=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=None
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-773/EFEPLE-2-Preface.pdf
|volume=Vol-773
}}
==None==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-773/EFEPLE-2-Preface.pdf
1st Workshop on Exploring the Fitness and Evolvability
of Personal Learning Environments (EFEPLE’11)
2nd STELLAR Alpine Rendez‐Vous (ARV), the French Alps, 30-31 March, 2011
Co-chairs
Effie L-C. Law1, Felix Mödritscher2, Martin Wolpers3, Denis Gillet4
1
University of Leicester, UK
2
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
3
Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
4
EPFL, Switzerland
Participants (in alphabetic order):
Sandy El Helou, EPFL, Switzerland
Carlo Giovannella, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Martin Memmel, DFKI, Germany
Maryam Najafian-Razavi, EPFL, Switzerland
Christopher Nehaniv, University of Hertforshire, UK (Keynote speaker)
Christian Prause, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Jose L. Santos, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgum
Benham Taraghi, TU Graz, Austria
Fridolin Wild, Open University, UK
Special thanks to H. L. Cornish, the Graphic Designer of Open University UK, for the
aesthetically pleasing cover of the proceedings
i
EFEPLE’11
1. INTRODUCTION In the context of PLEs, the selection of tools is at the
1.1 Motivation discretion of individual users, their organisations and the
In the recent decade a plethora of interactive software communities of practice (CoP) where users engage in a
tools, be they open source or proprietary, have emerged variety of collaborative activities. It is observed that some
and perished in the realm of technology‐enhanced learning software tools, after being used for a few typical tasks by a
(TEL). Concomitantly, there have also been surge and few people only, unexpectedly spread out within a CoP
demise of contents, social networks, and activities widely as well as wildly through good practice sharing,
associated with the use of these TEL tools. It is intriguing convincing peers of the benefits of these tools for
to understand what factors contribute to their rises and particular lifelong learning activities. In a very short
falls, and how. While controversies on the viability of period of time such tools can become as must-have
making an analogy between the evolution of natural and infrastructure for collaborative work (e.g. various Google
artificial objects prevail, it is deemed worthwhile to services). These tools and the environments built on them
explore its potential for analysing the changes in TEL and are not only intensively used but are also modified and
charting the future. sustained by active developer communities. On the other
hand, some tools are endangered to be rejected by end-
In accordance with evolutionary theory, the fitness of an users and to die out after a few successful cases of
environment or tool can be defined with respect to its application, even though they have undergone several
purpose and depends on the ‘genes’ from former iterations of redesign. Apparently, these observations
generations. In context of TEL, these genes can be manifest the notions of descent with modification,
understood as features of existing tools and functionality heritable variation and selection, sensitivity to changing
being reused from software libraries or developed over environmental or contextual requirements, and “control of
multiple lifecycles thus leading to new generations of and types of variability” (Nehaniv, 2003 [3]; Wernick et
software artefacts. Personal learning environments (PLEs) al. 2004 [4]) that characterize Darwinian evolution. In the
aggregate these functionalities to enable learners to context of PLEs, it is relevant to understand the processes
connect to peers and shared artefacts along their learning leading to successful tool uses, create respective models
activities. Consequently, the success of a PLE can be and learn how to control respective processes to increase
measured by its uptake and usage within different the efficiency and effectiveness of modern individual
communities of practice, its perceived effectiveness and learning environments.
efficiency in supporting the attainment of learning goals,
its application beyond pre‐defined purposes, its The assumption that changes in PLEs can be modelled by
distribution and outreach beyond single communities, and Darwinism underpins this proposed workshop, which aims
its evolution to new PLE generations through active to explore several pertinent issues:
developers. Moreover, data mining of so‐called variables • Nahaniv et al [5] (2006) define the notion of
of evolvability (e.g., perceived pragmatic/learning and evolvability as “the capacity to vary robustly and
hedonic/fun value) will enable the derivation of specific adaptively over time or generations in digital and
guidelines for designing and developing PLEs. Such natural systems”. This definition leads to a basic
empirically grounded guidelines, supplementary to those question: What is evolvable? Is it a matter of the
for generic IT applications, are currently lacking and much complexity of a system that is quantifiable such as
desired. lines of codes, number of modules? Or is it more a
Overall, the main aim of the workshop is to explore the matter of quality-in-use manifests in terms of user
fitness and evolvability of PLEs in order to identify and experience [6] (i.e. a non-functional requirement)?
