In response to the evolving landscape of electrical engineering education, this paper explores the integration of the flipped classroom model complemented by student-produced videos for assignment-solving. Videos, positioned as instructional tools within the flipped classroom, offer self-paced learning, im-proved accessibility, heightened engagement, and enhanced comprehension-addressing persistent challenges faced by electrical engineering students. The primary focus is on courses tailored for electrical engineering students, fostering peer-to-peer interactive learning, knowledge exchange, and a nuanced understanding of course material. The proposal to establish YouTube channels for hosting these videos presents a sustainable platform for collaborative learning that evolves and improves over time. The efficacy of this approach, evident in improved learning outcomes, underscores the transformative potential of video tutorials and tangible user interfaces. The conclusion reflects on the practical implications of this pedagogical approach, offering insights for educators, institutions, and students seeking innovative methods to enhance the educational experience. Acknowledging potential limitations, the study invites future research to build upon these findings, contributing to the ongoing discourse on innovative teaching methods in electrical engineering education. In essence, our research illuminates the transformative impact of integrating student-produced videos within the flipped classroom model, offering a unique perspective on collaborative learning and technological integration for improved educational outcomes.

This research focuses on the critical role of urban environmental education for addressing both human well-being and climate change, especially in densely populated metropolitan regions. Recognizing the particular vulnerability of these urban zones, the study introduces educational innovations to respond to these intertwined societal and ecological challenges. By integrating advanced technologies such as sensors, IoT, and generative Artificial Intelligence with inquiry-based pedagogy, the initiative promotes broader democratic engagement. This approach results in the development of accessible technological solutions that visualize and disseminate data on key urban environmental indicators, such as tree coverage and heat islands. By merging these technologies with pedagogic activities, the study presents novel learning designs that bolster both digital and environmental competencies. A cascading model ensures that educators and academic institutions are equipped with the necessary training, tools, and designs to champion eco-conscious urban information strategies, further supported by open online learning activities for effective real-world application.

Microelectronics is an essential component of virtually all aspects of our daily lives. The microelectronics sector in Europe is responsible directly 200,000 and indirectly 1,000,000 high-skilled jobs and the demand for new skills is increasing. In this scenario, ECoVEM project, European Centre of Vocational Excellence in Microelectronics, is a continuing work, based on an existing model for business-education collaboration of the Knowledge Alliance MECA and Sector Skills Alliance in Microelectronics, both targeting tertiary education. The ECoVEM project platform targets vocational excellence on all levels of European Qualification Framework. This project aims to establish a transnational cooperation platform of Vocational Excellence in Microelectronics to tackle the challenges of the: digitalization, artificial intelligence, green technologies, gender equality, and integration of migrants among others. One of these mechanisms is based on develop innovative VET curricula through Massive Open Online Courses. professional online courses serve as catalysts for individual and collective growth, driving innovation, sustainability, and inclusivity within our workforce. They empower individuals to adapt to new challenges, seize opportunities, and contribute meaningfully to their fields, ultimately fostering a more dynamic and resilient workforce for the future.

This paper describes the organization and results of several MOOCs delivered about technical topics (i.e., digital electronics, VHDL design on FPGAs, open education and OERs repositories and the use of STEAM technologies to encourage diversity and inclusion), where online laboratories have been used in some of them. An analysis of the enrollment, students participating on tasks or quizzes, drop-out rate and certifications requests have been done.

Industry 4.0 will enable new types of interactions between man and machine with ramifications on the nature of work and the labor force. New technologies will require new skills and competencies, and engineers, entrepreneurs, programmers, and workers will need a broad skillset to address the technological advancement of the fourth industrial revolution. Remote labs stand as an efficient and reliable platform to train students, improve their skills and prepare them for the Work 4.0 paradigm. The story of Princess Sumaya University for Technology with remote labs and its efforts to provide students with a glimpse of Industry 4.0 is presented. In addition, assessment methods to em-power students with virtual collaboration, social intelligence, and communication skills are investigated, showing improvements in performance and achievements.

This paper discusses the potential of ChatGPT as an assistant to help with natural English paper writing for non-native English speakers. And how if used in an honest way, it can be an educational tool with great potential and not just a plagiarism aid.

The Covid-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid transition to online education, forcing most academic institutions to adopt online assessments as a substitute for traditional, in-person examinations. Many of these online assessments were conducted in an unsupervised setting, with an underlying model that largely relied on the trust that students would maintain academic integrity and adhere to the principles of honest scholarship. Unfortunately, this trust-based approach showed its vulnerabilities, as we observed a significant uptick in incidents of cheating and academic dishonesty across many educational institutions including our own. In an attempt to address these issues, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the specific cheating behaviours we have identified. We detail how the lack of supervision in online settings has led to creative and highly collaborative cheating schemes that we call local and remote “exam parties,” in addition to the use of online platforms like Chegg.com to contract-cheat. The rise in cheating has been so dramatic that it has led to noticeable grade inflation, skewing academic performance metrics and potentially diminishing the value of educational qualifications. To combat this worrisome trend, we introduce an analysis tool specifically designed to detect signs of potential dishonesty in online assessments. The tool consumes student activity logs from popular Learning Management Systems such as Canvas, and digital assessment platforms such as CodeRunner and Inspera, and analyses these logs to flag suspicious behaviours. Combined with rapid-fire answer submissions and other suspicious timing patterns, the reports generated via the tool help us identify collusion and potential contract-cheating. In addition to the tool, the paper discusses preventive measures that institutions can take to minimize the risk of cheating. These include designing assessments to minimize the ability to cheat, enforcing remote proctoring services, and employing individualized assessments. By combining comprehensive analysis, technological solutions, and preventive recommendations, this paper aims to provide educators and institutions with the tools and knowledge they need to uphold academic integrity in this new era of online education.

The future of industry 4.0 which is called industry 5.0 is the crossroads between information technology and operational technology, converging on physical and virtual systems that were previously used separately in industrial manufacturing processes with a focus of western culture. In other words, the supply chain uses technology to create integration between people, processes, and products. SMEs owners, manufacturers, and service organizations can access unprecedented, new levels of data, which can make it easy to understand, control, and improve every aspect of their operations. In the present study, existing research work on the models and assessment readiness criteria for the adoption of industry 4.0 are over-viewed. In I4.0, hybrid organizations are a type of organizations that have two wings of social and environmental mission and economic wing. The business models of these organizations have blurred the line between for-profit and non-profit organizations so that hybrid organizations can fall into both for-profit / non-profit categories. Hybrid Entrepreneurs Seek Organizational Organizations and Markets to Address Specific Social and Environmental Issues. The characteristics of these organizations are creating value for healthy living, environmental and social justice, environmental sustainability, quality products and services. In this paper we did research the development of a readiness assessment framework for tomorrow’s SMEs/hybrid SMEs or SME 5.0 which are small medium sized enterprises for getting prepared for the future concern for adopting the educational components of future of I4.0.

amidst the economic, social, and environmental disruption being faced due to the COVID-19 outbreak, SMEs are being challenged with how best to ensure business continuity. As a result, business continuity and global supply chain performance are disrupted. Due to the damage caused by the outbreak of the Coronavirus, if the economic, social, and environmental losses are not addressed quickly, and practical policies and strategies are not adopted, the damage will be exponential. This means that many SMEs will face many crises in the future. Good governance has significant potential for sustainability & continuity of operations of the business, modernizing SMEs, business model innovation, new business development, improving public service delivery, addressing complex development needs and promoting prosperity, and may help achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. In this regard, smart governance to support business strategies remains an important driving force for this transition, especially in the face of international market pressures and global competition. And it offers incredible opportunities to innovate, strengthen and improve efficient practices and bring many benefits. In the meantime, the role of education is vital for sustainability. Education for sustainability leads to the accumulation of human capital in organizations by improving individual skills, abilities, and competencies. Companies that have better sustainability training have enjoyed more sustainable growth and development by using high-tech and knowledge-based products. In today’s increasingly complex social environments, many E-governance is working to ensure effective planning, implementation, and delivery of education policies. training in sustainable SMEs helps enthusiasts gain the necessary competence and skills to initiate sustainable enterprises. In fact, companies are no longer just legal in nature, and their main goal is not just profitability and accountability to shareholders. Companies have become citizens who are responsible for society and must become good corporate citizens. Innovative SMEs and their business ecosystems can be a major strength in achieving the goals of green technologies, the circular economy, as well as an innovation-enabling policy- and regulatory framework. Therefore, educational sustainability and transition to hybrid organizations are a necessity. In this paper, we are going to introduce a new concept which titled “Hybrid SMEs/SME 5.0 or Tomorrow’s SMEs” through the 5th wave theory towards mapping the future education with using the smart governance.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents a pilot test framed in educational robotics where parents and child work together during the same session. In recent years, an educational movement has emerged that is related to the introduction of computational thinking, programming, and robotics in schools. Educational robotics is presented as one more resource that serves as a support in the different curricular subjects and facilitates the emergence of skills such as socialization, creative spirit and personal initiative, allowing participants to find answers to the problems that may arise in their reality. It is for this reason that a pilot test was carried out where we included the participants' parents in a session. To do this we used the Crumble controller, a platform that is programmed using block programming language. This platform also allows making electrical connections in an amazingly simple way. From the mechanical point of view, we use materials that can be easily machined, both by children and by inexperienced people. At the end of the experience, the assistants completed the assembly of their own robot. The article contains a study of the state of the art of using educational robotics. It also includes an analysis of the different tools mostly used in educational robotics. Also, throughout the article the learning methodology used, the different educational resources and the results obtained from the experience are described.

