Emerging Technologies in Education. Conceiving and Building a Microblogging Platform for Formal and Informal Learning

Emerging Technologies in Education.
Conceiving and Building a Microblogging Platform for
Formal and Informal Learning
Tehnologii educaționale emergente. Construirea unei platforme de
microblogging pentru învățare formală și informală
Scientific Coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Ing. Vladimir-Ioan CREȚU Mariana-Carmen HOLOTESCU
2015

• Blended courses/flipped classrooms integrating Social Media (SM), Open
Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) –
new challenges for education (Johnson et al., 2014);
• Learning Management Systems extended with social functionality =>
LMS2.0, social LMS, Open Learning Environments or Social Learning
Environments (Crosslin, 2010; Dahrendorf, 2010; Mott, 2010; JISC, 2011);
• Gap between new technologies and their uses:
• rigid policies in formal education related to curricular systems and
assessment practices;
• teachers lack of time and interest to explore, understand, evaluate and
use new technologies;
• scenarios for innovative approaches and best cases are presented in a
too formal manner using Learning Design languages and tools, without
a direct link between these scenarios and learning environments
(Conole and Culver, 2010).
1. Thesis Context

Main aim: to explore possible solutions for designing and implementing effective
learning environments, founded on new learning technologies and theories.
Expected result: to design, implement and evaluate an innovative educational
platform, called Cirip, based on microblogging technology.
Research aims:
1. to identify and to analyse emerging technologies, trends and theories in
education;
2. to elicit the needed features of an open learning platform, founded on the
identified technologies and theories;
3. to create and validate a model for the development of effective open
learning platforms based on microblogging technology.
1. Thesis Objectives (1)

Answers and solutions for the following issues and problems represent the
thesis objectives:
1. to map the requirements of the microblogging framework onto the features
of an open learning platform;
2. to integrate microblogging with other emerging educational technologies;
3. to give students, teachers and practitioners a space to explore and
experiment new technologies,
4. to capture and formally represent the new pedagogical approaches and
scenarios as learning design objects;
5. to define and implement instruments for learning analytics and for assessing
students learning activities;
6. to conceive, to design and to build a microbloging platform for formal and
informal learning.
1. Thesis Objectives (2)

Increasingly applied in educational software projects, Design Based Research (DBR) „is
used to study learning in environments which are designed and systematically changed
by the researcher” (Barab, 2006), this way three deeply intertwined goals can be
identified: research, design, and pedagogical practice (Joseph, 2004).
DBR: Refinement of problems, solutions, methods &design principles (Reeves, 2006)
2. Design Based Research Methodology – Definition

DBR characteristics (Barab and Squire, 2004; Barab, 2006):
• object of the close study: (usually) a single learning environment in successive
iterations and in different contexts;
• goals: to develop new pedagogical theories, artifacts and practices/theories that
can be generalized and used in other learning contexts/environments;
• phases:
- learning environment designed/developed by researchers to solve a
local/particular identified problem, bringing innovations inspired by a
theoretical study/research;
- successive phases in an iterative cycle/on-going design process allowing the
generation and advancement of the new theory:
• improvement/development of new facilities;
• tests piloted in real-world educational settings, involving informal
learning, collaboration among learners, different resources, etc.;
• evaluation implying social interactions with participants for sharing
ideas, and for bringing expertise into producing / analyzing the design.
2. Design Based Research Methodology - Characteristics

2. Design Based Research Methodology
adapted for the educational platform development
DBR – Phase I
• 3. Emerging Technologies
and new Trends in
Education. A Conceptual
Model for Open Learning
Environments
• 4. Features, Uses and
Architectures of
Microblogging Platforms
• 5. Emerging Technologies in
Romanian HE
DBR – Phase II
• 6. Requirements
analysis for platform
• 7. Platform
Architecture and
Implementation
• 8. Platform as an
Open Learning
Environment
DBR – Phase III
9. Case Studies for
Platform Validation
DBR – Phase IV
10. Platform
Evaluation