understand characteristics and mechanisms for Another key question: Why does a system evolve? It
successfully evolving PLEs. can be instigated by changes in a system’s
environment, user requirements, usage,
1.2 Related Work implementation methodologies and technologies.
In principle, for a software system to be sustainable, it Answers to these what and why questions can shed
needs to be able to adapt to the changing requirements [1] some light onto the question How to effectively and
in terms of use contexts, user goals, organizational cultures reliably evolve a system (Ciraci & van den Broek,
and technological opportunities. Specifically, in the field 2006; footnote 3)? Addressing these questions in the
of TEL, there has been a shift from the pioneer work on context of PLEs will instigate stimulating discussions.
designing and implementing full-featured, organisation-
• Fitness for survival is a widely known but poorly
driven learning management systems (LMSs) to the
understood concept of Darwinian evolution.
emerging trend of developing specialised tools, which then
Paradoxically, the idea of heritable variation and
can be assembled by users to extend/create personal
selection is necessary but not sufficient to explain
learning environments (PLEs, Attwell, 2007) [2]. Not least
inherent phenotypic expression of fitness (Nehaniv et
due to the Internet, users have access to a seemingly
al. 2006; footnote 5). It hinges on the rigidity (or
innumerable amount of content and software tools, which
flexibility) of the genotype-phenotype mappings. The
are useful and partially even necessary to achieve the
main difficulties lie in drawing analogies between
learning goals driven by the demands of job tasks, higher,
biological concepts and artificial artifacts (e.g. What
and further education, or even private activities.
constitutes an “individual”, a “species”, or
“interbreeding”). Insights can be gained from the
ii
EFEPLE’11
notion of fit-for-purpose in the field of HCI (e.g. changing requirements; lineage, different fitness
Wong et al., 2005) [7] and the fitness model of nodes between offspring and parents
in the science of (social) networks (Barabasi, 2002) o Properties of evolvable systems: robustness to
[8]. Nonetheless, it remains an open question on how genetic variability, phenotypic robustness,
to define and measure the fitness of PLE tools redundancy, conservation of core
mechanisms/features; robustness to environment
2. WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION change (resilience), self-monitoring,
There were 10 presentations, including a keynote speech. compartmentalization (modularity),
In addition, plenary discussions on specific topics were symbiogenesis
held. Section 2.1 reports the main ideas addressed by o Software evolution: re-use, modularity,
individual presentations. Section 2.2 highlights the ideas information hiding, encapsulation, OO
explored by the workshop participants. inheritance, coupling and cohesion;
o PLE: system as fielded (instance: individual)
o Persist over time, descent with modification
2.1 Report on Presentations o Lines of code, modules can be considered as
In this section, we highlight the ideas discussed in each of genes (re-usable)
the presentations and present them in the form of notes o Variation: customization of generic software
that may inspire further thoughts along the related product via parameterization, copying and
inquiries. These notes can serve as pointers to the tenets sharing
of the respective workshop papers. o Iteratively adapted by users to context and
changing requirements;
2.1.1 Keynote by Prof. Chrystopher Nehaniv o Immediate fitness is very different from capacity
o Core concepts addressed: individual, to support possible evolvability;
reproduction, population, robustness, variability, o Variational capacity (vary/be varied robustly and
phenotypic plasticity, autopoiesis, self-replication adaptively) is crucial to evolvability
and repair, and evolvability
o The notion ‘replicating individual’ is difficult to 2.1.2 Discussion on the Keynote
define in the realm of software evolution – Is it a Notion of energy/resources in the context of software;
behaviour, an artifact or software release? o Areas of tension:
o Self-replication is a key notion in evolution (cf. - immediate fitness vs. variability
computer viruses, cancer cells, self-reproducing - simplicity: usability vs. complexity
automata); replicators entail external support; - genotype (design: functionality) vs.
