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Work-related stress is a dangerous and expensive problem because it affects performance, and, if prolonged, can even result in serious health problems. With the advance towards the ubiquitous use of digital technology at work, a new form of work-related stress is emerging: techno-stress. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have few, if any, resources to deal with this issue and lower access to experts. This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of a game-based training program, named DESTRESS, which aims to provide an innovative Vocational Education and Training (VET)-based solution to help managing this problem. Building on existing research, a curriculum was developed, supported by an innovative Digital Training Platform using the latest techniques in game-based training and gamification, complemented by a set of practical tools and resources to facilitate the transfer of learning into the workplace.

This article reports comparison results from studying the alignment of selected metadata models, used to manage E‑Learning Materials (ELM) in the medicine and healthcare education, against the accreditation standards of the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME). The study aims to (1) illustrate the variety of application profiles developed as metadata models in that field, (2) identify the alignment of the metadata models with the criteria set by the EACCME. This study com¬pared several application profiles, developed based on established metadata standards, using an evaluation matrix created using the accreditation criteria set by the EACCME. Further technical criteria were added to compare between the metadata models and their alignment with the new techniques used for publishing data online. Such techniques aid in the searchabililty and discovery of online content via the internet. Therefore, the use of XML and RDF technologies combined with the use of ontologies and controlled vocabulary was emphasized in the implementation of many metadata models. One limitation faced during conducting this research was the poor documentation of the methodology for designing the metadata models. Despite this, it is apparent that the EACCME criteria can work as best practices guidelines for describing the content of digital libraries with medical and healthcare content in order to be accredited later on. The study showed that the medicine and healthcare educational content requires specialized metadata models that consider having specific properties such as clinical history and expiry time of its material shown in some of the application profiles. Further research should be conducted to evaluate the completeness and conformity of applying the application profiles in digital libraries and online repositories to the standards’ guidelines.

Communities of practice are meant to generate knowledge through voluntary interaction between their members. With the expansion of electronic communication means these communities became virtual, in the sense that most of the innercommunication and collaboration are supported by synchronous and asynchronous electronic tools. However, research data shows that most of these virtual communities have great difficulty in reaching and maintaining healthy levels of activity. Gamification proposes to transfer the kind of intrinsic motivation found in games to increase the likeability and engagement in non-game contexts. Therefore it can be an approach to increase the member participation in communities of practice and, therefore, their chance to survive. Nevertheless, although gamification has proven useful in a number of cases, its implementation has to be carefully designed according to the intended audience to be effective.

There are many questions that must be addressed in the design of teaching-learning situations/scenarios. They include: how to adapt content/activities to learner´s specific needs; how to plan corrective feedback; how to fit teaching-learning-assessment techniques to a specific educational context; how to choose the educational tools more appropriate to a teaching-learning-assessment method; how to choose a language to express a pedagogical model; how to adequate the teaching-learning-assessment activities deployment to a specific educational format (distance, face-to-face or blending learning). Currently, educators, teachers included, are faced with those questions and therefore the development of teaching-learning systems is vital to help them in the design of learning situations in order to alleviate their burden in preparing lessons or teaching-learning activities. This paper presents an overview of a set of mechanisms that can help educators taking informed decisions when designing teaching-learning scenarios. To this end, a survey of the most relevant computer-based teaching-learning systems since 1960 along with developments in the learning and the instruction domains are presented. In addition, reflections on educational material design, teaching-learning activities more specifically, are also introduced. Those considerations aim at bridging the gap between relevant theoretical aspects and the teachers’ daily activities in the design of teaching-learning scenarios. Finally, this paper introduces our proposed model for automatic recommendation of teaching-learning techniques to support teachers in designing of teaching-learning activities.

Game-based learning and Problem-based learning are two different approaches that share some common principles about learning: student motivation and engagement, competence-based development, learning-by-doing, etc. eCity project aims at combining these two approaches to support students on solving engineering problems using an urban simulator environment. In this way, students will be able to tackle with issues such as: mobile network deployment, electricity supply, pollution control, flooding prevention, etc. This paper introduces similar systems and projects considering both the state of the art in urban game platforms and best practices in the use of games to support education. The paper also introduces the engineering games that are being developed in eCity and proposes a problem-based methodology to guide the integration of the proposed problems in the classroom.

Digital Games can be effective as learning tools, in applications that can be designated as Serious Games (SG), Games for Learning (GL) or Games-based learning (GBL). SG provide challenges in accordance with the intended learning objectives and can adapt and/or repeat (by allowing error recovering) them according to the learner’s level. In training, this aspect is decisive in the acquisition of knowledge, experience and professional skills. The effectiveness of games-based training is directly related to the success on how the challenges promote the acquisition of skills, for which there is no optimal design methodology. This paper presents how a study that identifies the most appropriate game genres to develop specific skills and competences can be used to provide initial solutions to serious games design methodologies. The Triadic Certification model combines the competences defined for each training plan with the challenges designed for the serious games on a matrix that matches the needs and levels.

The creation of computer-based design tools to help teachers in designing learning scenarios, more precisely teaching-learning activities, has great importance in education. Those tools are most valuable if enriched with special features as, for example, templates, scripts or wizards used to guide the teacher through the design process. Recommendation mechanisms anchored in solid theoretical achievements are currently a huge challenge in the scientific research. This paper presents a proposal for teaching-learning techniques recommendation supported by an ontological modeling approach. The recommendation aims to assist educators in designing of teaching-learning activities. The recommendation process is part of the ACEM model which integrates an authoring design tool. We propose that the recommendation mechanism will help teachers preparing those activities and improving the use of different learning techniques.

