Alexander Mikroyannidis

The Open University · Knowledge Media Institute

The educator within a modern higher education institution must be informed and be familiar with the latest knowledge of the scientific field he/she treats, as well as knowledge of the teaching methodology, techniques and tools of the cognitive subject he/she teaches. It is necessary that relevant initiatives are taken not only by educators, but als...

Cyber security threats are increasingly a serious concern to organisations, with an annual worldwide cost of a trillion dollars in 2021. Potentially the most significant contributor to cyber security threats is the human element, yet this has typically been insufficiently addressed in proposed solutions. Significant resources have been allocated to...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

In this paper, we present a sustainable approach for addressing the language skills gap among EU citizens, which significantly hinders their mobility across the EU and their participation in education, in training, as well as in youth programmes. Our approach is based on the sustainable design of the OpenLang Network platform, which provides an ope...

How can we better mediate processes of learning at large institutions? Learning analytics are used primarily in online and blended learning environments to expose patterns in learning behaviour or interaction. They make use of digital traces from virtual learning environments and combine this with other learner data. The goal is to assist both educ...

This paper presents work-in-progress regarding the definition and deployment of a pilot case study, which aims at supporting lifelong learning through the use of Blockchain technology. This pilot case study uses Blockchain technology in order to provide lifelong learners with transparent and immutable educational accreditation in the form of Smart...

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) for training in public administration has yet to see a wide adoption globally, mostly due to challenges related to the discovery and reuse of high-quality OER for training purposes. These challenges, combined with the general lack of openness in the public sector, have greatly impacted the penetration of...

This paper explores machine learning algorithms that can be used to predict student results in an assignment of a Software Engineering course, based on weekly cumulative average source code submissions to GitLab. GitLab is a source code version control system, commonly used in Software Engineering courses in Higher Education. The aim of this work i...

This paper presents the OpenLang Network platform, an open and collaborative online environment for networking between language learners and teachers across Europe. The OpenLang Network platform brings together educators wanting to discover and share open language learning resources, as well as Erasmus+ mobility participants that wish to improve th...

Blockchain technology provides a decentralised peer-to-peer infrastructure, supporting openness, transparency, accountability, identity management and trust. As such, the Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise education in a number of ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and t...

The emergence of the blockchain promises to revolutionise not only the financial world but also lifelong learning in various ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and tutoring services online, how we register and pay for them, as well as how we get accredited for what we have learned...

Cloud Learning Environments (CLEs) have recently emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the cloud-based tools for building their own learning environments according to their specific learning needs and aspirations. Although CLEs bring significant benefits to educators and learners, there i...

Learning analytics is an emerging field focusing on tracing, collecting, and analysing data through learners’ interactions with educational content. The standardisation of the data collected to supporting interoperability and reuse is one of the key open issues in this field. One of the most promising routes to data standardisation is through the x...

Open Educational Resources (OERs), now available in large numbers, have a considerable potential to improve many aspects of society, yet one of the factors limiting this positive impact is the difficulty to discover them. This study investigates and proposes strategies to better support educators in discovering OERs, mainly focusing on secondary ed...

The Cisco Networking Academy programme (NetAcad) supports education and training in network engineering worldwide. NetAcad works with diverse educational institutions to offer an educational ‘vertical’ from beginner to advanced network engineer. However, as recognised by employment stakeholders, skills shortages in networking remain (Tech Partnersh...

The main challenges commonly associated with acquiring practical network engineering skills are the requirements for access to specialised and up-to-date network equipment, as well as the high costs associated with obtaining and maintaining this equipment. The PT Anywhere initiative addresses these challenges by offering a mobile environment for ac...

The SlideWiki platform is fostering open education by supporting the collaborative authoring, sharing, reusing and remixing of open educational content online. This paper presents the lessons learned from piloting the SlideWiki platform in different learning contexts and scenarios. In particular, we describe the learning scenarios considered in eac...

Learning to configure computer networks is a topic requiring a substantial practical component and suggesting a pedagogic approach that foregrounds experiential learning. However, providing appropriate computer networking hardware is expensive for classroom labs, and is not viable for individual distance learners. Simulation offers an alternative b...

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise education in a number of ways. In this paper, we explore the applications of Smart Blockchain Badges on data science education. In particular, we investigate how Smart Blockchain Badges can support learners that want to advance their careers in data science, by offering them personalised reco...

An increasingly connected society demands people who can design, set up, monitor and maintain networks of computers and devices. Traditional classroom instruction cannot keep pace with demand, and networking hardware costs can be too high for widespread classroom use. This paper presents the Open Networking Lab, a new UK initiative for supporting h...

Producing or finding and reusing high-quality educational content online can be a laborious and costly process. With the open-source and open-access SlideWiki platform, the effort of producing and reusing highly-structured remixable educational content can be crowdsourced and therefore widely shared. SlideWiki employs crowdsourcing methods in order...

The emergence of Blockchain technology promises to revolutionise not only the financial world, but also lifelong learning in many different ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and training services online, how we register and pay for them, as well as how we get accredited for what w...

The open-source and open-access SlideWiki platform employs crowdsourcing methods in order to support the authoring, sharing, reusing and remixing of open courseware. The SlideWiki project is introducing the SlideWiki platform to different communities of educators and learners by performing a wide range of trials covering different levels of educati...

Data is currently being produced at an incredible rate globally, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of available data continues to increase, so does the demand for professionals who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. This paper pre...