Computational Thinking is a competence that is developed more in the last few years. This is due to the multitude of benefits it has in the classroom. Throughout this article we show a series of activities that promote the development of Computational Thinking using tools that allow visual block programming. The particularity of these activities is that some of them were performed during the confinement due to the COVID-19 and other activities were performed later, in the period known as the new normality. Throughout the article, details are provided about the different sessions. The different visual programming tools by blocks and the educational scenarios used are also indicated. In addition, the results obtained are shown.

Technologies 4.0 have had disruptive innovation in various sectors, including the energy one. Smart electricity grids, leveraging smart metering and data analysis systems, can provide a level of monitoring, control and optimization unimaginable until a decade ago. Network management mechanisms based on demand-response models may soon be a reality, thanks to smart contracts, blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine technologies. These changes are leading to a radical change in the skills required by the labor market to operate in the energy sector, as well as the birth of new professional figures with both electricity and IT skills. This paper aims to illustrate the new opportunities and challenges that the Internet of Energy will bring. It also wants to present the results of the IoE-EQ project, which designed new professional qualifications, VET courses and open educational resources to support the training of staff involved in the digital transition of the energy sector.

This paper presents findings on participants of a massive open online course named "Educational Robotics for all" developed under Open edX platform. The document describes the organization and structure of the MOOC and some of its preliminary results. As an example, Module 2 about Gender and STEAM is presented and discussed.

Industry 4.0 is changing not only the way we interact with the world but the way the world communicates with us. Consequently, the term Industry 4.0 implies changes in all the lays of society. Education is an area affected in two ways, how educational curriculum needs to be updated in order to satisfy demands from students, market and society and, as any other area, adapt workforce and infrastructures. In other words, educational institutions must adapt both processes, services and products. In this scenario, online laboratories, also known as web-based laboratories or non-traditional laboratories, emerge as an essential tool for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas. Online laboratories have become a very common tool in educational institutions through the last decade based on their anywhere and anytime availability premise. This fact has shown its relevance even more due to covid19 crisis: Online laboratories have been a crucial tool to provide practical activities. However, online laboratories are not only a suitable tool to provide a temporal and ubiquitous access, but they provide unique features and advantages which may fill the gap between education and industry in the 4.0 paradigm. In this paper, we aim to outline how the 4$^{th}$ industrial revolution is concerning education, and specifically focusing on how the Industry 4.0 paradigm is transforming educational web-based laboratories perspective.

This document reflects the contribution of a group of experts in the VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) remote lab, regarding recent advances, initiatives, federation, limitations and future. The methodology for gathering their opinion consisted of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis on VISIR, following three categories: Technical, Pedagogical and Educational. Major conclusions point to: (1) a need for new technical developments taking advantage of collaborative work; (2) a window of opportunity for expanding VISIR to other institutions, namely in developing countries; and (3) improving the interface for a better pedagogical experience, namely with better error feedback or the inclusion of a virtual tutor.

The educational courses that fall into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) category require an extensive practical training in laboratories, in order to build and strengthen students’ skills, thereby preparing them for a future job market. In particular, the significant advancements in computer science and engineering press an urgent need to rethink the core of the existing academic courses, their objectives, and the tools for the practical work, due to the need to maintain the balance between the knowledge that academia provides to the students and the actual requirements for students’ future job vacancies. To this end, our educational research includes the design and development of two different types of laboratories, i.e., a low-cost Raspberry Pi-based laboratory, and a laboratory in the cloud, for the practical teaching of the course Distributed systems. In this paper, we present the valuable feedback from our undergraduate students for both types of the aforementioned experimentation approaches, thereby unraveling the pros and cons of both, and analyzing the existing challenges that still need to be properly tackled.

A didactic experience is presented focused to a group of secondary school to learn the main features of the topic of diode-based circuits. Students have followed the experience by means of a MOOC in which didactic activities and practices have been designed using the Cognitive Motor Model taxonomy. VISIR remote laboratory is the main technical resource to carry out practices.

Internet of Things (IoT) is widely recognized as one of the pillars of the digital transformation and it is one of the technologies whose market is growing faster. The diffusion of IoT services and technologies is an important opportunity for the growth and development of companies and the labor market. To support the adoption and diffusion of IoT technologies, it is necessary to qualify and/or re-train professionals and technicians in the sector. Among the various initiatives created in this regard, the European project IoT4SMEs in three years has developed interesting studies and produced useful open educational resources. In particular, in this work the authors report the main project outcomes and their impact on the target groups.

Remote analog electronics laboratories promotes accessible educational resources anywhere and anytime through a connection of Internet, in order to support online/distance education as a complement of traditional hands-on laboratories. There are several solutions provided by educational institutions. The most widespread solution is Virtual Instruments System in Reality (VISIR). This system is physically installed in 17 Higher Educational Institutions. Five of these systems have been working en bloc within an Erasmus+project: Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR. Pilar project consists on a federation of five European VISIR kits sharing resources, experiences and even efforts to provide a wide and innovative educational platform. A tool was developed in order to optimize VISIR-based resources to make them transparent for users, teachers and students. Another Erasmus+project which efforts are focused on the providing e-learning practices and methodologies is e-lives (E-Learning InnoVative Engineering Solutions) project. E-lives project also relies on remote laboratories to foster the integration of operational e-learning good practices and methodologies in the South Mediterranean countries. Actually, a specific objective of the project is the development of reliable remote laboratory solutions for analog electronics. In this sense, under the umbrella of the federation, the aforementioned tool designed for PILAR project may become also beneficial for partners within e-lives project.

This article analyzes the existing management systems to be used as repository of Open Educational Resources for acquiring practical competences. The resources to be managed are mainly virtual and remote labs used in several European projects focused on improving the competitiveness of European SMEs. These virtual and remote labs may be based on different technologies, such as web pages, mobile apps, web services, virtual machines, etc. This wide variety of educational resources makes difficult the selection of a common management system to be used as repository for storage and delivery. The result of the analysis shows that the ViSH platform fits all the defined requirements.

Visual block programming environments can be defined as those programming environments that rely on objects rather than words to code the program. These types of environments are characterized by facilitating the task of the people who carry out the programs. This is mainly since they are more visually friendly. In addition, with this type of environment the person who makes the programs will not get the famous syntactic errors that characterize the programming tasks with textual programming languages. Along this paper, a set of tools commonly used in educational robotics are showed. Furthermore, a deep analysis in two of these tools are detailed. Additionally, some educational scenarios are detailed, as long as their relationship to students’ competencies and how to drive the scenarios in order to accomplish with the competencies. Finally, a study of the results from experience is included.

This paper introduces the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society, the CESEI, and its main activities. Along the years since its appearance, the CESEI has developed several initiatives devoted to promote the development of engineering education using new information and communication technologies. Publications and participation in relevant conferences have attracted the main efforts, but also the awards provided to the best student academic works is a remarkable action. It deserves special attention the activities performed in cooperation with the student branches, because they have been very fruitful. The paper describes all these initiatives and discusses about future actions.

The article reflects the experience of the development and implementation of a set of laboratory work on the recycling of photovoltaic panels of alternative energy. The main features of the modernization of the educational process for the dismantling of silicon solar panels using virtual reality technologies, as a new educational strategy used in environmental engineering, without risk to the health of students practicing some dangerous activities. This work focuses on the life cycle of sustainable energy systems and on activities to ensure the best educational practices

In this paper a model to track learning experiences from an interactive e-book is presented. For this a digital book coherent with the EPUB3 standards has been made by exporting an existing course in a learning management system and replicating its interactive behavior. Defining trigger points throughout the book and amongst the interactions made by the students, that send data to a learning record store, enrich the e-book and provide the possibility to analyze and preview statistical data for students’ commitment to learning the material and their actions over the whole course. The xAPI specification helps collect educational data and store it in a database, which can be used for creating a further set of reports anytime in the future.

This Research Full Paper presents a survey about science and technology education scaling. At the end of 2013, the Spanish government released an Organic Law for Educational Quality Improvement (LOMCE). Which this law provides is a guide with the aim of getting information about the changes which this law implies and what is impacted. All of this is based on gender equality opportunities. Education curriculum simplification is also included. This article describes the goals, assumptions, and underlying logic about Spanish legislation change has impacted on science and technology education. The aim of this study is to provide learning technologies to drive science and technology education to students. This study includes an analysis of local scope in the modifications of the Spanish educational legislation and data on the actions of different educational agents in Spain. Several educational centers emerged, and other, which already was present, have been growing. In the last years, educational institutions had the need to prepare their teachers for science and technology knowledge. Several educational centers and robotic educational tools commonly used nowadays are summarized. Additionally, the analysis of different use cases has been included as part of this study. Firstly, cases related to the formal education of Spanish educational centers and how the educators of such centers have perceived the change. On the other hand, a specific analysis of a Non-Official Education Centre is included. Thus, as part of the conclusions included in this article, this paper provides the impact of educational scaling improvement in Spain and a set of robotic educational tools to be addressed for classroom.

