns
and subsequently on trends while dealing with learning resources including the creating process within the repositories.
5.3 Usage Patterns of Architectural Learning
Resources
The MACE project, funded within the eContent+ programme of the EU, aims to enhance architectural education
in Europe by providing access to architectural learning objects using new approaches and advanced technology [12].
The learning resources are made accessible through an infrastructure of federated learning repositories. By correlating various types of content, usage, social and contextual
metadata, the project provides access to the high quality
architectural content through multiple perspectives and navigation paths that effectively lead to experience multiplication for the learner.
The MACE project will create a sustainable framework
for structuring, connecting and exchanging architectural
knowledge in Europe.
A focus of the MACE project is the utilization of
contextualized attention metadata for advanced metrics and,
subsequently, ranking approaches of architectural learning
resources. Based on the work by Ochoa and Duval [6],
metrics are developed to rank learning resources based on
their usage within the MACE architecture as well as the
respective repositories. For example, one simple metric
bases on the number of views of learning resources.
Another, more advanced metric, correlates the dates of
usage of the learning resources with each other thus gener60
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
ating a timeline of the usage per topic and relevant learning
resources. The timeline is a first step towards the identification of possibly relevant usage patterns and trends.
6 Summary
Observing the learner in dealing with digital information provides a measurement on how the learner spends his
attention on which information. Enriching these observations with information about the context provides
contextualized attention metadata. Using CAM, elements
of the learning process of the user can be much better tailored to his needs as the given example scenarios show. For
example, CAM can help control the information provision
within the learning process thus focusing the learner on the
learning activities rather than on the information management.
First experiments hint that CAM enables the detection
of so far undiscovered learning trends and tasks. The identification would be based on the correlation of observations
of how a user is handling digital information in general.
Being able to describe trends and tasks in terms of CAM
will significantly improve the learning experience of users
by enabling tools that directly target the needs of the learner
instead of presumed needs as done in most of today’s learning environments.
The research group "Context and Attention in Personal
Learning Experiences" (CAPLE) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FHG FIT) addresses the described research challenges in a number of
projects. CAPLE aims to improve the individual learning
experience by combing knowledge about the user, his context and relevant learning resources with advanced approaches for life-long learning. The focus is on individualization rather than recent mass personalization.
References
[1] N. Henze, W. Nejdl. "Logically Characterizing Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems". In Proceedings of the workshop on Adaptive Hypermedia and
Adaptive Web-Based Systems, Session at WWW2003
conference, May 2003, Budapest, Hungary.
[2] H. Holz, O. Rostanin, A. Dengel, T. Suzuki, K. Maeda,
K. Kanasaki. "Task-based Process Know-how Reuse
and Proactive Information Delivery in TaskNavigator".
In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Information
and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2006, Washington, USA, November 2006.
[3] S. Braun, A. Schmidt. "Don’t Annoy the Informal
Teacher: Context-Aware Mediation of Communication
for Workplace Learning". In Proceedings of the 6th
International Conference on Knowledge Management,
Graz, Austria, September 2006.
[4] J. Garofalakis, T. Giannakoudi, E. Sakkopoulos. "Semantic Web Site Usage Analysis: The ORGAN System". In Proceedings of the World Wide Web 2006
Workshop Logging Traces of Web Activity: The Mechanics of Data Collection, Edinburgh, UK, May 2006.
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[5] C. Roda, J. Thomas. "Attention Aware Systems: Theories, Application and Research Agenda". Journal on
Computers in Human Behaviour, 22. 2006.
[6] X. Ochoa, E. Duval. "Use of contextualized attention
metadata for ranking and recommending learning objects". In Proceedings of the 1st international Workshop on Contextualized Attention Metadata: Collecting, Managing and Exploiting of Rich Usage information. CAMA ’06. ACM, New York, NY, 9-16. 2006.
[7] S. Sosnovsky, P. Dolog, N. Henze, P. Brusilovsky, W.
Nejdl. "Translation of Overlay Models of Student
Knowledge for Relative Domains Based on Domain
Ontology Mapping". In AIED 2007: 13th International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. LA,
US, July 2007, IOS Press 2007.
[8] L. Sweeney. "K-Anonymity: a model for protecting privacy". International Journal on Uncertainty, Fuzziness
and Knowledge-based Systems, 10 (5), 2002.
[9] M. Wolpers, J. Najjar, K. Verbert, E. Duval. "Tracking
Actual Usage: the Attention Metadata Approach". International Journal Educational Technology and Society, Special Issue on "Advanced Technologies for LifeLong Learning". 2007.
[10] M. Wolpers, G. Martin, E. Duval. "CAM in Process
Execution". In Proceedings of the 7th International
Conference on Knowledge Management (I-Know),
Special track on Integrating Working and Learning
(IWL’07), Journal of Universal Computer Science,
Graz, Austria, September 2007.
[11] M. Memmel, R. Schirru. "Sharing Digital Resources
and Metadata for Open and Flexible Knowledge Management Systems". In K. Tochtermann, H. Maurer
(Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference
on Knowledge Management (IKNOW), Graz, Austria,
Journal of Universal Computer Science, 2007.
[12] M. Stefaner, E. Dalla Vecchia, M. Condotta, M.
Wolpers, M. Specht, S. Apelt, E. Duval. "MACE – Enriching architectural learning objects for experience
multiplication". Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL
2007), Crete, Greece, September 2007. In Creating
New Learning Experiences on a Global Scale, LNCS,
Vol. 4753, ISBN: 978-3-540-75194-6. 2007.
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Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Communities as an
Example of Successful Open Participatory Learning Ecosystems
Andreas Meiszner, Rüdiger Glott, and Sulayman K. Sowe
This paper examines participatory knowledge creation and transfer in the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement from
the viewpoint of the Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) community. In more recent years FLOSS communities gained
attention for their community production and support models and regarding their way of knowledge creation and learning.
From the "FLOSS perspective" it becomes obvious that the OER movement falls short in some points. Most strikingly, the
traditional way of resource creation using the traditional role distribution models that clearly distinguishes between educators
as creators and learners as consumer is still predominant. As a result even the most prominent examples within the OER
movement are rather static repositories than open participatory learning ecosystems (OPLE). This paper illustrates how FLOSS
communities function as open participatory learning ecosystems, focusing on the aspects content, support and underlying tools.
We will also try to show differences between the FLOSS case, current OER initiatives and education at large.
Keywords: Communication Tools, Communities of
Practise, Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Communities, Informal Learning, Open Participatory Learning
Ecosystem, Social Learning, Peer Support, TechnologyEnhanced Learning, Virtual Learning Environments.
1 Introduction
FLOSS communities increasingly influence teaching and
learning, and content quality and delivery at a rate unprecedented in the history of both software development and
education. As revealed by the FLOSSPOLS skills survey
[1], improving skills and sharing knowledge are by far the
most important motivators for people to engage in FLOSS.
FLOSS communities can thus be seen as a good example
for Open Participatory Learning Ecosystems (OPLE) in
which individuals interact and collaborate with their peers
to solve problems or to exchange ideas [2]. Collaborative
learning and the peer review process emphasize the importance of shared dialogue which results in the creation of
public knowledge resources for the benefit of interested
individuals. Generally, FLOSS communities consist of individuals, who contribute to, write, and build a particular
application by means of the FLOSS development or bazaar
model [3]. However, the volunteering and unselfish nature
in many communities enables members to get involved in
activities further than the realms of software development.
FLOSS communities possess many characteristics that educational settings seek to apply such as:
Authors
Andreas Meiszner is the Project Manager of the EU funded
FLOSSCom project on behalf of the coordinator Sociedade
Portuguesa de Inovação where he is working since 2005.
Andreas is also a research fellow at the Institute of Educational
Technology of the Open University-UK since 2006 where he
is looking at virtual informal learning environments, trying to
identify which of their aspect might be leveraged to (formal)
educational settings. A focus here is on FLOSS (Free / Libre
Open Source Software) communities and similar initiatives that
are directly targeting education like Open Educational Resource
projects. Besides the world of academic research Andreas also
worked in various business sectors and functions during the
past 13 years, having obtained three higher education degrees
in management from universities in France, Germany and The
Netherlands. <A.Meiszner@open.ac.uk>.
Rüdiger Glott worked from 1993 to 2000 at the Institute for
Sociological Research (SOFI – Soziologisches
Forschungsinstitut) of the University of Göttingen, working
on a wide range of projects on quantitative and qualitative
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aspects of work in the service sector and on Internet-based
collaboration of small and medium enterprises in Germany and
the USA. He is experienced in qualitative as well as quantitative
empirical work and participated in all kinds of work associated
with the analysis of data sets and the execution of surveys.
Since 2001 he has been at UNU-MERIT (formerly MERIT/
Infonomics), where he played a key role in the design, execution
and analysis of the EU-funded FLOSS developer and user
surveys and the EU-funded FLOSSPOLS surveys on free/open
source software. He is also a member of the EU funded
FLOSSCom project. <R.Glott@merit.unimaas.nl>.
Sulayaman, Sowe, (PhD) is a research fellow at the Informatics
Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
and a member of the EU funded FLOSSCom project. His
research interests include Free / Open Source Software
Development, Knowledge Management, Information Systems
Evaluation, Social & Collaborative Networks. He also has
served as Director of Research & Technology in the Ministry
of Development in Ghambia. <sksowe@csd.auth.gr>.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: Example of FLOSS Community Places (Ubuntu Project).
1) Open and inclusive ethos: everyone can participate,
no charges, no deadlines, life long membership.
2) Up to date and dynamic content; everyone can add,
edit and update the content.
3) Materials are usually the product of many authors
with many contributions from people other than authors.
4) Frequent releases and updates where product features and community structures are the result of a continuous re-negotiation/reflection process within a continuous
development cycle.
5) Prior learning outcomes and processes are systematically available through mailing lists, forums, commented
code and further instructional materials (re-use).
6) A large support network; provided voluntarily by the
community member in a collaborative manner nearly 24
hours a day, 7 days a week.
7) Free Riders (lurker) welcome paradox (the more the
better).
8) New Information and Communications Technologies
(ICT) solutions are adapted early by the community for the
sake of their usefulness, but not for the sake of using technology.
The FLOSS model shows how users can become active
"resource" creators, how learning processes can be made
visible and can benefit other learners, how to successfully
establish and maintain user support systems, and ultimately
how all of this can be re-used and freely maintained [4] [5].
Learning in the FLOSS community therefore highly
corresponds to the definition of OER, which is "the open
provision of educational resources, enabled by information
and communication technologies, for consultation, use and
adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial
purposes." [6].
© Novática
The way FLOSS communities function, and in particular the underlying commons’ approach, should thus be of
interest for educational settings to advance towards OPLE
[2] and towards an educational commons [7].
The current OER movement is tackling maybe one of
the most crucial aspects for education: the free and open
access to educational resources being released under a commons license and thus the possibility to re-use those resources and to adapt them [8].
We will however show that up until today, the OER
movement, analogue to the e-Learning movement, is still
following largely traditional educational paradigms using
experts’ production and development models, often using
technology for the sake of technology and seeing the learner
as a passive consumer, or at least leaving him with this role.
Within the following three sections we will try to illustrate how FLOSS communities function as OPLE, focusing
on the aspects of content, support and underlying tools. We
will also try to show differences between the FLOSS case
and current OER initiatives and education at large.
2 Learning Resources in FLOSS vs. Traditional
Educational Settings
FLOSS communities provides users with various types
of learning resources, not only the "common" ones that also
can be found in traditional educational settings, like manuals, tutorials, or wikis; but also resources that might not be
recognized at first as learning resources or content. Those
types of content sources, like mailing lists, forums, blogs or
Concurrent Versioning Systems (CVS), help to make learning processes visible and to avoid answering the same questions over and over again. As shown in Figure 1, one common aspect of all of the different types of content is that
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Figure 2: Learning Resources in Traditional Education (Expert Production Model).
they are jointly generated by users and developers and after
their generation continuously updated and improved [4].
