Internet of Things, Infrastructures and Mobile Applications

Given their ability to motivate and engage users, digital media, and games in particular, are being adopted on a mass scale in a wide area of applications including education, training, health care, and therapy, amongst others. Traditional therapy for children diagnosed with autism comprises a set of activities aimed at improving behavioral traits often associated with social and communication skills. However, the therapy process is challenging as every child responds differently to the intervention. There are usually long wait lists for treatment and there are high demands for the time clinician’s can provide for treatment. Games, and serious games in particular, that can be easily tailored to the needs of specific individuals, and that can span a wide range of scenarios, are proving to be effective alternatives to traditional therapy. Here we present an autism serious game framework (ASGF) whose goal is to provide therapists with a simple interface that will allow them to develop various serious game interventions. Using the ASGF, we have developed two games, one whose goal is to help users identify emotions by matching facial expressions such as happiness, anger, fear, or sadness, and another, which focuses on response inhibition. The ASGF employs a graphical user interface-based, What You See Is What You Get interface, that simplifies the development of autism serious games.

Higher education institutions will remain gatekeepers of opportunity if industry, governments, and students value their existing credentials. Keeping up with technological changes and new learning models may contribute to making learning environments more effective and desirable. With appropriate learning models like computer-based learning, contact time can be changed from absorbing information to situations where students inquire, think and challenge their lecturers and each other.A blockchain is a digital ledger of economic and financial transactions but is not limited to these kinds of transactions as it can record ‘virtually everything of value’. Blockchain is a disruptive technology that will influence our daily lives and organizations such as education, business, and governance.The focus of this study was on a model, called LinkLearn, that implements blockchain principals and used as a learning tool. The research question formulated for this research was whether LinkLearn can be used as a learning tool. A qualitative research process was followed, and lecturers were interviewed to obtain their views about LinkLearn in education. The outcomes of this study show that lecturers are positive about LinkLearn as a learning tool. The results of this study are important as it shows that the LinkLearn model has the potential to transform the way students are engaged, motivated and evaluated.

The Moore’s law rigorously fulfilled and in 2021 the CMOS technology seems to reach its ultimate limit. What’s next? All specialists anticipate that a circuit from 2031 will not keep the same performances offered by the last 2.5 nm CMOS from 2021. Proposals are multiple, alternative nano-devices are well-known, nanoscale technologies open amazing future facilities. Confluence of nano-electronics with organic semiconductors and biomaterials seems to be inherent. The paper intends to reply to this extraordinary challenging.

The latest technologies have enabled easier collaboration using commodity tools - mainly the Web Browsers. This facilitates online collaboration between universities and the experts in the industry. As an implementation of modern web services, our proposed solution is near to the real-life educational experience, aiming to replace or to complement assisted teaching and being a valuable add-on to the blended learning process.

Music Learning online has been promoted the last decades as an Interactive methodology with considerable outcomes, in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and attainment of popularity. However, a situation where no noticeable progress would be inferred as accredited benefit of massive learning was reported a decade ago. The advent of mobile computing communication proved a forceful exertion to situated learning in music having the power to influence the acquisition of music knowledge and skills. The case of a novel Byzantine Music learning protocol is examined for its potential to achieve relatively a big “crop” from rather limited in extend lessons but with the capacity to have a significant effect on the context of musical instruction.

Examining and identifying the way that designers approach game design could support the improvement of game design curricula. This paper explores how kids in the early childhood approach develop and apply game design strategies during participatory game design sessions. During a period of three months, eighteen kindergarten learners participated in game design sessions, creating their own games. The data analysis suggests that those learners applied different game design strategies than the ones they initially started using. The frequency and intensity of the use of those strategies also changed, showing patterns that indicate learners’ development in their use of game design strategies and add empirical evidence to the field of game design education. Additionally, the Game Design Strategies Analysis (GDSA) is presented, which elaborates on the different types of strategies encountered when designing games.

ChildConnect is an early childhood development programme which aims to use mobile learning to support and educate parents and other caregivers. The programme is based on an SMS curriculum focused on early childhood development content, underpinned by six core learning outcomes. In a pilot in 2017, 899 primary and secondary caregivers signed up to receive the messages. Caregivers were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. The treatment group received 3 messages a week for 24 weeks while the control group received one message every two weeks. Pre and post-tests were administered using ‘Unstructured Supplementary Service Data’ (USSD) surveys on mobile phones. Results of the tests were combined into a composite learning outcome score. This paper explores preliminary evidence of knowledge gains, comparing pre-test outcome scores to post-test outcome scores across treatment and control groups. The treatment group performed better on their learning outcome score than those in the control group by ~0.7 points (Cohen’s d = 0.21, small effect size, but non-trivial). This shows that there was a small but measurable positive effect on the knowledge gains of the treatment group compared to the control.

ChildConnect is a messaging service which aims to use mobile learning to support and educate parents and caregivers through an SMS curriculum of Early Childhood Development content. This paper reports on initial uptake and subsequent engagement with the ChildConnect messages. An experimental design was adopted where caregivers were randomly assigned to either a treatment or a control group. The uptake for ChildConnect from those targeted via public clinic data on pregnant women was 24%, this increased to 66% for secondary caregivers invited to join the service by a primary caregiver. Engagement was measured in terms of appetite, as well as in terms of response rates to both unincentivised and incentivised opportunities to engage. For both control and treatment groups there was clear appetite to receive more than three messages per week, with most (~78%) participants indicating that they would like to receive messages every day or every weekday. Three incentivised surveys (midline 1, midline 2 and endline) were completed by 72%, 70% and 69% of participants respectively. Between 25−55% of participants in the treatment group responded to unincentivised weekly ‘reply’ messages. Higher response rates were seen for the control group who received fewer messages and only fortnightly opportunities to reply.

The paper proposes an active-learning strategy aimed to increase class engagement and enhance student learning through the use of a Classroom Response System (CRS). A list of the commercially available CRS is reviewed. The motivation for designing an in-house CRS that addresses the limitations of the commercial CRS and solves specific needs of several automotive engineering courses is provided. The design and development of a mobile-based CRS at McMaster University in the School of Engineering Practice and Technology (SEPT) is presented. The CRS includes several modules that deal with the instructor and student interfaces, and with the infrastructure needed for a client-server application. The modules of developed CRS are described in detail. The paper presents the challenges that had to be mitigated during the development of the web-based applications and during its integration with the university’s Learning Management System. The benefits compared with commercial CRS justify the efforts to develop an in-house mobile web-based CRS software package.

Currently there is a fairly widespread tendency to investigate the use of mobile devices in education, since this type of device makes learning more flexible due to the possibility of using it anywhere and anytime. There are numerous projects that refer to the use of m-Learning and its incorporation into educational processes. This paper presents the results of an experience that was applied to a group of students of the Academic Department of Computational Systems (DASC) of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS) with the objective of analyzing the use of mobile devices as support in the classroom. The results show that the students improved the achievement rate, showing availability for the use of m-Learning. In terms of perception, the recognition of the benefits of using m-Learning environments stands out.

Mobile mediated learning is becoming more popular among small children with the advancement of technology. In early days learning process was completely teacher centric. Once the technology is coupled with learning processes, enhanced teaching-learning activities based on mobile or tablet can be presented even outside the classroom. This helps small children to get hands-on experience on various educational activities in learner-centered educational environment which allow them to become active learners. Hence, development of mobile learning systems which will be able to use both within the classroom environment as well as outside that would be more useful for deeper learning. Due to existing research, usability issues take prominence in today’s mobile mediated applications that targeting small children. Small children put more effort on interactions rather than achieving intended objectives of the application. This leads to a reduction of performance of those applications. Hence, the proposed research aims to develop a framework which incorporates usability aspects with digital didactical design for mobile mediated learning in pre-primary education. The framework would provide a set of guidelines for incorporating usability aspects with digital didactical design in mobile based learning applications.

This paper is a case study which discusses the development and the use of rubrics as means of assessing students in STEM project-based learning activities. The context of the case study involves the pilot phase of the STEMFREAK program, an out-of-school educational program which engaged students in such projects. The aim of the paper is twofold: 1) to present the systematic process that was employed for the design, development and application of rubrics and 2) to assess the effectiveness of the STEMFREAK program which, following the principle of constructive alignment between learning design and assessment strategy, was designed to develop the students’ competencies that the rubrics assess. The design and the development of the rubrics took place following an iterative and participatory approach, whereas their application engaged 15 students in STEM projects. The students were assessed using the ensuing rubrics in a pre-post single group research design. The results showed that all students made statistically significant progress in all aspects of their performance, as assessed by the rubrics made. The case study has the potential of informing future approaches towards the assessment of students in projects that cater for STEM project-based learning with young learners.

The paper treats an application of predictive modeling in the field of mobile learning. A methodology to facilitate the realization of a model predicting the most utilized research topics that are close to the term mobile learning is developed. The constructed model is based on machine learning technique and fuzzy logic method and it predicts the implementation of mobile learning in different educational context. The results point out the found dependency and tendency for future advance of mobile learning.

JumpStart makes use of research-based structured learning material for mathematics together with in-class support by interns, teacher training, real-time formative and summative assessment, through m-learning. To assess its impact on learner outcomes, a cross sectional study design was adopted, whereby performance of a random selection for learners across Grades 1 to 3 in 18 schools was analysed. Grouped learner outcomes (at the level of a grade across groups of schools) prior to the intervention were compared to learner outcomes post the intervention and set alongside a description of the nature of the intervention. Improvements in learning outcomes, as measured by the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) are evident after one year of intervention, and appear to be strengthened after two years of intervention. Overall the JumpStart programme is having a significant impact on all the schools. The use of m-learning by interns for the efficient uptake and appropriate dosage of an early maths intervention; as well as the utility of a tablet interface for the efficient collection of early grade mathematics assessment data should be of interest to the m-learning and broader education community.