Educational robotics applied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) activities combined with a project-based learning (PBL) methodology provides quite good results. Throughout this work it is described how to make use of Scratch, a visual programming environment, as a cost-effective tool with great potential for students to work on concepts related to robotics. When students work with Scratch, they can develop animations or video games in which real life applications are simulated. In this paper you can find the description of the intermediate Scratch module. This module is part of an introductory robotics course consisting of the use of three tools (Scratch, Crumble and Arduino) and three difficulty levels (basic, intermediate and advanced). In addition, the results obtained for the Intermediate Scratch module and a discussion of the most important aspects related to the findings obtained are also provided.

Popularity of Arduino has grown in the last years, mainly as part of the Internet of Things, which is producing a relevant impact in several economic sectors (industry, transportations, energy, agriculture, home automation, etc.). Several national and European policies have been set-up to train the EU companies to the adoption and diffusion of the IoT technologies. In this paper, we describe the development of a remote lab of Arduino to give support to on-line IoT learning experimentation environments, which are very important to provide quality on-line education programs on IoT.

This paper shows a solution to develop Collaborative Massive Open On-Line Courses (MOOC) among universities of three Latin American countries and universities of three European countries by the definition of a Standardization Guide as result of the DIEGO project. This guide is necessary to coordinate different actors to deliver a coordinate MOOC.

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment -hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.)-. This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described.

This study analyzes a gamification experience in a Network Security Management subject of an Information Technology Engineering degree to evaluate whether the spaced-education methodology contributes to the learning improvement. The gamification experience is carried out by an automatic daily delivery of technical questions to students by e-mail.

This article presents the results obtained from the collaboration and participation of the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) and the renewable energy company INOMA, both based in Spain, in the Microelectronics Cloud Alliances Project (MECA project). As part of this project, three open courses were created, two of microelectronics and one of maintenance in renewable energies systems. These courses were integrated into a cloud architecture, which are accessible to everyone. After three years of project, which involved the development and design of cloud architecture; the contents and implementation of the three courses; and a small pilot test. This article presents the results and conclusions reached, as well as points to take into account in the future.

The MUREE project addresses the needs of Jordanian Universities to modernize the learning of Engineering related to renewable energies in collaboration with European Universities. After the implementation of several courses, which combined online learning with traditional teaching in most cases, it is time to analyze and verify the benefits o f t his approach in the Jordanian society. In particular, this paper outlines the results obtained with this project, from three points of view: educational impact, research impact, and socio-economic impact. Results detail the students' participation, their profile in terms of training and required skills, and some aspects about recruitment of future professionals in renewable energies.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of UNESCO establishes goals and targets in areas of critical importance for humanity. Recently, members of the eMadrid network have organized the Conference Learning with MOOCs (LWMOOCS 2018), the leading worldwide global conference, inspired by this year's theme “MOOCs for All - A Social and International Approach”. This paper analyzes the main outcomes of this conference organized around the “Quality Education”, the Sustainable Development Goal 4.

In the last years, the number of Open Educational Resources (OER) on the Web has intensely increased thanks to initiatives from universities all around the world such as the Open Course Ware, and the production of Massive Open Online Courses. The potential of OERs to spread knowledge around the world is crucial. Nonetheless, spotting a list of resources targeting specific skills, and covering particular needs in a group of students is becoming a challenging task. The contribution of this work-in-progress is twofold: 1) this paper presents the results of harvesting 678 OERs and cataloguing them into specific entrepreneurship skills but also targeting three particular groups of students: young, female and trainers. This research aims at providing these students an adapted platform of OERs towards sharpening entrepreneurship skills; 2) based upon these findings, key repositories of OERs towards developing entrepreneur skills are highlighted. Data obtained through this work will allow to find precise OERs in the entrepreneurship field using a semantic taxonomy.

This Research to Practice Work in Progress presents an analytics add-on for QMSFC (Question Management System for Flipped Classroom), an online tool with the purpose of increasing student engagement and participation in a flipped classroom setting. This is done by providing an interface that students can use to post questions about educational videos, which would then be answered by the teacher in the classroom. The data generated by QMSFC could be collected and used to expand upon the functionalities of the platform, such as alerting the teacher about particularly tough topics for students. Additionally, these data could be analyzed together with student grades in order to find out the correlation between the volume of activity on the platform and exam performance. Work remaining on this project involves using the fully developed tool in a real learning situation and analyzing the results and feedback obtained.

This paper performs a preliminary analysis of the first MOOC of the IEEE Education Society, an IEEE Free Online Course on Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) Repositories. The MOOC "Foundations to Open Education and OERs repositories" is based on providing a comprehensive understanding both of Open Education and OERs, as well as the way they are changing the educational environment. The selection of participants' features from the MOOCKnowledge data collection mainly focuses on socio-demographic issues, previous experiences with MOOCs, usefulness of the MOOC to the participants' professional, personal and academic spheres, and types of student interaction. The preliminary results show that additional efforts are needed in order to boost the enrolment of both females and people with low level of completed studies, as well as increasing the level of awareness regarding certification. The results also reveal a positive impact of the course on the participants' professional and personal spheres. Finally, the most relevant interaction for them is the learner-content interaction. On the basis of these results it can be concluded that this MOOC offers an opportunity for practitioners to take advantage of the Open Education philosophy and its subsequent application to their everyday educational environment.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a pillar of European economy. Nowadays the acquisition of new e-competences is essential to follow the digital transformation for the society and the market, and to keep an adequate level of competitiveness. Internet of Things (IoT) are producing a relevant impact in several economic sectors (industry, transportations, energy, agriculture, home automation, etc.). This technology has a high potential in terms of new business opportunities and new job positions. Several national and European policies have been set-up to train the EU companies to the adoption and diffusion of the IoT technologies. This is also the main aim of the European project IoT4SMEs. In this paper, we describe the early activity of the project, focused on an assessment of the labour market training needs related to the IoT technologies.

The contents, hereby introduced, show a methodology to teach electricity to Secondary school students. As secondary teachers, one of the highest worries is to recognize the level of significance in learning in our students. Significance means permanent learning and thus, the assimilation of a solid basis conducts to make easier to understand knowledge in higher levels as our students are growing up. As a consequence of these worries, a structured massive open online course has been developed to optimize the assimilation of basic concepts, magnitudes and skills in relation with Electricity contents. The works in relation with the quantification of learning is written in this paper as well in order to show how good our students are learning and what the most important difficulties they find.

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the educational processes has brought about a series of changes in students' behaviour while raising new challenges for teaching. The analysis of the data provided by the learning management systems (LMS) is essential to know the behaviour of students and improve educational techniques. This behaviour may vary depending on the level of studies and the educational methodology used, and their knowledge allows determining various parameters to guide or implement improvements in the learning process. The purpose of this study is to know the behaviour of students when connecting to the LMS in online studies that follow the task-based methodology at the master level.

The year 2012, the IEEE Education Society Spanish Chapter published a study about the introduction of the Bologna Process in engineering degrees in several Universities in Spain. The study tried to know the professors' thoughts about the core aspects of this process and its deployment in their institutions. Five years later, the IEEE Education Society Spanish Chapter is carrying out a similar study taking into account that the EHEA has been active at least for seven years. The study has two parts. The paper presents the structure of the study, and the results of the first part, comparing (when possible) with the results of the 2012 study.

The PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project started in September 2016 and will last three years. The core of the PILAR project is the VISIR remote laboratory -Virtual Instruments System In Reality-. The project aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes, sharing experiments, capacity and resources among partners, and to provide access to VISIR remote lab, through PILAR consortium, to students from other educational institutions. PILAR will be the framework from which management tasks will be performed and laboratories/experiments will be shared. PILAR will also foster the Special Interest Group of VISIR under the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC) of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE).

This article describes the different Open Educational Resources included in several Vocational Education and Training qualifications designed by the authors. The aim of these courses is to foster European SMEs competitiveness through new technologies such as Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Internet of Energy. The main resources included in the didactic courses designed are video lectures, interviews, showcases, webinars and demonstrators.

Scratch Day is made up of a global network of events. Its main goal is to bring people together to celebrate Scratch. Scratch is a free encryption platform that can be used online and offline for children. Scratch Day events bring together young people from the Scratch community. During these meetings, attendees share projects, learn from each other and welcome newcomers. Robotics and computational thinking are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. Currently, innovation and motivation of students during the learning process are promoted by educational robotics tools. Robots are increasingly integrated into our society. To such an extent that robots are becoming more and more common in our everyday environment. This paper presents a workshop which is focused on two main objectives. The first one is to celebrate Scratch Day promoting Scratch locally. On the other hand, this event is aimed to present a robotic educational tool for people as the first step to get into robotics world. This workshop is aimed on those adults who want to discover what possibilities Scratch brings in the introduction to robotics. Throughout this workshop an initiation to Scratch is developed in the context of educational robotics. As the most significant results throughout the workshop, it is clearly demonstrated that Scratch is an ideal tool for children and adults with no previous programming or robotic experience to begin learning both through hands-on experiences. Throughout this work the importance of combining theory and practice is shown in order to include fun tasks intertwined with the challenges of applying theory to problem solving.

