Workshop on
Mash-Up Personal Learning
Environments (MUPPLE’08)

at the 3rd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL08), Maastricht, The Netherlands, September 17-19, 2008

!!! deadline for submissions extended to July 14, 2008 !!!

RATIONALE

A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years to technology-enhanced learning research and development: More and more learning applications on the web are putting the learner centre stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with capabilities to customize and even construct their own personal learning environments (PLEs).

These PLEs typically consist of distributed web-applications and services that support system-spanning collaborative and individual learning activities in formal as well as informal settings.

Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a learning web where information is distributed across sites and activities can easily encompass the use of a greater number of pages and services offered through web-based learning applications. Mash-ups, the ‘frankensteining’ of software artefacts and data, have emerged to be the software development approach for these long-tail and perpetual-beta niche markets. Core technologies facilitating this paradigm shift are Ajax, javascript-based widget-collections, and microformats that help to glue together public web APIs in individual applications.

In a wide range of European IST-funded research projects such as iCamp, LTfLL, LUISA, Palette, Prolix, and TENcompetence a rising passion for these technologies can be identified.

This workshop therefore serves as a forum to bring together researchers and developers from these projects and an open public that have an interest in understanding and engineering mash-up personal learning environments (MUPPLEs).

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

• Architectures: e.g. from cross-domain java scripting up to to embedding of pedagogy
• Learning Models: e.g. Activity Models, Environment Design Models, including their theoretical bases
• Learning Services: e.g. Concepts and Demonstrators for recombinable learning services
• Authoring: e.g. editors, user-interfaces for mash-up creation, drag&drop mash-up creation, in-place editing
• Data formats: e.g. microformats, new data models for fragmented data such as streaming data, recombination models needed to establish data interoperability
• User Interfaces: Concepts, Metaphors, Workflows
• Mash-Up Strategies: cooperative, value-chain oriented, master and slave
• Development Methodologies: for building and sustaining communities and services, including analyses of success factors, constraints, characteristics of user uptake including long-tail requirements engineering and software development

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The aim of this workshop is to bring together the various research and development groups in technology-enhanced learning that currently focus on the development of the next generation learning environments — learning environments that put the individuum centre stage and empower learners with design capabilities by deploying modern mash-up principles to establish system-spanning interoperability.

As this approach is rather young, the workshop seeks to attract both research results and work in progress in order to chart out the current state-of-the-art of MUPPLEs in TEL and to define main enablers and future challenges. Naturally, it will serve as a forum for establishing new collaborations.

Using the presentations as impulses and continuing post-talk debates, the workshop will conclude the day with an open discussion exchanging ideas, summing up, and defining a medium- to long-term research agenda.

The workshop is supported by the European Commission as a concertation activity between especially the European Projects iCamp, LUISA, LTfLL, Palette, and TENcompetence.

SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers (8 pages), work-in-progress as short papers (max. 4 pages) or position statements (max. 2 pages). All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three members of the program committee for originality, significance, clarity, and quality.

The workshop proceedings will be published online as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. http://CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, with ISSN 1613-0073. Furthermore, the two best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL).

Authors should use the Springer LNCS format. For camera-ready format instructions, please see “For Authors” instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

All questions and submissions should be sent to:
mupple08@alice.wu-wien.ac.at

Alternatively, submissions can be uploaded to our EasyChair submission system:

1. Prepare your paper with the template above and convert it to PDF.
2. Visit the Conference Submission System at the following page:
   http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mupple08
3. Register at the EasyChair System.
4. Login with your EasyChair username and password
5. Choose ‘New Submission’ in the top menu
6. Fill out all details of the form
7. Please specify the category, some keywords and topics for your contribution
8. Upload your paper as a PDF

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper Submission: July 1st, 2008 July 14th, 2008
• Results Notification: August 1st, 2008
• Camera Ready Submission: August 31, 2008
• Workshop Date: September 17, 2008

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

• Abelardo Pardo (University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
• Ajith Ranabahu (Wright State University, Ohio)
• Dai Griffith (University of Bolton, UK)
• Denis Gillet (EPFL, Switzerland)
• Effie Law (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
• Fabrizio Giorgini (Giunti Labs, Italy)
• Felix Mödritscher (Vienna University of Economics
  and Business Administration, Austria)
• Graham Atwell (Pontydysgu, United Kingdom)
• Gytis Cibulskis (Kaunas Technical University, Lithuania)
• Mart Laanpere (Tallinn University, Estonia)
• Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer FIT, Germany)
• Mohamed Amine Chatti (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
• Nikos Karacapilidis (University of Patras, Greece)
• Scott Wilson (University of Bolton, United Kingdom)
• Stéphane Sire (EPFL, Switzerland)
• Tony Hirst (Open University, UK)

ORGANISERS

• Fridolin Wild (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)
• Matthias Palmer (University of Upsala, Sweden)
• Marco Kalz (Open University, The Netherlands)

ABOUT EC-TEL08

After two successful EC-TEL conferences in 2006 and 2007, the Third European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning provides a unique forum for all research related to TEL, among them education, psychology, and computer science. The contributions will cover the design of innovative environments, the implementation of new technological solutions, results of empirical studies on socio-cognitive processes in learning, and field studies regarding the use of technologies in context.

EC-TEL is a competitive and broad forum for TEL research in Europe and beyond. In its specialised accompanying workshops and the highlighting main conference programme, EC-TEL08 provides unique networking possibilities for participating researchers throughout the week and includes project meetings and discussions for ongoing and new research activities supported by the European Commission. See http://www.ectel08.org/ for details.

Download this call for papers as a plain text file here.