This paper presents both the experts and users evaluation results of the alpha version of TARGET (anTi-doping AwaReness Game for hEalthy lifestyle), a Serious Game for supporting the Anti-Doping Awareness for a Healthy Lifestyle. The game has been designed and implemented in the context of GAME (A serious Game Approach in Mitigating performance Enhancement culture in youth) which is an Erasmus + project. Particularly, the paper briefly presents the design and content of the serious game, along with the technological solution, which is based on the well-known Unity 3D platform in combination with Fungus plugin, and then presents the findings of the Alpha Version Users’ and Experts’ Evaluation of the game.According to the evaluation results, Lund’s results are very satisfying indicating a simple and easy to use and learn user interface and users believe that the game is useful for them, and on the other hand, EGameFlow results are also satisfying, despite the fact that Social Interaction is below average but this kind of games do not include interaction between users, although Immersion is low. Combining this result with the open-ended questions about the negative aspects the result might be the long dialogues that the user meets during the gaming experience.

This paper outlines the process of integrating an ePortfolio as a tool of academic development for students in tertiary education. The construction of the ePortfolio was based on the Self-Regulated Learning strategies which lead students’ performance towards constructing the artifacts for their ePortfolios in order to better present reflect and improve one of their academic ongoing projects by reflecting on their prior knowledge. The evaluation of the research is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results prove the correlation between the enhancement of students’ self-regulation and the construction of an academic ePortfolio for the promotion of their academic development.

This research is based on verifying the changes in cognitive function through the use of a mobile application designed to work in the mental flexibility processes of the elderly. It is worth mentioning that the presence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within society is a reality that manifests a special reflection in continuous evolution, and it has been increased in the field of health. Health mobile or M-health is the use of portable devices such as smartphones or tablets exclusively for medical use including diagnosis, support or treatment or even having a report on general health and well-being. All users (doctors/patients) can interact with these devices through a software application (App), which generally gather information interactively. This research aims to identify the support of Apps in the mental flexibility of the elderly. Mental flexibility is part of the executive functions that get deteriorated due to several causes, like the death of neurons. It was verified that there are new ways of learning in the elderly through the use of cognitive stimulation, taking advantage of the technology as a cognitive stimulation resource by using an App in patients of the Vida en los Años Nursing Home. The methodology used for this research is experimental, because the variable cognitive flexibility was manipulated through the use of a mobile application that modified its operation. Also, the changes were verified through a pre and posttest called Stroop Test. The result of Cronbach’s alpha is (0.854) of the questions posed in the structured survey. Using the Wilcoxon statistic, the silver hypothesis in the research was verified by checking the confidence ranges in the Gaussian bell.

Nowadays, children have their first experience of using a mobile device very early in their life (even under their 2nd year). Furthermore, STEAM in Early Childhood Education (ECE) draws more attention lately, while a lot of discussion is being made regarding the integration of mobile applications in educational settings, formal and informal. A very common concern of both educators and parents of children aged 4–6 years old is “what mobile applications are appropriate for the children?”. Especially focusing in STEAM education questions are raised regarding the corresponding competences’ cultivation for these ages and the availability of applications that can facilitate this process. Although the issue of examining available mobile applications is being dealt with for several years for older ages and other disciplinary areas (e.g. mathematics, language), there is not much work regarding STEAM mobile applications for 4–6 ages. A survey in both Android and IOS environments was carried out in order to record and attempt to categorize the existing mobile applications which fall under the STEAM umbrella, in order to gain perspective on what is available for in-classroom utilization in this regard.

Educational visits to museums are beneficial for pupils in terms of differentiated teaching and cognitive objectives accomplishment. Pupils’ direct contact with historical and cultural evidence activates visual perception and observation skills. Moreover, when activities during such visits are gamified, learning process becomes more attractive. Therefore, pupils’ interest is increased. Equally important is the active involvement of children in educational activities’ preparation. Tutorials production for peers promotes motivation and participation willingness. Active involvement opposes the discouraging impression of young pupils, who often think themselves as passive receivers of obscure and uninspiring information during educational museums visits. In recent years, interactive educational activities in museums are developed, based on the utilization of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), such as playful applications for pupils’ mobile devices. The development of an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) playful activity in Hellenic Maritime Museum (HMM) is presented in this article. A small scale-study was conducted to measure the cognitive and attitude benefits for pupils after the completion of the study. The results are briefly presented in the article.

Although there is a growing interest in engaging children in the design of interactive learning technology, young learners are mostly asked to co-design features and apps that lie on the peripheral of the learning processes, such as websites, e-portfolios or assessment applications. In this article, we will try to investigate whether experienced elementary students can offer useful insights about the design of the content of an educational app, its learning representations and its learning interactions. For this purpose, we have developed a collaborative board design game called We!Design!Fractions, for designing apps about fractions. Fractions constitute a demanding learning domain in elementary education and, hence, an appropriate testbed for our research aims. The design game consists of a game board, cards, dice and pawns and it was developed by exploiting theories about board games, collaborative design games and idea generation. A study was conducted with 27 6th grade students who participated in 7 design sessions of three to four students. Each session lasted for about 3 h. By playing the game, students proposed a total of 199 ideas about the educational app that were later evaluated by themselves regarding their learning usefulness and their innovation. Students claimed that the board game stimulated their idea generation process, offered an enjoyable experience and that their proposals could enable designers develop an educational application about fractions that would fulfil better their needs and preferences.

As teaching methods become increasingly digitized, mobile augmented reality has taken a leading position in education due to its affordances, for instance the anywhere-anytime accessibility, the availability of augmented reality applications for students’ smartphones, and the effective and collaborative capabilities. Although there is a growing number of studies investigating the use of augmented reality in various subjects, a set of guidelines describing learning theories and pedagogical considerations regarding the development and use of mobile-based augmented reality environments is clearly needed. This paper first reviews empirical studies in the domain of learning with mobile-based augmented reality and then proposes situated cognition as a pedagogical framework for the design and use of this technology in educational contexts.

Medical care has always presented quite wide ranged and challenging problems. However, machine learning techniques and methods as well as deep learning never stopped evolving and tackling those challenges issued by medicine, medical and health care. In order to have a more close up look on how machine learning and deep learning has been affecting medical care in general, we review in this paper some machine learning and deep learning techniques used in a variety of medical care sections such as medical imaging, medical decision, diagnostic, medical records and big data, and disease prediction.

This paper discusses the first two phases in the development of a Learn to Code online web-based application, presents our initial findings and outlines the next stage of the research. First year Computer Science students start university with a wide range of qualifications, competencies, learning styles and experience with respect to computer programming. Research has found that the way programming is taught impacts on students’ confidence, their level of interest for the subject and whether they continue with programming. A common criticism of the teaching of computer programming is that it is too ‘abstract’ and hard to grasp, leading to students losing interest in the subject. The application is a digital resource developed to build students’ confidence in three common programming languages. The application uses code visualisation, web animation, lessons and video. The code visualiser analyses the code entered by the student and shows them graphically - in real-time - the code in the form of a flowchart. The application promotes learner autonomy and was designed to be accessible from multiple platforms and devices to enable students to be mobile learners. Feedback has been positive. Future work will extend the functionality of the application and the collaboration with students as co-creators.

This article establishes a frame of reference on the use of Augmented Reality (AR) applications in education, the significance of neurobiological maturation and enriched environments as conditioning factors for the development of human potential. A literary review of recent research on this subject was carried out, using as reference sources the bases of data: Google academic, Academic Search Complete, Lilacs and Scielo, using as keywords the terms: “Human Potential, Augmented Reality, Enriched Environments, Mental Processes”, in Spanish and English. The time period considered was the last five years. The search made it possible to identify multiple related works, but only the most significant were included in the review. The selection of papers included articles, research reports, monographs and book chapters. The analysis of the identified contents was carried out in function of a perspective of reflection, using for it the analytical-synthetic, inductive-deductive, historical-logical and dialectical methods. After the analysis of the information gathered, it was possible to conclude that the education of emotional learning capacity, sensory integration and significance in learning are neuropsychological conditions of learning mediated by Augmented Reality, considering challenges for education professionals the educational application of emerging technologies and the evaluation of their impact on the integral development of the student.

The digital age offers opportunities for the development of online information and communications technology (ICT) systems that emphasize the important role of digital literacy, including communication between people and the values necessary for working in an online environment, which greatly influences the processes and practices of learning and teaching. Especially in the field of mobile learning, digital and data-evaluating skills are of great importance, as this type of technologically extended learning is based on a comprehensive use of cloud and internet-based services.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the German version of a validated 54-item questionnaire and to assess the level of digital literacies and digital readiness of undergraduate and graduate students at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences.An online questionnaire was developed based on the items designed by Kurtz and Peled [1]. The questionnaire included 54 items divided into seven areas: data research and retrieval; data validation; data management; data processing; teamwork; integrity awareness; and social responsibility. The items were translated into German language and their validity was evaluated with Cronbach’s Alpha in a pre-study on 155 students. After improvement of some items, all students from the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences were asked to complete the questionnaire.The first key outcome of this study is the validation of the German version of a validated 54-item questionnaire. The second key outcome is the level of digital literacies and digital readiness of undergraduate and graduate students at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. Finally, we want to find out if there are differences in the digital competencies between the various degree programs of the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences.Our findings should enable faculty and educational policymakers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of digital literacies of students from the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences.

Online collaborative learning has been used since the 1980s, and although the evolution of the Internet and mobile computing has caused its mass adoption, e-learning remains a relevant field of study. Taking advantage of e-learning has driven the development of numerous tools, frameworks, and best practices to overcome the challenges faced by learners associated with the lack of interest and motivation to use online collaborative tools. In this paper, we present the development of a gamified educational network (GEN) focused at fostering and promoting collaborative learning by empowering learners to participate in the online activities by incorporating game elements including a points-based system, ranking, and a modular division. The results of a preliminary usability evaluation indicate that while the usability and user satisfaction of the GEN are both very good, further improvements to its collaborative functionality can be made.

