1st Workshop on Exploring the Fitness and Evolvability of Personal
Learning Environments (EFEPLE'11)
Held at the 2nd STELLAR Alpine Rendez-Vous (ARV) in the French Alps,
27-31 March 2010
http://augur.wu-wien.ac.at/EFEPLE11/
Introduction
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In the recent decade a plethora of interactive software tools, be they
open source or proprietary, have emerged and perished in the realm of
technology-enhanced learning (TEL). Concomitantly, there have also been
surge and demise of contents, social networks, and activities associated
with the use of these TEL tools. It is intriguing to understand what
factors contribute to their rises and falls, and how. While
controversies on the viability of making an analogy between the
evolution of natural and artificial objects prevail, it is deemed
worthwhile to explore its potential for analysing the changes in TEL and
charting the future.
In accordance with evolutionary theory, the fitness of an environment or
tool can be defined with respect to its purpose and depends on the
'genes' from former generations. In context of TEL, these genes can be
understood as features of existing tools and functionality being reused
from software libraries or developed over multiple lifecycles thus
leading to new generations of software artefacts. Personal learning
environments (PLEs) aggregate these functionalities to enable learners
to connect to peers and shared artefacts along their learning
activities. Consequently, the success of a PLE can be measured by its
uptake and usage within different communities of practice, its perceived
effectiveness and efficiency in supporting the attainment of learning
goals, its application beyond pre-defined purposes, its distribution and
outreach beyond single communities, and its evolution to new PLE
generations through active developers. Moreover, data mining of
so-called variables of evolvability (e.g., perceived pragmatic/learning
and hedonic/fun value) will enable the derivation of specific guidelines
for designing and developing PLEs. Such empirically grounded guidelines,
supplementary to those for generic IT applications, are currently
lacking and much desired.
Overall, the main aim of the workshop is to explore the fitness and
evolvability of PLEs in order to identify and understand characteristics
and mechanisms for successfully evolving PLEs.
Workshop Topics
***************
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop, researchers and
practitioners from technology-enhanced learning, software engineering,
human-computer interaction (HCI), bio-informatics, and evolutionary
biology are relevant stakeholders in the discussion. Focussing on PLE
software evolvability and the Darwinist theory, the following topics of
interest, albeit non-exhaustive, are identified to invite submissions,
and important, stimulating discussions in the workshop:
* Darwinist models of constructing and evolving personal learning
environments
* Data interoperability requirements for successful learning tools and
environments
* Social requirements engineering and end-user development
* Effects of PLE technology on user behaviour and competence development
* Modelling, capturing, and support of PLE usage contexts
* User interface and usability issues of evolutionary PLEs
* Fitness measurement of learning tools and environments
* Analysis of emergent structures of PLE-based communities
* Case studies of successfully evolving (and endangered) PLEs
Workshop Format and Submission Procedure
****************************************
Participants are invited to submit original unpublished research as one
of the two types of contributions:
- full papers with up to 6 pages describing substantial, completed work
- position papers with 2 pages describing either results that can be
concisely reported or work in progress.
Papers should be formatted with the template
(http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and
submitted as PDF-file to:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=efeple2011.
All submissions will be reviewed by the programme committee members
according to their originality, significance, clarity, and quality. An
open contribution process (i.e. shepherding) will be launched to engage
dialogs between experienced and young researchers in the workshop blog
already at the early stage to facilitate the writing up of papers.
Furthermore, participants will be asked to carry out preparatory work
before attending the workshop. Specifically, they should prepare an
experiential report to describe how their PLEs have evolved over last
three years. Pre-workshop virtual meetings can be arranged to discuss
these preliminary findings. Highlights of these discussions will be
documented and further analysed in the workshop.
Accepted submissions will be presented at the workshop (15 minutes) and
discussed on a round table format (15 minutes). Additionally, a panel of
four discussants with different expertise (software
engineering/human-computer interaction, biology, and mathematician) will
be invited to present their views (each 5 minutes) on the following
statements: "An inherent property of PLE is evolvability, which can be
modelled by Darwin's evolution theory and parameterized with the notion
of fitness."
Important Dates
***************
* Paper submission: October 30, 2010 *15th November 2010*
* Notification of acceptance: November 30, 2010 *7th December 2010*
* Submission of experiential reports: December 30, 2010 *7th January 2011*
* Camera ready submission: January 30, 2011
* Workshop date: March 30 -- 31, 2011
Programme Committee
*******************
* Christian Glahn, OUNL, the Netherlands
* Andreas Holzinger, Medical University Graz, Austria
* Ebba T. Hvannberg, University of Iceland, Iceland
* Ralf Klamma, RWTH, Germany
* Christian Prause, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
* Christian Stary, University of Linz, Austria
* Katrien Verbert, KUL, Belgium
* Paul Wernick, University of Hertfordshire, UK (to be confirmed)
Organisers
**********
* Effie Law, University of Leicester, UK
* Felix Mödritscher, Vienna University of Economics & Business, Austria
* Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
* Denis Gillet, EPFL, Switzerland
--
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