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This study looks at OpenCourseWare (OCW) in Spain, a country where most public universities have tried to promote that particular model of open educational resources (OER) provision among academics. Using three universities with varying levels of OCW activity as a case study, this article examines key drivers behind the implementation of OCW initiatives and unpacks what it means, as an academic practice, to engage in OCW authoring. Following a qualitative case study approach and a multi-methods design, this study offers a basis for theoretical generalisations that can be useful for understanding similar dynamics taking place within different organisational contexts in Spain and beyond. The findings reveal a major disconnect between the drive to implement OCW initiatives in Spain and actual opportunities for academics to engage with them as part of their work. The author concludes that the extrapolation of a highly prescriptive model of OER provision into institutional realities different from the context where it was originally devised--in this case, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States--is rather problematic. The article also provides some recommendations to university leaders and policy makers, encouraging the creation of alternative models that are mindful of the institutional and cultural specificities of their own contexts and also to take into consideration the social and material realities of the communities they aim to provide with lifelong learning opportunities.

The study analyzes the improvement in generic competences through e-portfolio/PLE platform and didactic planning. The new version of the platform, Digital Folder, contains utilities for students and teachers and some PLE components that help the learning process through e-portfolios. Didactic planning is compared for students from the University of Vic and the University of Barcelona, with a total of 61 participants. A questionnaire has been applied for measuring the use of functions and how much these functions aid in the improvement of the generic competences (reflection, planning and selection of information). The results confirm that the most helpful functions for students are: the Schedule, the Academic tasks, the Teacher's portfolio and Dialogue with the teacher. However, the implication of these functions in the improvement of the competences depends on didactic planning overall for reflection on learning.

In this technological era we live in, the educative scenario is changing rapidly and significantly due to the incorporation of the Internet. Therefore, education should pay special attention to society needs considering the information and communication technologies (TICs) essentially in the teaching process in order to make students ready for this changing society. This paper is focused on the implementation, assessment and analysis of a computer-based approach, a WebQuest, in a third year of compulsory secondary education. The didactic unit implemented deals with the different English-speaking countries and their particularities. The new approach has been carried out using in-class sessions together with autonomous work and group work. The purpose of this study is to analyse and discuss students' opinions and reactions towards the use of this new teaching and learning strategy in an English as a Second Language class. In this sense, the study aims at showing whether students 1) gain a higher motivation in learning English, 2) have improved their digital competence and 3) have acquired cultural competence. The results show that the use of new technologies have motivated students towards the teaching and learning of the English subject, improving their digital competence as well as their cultural competence.

A large number of emergent technologies have been acquiring a strong impulse in recent years. One of these emergent technologies is Augmented Reality (RA), which will surely have a high level of penetration into all our educational centers, including universities, in the next 3 to 5 years, as a number of different reports have already highlighted. The present paper shows various elements which, in our opinion, play an essential role when it comes to the incorporation of Augmented Reality into teaching, stressing the fact that this incorporation should not entail a technological problem but an educational and didactic issue. A mention is additionally made of several studies which have been performed with regard to the didactic exploitation of this emergent technology, as well as to the potential that it offers us. Our study forms part of an R&D&I initiative undertaken within the framework of the "Plan Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia" 2013-2016 [2013-16 State (National) Plan for the Promotion of Excellence Scientific and Technical Research], with reference EDU2014-57446-P.

Semantic Web technologies have been applied in educational settings for different purposes in recent years, with the type of application being mainly defined by the way in which knowledge is represented and exploited. The basic technology for knowledge representation in Semantic Web settings is the ontology, which represents a common, shareable and reusable view of a particular application domain. Ontologies can support different activities in educational settings such as organizing course contents, classifying learning objects or assessing learning levels. Consequently, ontologies can become a very useful tool from a pedagogical perspective. This paper focuses on two different experiences where Semantic Web technologies are used in educational settings, the difference between them lying in how knowledge is obtained and represented. On the one hand, the OeLE platform uses ontologies as a support for assessment processes. Such ontologies have to be designed and implemented in semantic languages apt to be used by OeLE. On the other hand, the ENSEMBLE project pursues the development of semantic web applications by creating specific knowledge representations drawn from user needs. Our paper is consequently going to offer an in-depth analysis of the role played by ontologies, showing how they can be used in different ways drawing a comparison between model patterns and examining the ways in which they can complement each other as well as their practical implications.