In sharp contrast, content in traditional educational settings is usually the product of few authors with few contributions from people other than authors. This content is infrequent released and feedback to it is only seldom considered, resulting in a low degree of updates with no continuous development cycle [9] [10]. Content usually does not
include the prior learning outcomes and processes of learners, which are consequently not systematically available and
searchable for future learners as one can see in FLOSS (e.g.
at mailing lists, forums or within the commented code).
The way content is produced and the underlying complexity of its production is still very different to what one
can see in FLOSS, or the Web at large1 [4][5]. Figure 2
provides an example of the content production approach in
traditional educational settings. As one can see, this approach
follows the traditional expert model with complex and well
defined development structures. Students’ learning processes
and outcomes are not considered at this model as a learning
resource for future students and students’ involvement might
be limited to providing some feedback on the final product.
The FLOSS model on the other hand combines expert
production with users input, plus featuring additional user
generated contents in various forms, formats and that was
built for various purposes at various times [11] [12]. The
production of the software within FLOSS, or at least the
core code of it, might be comparable with the expert production model as shown at Figure 2, but FLOSS community members on the other hand, as illustrated in Figure 3,
are equally valuable contributors that create content "on the
fly" due to their interactions and activities, but also in a
more organized way by compiling manuals, instructions and
live demos, or by establishing own sub-projects to extend
the core functionalities of a respective software [4] [5].
Early FLOSS-like educational pilots have indicated how-
1
FLOSS is not solely about the production of software. As Glott et al. [4] have shown, to integrate and/or play a role in the FLOSS
community is not per se and not only dependent on good programming skills. Though FLOSS community members consider coding skills as
the ones that can be learnt best within the FLOSS community, participating in FLOSS can also require expertise in patents law and license
issues or management skills and capacities to mobilise community members in order to exercise pressure on political and economic decisionmakers. Since the lingua franca of the community is English and since many software projects ask for translations of the code and programme documentation into other languages (so-called "localisation"), language skills are also required in the FLOSS community. All these
skills can however be learnt within the community, through interaction with other community members and project participation.
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 3: Learning Resources in FLOSS at the Joomla & osCommerce Projects.
ever that FLOSS principles related to the creation of content and learning resources at large can be successfully applied within educational settings; allowing to provide students with similar learning resources than in FLOSS; with
students adapting roles of content creators [5]. A FLOSSlike educational approach has also been suggested by the
Edukalibre project; stating that FLOSS-like principles might
add a value for the creation and maintenance of educational
materials, with those educational materials being located
mainly on the Web and are produced by groups of educators coming from different institutions and being geographically dispersed. Those materials would also be used, commented and modified by students; with educators and students using tools that enable them to collaborate in the way
FLOSS developers do, making their produced materials
publicly available to enable further collaboration on them
with third parties [10].
3 Community-Based Support in Floss and Possible Educational Counterparts
The FLOSS community support system is today largely
recognized for its user to user support approach, also known
as peer support. E.g. DELL already started to market their
products with Linux preinstalled as a result of their customers’ expressing that those community support systems
would meet their support needs2 .
The Floss support system is a good example of how Web
based technologies initiate and fuel learning processes.
2
See also: ZDNet, "Dude you are getting Linux", 29.03.2007,
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=284>.
© Novática
Lakhani and von Hippel [13] analysed the support system
of the Apache community and found out that their field support systems functions effectively and that 98% of the support services return direct learning benefits for the support
provider. They are confirming that "giving as a natural thing"
as described by Demaziere [14], or "gaining reputation" and
"personal enjoyment" are important motivational factors,
but so are the learning benefits. Thus the situation between
the information provider and receiver could be described
as a win/win situation.
The fact that a great part of motivation to provide volunteering support resides in learning benefits for the support provider leads also to the conclusion that there need to be problems in order to keep the support system alive [3]. Support in
FLOSS is characterized by "information seekers posting their
questions on a public website. Potential information providers log onto this website, read the questions and post answers
if and as they choose to do so." [13]. The FLOSS support model
relies on experts and advanced members that provide user to
user support, plus demanding support seekers to first check
that their problem or question has not been answered beforehand, or in the case it was answered to try learning from those
answers. However, even if not finding the answer and raising
a question there is a great likelihood that it has been answered
"somewhere else at the Web" and that other users would either
point the information seeker to those sources, or would bring
those sources in.3
It might be assumed that newbies represent the largest
group of support seekers. In the case of the Apache support
system however the most active support providers, but also
the most active support seekers, were experienced community members with recognizable skills [13]. Approximately
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50% of the answers on the observed Apache support system were provided by the 100 most prolific providers (2%
of all providers) and 50% of the questions were provided
by the 2,152 most prolific posters of questions (24% of all
information seekers). This supports the above described
functioning of the FLOSS support system with a large degree of newbies’ support being provided in the form of learning from what others did, with questions being raised mainly
once the individual is stuck.
As by today there seem to be few cases within the educational landscape that try to provide similar extra-institutional community based support systems, of which many
appear to arise together with the current OER movement
[15]. One major initiative here is the Utah State University’s Open Learning Support (OLS)4 . OLS is a free and open
resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the
world that currently provides discussion services for over
3
This activity is also known as information brokering where humans take on the role that technology has failed to take on. Furthermore, FLOSS community members may be involved in practical information seeking (seeking answers to specific questions
in the form of postings). In some communities, members undertake a more general activity characterized by frequent visits to
monitor the information neighborhood and what goes on in other
communities with similar or different projects. Erdelez [16] likens this activity to information encountering: a memorable experience of an unexpected discovery of useful or interesting information. Because of this serendipity, FLOSS communities are also
agents of socialization and information providers, thus making
FLOSS communities fertile and important learning environments.
4
<http://ols.usu/edu/courses>.
2,200 modules in the Connexions collection at Rice University and for MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative5 Despites
the scope of this project and the strong institutions behind
it has, however, only attracted, as by November 2007, 2077
registered users that generated 565 posts between 2005 and
2007.
Besides those initiatives from educational institutions
the web provides myriads of informal support communities
such as PhysicsForums6 . PhysicsForums features an extra
educational section, where 50% of the total postings can be
found within the more advanced forum sections, with 40%
of the posts being in the educational section. This distribution between activities at advanced level and beginner level
shows some analogy to the before mentioned Apache case,
though a more detailed analyses would be required to compare the type of activities within those two cases and to
evaluate if beginners do learn from advanced members in
the same way than can be seen within FLOSS.
Contrasting the OLS case with the PhysicsForum case
and putting those two into perspective with FLOSS cases;
it appears that community based support systems can work
out in educational settings as long as the community is heterogeneous enough consisting of experts, more advanced
members and newbies and provides different types of
5
<http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm>.
See <http://www.physicsforums.com/>. PhysicsForums is an
informal collaboration space where people can chat about maths,
physics and science. The forum went online in 2003 and had
77,203 members that started 154,509 threads and received
1,341,084 answers by November 2007.
6
Table 1: Learning Processes Initiated and Displayed Through Technological Tools (Hemetsberger 2006).
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
motivations for the different groups to participate and contribute.
Concluding it might be stated that the commons component is obviously a pre-requisite for community based
support systems, but as important seems to be the right consistence of community members that include experts, advanced members and newbies providing the right mix of
motivations to participate at such a community and to provide support.
4 The Role of Technology in FLOSS and Educational Settings
FLOSS projects are almost exclusively administered
online. One of the most important prerequisites for coordination and cooperation on the Internet is provided by the
functionality of various communication and groupware
tools. They provide a meeting place for online interaction
without regard to time or physical location [12]. Many of
these tools were built by FLOSS communities themselves;
creating products like wikis (Wikimedia), blogs
(Wordpress), or social networking solutions (Elgg).
FLOSS projects are either hosted at their own platforms
and systems, host their project at a repository like
sourceforge.net7 , or they choose a mixture of both. As detailed by Giuri [17] FLOSS communities seem to rely on
two important infrastructures: modular design and the use
of the Internet. The Internet (email, newsgroups, forums,
etc.) reduces transaction and communication costs among
developers and therefore provides a fundamental infrastructure for distributed development across space and over time.
The underlying technological infrastructure that can be
found in FLOSS communities is both simple and mature.
Code is usually stored in CVS, documents and manuals in
knowledge bases or wikis, and additional information are
published through the project’s website, newsletters, or blogs
[18]. Communications occurs mainly asynchronous through
mailing lists or forums and are therefore preserved and available for the entire community. The availability and integral
application of this diverse range of tools is one of the most
important preconditions for collaboration and to enable mass
participation in collective activities as they can be found at
FLOSS communities [12].
In order to be able to digest the huge amount of knowledge and information and to build up a group memory,
knowledge technologies and task-related features are implemented that decrease complexity through e.g. a modular
structure of tasks. "To foster comprehension developers also
add comments to their source code (reflection-on-action)
which enables a re-thinking and re-experiencing process
among the other community members." [18].
Mailing lists and forums are important for discourse and
open reflection and as an archive for transactive memory of
the learning community. These asynchronous communication technologies are not only valuable for knowledge creation purposes, but also in order to make community mem7
See also: <http://www.sourceforge.net>.
© Novática
bers think before they act and respond [12].
Meanwhile mailing lists are targeting the developer community; forums seem to target the community at large (e.g.
the user) [19].
Table 2 provides a general overview of the different types
of tools that are used within FLOSS communities and the
way they impact learning [12]. Wikis, documentation and
knowledge management systems are also important for coauthoring and collaborative content management [20] and
would (depending on their usage) belong to the transactive
group memory or instructive content.
Looking at counterparts in educational settings one can find
the more or less same type of tools, with LMS like Blackboard, Moodle or WebCt providing most of them "on-board".
However, as was shown at the OLS case it is not only a question of providing those tools, but as detailed at this section the
reason they are provided for. The OLS case has shown that
providing forum spaces for OER is not sufficient to be of use
for learners and to be used. What would be additionally required is to create needs for using those tools and to provide
participants with the option to engage at personal meaningful
tasks and activities [21] [22]. "By allowing users to be designers, sociotechnical environments offer the possibility to achieve
the best fit between systems and their ever-changing context of
use, problems, domains, users, and communities of users. They
empower users, as owners of a problem, to engage actively
and collaboratively in the continual development of systems
capable of sustaining personally meaningful activities and
coping with their emergent needs." [23].
A related question would also be what the equivalent
motivational aspects are for the seniors / advanced learners
to engage at those spaces and to provide (voluntarily) support. Motivation, as shown in FLOSS, results not only out
of the FLOSS culture of meritocracy, but also due to a win/
win situation that need to be created.
The case of PhysicsForum e.g. shows that analogue to
FLOSS a simple forum solution can be sufficient to serve
as a working support environment, thus the primary problem seems not to lie within the tools, but within the purpose
and way they are used for.
5 Resume
The examination of FLOSS communities as an example
of open participatory learning ecosystems revealed that
many open educational resources that have been developed
and that are used today still rather resemble traditional learning environments than tapping the full potential. Content is
static and provided by a specified group of professionals
that is also solely responsible for the provision of support,
and knowledge is created and distributed in a relatively rigid
system of curriculae and timelines, and new technologies
are adopted relatively slowly. The learning environment and
principles of FLOSS instead emphasize peer-to-peer production and dissemination of knowledge with changing roles
of knowledge providers and learners, within disperse environments.
