Inquiry-Based Learning on the Cloud

Cloud Learning Environments (CLEs) have recently emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the cloud-based tools for building their own learning environments according to their specific learning needs and aspirations. Although CLEs bring significant benefits to educators and learners, there is still little evidence of CLEs being actively and effectively used in the teaching and learning process. This chapter addresses this issue by introducing a European initiative called weSPOT (Working Environment with Social, Personal and Open Technologies for Inquiry-based Learning) for supporting and enhancing inquiry-based learning in STEM education via a cloud-based inquiry toolkit. The chapter presents evidence of using this toolkit within a case study that investigates how a secondary education community of students / co-learners selects information sources on the web and identifies factors associated with the reliability of information sources during their collaborative inquiry (co-inquiry) project in online environments.

Assessing Security with Regard to Cloud Applications in STEM Education

There are many steps involved with securing a cloud system and its applications (SaaS) and developed ones in (PaaS). Security and privacy issues represent the biggest concerns to moving services to external clouds (Public). With cloud computing, data are stored and delivered across the Internet. The owner of the data does not have control or even know where their data are being stored. Additionally, in a multi-tenant environment, it may be very difficult for a cloud service provider to provide the level of isolation and associated guarantees that are possible with an environment dedicated to a single customer. Unfortunately, to develop a security algorithm that outlines and maps out the enforcement of a security policy and procedure can be a daunting task. A good security algorithm presents a strategy to counter the vulnerabilities in a cloud system. This chapter covers the complete overview, comparative analysis of security methods in Cloud Applications in STEM Education and the introduction of a new methodology that will enforce cloud computing security against breaches and intrusions. Much light will be shed on existing methodologies of security on servers used for cloud applications in STEM education and storage of data, and several methods will be presented in addition to the newly developed method of security in cloud-based servers, such as the MIST (Alkadi). Not only can cloud networks be used to gather sensitive information on multiple platforms, also there are needs to prevent common attacks through weak password recovery, retrieval, authentication, and hardening systems; otherwise hackers will spread cyber mayhem. Discussion of current security issues and algorithms in a real world will be presented. Different technologies are being created and in constant competition to meet the demands of users who are generally “busy”. The selling point of these technologies is the ability to address these demands without adding more to any workloads. One of the demands often discussed is that users want to have their digital information accessible from anywhere at any time. This information includes documents, audio libraries, and more. Users also demand the ability to manage, edit and update this information regardless of physical location. Somewhat recently, mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones have provided these abilities. This is no small feat as vendors and providers have reduced the size of these devices to increase mobility. However, as the amount of personal information that users are wanting to access has grown exponentially, manipulation and storage of it require more capable devices. To meet increased demands, increasing the capabilities of mobile devices may be impractical. Making mobile devices more powerful without technological advancement would require that the device be larger and use more resources such as battery life and processing power to function properly. Storing all of a user's information on a mobile device that travels everywhere also adds vulnerability risks. The best technical solution to having a user's information accessible is some sort of online storage where there is the convenience to store, manipulate and retrieve data. This is one of the most practical applications for the concept of cloud computing in STEM education. As storage capabilities and Internet bandwidth has increased, so has the amount of personal data that users store online. And today, the average user has billions of bytes of data online. Access is everywhere and whenever is needed. As everyone started doing so, people want their data safe and secure to maintain their privacy. As the user base grew in size, the number of security issues of the personal data started to become increasingly important. As soon as someone's data are in the remote server, unwanted users or “hackers” can have many opportunities to compromise the data. As the online server needs to be up and running all the time, the only way to secure the cloud server is by using better passwords by every user. By the same token, the flaws in the password authentication and protection system can also help unwanted users to get their way to other people's personal data. Thus, the password authentication system should also be free from any loopholes and vulnerabilities.

Cloud Computing

Cloud is, in today's age, one of the important and valuable names not only in computing but also in all most all the fields of science, technology and engineering and even in several branches of humanities and social science—the reason behind this is its ultimate benefit of virtualization and elasticity of IT products. This is actually a type of virtualization; here computing is geared up with the wonderful virtual platform which provides a remote accessibility of hardware, software, IT resources, as well as application packages. Interestingly, ‘Cloud' also supports the green agenda of the organization and society. There are so many subjects and domains gaining or injecting the cloud benefit to their services. The information field and domain is more close to the computing and information technology, but it has another core agenda of information activities, which include collection, selection, organization, processing, management, and dissemination of information; here, cloud plays a potential and healthy role.

Support for Cloud-Based Mobile Learning

Cloud based mobile learning (m-learning) is emerging as one of the most important branches of cloud computing, and is still in its infancy. These days, there are two emerging archetypes in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for learning. The first one is the anytime, anywhere, on-the-move, to be called the mobility archetype, and the second one is the cloud computing. Both archetypes are radically transforming the way we learn, communicate, access, and utilize information resources, and connect with peers and colleagues, thus affecting all aspects of education. This chapter delivers an introduction of the evolution of cloud based m-learning, benefits and characteristics of cloud based m-learning. It also canvasses the current scenario of m-learning utilizing the cloud, various challenges for implementing the m-learning system on the cloud. It further confers technologies used for cloud based m-learning. It also considers a brief look at methods for creating m-learning content and experiences, suggested by various researchers and concluded with the future aspects of the cloud based m-learning.

