Agustín Cañas | Universidade de Vigo (original) (raw)

Papers by Agustín Cañas

Research paper thumbnail of Providing Event Recommendations in Educational Scenarios

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013

This paper introduces a novel event recommendation system for educational scenarios. Unlike tradi... more This paper introduces a novel event recommendation system for educational scenarios. Unlike traditional recommender systems that base their recommendations on user feedback, the proposed system takes into account both existing information on events and the particularities of the specific target learning environment. For this purpose, the system addresses the problem of recommendation as a decision problem based on multiple criteria. As part of the developed system, we propose a collection of interest criteria and an algorithm to sort the events according to their relevance to the development of a given learning activity. This work is the result of the collaboration between technical and pedagogical experts in the framework of an European large-scale pilot focused on learning in the 21st century and the design of the future classroom: Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom (iTEC).

Research paper thumbnail of Contributing to the Education of the Citizen of the Future. The iTEC Semantic Multicriteria Recommender

Research paper thumbnail of The iTEC Data Model and Vocabularies

Research paper thumbnail of Finding People Who Can Contribute to Learning Activities: A First Approach to Enhance the Information about Experts Available in a People Directory

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013

The participation of experts and other external contributors is a common requirement in the desig... more The participation of experts and other external contributors is a common requirement in the design of educational scenarios for the school of the future. We can find many repositories of learning objects, but it is not so common to find directories containing people who are willing to participate in an educational activity. Much less common is to find information about these people to determine their suitability from an educational perspective. This paper describes a proposal for the automatic enrichment of existing information in a directory of contributors to educational activities. Through this enrichment process, it is possible to enhance the amount of information available to a recommender system to identify the most appropriate people to participate in a particular activity, and reduces the need for human intervention when selecting individuals to contribute to educational activities.

Research paper thumbnail of Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom. Discovering the best resources for my school

This paper describes an approach to design and implement innovative pedagogical designs to be imp... more This paper describes an approach to design and implement innovative pedagogical designs to be implemented in heterogeneous educational and technical settings reflecting the actual situation in Europe, where this work is focused. This approach is based on an iterative methodology that produces descriptions for lesson plans that can be carried out in different types of schools. A set of new technologies are deployed to support the deployment of these new educational scenarios in practice. Given the heterogeneity of the technologies available across Europe and the competences to use those technologies, a dedicated intelligent recommender system based on the use of semantic web technologies has been implemented. This paper is focused on the description of the main decisions taken regarding this recommender service.

Research paper thumbnail of A Recommender System for Non-traditional Educational Resources: A Semantic Approach

JOURNAL OF UNIVERSAL COMPUTER SCIENCE

This paper describes a software system that allows for discovering nontraditional educational res... more This paper describes a software system that allows for discovering nontraditional educational resources, that is to say, those that go beyond educational content and incorporate elements such as: software applications that may support the teaching-learning process; events that take place outside school boundaries, such as new expositions in museums and theatre performances; and people who may participate as experts in some Learning Activity. The huge quantity of information available potentially all that can be extracted from the Internet- enforces us to adopt a strategy that enables filtering resources in accordance with their appropriateness and relevance, that is, an strategy based on recommendations. Besides, due to their particular nature (e.g. the most relevant events are those that will take place in the same city where the school is located) the apropriateness of those resources is highly dependent on the context where teaching and learning is produced. Therefore, the recomm...

Research paper thumbnail of Who else could participate in my lesson plans?

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the iTEC SDE (Scenario Development Environment), a recommendation ... more ABSTRACT This paper introduces the iTEC SDE (Scenario Development Environment), a recommendation system to assist teachers in the creation of lesson plans. A key functionality of the SDE is the recommendation of people. Basically, taking into account new pedagogical approaches, this system manages information about potential lesson plan contributors and provides recommendations on the best available people to participate in specific learning activities. The SDE has been developed as a multi-criteria recommender focused on supporting learning activities in particular technological and educational contexts. In this way, it manages information about the devices and applications available in the classroom and the features of the students, such as educational level, language, age, location, etc. The final goal of this system is to support teachers creating lesson plans in which they can develop new pedagogical approaches involving new technologies and external resources, such as people from outside the school. Eventually, this will contribute to engage students and improve learning.

Research paper thumbnail of The iTEC-SDE recommendation algorithms

Research paper thumbnail of A recommender system for educational resources in specific learning contexts

ABSTRACT This paper presents the algorithms that drive the behaviour of a recommendation system f... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the algorithms that drive the behaviour of a recommendation system for educational resources in specific learning contexts. The criteria taken into account to provide these recommendations is not based on the preferences or previous behaviour of an individual (personalization). Instead of that, we need to consider the particular characteristics of a learning context: subject, language, tools available, age range, etc. We present three different multi-criteria recommendation algorithms depending upon the type of resource to be recommended: tools, events and contributors (experts, parents and other external potential contributors to a learning activity). These algorithms have been designed as a joint effort between technical and pedagogical experts within a large European project: innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom (iTEC).

Research paper thumbnail of Enrichment of semantic knowledge bases - An application to the automatic enrichment of learning tool descriptions

2013 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education, 2013

We discuss the first outcomes of a research project targeted to the automatic enrichment of RDF/O... more We discuss the first outcomes of a research project targeted to the automatic enrichment of RDF/OWL-coded knowledge bases. More specifically, we discuss the enrichment of learning tool descriptions in a recommendation system for learning resources. We show how, thanks to the implemented enrichment processes, it is possible to improve the precision of recommendations by automatically completing those descriptions. Besides, this approach overcomes the limitations of manual cataloguing and their lack of completeness consequence of relying only on the previous knowledge of cataloguing personnel.

