To participate and design Dynamic Hypermedial context-aware Devices

Submitted by sanmartin on 18 April 2008 - 10:47am.
Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award: 
2008
Award Status: 
Entry
Contributing Institution: 
CONICET

Postgraduate Seminar open to professionals in the fields of Humanities and Art; Psychology; Social Communication; Computer Sciences; System Engineering; Architecture and Design; accredited by the Faculty of Humanities and Art of the National University of Rosario (In Spanish: Facultad de Humanidades y Artes de Universidad Nacional de Rosario). It develops the concept of Dynamic Hypermedial Devices for research and education integrating the ethical-philosophical perspective of free software developing communities, the workshop modality in the higher education virtual-physical context, and the contracts coordination theory to model relationships among the intervening actors by introducing and using Sakai in Argentina.

Course Information
Course Number/ID: 
---
Course Length (number of weeks): 
8
Course Delivery Mode: 
Hybrid/Blended (some face-to-face and some online interactions)
Average Number of Enrolled Students: 
Between 10 and 30 students
Course Level: 
Other (please describe below)
Describe Other Course Level: 
Professionals and PhD students
Course Development & Delivery
Course Contributors: 

Lic. Alejandro Sartorio, displayed his doctoral thesis advances on Computer Sciences “Contracts for context-aware dynamics”, designs and develops the “PE Open Project” (In Spanish: “PE Obra Abierta”) site of transfer on theoretical aspects and the technological basic knowledge of the computer science area to be operated with a DHD.Eng. Guillermo Rodríguez, Sakai administrator, assists students to select and operate Sakai tools for the final work. Ps. Griselda Guarnieri, participated in a classroom training stating the differences between the IT applications and a collaborative system by comparing Moodle and Sakai and focusing on the user’s interactivity domain.

Course Development: 

The ICT, (Information and Communication Technologies) – TIC in Spanish, naturalization process is carried out as a media visual presence within the market policies framework, in the massive electronic mail uses, in the cybergames videos, etc; but we believe that this is not what actually happens in the university educational practices in Argentina, where, as far as we know and from our viewpoint, we have observed neither relevant transformations nor a naturalization level which provides a creative flow and deep support to the whys and wherefores of such usage. “Participate in and Design Dynamic Hypermedial context-aware Devices” was a seminar that aimed at making professionals from different fields aware of research results and e-learning developments accredited by the “Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina “ (CONICET) and “ Universidad Nacional de Rosario”These developments are arranged within the “Dynamic Hypermedia Device (DHD)” program framework (CIFASIS, CONICET-UNR-UPCM) which ultimate purpose is the strategies design and implementation for the public knowledge dissemination and construction through the Dynamic Hypermedia Devices, fulfilling the Argentinean scientific and technological community development requirements. The Seminar was designed as a physical-virtual workshop with a dialectical constructivist pedagogical perspective based on the fact that a DHD is a responsible social net provided by the TIC in a new physical virtual context. Within an interdisciplinary and dialogic framework, we experiment, analyze and discuss online educational models regarding different e-learning systems and applications, by presenting the Sakai Project, currently unknown among almost the whole Argentinean university academic community. In a second stage, we pose the presence concept in the virtual context as a responsible interactive-intersubjective dimension to finally reflect on a pedagogical design proposal to use an original piece of software named “contract” integrated in Sakai, which purpose is to provide greater dynamism to the pedagogical and research processes under the context aware system perspective. The developed didactic strategy aimed at making the addressees take part in the DHD as active participants to build a collaborative and reflective knowledge regarding their own interactive research and experimentations by using Sakai environment and going through the “sand table” metaphor. This metaphor comes from the recovery of important teacher training experiences that took place in the first half of the twentieth century in our country, where the Active School methodologies were implemented by using various technologies like the sand table, which is used to work collaboratively on simulations about scientific and technological conceptualizations of greater complexity.

Course Delivery: 

