Advertisement

Technology, Knowledge and Learning

, Volume 20, Issue 2, pp 185–199 | Cite as

Towards Competence-Based Learning Design Driven Remote and Virtual Labs Recommendations for Science Teachers

  • Panagiotis Zervas
  • Stylianos Sergis
  • Demetrios G. Sampson
  • Stefanos Fyskilis
Digital Learning
First Online:

Abstract

Remote and virtual labs (RVLs) are widely used by science education teachers in their daily teaching practice. This has led to a plethora of RVLs that are offered with or without cost. In order to organise them and facilitate their search and findability, several RVL web-based repositories have been operated. As a result, a key open challenge is to design and implement recommender systems that support science teachers in finding and selecting appropriate RVLs based on core pedagogical elements of their learning designs and their own information and communication technology (ICT)-supported teaching competence profiles. In response to this challenge, we propose a recommender system for supporting learning design driven RVLs recommendations taking into consideration teachers’ profiling elements related to the ICT-supported teaching competences for using RVLs. To achieve this, we propose an instantiation of the UNESCO ICT competency framework for teachers for the context of using RVL and capitalise on our previously proposed metadata schema for describing RVLs, which includes core elements of a learning design and teachers’ required ICT-supported teaching competences. Our evaluation results based on a user study, highlight the high level of ranking accuracy of our proposed recommender system and support its capacity to facilitate science teachers in selecting appropriate RVLs.

Keywords

Virtual lab Remote lab Recommender system Teacher competence Learning design Web repository 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The work presented in this paper has been partially funded by the European Commission in the context of the Go-Lab Project (Grant Agreement No. 317601) under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) theme of the 7th Framework Programme for R&D (FP7). This document does not represent the opinion of the European Commission, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of its content.