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinhoypaco
PRESENTATION STRUCTURE
1. Thesis Context and Objectives
2. Design Based Research Methodology
3. Emerging Technologies and new Trends in Education. State of the Art.
A Conceptual Model for Open Learning Environments
4. Features, Uses and Architectures of Microblogging Platforms
5. Emerging Technologies in Romanian Higher Education
6. Requirements analysis for an educational multimedia microblogging platform
7. Platform Architecture and Implementation
8. Platform as an Open Learning Environment
9. Case Studies for Platform Validation
10. Platform Evaluation
11. Conclusions and Future Work
12. Publications and Projects
DBR Phase I
DBR Phase II
DBR Phase III
DBR Phase IV

Amy Campbell (2010): three characteristics of Social Media: the majority of content is user generated, a
high degree of participation/interaction between users, and easily integrates with other sites.
Anthony J. Bradley (2010): six core principles - participation, collective, transparency, independence,
persistence and emergence.
image: http://matetrack.webs.com/SOCIAL/SOCIAL.html
DBR Phase I 3. Emerging Technologies and New Trends in Education.
Social Media Landscape
DBR – Phase I: 3. Emerging Technologies and new Trends in Education. A Conceptual Model for OLE DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Social Media networks and applications for
content sharing – Classification (1)

Groups (Groups.Google.com, Groups.Yahoo.com, Ning.com, Meetup.com)
Forums/Spaces for discussions (phpBB.net, Quora.com, Disqus.com)
Localization (Foursquare.com, Yelp.com, Zvents.com)
Augmented reality (Layar.com, Wikitude.com, Zooburst.com)
Virtual worlds/Social Games (Secondlife.com, Playdom.com, OpenSimulator.org)
IM (YM, GTalk, Jabber, Skype)
Social Media for communication / collaboration / location-based
Classification (2)
Scopes of classification:
• understanding the characteristics of Social Media platforms (features)
• assessing uses in Romanian HE
• choosing the platforms to be integrated in the OLE to be built

Trends and technologies connected with Social Media (1)

A conceptual Model of Open Learning Environments (1)
Open Educational
Resources
Learners as content
co-creators
Collaborative/
distributed
assessment; Learning
Analytics
Interactions with external learners
and experts
Collaborative applications and
platforms
Public PLE
Time-persistency/
Retrieval
Teacher training/sharing Learning
Design
Institutional
/administrative
management
features/privacy
assurance
Mobile Learning
PEDAGOGICAL
TECHNOLOGICAL
SOCIAL

A conceptual Model for Open Learning Environments - OLEs (2). Use Case
Existing OLEs:
• Enhanced LMS
• Integrated LMS
• Widgets Network
• Dedicated Network

Open Learning Environment based on Microblogging
Open Educational
Resources
Learners as content
co-creators
Collaborative/
distributed
assessment; Learning
Analytics
Interactions with external
learners and experts
Collaborative applications and
platforms / Public PLE
Time-persistency/Retrieval
Teacher training/sharing Learning
Design
Institutional
/administrative
management
features/privacy
assurance
Mobile Learning
PEDAGOGICAL
TECHNOLOGICAL
SOCIAL
MICROBLOGGING
CIRIP

Microblogging is a new form of blogging, with brief text updates of 140
characters, via Web, SMS, email, IM or 3rd party applications, which allows
real-time interactions between users.
DBR Phase I 4. Features, Uses and Architectures of Microblogging
Platforms
DBR – Phase I: 4. Features, Uses and Architectures of Microblogging Platforms DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Jan 2008 Jul 2008Dec 2007 Mar 2008 Dec 2009
4 platforms in Tops 100 Tools for Leaning 2009-2014: Twitter, Cirip, Yammer, Edmodo
Elizabeth Koh, An overview of microblogging, http://www.slideshare.net/elizabethkoh/an-overview-of-microblogging, slide 16
Educational Microblogging Platforms

Other Microblogging Platforms
Problems identified for the current microblogging platforms (Passant et al., 2010;
Cheong and Ray, 2011; Penela et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2012):
• centralized architectures may cause performance bottlenecks, single points of
failure and malicious attacks; decentralized solutions would improve the
robustness, scalability, availability and reliability of the micro-services;
• lack of machine-readable meta-data about posts (creation date, author,
recipient, etc.);
• lack of semantic in microblog posts; the #hashtags semantics are not a
complete solution;
• information overload because the stream available for a user doesn't take into
account his/her current context;
• issues of seamless access, ownership and control.
Platforms that adress these issues:
Cuckoo, SMOB (Semantic MicrOBlogging ), WebBox, miKrow.

