Integration of External Tools in Virtual Learning Environments: Main Design Issues and Alternatives

Alario-Hoyos, Carlos; Asensio-Pérez, Juan I.; Bote‐Lorenzo, Miguel L.; Sánchez, Eduardo Gómez; Vega-Gorgojo, Guillermo; Ruiz‐Calleja, Adolfo

doi:10.1109/icalt.2010.110

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The main limitation of these new VLEs was that they were conceived to replace other existing and popular VLEs. Unfortunately, educators and students that are used to a given VLE in their classes are typically reluctant to embrace a new one, sometimes because of the learning e ort and the adaptation period required, and sometimes because their institutions force them to use a particular, institutional VLE [Ala10a]. In addition, these exible and tailorable VLEs were the outcomes of research projects that never become stable products, thus hindering their adoption by those potentially interested.…”

Section: Research Problem Of the Dissertationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The GLUE! architecture, including the elements and their responsibilities, the integration contracts, and the restrictions on VLE and tool providers has been published in [Ala10a], being the main original contribution of this dissertation.…”

Section: Conclusion Of the Dissertationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The identi cation of the main issues that should be taken into account when tackling the problem of integrating existing external tools in existing VLEs is a contribution of this dissertation, and has been published in [Ala10a], including the de nition of these issues and an analysis of existing proposals up to 2009. These issues were revised and updated in [Ala10c,Ala12a] to include later integration works.…”

Section: Integration Of External Tools In Vlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Actually, these requirements and issues are the guidelines to design and develop the architecture proposed in this dissertation. The conclusions about this partial objective and the contributions have been published in [Ala10a], including the de nition of the main issues and the integration proposals up to 2009, being revised and updated in [Ala10c] to include later integration works. Besides, the stakeholders' requirements have been formally embodied in [Ala12a].…”

Section: Objectives and Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, it is also important to mention that some of these practitioners may be reluctant to change the VLE they are accustomed to, and that some institutions may impose the use of speci c VLEs. Therefore, generic integration approaches should be designed with the objective of integrating the higher number of tools in, at least, the most popular VLEs [Ala10a].…”

Section: Virtual Learning Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments

Alario-Hoyos

Bote‐Lorenzo

Sánchez

et al. 2013

Computers & Education

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A mis padres. AcknowledgementsThe opening lines of this document serve to close this dissertation. In them, I want to sincerely thank all those who have made this work possible, and without whom this dissertation could not have been accomplished. First, I would like to thank my supervisors Miguel and Eduardo, with whom I share the credit of this work, and who have supported me throughout all these years in which we have worked together very closely. They believed in me from the very rst moment I ran into them, and they spent much time and e ort to make this dissertation succeed.Yannis is also one of the great minds that has most in uenced me over these years, and so I owe him much of this work. He insisted in showing me the right way, and he never hesitated to give me on-the-y advice or answers to my questions, despite his busy schedule. Of course, I have to specially thank Asen, Guillermo and Adolfo, who have very closely followed my dissertation, and with whom I had deep and intense discussions.Regarding the development tasks, I have been very lucky to be supported by David and Javier; without their work, this dissertation would have needed much more time, and the de- This fellowship gave me economic stability for almost three years and allowed me to make several short research stays abroad.Despite this ideal working environment, I could never have nished this dissertation without the support of my family and friends. Among them, special words of thanks are to Martín, iii Eduardo, Natalia, Miguel Ángel, Dani, Quini and many others who stood by my side to a greater or lesser extend throughout these years. Here, I would also like to remember all my college friends which led me to the front door of this PhD after a ve-year degree in which we all shared great times and memories.My parents, Julián and Tere, deserve my best words. They raised me in the values of sacri ce and knowledge. They always backed me up in every choice, and helped me overcome the di culties, and what is more important, they still keep doing it day by day. They are the ones that encourage me to get the best out of myself.Finally, my last words of gratitude must be for Bea, because she su ered this dissertation as I did. She was always by my side and never gave up on me. She gave me the strength to face this challenge, being even able to follow me to the end of the world. This dissertation proposes a middleware integration architecture called GLUE! (Group Learning Uniform Environment) that enables the lightweight integration of multiple existing external tools in multiple existing VLEs, overcoming these limitations. GLUE! fosters this integration by imposing few restrictions on VLE and tool providers, as well as by expecting an attainable e ort from developers. Besides, GLUE! facilitates the instantiation and enactment of collaborative learning situations within VLEs, leveraging the VLEs distinctive features for the management of users and groups. By means of GLUE!, practitioners may use external tools as if they were VLE built-in tools, and w...

show abstract

Section: Research Problem Of the Dissertationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion Of the Dissertationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integration Of External Tools In Vlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Objectives and Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Virtual Learning Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments

Alario-Hoyos

Bote‐Lorenzo

Sánchez

et al. 2013

Computers & Education

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Perceived openness of Learning Management Systems by students and teachers in education and technology courses

Conde

García

Rodríguez-Conde

et al. 2014

Computers in Human Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

Conde-González

García-Peñalvo

Forment

et al. 2014

Science of Computer Programming

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

h i g h l i g h t s• LMS and PLE are going to coexist and they should interact.• Existing initiatives don't support a complete interoperability among these contexts.• A service-based framework to facilitate this interoperability is defined.• It includes several interoperability scenarios that are tested in the university.• Interoperability between PLE and LMS is possible. a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t The landscape of teaching and learning has changed in recent years because of the application of Information and Communications technology. Among the most representative innovations in this regard are Learning Management Systems. Despite of their popularity in institutional contexts and the wide set of tools and services that they provide to learners and teachers, they present several issues. Learning Management Systems are linked to an institution and a period of time, and are not adapted to learners' needs. In order to address these problems Personal Learning Environments are defined, but it is clear that these will not replace Learning Management Systems and other institutional contexts. Both types of environment should therefore coexist and interact. This paper presents a servicebased framework to facilitate such interoperability. It supports the export of functionalities from the institutional to the personal environment and also the integration within the institution of learning outcomes from personal activities. In order to achieve this in a flexible, extensible and open way, web services and interoperability specifications are used. In addition some interoperability scenarios are posed. The framework has been tested in real learning contexts and the results show that interoperability is possible, and that it benefits learners, teachers and institutions.

show abstract

Integration of External Tools in Virtual Learning Environments: Main Design Issues and Alternatives

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments

Perceived openness of Learning Management Systems by students and teachers in education and technology courses

Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About