Smart Education and e-Learning 2017

The performed analysis of innovative technology-based learning and teaching strategies for smart classrooms clearly shows that in the near future smart pedagogy will be actively deployed by leading academic institutions in the world for teaching of local and remote students in one class. The research project is focused on in-depth analysis of innovative learning strategies, including (1) learning-by-doing, (2) flipped classroom, (3) games-based learning, (4) adaptive teaching, (5) context-based learning, (6) collaborative learning, (7) learning analytics, (8) “bring your own device” (BYOD) strategy, (9) personal enquiry based learning, (10) crossover learning, (11) robotics-based learning, and other advanced technology-based approaches to teaching and learning. The obtained outcomes of this performed research, analysis, and testing of implemented smart pedagogy components undoubtedly prove that those learning and teaching strategies support identified “smartness” levels and smart features of smart classrooms such as (1) adaptivity, (2) sensing, (3) inferring, (4) anticipation, (5) self-learning, and (6) self-organization. The obtained student feedback undoubtedly demonstrates students’ strong interest in smart pedagogy – the approach that will be an essential topic of multiple research, design, and development projects in the next 5–10 years.

Properly designed Assessment Program, both Formative tests and Summative test (Exam), is the basic part of arbitrary engineering course. Today, computerization of Assessment is a norm and in the 2nd generation of Smart Classroom, computerization means first of all active use of mobile technology. Then, measurement of effectiveness of Computer-Assisted Assessment, achievements of learning outcomes, correlation between number of Formative tests solved by the students and the Exam Pass/Fail ratio, is absolutely essential. The proposed measurement method is based on Discrete Memoryless Channel principles and utilizes mutual information as the measure of this correlation. The Case Study is presented and it confirms usefulness of the proposed measure. Some guidelines, good practices in Computer Assisted Assessment design are given.

In order to promote smart education on a collegewide level, it is essential for respective teachers to pursue upward spirals of their own practice of smart education in addition to the introduction of ICT equipment into classrooms, as well as the holding of faculty development sessions related to upward spirals. In this paper, we describe our college’s efforts in respect of a “review” of smart education which can be regarded as a future global standard, not only from one’s own point of view but also from that of others. We mention the content of upward spirals conducted based on feedback from both teachers and students, which was promoted as efforts by all the faculty members to practice and improve smart education.

Programming exercises are time-consuming activities for many students. Therefore, many classes provide meticulous supports for students, in the form of teaching assistants (TAs). However, individual students’ programming behaviors are quite different from each other, even when they are solving the same problem. It can be hard for TAs to understand the unique features of each student’s programming behavior. Using data mining (specifically autoencoding of deep learning), we have analyzed students’ programming behaviors in order to determine their varied features. The purpose of this study is to present such behavioral features for TAs, to improve the effectiveness of the assistance they can provide.

Environmental attitudes are essential for the today’s world in which shrinking natural resources and pollution are one of the biggest problems of the society. The research challenges go in two directions: on the one hand, the environmental researchers try to reduce the impact of human actions on the environment and, on the other, human researchers try to educate people to adopt ecological behaviour. This is the main issue faced in this research to sensitize young people to the environmental health using multimedia technologies. The paper presents a serious game addressed to primary school pupils aimed at transferring knowledge about marine litter and four species of Mediterranean Sea that are estimated to be at risk of extinction. The aim is to foster knowledge about the marine life and to explain people the problems that marine litter can cause. The results of a pilot study that investigates the usability of the game is presented.

The paper describes an approach to improve the efficiency and adaptability of the MOOCs, using RLCP-compatible virtual laboratories for implementation of the interactive practical exercises. The proposed approach is based on the organization of systematic situational awareness training (SAT) of students both before the start of the course and in the process of studying the MOOC. Software is proposed for SAT which provides not only the growth of cognitive functions (attention and thinking speed), but also affects the overall performance on e-learning. For systematic SAT during the MOOC a solution is provided to develop RLCP-compatible virtual laboratories based on a standardized interfacial forms and special demonstration mode. The use of this approach significantly reduces execution time of practical exercises in assessment trials as showed by the results of experimental studies on the MOOC of ITMO University on a National Platform of Open Education of the Russian Federation https://openedu.ru. To increase motivation to achieve better learning outcomes in the MOOC the technique of the game mechanics of perfectionism is suggested. The technique is based on complexity management RLCP-compatible virtual laboratories, allowing to provide new optional tasks of high complexity to the students who already passed mandatory assessment.