In this paper, we present a mobile Audience Response System (ARS) that is aiming to improve the teaching process for both students and teachers. It was designed and created an app that students can download and use on their phones to answer Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) given by the teacher during class. Students can answer these questions by using their mobile phones, in real time, and the teacher can immediately get the results and see a graph distribution of their answers. This is a step towards encouraging the Active Learning Model and increasing student participation during class while also providing the teacher immediate feedback. A pilot testing has been conducted and results are discussed. Also, future actions are described.

Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) are increasingly becoming and exponentially colonising our everyday lives. In this instance, VPAs have different names, two examples of which are conversational agents and intelligent personal assistants (Bohouta and Këpuska 2018; Garcia Brustenga et al. 2018; Knote et al. 2019; Krassmann et al. 2018). Traditionally, they serve either as text-based or voice-based dialogue (conversational) systems, or as a combination of both. Against this backdrop, the current paper focuses on one prototype of a VPA, called FENNChat, that is intended to offer automated responses to students enrolled in a module, English for Academic Purposes (ENN103F). The latter is an undergraduate module offered by the Department of English Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA), which is an open and distance e-learning (ODeL) university. This module is one of the modules whose enrolment figure is often above 10,000 students. As a prototype, FENNChat is intended to provide responses to three types of student queries: module administrative queries, module content queries, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).

Distance education is today a major pedagogical innovation and makes it possible to solve not only the problem of the massification of baccalaureate holders and the professionalization of training, but also and above all to optimize pedagogical and human resources. This type of teaching is based on digital platforms that contain educational resources. Consequently, for a good follow-up of learners in the conduct of the courses, the existing training platforms integrate a so-called tutoring system. However, although this system allows learners to be monitored by their tutors, it has many shortcomings, including the loss of quality in distance education due to a lack of continuous interactivity of tutoring. This lack of interactivity can come from the learner or the tutor and it is even worse if it has to come from the tutor. This paper aims to provide a constant and intelligent solution in the tutoring system. Our solution consists in guiding the learner as much as possible to carry out his tutoring even when the tutor is not available. Thus we propose a model that will take as input the useful course data from the tutor, and then make the necessary settings to allow the system to guide the learner in his learning process while avoiding any interruption in the tutoring.

Teachers and educators are always trying to find new ways to use the available technology around them to impart knowledge to their students. This includes exposing them to activities that engage them in learning through innovative ways. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that is starting to affect the conventional learning process since it has many potential uses and capabilities to introduce new ways and methods. AR technology may make classes more engaging and information more easily conceivable. Nowadays most young people own smartphones and use them in order to access social platforms, play games and connect with friends and their family. Thus, the combination of smartphones and AR for education is promising and still has to be fully discovered. This study aims to categorize the plethora of platforms available for building mobile AR applications and experiences, based on their distinct features and the capabilities that they provide. The findings of this study will assist teachers, educators and developers in choosing the appropriate platform to use when building educational mobile AR applications.

Mobile devices, which have been incorporated to everyday life all over the world – call a cab, order food, pay bills, search the Internet, listen to music, communicate with friends etc. – are heavily supported by cell phones. This technology has also become a part of the learning process. It can happen in an informal way since a lot of knowledge is available on the Internet. In this scenario, higher Education Institutions must be ready to fulfill the needs of their students. This work addresses the steps in the preparation for an institution to introduce Mobile Learning in its courses in Electrical Engineering and related areas. The starting point is an experience of over two decades in Information and Communication Technology supported learning which includes courses in Blended Learning with Flipped Classroom. A large collection of learning objects of different natures is also available. The Information and Communication Technology supported education is hosted on a platform with the unique characteristic of managing contents, users, remote labs and courses in an integrated way. The steps discussed in this work address the different characteristics of Mobile Learning and also key issues that have been under discussion in the University and in the Engineering Education community in the country. This paper reports a work in progress.

Practical laboratory work plays an essential role in science education because it helps to develop problem-solving capabilities and creative skills. To make it easier for remote actors to discover the resources available in a laboratory for practical work, we proposed the zeroconf protocol combined with a VPN. Zeroconf uses multicast mode for resource discovery but the multicast stream cannot pass through a router and go beyond a local network. In order for zeroconf to go beyond the local network, we used a VPN in bridge mode to allow remote users to integrate the local network as if they were local so as to discover and use laboratory resources. Configuring a VPN to allow discovery and access to remote resources from a laboratory is a difficult task for actors. In this article, we have proposed a solution that facilitates the implementation of a VPN to allow automatic discovery and access to laboratory resources, thus avoiding frustration and abandonment of remote users.

This paper is part of a PhD study. Parents and caregivers are the first teachers of young children; and therefore, play a crucial role in transforming education in the early years. The majority of South African parents are living in poverty, and because of their circumstances, they struggle to build relationships with their children. How to offer support programmes to parents living in poverty, at scale and in an affordable way, remains elusive. ‘Design-with-the user’ approach suggests building and developing programmes with the user throughout the project cycle. To answer the research question of who is the receiver of the message, I zoom into the life of one of the case study participants and specifically, what is the story encompassing her characteristics, needs and challenges. The results show that m-learning programmes designed and implemented in other countries cannot just be transferred into a new local context without adaptation and considering designing with the user.

The ubiquitous growth of smartphones with uninterrupted connectivity offers immense scope for delivering quality second language education in developing countries, especially in India. Though mobile learning has huge potential in India, there is little research on Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). The present paper studies the role of MALL in enhancing English language skills among engineering students and examines a) effectiveness and viability of smartphones for second language listening b) issues and challenges faced by learners and teachers, and c) perceptions of stakeholders. A quasi experimental study for over a semester was conducted with an experimental group (n = 59) who brought their own devices (BYOD) and a control group (n = 60) who used desktop computers in the language lab. The participants were undergraduate students of engineering belonging to a college affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Kakinada in India. The analysis of the scores revealed a statistically significant difference in the performance of the experimental group. The perceptions of stakeholders were collected through questionnaire and focus group discussions. The study witnessed a positive impact on the participants in enhancing participants’ L2 listening skills and improved motivation towards learning L2 listening. The results of the study have implications for teachers and practitioners of mobile assisted language learning.

Mobile learning has huge potential for developing countries like India where mobile devices have greater penetration even in rural areas recently. There is a remarkable difference in the quality of education between urban and rural India. Rural Indian students being the first generation learners of English, they have poor facilities for learning English both inside and outside the class. Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) plays a vital role in India Proficiency in English is considered essential for employment and higher education opportunities for millions of rural youth. The present paper aims at studying how rural Indian students respond to MALL individually and as a group to different learning activities and benefit from the same. The study is based on the data collected through a questionnaire and focus group discussions and the assessment tests at the beginning and end of the study. Statistical analysis of the data indicates positive results for group learning activities like contests and debates using social media whereas individual activities like recording one minute speeches have shown mixed results. Some of the best collaborative learning activities based on flipped classroom methods have implications for the practitioners, course designers and future research.

The popularity of Facebook makes it a particularly interesting platform to explore within an educational setting. In this article, we report on the use of Facebook to support a Media Studies A-level course that involved current and former students using a closed Facebook group. At the time of the study, the group included 106 graduates, and 21 junior and senior students who were the main participants of the study. We employed qualitative content analysis of focus-group and individual interview data to examine how Facebook was realized and used by juniors and seniors brought together to work as a group. Researchers perceived the emerging perceptions of the participants and self-reported interactions to be closely linked to the crowdsourcing model as presented in fields outside education. The study demonstrates how a Facebook group of mixed juniors, seniors and graduates can stimulate collective intelligence; it acts as an aggregator of subject-specific content that is created and disseminated by the online community and builds on a corpus of knowledge that is shared among group members and evolves organically. The work elaborates on a crowdsourcing model of Facebook use in secondary education, and equips practitioners with new knowledge to maximize the educational potential of Facebook with today’s learners.

The article describes learning space and the concept of implementing digital competences in learning systems. The concept includes the following main phases: creating a digital competence framework for different target groups; creation and filling of training modules; choice of individual learning environment; creating a mobile learning system based on your chosen environment. The system should include web and mobile interfaces, appropriately scoped server subsystems and up-to-date dynamic learning content. Functionality of the system should also provide modern concepts of learning and interaction in the following areas: student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher. The implementation of the described concept will contribute to the development of digital competences of different target groups: teachers, unemployed persons, persons in need of retraining and so on. Each of these target groups will have its own, customized digital competence system. The feature of this system is its dynamism, since it changes in content and even content type over time as well as its refinement according to the needs of the audience. The implementation of the concept will build a comprehensive roadmap to support the development of digital competences in learning for many years to come. This will enhance the role of interactive communications and digital learning in the community, attract more and more target groups to ICT, and deploy mobile applications in digital competence training. Creating a digital competence concept is part of the Erasmus plus project “dComFra - Digital Competence Framework for Ukrainian Teachers and Other Citizens”. 598236-EPP-1-2018-1-LT-EPPKA2-CBHE-SP. The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Nowadays occurs a jump in approaches to maritime technical systems developing with implementation of Industry 4.0, IIoT, Shipping 4.0 concepts. Progress in wireless technologies allows to perform absolutely new engineering tasks. Maritime branch realizes digital transformation steps, which envisage creation of unmanned, autonomous and remote controlled ships. But such systems are vulnerable for external malicious intrusion. Thus it’s necessary to deepen information technologies learning in maritime education in the following directions: IIoT, industrial wired and wireless data transfer technologies and hardware; satellite systems; big data, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality; remote control; cyber security technologies. National University “Odessa Maritime Academy” participates in Trainings in Automation Technologies for Ukraine project. Obtained mobile equipment allows to study PcWorx and CoDeSys software for automation systems development (based on PLCs) and Profibus, ProfiNet, EtherCAT and wireless technologies. This base equipment may be supplemented by security firewalls.Ways of modern technologies implementing in maritime branch are analyzed. Directions of deep studying are shown. Actuality and possibilities of cyber security technologies studying are highlighted. Approaches and technologies, successfully realized in education process and planned for future, are described.

