Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Building a smart campus to support ubiquitous learning

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

New technological advances in user mobility and context immersion are enabling novel adaptive and pervasive learning models in ambient environments. These advances allow physical learning spaces with embedded computing capabilities to provide an augmented self-aware learning experience. In this paper, we aim at developing a novel ubiquitous learning model within a pervasive smart campus environment. The goal of our research consists of identifying the steps towards building such an environment and the involved learning processes. We define a model of a smart campus, and advocate learning practices in the light of new paradigms such as context-awareness, ubiquitous learning, pervasive environment, resource virtualization, autonomic computing and adaptive learning. We reveal a comprehensive architecture that defines the various components and their inter-operations in a smart educational environment. The smart campus approach is presented as a composition of ambient learning spaces, which are environments where physical learning resources are augmented with digital and social services. We present a model of these spaces to harness future ubiquitous learning environments. One of the distinguished features of this model is the ability to unleash the instructional value of surrounding physical structures. Another one is the provision of a personalized learning agenda when moving across these ambient learning environments. To achieve these goals, we profile learners and augment physical campus structures to advocate context-aware learning processes. We suggest a social community platform for knowledge sharing which involves peer learners, domain experts as well as campus physical resources. Within this pervasive social scope, learners are continuously immersed in a pedagogically supported experiential learning loop as a persuasive approach to learning. A learning path, which responds to learners’ goals and qualifications, autonomously guides learners in achieving their objectives in the proposed smart campus. We evaluated our ubiquitous learning approach to assert the performance of these building blocks in the proposed smart campus model. The results show interesting tradeoffs and promising insights.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.adlnet.gov/scorm.

  2. Near Field Communication (http://www.nfc-forum.org).

  3. Learning Object Metadata specification is available at: http://ltsc.ieee.org.

  4. http://icampus.mit.edu/.

  5. Learner Information Package (LIP) specification, available at: http://www.imsglobal.org/profiles/.

  6. http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/.

References

  • Adomavicius G, Tuzhilin A (2005) Personalization technologies: a process-oriented perspective. Commun ACM 48(10):83–90

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Al Falahi K, Mavridis N, Atif Y (2012) Social networks and recommender systems: a world of current and future synergies. In: Computational Social Networks, Springer, Berlin

  • Atif Y (2010) Digital design learning patterns in ambient learning environments. In: 2010 IEEE 10th international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT), pp 229–230

  • Atif Y (2011) An architectural specification for a system to adapt to learning patterns. Educ Inf Technol 16(3):259–279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atif Y (2013) Conversational learning integration in technology enhanced classrooms. Comput Hum Behav 29(2):416–423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atif Y, Badr Y, Maamar Z (2010) Towards a new-digital learning ecosystem based on autonomic Web services. In: 2010 4th IEEE international conference on digital ecosystems and technologies (DEST), pp 180–185

  • Barrington R (2012) Moodle gradebook. Packt Publishing, Birmingham

  • Bizonova Z, Kardos M, Maillet K, Parodi E, Bo G (2009) Competency–driven approach in current technology enhanced learning systems. In: International conference on interactive computer aided learning, pp 508–517

  • Broll G, Rukzio E, Paolucci M , Wagner M, Schmidt A, Hussmann H (2009) Perci: pervasive service interaction with the internet of things. IEEE Internet Comput 13(6):74–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chang H, Shih TK, Li Q, Wang C, Wang T, Chao LR (2008) An adaptive caching strategy for m-learning based on SCORM sequencing and navigation. World Wide Web J 11(3):387–406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen CH, Hwang GJ, Yang TC, Chen SH (2009) Analysis of a ubiquitous performance support system for teachers. Innov Educ Teach 46(4):421–433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chin J, Callaghan V (2013) Educational living labs: a novel internet-of-things based approach to teaching and research. In: 2013 9th International conference on intelligent environments (IE), pp 92–99

  • Conde MA, Garcia-Penalvo FJ, Alier M, Mayol E (2012) A Service-based framework to facilitate the interoperability between personal and institutional learning environments. In: 2012 International symposium on computers in education (SIIE), pp 1–6

  • Cope B, Kalantzis M (2008) Ubiquitous learning: an agenda for educational transformation. In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on networked learning

  • Dolog P, Schäfer M (2005) Learner Modeling on the Semantic Web. In: Proc. of PerSWeb-2005 Workshop: Personalisation on the Semantic Web at User Modelling 2005: 10th International Conference