Whilst a significant body of learning analytics research tends to focus on impact from the perspective of usability or improved learning outcomes, this paper proposes an approach based on Affordance Theory to describe awareness and intention as a bridge between usability and impact. 10 educators at 3 European institutions participated in detailed i...

Data is currently being produced at an incredible rate globally, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of available data continues to increase, so does the demand for professionals who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. This paper pre...

As a global society, we are producing data at an incredible rate, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of produced data continues to increase, so does the demand for practitioners who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. The European D...

The study explores the effects of three different types of nonadaptive, metacognitive scaffolding on social, constructive metacognitive activity and reflection in groups of non-formal learners. Six triads of nonformal learners were assigned randomly to one of the three scaffolding conditions: structuring, problematising or epistemological. The tria...

Recent trends in online education have seen the emergence of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as an answer to the needs of learners and educators for open and reusable educational material, freely available on the web. At the same time, Big Data and the new analytics and business intelligence opportunities t...

Cloud Learning Environments (CLEs) have recently emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the cloud-based tools for building their own learning environments according to their specific learning needs and aspirations. Although CLEs bring significant benefits to educators and learners, there i...

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) help students manage and take control of their own learning. As such, the PLE promotes self-regulation in learning and allows learners to aggregate, manipulate and share digital artefacts within a flexible and versatile online space. This paper presents a case study in Greece, concerning an investigation about...

While more and more services become virtualised and always accessible in our society, laboratories supporting Computer Science (CS) lectures have mainly remained offline and class-based. This apparent abnormality is due to several limiting factors, discussed in the literature, such as the high cost of deploying and maintaining computer network test...

Personal learning environments (PLEs) hold the potential to address the needs of formal and informal learners for multi-sourced content and easily customisable learning environments. This chapter presents an overview of the European project ROLE (Responsive Open Learning Environments), which specialises in the development and evaluation of learning...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) competences are crucial for lifelong learning. Their cultivation requires the right balance between freedom and guidance during the learning processes. Current learning systems and approaches, such as personal learning environments, give overwhelming freedom, but also let weak learners alone. Other systems, such as lea...

This chapter explores the potential of informal learning within a Personal Learning Environment (PLE), as well as the identified informal learning cultures that have evolved from the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). A variety of research instruments and strategies have been employed to promote the use of PLEs in this case study and capture...

The following sections offer the comments of experts outside of the ROLE project consortium about the contents of this book. Each expert was asked to review and comment upon a chapter of this book that is relevant to their expertise, thus offering their feedback about a certain aspect of the ROLE research outcomes.

This book presents the outcomes of four years of educational research in the EU-supported project called ROLE (Responsive Online Learning Environments). ROLE technology is centered around the concept of self-regulated learning that creates responsible learners, who are capable of critical thinking and able to plan their own learning processes. ROLE...

Personal Learning Environments have recently emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the tools for building their own learning environments according to their specific learning needs and aspirations. This approach enables learners to take complete control over their learning, thus becoming...

This paper presents a personal and social environment for Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL). This environment enables teachers and students to combine a variety of inquiry components and generate mashups that can be adapted in order to meet their personal needs and preferences. This approach also allows users to share their mashups and use them collabor...

Following the latest developments in online learning and Linked Data, the scope of this tutorial will be two-fold: 1. New online learning methods will be taught for supporting the teaching of Linked Data. Additionally, the lessons learned and the best practices derived from designing and delivering a Linked Data curriculum by the EUCLID project wil...

This paper presents the Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) initiative, which aims to transform the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) testbed facilities, already vi-tal for European research, into a learning resource for higher education. From an educational perspective this project aims at promoting the notion of Self-R...

This paper presents the Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) initiative, which aims to transform the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) testbed facilities, already vital for European research, into a learning resource for higher education. From an educational perspective this project aims at promoting the notion of Self-Re...

With a projected six-figure skills gap looming in the US alone, here the authors share strategies and lessons learned regarding how to bridge the gap in training competent data scientists in the near future.

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) is a term that can be used to describe an individual’s ability to develop a skill set allowing him or her to learn in a number of different ways. SRL can also relate to new pedagogical theories that encourage teachers in formal education to motivate and support their students into achieving a high level of self-regulat...

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud-based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishme...

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) hold the potential to address the needs of formal and informal learners for multi-sourced content and easily customisable learning environments. This paper presents an overview of the European project ROLE (Responsive Open Learning Environments), which specialises in the development and evaluation of learning e...

There is currently a huge potential for eLearning in several new online learning initiatives like Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Educational Resources (OERs). These initiatives enable learners to self-regulate their learning by providing them with an abundant amount of free learning materials of high quality. This paper presents FORGE...

Personalised learning has emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the tools for building their own learning environments according to their learning needs and aspirations. Personalised learning is closely connected to self-regulated learning, which enables learners to take complete control...

Self-Regulated Learning, as well as its enabling technologies Personal Learning Environments and Cloud Learning Environments, signify an important shift in the "status quo" of eLearning. These novel learning technologies enable learners to adjust their learning environment and process to their particular needs and aspirations. This paper investigat...

The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments, EU 7th Framework Programme, grant agreement no.: 231396, 2009-2013) was focused on the next generation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A ROLE PLE is a bundle of interoperating widgets -often realised as cloud services - used for teaching and learning. In this paper, we first describ...