Authors:
Pedro Assunção
;
Carla Lopes
and
Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha
Affiliation:
Polytechnic Institute of Leiria / ESTG – Institute of Telecommunicatiosn, Portugal
Keyword(s):
b-Learning, e-Content, Wireless Access, Electrical Engineering.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
e-Learning
;
e-Learning, e-Commerce and e-Society Applications
;
Multimedia
;
Multimedia Systems and Applications
;
Telecommunications
Abstract:
This paper describes a novel pedagogical approach and its application to undergraduate Electrical Engineering courses. A b-learning model is proposed where students are subject to different types of interactions and diverse learning experiences characterised by the type learning session and pedagogical agent in use. These include face-to-face teaching sessions in the classroom, standalone e-learning sessions, working groups and supervised laboratory work. A wireless LAN infrastructure, as part of the Portuguese Electronic University Project, is used for the e-learning component of the proposed approach. In practice, this is an application of the “anywhere, at anytime” concept to learning processes by extending classroom boundaries in both space and availability domains. From a technical point a view, the paper addresses the information network infrastructure used and its quality of service in multimedia communications, the e-content generation, its characteristics, requirements and p
ossible adaptation to heterogeneous environments. A student survey was conducted to evaluate technical and pedagogical aspects of the learning process using the proposed model. The results show this is a promising approach towards flexible learning in Higher Education Institutions and also revealed that students tend to adapt rather slowly to emerging pedagogical approaches, though they are truly in favour to use IT in their own learning processes.
(More)