Robotics and computational thinking are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. A multitude of educational robotics tools have emerged in recent years. Some with a high price and great features, and others with a lower price and lower performance. There are also cost-effective options that allow you to tailor your services to tighter budgets. The presence of robots in our daily lives is becoming more and more common. Therefore, it is interesting that we are oriented to integrate robots in the different levels of our society. This workshop is focused on driving the same content across three different low-cost robotic educational tools. The first one is Scratch, interactive stories, games and animations can be programed. The second tool is Crumble, it is an easy-to-use programmable controller. Its programming interface uses a block programming language which eases its use by children aged below 14. The last but not the least is Arduino, Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It is a platform that incorporates a simple microcontroller and an interface development environment to create the applications to be downloaded into the board. This workshop is aimed to present the mentioned platforms as robotic educational tools for people as the first step to get into robotics world. Throughout this workshop an initiation to robotics is developed in the context of educational robotics.

Robotics and computational thinking are valuable tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy, and to promote inclusion and integration of students. We currently have a multitude of robotic education tools at our disposal. These tools arise with the aim of promoting innovation and student motivation during the learning process. Robots are becoming more and more common in our society today. Therefore, it is important to integrate robots into all levels of our everyday life. This work is focused on presenting Raspberry Pi as enhancer of educational robotics. The first step is presenting robotics as a tool for promoting the inclusion and integration of students. For this work a background and overview is also provided. The third part proposed different setups to prepare a Raspberry Pi for remote activities and robotics using Arduino as hardware interface. The last but not the least is an open discussion with the aim of exchanging impressions and getting feedback from the attendees.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field in general, and Engineering, suffer from a lack of diversity. Yet there is growing evidence that more diverse organizations are more successful and effective. There is also a global shortage of STEM and engineering skills that can be tackled by addressing the lack of diversity in the field. One obvious way to view this problem is by looking at gender. Women make up 50% of the population, but in Engineering the number of female students and professionals is clearly less than this, often around 10–25% in many parts of the world. This underrepresentation of women leads us to think about other groups that are underrepresented in Engineering; these include Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and those from socially deprived backgrounds. This paper examines a number of approaches to support diversity and inclusion to encourage a greater uptake of engineering by underrepresented groups and to retain people in the sector.

This paper shows the design, approach and first collection of data of the MOOC "Foundations to Open Education and OERs repositories". This is the first MOOC of the IEEE Education Society, and it has been delivered freely and open available through IEEEx, a channel of edX.

This paper presents some results of European projects for improvement and innovation of engineering education. It summarizes the application of performance support systems, previously used only for company training, in higher education and discusses its advantages. The development of distributed in four European countries performance-centred learning system for information technology, telecommunication, and microelectronics is also presented. As the practice in engineering education is crucial, virtual laboratories with demonstrations, animations and simulations were developed as well as laboratories with remote access to real experiments. Finally, our recent work on the creation of microelectronics Cloud system in nine European countries is presented by an example of building cloud nodes at an installation site.

In the process of searching for open educational resources, the use of ontologies is a key aspect in the reusability of resources for instructional purposes. In this paper, we address the issue of automatic tagging and classifying open educational resources by means of text mining techniques. The purpose is to set up a semantic framework in order to be used in the process of authoring educational material. Thus, authoring can be turned from a simple aggregation process into a dynamic and automatic selection of appropriate resources based on instructional needs and learning design.

Crumble is an easy-to-use programmable controller. Its programming interface uses a block programming language that makes it easy for children above 10 to use. In addition, the hardware elements associated with Crumble are very intuitive and easy to connect. For this reason, educational robotics can be easily implemented thanks to the card connectors. The motors and servos can be managed by Crumble. Different sensors such as the ultrasonic distance sensor, infrared distance sensor and line sensor can also be connected. In addition, Crumble can handle up to 32 RGB (Red, Green and Blue) LEDs (Light Emitter Diodes) independently and with 24-bit color resolution. Robotics and computational thinking are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. Today, robotics training tools are raised with the aim of promoting innovation and motivation of students during the learning process. Robots are becoming more and more common in our daily lives; therefore, it is important to integrate robots into all levels of our society. This document presents a workshop that focuses on two main objectives. The first is to make an event to promote Crumble locally. On the other hand, the aim of this event is to present a robotic teaching tool so that people can take their first steps in the world of robotics. This workshop is aimed at those children and adults who want to discover the possibilities that Crumble brings in the introduction to robotics. An introduction to Crumble in the context of educational robotics is developed throughout this workshop.

Robotics and computational thought are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. Throughout this paper a modular and adaptive course is presented, the main objective of which is to make known simple and economic tools of educational robotics. This course is aimed at those who want to discover the possibilities of educational robotics in the context of the introduction to robotics. Today, robotics training tools are raised with the aim of promoting innovation and motivation of students during the learning process. Robots are becoming more and more common in our daily lives; therefore, it is important to integrate robots into all levels of our society. The course is designed to work with the Scratch, Crumble and Arduino tools as STEM enhancers. Using Scratch, interactive stories, games and animations can be programmed. Scratch helps young people to acquire and improve skills such as think creatively, think systematically, and work collaboratively. Scratch is a project of MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group. It is offered free of charge. On the other hand, Crumble is an easy-to-use programmable controller. Its programming interface uses a block programming language based on Scratch that makes it easy for children from 10 years old to use it. In addition, the hardware elements associated with Crumble are very intuitive and easy to connect. Last, but not least, Arduino is an open source electronic platform based on hardware and software that is easy to use. It is a platform that incorporates a simple microcontroller and an interface development environment to create the applications to be downloaded on the board. The course offers a three-tiered journey through three levels with each of the three tools. It consists of a total of 9 modules. This course has a very practical approach. A project-based pedagogical methodology is used. Experiments are promoted, where trial and error are part of learning and self-discovery. The student learns to have more autonomy and responsibility. Knowledge is acquired in different disciplines. It develops: motor skills (scale mobility in the hands), group skills, allowing people to socialize, creative abilities, and learning in a fun way. The operational details, materials used and examples of activities for some modules are also presented with the expectation that all teachers will be able to adapt these activities in their class. In addition, results are included from several groups of students who have already completed some modules. Despite not having a large number of students, the experience provided results that may be useful for other teachers to promote a course with similar or equal content for more results. The results of this work show that it is important to combine theory and practice to include fun tasks intertwined with the challenges of applying theory to problem solving.

This Research Full Paper shows and analyzes the results of a study carried out by the IEEE-Education Society Spanish Chapter about several key aspects of the implementation in engineering degrees along Spain of the Bologna process, also known as the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The study was divided into two surveys. The first survey consisted in an updated version of a previous one performed six years ago for comparison purposes. The main results were used to identify some key topics about the EHEA implementation along these years. The second survey involved new questions focused on the key topics identified in the first one. The main contribution of this paper is to offer a clear vision of the development of the EHEA in Engineering in Spain. It gathers the opinion of engineering professors related to which objectives of the EHEA have been met and which have not, and if it has really been worthwhile and our engineers come out better prepared than with the previous system. The findings of this study, as a main conclusion, show a general agreement about the lack of resources and support and the many different views about what Bologna indicates. Therefore, the need arises for a debate, not only in Spain but also in the EHEA, about the advantages and drawbacks of the Bologna process, and its possible improvements.

Cloud Computing is a breakthrough paradigm and even more a key aspect for the digital transformation of companies, the Public Administration and Society. The IN-CLOUD project, funded by the European Union, aims to train and qualify professionals able to introduce and manage cloud-based services and technologies in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Public Administrations. Among all the outcomes of the project, a smart open online tool has been designed for adaptive education. The tool is able to assess the needs of each different user and to propose a customized learning path, optimally fitting his/her didactic needs and expectations.

Educational technology is very powerful. It allows not only to overcome distance and time, but also to enhance interaction in face-to-face settings. In this session of the eMadrid network, we will present how educational technology can boost education, not only in the large, but especially in the small, in the classroom. We will also show how one can influence and improve the other.

Robotic Education is becoming very popular these days. Simple robots are being used within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Education as a powerful tool which eases the way to teach STEM knowledge. Additionally, Robotics also provide an attractive manner to transform boring concepts into an amusing learning process. Along this paper, a new way to use robotic is presented. Instead of using robots in classrooms or remote laboratories, the proposal is to use robots at home. Currently, there are some alternatives on order to introduce educational robots at home. Along this article, Crumble is presented as a tool which can be used with the aim of deploying STEM knowledges at home joining adults and children.

This paper describes how the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) is currently sharing its educational experience on collaborative labs environments with an Argentinean University: the Santiago del Estero National University. This experience takes place within a wider framework provided by the VISIR+ project, which aims to define, implement and evaluate a set of educational modules following an Enquiry-based Teaching and Learning Methodology supported by the VISIR remote lab.

The purpose of this article is to study the dynamic reconfiguration in FPAA and, because of its potential, its academic applications. State driven and algorithmic reconfiguration methods have been considered during this work. Since these devices are not as well-known as FPGA, it is interesting to study its characteristics and abilities. The algorithmic method has been developed, obtaining conclusions about its use in education for technical and non-technical fields.

Presents the introductory welcome message from the conference proceedings. May include the conference officers' congratulations to all involved with the conference event and publication of the proceedings record.

A dedicated methodology for the production of MOOC videos has been implemented within the IN-CLOUD project, to guide all the partners, participants, and stakeholders, who will have to record them. In this case, the expertise needs have been achieved by the design and implementation of online courses for both open education (OCW and MOOC) and formal life-long learning technical courses. This paper suggests best practices for MOOC video production, including the basic principles of image language, the most common mistakes made when producing a first video, and the narrative structure.