This paper presents a case study evaluation results of a Coaching course on a MOOC to support dual career of athletes. The MOOC has been one of the most highly anticipated trends in higher education in recent years. Delivering web-based learning to potentially thousands of users at a time, it has dramatically expanded universities’ reach and provided an indirect income boost through greater global brand awareness. Sport coaching is as difficult and as demanding as any other aspect of sport. Good coaching and poor coaching often have impacts on the individual athlete or a team. According to the evaluation results this course is complete, well-structured and segmented, covering the most important parts of coaching.

The Internet of things (IoT) is the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. LoRa (short for long range) is a spread spectrum modulation technique derived from Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) technology. This paper presents the benefits of using LoRa technology in Educational Institutes. The aim of this paper is to answer the following question: “How has the emergence of LoRa technology affected the education process and an Educational Institute operation?”. Initially the paper presents a short introduction of IoT networks and LoRa technology and after that the possible benefits of LoRa technology in Educational Institutes are presented and analyzed. In addition, we analyses the potential impacts of LoRa technology in the education process and an Educational Institute operation.

In the last decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has attracted lots of attention. This paper evaluates the impact of three different IoT technologies represented in three types of wearables; Smart Glasses, Tracking Devices, and Crowd and Staff Wristbands. The deployment of these devices took place in a number of cultural and sports events in six European counties, as part of the European Commission funded project; MONICA. The analysis focused on the usability of the wearables and their impact on safety and security.

Current guidelines for heart failure (HF) patients’ treatment are focused on improving their clinical status, functional capacity and quality of life. However, these guidelines are more difficult to be followed when the patients are older adults, because of the comorbidities and the potential cognitive decline. Many studies have proven so far the effectiveness of various rehabilitation programs and the physical exercises, which however requires lifestyle changes for a long-term effect. The main questions raised from these studies remain the: “Do the participants follow the recommended systems after the end of the research pilots, even though they know the effectiveness?” The challenge of the current project is to measure real life adherence to a regular physical exercise program, and to attempt to influence the older adult patients with HF towards being more active. To do so, BioTechCOACH-ForALL uses wearable devices to measure the activity levels, exergames (serious games for physical exercise) to deliver a physical exercise plan as a joyful activity and e-coaching techniques to influence the patients attitude towards a more healthy and recommended lifestyle.

Recent developments in technology have made augmented reality (AR) accessible through smartphones, thus allowing millions of users to experience AR. With such unlimited market availability, every industry is attempting to leverage the potential of AR. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of AR in providing assembly instructions to lay (or novice) users. We compare video and AR instructions in assisting lay users to complete an assembly process; we manipulate the complexity of the assembly task to help validate results. Using task accuracy, task efficiency and user engagement proxies to measure effectiveness, we find that as the task complexity increases, AR instructions begin to yield higher objective accuracy and efficiency than video instructions do. We observe a learning curve associated with using the headset, the device through which the AR instructions were delivered; consequently, less complex tasks were better supported by video instructions than AR ones. We believe this study provides important insights for companies considering the use of AR to provide assembly instructions to their user base.

Several studies have been conducted which focus on the creation of new storytelling media that enhance empathic skills. In this study we introduce wearables as digital storytelling mediators to promote empathy in the context of bullying prevention interventions. In the proposed approach, the main “reader” of the narrative wears the e-textile in a dark room and stands opposite of a mirror in order to watch his own body as it is transformed by the illuminations. The narrative screen is the “reader’s” own body which mediate the oral narrations. In order to evaluate the proposed “empathy machine”, 21 students of 6th grade of an Elementary school interacted with the e-textile and a digital story about a young student named Orpheus, who was being bullied by a group of children at school. The participants stated that they enjoyed their interaction with the e-textile. The content of the mediated world (wearable e-textile, narrative & sound, atmosphere in the room) influenced the users’ feeling of being in the story. The participants identified with the characters, took their perspective and when they used their body, the narrative evoked even more their emotions.

Indoor localization techniques using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is attractive in the Internet of Things domain due to its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. However, there are many different approaches proposed in and there is not a common, widely acceptable solution in the research community. This is mainly due to the limited number of publicly available datasets and that the multi-effect signal phenomenon limits each dataset to its gathering testbed. In this paper, we tested several fingerprinting methods in a publicly available dataset and we compared them against the RSSI regression approach, which is considered as the most prominent one in certain domains, such as indoor and outdoor localization.

MulseMedia technology enables operation with multimodal data sets that requires their complex representation. In this paper, we propose a mathematical background of MulseMedia data representation. The application of both Algebraic System of Aggregates and Multi-Image Concept allows efficient representation and processing of MulseMedia data in computer systems as well as encourages development of new algorithms for data processing, including data compression and data modelling.

XXI century companies must adapt their business models to run on the internet. At present the transactions made on the WWW are countless ideas of commercial applications on it seem endless. This paper describes the concepts related to the terminology used in e-commerce, cryptosystems that are used to protect information, new attacks on cryptosystems and the main strategies to give users confidence and trust on transactions for buying and selling, which are the problems to be solved by information technology. This study concludes with recommendations related to creating new philosophies to online businesses, involving government policies and security, in order to pass the physical trading of e-Business with complete confidence by the end customer.

There is a developing interdisciplinary research field trying to provide advanced technological support to various sports activities. This support is focused mainly to professional elite athletes but is considering also about training in sports academies, gyms even about amateur athletes practicing at home. Advanced training can now be carried out using low-cost technology that can produce useful data for researchers and coaches. Sports data collected from athlete’s skeletal tracking, movement analysis and physiological measurements may prove a valuable tool for motor and technical skills development. In addition, there is an increasing interest from coaches and sports academies to enrich sport activities by utilizing the use of serious exer-games and applications of augmented reality in order to provide a more intelligent, personalized and immersive training environment. In this paper a smart platform is proposed which collects athlete’s bio-signals and data from visualization of skeletal movement, it analyses them and it provides affective and sport analytics feedback through application interfaces.

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) content means “the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith”. Although ICH content, especially traditional folklore performing arts, is commonly considered worthy of preservation by UNESCO and the EU Treaty, most of the current research efforts are on the focus is on tangible cultural assets. The aim of Terpsichore project is to, analyze, design, research, train, implement and validate an innovative framework for affordable digitization, modelling, archiving, e-preservation and presentation of ICH content related to folk dances, in a wide range of users. The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was involved in the performance of Greek traditional dances and the three-dimensional capturing and editing. The three-dimensional recordings were held at the Laboratory of “Motor Behaviour and Adapted Physical Activity”. For data capturing we used the Vicon 3D recording system. Two Greek traditional dances from different regions of Greece were performed and captured. The results of the three-dimensional capturing of movement showed that the assessment of left toe trajectories through markers gives us the ability to identify the differences between two types of the Greek traditional dance “Syrtos”, “Syrtos Makedonikos” and “Syrtos Kalamatianos”. The findings of this work add a new approach to improve Greek traditional dances identification through 3D motion kinematic data analysis. They represent optical and mathematical representation of the rhythm of Greek traditional dances which could be used for the purposes of Terpsichore project.

Mobile technology has the ability to change the way education incorporates computers in the teaching process. Mobile devices have distinct features compared to computers, such as portability, touchscreen and a variety of sensors that makes them more suited for young children. Computational thinking is an essential skill in teaching children how to code but it is also a universal problem-solving technique. In this paper we present mobile applications as educational resources that teach young children under 8 years old how to code and advance their computational thinking abilities. We also study whether these applications have proven their educational effectiveness in the classroom based on related scientific research. Finally, we propose characteristics that should be incorporated in mobile applications in order to improve their educational value.

Τhis article discusses how to promote learners’ oral reading fluency in primary and secondary schools using digital media-based gamification. It presents a study in progress carried out for the Erasmus+ project GameLet (Gamified, media-based training of reading fluency), in Germany, Cyprus, and Portugal. GameLet is based on the concept of the Multilingual Readers’ Theater (MELT), which extends the traditional Readers’ Theater (RT) by integrating foreign languages in school, including migrant student mother tongues. “Meaningful” digital media-based gamification mechanisms are applied to the development of learning scenarios and materials to increase pupil motivation in self-directed, individual and cooperative learning phases for reading fluency training. During 2019, usability testing trials were conducted in participating schools on the gameboard application and the didactic design of the scenario-based tasks given to students-players of the game. In addition to the design, this article presents the results of the formative evaluation conducted in Cyprus and Germany.

This research explored the serendipitous learning of mathematics in a group of Further Education students, after mathematics elements were embedded into the lessons. Data was gathered from students studying a Computer Games Design course. The data was gathered using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings indicated that students’ view of mathematics had changed to a more positive one in a positive direction and some students learned mathematics during this process. The data analysis showed has shown that stealth embedding mathematics within a games design unit helped to deal with barriers to engaging and learning mathematics.

STEAM is a serious game developed as a medium for helping teachers to experience multimodality for teaching and learning. A design-based paradigm is adopted to elucidate how in-game design elements coupled with learning may visualize in-game multimodal representations. Multimodality is experienced as a process of creating meaning though connecting and combining different modes, semiotic resources and semiotic ensembles. In this paper, we present the design and usability evaluation of the game. The usability study was conducted with (n = 32) school teachers completing an online survey after playtesting the game for identifying, capturing and fine-tuning in-game usability aspects. The findings indicated that the game’s core mechanics, the in-game dialogues and card-game, represent and visualise the content and process of multimodal in-game ensembles whilst the development of in-game feedback and progress indicators was perceived as having the capacity to guide understandings on in-game multimodality and to track in-game progress.

Smart Cities offer the promise to improve the quality of live for their inhabitants. Therefore, new concepts and technologies for citizen participation is indispensable. Not only new mobility technologies, but digital-driven interaction between citizens and planners is a key component for future smart cities. In the U_CODE Project an innovative approach has been developed and backed up by technologies to enable this level of participation in urban development. This paper presents the User Engagement Protocols (UEP) and their testing in the testing for the smart campus design at the CJD Learning Campus Sangerhausen, which function as a case study. The UEP enables the moderators of the U_CODE process to concert the variety of actions and stakeholders during a co-designed urban development process. For every stakeholder and every phase, a specific UEP can be generated from a Master Protocol which covers the entire process. The methodical steps, which lead to this comprehensive process are shown in this paper, as well as the first application in the Sagerhausen Test Case. There a new campus for children with special requirements is planned together with the school administration, the teachers, parents and children. It proves the management possibilities of the U_CODE process in massive co-design urban development scenarios in a real environment.

