Special Theme on Learning Analytics in the Bulletin of TCLT

Call For Articles – BULLETIN OF THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE ON LEARNING TECHNOLOGY (ISSN 2306-0212) http://www.ieeetclt.org/content/bulletin
publication of IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Learning Technology (TCLT)

* Special Theme: Learning Analytics
* Deadline for submission: March 30, 2013.


The Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Learning Technology (former
Learning Technology Newsletter) aims at publishing and disseminating current
research about new and emerging learning technologies as well as their
design, usage, application, and evaluation in different contexts of
technology enhanced learning.

The special theme of this issue will focus on learning analytics, including
(but not limited to) research on theory and practical uses of learning
analytics; learning analytics algorithms and tools as well as their
evaluations; concepts and applications of learning analytics in formal,
informal and non-formal educational settings; the visualization of results
from learning analytics for students and teachers; the design,
implementation and evaluations of learning analytics techniques; and case
studies and exploratory studies on how to use learning analytics to
facilitated learning and teaching.

Articles that are not in the area of the special theme are most welcome as
well and will be published in the regular article section. The Bulletin of
the Technical Committee on Learning Technology invites short articles, case
studies, and project reports for the April issue. This issue will be
published in Volume 15, Issue 2 (April, 2013).


** The bulletin is of non-refereed nature though the articles will be
selected and edited by the Editors. **


Submission procedure:

1. Authors have to follow the IEEE author guidelines when preparing their
articles (please see http://www.ieeetclt.org/content/authors-guidelines for
further information)

2. The articles in the bulletin are limited to 4 pages. Over-length articles
will not be published.

3. The manuscripts should be either in Word or RTF format. Any figures used
in the contributions would be required separately in a graphic format (gif
or jpeg). The figures should also be embedded in the text at appropriate
places.

4. Please send the manuscripts by email to karagian@uth.gr and
sabineg@athabascau.ca (Subject: Bulletin of TCLT Submission).

5. In the email, please state clearly that the manuscript is original
material that has not been published, and is not being considered for
publication elsewhere.

For further information please see http://www.ieeetclt.org/content/bulletin.

Best regards,
Sabine Graf
Charalampos Karagiannidis
(Editors of the Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Learning Technology)

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Joint Call For Papers - Conferences / Journal Special Issues Cloud Computing, March 2013)

Conference Call For Papers, Workshop Proposals, Demo and Participation

1. IEEE SCC 2013 (June 27-July 2, CA, USA)
The 10th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing
http://conferences.computer.org/scc/2013/
*Submission deadline: March 15, 2013

2. IFIP NPC 2013 (September 19-21, 2013, Guiyang, China)
The 10th IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing
http://grid.hust.edu.cn/npc2013/workshops.htm
*Workshop Proposal Submission deadline: March 15, 2013

3. INTERNET 2013 (July 21-26, 2013 - Nice, France)
The Fifth International Conference on Evolving Internet
http://www.iaria.org/conferences2013/INTERNET13.html
*Submission deadline: March 18, 2013

4. ICPP-IWATCC 2013 (October 4, 2013, Lyon, France)
The 2013 International Workshop on Advanced Technologies of Cloud Computing
https://sites.google.com/site/watcc2013/home
*Submission deadline: March 18, 2013

5. IEEE ISPA 2013 (July 16-18, 2013, Melbourne, Australia)
The 11th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications
http://anss.org.au/ispa2013/
*Submission deadline: March 20, 2013

6. FutureTech 2013 (September 4-6, 2013, Gwangju, Korea)
The 8th FTRA International Conference on Future Information Technology (FutureTech 2013)
http://www.ftrai.org/futuretech2013
*Submission deadline: March 20, 2013

7. IFIP NPC 2013 (September 19-21, 2013, Guiyang, China)
The 10th IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing
http://grid.hust.edu.cn/npc2013/
*Submission deadline: April 2, 2013

8. NoF 2013 (October 21-24, 2013, Pohang, Korea)
The 4th International Conference on the Network of the Future
http://nof2013.postech.ac.kr/
*Submission deadline: April 10, 2013

9. CUTE 2013 (December 18-20, 2013, Danang, Vietnam)
8th Intenational Conference on Ubiquitous Information Technologies and Applications
http://www.cute2013.org/
*Submission deadline: June 1, 2013