Research paper thumbnail of Providing Event Recommendations in Educational Scenarios

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013

This paper introduces a novel event recommendation system for educational scenarios. Unlike tradi... more This paper introduces a novel event recommendation system for educational scenarios. Unlike traditional recommender systems that base their recommendations on user feedback, the proposed system takes into account both existing information on events and the particularities of the specific target learning environment. For this purpose, the system addresses the problem of recommendation as a decision problem based on multiple criteria. As part of the developed system, we propose a collection of interest criteria and an algorithm to sort the events according to their relevance to the development of a given learning activity. This work is the result of the collaboration between technical and pedagogical experts in the framework of an European large-scale pilot focused on learning in the 21st century and the design of the future classroom: Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom (iTEC).

Research paper thumbnail of Contributing to the Education of the Citizen of the Future. The iTEC Semantic Multicriteria Recommender

Research paper thumbnail of The iTEC Data Model and Vocabularies

Research paper thumbnail of Finding People Who Can Contribute to Learning Activities: A First Approach to Enhance the Information about Experts Available in a People Directory

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013

The participation of experts and other external contributors is a common requirement in the desig... more The participation of experts and other external contributors is a common requirement in the design of educational scenarios for the school of the future. We can find many repositories of learning objects, but it is not so common to find directories containing people who are willing to participate in an educational activity. Much less common is to find information about these people to determine their suitability from an educational perspective. This paper describes a proposal for the automatic enrichment of existing information in a directory of contributors to educational activities. Through this enrichment process, it is possible to enhance the amount of information available to a recommender system to identify the most appropriate people to participate in a particular activity, and reduces the need for human intervention when selecting individuals to contribute to educational activities.

Research paper thumbnail of Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom. Discovering the best resources for my school

This paper describes an approach to design and implement innovative pedagogical designs to be imp... more This paper describes an approach to design and implement innovative pedagogical designs to be implemented in heterogeneous educational and technical settings reflecting the actual situation in Europe, where this work is focused. This approach is based on an iterative methodology that produces descriptions for lesson plans that can be carried out in different types of schools. A set of new technologies are deployed to support the deployment of these new educational scenarios in practice. Given the heterogeneity of the technologies available across Europe and the competences to use those technologies, a dedicated intelligent recommender system based on the use of semantic web technologies has been implemented. This paper is focused on the description of the main decisions taken regarding this recommender service.

Research paper thumbnail of A Recommender System for Non-traditional Educational Resources: A Semantic Approach

JOURNAL OF UNIVERSAL COMPUTER SCIENCE

This paper describes a software system that allows for discovering nontraditional educational res... more This paper describes a software system that allows for discovering nontraditional educational resources, that is to say, those that go beyond educational content and incorporate elements such as: software applications that may support the teaching-learning process; events that take place outside school boundaries, such as new expositions in museums and theatre performances; and people who may participate as experts in some Learning Activity. The huge quantity of information available potentially all that can be extracted from the Internet- enforces us to adopt a strategy that enables filtering resources in accordance with their appropriateness and relevance, that is, an strategy based on recommendations. Besides, due to their particular nature (e.g. the most relevant events are those that will take place in the same city where the school is located) the apropriateness of those resources is highly dependent on the context where teaching and learning is produced. Therefore, the recomm...

Research paper thumbnail of Who else could participate in my lesson plans?

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the iTEC SDE (Scenario Development Environment), a recommendation ... more ABSTRACT This paper introduces the iTEC SDE (Scenario Development Environment), a recommendation system to assist teachers in the creation of lesson plans. A key functionality of the SDE is the recommendation of people. Basically, taking into account new pedagogical approaches, this system manages information about potential lesson plan contributors and provides recommendations on the best available people to participate in specific learning activities. The SDE has been developed as a multi-criteria recommender focused on supporting learning activities in particular technological and educational contexts. In this way, it manages information about the devices and applications available in the classroom and the features of the students, such as educational level, language, age, location, etc. The final goal of this system is to support teachers creating lesson plans in which they can develop new pedagogical approaches involving new technologies and external resources, such as people from outside the school. Eventually, this will contribute to engage students and improve learning.

Research paper thumbnail of The iTEC-SDE recommendation algorithms

Research paper thumbnail of A recommender system for educational resources in specific learning contexts

ABSTRACT This paper presents the algorithms that drive the behaviour of a recommendation system f... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the algorithms that drive the behaviour of a recommendation system for educational resources in specific learning contexts. The criteria taken into account to provide these recommendations is not based on the preferences or previous behaviour of an individual (personalization). Instead of that, we need to consider the particular characteristics of a learning context: subject, language, tools available, age range, etc. We present three different multi-criteria recommendation algorithms depending upon the type of resource to be recommended: tools, events and contributors (experts, parents and other external potential contributors to a learning activity). These algorithms have been designed as a joint effort between technical and pedagogical experts within a large European project: innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom (iTEC).

Research paper thumbnail of Enrichment of semantic knowledge bases - An application to the automatic enrichment of learning tool descriptions

2013 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education, 2013

We discuss the first outcomes of a research project targeted to the automatic enrichment of RDF/O... more We discuss the first outcomes of a research project targeted to the automatic enrichment of RDF/OWL-coded knowledge bases. More specifically, we discuss the enrichment of learning tool descriptions in a recommendation system for learning resources. We show how, thanks to the implemented enrichment processes, it is possible to improve the precision of recommendations by automatically completing those descriptions. Besides, this approach overcomes the limitations of manual cataloguing and their lack of completeness consequence of relying only on the previous knowledge of cataloguing personnel.