It could also be shown that principles of learning in the
FLOSS community can be implemented in educational set-
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
tings. These attempts, at current, seem to focus on blurring
the boundaries between teachers and learners, collaborative creation of learning resources, and teaching and learning on vast geographical scope with participants dispersed
across regions and countries. These attempts appear however limited with regard to the emphasis on practical usability of what has been learnt. While in the FLOSS community the outcome of the informal learning and production process (software code, a political action, technical
documentation) is valued by its immediate visibility and
usability, FLOSS-like learning in educational settings is still
often required to compare to what is learnt in traditional
curriculae and to traditional formal certificates and degrees.
Three trends appear to reinforce a general trend towards
FLOSS-like approaches in education: Successful business
cases, like exemplified by DELL, the OER movement, and
Web 2.0-related inventions like interactive forums and wikis
demonstrate more and more how powerful these approaches
are with regard to speed, scope of content, and quality.
References
[1] R. Ghosh, R. Glott. FLOSSPOLS Skill Survey Report,
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[2] J. S. Brown. "Open Learning Broadly Construed".
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on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary". 2007.
[4] Glott et al. "FLOSSCom Phase 1 Report: Analysis of
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[5] Weller et al. "FLOSSCom Phase 2 New: Report on the
effectiveness of a FLOSS-like learning community in
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116>, retrieved March 14, 2008.
[6] C. Holotescu. "Open educational resources and
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2007.
[7] G. Hepburn. "Seeking an educational commons: The
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[9] J. M. González-Barahona, C. Tebb, V. Dimitrova, D.
Chaparro, R. Mazza. "Producing educational Resources
in the Libre Way". Edukalibre project. 2005. <http://
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[10] J. M. González-Barahona, C. Tebb, V. Dimitrova, D.
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Resources: the Edukalibre Project". Edukalibre project.
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the University of Innsbruck, April, 2006. <http://
www.hemetsberger.cc/publications/index.html>, retrieved February 27, 2008.
[13] K. R. Lakhani, E. von Hippel."How Open Source Software Works: Free User-to-User Assistance." Research
Policy, 32, 923-943. 2002.
[14] D. Demaziere. "How free software developers work".
Môle Armoricain de Recherche sur la Société de
l’Information et les Usages d’INternet. 2007.
[15] D. E. Atkins, J. S. Brown, A. E. Hammond. "A Review
of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement:
Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities".
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2007/03/a-review-of-the-open-educational-resourcesoer-movement_final.pdf>, retrieved February 27, 2008.
[16] S. Erdelez. "Information encountering: It’s more than
just bumping into information". American Association
for Information Science, 25 (3), pp.25-29. 1999.
[17] Giuri et al. "Skills and Openness of OSS Projects: implications for performance", LEM working paper 2004/
19, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa. 2004.
[18] A. Hemetsberger. "Sharing and Creating Knowledge
in Open-Source Communities: The case of KDE".
2004. <http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/hemreinh.
pdf>, retrieved February 27, 2008.
[19] A. Meiszner. "Communication Tools in Floss communities: A look at Floss communities at large - beyond
the development team". Web Based Community 2007
Conference, Salamanca - Spain.
[20] G. Pór. "Collaboration Tools for Communities of Practice". 2004. <http://www.community-intelligence.com/
pdf/Collaboration_Tools.pdf>.
[21] R. dePaula, G. Fischer, J. Ostwald. "Courses as Seeds:
Expectations and Realities". In proceedings of The
European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 2001 (Euro-CSCL 2001),
Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 22-24, 2001.
[22] G. Fischer, O. Jonathan. "Seeding, Evolutionary
Growth, and Reseeding: Enriching Participatory Design with Informed Participation". In proceedings of
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[23] G. Fischer. "Meta-Design: Expanding Boundaries and
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the Interact’2007 Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
September (in press).
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
New Objects in Formal Professional Learning:
Replaying Meetings to Learn
Linda Castañeda, Eleftheria Tomadaki, and Peter J. Scott
This paper explores the possibilities of on-line meetings in the context of a formal learning initiative, and how replays of
these meetings have been used as Learning Objects to improve the professional learning experience. We report on a study
of preparation meetings in professional learning in a formal context (pre-Doctoral Summer School), exploring how a
formal learning group has used the videoconferencing system FlashMeeting™ and more specifically the Learning Objects generated by this tool. We investigate the results from a quantitative analysis of server logs and user feedback. We
aim to provide insights into improving the use of Technology-Enhanced Learning in different environments, not only
inventing new ways to learn but also enhancing traditional ones.
Keywords: Computer-Mediated Communication, Distance Education and Telelearning, Formal Learning, Learning Objects, Lifelong Learning, Technology-Enhanced
Learning, Videoconferencing.
1 Formal Learning and Objects from New Experiences
It is now common-place to talk about new tools creating new forms of learning from our online learning experiences. Each new system we introduce seems to offer new
modalities of communication, with new media and new ways
to talk and share our knowledge. Most of these new oppor-
tunities seem to offer us learning opportunities which are
outside the formal and conventional channels of the books,
classrooms and lectures that we are familiar with. Interest
in non-formal and informal learning opportunities is growing, and this work is presented by some researchers as a
significant new force, particularly in fields such as professional learning [1] [2]. Detailed research into the features
of new systems and how they may influence informal learning is a great challenge. The picture is complex, as learners
still use traditional and formal learning channels together
with the more informal and non-formal ones. Our work here
is focused on how these formal, non-formal and informal
Authors
Linda J. Castañeda is a Lecturer in Educational Technology at
the Faculty of Education of The University of Murcia and
member of the Educational Technology Research Group (GITE).
With her background on Education and Educational Technology,
she has collaborated and participated on diverse research
projects, related with the application of pedagogical principles
to the development of the education processes through the
Internet, and the educational and organizational implications of
e-Learning in traditional educational institutions. In others
projects, she has designed, made and implemented different
courses and on-line didactic material, as well as given
professional advise to other teachers regarding the didactic material design and implementation. Currently she is working on
different projects about models and strategies for professional
and academic on-line assessments for universitary students;
implementation of Learning Objects in schools; collaboration
and learning interchange with videoconferencing tools;
Information and Communication Technologies and
multiculturalism. <lindacq@um.es>.
Eleftheria Tomadaki is a Research Fellow at the the Knowledge
Media Institute of the Open University. She is currently
researching the impact of synchronous collaborative media in
the process of learning from open educational resources, for the
creation and maintenance of online communities <http://
openlearn.open.ac.uk>. She is also evaluating the use of
© Novática
collaborative tools in professional learning (PROLEARN
Network of Excellence, <http://www.prolearn-project.org/>. She
completed her PhD in Information Extraction at the University
of Surrey (UK), investigating cross media co-reference
mechanisms to represent narrative in multimedia systems.
Peter J. Scott is the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute
of the Open University. He leads a large group of researchers
who specialise on e-Learning technologies. Scott’s current
research interests range widely across knowledge and media
research, focusing at the moment on Telepresence, Streaming
Media Systems and Agent Research. He has a BA (1983) and
PhD (1987) in Psychology. Before joining the Open University
in 1995, he lectured in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the
University of Sheffield (UK). He is a keynote speaker at a number
of key e-Learning venues, such as the newly established
“learning track” at WWW10 (The Tenth International World
Wide Web Conference), Online Educa, EdMedia and iKnow. In
the policy arena, Dr Scott’s knowledge media and open learning
research is highly valued; he has been invited to consultations
at both the UK House of Commons and the House of Lords. He
is also regularly invited to keynote at corporate led events such
as recent invitations to AT&T, BP Amoco and ICL. This mix of
vision and detailed action research deployment has become a
strong element in all of the work of his group.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
environments complement each other by the creation and
reuse of new Learning Objects.
Before designing any learning experience, it is crucial
to define how we understand the learning resources that we
can use [3]. It is now common to refer to these resources as
"Learning Objects" (LO). An LO is:
A learning medium. In other words, a complex
whole that has an instrumental entity (such as an electronic
document, a file) and a symbolic entity (including information, with a structure and a specific code and language).
On-line, obviously in the technological sense of the
word (referring to telematic networks, interactivity instrumental), but also in terms of professional networks, trainees, teachers, etc.
Reusable, because it has been configured (instrumental and symbolically) to be used in different educational
processes by various users.
In addition and following Wiley [4], this kind of resource
offers the potential for reusability, generativity, adaptability, and scalability.
Most LO definitions have emerged from the different
points of view of each researcher, and have a special emphasis on either one of the components of this concept, learning and object [5]. Some of them are putting greater emphasis on the nature of the objects of these new resources,
such as mobility, usability, and so on [6] [7]; whilst others
assign some importance to the educational aspects and how
they work in different pedagogical environments [8] [9].
We will attempt to approach both aspects.
Our research focuses on how we are using these objects
and how we can make better use of them in different environments, by not only inventing new ways to learn but also
improving traditional ones.
2 The Study
The PROLEARN SUMMER SCHOOL (PSS) is an initiative of the PROLEARN academy <http://www.prolearnacademy.org> in the context of the PROLEARN Network
of Excellence, a project funded by the Information Society
Technology programme of the European Commission,
which is focused on Technology-Enhanced Professional
Learning, <http://www.prolearn-project.org/>. The Prolearn
network brings together both academic and industrial partners with expertise in e-Learning, and has developed a
number of cooperative learning and meeting/organizational
tools to assist in its work. It is an annual event which has
been organised to develop training and collaboration opportunities among pre-doctorate researchers in Europe and
beyond. In 2007, the PSS took place in Frejùs (France) in
May including fifty-eight students.
To prepare some of the lectures and workshops, the PSS
organization team and lecturers prepared a series of on-line
sessions for students using the videoconferencing tool
FlashMeeting. These sessions have the principal objective
of exploring the possibilities and tools around one of the
key topics of the doctoral school. In addition, the students
have the possibility to "meet" each other, have the first view
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
of the community and start building the sense of group.
There were five FlashMeetings during April of 2007,
90 minutes each, and with an average of 16 attendees: one
lecturer and the students. The events are syndicated on the
FlashMeeting
public
folksonomy
<http://
flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/public/key/prolearn-summerschool>.
The data we present here is from these meetings in this
formal program of training (doctoral Summer School). Apart
from the technical data, provided by the FlashMeeting system, we have collected questionnaire and an interview data.
The on-line questionnaire invitation was sent by email
via the PSS distribution list to every participant. We recovered twenty-six answers, especially from students between
20 and 40 years (92%), 58% males and 42% females. In
this questionnaire we asked for the possibility to have a short
interview with each one of them using FlashMeeting. Finally, six semi-structured interviews were conducted in
October 2007. All the interview data was recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic coding was employed and
themes were generated inductively from the raw data [10].
3 The Video Meeting Environment
3.1 FlashMeeting™ Videoconferencing Tool
The FlashMeeting project research is part of the
"PROLEARN Network of Excellence". FlashMeeting is a
"lightweight" videoconferencing tool deployed gradually
since 2003.
The FlashMeeting applet is implemented in Adobe
Flash™, and works from within a Web browser. One user,
the "meeting booker" arranges an event via a Web-page
form, which generates a unique event URL. This URL is
accessible for a live meeting at the booked time, and thereafter points to the recording of the event. The applet works
best with a DSL connection and a webcam, but can function with a good 56k dial up connection and without a camera. Only one user may speak at any one time, via a simple
queuing mechanism to take turns. Users may jump over the
queue by "interrupting". The applet used by this community gave all users the same status and uniform access to all
features. Users do not need to "log in" to the applet, they
simply click on the generated URL, forwarded by the "meeting booker" who could be a professor, the course administrator or a normal user.
There is a single public text chat tab in the applet, a
support to shared URLs to open the shared web page in all
remote machines, a shared whiteboard available to share
text, annotations or pictures, voting and "emoticons", all of
which are common to all participants.
