E-learning Ecosystem Research Articles

Improving Education in Programming via Interactive E-Learning Ecosystems

Improving Education in Programming via Interactive E-Learning Ecosystems

Enhancing Learning Outcomes and Student Engagement: Integrating E-Learning Innovations into Problem-Based Higher Education

With the rapid development of e-learning in higher education, this study explores the application of the problem-based learning (PBL) learning model in the e-learning ecosystem. This article explores the concept of participatory engagement in the e-learning ecosystem and integrates it with PBL theory through the use of ICT to support interaction and collaboration. The research method used is R&D learning models in the Heavy Equipment Technology course at Universitas Negeri Padang. The research findings should be interpreted cautiously due to limitations such as differences in contexts across various courses and factors related to technology implementation in the learning environment. The study results show that it can improve learning outcomes and students’ critical thinking skills. Specifically, 70% have implemented Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy Level C4 and above, aided by a self-reflection participation process that enables students to reflect on content, learning processes, and understanding through internal dialogue, generating new ideas and solutions. This is evidenced by the results of the Path Coefficients test with P-Value EE → LO 0.050 and PBL → LO 0.046, as well as Specific Indirect Effect EE → SPR → LO 0.003 and PBL → SPE → LO 0.047 where the value is ≤ 0.05. The implications include guidance for designing effective e-learning ecosystems and adaptive learning strategies in higher education. Future research is recommended to further explore the impact of this integration and develop more effective PBL models in diverse courses and other educational institutions.

The Role of Educational Factors in the Success of Corporate E-Learning: A Case Study

The main purpose of this study is to determine the role of critical success factors in corporate e-learning. The research was designed according to a holistic single case study, one of the qualitative research designs. According to the critical situation sampling, the research sample was determined, and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews with eight senior bank managers. The data were analyzed according to content analysis using the MAXQDA qualitative analysis package program. Analysis results show seven critical success factors for corporate e-learning: staying in the environment and continuity, content quality, compliance with learning goals, accessibility, content attractiveness, interaction, and corporate communication support. According to the analysis findings, staying in the environment and continuity are the most critical success factors in e-learning. This study offers an andrological framework at the institutional level instead of research that focuses on students generally and provides a pedagogical framework for evaluating e-learning success. The research results are essential in revealing the necessity of a macro perspective in evaluating the success of the e-learning ecosystem consisting of individuals, the environment, institutions, education, and technology. This research is also original and essential in contributing to the employees seeing the factors that prevent the benefit they expect from e-learning

Flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design in open, distance and e-learning

Pedagogical contingency policy planning in open distance and e-learning plays a critical role in achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with the aim to stem poverty, protect the planet, foster gender equality, defend and promote cultures and cultural understanding, and ensure prosperity for all. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe criticalities of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning designs in open, distance and e-learning in developing states like South Africa. Furthermore, it examines epistemologies of diverse students’ pedagogic inclusion in line with social justice and equal rights during strategic planning and management. The legal rational paradigm is underpinned by a qualitative narrative research design to analyse available theories and epistemologies of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning theories in open distance and e-learning. Using the theory of justice by Rawls, the paper recommends that flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning in open, distance and e-learning ecosystems must ensure that students from diverse backgrounds are catered for in line with social justice and equal rights values and principles. This is critical for a country like South Africa to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

E-learning ecosystem metaphor: building sustainable education for the post-COVID-19 era

E-learning ecosystem metaphor: building sustainable education for the post-COVID-19 era

E-learning ecosystem metaphor: building sustainable education for the post-COVID-19 era

E-learning ecosystem metaphor: building sustainable education for the post-COVID-19 era

Designing an extended smart classroom: An approach to game‐based learning for IoT

This article presents a game-based learning model implemented in a smart learning environment. The goal is to determine students' interest, willingness to participate, and impressions about game-based learning, which takes place in interaction with the smart classroom. The educational game was designed and implemented by harnessing advanced web, mobile, Internet of Things (IoTs) technologies, and augmented reality and integrated into an e-learning ecosystem based on Moodle platform. The game aimed to test students' knowledge in the field of IoT. For the evaluation, an experiment was conducted within the IoT-related courses at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. The results show that the proposed approach has a positive impact on the learning process and that the integration of educational games into common learning management systems is a good practice for extending common formal learning models. The proposed approach is expected to contribute to introducing smart learning environments into the learning process in higher education.