We survey here the state-of-the-art in open courseware initiatives worldwide. First, the MIT OpenCourseWare project is overviewed, as it has been the real starting point of the OCW movement. Usually, open courseware refers to a free and open digital publication of high quality university level educational materials that are organized as courses, and include course planning materials, evaluation tools, and thematic content, under a Creative Commons license. OCW is free and open, accessible to anyone, anywhere, and anytime via the Internet. The OCW initiative started in 2002, and it has been followed by many more programs that offer open access to courseware: Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, Harvard Medical School's MyCourses, Webcast.Berkeley, Rice University's Connexions, OpenCourseWare Consortium, Open Education Resources Commons, and The Saylor Foundation's Free Education Initiative, along with other major open courseware projects worldwide. The prospects for futur development of open courseware are taken into consideration, while its potential to provide for both social construction of knowledge and for development of open educational models, and therefore for E-Learning 2.0 and Web 2.0 is emphasized.

The increasing demand for high quality innovative foreign language teaching and learning materials led the CAMILLE R&D Group at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) to design a completely online language-independent authoring tool and content manager to allow teachers from around the world to design and deliver tailor-made online courseware that would suit their learners' needs and which could be immediately modified or updated according to particular needs. This system is known as the "InGenio" System and comprises four modules: the authoring tool, the delivery platform, an online tutoring system and a module to allow authors to adapt their materials into different support languages. This paper aims to describe the specific functionalities that are embedded in "InGenio" designed to integrate specific feedback to support language acquisition in the language courses designed with the "InGenio" authoring tool. (Contains 4 figures.)

E-learning can be defined as learning facilitated and supported through the use of ICTs. ICTs can increase students' motivation, accelerate the knowledge process and facilitate the information access. The aim of this paper is to analyze the acceptability of three tools presented in a workshop carried out during six weeks, with university teachers (N = 22), taking into account their opinion about the usefulness of the workshop. Two researchers/teachers specializing in the field of educational technologies taught the three tools presented. Before the workshop, we administered a technology profile questionnaire; after it, we asked the teachers to fill in a questionnaire about the workshop and the tools used. We then carried out a non-parametric Friedman test to compare the differences found in the evaluation of the tools. The results show that the acceptability of the technologies and the methodology used during the workshop was high: teachers' assessment and opinion has been favorable for both pedagogy and teaching methodology, which facilitated the understanding of the tools and the innovative nature of the contents of the workshop. The participants also evaluated the technologies as appropriate and easy to use. We also mention the limitations of the study and future challenges.

The synthesis of digital circuits is a basic skill in all the bachelor programmes around the ICT area of knowledge, such as Computer Science, Telecommunication Engineering or Electrical Engineering. An important hindrance in the learning process of this skill is that the existing educational tools for the design of circuits do not allow the student to validate if his design satisfies the specification. Furthermore, an automatic feedback is essential in order to help students to fix incorrect designs. In this paper, we propose an online platform where the students can design and verify their circuits with an individual and automatic feedback. The technical aspects of the platform and the designed verification tool are presented. The impact of the platform on the learning process of the students is illustrated by analyzing the student performance on the course where the platform has been used. Results on the utilization of the platform versus the success rate and marks in the final exam are presented and compared with previous semesters.

The aim of this study is to test collaborative concept mapping activities using computers in a classroom scenario and to evaluate the possibilities that Elkar-CM offers for collaboratively learning non-technical topics. Elkar-CM is a multi-lingual and multi-media software program designed for drawing concept maps (CMs) collaboratively. Concept mapping is a widely accepted technique that promotes meaningful learning. Graphically representing concepts of the learning domain and relationships between them helps students integrate new knowledge into their current cognitive structure. This study was carried out with Social Education degree students at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). The experiment included two learning activities. First, all students collaboratively constructed in the classroom a CM on the subject of Moral Development. Second, students were organised into groups to complete the CM generated in the first part.