Every meeting in this tool is automatically recorded via
the FlashMeeting Memo feature of this system <http://
www.flashmeeting.com/memo/> (cf. Figure 1). Recordings
are made instantly available to the subject community itself
and the "Memo" replay provides a simple set of visualization tools to assist in the navigation and analysis of the event.
A map with the location of every attendee, the complete
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: PSS Meeting Details in FlashMeeting Memo™.
replay of the meeting, the "minutes" with every chat interchange, URLs exchanged, votes, names of attendees and
annotations, as well as the linear and polar graphic
visualizations of the chat and broadcast are available for
each meeting.
Each part of every recording could be useful to get an
idea about the meeting, its content, its shape and features.
In the same way, each part could be used independently or
in combination with the others to have a better visualization of the event.
3.2 FlashMeeting™ Replays as Learning Objects
Each meeting is recorded in the FlashMeeting Memo tool
as an independent object, the FlashMeeting Replay. Each of
these replays, together with their special features, could be used
as an efficient Learning Object, gathering the most interesting
LO basic characteristics: learning objective, digital format, reusability and some level of granularity. Figure 2 shows a
screenshot of the Memo recording applet replaying a PSS preparation meeting. The horizontal bars towards the bottom of the
figure show the broadcast video segments of the most active
Figure 2: FlashMeeting Memo Applet Showing a PSS Event.
© Novática
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Figure 3: Chat Dominance and Broadcast Dominance of a Pre-PSS Meeting.
six participants in this event. Each horizontal line represents a
speaker in the event. The linear visualisation presents the speakers in the order of the proportion of the event that they are
speaking. The interface allows this area to be "scrolled down"
to reveal the contributions of the remaining participants. In
this case, the top line shows the teacher who spoke the most in
this event.
The community considers the meeting mainly as a learning interchange. However, the meeting can be a learning
event in more than one modality. At present, over 6,000
naturalistic on-line meetings have been recorded, attended
by different communities: academic seminars, project meetings, peer to peer learning meetings, distance lectures, interviews and others [11] from a wide variety of formal, non
formal and informal learning [9].
In each FlashMeeting replay all participant actions are
logged and time-stamped. Once finished, the booker can
"make invisible" some pieces to clarify the important content of each event if it is crucial for future use. In addition,
each action in the meeting (broadcast, text chat, URL sharing, etc.) is a "tag", which can be joined to the meeting replay URL to jump to that time in the recording. The applet
allows users to click on any part of the visualisation to replay from any point, and to pause or jump from the controllers below the video window. In addition, the text chat
(shown in the right hand top pane) is time-stamped also,
and can be used to jump to the point in the event when the
text comment was made.
This interface allows the student to navigate through and
browse the recording data very efficiently and makes easy
the reuse of each replay, in different moments and for different learning models according to the special conditions
and requirements of each user.
4 Formal Learning in Live-Events Vs. Objects to
Learn
As we would see in the example showed in Figure 3,
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
and according to the classification made by Scott et al. [12],
the analysed meetings have a very strong shape of "remote
lecture". The key part of broadcast is dominated by the lecturer (almost 90%), whilst the chat is evenly dominated by
the students, who ask questions or comment on the content.
As previously mentioned, on average 15 students have
participated in each meeting (26% of PSS students). The
questionnaire answers indicate that 21 students (81%) have
participated in at least one event, and 7 people (27%) attended three or more live-meetings.
The content of these meetings was very important to
understand the live lectures in the PSS. In addition, the students had the opportunity to meet each other and to start
working on the PSS topics. Most of them consider their
active participation in the online seminars as a useful opportunity: "I decided to participate in these sessions, because I thought these meetings could be a very nice opportunity to know the other people and to know the specific
topic that we were studying." (student interview).
"It was really useful… the possibility to be with other
people, with the same interests as me, with a good professor, to have a good introduction in a very interesting topic
... And without moving myself from my office!!" (student
interview).
The participation in these meetings encouraged the students to build a sense of community before the live event.
Nevertheless some students had some ideas about the key
factors to improve this sense.
"Did these meetings make you feel part of the PSS community before going to the summer school? Yes, for sure."
(student interview).
"I think the teacher has a key role on this…The reason I
have felt as part of the PSS in these meetings is because of
him (the teacher), before each meeting he offered help to
everyone and had a little chat with us, asking about our
interests, work, etc.; so, I think his role was crucial." (student interview).
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 4: Questionnaire Items 6 to 10. Answers.
The questionnaire answers show that 7 PSS attendees
(27%) have not reused any event as an LO, while the same
amount have attended 3 or more events. Nevertheless if we
pay attention to the individual data, PSS attendees who have
not participated in any of these meeting did not replay any
meeting, and some who participated in 3 or more have replayed more than 2. Thus, no relationship was detected between people who participate in meetings and people who
reused it.
In the questionnaire items 6 to 10, we explore the PSS
attendees’ experience of replaying the PSS events (cf. Figure 4): Why they used it, how they use it and what kind of
impressions they had from the experience of replaying these
meetings.
The items used were:
Q 10: Replays have helped me understand more about
the work of other students with respect to the PSS.
Q 9: Replays have helped me understand my work in
the context of the PSS.
Q 8: I looked at replays to learn what happened in a
meeting I could not attend.
Q 7: Replays have helped me pay attention to things
that I missed in the live meeting.
Q 6: I looked at replays to remember what was said at
the meeting.
The PSS attendees have replayed especially the meetings that they have not attended, and used the replays to
remind themselves of the content of the meeting. Interestingly, most interviewees did not admit replaying the meetings to detect content they "missed" in the live meeting;
indeed when they answered our questions about how they
replayed the meetings, they had two different ways of replaying: usually PSS attendees, who did not participate in a
© Novática
live online event, watched the recording chronologically,
while those who attended it replayed specific "crucial"
moments or "jumped" to interesting data:
"I have replayed both, I have replayed those where I
was in the live meeting and the others in different ways. For
example, I have replayed all the meeting when I have not
participated, to know what they have done in it. BUT I have
only replayed SOME pieces of the meetings when I was in
the live, some interesting ones, for example how Collaborilla
works, or some URLs interesting to my work, specific explanations of terms about modelling…" (student interview).
Overall, the event replay is a Learning Object used to
revise the "lesson" for these students; it is a resource to check
again the key contents and continue learning.
"Helps writing minutes; helps to catch up with missed
meetings… you don’t lose an event and its contents." (student questionnaire).
Additionally, these meetings are public, which means
they are available to a worldwide community who can replay and learn from them. Since the start of the meetings, in
April 2007, to December 2007 the five meetings have been
replayed an average of 70.8 times each. For example, the
first meeting had 17 attendees and has been replayed 93
times from a big variety of countries around the world. Figure 5 shows the live attendance map of this meeting, plotting the IPs of meeting participants in red dots, and the replay map, representing the IPs of replay viewers in blue
dots. These replays are indeed Objects to Learn formally
for the PSS Students, but they could be also a good LO for
other people with the same interests, in this case in the informal way. Since the replay is publicly available for everyone to view, it has been viewed by people outside Europe, who did not participate in the PSS.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 5: Localization Maps with Attendees and Replay Viewers of First Pre-PSS Meeting.
Furthermore, the tool was used to enhance collaboration between students of similar research interests. The PSS
students feel the importance of understanding better their
research connection with each PSS participant. The replays
have been used to situate each participant’s work and how
it is related to the topics in the PSS.
"It helped to understand what was important for the others and to get to know the others." (student questionnaire).
At the same time the replays provided students with information about the people involved in the PSS, not only as
knowledge workers or professionals, but also as partners.
"Some of us used to be the same during the FlashMeeting
and are able to more or less give to the others a good picture of who we are. Other people behave in different ways
online during a FlashMeeting or in a face-to-face full-time
session like the PSS." (student interview).
"You can build a pre-opinion about people… is not a
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
strong opinion, but is an opinion about their role, or personality." (student interview).
5 Discussion
This study explored how a formal learning group have
used a videoconferencing system, and more specifically how
they used the Learning Objects generated by this tool. This
new tool has been used in some novel ways, but via a traditional learning model. This "semi-traditional" way to learn
from a new tools is a very interesting way to analyse future
opportunities in Technology Enhanced Learning.
These students have benefited from the use of this tool
in the context of a pre-doctoral school. Most of the PSS
attendees who replied to our questionnaire participated in
this optional activity of virtual meetings, in at least one livemeeting (21 people, more than 36% of the total of students
of the summer school) of 90 minutes duration. They used
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
the tool to learn from the lecturer and to also have a first
contact with their future course-mates. The role of the lecturer as facilitator and motivator was crucial to improve the
students’ experience. Students found the use of this tool very
appealing, giving them the opportunity to see each other at
a distance easy and comfortable.
Nevertheless, the use of replays is also important. The
largest percentage of our sample have used the replays as a
LO to remember the key content of the meetings they participated before and to explore the content of meetings they
have not attended. They benefited from the possibility to
"jump" in the timeline changing the complete LO to a granular Object which could be used as the whole element or
used in different parts as independent elements.
Furthermore, the replays have not been used only by
PSS students. The possibility to provide this content in public
has allowed other people from different countries to take
advantage of the knowledge transferred in them. In conclusion a formal Learning Object used in a traditional way of
teaching and learning, could be used from other people in
an informal way to learn in an informal dynamic. A great
interest from the educational technology research is related
to the aspects of informal and non-formal learning as they
possibly are the most exciting ways of learning for current
exploration; their investigation is our challenge for the future. Nevertheless, Technology-Enhanced Learning is still
at a distance form traditional ways of learning. Students are
still learning in formal environments, as in the past, and
everyone needs a formal qualification provided habitually
by formal educational institutions. It is necessary to investigate how new tools work in these environments and how
the traditional ways of learning are changing by the use of
these tools and for current students. Last but not least, it is
useful to explore how these formal, non formal and informal environments complement each other by the creation
and reuse of new Learning Objects.
[4] D. A. Wiley. "Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a
taxonomy". In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), "The Instructional
Use of Learning Objects: Online Version". Retrieved
January 13th of 2007, from the World Wide Web: <http:/
/reusability.org/read/chapters/wiley.doc>. 2000.
[5] B. Muirhead, M. Haughey. "An assessment of the learning objects, models and frameworks", developed by
the Learning Federation Schools Online Curriculum
Content Initiative. Australia: The Learning Federation.
2003.
[6] P. R. Polsani. "Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning
Objects". Journal of Digital Information, Vol. 3 (4).
2003.
[7] P. J. Molina, I. Torres, O. Pastor. "User Interface Patterns for Object-Oriented Navigation". In Upgrade
"Human-Computer Interaction: Overcoming Barriers".
4 (1). 2003.
[8] F. Martínez, M. P. Prendes (Dir.). "Objetos de
Aprendizaje para la Enseñanza". Madrid. Dykinson.
2007. <http://www.dei.inf.uc3m.es/ebecdl2002/papers/
polsaniLO.doc>.
[9] P. Scott, L. Castañeda, K. Quick. "Colaboración en
red a través de videoconferencia: Una experiencia no
formal". In Píxel Bit: Revista de Medios y Educación,
31. 2008.
[10] Boyatizis. "Transforming qualitative information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development". Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. 1998.
[11] P. Scott, E. Tomadaki, K. Quick. "The Shape of Live
On-line Meetings". In the International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, 3(4) 2-15. 2007.
[12] P. Scott, L. Castañeda, K. Quick, J. Linney. "Trialogical
learning in public: FlashMeeting recording and reuse
in a peer-learning context". International Journal of
Knowledge and Learning, 3 (4/5), 529-541. 2007.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the EU
Network of Excellence in Professional Learning PROLEARN and
are very grateful to the students, lecturers and organization staff
of the PROLEARN Summer School 2007.
References
[1] J. Breuker, S. Cerri, P. Dugénie, M. Eisenstadt, P.