The appearance of MOOCs has boosted the creation of educational material for use in all possible contexts. However, this material is often created without much thought and without proper tools and methodologies. Much more attention should be placed on the design of educational material, since this is the basis for a successful learning experience. In this special session, we report about several interesting approaches towards the design and creation of educational material that range from the call to the definition of a discipline of Courseware Engineering, to a methodology for video recording, another one for the creation of smart adaptive content, tools metrics for teaching computational thinking, the integration of OERs, and the design and application of game-based material.

The arrival of new electronic devices and high-speed Internet connections have provoked a revolution on the Web design, introducing new concepts as responsive web and OneWeb. Web developments should be able to adapt to any device. Applying these concepts it has been created a web application called "Formulas App", which is a perfect complement for enriching learning scenarios, mainly dictated to science fields such as physics, mathematics or electronics. Such application provides added value to virtual and remote laboratories, PDF files, videos or education tools, such as quizzes, forums or chats. In addition all of them could be integrated inside Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and create complete and efficient learning scenarios, scaffoldings.

The aim of this paper is to summarize the Work in Progress related to the design of a Collaborative Robotic Educational Tool. This tool arises to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) educational programs for school students. The design is intended to cover different specifications such as: scalability, modular capabilities, reconfiguration possibilities and compatibility with the aim of promoting the innovation and the motivation of the students during the learning process. Furthermore, the main objective of the mentioned platform is focused on getting a cost effective tool which can be included easily within educational institutions with a low budget restriction. This platform is intended for students which are able to use textual programming languages. Furthermore, the platform is expected to cost below 100 euros.

Reputation systems have been showed as effective mechanisms for capturing and extracting the global view a society has about some entities. Traditionally, these systems are based on capturing users' opinions through quantitative evaluations given by numerical ratings. However, it has been demonstrated that mapping opinions to numerical values might entail biased problems, skewing the reputation of some entities. In this work, we present our proposal for dealing with such problems, based on capturing opinions through comparative evaluations. Besides, we state that this mechanism can be successfully applied in MOOCs, in order to estimate the reputation of learning resources, allowing us to provide students/users with better resources.

International audience

InnoEscuela is more than a learning experience, a programmed methodology to implement courses related to Technology and Computing which follows an innovative way of teaching. The methodology focuses on Project-based learning and team work. Students organize themselves in teams which are called innovative enterprises and they have to decide to create a solution to a social disadvantage, technical problem, or any other kind of need they perceive. That's why the core of the courses is focused to practice the whole Technological Innovation process.

It is important to bring engineering to young people, and it is better to do so at an early age. In this case, the goal is to show children aged 10-15 years how electromagnetism works, and how we can find it in common tools that surround us. To do so, we are developing a remote laboratory that will be used in the sessions of science and technology in a school. Concept of electromagnetic crane has been chosen because a crane is a common tool. It is an object used in construction and in factories. Using electromagnet power to move metal objects is also a common concept that children can understand. Using these tools as an example, we seek to bring science to everyday life and promote the interests of children and young people in engineering and technology. The aim is to encourage them to seek education in engineering programs in the future, and teach them to understand and appreciate how important technology is. Initially, the laboratory will move left and right in a circumference of 350 degrees and permit up and down different preselected masses. Also, students can increase or decrease the voltage of the electromagnet to raise masses. The entire system will be accessible remotely by the student who will be able to move the crane, activate or deactivate the electromagnet, and lift or take down the masses. At the same time, the user interface displays the image of the laboratory and a graph showing the relationship between the power and its capacity to lift the mass every time the student applies voltage to the solenoid. All of this will allow us to see the effect that the applied voltage has over lifting the mass. This work in progress is associated with different learning environments to adjust the experience at different ages which range between 10 and 15 years. The students will interact with the remote laboratory from their homes, but also, the laboratory can be used in the classroom taking advantage of the data displayed through the user interface. Another objective is to show how engineering and science allow us to control remote objects and measure their effects through technology. Planting in students the seed of curiosity may be a good way to arouse the interest of future engineers.

An Industrial Electronic discipline, involving different topics and technologies was designed to improve the sequence of activities within the available time and learning resources. The b-learning new methodology, applied in the University of Vigo, Spain, is composed of lectures, self-study sessions, quizzes, design problems, emulations, and laboratory sessions, integrated to achieve a better pedagogical environment. Most of the resources are available online without time restrictions, thus providing the students the opportunity to choose where and when they can learn, interact with the emulators, the remote laboratory and self-evaluate. Five flexible and powerful emulators have been developed for the buck, boost, buck-boost, forward and flyback converters. Emulation sessions provide a fast and easy path to understand the required concepts. The laboratory sessions are implemented by means of existing automatic test equipment (ATE), drive by a dedicated online server with new specific custom made software. The students provided positive evaluations of the methodology, and achieved a better degree of knowledge acquisition. Nowadays students from the University of Minho, Portugal, are also using remotely the set of resources available. The future work on this methodology will integrate the resources developed in both universities, to include more aspects of power electronics converters.

MUREE project aims at the development of courses for training specialists about renewable energy production by combining face-to-face learning with on-line attendance. In this sense, remote laboratories are nowadays essential for distance education, even more within MUREE project, since Jordan students are not able to use face-to-face traditional laboratories due to their different physical location. These remote laboratories can be employed by instructors within their virtual classrooms, so that students can carry out their on-line experiments from anywhere and at anytime. For MUREE project, remote laboratories are seen as pedagogical elements that must be fully-integrated into a the learning/teaching process. Therefore, this work focuses its attentions toward the integration of remote laboratories into Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and, additionally, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.

The creation and publication of utilities as services (the most widely known being Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS, Platform as a Service, PaaS, and Software as a Service, SaaS) has been a hot topic of research and development for the recent years. They allow easy creation and deployment of infrastructures and applications which increase the versatility and usefulness of the Information Technology (IT) budgets of institutions that implement them. Therefore, this paper proposes the development of Laboratories as a Service (LaaS), which allow users of remote laboratories create versatile experiments adapted to their needs. These will be based on the deconstruction of remote laboratories, creation of clients, and selection of a container. An aeolian laboratory based on the Lego Mindstorms robotic kit is used as an example.

Technology surrounds us wherever we look, nonetheless it is necessary to facilitate its use in places where a greater public can enjoy, know and learn with it. Techno Museum and Go Lab projects are focused on this goal. As a first prototype to bring technology closer to young students and schools, UNED has developed a Arduino based smart device that facilitates the integration of remote laboratories in learning scenarios. Initially, the Arduino smart device was designed for robotics laboratories, but finally it was decided to expand it to other laboratories. The current prototype is called RGB led: “The color of the light” laboratory. This paper presents its use by teachers and their potential applications as a tool to bring technology to schools and young people who tomorrow will become engineers, scientists and curious citizens.

The lack of tracking and storing capabilities for the results of web-based learning activities is an issue that remains unsolved. Transitions or interactions defined by teachers through a set of conditions still require programming skills that stay far beyond the desired final results. In addition to this, authoring tools should be powerful enough to let lecturers generate contents which are high-quality, interactive, and tuned to each student's cognitive preferences and progress. Availability and processing capabilities, or motivation, relevance, etc., must also be aspects to address in this context. For these reasons, this paper aims to review the existing web application authoring toolkits focusing on distance education. In particular, we analize their main features, requirements and issues, as well as the most promising areas for future improvemenst in this field.

This paper describes the design, development and first results and impressions of a novel Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on industrial electronics practices. This was possible by implementing a state-of-the-art remote laboratory within the MOOC to allow online delivery of such practices-which makes this MOOC a first of its kind. Thus, the core of the MOOC is the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) and the experimentation carried out on it. A preliminary discussion on the design and structure of the MOOC is presented, based on the learning analytics of the MOOC platform and the operations record stored by the remote laboratory. The students' profile interested in this kind of MOOCs and their needs for getting advantage out of the remote laboratory are also considered in the discussion. The conclusions will result in modifications in this MOOC for a re-edition and the evaluation of the convenience of an advanced new MOOC.

The evolution of Web 3.0 and consequently eLearning 3.0 have demanded a major change of the way learning objects are provided and implemented. It is foreseen that learning objects in eLearning 3.0 should be interoperable and easily discovered, and will represent any kind of virtual or physical object. Several approaches attempted to implement remote Laboratories as a Service (LaaS) in order to achieve such interoperability and to allow their integration into heterogeneous educational systems for pedagogical purposes and for more convenience, as well as, their coupling and mashing up with other learning objects in order to yield a scaffold and rich educational environment. This paper provides a broad study on the available middleware solutions for service-oriented remote laboratories implementation, emphasizing the pros and cons of each and the upcoming challenges in developing service-oriented remote laboratories.

Development of virtual/remote laboratories is a common task involved in the design of course's assessments (in engineering disciplines). The deployment of these laboratories must manage several aspects related to the real use of them, as user's authorization and access, tracking of usage information, loading/saving data from experiments and so on. These features must be implemented by developers in a particular way for each laboratory. This paper shows how these services can be used automatically, with no development, using the RELATED management services. The deployment task consists of making a connector to the RELATED framework in order to consume these services. A full example is shown, describing the steps followed to integrate a previously developed low cost laboratory (based on a Lego system).