In the teaching of computer networks the main problem that arises is the high price and limited number of network devices the students can work with in the laboratories. Nowadays, with virtualization we can overcome this limitation. In this paper, we present a methodology that allows students to learn advanced computer network concepts through hands-on experience with the VNUML-UM virtualization tool, which is offered freely as a resource for the practical teaching of mobility, load balancing, and high availability. To verify the utility of using the VNUML-UM virtualization tool in the teaching of advanced computer network concepts, we have performed some opinion polls to the students during the last three academic years. The obtained results confirm that our students agree that the VNUML-UM enables an enhanced learning process of the different concepts and their practical skills. This perception is also confirmed by the final marks obtained by the students, which have considerably improved along the years. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first experience that provides results on the use of virtualization to teach advanced concepts in the field of computer networks.

This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were used under Avalon (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline), an EU co-funded project aimed at developing language-learning scenarios in virtual worlds. The introduction and background summarize some of the theories that constitute the starting points for the designs and are followed by a discussion of how the affordances of virtual worlds support the communicative language-learning model used in the project. The authors' main focus then turns to pedagogic design, where the authors present the methods used during the project and some generic aspects of course designs that were developed. The article ends with a more specific look at examples of task design from the courses given under the project framework.

Electronic learning (e-learning) portals can be defined as websites that store and present materials for online learning, training, performance assessment, and certification. Few, if any, studies have investigated the factors that might contribute to the integration or implementation of e-learning portals in universities. With the development of this article, we intend to address the following questions: Does availability of ICT imply the use of e-learning portals? How is ICT being used by students? This article examines the relative importance and significance of three types of ICT (Internet, Groupware, and Collective systems) relating to the use of e-learning portal through an empirical investigation of 210 students in a Spanish university using a multinomial logistic regression. The results support that by effectively developing higher levels of Groupware systems, teachers empower students to make better, more informed decisions--and facilitate the utilization of e-learning portals. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

Universities can offer eLearning 2.0 tools and services to learners while obtaining clear benefits from releasing the control over some learning content. This means a shift from the institution centred and monolithic model of traditional virtual learning environments (VLEs) to a more heterogeneous and open model. This article tries to plot an architecture to be put in practice by universities to give learners the control of their learning processes by using eLearning 2.0. We propose an institutionally powered personal learning environment (iPLE) that constitutes our vision of how Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, starting pages), services ("del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube") and people arrangement and data sharing (social networking, learn-streaming) could be applied in an integrated manner to learning processes. First, this article justifies the suitability for a PLE in the context of eLearning 2.0 and European Higher Education Area. Second, an overview of the evolution from VLEs to PLEs is given, and different PLE approaches are reviewed. Third, the concept of an iPLE is presented, and a conceptual architecture for it is detailed. Finally, this article also describes the technological aspects of a prototype of iPLE Network designed for the University of the Basque Country, which will be used as a test-bed for a case study in the Faculty of Medicine. (Contains 4 figures.)

Design pattern creation, especially in the e-learning domain, is a highly complex process that has not been sufficiently studied and formalized. In this paper, we propose a systematic pattern development cycle, whose most important aspects focus on reverse engineering of existing systems in order to elicit features that are cross-validated through the use of appropriate, authentic scenarios. However, an iterative pattern process is proposed that takes advantage of multiple data sources, thus emphasizing a holistic view of the teaching - learning processes. The proposed schema of pattern mining has been extensively validated for Asynchronous Network Supported Collaborative Learning (ANSCL) systems, as well as for other types of tools in a variety of scenarios, with promising results. (Contains 3 figures.)

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) has been shown to be an efficient learning-teaching procedure. Although there is an extensive educational software tradition using CAL approaches, few of them have demonstrated a better student performance than standard drill and practice methods. The purpose of this study was (a) to evaluate the effectiveness of the "Let's Play With..." software program, and (b) to evaluate the effectiveness of a prompt (i.e. a blinking object) used in the program. The educational software "Let's Play With..." was designed to teach basic concepts involving shapes and body positions to preschool students. The software structure follows a behavioral design and uses a stimulus control procedure. The study was carried out with 64 preschool students in the Cadiz (Spain) School District. Statistically significant differences were found between the experimental group and a control group.