Children diagnosed with ADHD are often at a disadvantage regarding their social interactions at school and at play due to their symptomatic inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. That may lead to isolation, low self-esteem and even depression. Music is shown to significantly help children maintain focused attention as well as offer a timed structure around their actions, involving melody and tempo. Music can also aid the development of cognitive ability, self-confidence and promote limits and rules. Through music, children can learn how to control their impulsivity, learn to pause and wait for their turn and apply such social skills to their every-day life. This paper presents a multimodal 3D serious game named “ADDventurous Rhythmical Planet”. Its goal is to exploit the benefits of music and rhythm helping children diagnosed with ADHD to overcome their psychosocial challenges, unlike currently available games offering interaction based on only the visual modality.

This paper describes the design and development process of a game-based training approach to entrepreneurship education. The game serves as part of a broader online training course which seeks to facilitate awareness of and engagement with dual-career development amongst amateur and professional athletes. Building on previously reported work around needs identification through focus groups and participatory design, this paper documents the processes and frameworks adopted to translate these concepts into a tangible game-based learning environment. In doing so, we reflect on the current state-of-the art in game-based learning design and its implications when considering the pragmatic constraints and compromises often associated with the development of immersive learning experiences. A core theme of this paper is the seeming divergence between entertainment game development principles, and those of serious games, which are identified and explored in this paper as principally occurring in terms of objectives, stakeholders, scaling, and iteration. Our discussion focuses on the consequences of this divergence, and common problems that arise. Conclusions and future work provide suggestions towards refining existing serious game design frameworks towards pragmatic and efficient development methods.

Interactive Music Video Games are games in which music plays a leading role. This paper presents an interactive serious music game about Rebetiko and Greek folk music and has as its primary musical instrument a traditional string instrument: the bouzouki. The user can play the bouzouki piece, aided by visual stimuli representing the notes and by the music itself that acts as acoustic stimuli at the same time. A special interface – controller was created for the application needs by modifying a keyboard, which the user can hold like a bouzouki. These mechanisms, along with other elements of the gameplay, give the user the feeling that they are playing the bouzouki themselves in the rebetiko song being played. In addition, the application also has an educational dimension. The playing style comprises an introduction to playing a stringed musical instrument, as it involves movements that simulate pressing the frets and hitting the strings of the instrument. The user also encounters musical elements such as tonality, harmony and rhythm. Finally, the game incorporates information about Rebetiko and folk music, directly intertwined with the songs the user plays, offering an integrated experience.

The aim of this study is to present some of the benefits of serious games in the development of social skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and how those can be enhanced when Socially Assistive Robots assist in the interventions. Six Kindergarten and Elementary children with ASD played mobile and board games with six children of Typical Development (TD) while assisted by a teacher to verify previous researches that show that serious games can increase interest in children with ASD to participate in activities with their peers. Similarly, all children responded better at presenting socially acceptable behaviors, when playing serious games but were supported by the socially assistive robot Daisy, which also incorporates mobile technologies.

The aim of this study is to create an interface which, through the simulation of human movements, transforms a typical sedentary activity as video games in physical activity and as a result make some improvement on their motor skills, which are necessary for people’s everyday life. Initially, a detailed description of the necessary theoretical concepts, namely natural user interfaces, serious games and exergames, is displayed. Then, after comparing the available technologies to create NUIs, researchers created a prototype of the interface Finally after the implementation of the interface an evaluation activity was conducted. The results were encouraging concerning the ease of use, the enjoyment and the usefulness of the game. This article ends with suggestions for future research.

The website “thegreeksteelbook.com” has been developed as an attempt to gather all the scattered information regarding the term “steelbooks” from all around the web to a single website. A SteelBook is a premium metal case of a video game- often with classic or specially commissioned artwork. The steel case provides both a better canvas for displaying the fantastic art, as well as a more durable way of storing the disks. The importance of the article is that we refer to the product that dominates the market as a very special Collector’s item. The main goal is to gather all the people interested in this particular category/product in one place and give them all the available information they seek whilst urging them to perform actions such as supporting the website via donations, start discussions on each item, suggest improvements on the website’s content and interact with each other.

Context The peculiar technological challenges of developing countries have impaired E-learning. Poor supply of bandwidth for E-learning due to cost has led to delayed response times across the internet. Technical knowledge in developing E-learning systems does not suffice for an understanding in pedagogical approach to effective learning. Purpose or Goal To leverage the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices, which has overcome the challenges of E-learning on traditional desktop computing environments, this research developed an intelligent mobile learning system (IMLS) using multi-agents. Ubiquitous learning (u-learning) provides the learner the freedom from learning environments, learning devices and learning content format and rather emphasize on the constructivist and behaviourist learning processes and cognitive development among learners. The ubiquitous learning environment (ULE) evolves more context awareness to provide most adaptive content for learners. M-learning application based on mobile devices fits into the u-learning paradigm. Approach A multi-agent framework known as the Java Agent Development Environment (JADE) was employed in the development of the M-learning system. Three agents were deployed; authentication, tutorial, and the assessment agents, respectively. For performance evaluation, the study also developed a similar non-agent system, fed with the same database and both monitored with network monitoring tools. The study also evaluated different pedagogical approaches through online survey in order to gain insight into users’ preferred learning style. Actual or Anticipated Outcomes Results of the response times of the IMLS when compared with a non-agent counterpart showed the IMLS being five times faster. The results from the survey suggested that majority of the respondents were split between constructivist and behaviorist approaches of learning. This result is significant as the multi-agents drastically reduce bandwidth demand, thereby reducing cost and at the same time ensuring that throughput was maintained.

For a plethora of individuals, video games are part of their daily lives, entertaining and inspiring them. The application of gamification in the education sector in the form of Game-Based Learning (GBL) can increase the amount of acquired knowledge on a specific subject since it brings the elements of engagement and amusement in education. In this paper, we present the creation of a first-person puzzle game which aims to teach the user the basics of logic gates and circuits as learning models implemented in Vocational Education and Training (VET). The gameplay scenario resembles closely the concept of escape rooms, viz. a “prison” that requires the players to solve riddles in order to break free. To do that, the users must operate switchboards that are comprised of logic gates and button switches and are connected to other unlockable elements, such as a door or a drawer, which unlock with the right combination of inputs and/or logic gates and keys that unlock the panels of the switchboards. With a variety of levels, the players are given many opportunities for improvement while using their past knowledge to progress further. The level of each player can be tracked and saved in a personal account. Overall, the goal of this GBL experience is to make the basics of electronics easy to understand without relying on common teaching methods.

The role of an e-Facilitator in schools as a major ICT expert is presented below. The e-Facilitator should facilitate the access to electronic services and information space, support the virtual libraries, be an initiator and architect of social communication by forming communities involving all participants in the learning process – students, teachers, parents, and administration. The webinar is reviewed as a means of disseminating educational resources and presenting the methodology for using them. The activities of the e-Facilitator before, during, and after the completion of the webinar are also described. Typical errors that reduce webinar quality are discussed. Three webinars are illustrated to distribute STEAM resources from the Virtual Mathematics Laboratory, in which participants are given the opportunity to experience working with a part of the resources, and to share the results and emotions in a forum. In the webinars under consideration, some specific ideas and resources for the study of mathematics through the use of digital resources are merely highlighted, in other cases they are presented with a detailed demonstration of use, modification, and the students’ realizations of their use.

This paper presents the process of transitioning lab procedures/manuals from traditional procedural text to interactive text with additional videos explaining equipment operation. Simple tools have been used for this intervention, but the anticipated outcomes in terms of student learning are significant. Lab instructors should also benefit from a smoother-running lab with fewer requests for help which will facilitate increasing the difficulty level of the required experiments. The process for capturing the student perceptions on the effectiveness of this new approach, as well as their satisfaction level, their learning, and actual lab performance is detailed. It involves questionnaires to students and instructors, collection of lab performance grades, and investigation of the view patterns on the posted lab videos. It is believed that this plethora of data will paint a clear picture of the results of the new approach. Comparisons with the traditional lab delivery method can also be made, as only half of the experiments are converted to the new format.

This paper presents the design of a learning analytics dashboard, utilizing learning traces that emerge from conversational MOOC activities. These chat-based activities encourage students to collaborate in dyads, with the support of a conversational agent, in order to answer open-ended questions, set by the course instructor. Taking into account the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of the agent-based support provided during this kind of online activities, we aspire to share a series of variables, metrics and use cases, which can be valuable for practitioners and researchers looking forward to initiate the development of a learning analytics dashboard that encompasses aspects of both peer-to-peer and human-to-bot conversational interactions.

As 5G networks have been systematically promulgated, the learning community is positively disposed for enhanced acquisition of skills and knowledge over rich media interconnections. Even further, Interactive Educational TV broadcasts, sporadically coming into sight, give the impression that the official appearance of advanced machinery and equipment is bound to unobtrusively make its entry into the learning society whereabouts. A preamble of this virtual vicinity already is sensed within some University environments, spreading prospects of euphoria. However, it is not clear if this transition will be smooth, or, as some indications expose, disorderly, leading to deregulation.

Algorithmics is a crucial step in programming learning processes. It helps learners to propose a better writing and understanding of solutions without worrying about programming language syntactic complexity. Once algorithm is clearly established, the next step is to translate it into a given programming language. When writing programs, syntax errors are common mainly due to the multiplicity of programming languages and strict syntactic rules. We propose in this work a web and mobile interface to automatically generate, from algorithms based on Pseudocode ontology, the corresponding codes in several programming languages such as C, Pascal and Python.