The research objectives of the article consist in the identification of the strategic elements which contribute to the transformation of TrU into SmU and of the characteristics of e-learning Tesys platform which improve the performances of the students and professors. In our research we have started from the premises that smart technology is a strategic tool for the development of critical thinking and the Smart curricula and the Smart pedagogy have to be created in order to develop the critical thinking for both students and professors. Our findings revealed that INCESA HUB has the possibility to optimize learning process and to transform the University of Craiova into a modern and SmU. The e-learning Tesys platform plays a very important role, because, through its flexibility, it is able to fulfil the Smart mission of SmU. Finally, we arrived at the conclusion that the solution resides in the involvement of all stakeholders at intern, local, national and international level in order to acquire and share the knowledge.

The article describes the features of the application of 3D-models in the design and development of RLCP-compatible virtual laboratories for interactive practical exercises in MOOC giving an example of laboratory devoted to the gradient descent method (backtracking line search) to define a multivariable function. Also features of application of the virtual laboratory in visualizer mode to preview and preliminary theoretical training of students are described. The article also shows the results of a study on pilot application of the developed virtual laboratory in practical training of the discipline “Methods of optimization”. It is shown that the use of 3D-models and the implementation of the visualizer mode helps to achieve better learning outcomes (a 10% correct answers increase, significant reduction of the execution time and number of the attempts at the assessment).

The paper reviews existing representative remote laboratory environments in the context of e-learning. The focus is then on the NetLab, a remote laboratory developed at the University of South Australia (UniSA) and in operation since 2002. Details of the NetLab configuration and operation are outlined with recommendations of its use for effective e-learning in engineering education. Further developments of an Intelligent Tutoring System to improve NetLab as a smart learning environment are highlighted.

Adaptive course development is a complicated task. Application of the traditional approaches leads to the increase of laboriousness during the development and evaluation of the course. This paper presents an approach based on automata model that helps to develop adaptive courses and provide a high quality assessment of the related knowledge and skills. The presented model uses smart analysis in order to build a proper course scheme.

This paper presents a contextual information formation algorithm for smart learning object, which enables to comprise learning content, process of active learning activities and the essential aspects of the problematic learning situations. It presents how to get the specification of a smart learning object by using context of learning content and learning activities. This paper also analyzes the characteristic of proposed algorithm by comparing two smart learning objects.

The article discusses the ways of Smart-e-Learning usage in the system of education of children in institutions of musical and art education. In relying on the ideas of contemporary Russian [5, 8, 9] authors determined how to incorporate into the learning process of children’s musical and art schools such modern forms of learning such as e-tutorial, presentation, individual sites, multimedia programs for music, music recording, the tempo changes, etc. Based on the test scores of students in the subject of “Musical Literature”, “Pop vocal” survey of teachers of children’s musical school, as well as the results of the competitive activities of students proved that these areas are effective in teaching children of teenage age.

Fifteen sophomore students are creating a SPOC on probabilities for their freshmen/women mates. This SPOC is based on 80 exercises to solve first numerically then analytically. For each exercise, the sophomore group have prepared a notebook, a video tutorial to explain the problem and another video clip to comment on the solution.

Many universities apply e-learning and learning management systems to control the learning process. Such systems require educational programs to be uploaded inside the system as specific structures. Nowadays almost all of the educational programs are based on a competency model with specified learning outcomes, which can also be determined for the courses that are parts of these programs. This paper provides a discussion of the three most widespread learning technology standards for describing, referencing, and sharing competency and learning outcome definitions in the context of online and distributed learning. It also describes a mathematical model that helps to develop a correct educational program based on the newly specified requirements, and provides information about the results of an application of the model in the learning management system of ITMO University.