NOTA: a novel online teaching and assessment scheme using Blockchain for emergency cases.

Technology advancements promote a redefinition of traditional instructional methodologies, as well as the roles of teachers and learners towards an efficient e-learning ecosystem. To date, all existing solutions are combined with the conventional face-to-face learning process. However, the latter can be unexpectedly hindered in some emergency cases, like the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To handle such unexpected scenarios, this paper presents NOTA, a novel online teaching and assessment scheme that takes advantage of Blockchain technology to maintain the expected teaching quality and assessment fairness while respecting the courses’ and examinations’ schedule. Besides, NOTA also motivates both learners and teachers to persist in their endeavours, even from home, through Blockchain’s incentive strategies. The preliminary results taken during the CoronaVirus period showed a very high satisfaction ratio, exceeding the 90%. This made us feel very optimistic about the potential of our proposal when deployed at a larger scale.

Learning Ecosystem using New Normal Active Administrative Innovation in Thai Society

: Learning ecosystem has been using in educational context in different areas to enhance the development of leaning ability in current situation. The purpose of this article was to propose learning ecosystem using new normal active administrative innovation in Thai society. Documentary study and qualitative research synthesis were used for the study. Results showed that 1) there are four aspects to consider of setting learning ecosystem that consisted of learning differently, supportive collaborative learning, self-directed learning, and thinking utilization. 2) New normal active administrative innovation is an active administration applying constructivism concept that consisted of knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. The nature of innovation should have relative advantage, compatibility, less complexity, divisibility, and visibility. 3) e-Learning Ecosystem will be applied in new normal active administrative innovation with 3 aspects consisted of (1) content providers offer content for learning solutions that is linked to competency development and personal development, (2) consultants which are strategy consultant, compensation consultant, information technology consultants, and implementation consultants, and (3) Infrastructure which are learning content management system, content delivery system and tools. Learning ecosystem is not started from how teacher design the lesson, but it will start from acceptance the difference of learners, teachers, parents, and community by performing roles of giving and taking knowledge from learners on supportive collaborative learning

Sustainable Development of E-Learning Ecosystems: Higher Education in India Post-COVID-19

Sustainable Development of E-Learning Ecosystems: Higher Education in India Post-COVID-19

Application of augmented reality technologies for education projects preparation

After analysis of scientific literature, we defined that concept of “augmented reality” has following synonyms: “advanced reality”, “improved reality”, “enriched reality”, “mixed reality” and “hybrid reality”. Analysis of scientific literature and own practical experience of the use of augmented reality technologies application in educational practices allowed to state next: augmented reality technologies have a great potential for application in education; there are some cases of augmented reality use for school education; positive aspects of augmented reality technologies application in higher education institutions are confirmed by experiments (isolated cases); only few universities in Ukraine apply augmented reality technologies to educate students; only few universities in Ukraine have special subjects or modules in schedule to teach students to develop augmented reality technologies; various scientific events, mass events, competitions are held in Ukraine, and specialized training on the augmentation of augmented reality technologies is carried out, but this is non-systematic and does not have special state orientation and support. Features of introduction of virtual and augmented reality technologies at Sumy State University (Ukraine) are identified: “e-learning ecosystems” was created; in 2019, augmented and virtual reality research laboratory was established. Advantages and disadvantages of project activity in education are described: project activity is one of the most important components of educational process; it promotes creative self-development and self-realization of project implementers and forms various life competencies. It is determined that augmented reality application for implementation of educational projects will help: to increase students’ interest for educational material; formation of new competences; increase of students’ motivation for independent educational and cognitive activity; activation of educational activities; formation of positive motivation for personal and professional growth; conditions creation for development of personal qualities (creativity, teamwork, etc.). Current trends in implementation of educational projects were identified: most of the winner projects were implemented using augmented reality technology; augmented reality technologies were used in projects to teach different disciplines in higher education institutions. Augmented reality technology application for project activity has positive impact on learning outcomes and competitiveness of the national workforce; it will enhance the country’s position in the global economic space.