DS (Digital Storytelling) and AR (Augmented Reality) applications offer opportunities for the creation of a multimodal and interactive learning environment, making the learning concept more appealing and exciting than traditional or more conventional instructional tools. The overall objective of this work is to assess how DS and AR can contribute to the enhancement of children’s vocabulary in the FL (Foreign Language) through a number of gamified activities. To this aim we restructured the classroom environment utilizing tangible interfaces to create a multimodal learning framework, where 6-year-old learners could play, collaborate and interact. Twenty (20) first grade children of a Primary School in Greece (experimental group) were engaged in digital activities learning about Greek mythology and ancient history, while eighteen (18) children of the same grade and school (control group) were taught the same context in a more traditional learning environment. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected by means of: a) non-equivalent posttest only, b) the teacher/researcher’s journal and, c) semi-structured interviews with the experimental group members. The results indicated that a higher vocabulary retention rate was observed when DS and AR were incorporated.

In computer science as in many fields, practice activities are essential to facilitate skill acquisition. Nevertheless, developing and correcting questions are time consuming tasks. That is the case, in particular, for traditional and online SQL courses which include many SQL questions to be created and corrected. SQL learners need to practice more writing SQL statements in order to better understand and correct their syntactic and semantic errors. To overcome the difficulty of creating questions from scratch, research proposes to automatically generate such questions.In this work, we propose a system that teachers can use to automatically produce SQL questions sorted by difficulty level. Instead of creating SQL questions, teachers only propose a database schema. Learners can also use the system to answer SQL questions and get appropriate feedback to improve their skills.

In this paper we present the augmented reality application based on information barcoding. Tricolor barcoding is used for creation of meaningful augmented reality markers. Barcode markers allow to achieve two purposes: defining location and orientation of virtual objects in an augmented reality scene and storing information about these objects. To enable storing larger amount of information, we propose to use a method of tricolor barcoding with data compression. The developed augmented reality application is focused on museum exhibition extension. It can also be useful for other augmented reality use cases where textual information about virtual objects is required along with the virtual objects appearance.

Non-technical skills are a set of human cognitive and social skills which are integrated and used along side with technical skills. T In each of these fields of work it is important to define the most valuable non-technical skills for a specific profession and how to further develop this set of skills during early studies and the learning process as a whole.The project OnBoard-Med aims at developing more aligned vocational education programmes in the Central Baltic area. The shipping industry has become multinational, therefore recognizing problems in education cannot easily be solved on a national level. A cross-border approach is needed to tackle the issue. The project develops study courses in maritime emergency management, medical treatment and occupational safety. education institutions. Blended-learning tools include face-to-face actions, e-learning courses, simulations and, of course, mobile communication, especially by emergency simulations (maritime emergency management, medical communication by accidents on sea etc.).The project results in harmonized and improved education and non-technical skills. Participants get excellent professional skills by using blended learning tools - combining lessons on e-learning platform OPTIMA and simulations face-to-face. Further, the results will help local employees to enter the European and international labor market.

Mastering skills of spatial orientation is a very important issue for the blind people. However, there are widely available or dedicated systems that support independent movement of them, i.e. the solutions based on GPS-navigation or the use of ultrasonic sonars or cameras, there is the lack of approaches that supports learning of spatial orientation in a smart way by helping blind people with recognition of real objects or assisting them with moving along unknown routes. To make a step forward to fulfill this gap, we propose an approach based on Object Map Ontology and binaural sounds. It allows us to describe unknown objects on the street and shows a new path for the blind user. The core of this proposal is a special ontology that stores knowledge about different objects that can be found in the city and set of binaural sounds that are integrated with these objects. The route that is a sequence of objects taken from the ontology is translated into a series of binaural sounds and auxiliary text descriptions. The preliminary studies have confirmed that blind users such as students but also adults are interested in developing such a solution. Investigations showed that the proposed system would be even useful for sighted trainers who teach spatial orientation. The initial Object Map Ontology that covers an exemplary root was created and expressed as a set of OWL classes, relations, and individuals. The preliminary sound classification was created and a couple of binaural sounds was recorded.

Research describes the design and Ontology for Ubiquitous Surveillance Systems (OSU). OSU arises from the combination of Video Event Ontology (VEO), used generally to conceptualize events surveillance [2] with Standard Ontology for Ubiquitous and Pervasive Applications (SOUPA), used generally to conceptualize events ubiquitous computing [3]. The goal of combining VEO and SOUPA is complementarity, because there classes SOUPA that can be used to describe events surveillance (Person, for example), while there are classes VEO that can be used to describe events ubiquitous computing (Object, for example). OSU allowed understand and conceptualize, better, the events recorded in CASAS [4] projects and start [5].

Advances in Psychological therapies to treat mental illness have found their peak in the search for new treatments, especially when they are combined with technology. Technology gives some hope of improvement in treatments and patients. The main purpose is generate positive emotions and in this way, not only learn but also manage to retain learning in order to be applied in concrete and real facts. In this work we show the viability in the development of routines that can help improve the quality of life of people suffering from Alzheimer and Autism, diseases that lend themselves to the programming of routines related to the daily life of patients. The assignment can be considered as impressive because working with a robot awakens positive emotions in those who are developing robotic therapies.

Intelligence is the carrying out of abstract thought, like the ability of learning and adopting to the environment. In general this ability would be defined by a common factor. Deferent types of intelligence, generally are distinguished according to the information on which they operate. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a type of intelligence which operates on emotional information. It is mentioned that personality disorder is linked to various aspects of EI. The common method for studying the status of individual’s EI is presented in questionnaires which are usually boring and exhausting for kids to fill them out. MSCEIT is one of this assessment tools which has performance-based measurement approach. To make the assessment process more engaging and entertaining for kids, we are going to gamify the whole process. In the first step, we have been designed and implemented a mini-game, which its main mission is to measure kids’ EI by focusing on gamifying Faces and Facilitation tasks which are presented in MSCEIT. As the information gathering process finished, we are going to analyze this information by implementing classification methods using machine learning algorithms to improve the speed and accuracy of the assessment process.

Dyslexia or Reading disorder is one of the most common learning disabilities which has a significant impact on the whole life of people who have dyslexia, for instance on the student’s educational outcomes and grades.Therapeutic intervention Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) usually takes more time alongside day-to-day educational activities at school. Many of these people, because of the difficulty and coercion they spend on extra time to carry out the types of activities that are usually involved, as well as the high costs these interventions impose on their families, makes them less likely to be motivated and have a low level of confidence. If a reading disorder can be practiced correctly, it can be resolved. So using gamification could potentially increase the motivation of the dyslexic students.The purpose of the project is using gamification on gamified interventions for the reading disorder for children ages 6 to 8 in the mobile platform. In this way, applying gamification techniques would increase motivation, participation, and desire of the individual to continue the process of cognitive rehabilitation.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood disorders is affected 5.9% to 7.1% of children. It seems that early diagnose of ADHD can prevent the number of negative impacts on the children’s lives. By gamifying the traditional approaches, we can motivate children to participate in the diagnostic test. In this paper, we present an assessment tool that is being developed to diagnose ADHD children by gamifying Conners Parent Short Form Assessment Reports. In first phase, by the time the ADHD statements were categorized, the various possible scenarios have been written. When the scenarios are gotten confirmation, the mini-game will be designed. In the design phase, participatory design model (PD) and a user-centered design approach (UCD) will be used to understand and realize what children are really like. In the implementation phase, we have two main steps: development and debugging. After the game design and developed are completed, the calibration phase will be start. In this phase. By using machine learning technique on the data, which have been saved, in the log file we will design the diagnosis model. Final phase is the test phase which is done to evaluate the game diagnosis accuracy.

Amblyopia or lazy eyes is a unilateral or bilateral Disorder and reduction of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) which affected approximately 3% of the world’s population. To improve the visual deficits caused by Amblyopia, the traditional treatments have to be implemented before the termination of the critical visual development period which is within the age of 6–12 years. Despite traditional opinions that amblyopia treatment is only effective for children through treatment such as eye patching, video games could be highly engaging and improve vision and attention in the adult with amblyopia.In this study, after examining the factors influencing amblyopia treatment, we used different experimental approaches that have been used to enhance visual function in adults with amblyopia including video game play and dichotic training. A Contrast based game has been developed for clinical trials used for that purpose to enhance visual function in adults suffering from amblyopia. The therapeutic procedure at first includes a clinical visit for assessing the patient’s visual related parameters and the second is using a proposed 3D video game and a game-set comprise a VR mobile-set and android device.This study represents that the proposed 3D video game might be useful as an effective treatment for amblyopia in adults.

The present work fulfills the objective of providing a tool of computer technology to the service of the personal health, an optimized diet in function of costs and quantities by rations that must be consumed to fulfill the diet in a high performance sportsman, caloric requirements in function of the type of physical activity. The method used consisted of taking a sample of athletes who maintain a regular training regime of four hours a day; the results include the application of the Linear Programming Model of Operations Research, which is a mathematical matrix model of deterministic type for the optimization of resources at minimum cost, with maximum utility. This model was applied to the formulation of mix or optimization of the nutritional diet for athletes, generating an optimal nutritional formulation that meets the technical specifications and minimum, maximum or fixed nutritional requirements (restrictions = rows). These nutritional requirements must be compared or met from the mixture or combination of a certain number of available food ingredients or inputs (decision variables = columns) that in turn possess or contribute to the mixture formula with their respective technical characteristics, contents and nutritional inputs. This matrix structuring of the model and its corresponding processing using the so-called Simplex Method, allows to obtain an optimal nutritional diet for athletes, taking also as a sample, the formulation of the optimal diet for breakfast, by virtue of the multiple possibilities of daily formulation for the athlete. Subsequently, the results are obtained and displayed through the link with a software and Linear Programming application used for the optimization of the diet, using online tools that give reliable results, which in turn are analyzed and validated prior to implementation.