Managing online materials for large classes can be time-consuming and error prone. In particular, it can be challenging to manage long lists of students, lecture progress, and auditorium schedules as these often change on a daily basis. We therefore introduce a simple Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework implemented in Excel that can help teachers handle daily tasks more efficiently. Examples include how to generate lecture plans, student presentation schedules, and peer-review plans for students. The authors have successfully used the system for more than five years in several courses. The framework simplifies the task of reusing material from one teaching semester to another. Teachers only need to focus on the content and not the visual appearance.

This article focuses on the design of smart-system of distance learning (DL) for people with impaired vision (PIV) based on multi-agent approach. There are considered the most common multi-agent platforms and based on them practical applications. Particular attention is paid to Java Agent Development Framework platform (JADE), there were analyzed the advantages and disadvantages. There were considered main problems of DL for people with impaired vision to provide high-quality engineering education in the shared laboratories (SL) with modern equipment. There was offered an integrated solution to this problem by the use of cognitive, ontological, statistical, intellectual and multi-agent approaches. Were developed the structure and the algorithm of functioning of the smart-system of DL for PIV using different agents.

Modern technologies have entered into all area and levels of education. This paper aims to introduce the Project Management e-learning course which was primarily designed for public administration. The paper describes the current situation and the specifics of public administration and also focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the application of project management in public administration. The practical demonstration of the course describes the smart technologies that are used in the course, SWOT analysis of the course and then, according to the questionnaire, the evaluation of the success of the course and its possible ways of improvements.

The use of cloud computing in open education resulted in the emergence of a new dynamic form of e-learning – massive open online courses. Massive open online courses are considered as large-scale web-based learning courses of a new generation that allow free admittance to the content of academic disciplines or subjects for a huge number of students from around the world at the same time. The article presents an analysis of their specific characteristics. To formalize the process of designing and creating online course the authors developed two models: four-level model describing the hierarchy of the basic levels of user access to the courses, and mathematical reflecting the interconnectedness of the course elements. The technique of course creating and placing on modern cloud platform is described in the abstract. The materials presented can be useful in the development of mass open online courses and their implementation in the educational process in the institutions of higher education.

The performed analysis of innovative learning analytics systems clearly shows that in the near future those systems will be actively deployed by academic institutions. The on-going research project described here is focused on in-depth analysis of hierarchical levels of learning analytics and academic analytics, types of data to be collected, main features, and the conceptual design of smart learning analytics for smart university. Our vision is that modern analytics systems should strongly support smart university’s “smartness” levels such as adaptivity, sensing, inferring, anticipation, self-learning, and self-organization. This paper presents the up-to-date research outcomes of a research project on the design and development of smart learning analytics systems for smart universities.

This study presents a smart software system named BiTak which employs strict turn-taking to encourage learners to practice speaking skills via a half-duplex dual-lingual video chat using a recording function. BiTak aims to motivate the conversation using two different languages as well as to identify the mutual benefits through this kind of conversation for the need of improving simultaneous bilingual acquisition. The paper also examines the improvement of users using BiTak that is assessed objectively by certified language teachers following the scoring tool named rubric. It is revealed from the results of the experiments that the system brings about the sense of language learning and favorably boost students’ speaking skills.

Programming Online Judges (POJs) are tools that contain a large collection of programming problems to be solved by students as a component of their training and programming practices. This contribution presents a recommendation approach to suggest to students the more suitable problems to solve for increasing their performance and motivation in POJs. Some key features of the approach are the use of an enriched user-problem matrix that incorporates specific information related to the user performance in the POJ, and the development of a strategy for natural noise management in such a matrix. The experimental evaluation shows the improvements of the proposal as compared to previous works.

e-Learning tools and environments, especially virtual laboratories, are becoming of great interest nowadays as the reason of fast improvement of learning management systems and education itself. Virtual laboratories are often used for developing and assessing students’ programming skills. However, these environments are commonly related to the specific programming language, so that some students may experience difficulties, while dealing with them. Hence, it is expedient to construct such learning tools that will not be connected to the specific language. This paper presents the results of evaluation of the developed virtual laboratory Multi-style code editor that corresponds with the stated rule.