Managing ICT solutions for training and evaluation of C++ programming skills in e-learning ecosystem

А set of functional upgrades to the existing e-learning ecosystem for the C++ programming language, which provides a solution where students can use their own computers during training and practical exams, is presented in this article. The ICT solutions applied in this case offer a supervised and protected the online environment, where each student has their own working account. The rights and privileges for accessing and using various software services are customised according to the educational tasks (training or exam). Depending on the purpose, the described software solutions are realised as web services for education and training and network services for collection and evaluation of the students’ solutions during the practical exam. During the training, web services are used, and each account has its own folder, in which the solutions are stored, and if necessary, those can be opened, modified, tested and shared for collaboration or evaluation in an integrated C++ compiler. During practical exams, network services installed on Raspberry Pi are used, and for security reasons, there is no online access. Ready student solutions according to defined test cases are placed on the server. The principle of evaluation consists in comparing the solutions of each student separately with the pre-designed solutions set in the system for the same test cases. The e-learning ecosystem is developed and upgraded by managing various ICT open source solutions described in this work.
 Keywords: E-learning ecosystem, C++ programming, Raspberry Pi.

The ecosystem of e-learning model for higher education

We present the ecosystem of e-learning (EeL) model, which can be applied to any higher education context, and which takes full account of all inhabitants and their interrelationships, not only the components, of the e-learning food chain. Specifically, this model was applied to our context within the University of the Western Cape, highlighting the role of the academic developer within the model. A key argument advanced in this paper is that academic developers should work to reduce complexities associated with emerging e-tools. The EeL model is used to emphasise the role of academic developers as mediators between components and relationships.
 Significance:
 
 By the application of the EeL model, it is demonstrated that the use of e-tools and their alignment with pedagogies within any context must be sensitive to the entire ecosystem, with the recognition that this is simultaneously a top-down and a bottom-up process.
 The student must be the core focus in the adoption of emerging technologies and the learning process, but simultaneously the student can only be in focus when they are placed within their broader ecosystem – including the societal level.
 Our findings add to the debate on physics education specifically, and more broadly by providing new ways of conceptualising an e-learning ecosystem.
 It is advocated that an academic developer-mediator should step in to mediate between academics, tutors and emerging e-tools, through a structured developmental process for learning and teaching.
 The EeL model can afford an insight into the processes involved when incorporating a learning management system (and emerging e-tools) into learning and teaching in higher education institutions.

Components of Participatory Engagement within E-Learning Community

This paper explores the components of participatory engagement to improve learner’s engagement within the e-learning community. Data are gathered through observations to measuring the interactions of the learner’s. The measurement included the learners’ feedbacks through the interactions of learners and educators, learners and learners and learners and content. Follow-up interviews are conducted to get deeper insights into the interactions and overall learner’s engagement environment. Findings show that in order to promote learners’ engagement in e-learning components such as accessibility, mobility, active learning and collaboration must be present in an e-learning ecosystem.

Implementation of team-based learning on a large scale: Three factors to keep in mind*

Team-based learning (TBL) is a structured form of small group learning that can be scaled up for delivery in large classes. The principles of successful TBL implementation are well established. TBL has become widely practiced in medical schools, but its use is typically limited to certain courses or parts of courses. Implementing TBL on a large scale, across different courses and disciplines, is the next logical step. The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), a partnership between Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Imperial College London, admitted its first students in 2013. This new undergraduate medical program, developed collaboratively by faculty at both institutions, uses TBL as its main learning and teaching strategy, replacing all face-to-face lectures. TBL accounts for over 60% of the curriculum in the first two years, and there is continued learning through TBL during campus teaching in the remaining years. This paper describes our experience of rolling out TBL across all years of the medical curriculum, focusing on three success factors: (1) “team-centric” learning spaces, to foster active, collaborative learning; (2) an e-learning ecosystem, seamlessly integrated to support all phases of the TBL process and (3) teaching teams in which experts in pedagogical process (TBL Facilitators) co-teach with experts in subject matter (Content Experts).

