Remote practical activities have been demonstrated to be efficient when learners come to acquire inquiry skills. In computer science education, virtualization technologies are gaining popularity as this technological advance enables instructors to implement realistic practical learning activities, and learners to engage in authentic and problem-based learning. However, virtualization solutions have not been designed especially for education and do not address any pedagogical concern. Since several large-scale studies showed that instructional supports during practical activities are almost as important as technical features, this article investigates the following research question: how the scaffolding around the lab increases students' engagement in remote practical learning of computer science? To answer this question, we introduce the Lab4CE environment, a remote laboratory for computer education which adopts a distributed, modular and flexible architecture to integrate a set of scaffolding tools and services intended for instructors and learners. An exploratory study conducted with 139 undergraduate students enrolled in the first year of a computer science degree suggests a positive effect of the framework on learners' engagement when they come to practice system administration, and reveals a significant positive correlation between students' activity within the system and students' learning achievement.

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Abstract. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have increasingly become objects of research interest and studies in recent years. While MOOCs could be a means to address massive audiences, they suffer from high drop-out rates and low user engagement. Gamification is known as the application of game design elements in non-gaming scenarios to solve problems or to influence a user's behaviour change. By applying gamification to MOOCs, we aim to enhance users' engagement and goal achievement within a MOOC environment. To define our gamification strategy, we asked 42 experts in the fields of game design, learning science and technology-enhanced learning to rate 21 selected game design patterns according to their suitability within a MOOC environment application. The data collected allowed us to identify a set of nine game design patterns as promising candidates to be tested in MOOC environments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the globe moved towards “emergency online education”, experiencing a metamorphosis that advanced their capacities and competencies as never before. Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs), the internal units that promote sustainable transformations, can play a key role in making this metamorphosis last. Existing models for TLCs have defined the competencies that they could help develop, focusing on teachers’, students’, and managers’ development, but have mislead aspects such as leadership, organizational processes, and infrastructures. This paper evaluates the PROF-XXI framework, which offers a holistic perspective on the competencies that TLCs should develop for supporting deep and sustainable transformations of HEIs. The framework was evaluated with 83 participants from four Latin American institutions and used for analyzing the transformation of their teaching and learning practices during the pandemic lockdown. The result of the analysis shows that the PROF-XXI framework was useful for identifying the teaching and learning competencies addressed by the institutions, their deficiencies, and their strategic changes. Specifically, this study shows that most institutions counted with training plans for teachers before this period, mainly in the competencies of digital technologies and pedagogical quality, but that other initiatives were created to reinforce them, including students’ support actions.

Open Archive Toulouse Archive OuverteOATAO is an open access repository that collects the work of Toulouse researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible To cite this version:Abstract Nowadays, the use of mobile applications is gaining popularity among people, spreading to different areas. Specifically, the use of mobile applications has boomed in the field of education, with the increasing variety of applications in the application stores (PlayStore, AppStore, etc) that address specific problems of stories becoming increasingly common in the market like: problems of reading, writing, mathematics and other topics.On the other hand, the special education is an area of attention to children with special educational needs such as attention deficit, intellectual disability, speech problems, among other problems. Specifically, children who have problems in literacy with special educational need, face a challenge during their learning process of reading and writing. Because of this, special education has begun to incorporate the use of technology through the use of mobile applications in the classroom. In this context, we believe that teaching strategies can be adapted to the development of competences, both specific and transversal, in special education students, while at the same time they can increase students motivation during their learning process. These elements are known as gamification techniques.There is a seies of gamification techniques that can be incorporated into the learning process in children with special educational needs.The present work exposes the gamification techniques incorporated in a playful way in mobile applications, as well as a methodological proposal for the integration of these techniques in special education enviroments, making a case study in conjunction with teachers and special education children. First section of the article consits of a brief introduction to the reader on the subject of the gamification techniques, in wich they are found and some examples of gamification techniques used. Section II exposes the problem that can be solved in this work, section III presents the methodology used for the preparation of this work, describing each of the stages by wich it is composed. Section IV presents the case study that was conducted in conjuntion with special education children and finally section V discusss the results and conclusions that wre obtained from the work done.

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