This paper describes DILIGO, a tool for smart assessment of preschool children attitudes. Many tests for children assessment children are based on verbal materials that can result tiresome for pupils, taking a long time for the administration and also they are sensitive to biases. This paper illustrates a gamified approach to promote participation and involvement of preschoolers and to run an implicit and transparent assessment. This way, it is possible to evaluate the children preference for a certain activity, giving information for orienting in school and work context.

This paper discusses some issues of e-learning, namely the problems of adaptations of learning materials to the individual opportunities and needs of students. The standardized content of e-learning doesn’t take into account individual features of student’s cognitive activity. It results in low motivation to study and poor progress. In this paper we describe an experimental research of hybrid text perception with the help of eye tracking technology. During the experiment we got data about behavior and emotions of students when completing learning tasks. A hybrid learning text consists of verbal text and several pictures. We believe that the visual component of a hybrid text influences efficiency of text perception because it may arouse different emotions: negative or positive.

The fourth industrial revolution is predicted to be one major topic in the upcoming decades, affecting nearly every industrial facility. The key enabler for the successful integration of corresponding developments are well-trained engineers with elaborated knowledge in the area of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).This paper introduces a concept enabling engineering students to gain the required skills for the upcoming challenges connected with the fourth industrial revolution. Therefore, the Smart MiniFab was developed - a demonstrator of an industrial facility primed for the implementation and the analysis of different IIoT concepts on a small scale. Due to the modular structure of the system, students can use the demonstrator to programmatically implement the functionality of an entire facility from scratch or to test only certain new concepts. The hardware can be programmed via remote access from anywhere at any time, while live feedback is provided through a webcam and different other communication possibilities directly within the remote access application.While the Smart MiniFab was already the HW environment of different student projects, a new lab course is currently under development which enables the access to the Smart MiniFab for a broad number of students.

Present-day educational process requires interactivity from the teacher and the student, as well as employment of modern tools provided by the internet informational space and computer technologies. Network organization of the subjects’ interaction in professional and educational activity is considered most effective; network-based software is currently used in many professional spheres. Educational activity in higher school requires resorting not only to proper “academic” network-based software solutions, but also to scientific ones, as far as educational tasks include mastering methods of obtaining new knowledge. The paper presents the “Semograph” Information System used for training specialists in linguistics while organizing both their educational and scientific activity. Particular instances of using the “Semograph” in teaching academic disciplines are introduced; examples of research projects used for teaching scientific activity are presented.

This article presents a sociometric social mapping tool and its application in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) ROODA (Cooperative Learning Network). The purpose of this tool is to map the social interactions that take place during the development of a classroom or Distance Learning activity. The maps are constructed based on selected categories (for example, participants and period of analysis) and visualized as sociograms. These graphs have been proven to be relevant in assisting teachers to both monitor and follow-up on their students during the teaching and learning process. In addition to providing punctual analysis of the relationships and forms of interaction among students, the availability of this sociometric tool in the VLE itself allows for the reconceptualization of educational practices and recreation of pedagogical strategies that can maximize not only virtual social interactions but also forms of collaboration and cooperation. Preliminary results were used to construct new research questions that enabled the collection of categories of social information and the construction of pedagogical strategies based on social aspects for Distance Learning.

The article deals with the issues of organization and management of education information interaction in a group of English language learners. The article looks at focus areas in using smart technologies for the purposes of foreign language acquisition and give an analysis of the most effective Internet resources for teaching and learning English. This research suggests the structure of education information interaction in a group in the processes of gathering, processing, transmission of information, exchange of messages among the members of the group in collaborative work with an electronic education resource and with the teacher in the local network. The research also suggests recommendations for the teacher concerning organization and management of education information interaction with the help of hard and software supporting an electronic education resource. The pedagogical experiment assessing students’ knowledge and skills showed high level proficiency of the students in the field of education information interaction management on the basis of Smart Technologies.

Trainee pilots are expected to be thoroughly trained on both technical and nontechnical skills. Technical skills are relatively easy to evaluate. However, non-technical skills are hard to monitor and assess. This study investigates the feasibility of providing a smart evaluation technique that can generate feedback on trainee pilots’ instrument scan behavior. The authors conducted gaze monitoring experiments with a number of trainee pilots while operating a flight simulator in order to isolate patterns of behavior associated with Situation Awareness (SA). Recorded data on eye movements are then processed and transitions are extracted using a state transition model. The sequence of transitions are then processed to retrieve repeated instrument scan pattern. The results are verified using chart visualizations.

