Student models are crucial components in personalised distance learning environments. These models usually include individual characteristics such as the level of knowledge of a given topic, the learning style or the type of personality, the level of participation and so on. However, when the focus is on group activities, these learning…

IMS Learning Design is a specification to capture the orchestration taking place in a learning scenario. This paper presents an extension called Generic Service Integration. This paradigm allows a bidirectional communication between the course engine in charge of the orchestration and conventional Web 2.0 tools. This communication allows the…

The paper advocates an approach to learning design that considers it as creating digital artefacts that can be extended, modified and used for different purposes. This is realised through an "act becoming artefact" cycle, where users' actions in the authors' software environment, named Learning Designer, are automatically interpreted on…

LS-Lab provides automatic support to comparison/evaluation of the Learning Object Sequences produced by different Curriculum Sequencing Algorithms. Through this framework a teacher can verify the correspondence between the behaviour of different sequencing algorithms and her pedagogical preferences. In fact the teacher can compare algorithms…

Students in all areas of computing require knowledge of the computing device including software implementation at the machine level. Several courses in computer science curricula address these low-level details such as computer architecture and assembly languages. For such courses, there are advantages to studying real architectures instead of…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered instructional strategy in which students solve problems and reflect on their experiences. Different domains need different approaches in the design of PBL systems. Therefore, we present one case study in this article: A Java Programming PBL. The application is developed as an additional module for…

Although previous research has demonstrated learning benefits for both instructors and students in the web-based collaborative learning environments, one of them major difficulties is the lack of a practical approach to assist teachers in evaluating the knowledge contribution of learners. A novel method of merging multi-modes of assessment and…

This report describes reflections from two cycles of developmental research that involved creating and refining a series of computer-based applets for reasoning about the relative magnitude of fractional quantities. The applet sequence stemmed from a cognitively demanding task used in face-to-face teacher education settings that involved placing…

Electronic performance support systems (EPSSs) are the software programs commonly used in commercial environments since the early 1990s. These software programs are generally called performance-based systems and focus on the complete job rather than providing individual development. For that reason, the usage of these systems in learning…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an indexing and teaching focus mining system for lecture videos recorded in an unconstrained environment. Design/methodology/approach: By applying the proposed algorithms in this paper, the slide structure can be reconstructed by extracting slide images from the video. Instead of applying…

The use of the Web to deliver open, distance, and flexible learning has opened up the potential for social interaction and adaptive learning, but the usability, expressivity, and interoperability of the available tools leave much to be desired. This article explores these issues as they relate to teachers and learning designers through the case of…

Distance and blended collaborative learning settings are usually characterized by different "social structures" defined in terms of groups' number, dimension, and composition; these structures are variable and can change within the same activity. This variability poses additional complexity to instructional designers, when they are…

Purpose: Social navigation is an emerging trend for navigation in hypermedia. With social navigation, users can be guided through large volumes of learning content by cues which integrate the browsing history of past users. Earlier papers have shown that social navigation is suitable for navigation not only in classic hypermedia but also in…

In well-defined domains such as Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry, solutions to a posed problem can objectively be classified as correct or incorrect. In ill-defined domains such as medicine, the classification of solutions to a patient problem as correct or incorrect is much more complex. Typical tutoring systems accept only a small set of…

Mobile computing facilities may provide many assets to the educational process. Mobile technology provides software access from anywhere and at any time, as well as computer equipment independence. The need for time and place independence is even greater for medical instructors and medical students. Medical instructors are usually doctors that…