Publications

@proceedings{808,
title = {Creating MOOC Guidelines based on best practices},
author = {Natalia Spyropoulou and Christos Pierrakeas and Achilles Kameas},
url = {http://library.iated.org/view/SPYROPOULOU2014CRE},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
journal = {6th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies},
pages = {7-9 July 2014},
address = {Barcelona, Spain},
abstract = {Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) constitute one of the most innovative movements within open learning and distance education. As they are constantly evolving they create new learning opportunities in higher education. However, there exist no consolidated approaches regarding the educational material development, the course curriculum development and the course implementation. Therefore, good practices used in several widespread MOOCs, can be followed and adjusted to different demands and needs of each new course and support designers and academic staff during the design, development and implementation process. Towards this direction, a study was conducted with the aim to create MOOCs guidelines based on best practices on three major categories: the educational material which describe guidelines in order to design and develop suitable educational material, the course curriculum concerning MOOCs structure and configuration and course implementation which include guidelines referring to learners support throughout the educational process. For the aforementioned study practices used by popular MOOCs such as Coursera, FutureLearn, Udemy, Udacity, edΧ and Ιversity were investigated and emulated. The resulting guidelines have been used by designers and academic staff to design four MOOCs of Computer Science Course of the Hellenic Open University (HOU) using EAP-MOOC, a MOOC platform developed based on the Open platform edX. The next step is to escalate the use of MOOCs, relying on the guidelines, in additional educational fields of the HOU.},
keywords = {best practices, distance education, MOOCs, open learning},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}

@proceedings{697,
title = {Ontological Modelling for Intelligent e-Learning},
author = {Niki Aggelopoulou and Christos Pierrakeas and Alexander Artikis and Dimitris Kalles},
url = {http://daissy.eap.gr/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Ontological-Modelling-for-Intelligent-e-Learning1.pdf},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
journal = {14th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2014)},
address = {Athens, Greece},
abstract = {The evolution of scientific research as well as the development of the relevant technologies and methodologies in the area of distance learning fall within the scope of the objectives the Hellenic Open University whose mission is to provide distance education at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. In order to develop intelligent e-learning applications, we capture the semantics of the Computer Science course concepts with the use of ontologies, by following a specific methodology to build the domain knowledge ontology. We illustrate our approach by presenting the construction of the ontologies of the Artificial Intelligence Expert Systems module.},
keywords = {artificial intelligence {–} applications, distance education, Lifelong learnig, ontologies},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}

@proceedings{70,
title = {An Ontological Approach in Learning Programming Languages},
author = {Christos Pierrakeas and Georgia Solomou and Achilles Kameas},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-01},
journal = {PCI 2012 – 16th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services.},
address = {Piraeus, Greece},
abstract = {

The learning of programming languages requires the student to develop systematic representations of the lexical constructs and semantic principles of the languages. At the same time, tutors are expected to develop the appropriate training content. In this paper we propose the combination of two techniques to make the above tasks more efficient.  Firstly, we propose to use Learning Objects (LOs), for the organization of educational content. At the same time, ontologies are rich knowledge representation structures that can be utilized for modeling the domain concepts. We then present how we can take advantage of the ontological models for two very popular programming languages – that is Java and C – in an attempt to provide tutors with the possibility to better organize their educational material.

},
keywords = {C, distance education, java, learning objects, ontologies, programming languages},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}

@proceedings{72,
title = {Modeling the Knowledge Domain of the Java Programming Language as an Ontology},
author = {Aggeliki Kouneli and Georgia Solomou and Christos Pierrakeas and Achilles Kameas},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-01},
journal = {11th International Conference in Web-Based Learning (ICWL 2012)},
volume = {LNCS 7558},
publisher = {Springer - Verlag Berlin Heidelberg},
address = {Sinaia, Romania},
abstract = {

Java is a very popular programming language and many study programs in Informatics worldwide include courses particularly designed for its learning. It is considered as the best paradigm for introducing students with object-oriented programming and concepts. Considering Javatextquoterights popularity, we initially make an attempt to model this language by using a quite expressing and rich knowledge representation structure, like is ontology. Our aim is to capture the semantics of Java concepts in a way that would render them utilizable by intelligent e-learning applications. Because the construction of an ontology is not an easy task, we follow very specific steps when building the Java ontology. We then take advantage of an already implemented model describing the structure of learning outcomes and combine it with our ontology, with a view to offer a more effective way in organizing the course of Java in the Hellenic Open University.

},
keywords = {distance education, java, learning outcomes, ontologies, programming languages},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}

@proceedings{637,
title = {Assisting tutors at the Hellenic Open University in the processes of designing, planning, managing and reusing learning activities},
author = {Christos Pierrakeas and Spyros Papadakis and Michalis Xenos},
year = {2009},
date = {2009-01-01},
journal = {European LAMS & Learning Design Conference},
address = {Milton Keynes, UK},
abstract = {

The aim of this paper is to present some early findings of the pilot implementation of Learning Design at the Hellenic Open University (HOU). This study represents the first step of a broader effort that seeks to use learning design tools to support tutors and learners in distance education across our university by charting existing international experience and methodology. This study aims to investigate how active tutors and students at the HOU (Greece) approach, understand and deploy LAMS and the additional support and tools they would find helpful. Such work holds interest for all developers and users of learning design tools. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with Computer Science  undergraduate students, and one tutor who has been using LAMS to support his students in the middle of their first year of distance study. This paper examines the evidence of this case study through a discussion of the issues that emerged from the interviews and a questionnaire from twenty eight students respondents of this group. Students demanded to be tutored on a textquoteleftjust-in-timetextquoteright basis, be given more practical tutorial examples, and that  exercises be interactive, hands-on, with practical support by peers. Tutors interested in adopting learning design as innovating and enhancing the technological support understand, on the other hand, that it is complex, demanding and time consuming.

},
keywords = {distance education, higher education, learning activities, Learning Design, tutors},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}