Currently, all educational institutions and their teaching staff join their efforts for the purposes of joint educational activities through Internet on the basis of common learning standards and technologies. Hence, the significance of e-Smart learning has been steadily increasing and this necessitates wide application of distance learning systems. Today, e-learning can be used not only as a specific form for gaining knowledge based on the distance technologies, but as an additional opportunity to reinforce the material learnt or for an in-depth study of the scientific knowledge area.

We have created a system that automatically records the inside-the-patient images of each colonoscopy in de-identified fashion. At present this “big data” database contains around 100 TB of de-identified endoscopy data. Interval colorectal cancers (CRCs) are CRCs that develop despite periodic colonoscopy and are due to de novo tumor growth, a missed lesion or incomplete lesion removal. Using a combination of location, date, time and image information we were able to find a video file within our de-identified big data from a prior colonoscopy that belonged to a patient with a recently diagnosed large interval lesion. Analysis of the video file showed that a large lesion was incompletely removed. Analysis of big endoscopy datasets has the potential to resolve the cause of most if not all interval lesions and CRCs and can provide specific, focused education to endoscopists related to their individual limitations.

The arrival of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) and their widespread use in all spheres of human activities definitely has influenced teaching and learning processes, which is manifested in student centered learning, exploiting creative potential of a student, integration of different teaching plans, or diversity of teaching methods and strategies. Consequently, the traditional, in most cases the authoritative role of the teacher in the classroom is changing, too. Nevertheless, the teacher still has his/her role in student’s learning. S/he is responsible for careful planning and running of the whole course, setting the learning aims and objectives, exploiting different teaching approaches and strategies, and determining whether and how to apply ICT in his/her teaching. Therefore the purpose of this article is to discuss a new, challenging role of the teacher in the new environment, the so-called smart learning environment enhanced by ICT. This is done on the basis of literature review of available studies on the research topic in the world’s acknowledged databases Web of Science, Scopus, Springer, ScienceDirect and PubMed in the period of 2010 till October 2016. The results of this review study indicate that teachers have a positive attitude to the use of ICT in their teaching. Nevertheless, they also reveal that teachers are still not able to fully integrate ICT in their teaching. Therefore they should be made aware of the role of ICT in educational processes and provided with a chance to be trained in the new competences which are necessary for teaching in the new smart environment.

The growing number of open educational resources (OER) causes the problem of search and sharing, design and reusability of learning objects in the semantic web according to a chosen subject. The authors have worked on the learning objects (LO) design model based on semantic technologies and now intend to present the integration of the model into a learning objects repository. The aim of the paper is to present the role of semantic web technologies in LO design, exchange and store in learning objects repository (LOR).

This article is aimed at identifying a set of quality indicators to analyze an on-line learning process referred to one of the methodologies that is currently considered among the most effective to promote language learning in formal contexts, i.e. the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). This methodology calls for various activities (speaking, listening, reading and writing) supported by the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). The main objective of this study is to evaluate the quality of a CLIL practical activity (task) carried out in e-learning mode, using Technologies to support the teacher’s/tutor’s activity and boost students’ learning of the basic aspects of a certain subject matter and their competence in discussing and debating. The indicators are used to analyze cognitive, meta-cognitive and relational aspects, drawing on a content analysis methodology. The model appears to have a wide range of possible applications in other online courses.

In this paper we consider development of interest among master students and young scientists involved in robotics. One of the key factors influencing a human involvement in learning and work processes is an ability to absorb knowledge in his/her usual way.If a teacher presents a new theme in a way, not peculiar to student thinking, then the understanding process breaks and, as a consequence, the interest falls down. Similar problems can arise in communication of young scientists being a part of an international laboratory.To “speak the same language” it is important to determine individual features of thinking of students and laboratory staff and organize exchange of information appropriately. To solve this problem we propose two approaches based on usage of meta programs (MP) and person’s needs. The first method refers to increase of student interest in acquiring new knowledge. The second one is devoted to motivation young scientists and organization of their work in the international laboratory “Nonlinear Adaptive Control Systems”. It is shown that the use of proposed approaches increases the number of students interested in self-realization in the field of robotics.