Limited Features of microblogging platforms OLEs
•The existing open/general microblogging platforms such as Twitter or
Identi.ca offer the characteristics of communication/collaboration and
ePortfolios visibility, but those for courses' privacy or history
(groups) are missing.
•The educational microblogging platform Edmodo or Twiducate,
which integrates LMS features, don't offer the possibility to interact
with external experts, nor to built a public PLE.

Aims of the study conducted in 2012:
• to gather information on ways in which Romanian academic staff are adopting
new educational technologies and applications;
• to find out best usages;
• to identify expected features;
• to examine policies related to new technologies use in Romanian education.
Research questions:
• How faculty members use new educational technologies/Social Media as
reflective and collaborative teaching and learning tools, also for research and
professional development?
• Which are the potential benefits, challenges, and disadvantages in using new
educational technologies/Social Media in universities?
• Which is the relation between these technologies and mobile learning?
• How the usage can be extended, is there a need for training the educational
actors in this topic?
DBR Phase I 5. Emerging Technologies in Romanian Higher Education
DBR – Phase I: 5. Emerging Technologies in Romanian Higher Education DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Significant results (summary of findings) (1)
Need for :
- policies related the use of new educational technologies in education
- teacher training in using emerging technologies

Significant results (summary of findings) (2)
Need for:
- integrated online spaces for students / teachers / practitioners:
- to experiment new technologies
- to share learning scenarios.

DBR Phase II 6. Requirements analysis for the educational
microblogging platform as a social network and OLE
Identified 25 categories of functionalities for Social Media platforms based on:
• Pistachio Consulting (2008): study of 19 enterprise microsharing
applications, 19 criteria
• Smith et al. (2012): set of 15 types of Social Media applications, 8
capabilities
• our previous research and work/develop educational platforms.
Comparing Social Media platforms functionalities:
• 6 microblogging platforms used in education Twitter, Edmodo, Plurk,
Identi.ca, Yammer, Twiducate;
• 23 categories of Social Media networks and applications:
• 17 categories for content sharing
• 6 categories for communication/collaboration/location-based.
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II: 6. Requirements analysis for the educational microblogging platform DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Requirements the educational microblogging platform as a social network

OERs
Multimedia
objects
embedding
Learners
as content
co-
creators
Resend
notes
(Retweet)
Access to
group
documents
Collaborati
ve editing
Import/
Export
notes (re-
sharing)
Collaborative /
distributed
assessment;
Learning Analytics
Statistics/
Visualizations
for
users/groups
Surveys
/ polls
online/
SMS
6. Requirements analysis: Characteristics mapped onto the OLE features (1)

DBR Phase II 7. Platform Architecture and Implementation. Open
Technologies
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II: 7. Platform Architecture and Implementation DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Platform Architecture

MySQL Database (36 tables))

Relations between tables

REST API (12 functions). Example: show function

Plug-ins and Mash-ups

announcements
modules -
LOM/SCORM
objects
collaborative
exercises
learning from the
stream
multimedia
messages
polls/quiz/
comments via
SMS (f2f)
RT wall
validations -
interactions with
users/experts/
groups
DBR Phase II 8. Platform as an Open Learning Environment (1)
Cirip as a social network of msLMS (mobile social Learning Management Systems)
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II: 8. Platform as an Open Learning Environment DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