Leukemia is one of the deadliest diseases in human life, it is a type of cancer that hits blood cells. The task of diagnosing Leukemia is time consuming and tedious for doctors; it is also challenging to determine the level and type of Leukemia. The diagnoses of Leukemia are achieved through identifying the changes on the White blood Cells (WBC). WBCs are divided into five types: Neutrophils, Eosinophils, Basophils, Monocytes, and Lymphocytes. In this paper, the authors propose a Convolutional Neural Network to detect and classify normal white blood cells. The program will learn about the shape and type of normal WBC by performing the following two tasks. The first task is identifying high level features of a normal white blood cell. The second task is classifying the normal white blood cell according to its type. Using a Convolutional Neural Network CNN, the system will be able to detect normal WBCs by comparing them with the high-level features of normal WBC. This process of identifying and classifying WBC can be vital for doctors and medical staff to make a decision. The proposed network achieves an accuracy up to 95.47% with a dataset including 10,000 blood cell images.

Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced. The constant hyperglycemia of diabetes is related to long-haul harm, brokenness, and failure of various organs, particularly the eyes, kidneys, nerves, heart, and veins. This last can be monitoring by doctors over the internet and especially social networks.In this context, having a healthcare social media strategy is no longer optional, it’s a requirement. With the right strategy, social media will become a powerful tool to build trust, reach more patients, and spread valuable medical information. Furthermore, advances in mobile technology and the widespread use of smartphones and tablets will make an improvement in healthcare services at a rapid pace.In this paper, we propose a system that supports a community of diabetes people, their families and friends, doctors, nutritionist and anyone who might need or offer help and support to the community. Our objective is to develop a system that can predict, diagnose and monitor the diabetes or support diabetes self- management using machine learning algorithms and Big Data.

Throughout the past several years, the new technologies and enhancements related to medical visualization has been more than fascinating. In this study, we discuss a proposed idea of a handheld or a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application. This application will ease the process of medical visualization. The criticality of a faulty medical imaging diagnosis could lead to severe consequences and outcomes to patients’ health. This criticality is what ignites new ideas to improve medical imaging. The proposed AR application will help doctors and radiologists in their daily basis. Still most doctors, surgeons, and radiologists use two-dimensional (2D) slices to visualize patients’, which is quite hard to image and map the 3D structure of a human anatomical structure with just 2D plain images. This process requires a lot of experience which sometimes might not be enough. It will help physicians by visualizing patients’ scans such as Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to be rendered as a three-dimensional (3D) object and not as a 2D object. Using the AR technology makes it much more straightforward in observing the rendered object. The proposed application reads a medical image file(s) such as CT or MRI files and renders its data as a 3D model in real world space, by using a volume rendering technique called ray-tracing. This technique works by reading data from a selected file or dataset. After reading a file, the technique traces a ray into object space from each pixel. Afterwards, it accumulates and calculates the color and opacity values of pixels along each ray. The Final step is to assign the values to its corresponding pixels. By completing this process, a selected dataset is rendered as a 3D object into real world space. With AR technology, seeing and interacting with the 3D object is much easier for the users. The expected outcomes of this study are to improve the process of pre-surgery medical images visualization. With interactive buttons and controllers included in the application and the use of several options like decreasing opacity, clipping, zooming, rotation, threshold … etc. will give more control to the users. Moreover, the proposed application enables users to customize his views to get the best of the 3D object for better visualization. This study discusses the in development mobile AR application that could be used as a new, more facilitating method of visualizing medical images. The application will deliver a more feasible way of interacting with visualized medical images, with buttons and sliders and virtual joysticks creating a better user experience (UX).

This work is part of the study carried out in the central zone of Ecuador, formed by the provinces of Tungurahua, Pastaza, Chimborazo, Bolivar and Cotopaxi, where people with blindness and their labor situation were initially detected, taking into account Ecuadorian legislation and the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador in Art. 330 mentions that people with disabilities are guaranteed insertion and accessibility in equal conditions, guaranteeing paid work. Supported by this legislation, an Accessible Web Portal has been designed to support the group of people with total blindness, thus facilitating their labor insertion in the productive sectors. Our research aimed to categorize the skills and abilities of people who are blind. The methodology consists of two stages: The first was constituted by the identification of skills and abilities, while the second stage was the creation of a portal with accessibility patterns designed through HTML and CSS where the personal data of individuals with blindness are shown, that is to say, to make the job profiles visible to all employers. It is concluded that the use of the accessible web portal generates dynamics in the process of labor insertion, highlighting that blind people can access the portal without problems, finally the accessible portal must be considered a means of common use for people who need to be employed and are visually impaired.

Challenges related to the overcrowded colleges amphitheaters have been the subject of several conferences on the state of higher education in sub Saharan Africa. With the advent of information and communications technology (ICT), institutions of higher learning are undergoing a rapid shift. The traditional physical in-class learning is rapidly shifting to full-scale distance learning. The shift brings some challenges in teaching and learning methods as various media are used to suit different learning patterns. This article presents a distance learning module, (massive Learning), whose main objective is to showcase an offline distance-learning lecture model through the use of video and explanatory slides.

With the advancement of technology, e-learning has become a major component of education. Hence, parents now show more interest in games and educational applications based on touch sensitive devices. Today, even very small children play with touch screen devices. Every day, many tablet-based educational apps are introduced to app stores with the objective of improving knowledge of small children and providing them with some sort of edutainment. But recent research shows that most of these apps are not successful due to usability issues with small children. The reason for this is the app developers’ lack of understanding of the abilities and limitations of children that vary with their age as well as their exposure to technology. Hence, most of the children find it difficult to use the apps due to their inability to perform the gestures or understand the concepts. Therefore, most of the children targeted apps are not as successful as anticipated. There are existing studies on gesture performance, but many of them focus on children in developed countries. The gesture performance of a small child may be affected by factors such as exposure to the latest technologies, socio-economic background of the child and native language. Hence, this research is focused on analyzing the gesture performance of children of ages 3 to 5 (Kindergarten level) in Sri Lanka. This paper also makes recommendations on criteria that will ensure better gesture performance by making some changes to interface design for children targeted applications.

Over the past two decades, mobile learning has become a popular part of educational technology in higher education. Mobile learning has the potential to individualize, personalize, and optimize learning processes. It enables students to learn, collaborate, and share ideas among each other anywhere and anytime with the aid of mobile devices. This requires a high degree of students’ autonomy and self-organization and may lead to a significant fragmentation of the learning process. Learning diaries can serve as a didactic tool to support, structure, and consolidate students’ learning progress in distance learning phases.In this paper, we present our experiences with integrating reflective learning diaries into eight Bachelor courses taught in mobile learning settings. We introduce different course designs combining mobile learning and learning diaries, and conclude with our lessons learnt on how to effectively integrate learning diaries into mobile learning settings. Especially in software engineering education, learning diaries offer an effective learning tool to develop students’ autonomy and reflection capabilities.

This article analyses the part of a broader ethnographic narrative portrait of a boy called Kabelo that deals with his everyday digital play. Kabelo lives and schools in Soweto, South Africa and was followed over 16 months. His portrait is a response to the dearth of sociological knowledge on the everyday digital lives of African children. A social justice orientation combined with critical ethnography, narrative inquiry and portraiture provided the conceptual and methodological framework and guided the use of a range of qualitative data collection strategies. Through activity systems analysis (ASA) (Engeström 2015) the interrelationships and tensions within his world of digital play are anaysed. The study concludes that Kabelo’s relative access to mobile digital technologies illuminates his mobilities within and between his world of digital play and enables his voice, agency and capabilities. However, tensions exist based on the misrecognition of the subject’s agency and capabilities in policy. The study recommends the socially-just recognition of digital play capabilities as part of a list of children’s play capabilities for inclusion in policy and formal learning systems. Attention to the production of small and thick digital ethnographies to complement big and broad data is also recommended.

Mobile foreign exchange trading system for m-learning is proposed. It’s used for time series analysis skills learning. Method of pre-forecasting fractal R/S analysis of non-stationary time series is integrated in system. This method includes: persistence, anti-persistence and random level determination based on the calculation of the Hurst exponent. To calculate the average value of the nonperiodic cycle of time series, as well as to establish the potential profitable of assets that are represented by financial time series. A criterion for determination of the average length of non-periodic cycles based on the smoothing of V-statistics with simple moving average and Kaufman’s adaptive moving average is proposed. It has been confirmed that most financial time series are more or less persistent and endowed with long-term memory of their initial conditions using computer simulation. Time series of course pairs are close to random. Using fractal analysis in m-learning mobile foreign exchange trading systems for smartphones based on iOS or Android operating systems is suggested. The system is characterized by visualization and description of all stages, which has to be executed for time series analysis. Practical use of this system has shown high efficiency for time series analysis skills learning.

Water scarcity and water stress issues pose a serious threat to the global population. Climate change, drought, population growth and consolidation in urban centres have all been increasing the pressure on water service providers to deploy more sustainable approaches in urban water management. Real-time monitoring and control of water consumption are key ingredients for a smart water management system which will raise consumers’ environmental awareness and reduce costs. This paper introduces a smart infrastructure system which enables remote telemetry and control of water consumption via a web application. The bidirectional and reliable communication between terminal devices (smart meters and valves) and the end-user (consumers and water utility operators) is realized through a fixed hybrid network which uses multiple telecommunication protocols. The metering data is collected and further processed through modern data analytics tools to give a deeper insight on water consumption and behavioral patterns.

Human cognition is guided and shaped by the physical manifestation of objects around us- acting and thinking are intertwined. By integrating digital interactions to the physical world, we improve the potential to perceive and understand objects, spaces and notions and we facilitate the creation of mental representations since these are directly influenced by the way we bodily interact with objects. The integration of educational robotics, mixed reality and tangible interfaces provides us with a fertile ground on which to develop new learning scenarios. Astronomical phenomena, from the simplest to the most obscure include difficult to grasp concepts for which learners usually develop strong misconceptions. In this paper, we propose the use of educational robotics as a tangible simulation tool of the Earth’s movements, in a mixed reality space for learning the day/night cycle. In order to evaluate the proposed environment, a pilot study was conducted with sixteen elementary students. Data were collected through pre/post tests, an attitudes questionnaire and semi-formal group interviews. Students’ answers indicated that they were excited with and impressed by the proposed intervention while the gained invaluable knowledge about the day/night cycle.