Describes microcomputer-based courseware designed for the simulation of the microbiological analysis of drinking water, including digitalized color images. The use of HyperCard is described and evaluation procedures are explained, including evaluation of the learning and of the class. The evaluation questionnaires are appended. (20 references) (LRW)

Description of Atenea, the Spanish National Project for Computers in Education, focuses on the use of computer simulation and modeling in elementary and secondary education. Highlights include system dynamics, training courses for teachers, a microcomputer-based software package called System Dynamics Simulator for Education (SDSE), and a list of ready-made models. (LRW)

The potential of DTIC has brought new and emerging challenges to teachers, making it essential to acquire digital competences, especially in virtual learning environments and online technologies. In this sense, based on the DigCompEdu CheckIn self-assessment questionnaire, validated for the Portuguese population by earlier studies, this research aims to identify the most fragile and robust areas of digital competences of Portuguese and Spanish university teachers. The quantitative methodological approach emphasizes teachers' perception of their digital competences in three dimensions: teachers' professional competences, teachers' pedagogical competences and students' competences and involved 347 teachers from Portugal and Spain. The results show that teachers of the two institutions have an overall moderate level of digital proficiency--level B1 and B2--and that the differences encountered between Portuguese and Spanish teachers (for example, Portuguese teachers have level A2 in area 4--assessment--, while Spanish teachers are already at level B2) highlight the need to invest in specific training that may address specific frailties, and therefore allow for the promotion of their digital competences. Results relating to teaching experience and age show that there is no direct relation between either factor or being digitally competent. Regarding gender, results reveal that men had slightly better results than women. Overall, what the results show is the need for teachers to increase the level of digital competence through specific training, prepared according to the specificities of each institution, and the importance of developing public policies that prepare teachers for a more digital education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of Virtual Exchange (VE) on the development of global citizenship competences. One hundred and six participants from universities in Mexico, Poland, Spain, and the USA took part in a 6-week synchronous VE. Adapting Reysen, S., and Katzarska-Miller, I. (2013. A model of global citizenship: Antecedents and outcomes. International Journal of Psychology, 48(5), 858–870. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.701749) survey, VE participants were asked to rate global citizenship and their approval for prosocial values and behaviours such as: intergroup empathy and valuing diversity. These results, along with qualitative analyses of open-ended questions, provided evidence of global citizenship development. This development illustrates how instructors could implement VE that could include tasks aiming at fostering global citizenship development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Spanish Journal of Comparative Education / Revista Española de Educación Comparada is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Educar is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Servei de Publicacions and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education & Law Review / Revista de Educación y Derecho is the property of Revista de Educacion y Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyzes the current situation of English language teaching (more particularly TESOL) to adults with Special Educational Needs (hereinafter SEN) in Spain from a double perspective. On the one hand, a qualitative study on teaching experiences with adult students with some type of disability is presented. The conclusions of this study shed light on the difficulties detected and the strategies implemented for teaching English. On the other hand, the resources most commonly used in the field of virtual teaching to increase and improve the skills of these students are reviewed. Finally, the authors describe an on-going European project that implements a Virtual Learning Environment (hereinafter VLE) where the principles of Universal Design are incorporated to facilitate the formative access to learning English as a second language to adult students with SEN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Calidoscópio is the property of Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Pixel-Bit, Revista de Medios y Educacion is the property of Pixel-Bit, Revista de Medios y Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study is focused on applying a competence-based education model to the Projects subject at the School of Industrial Engineering, University of Vigo. The aim has been to try to adapt to Bologna Process before it affects the subject in order to gain experience, to apply learned lesson and to change the working method and teacher's assessment. The two pillars of this experience have been: Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Virtual Learning. These two educational methodologies have been implemented in two consecutive stages, one year for each methodology. The paper will deal with this model design presentation; the different experienced training activities; the solutions that allowed for capacities, abilities and attitudes; organization criteria and some thoughts derived from its development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper on the study on the role of web 2.0 technologies and social software in formal learning is presented. It discusses the use of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in higher education institutions like Universitat Rovira Virgili (URV) in Tarragona, Catalonia in Spain for student's achievement of competences as well as social interaction and collaborative learning. It mentions the teaching-learning process through technological innovations and development of digital competence.

