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Most educational software programs use and gather personal information and metadata from students. Additionally, most of the educational software programs are no longer operated by the learning institutions but are run by third-party agencies. This means that in the decade since 2020, information about students is stored and handled outside premises and control of learning institutions. The personal information about students and their activity while they interact with learning management systems and online learning tools is increasingly in custody of cloud computing platforms, software-as-a-service providers, and learning tool vendors. There is an increasing will to use all the data and metadata from the activity of the students for research, to develop education management strategies, pedagogy approaches, and develop behavior control tools or learning tools informed by behavior analysis from learning analytics. Many times, these studies lack the ethical and moral perspective. In addition, there is an increasing number of cases in which this information has leaked or has been used in a shady way. Additionally, this information will be around for a long time, tied to the future digital profiles of the students whose data has been leaked. This paper hypothesizes that there has been an ongoing process of technological evolution that leads to a loss of control over personal information, which makes it even more difficult to protect user confidentiality and ensuring privacy, that data surveillance has entered the world of education, and that the current legal frameworks are not enough to really protect the student’s personal information. The paper analyzes how this situation came to pass, and why this is wrong. We conclude with some proposals to address it from its different root dimensions: technical, cultural, legal, and organizational.
Marc Alier; Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero; Daniel Amo; Charles Severance; David Fonseca. Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9206 .
AMA StyleMarc Alier, Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero, Daniel Amo, Charles Severance, David Fonseca. Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (16):9206.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarc Alier; Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero; Daniel Amo; Charles Severance; David Fonseca. 2021. "Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task." Sustainability 13, no. 16: 9206.
This paper presents a collaborative learning activity for courses in engineering degrees or master’s programs that cover the subject and skills of sustainability, social compromise, and ethics for engineering. The activity consists of performing a multidisciplinary analysis of a case of study, which presents a technology or innovation, to detect and debate possible issues and solutions. This learning activity is based on the PESTLE methodology that is used to analyze the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental aspects of a technology or innovation. The PESTLE analysis is implemented using the jigsaw collaborative learning technique. This learning activity can be completed in two sessions of two hours. To validate its usefulness, the learning activity was applied for two semesters in a study on two courses: one in Informatics Engineering Degree and the other one in the Master Degree of Sustainability at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, with very good results.
Maria Casañ; Marc Alier; Ariadna Llorens. A Collaborative Learning Activity to Analyze the Sustainability of an Innovation Using PESTLE. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8756 .
AMA StyleMaria Casañ, Marc Alier, Ariadna Llorens. A Collaborative Learning Activity to Analyze the Sustainability of an Innovation Using PESTLE. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (16):8756.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaria Casañ; Marc Alier; Ariadna Llorens. 2021. "A Collaborative Learning Activity to Analyze the Sustainability of an Innovation Using PESTLE." Sustainability 13, no. 16: 8756.
Urban areas can be considered high-potential energy producers alongside their notable portion of energy consumption. Solar energy is the most promising sustainable energy in which urban environments can produce electricity by using rooftop-mounted photovoltaic systems. While the precise knowledge of electricity production from solar energy resources as well as the needed parameters to define the optimal locations require an adequate study, effective guidelines for optimal installation of solar photovoltaics remain a challenge. This paper aims to make a complete systematic review and states the vital steps with their data resources to find the urban rooftop PV potential. Organizing the methodologies is another novelty of this paper to create a complete global basis for future studies and improve a more detailed degree in this particular field.
Elham Fakhraian; Marc Alier; Francesc Valls Dalmau; Alireza Nameni; Maria Casañ Guerrero. The Urban Rooftop Photovoltaic Potential Determination. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7447 .
AMA StyleElham Fakhraian, Marc Alier, Francesc Valls Dalmau, Alireza Nameni, Maria Casañ Guerrero. The Urban Rooftop Photovoltaic Potential Determination. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (13):7447.
Chicago/Turabian StyleElham Fakhraian; Marc Alier; Francesc Valls Dalmau; Alireza Nameni; Maria Casañ Guerrero. 2021. "The Urban Rooftop Photovoltaic Potential Determination." Sustainability 13, no. 13: 7447.
In 2004, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya decided to change one of its critical and strategic information services: the online teaching support platform. An Open Source software, Moodle, was adopted and the previous proprietary software was abandoned. In 2020, the home confinement of the population due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 has been a stress test for the entire university community, and very specifically by those responsible for providing the support of the online teaching support platform. The increase in activity and the prospect of the generalization of online assessment raised the concerns of possible scalability issues with the quiz functionality during the examination period. The solution applied involved using Moodle’s IMS LTI interoperability features to deploy a high-performance version of the Moodle Quizz Module As A Service (SaaS), to plug-and-play within the university’s LMS without drawing on its internal resources. This solution combined with a systems strategy, private cloud operations, internal communication and teacher training, solved this problem and successfully complete the assessment of the university course in a situation of confinement.