  • Ehrmann SC, Gilbert SW, McMartin F, Abelson H, Long PD (2007) Factors affecting the adoption of faculty-developed academic software: a study of five iCampus projects. 37th Annual Frontiers In Education Conference—Global Engineering: Knowledge Without Borders, Opportunities Without Passports, FIE ’07

  • El-Bishouty MM, Ogata H, Yano Y (2008) A model of personalized collaborative computer support ubiquitous learning environment. In: Eighth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, 2008. ICALT ’08, pp 97–101

  • Fischer G (2012) Context-aware systems: the ’right’ information, at the ’right’ time, in the ’right’ place, in the ’right’ way, to the ’right’ person. In: Proceedings of the international working conference on advanced visual interfaces, AVI ’12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 287–294

  • Fischer G, Konomi S (2005) Innovative media in support of distributed intelligence and lifelong learning. In: Proceedings of the third IEEE international workshop on wireless and mobile technologies in education

  • Harman K, Koohang A (2007) Learning objects: standards, metadata, repositories, and LCMS. Inf Sci

  • Hsinyi P, Chou C, Chang CY (2008) From virtual environments to physical environments: exploring interactivity in ubiquitous-learning systems. Educ Technol Soc 11(2):54–66

    Google Scholar 

  • Huang W, Zhao YX, Xiao Y, Sun XH (2011) A cloud service environment framework for SCORM compatible content. In: 2011 Third Pacific-Asia conference on circuits, communications and system (PACCS), pp 1–4

  • Hwang G, Chen B, Chu H, Cheng ZS (2012) Development of a web 2.0-based ubiquitous learning platform for schoolyard plant identification. In: 2012 IEEE seventh international conference on wireless, mobile and ubiquitous technology in education (WMUTE), pp 259–263

  • Hwang G, Wu C, Tseng JCR, Huang I (2010) Development of a ubiquitous learning platform based on a real-time help-seeking mechanism. Br J Educ Technol 42(6):992–1002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hwang G, Yang T, Tsai C, Yang JHS (2009) A context-aware ubiquitous learning environment for conducting complex science experiments. Comput Educ 53(2):402–413

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hwang G, Shi Y, Chu H (2011) A concept map approach to developing collaborative Mindtools for context-aware ubiquitous learning. Br J Educ Technol 42(5):778–789

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joshi A, Singh MP (1999) Multiagent systems on the net. Commun ACM 42(3):38–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kallonis P, Sampson DG (2010) Examining learning object repositories from a knowledge management perspective. In: IEEE 10th international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT), pp 289–293

  • Karavirta V, Ihantola P, Koskinen T (2013) Service-oriented approach to improve interoperability of e-learning systems. ICALT, pp 341–345

  • Kephart JO, Chess DM (2003) The vision of autonomic computing. IEEE Comput 36(1):41–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kolb DA (1984) Experiential learning. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River. http://infed.org/mobi/david-a-kolb-on-experiential-learning/

  • Kortuem G, Bandara AK, Smith N, Richards M, Petre M (2013) Educating the internet-of-things generation. Computer 46(2):53–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li M, Ogata H, Hou B, Uosaki N, Yano Y (2012) Personalization in context-aware ubiquitous learning-log system. In: 2012 IEEE seventh international conference on wireless, mobile and ubiquitous technology in education (WMUTE), pp 41–48.

  • Mathew SS (2012) Managing things in an ambient space. Service-Oriented Computing—ICSOC 2011 Workshops. In: Lecture notes in computer science, vol 7221. Springer, Berlin, pp 226–232

  • Mathew SS, Atif Y, Sheng Q, Maamar Z (2010) Ambient things on the web. J Ubiquitous Syst Pervasive Netw 1(1):1–8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCullagh P, Augusto JC (2011) The internet of things: the potential to facilitate health and wellness. UPGRADE Eur J Inf Prof. http://eprints.ulster.ac.uk/21126/

  • McGreal R (2012) The need for open educational resources for ubiquitous learning. In: 2012 IEEE international conference on pervasive computing and communications workshops (PERCOM Workshops), pp 679–684

  • Mulvenna M, Martin S, McDade D, Beamish E, De Oliveira A, Kivilehto A (2011) TRAIL Living Labs Survey 2011: a survey of the ENOLL living labs. University of Ulster. http://eprints.ulster.ac.uk/22313/

  • Namuganga E, Boonabaana S, Asiimwe AT, Butime J, Tickodri-Togboa SS (2012) Integrating the Emona FOTEx interface into the batched iLabs client. In: 2012 International conference on interactive mobile and computer aided learning (IMCL), pp 86–91

