Is automated and personalized e-

learning a utopia?

MATI Montreal October 21, 2009

María Luisa Sein-EchaluceDpto Matemática AplicadaUniversidad de Zaragoza, Spain

http://www.zaragoza.es/ciudad/turismo

Zaragoza (Spain)Zaragoza (Spain)

Content

• Our group I2FM (FMI)

• Automated and personalized

itineraries WHY?

• Characteristics of MOODLE

Conditionals

WHAT? ... HOW?

• Current experiments

WHO? ... WHEN?

Grupo I2FM: Investigación e Innovación en Formación

Matemática

http://www.unizar.es/fmi

Universidad de Zaragoza (UZ):

Departamento de Matemática Aplicada

• E.U. de Ingeniería Técnica Industrial

• Centro Politécnico Superior

Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación

Universidad Jaume I de Castellón (UJI) Departamento de Matemática Aplicada y Métodos Estadísticos

Group: Research and Innovation in Mathematical Training I2FM

Spanish collaborators

Universidad Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ULPGC

CICEI (Centro de Innovación para la Sociedad de la Información)

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM LITI (Laboratorio de Innovación y Tecnología de la Información) Cátedra UNESCO de Gestión y Política UniversitariaDepartamento de Matemáticas y Métodos informáticos de la ETSI Minas

UZ

UPM

UJI

ULPGC

1999-2003 2004-2006 2007-2009 ...

e-LKE-EG project

C1 =

UZ + UJI + UPM

ppsLatex/pdf

MAthematicaMatlabWebCTDSED

…

TICCooperation &

Education

MathematicsFirst year student

C2 = C1 +

CILEA + Ostrava+ Ireland

C3 = C2 + ULPGC+

Canada+Chile

MOODLETEOREMA/e-LKG Projects• e-learning• Groupware• KMS

When?

Who?

What? •Multilanguage•Conditionals

•Improved quizzes•Improved contents

•Competences

Personalized learning

First year university student

Aim: reduce the gap between Secondary Education and University

Secondary

Formative weaknesses

e-learningb-learning

Virtual communities

Teorema project

First year university student

EEESNew Engineering

Degree

Active methodologie

s

Innovation in Mathematical

training

COMI

Officialsubjects

E-LKG project

Face to face classesGroupwareCompetences

project

e-LKG Platform: A new open source platform for integrated Groupware and Knowledge Management services in e-learning. Testing and starting up

Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Spain (2006/2008)

Universities: UJI, UPM, UNIZAR.

( e-Learning, Knowledge management, Groupware)

http://www.unizar.es/fmi/elkg

Plataform: MOODLE

(Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment)

An e-learning course in MOODLE

with better functionalities for personalization of learning paths a big repository of mathematical resources cooperative activities tutorized learning process

Open SourceFlexibleBig community

CILEA

(Consorzio Interuniversitario

Lombardo per l’Elaborazione

Automatica, Milán)

Italian collaborators Spanish & English versions of TEOREMA in Zaragoza + e-LKG (adaptation to other degrees)

Unidades de aprendizaje

http://teorema.cilea.it/

TEOREMA

TEaching On-line pRoject for Economic

MAthematics

Learning Units (TEOREMA/eLKG)

1. Logic2. Sets3. Real Numbers4. Algebra5. Equations and Disequations6. Analytic geometry7. Trigonometry8. Functions

9. Complex Numbers10. Matrices and determinants11. Derivatives 12. Primitives

Repository of theoretical units and quizzes in English, Italian and Spanish (Knowledge Tree)

Studies and experiments

Evaluation of the entrance profile at the University:

Design of the evaluation, implementation and results.

Experiments with different learning units of TEOREMA/eLKG with

First year university students of Engineering and Business degrees at the UJI (Castellón), UNIZAR (Zaragoza) and Italian Universities (also in the last year of Secondary School)

Opinion poll

WHY personalized itineraries?

E-learning means…

anyone, anywhere, any time

BUT… what about…

…different backgrounds?

…students starting the online

course at different times?

…different progress?

etc.

