"Who is who": the roles in an intelligent system for foreign language terminology learning

ITELS is an intelligent system for foreign language terminology learning. It is aimed not only at assisting language learning focused on specific terminology but also at enhancing learner's conceptual knowledge in the subject area. The system could be tuned to aid learning in different terminological areas and supports three styles of tutoring: system-initiated, collaborative, and learner-initiated. Three agents take part in the instructional process supported by ITELS: the human teacher, the system, and the learner. Each of them is an active agent characterised by a set of specific roles with respect to the system functioning. In this paper we describe ITELS with emphasis on the roles of these agents.     

The state-of-the-art in digital technology-based assessment

The role of digital technology in assessment has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Naturally, technology offers many practical benefits, such as increased efficiency with regard to the design, implementation and scoring of existing assessments. More importantly, it also has the potential to have profound, transformative effects on the field of assessment by facilitating the integration of formative activities with accountability requirements and broadening the range of abilities and the scope of constructs that can be assessed. This article provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in digital technology-based assessment, with particular reference to advances in the automated scoring of constructed responses, the assessment of complex 21^st century skills in large-scale assessments and innovations involving high fidelity virtual reality simulations. Key challenges with respect to each are highlighted before the extent to which digital technology is truly transforming assessment is considered.     

Evolution of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: The Effects of the “Third” on the Interplay Between Cooperation and Competition

Minerva - The paper investigates the evolution of the first manned international space mission – a rendezvous and docking between a US and a Soviet spacecraft in 1975 known as the...     

TM4L: Creating and browsing educational topic maps

In this article, we describe TM4L, an environment for building, maintaining and using standards‐based, ontology‐aware e‐learning repositories. It is based on the idea that concept‐driven access to learning material implemented as a topic map can bridge the gap between a learner and targeted knowledge. One of the driving goals of this work is to increase the reusability of available educational resources by enabling the use of a developed subject ontology with courses on the same subject with different stricture. Another goal of TM4L is to support an efficient context‐based retrieval of learning content tailored to the needs of a learner working on an educational task. The paper focuses on three aspects of the TM4L environment: domain modelling, editing capabilities and the interface for exploring the learning collection. The key features of the TM4L functionality are illustrated with some examples.     

User Interfaces for a Virtual Learning Environment: Two Study Cases

A recent powerful idea in the design of Web-based learning environments is the usage of virtual places. The employment of interface metaphors is one of the approaches enabling inexperienced users to feel comfortable in such virtual environments. We have designed a Virtual Environment for Distance Education and Training (VEDET), which provides basic virtual spaces, resources, and services. In this paper we discuss the user interface of two Web-based distance learning courses Business on the Internet and Business English, developed on the basis of VEDET. A web-based learning environment has been implemented to support the delivery of these courses. Two examples of interface metaphors have been developed and adopted, each presenting a coherent image of the environment. © IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers