Papers by Prof Avgoustos Tsinakos
European Conference on e-Learning
The ever-evolving information and communication technologies (ICTs) have affected the learners’ p... more The ever-evolving information and communication technologies (ICTs) have affected the learners’ preferences for on-demand and on-the-spot access to information that challenge the traditional classroom practices and call for a reconstruction of curricula. New educational approaches are to be encompassed so as to align with the tech-savvy Generation Z needs and the contemporary digitized world that demands competences and skills for successful and well-informed personal and professional choices. Nevertheless, consumption and creation of new knowledge in the plethora of the new crowdsourced information ecosystem have to be critically accessed, analyzed, evaluated, and leveraged so as to lead to creativity and innovation. This paper is a report of the design of an educational intervention with the intent to enhance students’ media literacy skills in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) secondary education context leveraging immersive technologies. In the first part there is a review ...
Perspectives on rethinking and reforming education, 2018
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Sustainability
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused school closures worldwide and has disrupted nearly 1.6 billion s... more The COVID-19 pandemic has caused school closures worldwide and has disrupted nearly 1.6 billion students across the globe. This has widened existing digital gaps and has caused vulnerable students to be further digitally displaced. In efforts to mitigate this issue, various strategies have been used to cater for the educational digital divide of vulnerable students. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the relationship between access and connectivity of learning and use and exploitation of technology, particularly with regards to iPads during the pandemic. Thus, the present study investigates this scenario by examining the digital educational divide for vulnerable students in the pandemic, in terms of access and connectivity and use and exploitation. A survey was distributed to 518 vulnerable students in schools between the ages of 10 and 15 years old, and results were analyzed using partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings indicate tha...
The Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, Apr 1, 2004
Internet of Things, Infrastructures and Mobile Applications
Proceedings of the 26th Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics, Nov 25, 2022
European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Dec 31, 2022
Vision impairment severely impacts quality of life among adult populations. People with vision im... more Vision impairment severely impacts quality of life among adult populations. People with vision impairment often have to deal with a number of problems in their everyday life. One of them is related with their shopping and after sales experience. They need assistive tools so that they can get information about the products they shop and store in their home. QR codes is a well-known technology that contains a link and directs mobile users to a specified website. This website can include various and multimodal information related to a product that can easily be received through audio from peopled with visual impairments. In this paper we propose a solution for people with visual impairments in order to improve the way they shop. From the company's side, QR code labels are printed and placed on the product's packaging while on the same time a mobile application that supports QR code reading has been implemented. The users, scanning the QR code of a product using the mobile application, can seamlessly be redirected to the product-related audio information. The proposed approach and the implemented mobile application were tested by a group of people with vision impairment in order to assess its usability, satisfaction and intention to use. The evaluation results revealed that people with vision impairment find the provided mobile application useful and easy to use, while they are totally satisfied with the proposed approach, and they intend to use it in the future.
The current paper describes the implementation of an educational game designed to assist students... more The current paper describes the implementation of an educational game designed to assist students’ comprehension on a given topic. The game was developed to operate on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) device, according the fundamentals of student modeling theory and of game based learning. Students’ interactions are enabled, either in their school environment or they can follow the outdoor approach, by creating ad hoc wireless networks form their homes. Students’ performances are monitored by the Student Model component of the game. The teacher is therefore assisted to outline a student model for each student in the class, considering also the outdoor activities of the learner.
Training on issues concerning the administration of enterprises is very wide spread in educationa... more Training on issues concerning the administration of enterprises is very wide spread in educational systems and is requested from most people who want to work for enterprises or to become entrepreneurs themselves. Many Greek universities, institutions and organisations that support life-long learning offer education on this subject field. Greek entrepreneurs nowadays need to face issues that they have not faced before and were not able to predict, due to the current Greek financial crisis. Many of them have studied to the above programs to get the background knowledge for their job, however the great difficulties that they seem to face and the continuous closing of the enterprises demonstrate that the knowledge they got is not applicable and effective to solve the current issues. In an attempt to solve this problem the creation of a blended learning course is proposed to train Greek entrepreneurs on how to practically face their issues. The program will consider the characteristics o...
Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning, 2017
Technological developments of recent years can provide the ability to use innovative techniques a... more Technological developments of recent years can provide the ability to use innovative techniques and tools in education. One of these useful tools is mobile augmented reality, a technology that enables users to enrich the real world with virtual content using mobile computing. Learners with different-abilities (or learner with disabilities) are a growing and significant demographic globally, yet distance education has failed to address their specific needs to create a fully inclusive experience in education. Mobile augmented reality (MAR) and its distinct characteristics provide an opportunity to remedy this situation. This chapter will present three strategies for eliminating systemic barriers in distance education through the added value of MAR. The chapter concludes by summarizing and contextualizing the research, describing the current limitations, gaps in research and exploring key areas for future studies so that MAR technology can reach its full potential for inclusiveness in distance education.
Internet provides access to hundreds of gigabites of information through a variety of wide-area f... more Internet provides access to hundreds of gigabites of information through a variety of wide-area filing, information retrieval, publishing and library access systems. This rapidly growing data volume and diversity in Internet has created significant problems related to the efficiency and accuracy of the information retrieval. To make effective use of this wealth of information, user needs means to locate information. Additionally, information in existing Internet repositories is heterogeneous, inconsistent and sometimes incomplete [Bowman and Danzig and Manber and Schwartz 1994]. This fact increases the difficulty of the above mentioned problem. In the past few years, a number of such resource discovery tools have been created such as: 1) Internet Browsing and Exploring systems, such as Gopher, Hytelnet, Global Network Navigator, 2) Subject - Oriented Search systems, such as WWW, Virtual Library, Yahoo, USENET Frequently Asked Questions Archive, 3) Word - Oriented Search systems, such as Lycos, Web Crawler, Knowbot, Archie, WAIS and have gained wide popular acceptance in the Internet.
The incorporation of online learning tools as a detrimental component of the education of younger... more The incorporation of online learning tools as a detrimental component of the education of younger generations has yet to see an en masse standardized adoption by the public. The primary reason is the lack of an existing platform (or the inability to produce one) that can perfectly replicate the classroom experience. However, the noticeable increase in offerings of such tools and materials over the past few years from both the institutional (universities) and the noninstitutional (private) side could be a sign that the technology is being created so that the concept may well be proven and adopted during the current technological revolution. This paper introduces the most recent addition to the non-institutional part of the movement, an online education platform called The Open Academy. The website at its current state is an accumulation of online lecture videos, slides, exercises and practice exams covering various academic disciplines for college-level students. The paper covers the background and the development of the platform, its purposes and potential future benefits, further development projects currently underway and also potential problems and challenges that may lie ahead.
ABSTRACT Internet and World Wide Web have experienced an enormous explosion recently. With the ex... more ABSTRACT Internet and World Wide Web have experienced an enormous explosion recently. With the explosive growth in the availability of on line information it has become increasingly difficult for most of Internet users to locate and exploit the information avail ...
Education Sciences
The present empirical study investigates, analyzes, and discusses the affordances and limitations... more The present empirical study investigates, analyzes, and discusses the affordances and limitations of an augmented reality (AR)-based educational intervention for the critical digital awareness of secondary school students through a sociocultural framework of instruction. The design of the educational intervention focuses on the empowerment of students’ critical digital skills in the new media produsage ecosystem in parallel with the development of target language skills through content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in a mobile augmented reality (MAR)-based transnational educational setting. This study focuses on examining the usefulness rather than the digital use of MAR from a socio-constructivism perspective with 77 participants from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds and educational settings. More specifically, an investigation of the potential of internalization of new knowledge through immersive-triggered inclusive educational practices is carried out, examining the e...
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2018
The evolution of learning environments is huge in recent years in the fields of mobile, blended l... more The evolution of learning environments is huge in recent years in the fields of mobile, blended learning and telecommunication technologies. Many courses are using VR tools to recreate historic and natural sites, while teachers use VR, guiding students to never before seen historic places.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology
Over the past decade, opportunities for online learning have dramatically increased. Learners aro... more Over the past decade, opportunities for online learning have dramatically increased. Learners around the world now have digital access to a wide array of corporate trainings, certifications, comprehensive academic degree programs, and other educational and training options. Some organizations are blending traditional instruction methods with online technologies. Blended learning generates large volumes of data about both the content (quality and usage) and the learners (study habits and learning outcomes). Correspondingly, the need to properly process voluminous, continuous, and often disparate data has prompted the advent of cognification. Cognification techniques design complex data analytic models that allow natural intelligence to engage artificial smartness in ways that can enhance the learning experience. Cognification is the approach to make something increasingly, ethically, and regulatably smarter. This article highlights how emerging trends in cognification could disrupt o...
Uploads
Papers by Prof Avgoustos Tsinakos
Written by a team of international experts in the field of mobile and ubiquitous learning from 12 countries
Constitutes a unique learning resource for educators and researchers in the field of mobile and ubiquitous learning