Lemoisson. "D20 Conceptual and Organisational
Framework for Conversational and Collaboration Processes". Intern Document ELeGI Project. Unpublished.
2006.
[2] M. P. Prendes. "Herramientas para el Trabajo
Colaborativo en Red". Comunicación y Pedagogía,
210, 39-44. 2006.
[3] J. Salvachúa-Rodríguez, J. Quemada-Vives, B.
Rodríguez-Pajares, G. Huecas. "EducaNext: a Service
for Knowledge Sharing". In Upgrade "Human-Computer Interaction: Overcoming Barriers". 4 (5) 53-58.
2003.
© Novática
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
75
Technology-Enhanced Learning
UPC’s Moodle Platform:
A Study on Architecture and Performance
Marcos Montero-Torres
This article describes a design and implementation project for a Moodle architecture capable of providing service to a
community of 30,000 users under criteria of scalability, performance, and high availability. In addition to the design of
the architecture, we look at the design and development of a series of performance tests which allow us to enhance the
efficiency of the system and reliably establish the validity of the platform in terms of environment dimension sufficiently in
advance of its actual implementation. The aim is also to be able to repeat this type of performance analysis on a regular
basis ahead of future modifications of the Moodle platform.
Keywords: Atenea, Digital Campus, JMeter, Moodle,
Performance, UPC, UPCnet.
Author
Marcos Montero-Torres has a degree in Computer Science
Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
(UPC). He has worked at UPCnet as project manager, mainly
specializing in large e-mail and Web system installations and
high availability solutions. He has been fully involved in the
design and deployment of Atenea, the e-Learning platform at
the UPC. He currently works as IT Product Manager at UPCnet.
<marcos.montero@upcnet.es>.
1 Introduction
During the academic year 2005/2006, UPC carried out a
pilot implementation project on a new Moodle-based e-Learning platform. This pilot project had a limited scope within the
university, providing a small number of subjects to a community made up of 4,700 learners and 700 teachers.
The UPC already had its own e-Learning platform, developed entirely within the university itself and which enjoyed a significant degree of implementation and usage.
After evaluating a number of options and verifying the viability of using Moodle from an educational viewpoint and
its appropriateness to the needs of UPC’s teaching staff, it
was decided to use it as an e-Learning tool throughout the
entire university. To this end a project was designed to extend the new digital campus (to be known as Atenea) to the
entire UPC community.
In this new phase the digital campus was to provide service to a community of 30,000 students and 3,000 teachers,
offering around 4,000 Moodle courses. A volume such as
this meant that it would not only be a key tool within the
university’s learning environment, but it would also be one
of the largest Moodle installations in any Spanish-speaking
university. And as such, its implementation had to be nothing short of a complete success. One of the key success factors (though not the only one) was that the platform providing
this service should meet a number of requirements in terms of
performance, scalability, and availability which would ensure
that Moodle would function correctly under extreme load conditions and would be able to respond easily to future extensions of the service, whether in terms of number of users,
number of academic subjects, or load capacity.
After an architecture design project and a performance
study to ensure its correct dimensioning (as described later
in this article), the system finally started up in September,
2006.
2 Architecture Hardware
2.1 Architecture During the Pilot Project
In the first version of the pilot project, the Moodle architecture comprised 2 separate layers (Figure 1):
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
Front-end layer: made up of 3 Debian + Apache
servers. There is a generic Domain Name System (DNS)
name for the campus containing the Internet Protocol (IP)
addresses of the 3 servers. Front-end load distribution is
performed transparently using RoundRobin which provides
the DNS resolution mechanism.
Back-end layer: made up of a single database server
with a PostgreSQL database management system (DBMS)
plus an Network File System (NFS) exported disk space to
which the 3 front-ends access. The back-end server stores
data in local partitions using RAID1 5.
2.2 Present Architecture
The basic concepts of the pilot project are maintained in
the new architecture: a single instance of Moodle to serve
the entire UPC community and physical separation of the
Web servers and database servers. Special emphasis is also
given to improving possibilities of scalability, load distribution and high availability.
The definitive architecture comprises 4 separate layers
(Figure 2):
Load balancing:
A cluster comprising 2 servers with Linux Virtual Server
(LVS) and High Availability (HA) is responsible for balancing the traffic between the various HTTP front-ends.
They enable the load to be distributed "intelligently", while
improving availability by dynamically eliminating non-operational front-ends. They also allow the system to grow or
shrink transparently (for maintenance purposes, say) by
adding nodes to or eliminating nodes from the front-end,
1
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
prising a Bull FDA 2400 disk array and 2 fibre-channel
Brocade Silkworm 3850 switches. The data volumes are
composed of RAID 6 partitions (providing 2 redundancy
disks) of 120GB for the database and 200GB for the
"Moodledata" file system.
3 Simulation Tool
Figure 1: Architecture of the UPC Moodle Platform During
the Pilot Project.
without impacting on the service.
HTTP front-ends:
Hardware structure remains the same as before, comprising 3 Linux servers Linux with Debian + Apache. The
servers have two 2.8 GHz Xeon CPUs and 4GB of RAM. A
number of enhancements have been made to the software
which we will comment on later in this article.
Back-end:
Comprising two servers, of which only one provides
service to the campus:
1 primary back-end server. 6GB of RAM and 4 CPUs.
Contains an DBMS PostgreSQL v8.1 and a 2Gb Host Bus
Adapter (HBA) Emulex LPE9802 board for connection to
a Storage Area Network (SAN).
1 back-end backup server. This is a machine very similar in terms of hardware to the above mentioned server and
with an identical configuration.
The decision to use this device was based on the fact
that, at the time of implementing Moodle at UPC, the only
available candidates (due to constraints imposed by Moodle)
for use as a DBMS were MySQL and PostgreSQL. Neither
of these two platforms were yet able to provide clustering
support that was sufficiently mature (or of an acceptable
complexity). For this reason we decided to use a system
without automated high availability. A single server is responsible for managing access to data, but the platform has
been equipped with a backup node which, in combination
with SAN storage, ensures rapid service recovery in the
event of a hardware failure.
SAN storage:
The data is located in specific volumes in a SAN com© Novática
3.1 Selection Criteria
The choice of the simulation tool was determined by
its capacity to perform realistic tests that would allow us
to check the Moodle’s performance throughout the UPC.
The essential factors that have been taken into consideration are:
Possibility of establishing and checking usage quality criteria: for example, the generation of statistics based
on the response time for each HTTP request or the
number/percentage of bad requests.
User concurrency management: the tool must be
able to simulate simultaneous accesses to the system by
different users. It must be able to manage their authentication and each user’s particular characteristics.
Scalability: it is essential for the tool to be able to
generate simulations under very high loads in order to
meet the ever growing needs of the digital campus environment.
Possibility of performing realistic tests: not any simulation will do. It is not enough to send HTTP requests to the
system at random. To ensure that the test is reliable, it is
necessary to use browsing patterns similar to those of the
Figure 2: Present Architecture of the UPC Moodle Platform.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
system’s users, to consider session times similar to theirs,
and even to use time intervals between different requests
that are as realistic as possible. In short, it is important to be
able to design usage profiles that are tailored to the operating environment, and for the tool to be able to reproduce
such profiles on a large scale.
3.2 JMeter
The tool chosen to perform the performance tests was
Apache JMeter. Developed by the Apache Software Foundation, it is a 100% Java application which is commonly
used to perform functional tests and measure performance.
It was originally designed to test Web applications, but since
then it has evolved and it now features increased functionality and can be used to perform a wider range of tests.
It can be used to simulate very high loads on servers,
networks, or specific applications in order to verify their
capacity or analyse general performance under different load
conditions.
Its main features include:
Load modelling. Based on real logs from Apache or
by generating model users specific to our application.
Authentication and cookie management for each user.
Provides for the verification of quality criteria.
Possibility of cluster installation for simulations requiring very high loads.
4 Performance Tests
The performance tests conducted on the system had two
complementary purposes: firstly to certify the validity of
the chosen technological architecture and its ability to handle the kind of load volumes expected from UPC’s community of students and teachers (30,000 students, 3000 teachers). And, secondly, to identify improvable aspects of the
platform in order to provide it with sufficient response capacity and, once that has been achieved, to provide us with
the best possible idea as to which elements might be improved in the event of future extensions.
4.1 Preparation of the Test Scenario
Prior to the performance of the load tests, a usage profile was produced for the digital campus based on the system’s real usage data during the pilot project. The intention
was to obtain the most reliable information possible about
the browsing style of users on campus: session times, most
accessed sections, time intervals between requests etc.
In order to obtain this data it was necessary to select the
busiest periods during the pilot project. The logs were extracted from the web servers and all logins corresponding
to non-teaching periods were eliminated.
With the aid of a Web statistics program (AWStats) the
periods with the highest concurrency levels were selected
and, on the basis of that data, the following parameters were
obtained:
Average session time: 7.25 mins.
50.26 hits/user.
90% logins belonging to learners, 10% to teachers.
List of most accessed URLs.
Once the most relevant aspects defining user behaviour
had been determined, two different browsing profiles were
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
constructed; one for teachers and one for learners. Access
to Moodle by other user behaviour profiles is so marginal
compared to these two as to be not worth including in the
load tests.
The profiles were constructed by combining the results
obtained from studying the specific browsing history of users
experienced in the use of Moodle. By doing this we aimed
to ensure a minimum level of access to the most important
areas of the campus in each session.
The next step was to set up a small test environment
(made up of just 1 front-end server and 1 back-end server),
and copy the operating database to it. On top of the original
content of the database, we added a total of 3000 test users
(300 teachers and the rest students), all enrolled in various
subjects created expressly for the test. The aim was to have
a database that, rather than being made up of recently created tables and containing minimal data, would have the
size and "possible degradation" typical of a database in regular use, with the addition of new users and subjects.
4.2 Running Tests: Bottlenecks and Their Solutions
Once the test scenario had been set up, we embarked on
a 2 month testing programme, first using a test environment and then running two final tests in the operating environment with its definitive configuration.
The complexity of the tests was gradually increased. We
started with very simple concurrency levels (a single user
to test the validity of the profiles, 10-20 simultaneous users, 50-100 users, 200 users... ), and finished with the two
large scale tests under the real operating environment.
We chose this gradual approach because it allowed us
to discover, step by step, where the system’s bottlenecks
were and to apply the most appropriate solutions before
moving on to the next test.
Thus, the performance of the system gradually improved
and, by the time we ran the last two tests under the operating environment, we were already looking at thoroughly
tuned system.
For those last two definitive tests under the operating
environment we used a JMeter cluster to be able to generate the required load. The aim was to check whether the
system was capable of handling 1,000 Moodle users working simultaneously. To this end the following tests were performed as shown in Table 1.
It should be noted that simultaneity does not refer merely
to HTTP requests, but rather to the number of users in the
system at the same time running part of a session, as defined previously in our user profiles. In other words, we are
looking at 1,200 or 1,500 seven minute sessions involving
different users and overlapping in time.
Below we present a summary of the most serious bottlenecks detected in the platform as the tests progressed, and
the solutions that we found for them. They are grouped together according to the layer of the platform involved:
Load balancers:
Once the balancers were installed, the next step was to
optimally tune the values of the various time-outs of ldirector
and define an appropriate test to verify the HTTP service
(in our case, the query of a .gif file).
HTTP front-ends:
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Test 1
Test 2
#PC cluster
JMeter
12
18
#Hits/sec
#Hits/hour
600
800
2,100,000
2,900,000
Concurrent
users
1,200
1,500
Table 1: User Concurrency Tests Using JMeter Performed on UPC’s Moodle Platform.