A proposed paradigm for smart learning environment based on semantic web

The current approaches of e-learning face challenges, in isolation of learners from learning process, and shortage of learning process quality. The researchers mentioned that the next generation of e-learning is e-learning ecosystem. E-learning ecosystem has many advantages, in which, learners form groups, collaborate with each other and with educators, and content designed for interaction. E-learning ecosystem faces some issues. It applies teacher-student model, in which, fixed learning pathway is considered suitable for all learners. Consequently, learners are presented with limited personalized materials. E-learning ecosystem needs to merge the personalization's concept. Semantic web ontology based personalization of learning environment plays a leading role to build smart e-learning ecosystem.This paper previews a detailed study which addresses research papers that apply ontology within learning environment. Most of these studies focus on personalizing e-learning by providing learners with suitable learning objects, ignoring the other learning process components. This paper proposes and implements framework for smart e-learning ecosystem using ontology and SWRL. A new direction is proposed. This direction fosters the creation of a separate four ontologies for the personalized full learning package which is composed of learner model and all the learning process components (learning objects, learning activities and teaching methods).

Architectural pattern to improve the definition and implementation of eLearning ecosystems

Knowledge management within companies and institutions is one of the main problems when defining and developing new solutions to improve information systems. Currently, information systems have evolved into technological ecosystems that are a set of different components related to each other through information flows in a physical environment that supports these flows, where users are part of the ecosystem. Particularly, during the last several years, the Open Source software has been used to develop these technological solutions. The aim of this paper is to formalize an architectural pattern to support the right description and implementation of eLearning ecosystems. The theoretical basis has been provided in previous works by using a comparative analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of several real case studies developed in different contexts. The problems detected through the previous analysis have been modelled using the Business Process Model and Notation. Next, the pattern has been formalized with the Service-oriented architecture Modelling Language. Finally, the pattern has been tested in a real context, namely, an institutional development for the Spanish Public Administration, which has demonstrated that the pattern works properly. As a result, we have obtained a set of Business Process Model and Notation diagrams that provide a high abstraction level for the main detected problems in eLearning ecosystems. We have also obtained an architectural pattern composed of several layers and a set of external elements that provides a solution to these problems.

Discovering usage behaviors and engagement in an Educational Virtual World

This paper explores data retrieved from an Educational Virtual World to identify and validate behavior and usage patterns and engagement indicators. This data exploration is intended not to validate pre-defined questions or specific goals (for example, a comparison between engagement and academic scores) but to discover usage trends and obtain insights about users’ usage of the system and their knowledge of and proficiency with the available resources and features. The engagement indicators and knowledge obtained from the analysis of these indicators regarding the users of the system, their desires, and their competencies with virtual resources will facilitate decision-making and planning by managers of the Virtual World to improve system adoption and learning effectiveness, correct usage mistakes, perform actions to enhance user exploitation of available features, and provide information to users on system usage. This knowledge and the actions based on it are capital in an eLearning ecosystem such as an Educational Virtual World, where students are able to perform tasks in 3D at any time or location without supervision.

Harnessing cloud computing infrastructure for e-learning services

This paper introduces an innovative model for harnessing cloud computing infrastructure within an e-learning ecosystem. The main goal was to design a scalable, reliable and secure IT environment that provides a plethora of e-learning services and seamless integration of the heterogeneous e-learning components through IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud service models. The e-learning services are tailored to foster courses for IT engineers in the areas of mobile technologies, social computing, Internet of Things and big data. The model was implemented and evaluated in the e-learning ecosystem of the E-business Lab, University of Belgrade.

A Proposed Model for Using Cloud Computing and Web2.0 in Deploying E-Learning Ecosystem (ELES)

Research community has believed that an e-learning ecosystem is the next generation of e-learning but has faced challenges in optimizing resource allocations, dealing with dynamic demands on getting information and knowledge anywhere and anytime, handling rapid storage growth requirements, cost controlling and greater flexibility. So, flourish, growing, scalable, available, up to date and strong infrastructure e-learning ecosystems in a productive and cost effective way will be needed to face challenges and rapidly changing in learning environment. This paper work focused on an e-learning ecosystem (ELES) which supports new technologies is introduced and implemented. An integration between cloud computing and Web 2.0 technologies and services used to support the development of e-learning ecosystems. Cloud computing an adaptable technology for many of the universities with its dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources as a service through the Internet and Web 2.0 brings new instruments help building dynamic e-learning ecosystem on the web.