o Constraints of evolution: finite resources, phenotype (affordances: practices)
heredity, variability, differing reproductive
o Complexity: base is interaction, energy comes
success, turn-over of generations;
from interaction, non predictable
o Increasing complexity through successive o Consciousness/Intentionality (or awareness):
inheritable mutation; a measure of complexity in comes from interaction, collaboration
biological sciences can be number of cell types o Is evolvability kind of higher level creativity
and in software can be level of embeddedness, o Success: performance improvement of learners;
lines of code, number of loops, etc.Adaptive
“form follows failures”
changes in population over generations o Complexity: maximise contact with environment
(genotype-phenotype map) subject to being able to understand and
o Artificial selection vs. natural selection; manipulate: complexity needs to be close to
o Variability: neutral mutation (no harm, no contact
benefit) is important: similar fitness in the same
o Educational technology so far has failed: because
environment; mutation that is neutral in such an
there are no solutions of scale (past: LMS have
environment is beneficial as a resource; been successful, but not ‘real’ learning support
o Neutral mutation such as user interfaces – a tools)
variety of choice for selection; o Capacity for variability: Learning is development
o Fitness landscape: inheritable fitness to flourish of potential for action: competence, but we can
o Open-ended evolution is unbounded increase of only assess performance
complexity over time; o Capacity relates to complexity through adaptation
o External fitness function imposed on agriculture through exchange of modules and over time!
(can we learn from this domain?); number of o Freedom of adaptation vs. ethical concerns
offspring and living long enough to reproduce experimenting with bad combinations of software
(fitness measures); o Sharing of successful practices/arrangements/etc.
o Symbiogenesis: dynamic user-synthesis of PLE is hereditary replicability
from components; combinations from the lower o Problem: It’s not the PLEs surviving and being
level units; fit, it’s the widgets
o Evolvability for artefacts: capacity for producers o Problem: PLE: Livespan of generations is not
to rise to adaptive variants for flexibly meeting controlled
iii
EFEPLE’11
o But: Behaviour vs. artefacts: patterns of practices o Use traces of user activity to observe evolution
vs. widgets o Arrival of facebook changed the use of the
o Behaviour: duplication and divergence; behaviour system
patterns can be very far away from genetics; o New journal: Interaction Design & Architecture
active copying vs. environment driven auto
discovery 2.1.5 Presentation by Felix Moedritscher
o Controlling of behaviour: we can (to a part) o Environment: socio-technical system: activities,
control the environment to recreate ‘situations’ purposes, patterns, interaction, features,
o Translation of behaviour (phenotype) into functionality, implementation
genotype? No convergence in other areas. o Evolvability: versioning, copying/reusing,
o Would be helpful to very clearly define concepts interoperability
such as genotype, phenotype in the PLE context o Fitness: usefulness & usability, user feedback,
o Groundbreaking works in e.g. evolutionary technological compliance
algorithms: e.g. von Neumann: theory about live; o Distribution approximation
e.g. evolutionary algos: were designed as o Fitness depends on the usage context (e.g.
optimisation techniques (example: designing publication impact)
nozzles, aircraft wings) o Impact of papers very strongly relates on
experience of the researcher (years of experience
2.1.3 Presentation by Benham Taraghi in a field). What about production of widgets?
o Success measurement: Are widgets produced by more experienced users
- Complexity: number of widgets in an more successful?
environment
- Change: rate of change: number of 2.1.6 Presentation by Martin Memmel
replacements, new widgets o Sustainability
- Number of users o Interoperability: using and offering APIs,
o Selection types: stabilising selection, disruptive following standards
selection, directed selection o Number of application scenarios: very many
o Selection strategies: r-strategy (short livespan, application scenarios for PLEs
unknown environments) vs. K-strategy (long o Low technical and low conceptual barriers to
livespan, known environments) system use
o Mutation: slight variation of existing o Resources are finite: people, time, infrastructure,
functionality or UI money
o Recombination: combining code of different o Repurposing and re-theming/branding of systems
widgets to build new ones: code sex o Solve a specific problem, but do it in a generic
o Tracking of use: frequency of activated widgets, way
frequency of interactions with widgets that can be o Support tools for setup and deployment
tracked in the system o Refactor
o TUG system: 1000 users, 30% active users o Fitness is plasticity with respect to user
o Competition not between widgets, but between requirements
PLE system and competing websites
o Code complexity of the PLEs: PLE as a whole (of
one user) or widgets? How did it change over
2.1.7 Presentation by Sandy El Helou
time? Lines of code? Level of embeddedness? o Viability:
Modularisation? Interwidget communcation? - flexible representation of interaction and
Service orientation? contents
o Affordances (= in a certain cultural context)? - adopt social media paradigms
o Other factors (besides fitness): usability, (encouraging participation)
usefulness (e.g. indirect via level of the learners)? - elastic community and CMS services
o Need to look at overall PLE system, not only at - automate/openness: recommender
single widget; still: number of contexts, number systems: open corpus environments
of functions, number of other widgets it has been o Use of Graaasp
used with (degree centrality, betweenness, o Flexible representation: not necessarily dependant
prestige): indicator of complexity on number of users
o Symbiotic relations: themingWidget: cannot exist
on its own 2.1.8 Presentation by Jose L. Santos
o Coevolution of development and users o CAM dashboard
o Activity – actions executed in widgets
2.1.4 Presentation by Carlo Giovanella o Capturing communcation data from interwidget
communication
o Evolution: strong focus on learning analytics: e.g.