Different itineraries have become necessary for the following reasons: • They are widely demanded in the

user community

• They allow to customize the learning

process

• They allow curricular diversification

• They allow automize some tutor task

What to do with personalized paths?

• Identify prior knowledge of students and condition the

activities and resources by obtained results.

• Set different learning paths by applying conditional

activities

• Keep track of the course structure

• Follow the students’ progress during the course

• Establish flexible groups for each activity.

• Research the use of different options (styles,

background, paths, etc...).

• Improve the managing of courses which are always

open to enrolment.

CICEI (Centro de Innovación para laSociedad de la Información)

Univ. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Developers of Conditional Activities in MOODLE

HOW to make the itineraries?

Conditioning activities in MOODLE:

• Choice: whether the student answered and what their answer was

• Forum: Topics started, number of messages, success (number of answers to a specific message) and grade

• Glossary: Entries added and the number of comments made

• Quiz: Rating and answers of the questions • Task: whether the student sent it and its grade• Wiki: Number of times edited• For any resource: whether the student accessed• etc

You can also condition on:

• Elapsed time (in days) since the course

was first entered by the student

• Elapsed time (in days) since the official

beginning of the course

• Elapsed time (in days) from a certain

date

• Student language

• Student country

Who? and ... When?After the previous studies of entrance profiles of students and the experiments with mathematical resources ...we are carrying out...

Implementation, evaluation and quality control of TWO courses with different path design

Engineering and Business Degrees

At three Spanish Universities (Castellón, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Zaragoza)

Academical year 2009-2010

−Four mathematical units−Units will be opened depending on

the questions answered correctly in the initial test.

−Activities: All theories, quizzes and a general forum for each unit, final opinion poll.

FIRST COURSE:

SECOND COURSE:

−One mathematical unit−Sections are divided in two groups

(elementary and advanced)−The mark and the questions answered

wrongly in the Initial Test will establish the different paths.

−Activities: theories and quizzes are organized in two versions (complete and “light”). Q&A forums. Tasks. Final opinion poll.

Aplication and evaluation of a prototype

Facts and proposals DEFINITION OF PATHWAYS

Section 2. P5 and P10 of IT:Both correct Answer on a Q&A forumOnly one wrong Do the “light” version of the contentsBoth wrong Seguir la versión completa de los contenidos

Section 3. P1, P6 and P9 of IT:All correct Do a simplification task Only one wrong Versión LightTwo or more wrong Complete version

Section 5: do the complete version in any wayIn case of IT=10, depending on the TUTOR

The result of the initial test (TI) establishes the path proposed to the student

If the initial test (TI) <5, the complete version will be done

If 5<=Test Inicial (TI) <=10, the path depends on the answers

Theoretical Units

Selfevaluation tests

Open answer questions

Forums

Tasks

Blogs

Wikis

Opinion poll

Learning tests

Internationalization

I2FM, Zaragoza

I2FM

1 UPM, Madrid

2 LITI, Madrid

3 UJI, Castellón

4 Institute of Technology Sligo

5 CILEA, Milano

6 Università degli Studi Milano Bicocca

7 Università Cattolica el Sacro Cuore, Milano

8 CICEI Univ. Las Palmas Gran Canaria.

9 Technical University Ostrava

10 Scienter, Bologna

y más...

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4

56

7

8

9

10

Cooperation with Italy

−CILEA•Repository of mathematical contents •Implementation of Conditionals from

CICEI •Management of multilanguage courses

in MOODLE (platform and content).

−Universities in Milano•Scientific supervision of mathematical

material (theories and quizzes)

Cooperation with other foreign groups

• Ireland −Revision of English contents−Use of the TEOREMA/eLKG course−Comparison of results−Cooperative tasks

• Czech Republic In addition...−Possible translation into Czech−Activities 2.0

• Canada (Université de Montreal)−“Drill-and-practice” integrated in Moodle

Cooperation with foreign groups

We expect...−Translation into other languages

−Experiments with our courses (without or with Conditionals)

−New mathematical topics...

Contact:

María Luisa Sein-Echaluce

mlsein@unizar.es