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The widespread adoption of computers and Internet in our life has reached the classrooms, where computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) based on wikis offers new ways of collaboration and encourages student participation. When the number of contributions from students increases, traditional assessment procedures of e-learning settings suffer from scalability problems. In a wiki-based learning experience, automatic tools are required to support the assessment of such huge amounts of data. In this work, we present StatMediaWiki, a tool that collects and aggregates information that helps to analyze a MediaWiki installation. It generates charts, tables and different statistics enabling easy analysis of wiki evolution. We have used StatMediaWiki in a Higher Education course and present the results obtained in this case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights: [•] Different skills (including interpersonal ones) can be assessed by using wikis. [•] We compare seven case studies that use wikis in higher education learning. [•] The different settings in each one have lead to quite different results. [•] We analyze three different tools used to automate assessment procedures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Software process engineering is a discipline, which aims to study and improve software development and maintenance processes. The explicit definition of software processes is essential. To this end, the Object Management Group consortium proposed the Software & Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model (SPEM) that exploits the benefits of the Model Driven Architecture paradigm applied to software process models, instead of software specification models. The aim of this study is to discover evidence clusters and evidence deserts in the use and application of SPEM from a business process management point of view. To reach the proposed objective, we have undertaken a systematic mapping study of the existing scientific literature. The reviewed literature deals mainly with process modeling and, to a lesser extent, with process adaptability, verification, and validation, enactment and evaluation. Wide agreement exists in using the SPEM meta-model to develop different types of methods and processes. Further research efforts are needed in areas related to enactment and evaluation of software processes. There is a need to evolve to a new version of the meta-model that incorporates the improvements proposed by different authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Learning management systems (LMS) provide an operational environment in which an online course can be created and later executed. Inter-operation between creators and their authoring facilities, and the LMS execution engine are based on defining standards and specifications, such as the IMS Learning Design (LD). Because an LMS better serves as a course player than as a course creator, a large number of approaches and environments for standards-compliant course authoring have been developed. These approaches and environments propose a number of issues that deal with how adaptations are edited and how to define the connection of learning activities with external learning applications and services. These questions have raised concern, mostly because of the excessive commitment of the creators’ methods and tools used with an educational modeling language, as well as the isolation of the language used to describe the course from the host LMS. This work describes an abstract, extendible language used to specify the learning design of a course, which can be transformed into any LD language as required by the execution environment. The language is used from a generative authoring environment that offers the possibility of editing web services as an additional resource to assess learning activities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, the authors describe a mechanism for the introduction of small variations in the original learning design process defined in a particular Unit of Learning (UoL). The objective is to increase the UoL reusability by offering the designers an alternative to introduce slight variations on the original design instead of creating a new one each time they want to reuse it. No changes or extensions to the Learning Design definition are required to perform these modifications. The use of design patterns to include the adaptations offers the possibility to easily introduce new operations, such as tracing the activity progress, for instance. The structure of a Learning Design player that is able to process the desired adaptation information and to apply it at runtime will be outlined. The player will be part of an architecture for the automatic adaptation of UoLs to their actual context of execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of code quality control platforms for analysing source code is increasingly gaining attention in the developer community. These platforms are prepared to parse and check source code written in a variety of general-purpose programming languages. The emergence of domain-specific languages enables professionals from different areas to develop and describe problem solutions in their disciplines. Thus, source code quality analysis methods and tools can also be applied to software artefacts developed with a domain-specific language. To evaluate the quality of domain-specific language code, every software component required by the quality platform to parse and query the source code must be developed. This becomes a time-consuming and error-prone task, for which this paper describes a model-driven interoperability strategy that bridges the gap between the grammar formats of source code quality parsers and domain-specific text languages. This approach has been tested on the most widespread platforms for designing text-based languages and source code analysis. This interoperability approach has been evaluated on a number of specific contexts in different domain areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of programming skills is a barrier to the engagement of teachers in the development and customisation of their own applications. Visual Environment for Designing Interactive Learning Scenarios (VEDILS), a visual tool for designing, customising and deploying learning technologies, provides teachers with a development environment with a low entry threshold. Current mobile devices are equipped with sensors and have sufficient processing power to use augmented reality technologies. Despite the heavy use of mobile devices in students’ lives, the use of augmented reality mobile applications as learning tools is not widespread among teachers. The current work presents a framework comprising the development tool and a method for designing and deploying learning activities. It focuses on the augmented reality components of the authoring tools, which allow users to create their own mobile augmented reality learning apps. It also present the results of the evaluation of the framework with 47 third-level educators, and two case studies of classroom implementations of mobile augmented reality apps developed by these educators. The results illustrate the suitability of the framework and authoring tool for supporting users without programming skills in developing their own apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious games are games with an educational purpose. In these games, players develop their skills by facing a number of challenges, and students are assessed according to their game playing behaviour. Assessment of serious game-based learning experiences has to take into account diverse features as game genre, pedagogical aim or game context. This paper analyses how skills are usually assessed in learning experiences based on serious games. To reach this objective, a systematic mapping study of more than 400 papers is undertaken. Papers were