10. IEEE CloudCom 2013 (December 2-5, 2013, Bristol, UK)
5th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science
http://2013.cloudcom.org
*Submission deadline: July 5, 2013

11. CITS 2014 (July 2014, Jeju Island, Korea)
International Conference on Computer, Information and Telecommunication Systems
Web site: TBA
*Submission deadline: TBA

Journal Special Issues CFP

1. International Journal of Grid and High Performance Computing (IGI Global)
Special Issue on"Enabling Technologies for Green Cloud"
http://grid.chu.edu.tw/IJGHPC/sub
*Manuscript Due: March 20, 2013

2. Journal of Applied Mathematics (Hindawi)
Special Issue on"Mathematical and Numerical Modeling of Information Dissemination in Mobile Networks"
http://www.hindawi.com/
*Manuscript Due: April 19, 2013

3. Journal of Communications
Special Issue on "Smart Grid Communications"
http://www.dnagroup.org/PDF/SpeicalIssue_SmartGridCommunications_CallForPapers.pdf
*Manuscript Due: May 15, 2013

4. IEEE Trans. on Learning Technologies
Special Issue on"Social Computing and Social Knowledge for e-Learning"
http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/transactions/cfps/cfp_tltsi_scskel.pdf
*Manuscript Due: June 1, 2013

5. Information Sciences (Elsevier)
Special Issue on"Cloud-assisted Wireless Body Area Networks"
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/information-sciences/call-for-papers/special-issue-of-information-sciences-on-cloud-assisted/
*Manuscript Due: July 1, 2013

6. IEEE Trans. on Cloud Computing
Special Issue on"Utility and Cloud Computing Science and Technology"
http://grid.chu.edu.tw/SI/TCC
*Manuscript Due: Sept. 1st, 2013

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PostDoc / Ph.D. Positions at L3S Research Center, Germany

PostDoc / Ph.D. Positions at L3S Research Center, Germany

The L3S Research Center, Hannover, Germany, invites applications for

one Postdoc and two Ph.D. research positions

in the area of Large Scale Web Analytics and Information Retrieval. Your
work will focus on temporal information retrieval, exploration and
analytics. Investigating innovative and scalable solutions, you will be
utilizing and extending distributed platforms such as Hadoop, HBase and
Storm, and have the opportunity to shape and extend the computing cluster
infrastructure of L3S. Your research will connect to our work in the EU
funded projects ARCOMEM, ForgetIT and CUBRIK, and provide important input to
the development of large scale Web observatories in the context of our
WSTNet activities.

Your research will focus on topics in the following areas

* Distributed Crawling, Indexing and Analytics
* Distributed Algorithms and Data Processing
* Evolution-Aware Entity-Based Enrichment and Indexing
* Temporal Retrieval and Ranking

in a challenging and unique research environment.

You should possess good knowledge in one or several areas relevant for the
topics specified in this announcement. Good proficiency in English is
expected, as well as an outstanding M.Sc. or Ph.D. in computer science.
German language skills are useful, but not mandatory.
International experience during your studies or afterwards, as well as good
social and communication skills are helpful.

The salary amounts to German TV-L E13/E14, which is roughly 40.000 to 50.000
Euro gross income per year.

Please submit your application including the usual documents as well as a
list of references, preferrably by email, to

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Nejdl
L3S Research Center
Appelstrasse 4
30167 Hannover, Germany
http://www.L3S.de/
http://www.kbs.uni-hannover.de/~nejdl/
E-Mail: nejdl@L3S.de

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Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GaLA conference 2013)

Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GaLA conference 2013)