Installation of a PHP accelerator (eAccelerator). As
Moodle code is almost entirely based on PHP, this is the
obvious way of tuning it. However, the improvement rates
obtained when an accelerator is installed may vary according to a number of factors. In our tests we saw a significant,
but not excessive, improvement (an increase in system capacity of around 15% compared to the tests without an accelerator).
Apache processes. This is the priority aim of this
phase. The concurrent capacity of the Web server depends,
to a large extent, on the memory available (the performance
of the CPU is already improved by the PHP accelerator).
While the performance of the Apache Web server is
magnificent, the use of PHP imposes a number of constraints: since PHP is not considered to be a thread-safe product, it is not possible to run Apache under the mpm-worker
module, which is where it performs best. Moodle (PHP,
actually) forces us to use the mpm-prefork module, running Apache in multi-process mode instead of multi-thread.
This means that, in order to handle each HTTP request,
Apache spawns a child process which consumes additional
memory. Thus, the amount of processes Apache can run in
our system is physically limited by the available memory divided by the memory occupied by any one of these processes.
From our measurements we observed that the overhead
of an Apache process ranged between 10 and 12MB (reaching as high as 15MB depending on system conditions). Assuming a system with 3GB of free memory, we could have
no more than 300 processes running on each front-end.
To raise this limit without increasing the physical
memory of our servers we took a close look at the HTTP
traffic and concluded that over 50% of the requests handled
by the Web server corresponded to static content, more specifically small images (.gif, .png, .jpg) which are served
over and over again in headers, footers, icons, logos, etc.
To increase the capacity of the system, a second Apache
server was installed in the front-end servers with an extremely simple configuration. It was deliberately compiled
to exclude most of the modules that a standard server has;
due to this simplicity only 2MB of RAM are occupied by
Apache processes.
This server, which we call "Tiny-Apache", is the Web
server listening at port 80. For each request that arrives, all
it does is to determine whether the content is static or dynamic, serve the request if its static content, and otherwise
send it to the standard Apache server (which now listens at
port 8080).
In this way, most HTTP requests received by the system
are handled by a server which only occupies 2MB of
memory instead of the 10-12MB previously, thanks to which
the number of requests the system is able to handle simultaneously is greatly increased.
© Novática
Back-end:
The steps taken in the back-end were aimed mainly at
arriving at the necessary configuration to ensure that the
DBMS was able to support a very high number of simultaneous connections; in our case, 1,500 connections.
Apart from configuring the PostgreSQL server, we had
to alter the values of certain memory management related
parameters in the Linux kernel.
Experience has shown that the number of connections
to the database tend to stay at quite a low level even when
the system receives a very high number of simultaneous
requests. If the server has sufficient memory and CPU, requests tend to be served very quickly.
However, external factors may mean that connections
last longer and, therefore, the number of simultaneous requests may rise very rapidly under high load conditions.
This is why it is important for the system to be able to absorb a great many requests simultaneously. In any event,
the regular and sustained appearance of a very high number
of connections to PostgreSQL is a sure sign that the system
has a problem of some sort (whether due to hardware, slowness of the network, a missing index in a table, costly queries, malfunction of a Moodle module, etc.).
5 Conclusions
5.1 Validity of the Platform and Current Usage
Figures
The most obvious conclusion to be drawn now that the
improvement measures are in place and all the performance tests have been conducted is that now we can be sure
that the new Moodle platform has sufficient capacity to
handle the expected load once nearly all the students and
subjects have been incorporated into the digital campus.
In fact, the figures obtained during the first semester
that the system has been in use provide clear confirmation
of this conclusion on a day-to-day basis. The Table 2 summarizes this data:
These figures represent average values recorded during
2007 and demonstrate the undeniable success of the platform. As we can see, a third of the total number of students
at UPC use the digital campus platform every day, some of
them more than once. And in the course of a month, practically all the students accessed the digital campus on at least
one occasion.
In fact, on weekdays the number of Moodle sessions
established is systematically close to 1,000 during practically the entire time period between 10h and 22h. At times
of intensive use of the platform (at the end of semesters)
there were sustained peaks in the system of over 2,000 simultaneous users that had hardly any impact on server load
or speed of response.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
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Technology-Enhanced Learning
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Different users
12,000
20,000
25,000
Number of logins
32,000
140,000
400,000
Activity log
320,000
1,200,000
4,500,000
Table 2: Average Current Usage of UPC’s Moodle Platform, 2007.
The column "Activity log" refers to logins contained in
Moodle’s log table. In this table Moodle keeps a record activities performed by users of the system. This is much appreciated by the teachers as it allows them to know what
material has been of most interest to their students, the most
commonly performed exercises, which sections of a subject have been visited most, etc. The number of entries in
this log table is an infallible indicator of users’ level of activity regarding the tool.
If we look carefully at the table we can see that, given
these daily access figures, the complexity and length of today’s "real" sessions differ to a certain extent from (i.e. are
lower than) those used in the model employed to test the
system. It is to be expected that once the platform is extended to serve a much wider public and its use becomes
more generalized, usage patterns will vary substantially. A
greater frequency of access means sharing the workload
between the various sessions and involves both a reduction
in the complexity of the tasks performed in each session
and a shorter duration of those sessions. In any event, these
reductions are offset by the overall increase in the number
of requests and, under these new conditions, the system
should still ensure (as in fact is the case) sufficient capacity
to handle the high demand for connections to the system.
5.2 Other Conclusions: Key Success Factors
In addition to conclusions regarding whether or not the
chosen platform is valid, there a series of results (lessons
rather) that may be drawn from this project which, while
not so obvious as the above conclusions, may be of more or
less importance to the table.
Usage profiles: a key success factor. If we wish to be
sure of success, the most important factor when conducting
performance tests is to arrive at usage profiles that are as
close as possible to reality (or at least to the reality that we
wish to reproduce). While we need to be aware that these
are laboratory tests, it is important to reproduce the scenario in as realistic a manner as possible.
Not all Moodle modules have the same impact on the
performance of the system and therefore it is important to
give each component a similar weighting in the tests as they
have in real daily use.
Changes to the platform or software require new
tests. A performance test conducted on our platform today
is only valid provided that there are no changes to the system’s hardware or software. Adding processors or memory,
or increasing the speed of the network will have an impact
(mostly positive) on performance. But it is very difficult to
quantify this impact a priori. Changes to software, whether
due to using a different version of Moodle, using new mod-
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
ules, using a different version of the Web server, the database server, or any other basic software component, are
delicate and their impact on the ultimate behaviour of the
digital campus is, in many cases, an unknown quantity. For
this reason any change in the system requires new tests so
that we can be sure that the platform will continue to behave as we expect it to. However, it will not always be necessary to embark on a massive project to carry out these
checks. Depending on the importance of the changes we
may choose not to perform any checks, or we may decide
to carry out some relatively simple tests merely to compare
the performance of the versions we are familiar with to that
of the new versions.
Need for a stable test environment. To ensure that this
project enjoys a certain degree of continuity we need to
have a stable test environment. Ideally this would involve
having an exact replica of the operating environment, but
that is not always so easy to achieve. However, such a replica is not in fact essential, although it is important that the
two environments are easily comparable (e.g. do not set up
a test environment based on a server with an integrated
front-end and back-end if the two components are separate
in the actual operating environment). This will allow us to
extrapolate the results obtained in the tests and minimize
the need to resort to real environment, the availability of
which tends to be very limited for such purposes.
References
K. Douglas. "PostgreSQL" (2nd edition).
R. Bowen, K. Coar. "Apache Cookbook: Solutions and examples for Apache administrators".
B. Laurie, P. Laurie. "Apache, the definitive guide" (2nd
edition).
Online resources
PostgreSQL: documentation. <http://www.postgresql. org/
docs>.
The Linux Virtual Server Project: <http://www.linux.
virtualserver.org>.
Wikipedia. <http://www.wikipedia.org>.
Apache JMeter. <http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/>.
Apache performance tuning. <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/
2.0/misc/perf-tuning.html>.
Using Moodle: Hardware & performance. <http://
moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=596>.
Sakai project . <http://sakaiproject.org/>.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
IFIP and TC 3
Jan Wibe
Presentation and summary of the main activities and achivements of the Technical Commitee 3 (TC 3) of the International
Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), focused on Education.
Keywords: AGORA, "Atelier", Education, IFIP,
Longlive Learning, Networking, Stellenbosch Declaration,
"Studio", TC 3, World Computer Congress.
1 International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP) and it’s Committee on Education
(TC 3)
IFIP was founded in January 1960 under the auspices of
UNESCO. Members in IFIP are national Computer Societies. Its basic aims are to promote information in science
and technology by fostering international cooperation, by
stimulating research, development and the applications of
information processing in science and human activity, by
furthering the dissemination and exchange of information
and by encouraging education in information processing.
The main activities in IFIP <http://www.ifip.org/> are
in the so-called Technical Committees. Most of them are in
the area of Informatics with two exceptions, TC 3 and TC
9, which are about Education and Relationship between
Computers and Society, respectively.
Each Committee has several working groups. TC 3 (Education) <http://www.ifiptc3.net> was founded in 1963 and
has 9 working groups. The first of them (WG 3.1:
Informatics and ICT in Secondary Education, <http://
www.die.informatik.uni-siegen.de/ifip-wg31>) was established in 1966.
The main activity in IFIP is to arrange conferences. In
TC3 we organize the World Conferences on Computers in
Education (WCCE), which take place every 4 years, approximately. The next WCCE edition will take place in Brazil in 2009.
The best source I know for the History of Computers in
Education is the proceedings from the WCCE. I have attended all of them except for one. Because of this, I have
personal experience of the history of this field.
In 1976 the programming language LOGO was introduced. This is still in use and conferences about the pedagogical use of the language are arranged regularly. In the
Sydney conference in 1990, we arranged a videoconference
between Norway and Sydney. Students from schools in
Sydney and Trondheim participated in this videoconference.
Teleteaching 93 gave for the first time a worldwide example of the use of communication in projects and education.
In 1995 PowerPoint was widely used in presentations. The
title of the 2005 conference is illustrative: 40 years with
© Novática
Author
Jan Wibe is from The Norwegian University of Science and
Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. He is chair of
IFIP TC 3. He was chair of IFIP WG 3.6 between 1993 and
1999. He started with ICT in upper secondary education in
1970 as lecturer. Since then he has worked with ICT in
Education at governmental level and in teacher education at
university. <jan.wibe@plu.ntnu.no>.
computers in education: What works?
In addition to the TC 3 Education world conferences,
the working groups arrange working conferences. Some
examples of these conferences are:
WG 3.1 Secondary Education and WG 3.5 Primary
Education. New Modes of Teaching and Learning
Informatics, Mathematics and ICT - a "golden triangle".
June 27th - 29th, 2007, Boston, U.S.A. <http://www.ccs.
neu.edu/imict2007/Home.html>.
WG 3.1, WG 3.2 and WG 3.6 Joint Open and Working Conference: ICT and Learning for Net Generation LYICT 2008. 7th - 10th July 2008, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. <http://cidt.oum.edu.my/lyict/>.
WG3.5, Open and Working Conference: Valuing individual and shared learning: The role of ICT VIASL 2008.
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic 23-27 June.
<http://ifip2008praha.cz>.
WG3.7 Open and Working Conference: Information
Technology in Education Management 2008 Conference.
"The Evolution of ITEM". ITEM 2008. Charles Darwin
University in Darwin, Australia, 21st- 25th July 2008. <http:/
/informatics.cdu.edu.au/staff/afinegan/ITEM2008/>.
2 Relevant Activities in TC 3
2.1 IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC)
WCC is the biggest IFIP event and it is arranged every
second year. WCC 2008 takes place in Milan, Italy from 7th to
10th September 2008 <http://www.wcc2008.org/site/>. The
program consists of co-located conferences which are arranged by the Technical Committees. TC 3 has always been
very active with its own conference.