identified and classified according to a framework based on four categories: assessment aim, implementation, integration and primary assessment type. The reviewed literature mainly deals with contributions on methods and approaches for serious games. Results have revealed that most assessment methods are applied for a formative purpose more than for a certification purpose. Most frequent implementations such as game scoring and integrations like monitoring states were also uncovered. The main primary type of assessment detected was in-process. In addition, several limitations were found in the assessment methods: regarding the aim of assessment, certification of previous or attained skills was usually implemented out of the game; the scope of some implementations was limited because results were predefined earlier; and most of methods analysed present scalability issues because they rely on manual assessments. Such findings are analysed and discussed to clarify the state of the art and provide recommendations for further work in the area of serious games-based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose In a project-based learning experience, the detailed monitoring of the activities in which team members participate can be useful to evaluate their work. However, the project activity produces a large amount of data that can be hardly assessed by a single project supervisor. This poses a scalability issue if the number of users or projects size increases. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to make the assessment of online learning experiences more sustainable.Design/methodology/approach This paper describes a learning-oriented collaborative assessment method, supported by an open data framework. Also, an architecture for the extraction of different indicators to facilitate the assessment process is presented.Findings The assessment method and the open data framework were applied to a project-based course on web engineering. This experience has provided positive evidences because the grade measurement was backed up with assessment evidences and calculated with less effort.Research limitations/implications At the moment, results indicate that apparently there are no significant evidences against the sustainable evaluation practices for students’ summative evaluation. Nevertheless, when more data become available, a more statistically significant analysis could be made to determine the influence of the assessment practices in the final result of the evaluated skills.Originality/value In contrast to various existing proposals for e-assessment, the strategy focuses on assessing learning experiences in software development projects. Also, the approach is based on the reuse of information from external process supporting tools by integrating a number of metrics in a non-intrusive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, companies are adopting service-oriented architectures to respond to rapid changes in the market. Even though there are excellent tools and frameworks for service-oriented architecture adoption and service development, the latest adaptation to context has not been properly dealt with yet. Current approaches are mostly focused on solving context-aware issues for web applications only, focusing mainly on client-side adaptation, and there is a clear lack of context taxonomies which facilitate context-aware applications. In our previous work we proposed Model-Driven Adaptable Services (MoDAS): a methodology and tool for the development of context-aware services. In this paper, we propose two key improvements on MoDAS: firstly, leveraging the proposal’s abstraction level, facilitating the use of a larger collection of contexts through the definition of an extensible context taxonomy by means of a metamodel; secondly, providing additional opportunities for code generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of computer-supported learning systems is a complex task that must take into account diverse issues and perspectives. Given the difficulties attached to this process, different authors have proposed the use of software engineering as a reference to optimize the courseware development process. Following this trend, and given the efficiency of the outcomes, it seems convenient to adapt existing product line development principles from software engineering to the development of learning resources. The purpose of this paper is to postulate a specific analysis method for computer-supported learning systems that guarantees the quality of the development. This specific analysis method can facilitate the learning object reusability and minimize the relevance of the expertise in the development of learning resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of European Higher Education students face an increasing focus on independent, individual learning-at the expense of face-to-face interaction. Hence learners are, all too often, not provided with enough opportunities to negotiate in the target language. The current case study aims to address this reality by going beyond conventional approaches to provide students with a hybrid game-based app, combining individual and collaborative learning opportunities. The 4-week study was carried out with 104 German language students (A1.2 CEFR) who had previously been enrolled in a first-semester A1.1 level course at a Spanish university. The VocabTrainerA1 app-designed specifically for this study-harnesses the synergy of combining individual learning tasks and a collaborative murder mystery game in a hybrid level-based architecture. By doing so, the app provides learners with opportunities to apply their language skills to real-life-like communication. The purpose of the study was twofold: on one hand we aimed to measure learner motivation, perceived usefulness and added value of hybrid game-based apps; on the other, we sought to determine their impact on language learning. To this end, we conducted focus group interviews and an anonymous Technology Acceptance Model survey (TAM). In addition, students took a pre-test and a post-test. Scores from both tests were compared with the results obtained in first-semester conventional writing tasks, with a view to measure learning outcomes. The study provides qualitative and quantitative data supporting our initial hypotheses. Our findings suggest that hybrid game-based apps like VocabTrainerA1-which seamlessly combine individual and collaborative learning tasks-motivate learners, stimulate perceived usefulness and added value, and better meet the language learning needs of today's digital natives. In terms of acceptance, outcomes and sustainability, the data indicate that hybrid game-based apps significantly improve proficiency, hence are indeed, effective tools for enhanced language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic idea of service-oriented learning is that a learning environment should be conceived as a set of independent units of learning packaged as learning services. The design, development and deployment of a learning system based on integrating different learning services needs both a technological platform to support the system as well as a methodology that manages the development process. Such technological platform is provided by the Service-Oriented Learning Architecture (SOLA). SOLA proposes an architecture style, which defines how to deploy several units of packeged-learning services. The purpose of this paper is to review the SOLA concept and to present a specific method based on specifying instructional domains, to complement the SOLA approach. Our method suggests the definition of a feature model, which represents the characteristics of the instructional domain, in order to address the identification and clasiffication of candidate services. The approach here proposed facilitates the definition of candidate-learning services in order to enhance the integration of such services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]