At Dassault Systemes, Paris, October 23-25 2013

AIMS AND SCOPE
There is a wide consensus in the scientific community about the educational potential of Serious Games. And serious games are being used in professional and corporate contexts to teach skills and new competences, which is particularly important in a lifelong learning perspective, to engage and train workforce, to discover and develop leaders, and to support sharing of knowledge and experience. Serious games are promising also in fields such as healthcare and personal development.
Serious games are very well suited to motivate learners and, exploiting the latest simulation and visualization technologies, are able to contextualize the player’s experience in stimulating and realistic environments. Furthermore, a large and growing population is increasingly familiar with playing games, which makes them particularly suited as a powerful instructional tool.
However, so far, only few tests have clearly shown the educational effectiveness of serious games. In general, most authors agree that more extensive tests need to be performed in order to provide valid and reliable evidence for effectiveness of serious games as educational tools. Serious games should lead to improved learning in an efficient and attractive way. We believe that providing evidence of these benefits is key to promote serious games for education and training amongst the large public of families, teachers and stakeholders.
Furthermore, there is a growing concern that there is a need for scientific and engineering methods for building games as means that provide effective learning experiences. An effective application of SGs for education and training demands appropriate metrics, analytics, tools, and techniques for in-game user assessment, in order to allow meeting the educational goals, provide proper user feedback and support adaptivity. This can be achieved in particular by measuring elements such as learning outcomes and engagement, considering the twofold nature of SGs as compelling games that achieve some precise educational goals. We believe that this is necessary in order to develop a new generation of SGs that are able to meet the above mentioned expectations and the requirements for availability of more effective education-supporting tools.

CALL FOR PAPERS

We are seeking original contributions that advance the state of the art in the technologies and knowledge available to support development and deployment of serious games. Experimental studies are strongly encouraged.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

Pedagogical foundations track:

• Pedagogical theories and their applications in the field of serious games
• User modeling
• Methodologies and principles for serious games user assessment
• Support for educators and trainers
• Pedagogical principles of gamification
• Support higher-order thinking through serious games

Serious Game design track:

• Mapping educational outcomes and principles into serious game mechanics
• Serious game mechanics joining entertainment and pedagogical goals (at all the levels)
• Mapping pedagogical principles and serious games mechanics
• Gamification design
• Design of score and rewards
• How to balance realism (also in timing), engagement, learning and entertainment?

Technology track:

• Advanced Human-Computer Interaction for serious games (hardware, software)
• Artificial intelligence for serious games
• Neuro-scientific principles, experiments and applications
• Technological support for collaborative games
• User modeling and profiling
• Adaptivity
• Augmented and virtual reality
• Support for learner performance assessment (stealth, formative, summative) 
• Provision of feedback
• Efficient development tools
• Support for educators and trainers
• Support for gamification
• Learning analytics
• Modeling and simulation
• Interopreability and standards

Application track:

• User studies applying serious games in formal education
• User studies applying serious games in training (professional, corporate and executive training, skill development and other workforce programs)
• Case studies on developing/deploying serious games in application domains such as business, management, entrepreneurship, environment, cultural heritage, health, smart buildings, humanities, engineering, manufacturing, security, safety, ethics, etc.
• User studies of applying serious games in the above domains, studying effectiveness for learning/training
• Understanding how, when, with whom, for what to use serious games
• Gamification in various application domains
• Verification of learning transfer
• Study of the long-term impact
• Assessing personal abilities through serious games
• Usability studies

Industrial track:

• Serious games market studies
• Business models for serious games
• Pervasive gaming
• Mobile gaming
• Gamification
• Products to support serious games development and deployment

IMPORTANT DATES

Papers (10 pages) submission: May 31th2013
Call for Workshops (4 pages) submission: April 26th 2013
Call for Tutorials (4 pages) submission: May 31th 2013

Notification date for Papers: September 6th 2013

Notification date for Workshops: May 15^th 2013

Notification date for Tutorials: June 19^th 2013

Camera Ready Papers and Registration Due: ------ September 27, 2013
Conference Dates:  ------------------------------------------- October 23 - 25, 2013

More info:
http://www.galaconf.org

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ACIS presentation - An Adaptive Filter-Framework for the Quality Improvement of Open-Source Software Analysis

Anna Hannemann from the ACIS group did a presentation on "An Adaptive Filter-Framework for the Quality Improvement of Open-Source Software Analysis" at the main German software engineering conference SE 2013 in Aachen last week. Here are the slides. This is part of Annas work on social network analysis of open-source projects.

An Adaptive Filter-Framework for the Quality Improvement of Open-Source Software Analysis from Anna Glukhova

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ACIS video - Mobile Gigapixel Service for Android Devices

Petru Nicoleascu produced a video for the demonstration of the mobile Gigapixel Service for Android created by the ACIS group. The service was demonstrated at the Learning Layers Design Conference at Aalto University in Helsinki from March 4-6, 2013. At the design conference we are building first paper prototypes for the user stories collected in the last weeks by the project partners in Bremen and Leeds.