In the field of Engineering Education, performing practical experiments is essential, as an accompaniment to magisterial classes, in order to enforce theoretical and practical concepts. This task is much more difficult in distance education since students attend mainly to virtual classes. Therefore, the use of remote laboratories can help minimize this inconvenient. In addition, remote laboratories may help teachers to prepare suitable evaluation on-line experiments, in similar conditions if students were physically in the real laboratory, on the other hand, remote laboratories can be a good complement to real experimentation, as a preparatory step, preparing them to face similar tasks in the immediate future. Accordingly, the principal objective of the European TEMPUS project entitled "Modernizing Undergraduate Renewable Energy Education: EU Experience for Jordan", which supports this work is the development, integration, accreditation, and evaluation of a renewable energy course in the context of engineering degrees from several universities in Jordan. This project follows the guidelines proposed in the Bologna process, and considers the previous experimentation with low-cost renewable energy equipment in order to allow us to study the best approximation of remote laboratories. This is a previous step before addressing this task with complex and expensive equipment.

There are many tools that enable the development of the augmented reality (AR) activities, some of them can even create and generate an AR experience where the incorporation of 3D objects is simple. However AR tools used in education are different from the general tools limited to the reproduction of virtual content. The purpose of this paper is to present a learning environment based on augmented reality, which can be used both by teachers to develop quality AR educational resources and by students to acquire knowledge in an area. Common problems teachers have in applying AR have been taken into account by producing an authoring tool for education which includes the following characteristics: (1) the ability to incorporate diverse multimedia resources such as video, sound, images and 3D objects in an easy manner, 2) the ability to incorporate tutored descriptions into elements which are being displayed (thus, the student is provided with an additional information, description or narrative about the resource, while the content gets adapted and personalized), (3) the possibility for the teacher to incorporate multiple choice questions (MCQ) into the virtual resource (useful for instant feedback to students on their understanding, it can be useful for the student to know what are the most important points of that issue and for the teacher to assess whether the student distinguishes different concepts) and (4) a library of virtual content where all resources are available in a simple and transparent way for any user. In this study ARLE is used to add AR technologies into notes or books created by the teacher, thereby supplementing both the theoretical and practical content without any programming skills needed on the designers' behalf. In addition to presenting system architecture and the examples of its educational use, a survey concerning use of AR amongst teachers in Spain has been conducted.

Educational remote laboratories are software and hardware tools that allow students to remotely access real equipment located in universities as if they were in a hands-on-lab session. Federations of these remote laboratories have existed for years, focused on allowing two universities to share their equipment. Additionally, the integration of remote laboratories in Learning Tools-LT-(Learning Management Systems, Content Management Systems or Personal Learning Environments) has been achieved in the past in order to integrate remote laboratories as part of the learning curricula, being part of the practice exercises or even as a tool of evaluation. An cross-institutional initiative called gateway4labs has been created to perform this integration through federation protocols. In this contribution, this initiative adds support for OpenSocial as a new protocol for Learning Tools (in particular, for EPFL Graasp), as well as for the iLab Shared Architecture (in addition to WebLab-Deusto and UNR FCEIA laboratories already supported). Supporting OpenSocial opens a number of new technical and organizational challenges since public labs should be supported without registering students, teachers or schools. The focus of this contribution is to show these challenges and how they are tackled in the proposed open source implementation.

The last few decades have seen advances in communication and computer networks and the evolution of programming languages. New e-Learning resource have emerged and enabled the usage of learning methodologies such as blended and distance learning. These "new" e-learning resources are called Open Educational Resource (OERs) and cover a wide range of materials, such as online video and audio. These OERs can be stored in repositories and reuse by different students and institution. This Article presents Open iTunesU application service. Open iTunesU is a digital content store, developed by Spanish university for distance learning, which allow some professors to create new educational resource and to search and reuse existing OERs. The paper is focused on describing the development, implementation and use of this tool by some professor around the Web.

In this paper we focus on the achievements of eMadrid initiative in some fields of technology-enhanced learning, mainly involving the improvement of the mechanisms for open educational content retrieval from Internet, considering Internet resources as potential learning objects. Also we facilitate the integration of remote laboratories and external tools in virtual campuses architectures supporting enriched capabilities and describe a way to cluster and identify learner weaknesses using a learning analytics approach in combination with the item response theory.

The use of educational games in an academic context seems to be a superb alternative to traditional learning activities, such as drill-type exercises, in order to engage 21st-century students. Consequently, this work tries to raise the following objectives: analyze the effectiveness of game-based learning, characterize game elements that may contribute to create playing experiences, comprehend how different player types interact with games and, finally, design interactive games which may create challenges, set goals and provide feedback on progress while motivating learners to study physics and chemistry in a foreign language in the second cycle of Secondary Education (4thE.S.O. that corresponds to the age of 15-16 years old). Specifically, we have used several Web 2.0 tools (Hot Potatoes, Scratch, What2Learn and SMART Notebook 11) and applications (Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel) in order to create the games; and these games are based on the successive contents: laboratory safety, laboratory equipment, stoichiometry, atomic structure, electronic configuration, the periodic table, forces, motion and energy.

The expansion of the application of remote laboratories, along with the shift from eLearning 2.0 towards eLearning 3.0, have raised many implementation issues and demanded several considerations in their architectural design, which has long been a missing topic in the literature. In response to these needs, we realize a literature review on the common encountered hardware and software implementation issues nowadays, in order to provide a generic model for developing and implementing modern remote laboratories suited for a wide spectrum of application categories, as well as, for next generation educational systems.

Nowadays, a large number of online laboratories are available and deployed throughout the world. Most of them are sponsored by universities and often only used by their home institution, because they tend to be dedicated to the needs of their creators. However, in many cases these labs provide successful experiences and other teachers would wish to incorporate them into their classroom activities and to embrace Learning-by-Experience methodologies. Currently, they cannot do that effectively without first tailoring the lab experience to their own teaching style and the educational background of their students. This can be a complicated affair, due the closed nature of many online labs and the steep learning curve of the few tools that allow customization. This paper describes the work on an application builder, named App Composer, which aims to make it easy for school teachers to create their own customized applications from existing ones. Different customization levels are provided, each one powered by a different type of composer. For instance, teachers will be able to easily translate an application into a new language, or to start with a template and create a customized version of an application. The App Composer makes use of Graasp and Open Social - a widely-used, interoperable and open technology.

Bilingual English education is increasing in Spain, and especially in Madrid Region. The number of Universities, High Schools and Primary School is higher each year and the demand from Society about this kind of education has made the amount of students involved to grow up exponentially throughout the last decade. In the present paper, the experience in the last two years in the department of Technology of Institute “Ramiro de Maeztu” is described in relation with the technical education of the students attended. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is the methodology applied to common bilingual subject, but in the case of pre-engineering studies, the methodology is combined with a new perspective of Technology subject focused in innovation and entrepreneurship.

A vast number of learning content and tools can be found over Internet. Currently, most of them are ad-hoc solutions which are developed for a particular learning platform or environment. New concepts, such as Widgets, Smart devices, Internet of Thing and learning Clouds, are ideas whose goals is the creation of shareable online learning scenarios over different devices and environments.

This paper shows the results of a study carried out by the IEEE-Education Society Spanish Chapter on the state of implementation of the Bologna process in engineering degrees along Spain and the opinion of teachers about the main aspects of this implementation. These include the implementation of new learning methodologies (problem-based learning, collaborative learning, project-based learning, etc.), resources, assessment criteria, workload of students and teachers, the support of each university for the EHEA implementation, and the general satisfaction (or not) about the EHEA. The aim of this paper to contribute to a reflexive debate, not only in Spain but also in the international community, about the advantages and drawbacks of the EHEA implementation in engineering education.

This special session presents a new European project, Remote-labs Access in Internet-based Performance-Centered Learning Environment for Curriculum Support (RIPLECS). The project is carried out by five European partners and is aimed to deliver an official, online, and labor-oriented master degree program, conducted by the project partners, in Information and Communication System (ICS). The program addresses the labor market needs and tackles the deficit in graduate professionals. On the other hand, it copes with the predominant students' lifestyle. The administration and organization of the program is entirely carried out online through a platform DIPSIEL that was initially created by the project partners. Remote laboratories are well integrated in most of the master's subjects, which makes the program unique of its kind. Each partner contributes with at least a subject and access to a remote laboratory. In is session, the project is described outlining the main objectives and the contribution of each partner.

This paper reports on a new designed electronics practices with the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). The proposed practices encompasses many common electronic circuits for electronic circuits related subjects within the undergraduate engineering education as well as for the postgraduate degrees and the vocational training courses. A new range of components and black boxed circuits have been added to VISIR such as inductors and converter circuits. This paper shows the configuration of the VISIR's switching matrix and provides a case study with results. The proposed practices are aimed to be conducted online as en essential task of the subject “Power Supplies for ICT Equipment”; a subject delivered by the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (DIEEC) of the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) within a new European online master degree program in Information and Communication Systems (ICS) in which UNED is a partners along with other four European university partners from different European countries. Remote laboratories forms an integral part of all master's subject in order to foster experimentation and to prepare qualified and skilled graduates. The proposed practices covers most of the subject's content and are totally administrated and delivered online in accordance with the master's objectives.