References

  1. Balamuralithara, B., & Woods, P. C. (2009). Virtual laboratories in engineering education: The simulation lab and remote lab. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 17(1), 108–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Bobadilla, J., Ortega, F., Hernando, A., & Gutierrez, A. (2013). Recommender systems survey. Knowledge-Based Systems, 46, 109–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Conole, G., & Fill, K. (2005). A learning design toolkit to create pedagogically effective learning activities. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Special Issue Portable Learning, 8, 1–16.Google Scholar
  4. de Jong, T. (2010). Technology supports for acquiring inquiry skills. In B. McGaw, E. Baker, & P. Peterson (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (pp. 167–171). Oxford: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. de Jong, T., Linn, M. C., & Zacharia, Z. C. (2013). Physical and virtual laboratories in science and engineering education. Science, 340(6130), 305–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. de Jong, T., Sotiriou, S., & Gillet, D. (2014). Innovations in STEM education: The Go-Lab federation of online labs. Smart Learning Environments, 1(1), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Dikke, D., Tsourlidaki, E., Zervas, P., Cao, Y., Faltin, N., Sotiriou, S., et al. (2014). GoLabz: Towards a federation of online labs for inquiry-based science education at school. In Proceedings of the 7th annual international conference on education and new learning technologies (EDULEARN14), July 2014, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 3238–3248.Google Scholar
  8. Gomes, L., & Bogosyan, S. (2009). Current trends in remote laboratories. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 56(12), 4744–4756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Govaerts, S., Cao, Y., Vozniuk, A., Holzer, A., Zutin, D.G., Ruiz, E.S.C., et al. (2013). Towards an online lab portal for inquiry-based stem learning at school. In J. Wang & R. Lau (Eds.), Advances in web-based learning—ICWL 2013 (pp. 244–253). Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
  10. Gravier, C., Fayolle, J., Bayard, B., Ates, M., & Lardon, J. (2008). State of the art about remote laboratories paradigms—Foundations of ongoing mutations. International Journal of Online Engineering, 4(1), 19–25.Google Scholar
  11. Jaakkola, T., Nurmi, S., & Veermans, K. (2011). A comparison of students’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits in simulation only and simulation-laboratory contexts. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(1), 71–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Kong, S. C., Yeung, Y. Y., & Wu, X. Q. (2009). An experience of teaching for learning by observation: Remote-controlled experiments on electrical circuits. Computers & Education, 52(3), 702–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Koper, R. (2006). Current research in learning design. Educational Technology & Society, 9(1), 13–22.Google Scholar
  14. Koren, Y., & Bell, R. (2011). Advances in collaborative filtering. In F. Ricci, L. Rokach, B. Shapira, & P. Kantor (Eds.), Recommender systems handbook (pp. 145–186). New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Lowe, D., Murray, S., Weber, L., de la Villefromoy, M., Johnston, A., Lindsay, E., et al. (2009). LabShare: Towards a national approach to laboratory sharing. In Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Association for Engineering Education conference, December 2009, Adelaide, Australia, pp. 458–463.Google Scholar
  16. Maier, C., & Niederstätter, M. (2010). Lab2go—A repository to locate online laboratories. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 6(1), 12–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press (online). http://tinyurl.com/n47qx8s. Accessed 14 Apr 2015.
  18. Ricci, F., Rokack, L., Shapira, B., & Kantor, P. B. (Eds.). (2011). Recommender systems handbook. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
  19. Richter, T., Boehringer, D., & Jeschke, S. (2011). LiLa: A European project on networked experiments. In S. Jeschke, F. Isenhardt, & K. Henning (Eds.), Automation, communication and cybernetics in science and engineering (pp. 307–317). Heidelberg: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Sergis, S., Zervas, P., & Sampson, D. G. (2014). ICT competence-based learning object recommendations for teachers. In Proceedings of the IADIS 11th international conference on cognition and exloratory learning in digital age (CELDA2014), October 2014, Porto, Portugal, pp. 150–157.Google Scholar
  21. Shani, G., & Gunawardana, A. (2011). Evaluating recommendation systems. In F. Ricci, L. Rokach, B. Shapira, & P. Kantor (Eds.), Recommender systems handbook (pp. 257–297). New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Tsourlidaki, E., Zervas, P., Sotiriou, S. & Sampson, D. G. (2015). An investigation with European school teachers on how to characterize virtual and remote labs. In Proceedings of the IEEE 6th international conference on engineering education towards excellence and innovation 2015 (EDUCON2015), March 2015, Tallinn, Estonia.Google Scholar
  23. UNESCO. (2011). ICT competency framework for teachers (online). http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002134/213475e.pdf. Accessed 14 Apr 2015.
  24. Vanderlinde, R., Aesaert, K., & Van Braak, J. (2014). Institutionalised ICT use in primary education: A multilevel analysis. Computers & Education, 72, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Zervas, P., Fyskilis S., & Sampson, D. G. (2014a). ASK4LABS: A Web-based repository for supporting learning design driven remote and virtual labs recommendations. In Proceedings of the IADIS 11th international conference on cognition and exploratory learning in digital age (CELDA2014), October 2014, Porto, Portugal, pp. 172–179.Google Scholar
  26. Zervas, P., Kalamatianos, A., Tsourlidaki, E., Sotiriou, S., & Sampson, D. G. (2014b). A methodology for organizing virtual and remote laboratories. In D. Sampson, D. Ifenthaler, J. M. Spector, & P. Isaias (Eds.), Digital systems for open access to formal and informal learning (pp. 235–255). USA: Springer.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Panagiotis Zervas
    • 1
    • 2
  • Stylianos Sergis
    • 1
    • 2
  • Demetrios G. Sampson
    • 1
    • 2
  • Stefanos Fyskilis
    • 2
  1. 1.Centre for Research and Technology HellasInformation Technologies InstituteThessaloníkiGreece
  2. 2.Department of Digital SystemsUniversity of PiraeusPiraeusGreece

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options