Serious Games are specifically designed to develop mental abilities and skills such as strategy, mental calculation and decision making but the acquisition of deep knowledge with Serious Games is less well understood. To improve this understanding, a game called TimeMesh, as well as the needed graphic engine, called TimeMesh engine, -a multi-player graphical adventure engine inspired by the 90s graphic adventures created by LucasArts- have been developed. Time--Mesh has been designed to impart knowledge and competences in the area of History and Geography.To test the acquisition of knowledge with Time-mesh a complete process of evaluation was designed, divided in three parts, always with user intervention: first, with the game developers, then with teachers and lastly, but most importantly with students.In this paper we present our experience in designing, implementing and evaluating TimeMesh and formulate the conclusions of this study.

Students worldwide find very difficult to learn sciences. Therefore there is a need to find innovative ways to motivate students and help them learn. One possible way is the inclusion of technology in the classroom because it is a familiar environment for these students, the digital natives. This article addresses the specific use of simulators as a means to improve the learning of Physics. The aim of this work is to design, develop and test a virtual reality simulator that allows experiencing / feeling various forces of physics such as the friction force, the aerodynamic force and the gravitational force. To give more realism to the man-machine interaction the simulator uses a haptic interface.

A simple evaluation question for any educational software is: did the students learn, by using that product, what they were supposed to? It is a simple question to ask, but difficult to answer because learning is an individual process and there are normally too many factors involved. Therefore, benchmarking educational software is a complex task and a complete evaluation process requires a holistic approach where the evaluator, in order to understand how students learn, must determine how and whether the learning objectives were achieved with the educational software. When we talk about Game-Based Learning, we refer to a very specific type of educational software, games, with very definite properties and characteristics. Games develop personal characteristics that can contribute to becoming a good engineer. The purpose of this article is to present an evaluation framework that assesses the efficiency of this pedagogical approach in Engineering Education.

In Engineering Education, the traditional process of knowledge building was based on one-way (teacher->student) delivery of information, in classrooms. Students were passive receptors of the teacher's messages. In the past few years, the tendency is to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. The interaction between teacher and students is more dynamic, enhanced by technological tools and includes rich content and flexible activities. The integration of Virtual Environments in Engineering Education allows new and innovative learning methods and is, therefore, a contribution to these new paradigms. This article presents the instantiation of these learning methods with first year engineering students. In our study, students were involved in simulation/gaming environments related to fundamental physics learning. Afterwards their knowledge was tested and their perception of the relevance of the system was evaluated. Results show that knowledge construction was greatly enhanced and that student's motivation for learning was increased.

In this article, authors present the objectives of the EU ERASMUS CD project: European Study Programme for Advanced Networking Technologies (ESPANT). Major novelties in the development of one year curriculum long and lifelong learning oriented are discussed. The competences design aspects are described and a Syllabus contents presented as a crucial methodology to develop the ESPANT innovative teaching approach. In ESPANT, training has place in a realistic, real world environment rather than an artificial lab setup where operational competences rather than the reproduction of theoretical details play a central role. Flexibility of the Teaching/Learning paradigm is guaranteed by implementing educational novelties such as e-learning, video conferencing and distance learning.

In this paper we discuss how the inclusion of semantic functionalities in a Learning Objects Repository allows a better characterization of the learning materials enclosed and improves their retrieval through the adoption of some query expansion strategies. Thus, we started to regard the use of ontologies to automatically suggest additional concepts when users are filling some metadata fields and add new terms to the ones initially provided when users specify the keywords with interest in a query. Dealing with different domain areas and having considered impractical the development of many different ontologies, we adopted some strategies for reusing ontologies in order to have the knowledge necessary in our institutional repository. In this paper we make a review of the area of knowledge reuse and discuss our approach.

European Study Program for Advanced Networking Technologies (ESPANT) is a two semester study program, jointly developed by higher education institutions from Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia. It will support students in developing competences to cope with difficulties which are encountered in real world networking configurations. As this study program is designed for students from all over Europe and is run by partners from five European countries, it has to be implemented by means of blended learning activities, i.e. as a combination of traditional face-to-face instruction with student and staff mobility as well as independent learning in virtual learning environment, implemented by means of information and communication technology.

To be possible to reuse a learning object it is necessary to know its context of use and what learning outcomes can be achieved with it. Otherwise, its reuse will be limited to the learning object developers, the ones that know how to successfully apply it.In this paper we present a framework that describes the learning object in relation to one or more learning scenarios that incorporate it. Teachers can choose then the most suitable scenario for a particular learning situation.

Experiential learning reflects the idea of knowledge construction as a behavior change resulting from the interaction between the user and the environment leading to experiences, feelings and sensations. The use of virtual simulators in education is a path to foster experiential learning because they provide interactive environments that students can explore and observe. The use of haptic devices with these simulators adds a new dimension, touch, increasing their immersive capacity and the studentsâ?? attraction and interest. Physics is an area particularly well-suited for the application of haptic simulators. The study of forces, for instance, is an area normally taught in a very abstract and theoretical way and students have extreme difficulty in relating those concepts with their practical application. The â??Forces of Physicsâ? haptic simulator described in this article allows experimenting various forces of physics such as the friction force, the aerodynamic force and the gravitational force.

In this paper we describe a project that will develop and evaluate a model for learning object repositories, relating it to other projects. The model includes the semantic characterisation of learning objects and a description of how to use them in learning and teaching practices. This way we believe it will be possible to enhance reusability. The IMS Learning Design specification has been used in this work to pragmatically characterise Learning Objects (LOs). For each LO, practical examples are provided to demonstrate how it may be reused.

This paper introduces some pedagogical reflections about the “lights” and “shadows” of the MOOCs in higher education. It presents the main characteristics of those courses and proposes feasible potential scenarios of online learning recognitions. Currently, there are several modality to design the assessment in the massive courses, but the majority of them focus only on summative assessment function.