One of the key issues in the education field is the acquisition of skills. This practical knowledge was usually acquired through traditional labs or standalone simulation programs. The World Wide Web and the advance in web programming language have allowed teachers to create online learning applications, such as virtual web laboratories which can be displayed by Web browser, at any time and everywhere. Currently, a large amount of virtual Web labs can be found in the World Wide Web, and these are able to cover a wide range of educational fields such as physic, chemistry, electronic, medicine, mathematics and languages. This paper describes the process of searching of these laboratories and their packing in Sharable Content Object, following the e-learning standard called SCORM.

The ability for accessing learning tools at any time and from anywhere is highly increasing. Technologies such as Internet and mobile devices provide universal integration of teaching and learning. For scientific or engineering subjects, the use of real resources through on line laboratories is another step towards bringing the students to the practical laboratory sessions. These platforms show how teacher and student share a common work space in which they work together to solve problems. UNED (Spanish University for Distance Education) is working on the development of techniques that facilitate the building of remote laboratories and their access, both for students and for teachers. Current experience shows that the interaction of the students with these tools makes them more receptive to learning, regardless of their age. It also helps them to understand more easily abstract concepts in engineering and science subjects, associating these abstract concepts with daily life. It is also relevant that students can commit mistakes without any real risk. Moreover as the system will facilitate the building of customized reusable laboratory practices for teachers, these will be motivated to use them in their classrooms whenever possible. Both effects reinforce learning and reaffirm the position of teacher-student couple.

Until the last decades, students of distance learning universities had to go to traditional and physical laboratories to acquire practical knowledge and skills. Currently, thanks to the advances in communication and computer networks and the evolution of programming languages, new eLearning tools have emerged that enable the usage of learning methodologies such as blended learning and distance learning. One of them is the remote Web laboratory. A remote Web laboratory is an application which allows students to work with real hardware or instruments. To do this, students only need a computer with an Internet connection. However, emerging technologies and other hardware such as mobile devices, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, require the design of different models to support innovative learning experiences. For this reason, remote labs are being reconsidered to smart device paradigm. Physically, the considered smart device is made of the junction of a controller (computer server) connected to physical equipment on the one hand, and to the Internet on the other hand. This paper describes the process to translate a “traditional” remote Web lab into a set of smart devices which are able to work together in the cloud and the Internet of Things.

Educational remote laboratories are a software and hardware tool that allows students to remotely access real equipment located in universities as if they were in a hands-on-lab session. Their integration in Content and Learning Management Systems (CMSs or LMSs) has been an active research topic for years, supporting mainly ad hoc solutions. A notable exception has been the use of federation protocols -commonly used for sharing laboratories from one university to other-, for actually sharing laboratories from a remote laboratory system to a C/LMS. This approach opened new doors in the simplification of the process, since it did not require the remote laboratories to make any type of change. The focus of this contribution is to provide a solution to decrease the number of functionalities required for creating an integration by providing a software component that reuses them. As shown in the contribution, this component has been implemented and two remote laboratory management systems (which provide access to multiple remote laboratories) are already supported, and a third one is under development. In the C/LMS side, all the LMSs supporting IMS LTI are supported, and HTTP APIs are provided for being supported by other systems. Indeed, the contribution describes its support in the Joomla CMS and in the Moodle 1.9 and dotLRN LMSs which do not support IMS LTI. The solution, called gateway4labs, is an open source initiative which targets to be used in production.

On-line laboratories (virtual or remote) are widely used in experimental engineering subjects as part of the learning process. In order to develop these laboratories, a development framework called RELATED (Remote Laboratories exTendED) is used by the Communications and Control System Department of the Spanish University for Distance Education of Spain (UNED). This framework defines a structured and methodological development procedure, allowing the students the generation of their own laboratories. Once the laboratory is developed (based in its components), students have to configure their own computing resources in order to make their labs available. However, several problems must be faced by students in the “deployment” of their labs: network configuration, hardware availability, and so on. So, in order to solve these problems, an automatic system based on cloud providers is defined to allow students having their own cloud network/resources for their developed labs. This system simplifies the lab deployment and avoids common errors/mistakes in the development of laboratories with RELATED.

This paper presents a new educational system to automatically adapt the evaluation activities to the students' needs in the context of Higher Engineering Education. As an example, a subject focused on the configuration of network services has been chosen to implement our proposal. Therefore, the system will be able to guide each student through the learning process based on his/her particular knowledge-level. In addition to this, specific techniques are needed to dynamically evolve the system depending on the students' progress. In our case, this is analyzed by using data mining techniques. Finally, we show survey results, which illustrate the ease of use and usefulness of the system.

This article presents a study on the application of distributed fault-tolerant real-time control for the parallel operation of single-phase inverters integrated in modular uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) or Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). The inverter controllers run the fundamental control tasks in synchronization with each other to create a replica determinate set. Control of the parallel inverters follows an active load sharing scheme supported over a digital real-time fault-tolerant control layer. Each inverter applies a Smith predictor for delay compensation and a Kalman observer to estimate output current. Thus the set of parallel inverters behaves as an AC source with low output impedance, whereas the output current is shared equally between the inverters, avoiding circulating currents. Variants and extensions of the method are also proposed. The paper concludes by discussing grounds for standardizing a distributed real-time control layer for modular converter systems.

This article first reviews the droop control method for inverters participating in low voltage microgrids, discussing static and dynamic response. Then the paper proposes a droop controller that brings independent actuation of frequency over active power and voltage over reactive power. The method is based on the application of a matrix filter that decouples dynamic actuation and reduces the multivariable system to two independent single input-single output systems. The results of static, dynamic and robustness analysis are given, with a discussion of simulation results. An advantage of this method is that the control loop can be stabilized and tuned by specifics gain parameters that are independent of the droop coefficients and of the coupling impedance of the inverter with the grid. It thus offers maximum freedom and flexibility for adjusting the static and dynamic behavior of droop control.

Harnessing energy from the renewable energy sources is coming to be more and more relevant in the coming years [1], due to this fact power energy companies and manufacturing companies producing technology facilities for the renewable energy harvesting are demanding engineers skilled in this field [2]. As a general answer to that fact, all the universities are adapting their engineering curricula to that demand creating new subjects in renewable energy (RE) technology; those new subjects needs new education tools and this motivate the investigation and creation of software simulation environment specific for those technologies with the goal of engineering education. In the present work it is shown a multi-platform software architecture specially designed for distance learning and with the target to be a complementary tool to the curricula contents of the new subjects in RE engineering with the aim to offer a virtual laboratory able to simulate the most updated energy harnessing systems. Flow diagrams, management, functionality and capabilities of this multi-platform software environment development is explained in the article.

Online learning tools, such as courseware, learning management system, assessment tools, virtual, and remote laboratories are used in blended and distance learning. These online tools, Apart from being able to provide learning activities, allow displaying learning resources such as web pages, pdf or doc files and multimedia contents. This paper describes some online learning tools and the challenges to apply them in distance learning.

This article analyzes the use of wireless systems in learning environments and explains the advantages of these when robots are used for educational purposes in recreational and industrial environments. This article reflects the importance that these tools may have in safety, efficiency and productivity of training in learning and e-learning as well as the motivation that this systems cause on the students.

This paper introduces the development of a Web-based platform that serves as tool to analyze the evolution and necessities of the new technologies in the education of engineering, as well as to evaluate those that finally will have more possibilities to be implanted. This platform gathers the opinion of engineering education experts to create visual comparisons of the results. The analysis offered by the platform is cross-discipline, cross-country, cross-continent, and cross-technology comparisons.

Mobile learning is impacting education using different technologies and methodologies. This article introduces two relevant learning experiences at UNED where new mobile technologies and pedagogical methodologies were applied. The first experience was based on a ubiquitous annotation system, while the second one used augmented reality to create an engaging mobile collaborative and open environment where students were learners and teachers at the same time, publishing content and learning from the content published by other peers.

This paper presents a thorough study on the available lab server software technologies for the design of remote laboratories. The paper focuses on the common outstanding technologies applied for this purpose such as LabVIEW and MATLAB. The paper addresses as well on other solutions such as high-level programming languages, e.g., C/C++ and .NET languages, pointing out the advantages, limitations, and applications of each. This is in order to ease the selection of the appropriate software when designing a remote lab. Furthermore, the paper points out applications in which various technologies are adopted in order to make use of the exclusive features of each. The study is preceded by a brief overview on the main hardware and software components in the construction of today's remote laboratory for engineering practice to emphasize the role of the controller server in the lab operation.

This paper shows the preliminary results of a study carried out by the IEEE-Education Society Spanish Chapter on the state of implementation of the Bologna process in engineering degrees along Spain and the opinion of teachers about the main aspects of this implementation. These include the implementation of new learning methodologies (problem-based learning, collaborative learning, project-based learning, etc.), resources, assessment criteria, workload of students and teachers, the support of each university for the EHEA implementation, and the general satisfaction (or not) about the EHEA. The aim of this paper to contribute to a reflexive debate, not only in Spain but also in the international community, about the advantages and drawbacks of the EHEA implementation in engineering education.