As teachers look for ways to improve practice and enhance student engagement, referral to the literature leads to a dichotomy between specific activity and heavy academic research on metadata and learning analytics. This paper is intended to tread the pathway between the two so that teachers can, using the findings, introduce video for flipped classes, or online teaching. Taking 5 iterations of an action research approach the authors present the techniques and principles for making an interactive video and clear examples of lesson design. The research was conducted at a Danish higher education institution in technical subjects, but the methods are applicable to most teaching situations. The outcomes are, that paying attention to the process of recording existing lecture content leads to interactive video. This new content can be embedded in a structured lesson design and can greatly improve educational outcomes and student engagement. The researchers’ goal was to create and sustain smart, rich and active learning environments in both online and in classroom environments, and utilize existing content across both platforms.

Education and use of technology have undergone through a turbulent development over the last two decades in the Czech Republic. Students widely utilize latest advanced technologies on the daily basis for their private purposes as well as for study purposes at majority of universities where they have access to online study materials in virtual platforms. The Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Králové is one of the major institutions that has co-formed and influenced the local Czech educational scene in e-learning. Both education and common life have been closely connected with social software applications. Real world is being enriched with the virtual space. It is valued for creativity and innovations it enables and fosters. The paper contributes to the exploration of utilization of Web 2.0 phenomenon in the university setting with students of financial and information management. The goal of this paper is to map real situation relating to utilization of social applications with focus on students’ expectation in potential of selected social software applications. Three hypotheses which assume that students who can see potential for educational purposes in YouTube, Facebook and a learning management system, already use these applications either for private or study purposes or both.

The article addresses the issue of tool support for teacher activity and learning activity of students. Synthesis of the technology of multidimensional didactic tools (hereafter MDT) and the smart technology for creation of electronic mind maps is suggested for presentation and analysis of the content and structure of educational material. Multidimensional didactic tools are universal logical and semantic models for the presentation and analysis of knowledge in a natural language possessing the properties of multi-dimensionality, fractality and solarity (have a radial and ray structure). Electronic mind maps provide technological and substantial flexibility in the development and use of MDT. Synthesis of technologies makes it possible to create verbal and image models for presentation of the educational material at various structural levels - from a separate element of knowledge to interdisciplinary links. Multidimensional didactic tools serve as a systemic orientation basis in the course of studying educational material and enable students to control knowledge quality and manage the development of their own knowledge. The synthesis of technologies is demonstrated using structuring and presentation of the content of the academic discipline “Testology”.

The objective of this study was to identify possible pedagogical strategies for m-learning with the elderly in order to develop inclusive pedagogical practices. Each year new digital technologies, such as smartphones and tablets, are being developed and consumed by different age groups. At the same time, the number of people 60 years of age and older continues to increase. Thus, it is important to investigate possible pedagogical strategies for m-learning, aimed to include the elderly in the digital and mobile world. Therefore, this work has used a qualitative and quantitative research methodology with a case study. Five steps were adopted in the methodology to address the research objective. The study was carried out with a group of 23 elderly people that had a mean age of 70 years of age. These subjects participated in a digital inclusion course at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. As a pedagogical practice, the research adopted the construction of applications in order to promote authorship for the elderly, as well as to encourage them to use of their smartphones and tablets as a possible way of interacting with society. Twenty-three applications were developed that addressed different themes. Self-valorization of the elderly as authors of their digital materials was observed during the course of the project, transforming them from passive to active students and including them in digital society.

At present electronic education, the so-called eLearning, is quite widespread at all levels of educational institutions. There are many modalities of eLearning and web-based instruction is one of them. Therefore the purpose of this article is to discuss a procedure and pedagogical principles imposed on the development of any web-based application and technologies used in the creation of such web application. In addition, the authors of this article provide a specific example of the development of one smart web application which was designed for its use in the first grade of one basic school in the Czech Republic. The authors emphasize its benefits and list several improvements for its future use.