On technological level
•create, localize and join mobile groups
•access social media and open educational resources
•share opinions
•work collaboratively on multimedia objects
•participate in polls and quizzes
•receive/send updates via SMS
•create and manage mobile PLEs
•recover password via SMS
On pedagogical level
•develop multimedia educational resources / learning
objects by using mobile technologies specific for
different subject areas
•build mobile social learning environments engaging
students in PBL, case studies, and collaborative
projects
•capture and formally represent experience and new
pedagogical approach as learning design objects -
shared, discussed, validated, improved, and reused
Mobile Learning Features
e I DBR – Phase II: 8. Platform as an Open Learning Environment DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV

Dashboard of a mobile group

Integration of other SM platforms
Multimedia objects embedded in messages (part of the communication flow,
created/recreated, openness to (small) OERs - Weller, Martin (2010)):
- livestreaming
- images (flickr, tinypic)
- audio (eok, trilulilu, deezer, blip.fm, vocaroo, mp3)
- (live) video (youtube, dotsub, vimeo, screencastle, screenjelly, screenr,
220.ro, myvideo)
- presentations/learning design (slideshare, capzles, voicethread, flowgram,
photopeach, picasa, notaland, prezi, diagrammr, mindomo,
mindmeister, spicynodes)
- documents (odf, odt, pdf, doc, xls, txt, ppt, google docs/forms/spreadsheets)

Learning Design Objects

CompendiumLD2CiripLD Mash-up – extending community of practice

The Network section of
a user / group displays
statistics, which facilitate
the assessment and the
analysis on various
research directions:
• the activity
• the relations
formed
• the interests
• the means of
participation
• the content of
messages.
Students Assessment Metrics. Learning Analytics

9. Case Studies for Platform Validation
1. Online Courses and Courses Enhancement
2. Learning from the Stream
3. Integrating MOOCs in Blended Courses (Holotescu, Cretu, 2014)
4. Teacher Training
5. Personal Learning Environment
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III: 9 Case Studies for Platform Validation DBR – Phase IV

Blending MOOCs in
university courses - EdX
„We are taking what we are learning and the technologies we are developing in
the large and applying them in the small to create a blended model of
education to really reinvent and reimagine the classroom.”
We need to go from lectures on the blackboard to online exercises, online
videos. We have to go to interactive virtual laboratories and
gamification. To go to completely online grading and peer
interaction and discussion boards.
Everything really has to change.”
Integrating MOOCs in Blended Courses
Anant Agarwal, 2013. Why massive open online courses (still) matter.
A TED presentation,
ted.com/talks/anant_agarwal_why_massively_open_online_courses_still_matter.html

Variants of blending MOOCs in university courses

Web Programming, 2013-14, III CTI
• HTML/HTML5, Javascript, CSS, XML, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Ajax;
• Web2.0/Social Media (blogging, microblogging, social networks, collaborative applications,
curation/collaborative bookmarking systems, RSS feeds, mash-ups), Open Educational
Resources and Creative Commons licenses, Massive Open Online Courses.

announcements
modules
collaborative
exercises
learning from the
stream
multimedia
messages
opennes to (small)
OERs
polls/quiz/ comments
via SMS (f2f)
validations -
interactions with
users/experts/ groups
Web Programming Blended Course

2. To enlarge knowledge/topics of
the course, to obtain an auxiliary
support for students’ group
project development.
3. Allow students to have concrete
views, opinions and proposals on
MOOCs and to critically evaluate
their usefulness for personal
development and for different
ways of integration in formal
higher education courses.
Aims of integrating MOOCs
1. Allow students to become familiar (aware) with the MOOC phenomenon
and trends:
• the most important players/platforms/offers, types of learning,
interaction and specific pedagogies
• to be able to search and evaluate useful and quality MOOCs.