Marc Alier; María José Casany; Ariadna Llorens; Jesús Alcober; Joana D’Arc Prat. Atenea Exams, an IMS LTI Application to Solve Scalability Problems: A Study Case. Applied Sciences 2020, 11, 80 .
AMA StyleMarc Alier, María José Casany, Ariadna Llorens, Jesús Alcober, Joana D’Arc Prat. Atenea Exams, an IMS LTI Application to Solve Scalability Problems: A Study Case. Applied Sciences. 2020; 11 (1):80.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarc Alier; María José Casany; Ariadna Llorens; Jesús Alcober; Joana D’Arc Prat. 2020. "Atenea Exams, an IMS LTI Application to Solve Scalability Problems: A Study Case." Applied Sciences 11, no. 1: 80.
A significant number of universities where engineering is taught, acknowledge the importance of the social and environmental impact of the scientific and technological practice, as well as the ethical problems it presents, and the need to provide their students with courses covering this as a subject. This paper presents 29 years of teaching courses with the subject of social, environmental, and ethical issues to students of Informatics Engineering. The table contents and its evolution over the years will be analyzed, plus the different teaching strategies applied, with emphasis on the collaborative learning methodologies to facilitate critical thinking and debate. During the experience, the course incorporated the subject of History of Informatics which proved to fit in the course. While the subject of Ethics and Sustainability is increasingly being regarded as an important matter to learn by future ICT engineers, the courses covering it remain as optional in the curriculums. This should change.
Maria Jose Casañ; Marc Alier; Ariadna Llorens. Teaching Ethics and Sustainability to Informatics Engineering Students, an almost 30 Years’ Experience. Sustainability 2020, 12, 5499 .
AMA StyleMaria Jose Casañ, Marc Alier, Ariadna Llorens. Teaching Ethics and Sustainability to Informatics Engineering Students, an almost 30 Years’ Experience. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (14):5499.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaria Jose Casañ; Marc Alier; Ariadna Llorens. 2020. "Teaching Ethics and Sustainability to Informatics Engineering Students, an almost 30 Years’ Experience." Sustainability 12, no. 14: 5499.
The privacy policies, terms, and conditions of use in any Learning Management System (LMS) are one-way contracts. The institution imposes clauses that the student can accept or decline. Students, once they accept conditions, should be able to exercise the rights granted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, students cannot object to data processing and public profiling because it would be conceived as an impediment to teachers to execute their work with normality. Nonetheless, regarding GDPR and consulted legal advisors, a student could claim identity anonymization in the LMS, if adequate personal justifications are provided. Per contra, the current LMSs do not have any functionality that enables identity anonymization. This is a big problem that generates undesired situations which urgently requires a definitive solution. In this work, we surveyed students and teachers to validate the feasibility and acceptance of using aliases to anonymize their identity in LMSs as a sustainable solution to the problem. Considering the positive results, we developed a user-friendly plugin for Moodle that enables students’ identity anonymization by the use of aliases. This plugin, presented in this work and named Protected users, is publicly available online at GitHub and published under GNU General Public License.
Daniel Amo; Marc Alier; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca; María José Casañ. Protected Users: A Moodle Plugin To Improve Confidentiality and Privacy Support through User Aliases. Sustainability 2020, 12, 2548 .
AMA StyleDaniel Amo, Marc Alier, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, David Fonseca, María José Casañ. Protected Users: A Moodle Plugin To Improve Confidentiality and Privacy Support through User Aliases. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (6):2548.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDaniel Amo; Marc Alier; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca; María José Casañ. 2020. "Protected Users: A Moodle Plugin To Improve Confidentiality and Privacy Support through User Aliases." Sustainability 12, no. 6: 2548.
The construction of knowledge through computational practice requires to teachers a substantial amount of time and effort to evaluate programming skills, to understand and to glimpse the evolution of the students and finally to state a quantitative judgment in learning assessment. The field of learning analytics has been a common practice in research since last years due to their great possibilities in terms of learning improvement. Both, Big and Small data techniques support the analysis cycle of learning analytics and risk of students’ failure prediction. Such possibilities can be a strong positive contribution to the field of computational practice such as programming. Our main objective was to help teachers in their assessments through to make those possibilities effective. Thus, we have developed a functional solution to categorize and understand students’ behavior in programming activities based in Scratch. Through collection and analysis of data generated by students’ clicks in Scratch, we proceed to execute both exploratory and predictive analytics to detect patterns in students’ behavior when developing solutions for assignments. We concluded that resultant taxonomy could help teachers to better support their students by giving real-time quality feedback and act before students deliver incorrectly or at least incomplete tasks.