o Specialisation to styles?
activity graphs, emotions, social networks,
o Active use of the dashboard to change behaviour?
emotion in social networks
o Evolution: Awareness > Social Behaviour > …
iv
EFEPLE’11
o How to support awareness between developer and
user? 2.2.2 Teachers as Target Groups
o Representation of context to make use of the o Find a way to prove to the teacher that
activity monitoring relying on a specific technology will help
o Fitness: take care of environment them be more effective
o Visual quality o Tackle danger for teachers: environments
o Trust relationship between developers and user disappear: but environments change with
their needs
2.1.9 Presentation by Fridolin Wild o How to sell technology to the teachers?
o Acceptance: expectancies, social influence, o Show that with the help of any technology,
facilitating conditions etc. the learners in the classroom/course became
o Longer term 10% better: works only with criterion-
referenced testing (no norm referenced
2.1.10 Presentation by Christian Prause testing): skills assessment: increase by 10%
o “Walking on water and developing software from o Emergence of new widgets coming from the
a specification are easy if both are frozen.” teacher and learner community
(Edward V. Berard) o Living community: Increased sharing of best
o high costs of change lead to extinction practices: 1 million teachers / million learner
o evolvablity: internal quality using a PLE; There are enough teachers in
o software quality: ISO 9126: functionality, Europe
reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability, o Digital literacy of teachers is a problem
portability o Technology is seen as an amplifier
o developers learn software: documentation! Code! o Combine agents and human tutors to provide
o Fitness = external quality + quality in use = Tool high quality tutoring to every child
in environment in its context
o Case-based tools 2.2.3 Invisible PLE
o very low entry barrier
2.1.11 Presentation by Maryam Najafian-Razavi o Sharing a curriculum in 15 minutes
o Barriers to adoption (of gleanr) o No good idea: it is rather about
- Lack of simplicity reconfiguration, not sharing: more about the
- Slow ROI: differed benefit adoption than that it is fast
- Need for training o Extremely complex issue
- Usability problems: memorability, error o Widgets: 1000 widgets: which one is better
rate, portability and how do we measure that? Through the
- Success factors: clear value prop, community
awareness, ease of integration o Testing: could include teacher has to be able
- Interesting: big and fluid sites show up to re-use a PLE in 15 minutes; but: it’s not
earlier in google about time, it’s about the return on
- Suggestions: anonymity, prepopulation, investment
network effects o Identifying the scores that someone gets
o Success factors: could be fitness factors based on the traces that someone leaves in
o Fitness leads to adoption the system
o Prepopulation: problematic and difficult o Pedagogically sound user interfaces
o Prepopulating vs. survival?
o Ecosystem: has to be created, needs a context 2.2.4 Predictive Modelling
o Predictive models: Predicting performance based
2.2 Report on Plenary Discussions on traces
o Testing of predictive models in competitions:
2.2.1 Contextual Issues
accuracy vs. satisfaction
o Flexibilisation of technology support for any kind
o Learning analytics: graphical user interfaces that
of educational process
foster quick understanding of performance and
o Culture of certification: assessment and
aesthetic display, streaming feedback
accreditation;
o Learning analytics, traces, context capturing;
o Fitness: Integration of environments: mobile,
Privacy-ensured, anonymised; Streaming analysis
web, all
o Open requirements elicitation: Implicit
o Fitness of users: critical design skills, measure
requirement modelling, helpdesk monitoring,
experience / styles
Implementation competitions in the bartering
o Context: capture context of learners holistically,
platforms for software development
make this context description available to sound
applications;
o Plasticity: Support change in pedagogical
approaches
v
EFEPLE’11
3. EMERGING RESEARCH the direction, though there are still many steps to be taken
QUESTIONS to achieve this seemingly insurmountable task. The initial
step is seen as successful with intriguing ideas being
• Find a way to prove to the teacher that relying on a
conceived. Future work includes organizing a series of
specific technology will help them be more effective
related workshops/seminars that involve participants with
o The million practices & million teacher
diverse backgrounds. Project proposals addressing the
challenge: ad hoc formation of large scale
emergent topics are seen as a promising way to explore
learning networks: Reach a certain level of
them in depth over a relatively long period of time. In the
scale in variability and build capacity for
meantime several meetings amongst the workshop
variablity of practices of technology use in
participants have been held to explore these possibilities.