Contribution coming from TC3 is ED-L2L, Learning
to live in the knowledge society. It is one of the co-located
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
81
Technology-Enhanced Learning
conferences of WCC 2008. The conference is devoted to
themes related to the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for education in the knowledge
society and provides an international forum for professionals from all continents: <http://ulearn.itd.cnr.it/wcc08/
index.html>.
2.2 The Stellenbosch Declaration
The participants of the IFIP 8th WCCE, held in
Stellenbosch, South Africa, July 2005, address to all
stakeholders in ICT in Education: teachers, practitioners,
researchers, academics, managers, decisionmakers and
policy-makers, the "Stellenbosch Declaration", in order to
improve the integration of ICT in Education as a resource
for better teaching and learning and as a preparation of citizens for the Knowledge Society. The full text is available
on the IFIP website <http://www.ifip.org/images/stories/ifip/
public/publications/Onl_Publ/thestellenboschdeclaration.
pdf> and includes recommendations and suggestion for
possible actions.
This Declaration has been produced from the ideas provided by speakers and participants in the WCCE 2005. It
will be widely disseminated all around the World, and particularly in the next international major events, such as the
WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society), Tunis,
November 2005. All IFIP members are invited to help disseminate this important contribution of IFIP to the development of ICT in Education.
As educators, we want not only an Information Society,
but a Knowledge Society, enabling all children and all people to access knowledge and to benefit from being educated.
Education is a key issue in the Knowledge Society, and educators have a major mission. Particularly, it is the responsibility of all educators and decision-makers around the world
to help developing countries take part in the developments
of ICT in Education.
Six major areas will shape a beneficial use of ICT in
Education:
1) Digital Solidarity. In the field of education, ICT
should help develop "Digital Solidarity". This requires
strong and joint actions of all stakeholders to guarantee the
right of participation in the digital society for all students in
the world. We recommend a Digital Solidarity Action, which
will define the most important aim for the next five years,
that every child in the world has access to a digital information and communication infrastructure.
2) Learners and Lifelong Learning. In the Knowledge
Society, every learner is a lifelong learner. The content and
the methods of initial education must take into account
preparation for lifelong learning. ICT is a key tool for developing lifelong learning. The development of lifelong
learning needs an integration of education into the real world
(ICT should be used for this purpose). Lifelong learning
must be encouraged in all countries, as a tool for reducing
the Digital Divide.
3) Decision-Making Strategies. In order to help decision-makers and to make decisions meet the real needs,
82
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
bridging research, practice, experimentation, innovation
with decisionmaking is essential. Decision-makers should
make better use of the experience of practitioners and the
findings of researchers. In turn, practitioners and researchers should make their findings and results more visible and
usable for the decision-makers. Educators and researchers
should help in elaborating a vision and making it explicit.
4) Networking. The Knowledge Society is networked.
Networks in education offer many ways to access knowledge, offer many possibilities for networking people and
developing collaborative work and enhancing the "collective intelligence". There is a need to develop networks and
to involve all countries, particularly developing countries,
in the education networks. Help in making the following
sentence of an African child become reality: "I am a child
of Africa and a citizen of the world".
5) Research. The development of ICT-based education
and training processes is a growing reality. Therefore there
is a need to continue research work on the development of
these technologies and their applications. A certain realignment of research priorities is necessary:
Bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy;
development of solid theoretical frameworks; development
of an understanding of the use and the effects of ICT in
Education; finding an appropriate balance between fundamental, applied, and development research as well as between public research and research made by the private sector. The output of research should be made widely available, as open source, for improving practice, decision-making, and resources development.
6) Teachers. Being a teacher in the Knowledge Society
requires new specific competencies: a teacher has to deal
with new knowledge, new ways for accessing knowledge;
with a networked world and with new types of co-operation and collaboration; with a society in which knowledge
plays a crucial role; with lifelong learning. Teachers are the
key agents in the education system. It is our common responsibility to help all countries to train and recruit teachers, and to involve all teachers in international networks.
ICT changes teaching and learning, but technology is not
the main issue. "Technology matters, but good teachers and
good teaching, matter more".
Contact: Prof. Bernard Cornu, Chairman of the Declaration Committee, <bernard.cornu@cned.fr>.
2.3 The AGORA Approach
The AGORA Initiative on Lifelong Learning was
launched by IFIP in Poitiers, France, October 2006. TC3
has played a major role in proposing and creating this
project. The AGORA Initiative, an element of the process
of revitalisation of the IFIP strategy, aims at implementing
a dynamic methodology for initiating cooperation projects
on Lifelong Learning with many different stakeholders. It
is providing a methodical concept of action where contextual local efforts are connected to each other and contribute
to generic common knowledge about Lifelong Learning in
a synergetic manner.
© Novática
Technology-Enhanced Learning
Figure 1: Methodological Concept of Action: "Studios" and "Atelier".
2.3.1 Methodical Concept of Action: Local Studios and
Generic Atelier
The methodical concept of "Atelier" was developed. The
function of an "Atelier" is to generate generic knowledge
based on the experience in different "studios" (cf. Figure
1). This knowledge in its turn can be used to enhance the
"studios" where Lifelong Learning (LLL) pilot implementations are realised. In Seoul (June 2007), 4 international
"studios" were created. Each "studio" will be directed at
practical, real-world creation of practical instances of eEducation for Lifelong Learning. "Studios" will provide
contextual solutions, suitable for the cultural, social and
economic context.
In the Agora Initiative local LLL projects focus on specific objects and processes in specific contexts. The Initiative tries to study these projects as integral and meaningful
phenomena allowing context-free generalizations. The
projects provide contextual pilot implementations of LLL,
called "Studios". Context specific knowledge is developed
in these Studios, but shared in an "Atelier" linking the Studios. The "Atelier"-function generates generic knowledge
based on the experiences in studios. This generic knowledge can then be applied in the local "Studios" where Lifelong Learning pilot implementations are realised. Thus, the
generic educational Lifelong Learning model developed in
the Atelier will be evaluated and improved in a process of
critical review of the pilot implementations and concurrently
improve practice of Lifelong Learning in the local Studios.
The 4 first AGORA Studios were created during the
Seoul seminar. These are:
The "Cyber-Teacher Studio", aiming at working on
the new competences of Teachers and Trainers in the Lifelong Learning Society, and providing ideas, tools and re© Novática
sources for building such competences.
The "Digital Divide Studio", aiming at using Lifelong Learning as a mean to reduce the digital divide and
aiming at making Lifelong Learning available for all, in
order to avoid a "knowledge divide".
"How to manage and administrate Lifelong Learning": The studio will work on the impact of Lifelong Learning on the management of Education and Training, and will
provide tools for managing Lifelong Learning.
The "Croatian Studio", aiming at organising e-Learning for Croatian businesses and providing the basic skills to
Managers.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
83
UPENET
Ethics in Computing
Robosoldier
David Evans
© 2008 ITNOW
This paper was first published, in English, by ITNOW (Volume 50, issue # 3, May 2008, pp. 4-5). ITNOW, a UPENET partner, is
the member magazine for the British Computer Society (BCS), published, in English, by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
BCS, <http://www.bcs.org/>. The May 2008 issue of ITNOW can be accessed at <http://itnow.oxfordjournals.org/archive/>.
Can software be more ethical than a human? The use of technology in warfare is often controversial, just like war itself,
the author explores the issues.
Keywords: Autonomous, Ethics,
Robot, Soldier, Warfare, Weapons.
Ever since the invention of the
crossbow there have been public
outcries against weapons technology
that was perceived to go beyond what
was moral and humane. Yet for soldiers
fighting an enemy face to face, the very
idea of humane warfare may not sit
well with their experiences.
The key question then is how to
meet the pragmatic needs of warfare
without sacrificing our morality. Principles of war (jus in bello - justice in
war) have been developed over time
through international rules of warfare
such as the Geneva Convention. These
have broadly stood the test of time, and
with each new generation of technology have had to be reinterpreted into a
new context.
However, the introduction of new
technology usually comes before the
interpretation of law, and occasionally
with dire consequences. Mustard gas
and landmines are two technologies
that spring to mind.
It is with these issues in mind that
the Royal United Services Institute and
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UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
the BCS held a seminar on the ethics
and legality of autonomous and automated weapons systems. This brought
together computer scientists, engineers, lawyers, ethicists and those in
the military to share perspectives on a
new generation of weapons systems
being developed, and in some cases
already in use.
Several nations across the globe are
in various stages of deploying weapon
systems that are in a new class of remote operation. Unmanned combat
aerial vehicles (UCAV) have been with
us for some time, although we are still
coming to terms with the impact of killing someone half a world away while
sat at a PC in Nevada sipping coffee.
Israel and South Korea are also
deploying border defences that can
automatically detect, target and kill
people without human intervention
when they enter a restricted area. The
USA is committed to spending something in the region of a quarter of a trillion dollars to develop unmanned combat vehicles with the intention that they
will make up a third of their operational
vehicles.
Some of the issues are similar to
Author
David Evans is Head of Government
Relations for the CEPIS British society
BCS (British Computer Society, <http:/
/www.bcs.org>). He has a Bachelor in
Physics from the University of
Southampton, UK. <david.evans@
hq.bcs.org.uk>
existing and well-worn ethics-in-warfare debates. What, if any, are the differences between sitting in Nevada
operating a UAV, launching a cruise
missile, or being in an Apache firing
at people who can't even see you are
there? What is the difference between
an automated machine gun and a
landmine? Perhaps it is only a matter
of degrees, but are there limits?
One of the speakers made a point
about remote operation by showing
scenes from a US Army video "Apache
Rules the Night" where a gunner viewing via infrared clearly identifies a soldier as wounded, but is ordered to "hit
him".
Under the Geneva Convention a
wounded person unable to fight is
© CEPIS
UPENET
"hors de combat" (out of the fight) and
cannot be attacked, so that killing was
probably illegal (a war crime). The
same action face to face would have
been more obviously dubious. It seems
that the more removed a soldier is from
their action, the more likely they are
to take action that is morally questionable.
When it comes to autonomy, there
is a continuum between remote control, through remote operation, to supervised operation and ultimately full
autonomy. The latter category is where
the landmine sits, it could be argued,
as a landmine makes a "kill decision"
based on a simple algorithm along the
lines of "have I been stepped on?"
There is little doubt that we are on
a road to more and more automation
and autonomy, and that the supposed
moral protection of having a human in
the loop on decisions may be illusory.
If a system identifies and selects targets and then requires an OK/Cancel
click from the human operator who has
little clue what they are approving, is
the human really taking responsibility?
To quote the film "Lost in Space": "And
the monkey flips the switch".
The surprise of the day came from
Ron Arkin, a leading roboticist based
at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
He suggested that autonomous robots
could be more ethical than their human
counterparts. The joke is that military
training and discipline is all about turning humans into robots, so perhaps
using robots to begin with could be
better.
The bar for a robot to be more ethical than the average human soldier may
not be all that high. Research done by
US Army Medical Command on attitudes of soldiers coming back from
operations gave worrying results. For
example, less than half thought that
non-combatants should be treated with
respect, and more than a third thought
torture was OK if it saves the lives of
their comrades.
An autonomous or supervised
weapon could have ethical behaviour
designed in. For example, it may be
able to recognise medical symbols on
vehicles, or detect that an individual is
wounded or surrendering. Robots can
suffer from poor information or recog© CEPIS
nition just as humans can, but are not
encumbered by the psychological aspects of the "fog of war" that can lead
to poor decision making.
Even more than that, an object does
not have an automatic right of self defence, so can tolerate a higher level of
doubt. A soldier that feels under threat
can defend themselves, even if they are
in uncertain circumstances.
With the current capability and sophistication of recognition software,
this may seem something of an aspiration rather than a reality. Professor
Arkin and others openly acknowledge
the gaps in capability, but are attempting to bridge them in their research.