  • Passant A, Laublet P (2008) Meaning Of A Tag: A collaborative approach to bridge the gap between tagging and linked data. In: Proceedings of the linked data on the web (LDOW2008) workshop at WWW2008

  • Pintus A, Carboni D, Piras A (2012) Paraimpu: a platform for a social web of things. In: WWW ’12 Companion: Proceedings of the 21st international conference companion on World Wide Web. ACM, New York

  • Raad MW, Arabia DS (2007) KFUPM Smart Campus and the Role of RFID in Academia. Middle East RFID Association. Available at http://www.merfida.org/files/rfideducationnew.pdf

  • Richtel M (2011) In classroom of future, stagnant scores. The New York Times

  • Rifkin J (2011) The third industrial revolution: how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Sakamura K, Koshizuka N (2005) Ubiquitous computing technologies for ubiquitous learning. In: IEEE international workshop on wireless and mobile technologies in education, 2005, WMTE 2005, pp 11–20

  • Sampson DG, Zervas P, Sotiriou S (2011a) COSMOS: a web-based repository of learning designs for science education. Adv Sci Lett 4(11–12):3366–3374

    Google Scholar 

  • Sampson DG, Zervas P, Sotiriou S (2011b) Learning object repositories for science education: the case of the OpenScienceResources repository. In: 11th IEEE international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT), pp 358–359

  • Schaffers H, Komninos N, Pallot M, Trousse B, Nilsson B, Oliveira A (2011) Smart cities and the future internet: towards cooperation frameworks for open innovation. The future internet

  • Sie YL, Wang TH, Chang HP, Chang SN, Shih TK (2006) A SCORM-based caching strategy for supporting ubiquitous learning environment. In ATC’06: Proceedings of the third international conference on autonomic and trusted computing. Springer, Berlin

  • Singla G, Cook DJ, Schmitter-Edgecombe M (2010) Recognizing independent and joint activities among multiple residents in smart environments. J Ambient Intell Humaniz Comput 1(1):57–63

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sirin E, Parsia B (2007) SPARQL-DL: SPARQL Query for OWL-DL. In: 3rd OWL Experiences and Directions Workshop (OWLED), vol 258

  • Tantatsanawong P, Kawtrakul A, Lertwipatrakul W (2011) Enabling future education with smart services. In: 2011 Annual SRII Global Conference (SRII), pp 550–556

  • Thomas AM, Shah H, Moore P, Rayson P, Wilcox AJ, Osman K, Evans C, Chapman C, Athwal C, While D, Pham HV, Mount S (2012) E-Education 3.0: challenges and opportunities for the future of iCampuses. In: 2012 Sixth international conference on complex, intelligent and software intensive systems(CISIS), pp 953–958

  • Tolba AS, Atwan A, Atta AM (2009) Development of distributed learning object repository. In: 2009 International conference on networking and media convergence, ICNM 2009, pp 118–121

  • Wang M, Luo J, Zeng L, Shi Z (2006) Autonomic element design based on mind agent model. Int J Comput Sci Netw Secur 6(9):63–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiser M (1991) The computer for the 21st century. Sci Am 265(3):94–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xue R, Wang J, Chen L (2011) Using the IOT to construct ubiquitous learning environment. In: 2011 Second international conference on mechanic automation and control engineering(MACE), pp 7878–7880

  • Yu Z, Liang Y, Xu B, Yang Y, Bin G (2011) Towards a smart campus with mobile social networking. In: 2011 International conference on and 4th international conference on cyber, physical and social computing internet of things (iThings/CPSCom), pp 162–169

  • Zhao X, Okamoto T (2011) Adaptive multimedia content delivery for context-aware u-learning. Int J Mobile Learn Organ 5(1):46–63

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao Y, Karypis G (2004) Empirical and theoretical comparisons of selected criterion functions for document clustering. Mach Learn 55(3):311–331

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou W, Cui B, Wang B, Shi Q, Yokoi S (2012) An exploration of ubiquitous learning in computer fundamental learning scenario. In: 2012 7th International conference on computer science education (ICCSE), pp 1420–1424

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of IT, UAE University, Al Ain, UAE

    Yacine Atif, Sujith Samuel Mathew & Abderahmane Lakas

Authors
  1. Yacine Atif
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sujith Samuel Mathew
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Abderahmane Lakas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yacine Atif.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Atif, Y., Mathew, S.S. & Lakas, A. Building a smart campus to support ubiquitous learning. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 6, 223–238 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-014-0226-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-014-0226-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation