The 13th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning took place from Oct. 7th to 14th in Aveiro, Portugal. In a workshop on Social and Collaborative Software participants had the chance to get their hands on research prototypes, amongst them: the Social MicroLearning prototype developed at the MobileKnowledgeLab.
The JTEL Summer School is an annual opportunity for PhD-students from all across Europe (and beyond) to develop research skills, learn about cutting-edge research and collaborate with others in their own and complementary research areas. It is organized by the European Association for Technology Enhanced Learning (EA-TEL). This year, researchers from the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) of the Open University, the Advanced Community Information Systems Group (ACIS) of the RWTH Aachen and the MobileKnowledgeLab of the Research Studios Austria FG organized a workshop to let students play around with new research prototypes in the emerging field of social and collaborative learning.
Cooperation on Collaboration
The first prototype was a peer-to-peer software for a Question-Based-Dialog facilitation method called Noracle that fosters inquiry skills and reflection on complex matters. The project was a true cooperation on collaboration as all three institutions contributed key elements:
- KMi was responsible for the pedagogical and theoretical approach
- ACIS provided its peer-to-peer framework las2peer and developed the backend
- MobileKnowledgeLab contributed social graph analysis and frontend development
Social MicroLearning
The second half of the workshop focused on the Social MicroLearning prototype developed by the MobileKnowledgeLab (see also: Social MicroLearning: Beyond Remembering). The participants were encouraged to freely use the prototype to create MicroLearning content, share, rate, tag and comment it. The prototype convinced with stability, consistent design, smooth user experience and usability across devices as the overall feedback showed.
Try it yourself
Both projects provide live-deployments of their prototypes that are accessible via the Internet. You can find a short explanation on how to get started with Noracle on the Noracle project page. A live deployment of the Social MicroLearning prototype is available at https://soml.knowledgepulse.com. You can register a new account if you don’t yet have one yet by using the password self-management software at https://soml.knowledgepulse.com/pwm (you also get redirected there if you click on cancel in the authentication dialog).
Links:
- EA-TEL
- Knowledge Media Institute
- Advanced Community Information Systems Group
- KMi News Article on the Summer School
- las2Peer
Live Prototypes