Inter-university Virtual Learning Environment
Virtual learning environments are irreversibly shaping the way of teaching and learning at universities. They have become more and more popular as practitioners recognized the advantages virtual learning environments offer when applied in online teaching
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Inter-university Virtual Learning Environment Andrej Tibaut, Danijel Rebolj, Karsten Menzel and Ricardo Jardim-Goncalves
Abstract Virtual learning environments are irreversibly shaping the way of teaching and learning at universities. They have become more and more popular as practitioners recognized the advantages virtual learning environments offer when applied in online teaching and learning. Nevertheless, most of the virtual learning environments do not provide straightforward support for inter-university interoperability between heterogeneous learning environments. This paper presents a use case of ITC-Euromaster with collaboration concept for inter-university interoperability. Furthermore, a taxonomy, an ontology and a high level architecture using intelligent software agents that enable dynamic inter-university interoperability are proposed to further develop an existing virtual learning environment used among four European universities.
Keywords Inter-university Virtual learning environment Federated approach High level architecture Dynamic interoperability Ontology Software agents
A. Tibaut (&) D. Rebolj Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] D. Rebolj e-mail: [email protected] K. Menzel University College Cork, Cork, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] R. Jardim-Goncalves New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected]
M. Ivanovic´ and L. C. Jain (eds.), E-Learning Paradigms and Applications, Studies in Computational Intelligence 528, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-41965-2_4, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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4.1 Introduction Virtual learning environments (VLEs) in higher education are typically used for facilitation of online teaching and learning (OTL). Online teaching and learning occurs thru online participation (OP) within different organizational forms like courses, labs, meetings, etc. Facilitation mechanisms (FM) that enable online participation are software and hardware systems like virtual classrooms (VC) and learning management systems (LMSs). The above-abbreviated VLE concepts are involved and applied to educational process at modern universities. However, application of VLE to educational process is not as straightforward as expected because of the two apparently contradictory assumptions: a rather pessimistic assumption is (a) that there is no invention in online teaching and learning when compared to the proven face-to-face concept that works well in traditional classroom and another, rather enthusiastic assumption is (b) that well designed course and proper technology is simply enough for successful teaching and learning online. Of course, both assumptions are false. After while pessimism and enthusiasm fade and teachers are looking for assessment methodologies for OTL that would lead to improvement of their online activities. On the other hand understanding of technical dynamics of OTL, its requirements and improvements towards inter-university enterprise systems’
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