learning and teaching.
o This includes: sharing of context information
such as attention meta data, interoperability, ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
practice capturing and sharing facilities such We are obliged to the two EU FP7 projects on technology-
as scripts or learning designs or activity enhanced learning: ROLE (http://www.role-project.eu/)
streams and STELLAR (http://www.stellarnet.eu/) for enabling the
o This is not about showing that a certain realisation of this stimulating workshop. We would also
template is used by a million people, but that like to express our appreciation of the organisers of the 2nd
1 million people have differing, adapted to Alpine Rendez‐Vous (ARV) 2011 whose efforts have
their needs practices in technology support make the event enjoyable and successful. Last but not
o Ad hoc formation of large scale learning least, thanks should go to authors of the workshop papers.
networks
• Fitness of learning environments is plasticity with REFERENCES
respect to user requirements: [1] Ciraci, S. and van den Broek, P. M. (2006)
o Variation: Adaptation or mutation: Evolvability as a Quality Attribute of Software
construction set widget-based PLE, coding Architectures. In: The International ERCIM
according to changing user requirements, Workshop on Software Evolution 2006, 6-7 Apr 2006,
mash-ups LIFL et l’INRIA, Universite des Sciences et
o Speed of change: Technologies de Lille, France, pp. 29–31.
Evidence that a trajectory is [2] Attwell, G. (2007). Personal learning environments:
followed that a system has been The future of eLearning, eLearning Papers, January
adapted: evidence of plasticity 2007, 2(1), www.elearningpapers.eu. ISSN 1887-
Knowledge management for 1542
teachers [3] Nehaniv, C. (2003). Evolvability, Biosystems: Journal
Dissolving of communities of of Biological and Information Processing Systems,
practices: problem solved, 69(2-3), 77-81.
community dissolved [4] Wernick, P., Hall, T., Nehaniv, C. (2006). Software
• Invisible PLE evolutionary dynamics modeled as the activity of an
o Low entry barriers actor-network. Proceedings of 2nd Intl. Workshop on
o Flexibility with respect to pedagogical and Software Evolvability. IEEE computer society press.
andragogical approaches [5] Nehaniv, C., Hewitt, H., Christianson, B., & Wernick,
o fitness of widgets: create an open market for P. (2006). What software evolution and biological
widgets; then we can use the market evolution don’t have in common. In Proc. Of 2nd Int’l
mechanisms; show that there are widgets IEEE Workshop on Software Evolvability (SE’06).
from each of the European countries; [6] Law, E. L-C. & van Schaik, P. (2010). Modeling of
differing learning contexts (school, user experience: An agenda for research and practice.
university, lll) and stakeholders (providers, Interacting with Computers, 22, 312-322.
learners, teachers, educational institutions) [7] Wong B. L. W, Keith S. & Springett M. (2005) Fit for
Purpose Evaluation: The case of a public information
kiosk for the socially disadvantaged, People and
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS Computers XIX – Proceedings of HCI 2005,
Evolutionary or Darwinist theories are inherently Edinburgh Sept. 5-9. Springer.
controversial; applying them to explain and predict the [8] Barabasi, A-L. (2002). The Linked: The new science
trajectory of the development of Personal Learning of networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Environments (PLE) is particularly challenging. PLE is [9] Star S.L. & Griesemer, J.R. (1989). "Institutional
still at its infancy stage, and a consensual definition is still Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects:
lacking. Amongst others, the task of defining fitness Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of
models for predicting the rise and demise of specific Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39". Social Studies of
widgets (which are commonly seen as the building blocks Science 19 (4): 387–420.
of PLE) and a specific configuration of PLE per se is doi:10.1177/030631289019003001.
daunting. The workshop is seen as the first step moving in
vi