Strategies and Practice of Cloud-Based Learning Environment Implementation

The education landscape around the world is in a constant state of flux and evolution, facing significant challenges in adopting new and emerging technologies. This is driven mainly by a new genre of students with learning needs that are vastly different from those of their predecessors. It is increasingly recognized that the use of technology in higher education is essential to providing high quality education and preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century. Advances in technology offer new opportunities in enhancing teaching and learning. The new technologies enable individuals to personalize the environment in which they work or learn a range of tools to meet their interests and needs. In this chapter, we attempt to explore the salient features of the nature and educational potentials of ‘cloud computing' in order to exploit its affordance in teaching and learning in the context of higher education. It is evident that cloud computing plays a significant role in the higher education landscape as both a ubiquitous computing tool and a powerful platform. Although the adoption of cloud computing promises various benefits to an organization, a successful adoption of cloud computing in an organization, particularly in educational institutes, requires an understanding of different dynamics and expertise in diverse domains. This chapter aims at describing an architecture of Cloud Computing for Education (CCE), which includes a number of steps for adopting and implementing cloud computing. To implement this architecture, we have also outlined an open framework that is used as a guidance in any organisations with any cloud computing platforms and infrastructures towards the successful adoption and implementation of cloud computing.

Cloud-Based Continuous Formative Assessment (CFA)

Continuous Formative Assessment (CFA) is a strategy that employs free and accessible collaborative cloud-based technologies to collect, stream, and archive evidence of student knowledge, reasoning, and understanding during STEM lessons, so that instructors and students can make evidence-based decisions for adjusting lessons to optimize learning. Writing samples, diagrams, equations, drawings, photos, and movies are collected from all students and archived in cloud-based databases so that instructors can assess student understanding during instruction, and monitor learning gains over time. This chapter introduces and explains CFA techniques and provides preliminary research pertaining to the effectiveness of CFA instructional strategies in promoting student accountability, metacognition, and engagement in STEM courses, and suggests avenues for future research.

Screencasts in Mathematics

A screencast is a video recording of a computer monitor display, together with voice-over. This teaching technique has multiple advantages including the ability to model the thought processes of a mathematician in a context in which content may be repeated at will. Anecdotal evidence suggests that screencasts can be a very effective teaching tool, especially for providing model answers. Here, screencasts are discussed from a pedagogical and curriculum perspective using student feedback statistics as data. Specifically, screencasts offer a teaching resource that has value for many traditionally difficult groups of students. For example, poorly engaged students are well-served, as the barriers for participation are low; and high-achieving students benefit from the directed narrative. All students valued the ability to view material multiple times at will. The chapter concludes with some observations about how the overall learning environment might be improved in the context of undergraduate mathematics.

Engaging Students in Conducting Data Analysis

Computer Supported Collaborative Science (CSCS) is a teaching pedagogy that uses collaborative web-based resources to engage all learners in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of whole-class data sets, and is useful for helping secondary and college students learn to think like scientists and engineers. This chapter presents the justification for utilizing whole-class data analysis as an important aspect of the CSCS pedagogy and demonstrates how it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The chapter achieves this end in several ways. First, it reviews rationale outlined in the NGSS science and engineering practices for adapting 21st century technologies to teach students 21st century science inquiry skills. Second, it provides a brief overview of the basis for our pedagogical perspective for engaging learners in pooled data analysis and presents five principles of CSCS instruction. Third, we offer several real-world and research-based excerpts as illustrative examples indicating the value and merit of utilizing CSCS whole-class data analysis. Fourth, we postulate recommendations for improving the ways science, as well as other subject matter content areas, will need to be taught as the U.S. grapples with the role-out of new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and NGSS. Taken together, these components of CSCS whole-class data analysis help constitute a pedagogical model for teaching that functionally shifts the focus of science teaching from cookbook data collection to pooled data analysis, resulting in deeper understanding.

Context-Aware Cloud Computing for Personal Learning Environment

Virtual learning means to learn from social interactions in a virtual platform that enables people to study anywhere and at any time. Current Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are normally institution centric and are designed to support formal learning, which do not support lifelong learning. These limitations led to the research of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), which are learner-centric and provide lifelong access as well as the ability of a user to produce (share) and consume information resources easily. In this research, a context-aware cloud based PLE architecture is proposed, which is driven by a Context-Aware Engine to acquire, filter and interpret context information based on the preferences defined in user profile, where cloud computing is taken as service infrastructure. An illustrative personal learning scenario is investigated to demonstrate the proof of concept implementation. The results show the benefits of the proposed architecture on resource utilisation and user experience.

The Significance of Situation Awareness in Education

Learning today is no longer related to the “classroom” as the physical environment; it is instead an “across spaces” place characterized by the possibility to build serendipitous, pervasive and seamless experiences. Such experiences are in fact no more constrained to space-time limits and bounds but focused on context and situation awareness to enhance the learning process. Also, these experiences are often associated with next generation technologies which well fit to a paradigm shift marked by seamless continuity of learning. The interest in context-aware educational settings mainly based on mobile and sensor systems has led researchers to investigate new ways to recognize issues mainly related to the definition of “learner's contextual information” (profile information in situation) and, on the basis of this information, to identify the “types of adaptation”. In this work, we present the first theoretical and applicative results that the Italian scientific community has achieved as part of the research lines that revolve around the concept of Situation Awareness (SA).