With globally increased migration and mobility across countries, it has become critical for many people to acquire a language of the host country. This study focuses on the case of adult migrant workers who are i) enrolled in second language education and ii) faced to a challenge of balancing between their professional and private lives and their studies of the target second language, needed for their successful integration into the host society. This explorative case study aims to support migrant learners in their second language acquisition across learning settings. It introduces and evaluates the use of specifically designed tool, TimeTracker, aimed at helping learners to keep track on how much time they spend on studying the target language influences their engagement and motivation to continue to study the host language. Eight participants from Sweden and Norway used the tool during the period of one to two weeks. Overall, the results show that using TimeTracker to log and keep track of the time spent on studying a host language inspired the learners to i) allocate more time on their second language learning, and ii) become more engaged in it through raising awareness and monitoring of their learning activities.

In this paper we introduce a model of cooperation between High School-University-Industry sustained by activities and results obtained in “Cypress – National Instruments Club” started at “Transilvania” University of Brasov – Romania. This strategic collaboration between High School-University-Industry was become necessary because technology is evolving at a rate that is quickly outpacing traditional engineering teaching methods. New methods such as hands-on learning labs, industry-centric curriculum, permanent updating of facilities, and using new adaptive learning software are being adopted. “Transilvania” University is targeting education at the industries of the future rather than industries of the past and for this reason we must apply the same strategies inside the high school in order to well prepare the children’s, future students and the new engineers.

This paper presents how the concept of virtual community can be further elaborated to account for the use of modern digital technologies in a way that promotes the establishment of rich social contexts within which human creativity is exercised and learning happens. The new reality brought about by digital technologies is characterized by new qualities, new opportunities for action, new community affordances, that are captures by the term onlife. This term was initially proposed in the Onlife Manifesto and used in this paper to signify certain qualities that are important in understanding modern digital platforms and applications as well as guide the efforts for effectively extending to provide new capabilities to their users. Specific design principles are presented exemplified by the presentation of the design of a mobile app addressing creativity and learning in the field of cultural heritage to showcase how these principles are put in action. This mobile app enables the users of an existing digital storytelling platform inspired by traditional Shadow Theatre, develop their own digital puppets in a way that incorporates the creative process of developing traditional shadow theatre puppets. The use of the mobile app is compared to the need to use external image processing tools and the pros and cons of each approach are presented and linked to the design principles initially presented.

In today’s modern age, it is almost impossible to exist without the Information Communication Technologies that makes our life easier.In addition to other areas, Information Communication Technologies is also needed in education. There are a number of ways to contribute to the development of the learning process, which we refer to in this article - student centric model, gamification, virtual and augmented reality (using Gear VR), remote and virtual labs. We will also discuss the educational application focused on the basics of geographical knowledge of Slovakia.

The domain of cyber security has gained an increased importance in the industry that is naturally reflected in the universities curricula that have included security courses and dedicated programs in their offer. The scope of this paper is to describe the requirements of a cybersecurity virtual platform, the basic mandatory tools to be included and the methods for building a flexible and extensible cyber security laboratory, taking benefit of industry support, academic programs and open source implementations.

Industry 4.0 is storming the world and irreversibly changes it. If Industry 4.0’s physical components develop at an accelerated rate, the human component tends to keep pace. Considering this, it is the responsibility of universities to renew their curricula as soon as possible for the new industrial reality. The MSIE 4.0 project has brought together universities from Thailand, Poland, Portugal and Romania to develop a master programme oriented to Industry 4.0. After analysing existing curricula from various universities and performing a gap analysis between the skills required by industry and those offered by universities, a new curriculum was drawn up, consisting of 16 courses.

This paper examines the perceptions of Greek Primary School teachers about the educational use of mobile augmented reality (MAR). The research of this study includes the design and development of an educational application which involves augmented reality and mobile learning. Additional information and digital features, following the school curriculum, were superimposed to the user’s real world through the utilization of mobile devices. Primary school teachers were familiarized with the application and formed their opinions regarding mobile augmented reality in the teaching process after using it. Then, they filled out a questionnaire based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The analysis of the data that were collected showed significant correlations between the variables. In particular, it was found that teachers’ intention to use the mobile AR application that was designed is related both to perceived usefulness and to perceived ease of use. Teachers enjoyed the mobile augmented reality experience and considered the app as a useful and easy to use tool, which has a lot to offer to their teaching.

A systematic scientific taxonomy designated upon the musicological and physical sound properties of Musical Instruments dates since 1914; it is the legendary Hornbostel-Sachs classification scheme. However, lacking, then, the communicative ability to contemplate profoundly and at length the tremendous multiplicity of worldwide contemporary musical subtle differences in sound expression and nuances of national identities, it provided an “ontology”-based methodology for classifying the organological discourse in depth at a later time. Even further, as digitally mastered sounds have prevailed recently, mobile computing provides suitable instrumentation meant to anticipate, measure and scale hundreds of new or “marginalized” instruments that seek bibliographic classification. The multimedia potential, both for input and output of an App serving as a measuring device is figuratively presented.

Over the last decade, the European Commission, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympics Committee have made significant investments for the development of evidence-based anti-doping education. Although this is an important step towards eliminating doping in amateur and professional, elite sport, still most of the existing projects operate in a fragmented manner and there is a considerable lack of synergies. Consequently, there has been little consideration of effective ways to manage and sustain the knowledge created in this area in ways that will further maximize and sustain the usability and impact of existing anti-doping education initiatives. For this purpose, project IMPACT was developed in order to deliver, for the first time, multi-stakeholder Communities of Practice for Clean Sport Education across Europe. Through the implementation of face-to-face and web-based communities of practice, IMPACT will provide a knowledge management framework that will transform existing anti-doping educational resources into meaningful, timely, and sustainable tools, and stimulate the generation of innovative anti-doping educational solutions. This will be achieved through a strategic partnership between academic experts in anti-doping research and online education, and international and national sport stakeholders (i.e., sport associations; anti-doping agencies; organizations for doping prevention in amateur sports).

We experimentally demonstrate an uplink transmission of a Fiber Wireless A-RoF/IFoF fronthaul link for 5G networks using a 32-element 60 GHz phased array antenna in the 1-m long wireless channel and 10 km of SMF spool for the optical link. At first, we characterize the link frequency response using a single tone measurement and perform a dynamic characterization using an 100Mbd QPSK, 8PSK and 16-QAM signal, resulting in 200 Mb/s, 300 Mb/s and 400 Mb/s user data rate, meeting the uplink user-rate KPI-requirements for 5G mm wave networks. Beam-steering capabilities for the Fiber Wireless link are shown for a 300 Mbd QPSK transmission and 15° degrees incident angle, showing flexibility for 5G mm Wave networks.

This work describes the advancements that next generation mobile networks can bring to emergency services on the basis of a fully 5G enabled medical emergency response scenario. An ambulance service combining autonomous driving, advanced on-board patient monitoring, remote diagnosis and remote control from the hospital is introduced, allowing increased levels of care during patient transport and improved early diagnosis, thus enhancing patient survival rates. Furthermore, it is shown that such an ambulance service requires a variety of different traffic types that can only be supported concurrently and with guaranteed quality of service by a high-performance network fulfilling all 5G key performance indicators. The scenario described combines a multitude of aspects and applications enabled by 5G mobile communications, including autonomous driving, ultra-high definition video streaming, tactile remote interaction and continuous sensing, into a compelling showcase for a 5G enabled future. A centralized radio access 5G network with space division multiplexed optical fronthaul using analog radio-over-fiber and optical beamforming is analyzed, fully supporting SDN and NFV for advanced network slicing and quality of service guarantee.

We present a colorless transmitter based on a reflective electroabsorption modulator (EAM) monolithically integrated with a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). A semi-insulating buried heterostructure (SI-BH) technology is used to define the device waveguide structures. The integration of the SOA allows to fully compensate for insertion losses. We observe up to +2 dB net gain in the fiber-coupled output power, for 90 mA SOA bias current. We demonstrate 25 Gb/s operation with non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation format, with a dynamic extinction ratio (DER) up to 14 dB for 2.6 V peak-to-peak EAM driving voltage. Colorless operation is demonstrated over 15 nm spectral range in the C-band. We achieved 10 km dispersion limited transmission distance at 25 Gb/s NRZ with a penalty of 3 dB at 10−3 bit error rate (BER).

Software Defined Network is one of the key enabling technologies for the upcoming 5G networks. Both the fronthaul and the backhaul of the network must be reconfigurable for SDN to work properly. Phased Array Antennas could add to the backhaul/fronthaul wireless equipment beamsteering capabilities to make it reconfigurable. This paper summarizes feasibility considerations resulting from the desire of replacing the current reflector antenna with phased arrays in the backhaul segment. Energy consumption and compliance with regulatory radiation masks are analyzed and found to represent challenging requirements. Several techniques are also identified as possible solutions to comply with such stringent demands and future research steps are described.

Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) has been introduced as a part of the 5G architecture to reduce network latency and traffic compared to cloud computing. Applications are running in MEC centers close to the end users improving user experience. Due to limited resources of a MEC center, only selected applications can be placed there. In this paper we introduce a machine learning-based approach to optimize network traffic by intelligent selection of applications running in a MEC center. Our approach is based on current and historical network traffic data to predict the potential for network traffic savings. We propose a smart city architecture for integrating this approach and discuss its benefits and challenges. Using smart waste management as a particular use case, we illustrate the application of our solutions.

The existing LTE network is software upgraded to support Narrow Band Internet Of Things (NB-IoT), which is designed to incorporate a massive number of ultra-low-power consuming and ultra-low complex devices operating in the poor coverage area, and the devices communicate to the internet through the existing cellular infrastructure. The massiveness of devices in the network will cause a collision which will degrade the performance of the system. The question that arises is what are the network parameters which could be optimized to reduce the collision in the massive access scenario. In this context, we evaluated the performance of NB-IoT random access channel by modeling the access channel as a multi-channel slotted aloha system. Focusing on the success probability of NB-IoT random access channel, we figured out that the subframe repetition number, back-off window selection, and random-access opportunity per device can be optimized to decrease the preamble collision under massive access scenario.