Steps for MOOCs Integration
1. MOOCs discovery and selection - #mooc:
• openeducationeuropa.eu
• mooc-list.com
• futurelearn.com
• class-central.com
2. Participation in MOOCs –requirement: at least 10% of the activities
3. MOOCs participation evaluation: survey with 55 responders/70 students

MOOCs Participation Evaluation
• knew about MOOCs before the course (49%)
• followed MOOCs before the course (29%)
• will follow MOOCs after the course (100%)
• activities completed in MOOCs (66%: > 50%, 24%: 100%)
Followed MOOCs:
Coursera (44%),
Udemy (23%),
Udacity, edX, Khan
Academy,
Codecademy,
FutureLearn, but
also European
MOOCs found on
Open Education
Europa
In the same time
MOOCs for other
disciplines

Blended course activities and pedagogival benefits

Study of Learning Impact
DBR Phase IV 10. Platform Evaluation
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV: 10. Platform Evaluation

Study of Professional Development Impact
10. Platform Evaluation (2)
DBR – Phase I DBR – Phase II DBR – Phase III DBR – Phase IV: 10. Platform Evaluation

11. Original contributions (1)
1. Identification and analysis of the emerging technologies, trends and theories in
education, together with a proposed classification of Social Media platforms and
applications. The findings are presented in Chapter 3 and were published in
(Grosseck and Holotescu, 2011a).
2. An analysis of the features, uses and architectures of educational microblogging
platforms was presented in Chapter 4 and published in (Holotescu and Crețu,
2013).
3. Two studies on the usages, challenges and policies regarding the integration of
emerging technologies and microblogging in Romanian education, for teaching,
learning and professional development. The results are published in Chapter 5 and
10. The studies were the first with this topic in Romania and were published in
(Holotescu and Grosseck, 2012) and (Grosseck and Holotescu, 2011).
4. A model of Open Learning Environments founded on the identified educational
technologies and theories was proposed in Chapter 3.
5. A model of Open Learning Environments based on microblogging technology was
proposed in Chapter 6; some results were published in (Holotescu and Crețu,
2013).

11. Original contributions (2)
6. The model was validated through designing, implementing and evaluating the Cirip
educational microblogging platform. The innovations brought by Cirip and presented in
Chapter 8 and 9 are summarized below, together with the corresponding articles:
• private and public groups can host online courses, having the characteristics of
LMSs (Holotescu and Grosseck, 2009c; Grosseck and Holotescu, 2008);
• provides unique features for mobile learning (Holotescu and Grosseck, 2011;
Holotescu, Crețu and Grosseck, 2014);
• integrates a large area of emerging educational technologies (Grosseck and
Holotescu, 2010a);
• captures and formally represents the new pedagogical approaches and scenarios as
learning design objects (Holotescu and Grosseck, 2010a);
• defines and implements instruments for learning analytics and for assessing
students learning activities (Holotescu, Mioc and Grosseck, 2012; Grosseck and
Holotescu, 2009);
• is used in formal and informal learning contexts (Holotescu and Grosseck, 2009c;
Grosseck and Holotescu, 2010b; Grosseck and Holotescu, 2011c; Holotescu et al.,
2012; Holotescu et al., 2013; Holotescu et al., 2014a).

Future Work
New features and case studies will be designed, implemented and tested in the
next months on the Cirip platform:
1. Testing and consolidation of the MOOC features after designing and running
a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) related to „OER and MOOC”;
2. Updating / enlarging the typology of social (multimedia) objects embedded
on the platform - based on the platforms evolution/modifications and on the
results of the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2014 (Hart, 2014);
3. A directory of (little) OERs (Open Educational Resources) (collaboratively)
created on the networks connected with Cirip to be listed in user’s profile;
4. Integrating the Learning Analytics for Cirip courses with existing institutional
metrics and reporting mechanisms and standards (IMS Caliper - Learning
Measurement Framework) in a joint project with a research team from
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy;
5. Improving user experience: new layout, make more transparent the
embedding of social (multimedia) objects, lowering access time.

12. Publications and Projects
a. Articles
1. ISI Proceedings – 25 (9 not indexed yet); first author: 15
2. BDI - 5
3. International Journals - 2
4. International Conferences Proceedings - 23
5. National Conferences / Journals - 12
b. Books/Chapters - 13
c. Research studies/Reports - 9
d. Projects - 17
e. Citations – over 520

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