Education and the use of technology have seen a substantial positive trend over the last 17 years in the Czech Republic. Students have currently advanced technologies at their disposal, but they also have the ability to access online study materials at a vast majority of universities. The Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Králové is one of the major institutions that has influenced the Czech environment. This article analyzes the utilization of the Learning Management System Blackboard and related tools in connection with subject Enterprise Accounting as it is taught at the Faculty of Informatics and Management at the University of Hradec Králové. At the same time, the subject, conditions of study and basic information about students will be introduced. The main part of the article is focused on statistical data aimed on the use of individual tools within the subject by the students. The results shall be compared for full-time and part-time studies. The final part is focused on student feedback after completing the subject by blended learning. It has been established that full-time students use LMS tools more and they log in more often. Results shows that the time spent in LMS by students is very similar on average. Learning modules and assignments are the tools that are used the most.

This paper describes a remote lab, currently available on the Department of Control Systems and Computer Science in ITMO University. The remote lab allows students with disabilities to gain knowledge in Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Control Theory, Systems Identification and etc. In this paper the developed laboratory setup for DC motor control is described. The paper shows the model of DC motor and designing the proportional-integral-differential controller tuned using Ziegler-Nichols and modal control approaches.

The landscape is changing, mainly due to man. The changes in the landscape are increasingly important, so it is important to monitor these changes, mainly due to the use of resources in the country in the future. The article deals with the use of automatic classification of data from remote sensing to analyse the development of the landscape on the case study in the village Staré Jesenčany, the Czech Republic.

Smart Education Initiative (SEI) was announced on the 29th June, 2011. Technology trend has been integrated into SMART concept as APPLE’s iPhone and SAMSUNG’s smart phone entered as the big giants into the world market. Korean society is very often called as the front line of smart society embedded with such highly digitized and connected technology. Korean education often cited as the miracle of the 20th century would be the pioneer to open the new millennial world of education by applying the smart technology. Although too many issues and concepts are not yet constructed as the solid ground for the daily guidelines for school teachers and students, the wider and deeper connection among them must be the key engine. This article touches on those issues and implications raised by Korean SEI, which is expected to contribute to build a meaningful step for the new millennial pedagogy.

The paper describes the procedure of international accreditation and its impact for education in the Russian Federation. Namely, international accreditation of education programs is related primarily to the formation of quality assurance mechanisms in the field of education and adaptability of international and national standards of education within the Bologna process.

The validity, truthfulness, and reliability of obtained results are of great value when it comes to theory and, specifically, when it comes to risk-free implementations of theoretical research outcomes, deliverables, and findings in practice. The reliability is particularly significant for people who are dependable on outcomes of innovative approaches and developments for human society, such as pedagogy, general theory of education, e-learning, economics, finance, etc. This paper presents the up-to-date outcomes of an on-going research and development project on analysis, design, and engineering of smart educational systems in general and, in particular, theoretical justification of the introduced smart university concept based on the algebraic formalization of smart systems. The obtained theoretical outcomes and findings were successfully validated by their application to an evaluation of sustainability of various universities’ ranking systems.

Opening up government data introduces a change about how governments operate and how stakeholders use data. At the same time, the large amounts of data need to be collected, processed, transmitted, and published with the aim of enhancing the quality of urban life. Now, these trends are shaping smart cities efforts in the public sector. This paper aimed to clarify the concepts of enterprise architecture, big and open linked data analytics, and smart city and how they are related to each other. A conceptual framework was proposed to analyze the requirements of BOLD analytics in a smart city ecosystem. This was contextualized by decomposing selected smart city architectures that served as a basis for understanding the interrelationships between components. This framework can be used as a guide to help developers and designers in creating government enterprise architectures for BOLD analytics in smart cities.

In the process of e-learning students are often organized in different groups in social networks for remote educational interaction. Social networks of modern Smart society are used by unscrupulous people as a means of preparing and committing various types of criminal activity. The article demonstrates the results of the development of the algorithm of identification of the user of social networks based on the analysis of text attributes and social ties which can be included in the complex of measures to combat illegal activities in social networks by law enforcement agencies. The algorithms on the similar subject developed by other authors are analyzed. The authors propose the implementation of the algorithm and experimental results on its use with specific percentages.