An educational remote laboratory is a software and hardware tool that allows students to remotely access real equipment located in the university as if they were in a hands-on-lab session. Federations of remote laboratories have existed for years: they are based on enabling two universities to exchange remote laboratories directly, without registering students of the latter on the former university. Integration of remote laboratories on Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Content Management Systems (CMS) have also been addressed in the past, enabling institutions to delegate the authentication or authorization of the experiments to the LMS/CMS. However, these integrations are usually achieved in an ad hoc way, integrating each particular laboratory to a LMS/CMS. This contribution studies the use of federation models to integrate remote laboratory management systems in LMS/CMSs, since both approaches (integrating a laboratory on an a external electronic learning tool, and integrating a laboratory on other laboratory) are essentially equivalent. The contribution defines two case studies to evaluate this approach, showing how this integration is achieved on a LMS (Moodle) and on a CMS (Joomla).

Nowadays, the use of remote laboratories is a common feature in order to get students involved in practical experiences. This is particularly important in distance learning environment. The regular practice is to develop a particular laboratory, required by the student competence's curricula. Usually, this involves a lack of methodology or a standard procedure so, new developments must be done to include new laboratories, additionally so many “manual” procedures are required. RELATED (REmote LABoratory Extended) it's used to solve these issues. In this paper, a practical experience of the structured development process of a virtual laboratory, using RELATED framework, will be presented from the point of view of students. This virtual laboratory is a simple signal generator. This signal generator will be used to generate a reference position for the height of the ball of an electromagnetic levitation system in a control experiment. Finally, responses of surveys made by students will be presented, in order to get satisfaction results of using/development of virtual/remote laboratories using RELATED.

Until a few decades ago, face to face classrooms and hand-on laboratories were the common solution for teaching theory and practice. But, new e-Learning tools have emerged and learning methodologies such as blended and distance learning have taken an important space in learning initiatives. Among them are virtual and remote Labs which provide student with a learning environment where can carry out the experiments through Internet and acquire the needed skills to develop his future jobs. This paper describes the importance of virtual and remote labs and their usage in learning scenarios.

Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED) has a great number of students located in different places from Spain, Europe and South America. By this reason, it is necessary to use e-learning tools that make easier learning process of our students. Nowadays, there are many e-learning tools in the World Wide Web, for instance: Learning management systems (LMS), courseware or online laboratories. In this paper we are going to describe the design, implementation and use of an assessment tool developed by Electrical and Computer Engineering Department that is able to work along with other learning systems (for instance a LMS, online laboratories, etc.) with the objective of improving learning processes.

This paper shows the partial results of a survey sent to all the members of the IEEE Education Society around the world about some aspects on the use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in Engineering Education. The main interest of this study was to learn how e-learning functionalities were being used in the field of engineering education. The study covered the most commonly used LMSs, their main functionalities (Content Delivery, e-mail, Tasks-Exercises, Forums, Mailing lists, Exams, Self-assessment, Surveys, Groupwork, Chat, Calendar, FAQs, Wikis, Blogs, Glossaries, Videoconference, Notebook, Whiteboard, Learning Paths, Student Portfolio, Podcast, Student Tracking, and Vodcast), and aspects of their use, such as knowledge levels, training, patterns of use, perception of training proficiency, usefulness, learning curve; teachers' perceptions of the students' use of the different functionalities; institutional support; exams tools, and finally, the main advantages and disadvantages of e-learning use. The objective of this paper is to show the main results of this survey in the use of LMSs, and therefore to contribute to a reflexive debate in the international community about e-learning functionalities.

This paper introduces the use of interactive animations in a blended learning approach for a digital electronics course. These interactive animations help students in the concepts acquisition, thanks to their visual and interactive features. The designed animations include all kind of logic gates (e.g., OR, AND, NOR; NAND, EXOR), Boole's algebra, many combinational and sequential circuits (e.g., coders, decoders, multiplexors, demultiplexors, comparators, synchronous and asynchronous flip-flops, chronograms, synchronous and asynchronous counters, and shift registries). These interactive animations have been embedded in many examples, exercises and auto-evaluation exams, which facilitate the understanding of the different concepts. Besides, these interactive animations have been encapsulated as learning objects and included in a learning object repository. Thus, anyone in the Web can search, find and use these digital resources. Finally, these interactive animations have been used in two different environments: high school and distance learning university. A different methodology has been used in each one of these environments to fit its requirements.

Use of multimedia services has become very important in learning process. This is due to the traditional approach of document based assignments not provide any feature which allows to evaluate some basic competences (oral communications skill, for example). In this paper, the UNED (Spanish University for Distance Education) solution will be presented focusing on user's interaction: lecturers and students. In the first case, the lecturer has to define a task and propose a solution (available only at the end of task availability). This solution is also video/audio based, so the student can learn about it and compare it with his/her solution. The student has several attempts, in order to try better responses and decides which of these attempts will be selected as final response. The whole interaction schema will be presented and how is integrated in the e-learning platform as a usual task (like document based tasks). This integration permits the use of all features of the platform evaluation tool, simplifying the evaluation process and tasks grading (no special procedures are required).

Practical sessions are the backbone of qualification in engineering education. It leads to a better understanding and allows mastering scientific concepts and theories. The lack of the availability of practical sessions at many universities and institutions owing to the cost and the unavailability of instructors the most of the time caused a significant decline in experimentation in engineering education over the last decades. Recently, with the progress of computer-based learning, remote laboratories have been proven to be the best alternative to the traditional ones, regarding to its low cost and ubiquity. Some universities have already started to deploy remote labs in their practical sessions. This contribution compiles diverse experiences based on the deployment of the remote laboratory, Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR), on the practices of undergraduate engineering grades at various universities within the VISIR community. It aims to show the impact of its usage on engineering education concerning the assessments of students and teachers as well.

This project aims to solve the problems of identity authentication of users in online tests. The project integrates a biometric identification module based on techniques of fingerprint recognition in the educational communities and learning management systems where most of the courses for distance education are held. The project aims to cover all the weaknesses that traditionally have the password or user name. The implementation starts from the own fingerprint identification system developed to its final integration in the new environment.

Higher education has undergone a deep change in Europe since Bologna Declaration. One of the main tools to affront this change is through the incorporation of new technologies and learning methods, such as mobile and blended learning. This paper shows new services aimed to provide a personalized and closer education to learners. It will be achieved thanks to the integration of new services into the existing educational environment, giving rise to the concept of service-based learning. This concept is based on the philosophy of re-usable educative objects to create encapsulated and re-usable educative services easily integrated in e-learning platforms.

This paper introduces a generalized solution to support the development and reuse of practical educational scenarios. It is intended to complement the reuse initiatives already proposed for LMS resources, such as LOM, SCORM or IMS. These initiatives are mainly focused in media contents. By the contrary, this proposal is concerned with the tools that can be used in practical educational scenarios: simulators, remote labs, communication tools, etc. It considers the way in which these tools can be described, but also the way in which these tools are intended to be used. At this point, three main issues are supported: authorizations, awareness and interaction. This proposal is part of a more comprehensible development based in the language PoEML. It extends the IMS Learning Design capabilities to support practical scenarios through a generalized solution.

Creating, cataloguing and distributing high quality learning contents requires a significant investment of resources and time. Nowadays information technology applied as a tool in education has drastically reduced these efforts. It makes it possible to share, use and exchange digital documents under certain conditions specified by the author without any cost. Furthermore, the use of standards can improve development and reutilization. Learning objects are the new paradigm developed for spreading knowledge and increasing interoperability through metadata.

The arrival of new technologies to universities creates new situations and problems that must be solved in order to improve the care, support and tutoring provided to students. In many cases, the communication flows between teachers and students place an excessive demand on the teacher’s response capacity. This paper describes a system designed to answer automatically the questions of students, using the existing knowledge stored in e-learning platforms, such as dotLRN or Moodle; indexed in search engines, as Google or Yahoo; or data repositories as wikis.

All the different kinds of education are converging to a blended learning one and a large number of new applications has appeared using educational platforms (LMS, Learning Management Systems). Besides we must have into account the importance of the security in our applications, in order to get a suitable behavior of our system. One of these possible applications would be in the evaluation procedure. This article describes this huge area for Higher Education considering different technologies where biometric technology will be our cornerstone. Our application will be developed in two different scenarios: in traditional and on-line test.

The present paper introduces the creation of an interactive system for university environments based on personalization of services thanks to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The described system is a mosaic application that integrates different services that will allow identifying and locating students and teachers in some areas of a Faculty or Engineering School, as well as offering personalized information such as mails, messages, news, agenda, blogs, etc. The mosaic of services is designed to allow different levels of interaction with the users and different kinds of methods to interact with them, such as voice, touch screens or handwriting recognition systems.

Nowadays there are a great number of universities and organizations working on developing virtual labs. These virtual labs allow students to carry out their experiments and acquire practical knowledge. At the same time these universities are using one or several learning management systems that allow professors to display and organize theoretical content. A good solution is the integration of learning management system and virtual labs. That is what we are going to describe in this paper. We are working on a middleware that allows using the LMS's services together with the virtual labs.

The use of Near Field Communications technology in AmI environments is a further step in achieving our particular proposal of the vision of Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence. This work explores the single use of this technology in order to get context information (partial) and offer services with a minimal interactive effort. Our proposal contemplates a general computational infrastructure. In this work, we put into practice the "touching interaction". We present AmIReG system for using the NFC-enabled cell phone to obtain services in a building.