Copyright of RED - Revista de Educación a Distancia is the property of Universidad de Murcia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To guide and accompany the students throughout their academic career in making educational decisions of their itinerary, their area of expertise, or how to study and collaborate with their peers is an essential challenge in a virtual learning environment. In this sense, this work presents the tutorial model at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), especially how it is organised at the Psychology and Psychopedagogy degrees. Tutorial action at UOC is conceived as a mentor role which provides constant personalised support and guide to the student all along his/her academic life in the University. The tutorial action needs to be adapted to the student’s progress. The present work describes the main tutorial actions as well as the available resources for the tutor. One the most important agents implied in coordinating the tutorial action is what we call the tutorial working group. It designs, unfolds and constantly reviews the tutorial plans in each degree. These plans structure and facilitate the guiding role of the tutor by specifying which are the objectives, the actions and the tools to use in each tutorial phase. Finally, the main instruments to guarantee a quality tutorial action are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a quasi-experimental investigation with a pre-test/post-test control group design carried out in the second semester of the academic year 2006-2007 with Spanish pre-service English teachers at the University of Jaen in Spain. Its aim was to determine whether the use of virtual learning environments (VLE) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) could improve the teacher trainees' lexical competence. After outlining the rationale of the initiative, grounded on previous research outcomes and on the novelty of the experience, this article describes the actual project and study. It outlines the semantic fields, lexical aspects, vocabulary learning strategies, and activity types on which the project has focused and goes on to describe the research design and procedure of the investigation. It subsequently presents and discusses the results yielded by the latter. The limitations of the study, together with the lines for future research and the consequences which the project has had, are broached in the final section of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Innovacion Educativa is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Réseaux (07517971) is the property of Editions La Decouverte and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Andalusian Virtual Campus (CAV) allows students of any Andalusian university to enroll in online courses offered by any of the ten universities in Andalusia. It aims to highlight a case study and the need to evaluate the learning programme in order to identify gaps in the system with the aim of trying to improve them; to do so, peer -evaluation has been carried out in the course of Statistics and Tourism following an assessment procedure developed within the CAV. The results, once the evaluation was carried out, are essential for feedback and further improvement of teaching of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing demand for virtual platforms based on the concept of Web 2.0 and on Personal Learning Networks (PLN) as these guarantee conversations between educational agents and cooperation aimed at the joint knowledge production. From this point of view, Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) have emerged in which new applications adapted to users' needs are configured, integrated and combined. The ultimate purpose of this experience is the creation of a shared virtual environment to ensure that learning is not linked exclusively to rote activity. Through the combined use of the virtual platform, Web 2.0 tools and social networking, students can create their own workspace in which the search and processing of information, as well as the creation of learning resources and collaboration tasks are reflected. Our shared virtual learning environment has been tested, implemented and evaluated in the second semester, as part of the General Teaching Methodology course in the Faculty of Education at the University of Seville (Spain) during the 2009 - 2010 academic year. A survey reveals interesting facts about the success of the shared virtual environment in relation to the motivation and learning outcomes of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to perform the Spanish adaptation of the Networked Minds Social Presence Measure (Harms & Biocca, 2004) with 36 items, and specifically, to virtual learning environments, and on the other hand, to obtain a shortened version of it. In doing so, the scale reliability was analyzed, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes were performed, and also the relationship between social presence and perceived learning was studied, by means of two cross-sectional samples of university students (n = 270 and 315, respectively). Results show good instrument reliability, reproduce the original scale factor structure, and confirm a positive relationship of social presence with perceived learning. The adapted scale was reduced to 17 items. This allows us to have a shorter instrument which is adapted to the measure of social presence in virtual learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]