Daniel Amo Filvà; Marc Alier Forment; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca Escudero; María José Casañ. Clickstream for learning analytics to assess students’ behavior with Scratch. Future Generation Computer Systems 2018, 93, 673 -686.
AMA StyleDaniel Amo Filvà, Marc Alier Forment, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, David Fonseca Escudero, María José Casañ. Clickstream for learning analytics to assess students’ behavior with Scratch. Future Generation Computer Systems. 2018; 93 ():673-686.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDaniel Amo Filvà; Marc Alier Forment; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca Escudero; María José Casañ. 2018. "Clickstream for learning analytics to assess students’ behavior with Scratch." Future Generation Computer Systems 93, no. : 673-686.
Marc Alier Forment; Daniel Amo Filvà; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca Escudero; María José Casañ. Learning Analytics' Privacy on the Blockchain. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality 2018, 294 -298.
AMA StyleMarc Alier Forment, Daniel Amo Filvà, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, David Fonseca Escudero, María José Casañ. Learning Analytics' Privacy on the Blockchain. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality. 2018; ():294-298.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarc Alier Forment; Daniel Amo Filvà; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca Escudero; María José Casañ. 2018. "Learning Analytics' Privacy on the Blockchain." Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality , no. : 294-298.
Daniel Amo Filvà; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; Marc Alier Forment; David Fonseca Escudero; Maria José Casañ. Privacy and identity management in Learning Analytics processes with Blockchain. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality 2018, 997 -1003.
AMA StyleDaniel Amo Filvà, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, Marc Alier Forment, David Fonseca Escudero, Maria José Casañ. Privacy and identity management in Learning Analytics processes with Blockchain. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality. 2018; ():997-1003.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDaniel Amo Filvà; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; Marc Alier Forment; David Fonseca Escudero; Maria José Casañ. 2018. "Privacy and identity management in Learning Analytics processes with Blockchain." Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality , no. : 997-1003.
Marc Alier Forment; Xavier De Pedro; Maria Jose Casañ; Jordi Piguillem; Nikolas Galanis. Requirements for Successful Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios. Trends and Effects of Technology Advancement in the Knowledge Society 2014, 196 -211.
AMA StyleMarc Alier Forment, Xavier De Pedro, Maria Jose Casañ, Jordi Piguillem, Nikolas Galanis. Requirements for Successful Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios. Trends and Effects of Technology Advancement in the Knowledge Society. 2014; ():196-211.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarc Alier Forment; Xavier De Pedro; Maria Jose Casañ; Jordi Piguillem; Nikolas Galanis. 2014. "Requirements for Successful Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios." Trends and Effects of Technology Advancement in the Knowledge Society , no. : 196-211.
This article outlines a set of features that wiki engines require to successfully host collaborative educational scenarios. The authors explore multiple issues that deal with the use wikis with learning activities. One of the first issues to solve is software support for assessment methodologies. The second is choosing between using an integrated wiki engine inside the Learning Management System (LMS) or an external standalone wiki engine. Advantages and disadvantages from both options of this second issue are discussed. The different implications of each option as far as individual student assessment, feedback, and grading are concerned are also analyzed. Among the expected results, the most notable are incentives to incorporate wikis in the teaching process, significant enhancements in usability, as well as allowing teachers to provide more timely written feedback on their students’ individual contributions on wiki based activities, on top of the usual numerical grading. This paper presents the conclusions of 5 years of experience of work in the field of wikis in education, development of improvements on open source wiki engines and thus, building from scratch accordingly the new wiki engine for the LMS Moodle 2.0.
Marc Alier Forment; Xavier De Pedro; Maria Jose Casañ; Jordi Piguillem; Nikolas Galanis; And Nikolas Galanis. Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies 2012, 10, 72 -81.
AMA StyleMarc Alier Forment, Xavier De Pedro, Maria Jose Casañ, Jordi Piguillem, Nikolas Galanis, And Nikolas Galanis. Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies. 2012; 10 (4):72-81.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarc Alier Forment; Xavier De Pedro; Maria Jose Casañ; Jordi Piguillem; Nikolas Galanis; And Nikolas Galanis. 2012. "Wikis in Collaborative Educational Scenarios." International Journal of Distance Education Technologies 10, no. 4: 72-81.