Crucially, unless engineers can
meet these recognition and ethical requirements, it may well be illegal to
make use of an autonomous system. If
a system cannot tell the difference between combatants and non-combatants, an aggressor and someone injured
or surrendering, and an ambulance or
a tank, then the circumstances of use
may be severely limited to the point of
uselessness. Where the rubber of this
argument hits the road is in two places:
Firstly, if you are a commander
looking to delegate fire-authority to a
system that does not meet these ethical tests, by doing so you may (or may
not) be committing a war crime. If in a
spirit of inquiry you are willing to test
your decision in court, fine, but a duty
of care to soldiers in the field should
not put them in the role of legal guinea
pig.
The second area is in reputational
damage. There is little doubt that incidents such as those that occurred in the
Abu Ghraib prison and the questions
of international law and morality surrounding detention at Guantanamo Bay
have done huge damage to the international standing of the United States.
Where there is a question mark and
a huge emotional charge around the use
of a weapon, it has the potential to selfinflict collateral damage. In the era of
"effects-based" warfare focused on holistic outcomes rather than purely military objectives, thought must be given
to what the long term effects truly are.
Finally, the most chilling topic of
the day was proliferation. For most
nations three things are required to
deploy these weapons. The first is the
existence of and access to the science
and technology. The second is the ability to engineer the system. The final
one is the will to use them, which is
impeded by law, ethics and public
opinion.
As technology marches on, the first
two requirements will move from an
implied requirement for a multi-billion
dollar research capability to a mail order catalogue and skills akin to Airfix
model assembly. At that point, all that
will stand in the way is the will use
them.
There will be those for whom will
is a simple matter unencumbered by
ethical or reputational issues. There
will be those who could manipulate
perceptions of another nation's justifiable and legal use to create doubt and
confusion to cover their own immoral
and illegal actions. There are many
examples of this in nuclear proliferation.
Despite clear commitments from
the major military powers to develop
and use weapons throughout this range
of remote to autonomous, there is still
much that remains unclear. This event
brought together the full range of people needed to start answering these
questions for the UK, but it is just a
start.
For the military, and for those with
family members on operations, this
technology is clearly and almost unequivocally beneficial to the UK. The
goal is to try and work out what in future we wish we had done now to mitigate against the potential negative sideeffects. Ideally, our soldiers, our nation,
our standing and our values need to be
protected all at the same time.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008 85
C EPIS NEW S
CEPIS Projects
Harmonise Outcomes
Peter Weiß
The Harmonise project has been officially approved by the European Commission and received a highly positive rating.
The purpose of the Harmonise project was to review the existing qualification and certification schemes for ICT professionals in Europe, and to clarify the underlying schemes, profiles, terminology and curricula. We are pleased to present
this extract from the Executive Summary which includes the results of the survey and summarises the main findings of the
analysis.
Keywords: Harmonise, Harmonisation, ICT Certification Market, ICT
Industry, ICT International Standards,
ICT Professional Certification, ICT
Professionalism.
1 Introduction
The Harmonise project examined
vocational ICT qualifications in Europe, with a view to establishing a common basis for assessing and comparing the ICT professional qualifications
offered in each country. The project
started by gathering information on the
current situation, and then examined
the need for harmonisation and the feasibility of achieving it. It proposes a
number of concrete measures designed
to achieve convergence between the
existing approaches to ICT skills certification in different countries and provides recommendations on the way in
which these differences in various
countries and institutions might be
made more transparent, with obvious
benefits for users and employers.
The project concentrated on certification arrangements and related training offerings, and on career development services offered to ICT professionals in Europe and beyond.
This report analyses four thematic
areas:
ICT Professional Labour Market.
ICT Skills Certification System.
ICT Skills Certification Market.
ICT Professional Certification
Quality.
An overview of the key findings is
presented in Figure 1.
2 ICT Professional Certification
Since the 1990s, ICT certification
has become an integral part of the edu86
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
cation and training landscape. While
the growth of ICT vendor-specific certification appears to be slowing, vendor-independent offerings are still in
the initial phase of their lifecycle. There
is also an observable shift towards profile-based certification. These developments are driven mainly by vendorneutral and vendor-independent certification providers.
3 Need for Harmonisation
The continued development of the
ICT industry (and ultimately the success of the economy as a whole) depends on the availability of sufficient
numbers of qualified people with the
required skills and competences.
The annual cost of software failures
in Europe is estimated at almost 100
billion euros. Adequate training of staff
would result in improved project success rates and better innovation capability. Thus, ensuring that ICT practitioners are able to perform to professional standards is a matter of vital
importance for the economy and for
society.
Our survey revealed 62 certification suppliers, delivering 617 types of
certification. This proliferation is an
obstacle to the achievement of global
standards for the ICT profession. It also
hampers the development of ICT as a
professional discipline, and makes it
less likely that employers will recognise ICT as a serious profession adhering to higher principles and clearly
defined, international standards.
Our research suggests that employers do not place much value on ICT
professional certification. This deserves further examination, as it
strongly influences the demand by ICT
Author
Peter Weiß is department manager and
team leader in the research group Software Engineering at the Research Center
for Information Technology (FZI) in
Karlsruhe, Germany. Before he was
project manager and member of the
research group of Prof. Dr. Wolffried
Stucky at the Institute Applied
Informatics (AIFB) at the University of
Karlsruhe (TH). He received his
doctorate in Applied Informatics from
the University of Karlsruhe (TH) in
2005. Prior to joining AIFB he
was leading the international relations
office at FZI for three years. His
educational and professional background
includes a diploma degree in business
engineering from the University of
Karlsruhe (TH) (1999) and a certificate
of apprenticeship as industrial
clerk (1992)
from
industry.
<weiss@fzi.de>.
practitioners for training and certification. We believe that certification
should not itself be a priority, but that
the obvious need is to establish ICT
professionalism and international professional standards.
4 Defining Harmonisation
If ICT professional certification
schemes are successfully harmonised,
the certifications will be more widely
recognised, employers and job-seekers
will be more aware of them and their
value, and it will be clear to all
stakeholders what they are and what
they mean. This would be of considerable value in establishing ICT as a professional discipline.
In this project, harmonisation was
defined in the following terms: the
© CEPIS
UPENET
Figure 1: Identified Basic Pillars of the Harmonisation Process.
achievement of broader recognition
and transparency of ICT professional
certification, higher awareness of what
is available in the market, and the promotion of the benefits arising from a
consistent, international ICT profession, based on clearly defined standards.
From the start, it was clear to the
project team that this was an ambitious
and challenging task. A number of pivotal questions were explored with experts and the wider community:
What are the specific complexities of the ICT certification market?
How do we expect this market
to evolve and change?
What do we need to do to harmonise this market?
5 Towards Harmonisation
The Harmonise project sets out a
roadmap for harmonising ICT professional certification, along with concrete recommendations for action. It
draws on the EUCIP1 experience to
suggest a path towards how IT Professional Certification harmonisation can
be implemented.
The proposed harmonisation approach is built on ICT professionalism,
a multi-stakeholder approach, quality
standards, and visibility. It attempted
1
European Certification for Informatics
Professionals. <http://www.eucip.com/>.
© CEPIS
to address the following key questions:
Why harmonisation? For whom? and
How?
The proposed approach is marketdriven; we do not recommend a topdown regulatory approach to the existing market for ICT certification.
6 Recommendations2
Harmonisation activities need
to be carefully planned, and must involve all stakeholders. The successful
implementation of quality standards
will require commitment from all involved and affected parties, and in particular from professional associations,
industry, and educational institutions.
Harmonisation of ICT professional certification must be seen in the
broader context of ICT professionalism. The ICT professional associations
play a pivotal role in setting, developing and promoting standards in ICT
certification; their desire to develop
ICT as a professional discipline is the
single most important driver of harmonisation.
A sustainable solution to the
harmonisation of ICT professional certification must be based on an umbrella
approach that allows different certification systems to co-exist and to be
cross-referenced in a reference frame-
2
Please, refer to the project for the full
version.
work. This requires:
- a common language for describing professional skills and
competences;
- a standard means of measurement
for professional skills and
competences;
- a mechanism for independent recognition and quality assurance of those
professional skills and competences.
Quality standards and accreditation are among the most important
aspects of a harmonised European approach to certification. The harmonisation process should review existing
quality approaches, and record their
scope and objectives, and how they are
applied.
The contents of certification
programmes must be made more transparent. An important step in this direction is the forthcoming European eCompetence Framework, currently
under development by the CEN/ISSS
Workshop in ICT Skills.
A harmonised system should be
aligned with European frameworks
such as the EQF (European Qualifications Framework) and ECTS (European Credit Transfer System).
7 Network of Interest
The Harmonise project has succeeded in establishing a network of
interest and links with the major ICT
vendors. This has already raised awareness among stakeholders and promoted
the need for harmonisation of ICT professional certification.
The project established links to
other projects and existing European
groups working in related areas that
had the potential to support the work
of the project. It participated actively
in a number of European working
groups, such as the CEN/ISSS Workshop on ICT-Skills3 , and the European
e-Skills Forum and its current followup activities, as well as liaising with
the e-Skills Industry Leadership Board.
The aim was to influence ongoing developments, to inform stakeholders and
the expert community about the project
and its potential outcome, and to ac-
3
<http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/Sectors/
sectors/isss/activity/wsict-skills.asp>.
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008 87
UPENET
Industry4 , CEPIS took an in-depth look
at the core issues affecting the supply
of and demand for IT practitioners and
professionals. In that study, CEPIS predicted a significant shortfall in the supply of IT graduates over the coming
years.
The Harmonise Reference Material
website is <http://www.cepish a r m o n i s e . o rg / h a r m o n i s e / p h p /
index.php>. The full report will be
posted shortly.
quire inputs needed for the performance of the project’s tasks. This network of interest will be used to sustain
the work of the project and to implement the required changes in the area
of ICT professional certification.
8 The Harmonise Project Consortium
The Harmonise project was carried
out by a consortium of nine partners
led by CEPIS, and including CEPIS
member societies from Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the United
Kingdom, as well as the ECDL Foundation and partners from education and
research. The Harmonise project is one
of many activities that CEPIS conducts
in the area of professional skills. For
example, in its recently completed
eSkills Foresight Scenarios for the ICT
4
Report to the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Enterprise & Industry. <http://www.cepis.org/index.jsp?b=0636-638&pID=648& nID=717>.
CEPIS Projects
Selected CEPIS News
Fiona Fanning
Euro-Inf Project Final Conference: Register now!
The final conference of the EuroInf project will take place on September 4th and 5th, 2008 in Cagliari, Sardinia. Registration is open and discounts on accommodation are still
available.
The Euro-Inf project aims to create a framework to set up a European
system for accrediting informatics education at the first and second cycle levels, and in doing so to improve the
quality of informatics education programmes, provide a recognised label
for accredited programmes and ulti-
88
UPGRADE Vol. IX, No. 3, June 2008
mately to increase the mobility of European graduates in accordance with
the Lisbon Strategy.
The conference will deal with issues of subject-specific quality assurance for informatics higher education.
In particular, it focuses on the activities, results and future of the Euro-Inf
project.
The programme and registration
information are now available on the
website: <http://www.euro-inf.eu/>.
Anyone interested in attending is encouraged to register now or contact
Frauke Muth <muth@asiin.de> for
further information.
Other News
The CEPIS Legal and Security
Informatics group has recently had
their paper "Online Banking Authentication systems" published in ENISA’s
Quarterly Review. This publication is
the European Network and Information
Security Agency’s main channel for
sharing new developments and best
practice. To view this paper in the
Quarterly Review: <http://www.enisa.
europa.eu/pages/02_02.htm>.
© CEPIS