MyUOC, a New Solution for Creating Customized Learning

Platforms Llorenç Valverde, Magí Almirall, Francesc Santanach,

Xavi Aracil, Eva de Lera, Eva Loste

MyUOC

• About UOC

• Creating MyUOC

• MyUOC at present

About UOC

UOC:

• Headquarters in Barcelona, Spain

• Fully online university (BAs, MAs, PhD)

• Founded 15 years ago as an online university

• 47.000 students, 500 f-t faculty, 2000 p-t faculty

• Faculty as Mentors

• Students as Teachers

UOC’s faculty:

• The online environment is their only medium to teach and motivate students

• Their “teaching” is asynchronous

• The contents they use, evolve

UOC’s student:

• There are as many typologies of students as students are in the University

• They have different ages, backgrounds, experiences, needs, desires and expectations

• They are “on” 24/7

• They are active participants in the learning process• They are overwhelmed with information

UOC’s needs:

• An open source learning environment• An environment that integrates versatile solutions

desired by faculty to help enhance learning for the different subjects

• A more engaging-to-all-students learning environment to help increase overall satisfaction and motivation to learn (Joy of Learning)

• An accessible-to-all environment, anytime, anyplace

UOC’s needs:

Creating MyUOC

The new on-line virtual platform

Technical Dilemma:

?

Learning Management System?

Technical Dilemma:

LMS is the tip of the iceberg.

• Many integration problems.

• Many configurations are possible.

Evolution:

•product -> LMS 1st generation

•framework-> LMS 2ndgeneration

Today:

Many tools available to be used as e-learning tools.

UOC’s Solutions to the technical dilemma:

• Service Oriented Architecture in order to achieve real interoperability

• An open source and Lego-like environment connected with each other

• Open Knowledge Initiative technology

UOC’s Solutions to the technical dilemma:

e-learning tools

OKI Bus Services

Gateway Common LMS

UOC’s Solutions to the technical dilemma:

Architecture metaphor

UOC’s Solutions to the technical dilemma:

MMMM

SakaiTools

MMMM

MoodleTools

Moodle Sakai

Moodle Gateway Sakai Gateway

Tool 1 Tool n...Tool 2 Tool 3

OKI Bus

The Affectivity Dilemma:

community

engaging

motivating

The Affectivity Dilemma: Some engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool” elements (i.e. Mac-

style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

UOC’s Solutions to the affectivity dilemma:

• Widget container + set of widgets

• iGoogle’s standards

• iGoogle’s widgets into LMS

• (Almost) each UOC’s widget rely on RSS

HOMEPAGE of My UOC. Personalization through a Widget Solution:

UOC’s Solutions to the affectivity dilemma:

HOMEPAGE of My UOC. USER’s ACTIONS

• Drag & drop widgets

• Select a background

• Choose, choose, choose

• Change colour of widget

• Delete what you don’t like

• Easily create your own widgets

• Personalize, customize

• Select visualization type (# items, etc.)

• Bring in external widgets (i.e. Gmail, RSS…)

• Endless opportunities

Instead of 1 design for everyone we now have as many designs as number of students (47.000). One design does not fit all.

UOC’s Solutions to the affectivity dilemma:

Affectivity evaluation:

Up to now...

• Universities mainly use questionnaires to assess tools and courses

• Generally these surveys do not gather affective data

• They use typical overall items such as: ‘Do you think the course is motivating enough? Has the course met your expectations?

Our main objective

To test a methodology that allows us to gather relevant affective information of the user-computer interaction

Affectivity evaluation:

My UOC at present:

MY UOC AT PRESENT

• Keeping control over the learning model

• Ability to change as we go

• Personalization and usability for both faculty and students

• Flexibility and opportunities to innovate and explore new learning approaches.

• Accessibility

• Automatically generation of multiple formats. Versatility of Formats

My UOC challenges:

For us the future in e-learning will be focused on interoperability.

• Maintaining and evolving the environment

• Continuing UOC's user-centered tradition integrating psychological and consumer research methods into the UCD process

• Reaching out to the community so we can all evolve webservices and interoperability together

Thank you for your attention!!

learningtechnologies@uoc.edu.