The Sakai choice is the result of a more than ten-year I&D trajectory with applied tests on e-learning for higher education in Argentina where well-known platforms, open source as well as commercial ones, were taken into account, and experimental prototypes implementations and pedagogical proposals publications like “Hypertext: six proposals for this millennium” (San Martín, 2003) were carried out and were internationally acknowledged (Spain 2002, New Technologies Applied to Education Award). At the end of 2005 we started to study the Sakai project and we found convergent perspectives and direct relation with our own proposals. We consider that a system aimed to develop the higher education physical-virtual workshop should provide: • Individual and group work environments.• Participation possibilities with different roles and a unique access code.• Varied contextualization of virtual domains according to disciplinary specificities: both in the visual interface as well as the tools. • Research, teaching, learning and participative production. • All actors’ synchronic as well as asynchronic hypermedial communication, configuration and edition with dynamic permissions for each tool. • Several individual and group instruments for the evaluation.In Sakai, we can develop research, composing and educational processes in physical-virtual-interactive-communicative higher education contexts by implementing the workshop methodology to respond efficiently to the disciplines demands where the image and sound are fundamental for knowledge development (Architecture, Design, Music, etc.). Their 2 categories: Projects and Courses enables the integration of Research, Technological Development and Education. At an organizational level, these categories can be conceptualized as Development Units (DU) comprising dynamic modelers activities. The Conferencing tool together with the integrated sub-tools and the chance to continue an audible verbal communication contribute to the construction of a non-fragmented knowledge produced through the online dialogue and participation as a tool for creative action and new representations production. The system is the “sand table” metaphor. The forums and their organization tool, the wikis and blogs enrich the individual and group analytic reflection to build up knowledge thanks to the productions, the different variables categorization, the hypertextual circuit configurations among tools, the hypermedial works publications providing multiple possibilities to make comments. The Sakai project conception that provides an entry into a personal domain with a unique password where we can participate in diverse courses and projects by performing different roles, states a new democratic, autonomous, daily life perspective conceptually absent in other e-learning systems. All this articulates with the university chairs and research projects organization in Argentina.

Course Self-Assessment
Communication & Collaboration Self-Assessment: 
Excellent
Communication & Collaboration Evidence: 

In order to favor communication and to achieve better interdisciplinary interaction and affinities, the professionals were required to build up their own profile, as part of their first task. Common exploration domains, where the specialty groups were able to collaboratively experiment with diverse Sakai tools according to the different disciplinary requirements, were opened after the first presence meeting in the Faculty. Those domains were additional sites where every participant has the maintenance role. Not only could they work in their own site, but they also had access to other groups’ experimentation sites (Sept-Oct, 2007) to observe interdisciplinary advances or participate in their suggested activities. This enhanced communication and collaboration, bearing in mind that the final individual evaluation work comprises an online project design and implementation in Sakai based on the tasks and objectives to be developed. This triggered asynchronic reflections on the presence concept, comparisons between platforms, interfaces, user-friendly tools selection, and performance in the DHc-aD forum and other experimental domains forums. The topics were posed by teachers and students as well. Finally, the qualitative difference, as compared with other previous experiences, was the impact on the user-friendliness of Conferencing where the board, camera, sound and chat were motivating tools that favored interchange and knowledge construction among all the participants.

Learning Material Self-Assessment: 
Excellent
Learning Material Evidence: 

Taking into consideration that the audience was made up of professionals who were doing doctorates and belonged to different Argentinean, Uruguayan and Mexican Universities, the available material comprised an updated scientific and technological production with national and international research refereeing that belong to our own team of professors as well as international referents. The content modules (Didactic guide) were designed and based on the physical-virtual book recently published by the National University of Quilmes “Towards a Dynamic Hypermedial Device: Education and Research for the interactive audiovisual field” (San Martín et al, 2008) -- which, throughout its seven chapters (208 pages) and its experimental domains in Sakai, establishes the general theoretical framework of the “Obra Abierta” project, the open source perspective, the higher education e-learning cases analyses, Moodle and Sakai features, the physical-virtual workshop perspective through the sand table metaphor and the research team’s applicable examples, the e-learning systems evolution and base lines focusing on a context-aware perspective, the contracts theory and framework in order to finally state an interdisciplinary design methodology for the “contracts” software application in the DHD Program virtual domain. (http://200.3.120.236:8080/portal)Different tools and material (as Texts, audiovisuals, etc.) were used to optimize the hypermedial writing and reading.

Learning Outcomes & Assessment Self-Assessment: 
Effective
Learning Outcomes & Assessment Evidence: 

Interchange among Argentinean, Mexican and Uruguayan research teams was promoted since the future doctors carry out their higher education teaching activities as well as research on the Developer contents. After an 8-week training in the physical-virtual workshop modality, the participants experienced the role of a student, a member, a project coordinator, a person responsible for a course by supporting each other in case of problematic issues or specific contents which do not belong to their disciplinary field. After 4 weeks, the 2nd presential encounter took place. The participants’ integration in their new physical domains was observed and their fluent interdisciplinary dialogue and comradeship portrayed their previous interchanges in the virtual domain (both in the first and second encounter we sat at a big round table, total Nº 29). It means a great effort to carry out a doctorate due to the Latin American social economic context and the transport costs compared to the professors’ and trainee researchers‘salaries so it implies a shared responsibility as regards the communication of expectations, the research methodologies, the thesis schedules and the results to be achieved. The participants committed themselves to perform individual and group activities in due time. The final work configuration and guardianship throughout the year meets the needs and expectations of each Ph.D. student according to his/her research project, times and training processes.