If you have any question, please do not hesitate us by email at acis@dbis.rwth-aachen.de.

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The fourth international conference on Personal Learning Environments (The PLE Conference 2013)

CFP

The fourth international conference on Personal Learning Environments (The PLE Conference 2013)

Date:  10-12 July 2013

Venue: Berlin, Germany & Melbourne, Australia

Website: http://pleconf.org/

Hashtag: #pleconf

Best Papers will be published in the Special Issue of eLearning Papers (Issue 34) and in the 

Special Issue of the Journal of Literacy and Technology (JLT)

Deadline for the submissions: 4th March 2013

The Personal Learning Environment Conference (The PLE Conference) is an international scientific conference taking place annually, each time in a different city. Following the highly successful events in Barcelona in Spain 2010 (#PLE_BCN), in Southampton, UK in 2011 (#PLE_SOU) and the parallel events in 2012 in Aveiro, Portugal and Melbourne, Australia (#PLECONF), the 4th International PLE Conference 2013 will be held in Berlin, Germany together with a parallel event in Melbourne, Australia (#PLEONF) from the 10th to the 12th July 2013. The PLE Conference intends to create a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences and research around the development and implementation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are an approach to Technology-Enhanced Learning based on the principles of learner autonomy and empowerment. PLEs include methods, tools, communities, and services constituting individual learning infrastructures or ecosystems which learners use to direct their own learning and pursue their educational goals. This represents a shift away from the traditional model of learning based on knowledge transfer towards a model of learning based on knowledge construction where learners draw connections from a growing pool of online and offline resources to plan, organise, engage in, reflect on and evaluate their learning and development. By focusing on the enhancing learning of individual, yet interconnected learners, the PLE approach encompasses a diversity of learners, tools, perspectives and knowledge.

So far Personal Learning Environments have been designed and implemented in formal and informal learning contexts, such as school and higher education, work-based learning and in-company training, and in continuing education. The potential of Personal Learning Environments for crossing the boundaries of traditional learning contexts, connecting diverse communities and infrastructures has not been fully realised. Therefore, the 4th PLE Conference in 2013 aims at taking the discussion on Personal Learning Environments a step forward, providing a new impulse for PLE research and development.

The theme for the conference is learning and diversity in cities of the future. In view of the “Smart City” concept and the key priorities for research and innovation expressed in the EU Horizon 2020 framework, innovative, sustainable and inclusive solutions become crucial not only in terms of future and emerging technologies but first and foremost in terms of (i) human knowledge and skills, (ii) diverse and inclusive communities, as well as (iii) learning and knowledge networks. Hence, new forms of connected, interdisciplinary learning and cross-boundary cooperation are seen to play a critical role in the development of creative solutions and in the intelligent exploitation of networked urban infrastructures. In smart urban spaces, people, organisations and objects become interconnected by means of new technologies and media, forging new patterns of cooperation, production, research and innovation.

Submission Procedure

Conference themes include (but are not limited to):

 • Concepts, scenarios and technologies for fostering diversity with PLEs

 • Concepts, scenarios, technologies for learning in smart urban spaces

 • General theories and frameworks for PLE

 • Technologies and software for developing PLE

 • Pedagogical and didactic approaches to Personal Learning Environments

 • Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks (PLN)

 • PLE and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

 • Personal Learning Environments, Open Badges and Gamification

 • PLEs in practice: case studies, good practice and approaches to PLEs

 • PLEs in education: new approaches and managing change in education

 • PLEs in organisations: new approaches and change in enterprises

 • PLEs at work: PLEs work-based learning and vocational training

 • PLEs in context: PLEs for contextual learning such as mobile learning

 • PLE vision: emerging technologies and innovative approaches to PLEs

For more information on the authors please refer to the following website: http://pleconf.org/call-for-papers/

Deadlines

25.11.2012 Call for Papers

04.03.2013 Deadline for all submissions: extended abstracts for full and short papers, short abstracts for workshops, posters and other formats

12.04.2013 Author notification of acceptance of extended abstracts for full and short papers, workshops, posters and other formats.

14.06.2013 Submission of final full and short papers as a result of the shepherding process

10.07.2012 Pre-Conference Workshops

11-12.07.2012 Conference

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