Course Look & Feel, Web Usability Self-Assessment: 
Excellent
Course Look & Feel, Web Usability Evidence: 

Different html pages were developed to design the web site according to the Accessibility issues for surfing like hyperlinks access, links surfing, fields surfing, pages surfing and the pages design that provide an easy understanding (numbered lists, headings, etc.). Different alternative accesses to the presented information were provided through images, sounds, applets and scripts in various types of formats. A dynamic superior marquee was developed in flash. The plastic images were provided by Miguel Canatakis, a well-known Argentinean plastic artist who conceptually states the global communication from original perspectives. The tools were selected according to the course contents mentioned in the explanatory introduction. Different menus were translated into Spanish. We noticed that though the wiki tool was available to the participants, its editor was not user-friendly; later most of the participants confirmed this observation. Moreover, Version 2.4 blog had bugs in the typology of the Spanish language that were soled in the current Version 2.5. All this technical material was referred to and enlarged from the Sakai community’s established model and format. Simplified manuals of the main tools, which linked videos in English, were collaboratively translated into Spanish. In the announcements tool, exploratory activities instruction links and relevant information web search were published.

Learner Support Self-Assessment: 
Effective
Learner Support Evidence: 

The online “guardianship” support was in charge of Eng. Guillermo Rodríguez who reliably responds to the students’ diverse requirements in due time. The professionals were assisted, not to solve technical issues, but also to conceptualize the Sakai System perspective. This support lasts one year after the 8-week physical-virtual course finishes for the students to be able to design their own project in Sakai according to their PhD thesis. The experimental collaborative environment belongs to the Virtual Field Research and Development of the National University of Rosario (In Spanish: Universidad Nacional de Rosario -UNR) in membership agreement with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina (In Spanish: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la Argentina, CONICET); the students have the pedagogic and technical field infrastructure of their university as well. Though the participants accredited their reading in English language, different Sakai pages and tools were translated into Spanish to favor their Spanish-speaking universities’ adoption. Moreover, a simplified manual in Spanish is available for its further enlargement. Clear information on the roles of the people responsible for the Seminar, the institutional support and the contact person according to the different students needs were provided.

Teaching Innovation
Teaching Innovation: 

Among the main contributions of the dialogic constructive active methodologies from the beginnings of the twentieth century, we can highlight the opening-up of the educational sphere to the geographical and socio-cultural environment providing a space where students as well as teachers can experiment and construct knowledge. For students and teachers as well, the construction of knowledge demanded getting hands and overalls dirty while creatively playing with materials on a sand table, and being aware that the shortest line between two points in an educational process is not a straight but a zigzag one and that we lived in the past as much as today in Smeraldina:“In Smeraldina, an aquatic city, a grid of canals and a grid of streets are superimposed and interweaved. To move from a place to another, you may always choose between the land voyage and the one on a boat: and as the shortest line between two points in Smeraldina is not a straight but a zigzag one, that branches into tortuous variants, the streets opening up to each passer-by are not only two but many, and the number increases for those who alternate between journeys on boat and those on firm land" (Calvino, I.)So it is that in our journey through the different environments and e-learning proposals we wondered if “it allowed us to rearrange benches, communicate with the community, get our hands dirty in the sand table...”The importance encircled by the Visibility of the DHD processes manifested through intersubjective relations, varied activities, contextualization, etc, led us to deepen the Context Aware systems perspective. The deep awareness of the complex connections within the educational processes as well as in R&D, regarding its own dynamics and the participant’s protagonism, made us face the indispensable need for users to have the possibility of changing adjustment criteria of the services involved in a dynamic and qualitative order, facing up to the traditional “monolithic” e-learning systems. The Dynamic Hypermedial Device concept transference is based on scientific technological aspects such as the inclusion of the piece of contract software in the Sakai architecture and it constituted not only an innovation at a content level but also the execution of an interdisciplinary participative methodology using the Sakai tool itself. The exactness of Sakai collaborative characteristics constituted an ideal framework to deploy DHD’s innovative.An innovative active perspective with a theoretical-practical methodology documented in Sakai with Contract was developed and implemented. So, throughout the Seminar, it was suggested to deal with the state of art and then to reflect on the critical opinion on the suggested innovation. The participants appreciated the exposition clearness, the proposal innovation, the “sand table” metaphor innovative proposal and the production quality of the contract design based on Sakai.

Optional (screenshots, links)
Related Links: 
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Capturas Sakai.doc1.15 MB