The UMI-Sci-Ed Platform: Integrating UMI Technologies to Promote
Science Education
Christos Goumopoulos
1,2
, Olga Fragou
1
, Nikolaos Chanos
3
, Konstantinos Delistavrou
1,3
,
Ioannis Zaharakis
1,4
, Vasilis Stefanis
1
and Achilles Kameas
1,3
1
Computer Technology Institute and Press, Diophantus, Patras, Greece
2
Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department, Aegean University, Greece
3
School of Science and Technology, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece
4
Computer and Informatics Engineering Department, Technological Educational Institute of Western
Greece, Greece
Keywords: UMI Technologies, STEM Education, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing, Communities of Practice.
Abstract: Currently, there is a growing research interest on emerging technologies, such as, ubiquitous computing,
mobile computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), collectively mentioned as UMI technologies. The
proliferation of UMI technologies will not only change the way we live but can also offer new learning
opportunities. At the same time, there is an increasing need for skills that are associated with the UMI
domain in the labour market. The Umi-Sci-Ed is an EU project which explores ways to shed new light into
this training aspect by introducing several model educational scenarios that incorporate UMI technologies,
in order to cultivate relevant competences on high school students. This paper reports initial results achieved
in this context. In particular, we give an overview of the key components of the UMI-Sci-Ed platform that
aims to support the activities of Communities of Practice involved in STEM education. Students through a
mentoring mechanism are provided with training material, IoT hardware kits and software tools to explore
UMI technologies through hands-on activities. In this framework, example educational scenarios and the
corresponding UMI applications developed are presented. The hypothesis is that the learning process can be
empowered by using such UMI applications as students are provided with meaningful opportunities to
participate in the learning process such as in terms of building applications that are relevant to the subject
they like and having active interactions within student groups in a way that practical experiences can
provide them a rich context to grasp scientific knowledge. Finally, the results of a preliminary evaluation of
the proposed approach in the context of an educational workshop are discussed.
1 INTRODUCTION
As the quality of school education in science and
mathematics has become an important asset, the
society is actively communicating and cooperating
with the scientific community for the establishment
of responsible scientific practices in order to enable
the structuring of citizen-centric policies (Cavas,
2015). The ultimate aim is to recruit new talents for
science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) domains as well as to fertilize and further
promote excellence. On the other hand, Ubiquitous
Computing, Mobile Computing and Internet of
Things (UMI) are state-of-the art technologies that
emerge both as educational means and as support
mechanism for developing powerful careers in
STEM domains (Delistavrou & Kameas, 2017).
In the meantime analysis of Eurostat data on
STEM employment indicates that in the next ten
years, there will be 8 million new STEM jobs in the
EU (Brzozowy et al., 2017). Consequently there is
an urgent need to establish new learning and training
programs in a more interdisciplinary form which
embraces transversal competences and career
consultancy (Mavroudi & Divitini, 2017).
The Horizon 2020 UMI-Sci-Ed project
(http://umi-sci-ed.eu/) focuses on the investigation
of the introduction of UMI technologies in
education, putting these state-of-the-art technologies
in practice, so as to make attractive the prospect of
78
Goumopoulos, C., Fragou, O., Chanos, N., Delistavrou, K., Zaharakis, I., Stefanis, V. and Kameas, A.
The UMI-Sci-Ed Platform: Integrating UMI Technologies to Promote Science Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0006686200780090
In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2018), pages 78-90
ISBN: 978-989-758-291-2
Copyright
c
 2019 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

pursuing a career in domains pervaded by UMI. In
order to realise this aim, UMI-Sci-Ed provides a
collaborative environment for educational activities,
where technology itself will not star but support the
stakeholders of education, including, the educational
community, the industry, career consultants and
educational authorities and policy makers. To this
end, Communities of Practice (CoPs) will be formed
dynamically around UMI projects implemented at
schools, including representatives of all necessary
stakeholders. UMI-Sci-Ed aims to deliver:
 A set of educational services in the context of
a training mechanism for young students,
containing guidelines for UMI learning under
the CoPs format, roles and structures.
 A set of career consultancy services by
conducting piloting UMI-Sci-Ed activities
and scenarios using CoPs and UMI and
linking the market needs to the project
stakeholders through the UMI-Sci-Ed
software platform.
 An open-source software based learning
environment as a facilitating mechanism for
UMI learning in the science education in
order to support all stakeholders to form
CoPs.
 A range of hardware supporting tools that
includes low cost modular hardware kit and
several peripherals, packaged in handy
suitcases that will be delivered to selected
schools for the fast prototyping of new
artefacts and for the teaching and promoting
the UMI technologies.
All the above are aligned with the open access to
scientific publications and to research data EU
policy and conformed to ethical principles and data
protection legislation based on EU guidance on
responsible research innovation.
The remainder of the paper is organised as
follows. In the next section we present the key
components the UMI-Sci-Ed platform in terms of
the CoPs model adopted, the hardware and software
tools integrated, the on-line services provided and
the portal navigation design. A justification of the
services integrated based on the CoPs theory is
attempted. Next we discuss the approach we
followed to create model UMI educational scenarios
and give example scenarios and UMI applications.
The advantages of the proposed approach are laid
out, especially in the setting of a secondary
education system via a preliminary evaluation of the
approach in the context of a local school. A
discussion on related work is also provided.
2 UMI-SCI-ED PLATFORM
2.1 Communities of Practice (CoPs)
Social networking and its power in shaping a new
dynamic educational landscape of 21
st
century has
become a key factor for emerging teaching and
learning modalities, based on collaborative features.
Closely linked to organizational learning and
Knowledge Management schemata is the framework
provided by Wenger et al. (2002) on CoPs, as
“groups of people that cohere to through sustained
mutual engagement on an indigenous enterprise, and
creating a common repertoire”. The term is based on
legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger et al.,
2002) which emphasizes the informality of learning
through social interaction rather than by a planned,
rather mechanistic process of cognitive transmission.
The message conveyed by the CoPs theory is that
even in apparently routine or unskilled work, there is
a large amount of interaction and sense making in
completing the task(s) involved.
There is an extensive literature on the benefits
and the impacts of establishing and maintaining
CoPs (McDermott, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002;
Snyder & Brigg, 2003), however their value could
be summarized in: a) providing access to new
knowledge; b) fostering trust and a sense of common
purpose; c) generate knowledge and encourage skills
development; d) disseminate valuable information
and transfer best practice; e) initiate new lines of
business including new products and services; f)
decrease the learning curve for new practitioners or
employees; and g) help companies recruit and retain
talent.
CoPs continue to be explored as ways to build
capacity in schools to impact student achievement as
well as organizational practitioners. The model by
Wenger et al. (2002) in this context is based on
social learning; participation is voluntary,
membership can be self-selected or assigned, based
on the expertise or a passion of the topics.
Leadership comes from both formal and informal
leaders while organisation values innovation and
knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing occurs
mainly within the community. Under this model the
designed and developed learning environment had to
incorporate the basic array of CoPs framework tools
to achieve, knowledge presentation, communication
and collaboration; however in our approach, the
strategic decision has been to design a simple but
robust structure supporting CoPs avoiding to finally
structure the educational environment before taking
into consideration members’ interaction and
The UMI-Sci-Ed Platform: Integrating UMI Technologies to Promote Science Education
79

launching of pilot activities. For that reason,
knowledge management and collaboration tools are
incorporated in the UMI-Sci-Ed platform.
In UMI-Sci-Ed CoPs case, a major part is to
inventory existing processes and then refine those
processes through collaboration among UMI-Sci-Ed
stakeholders. The collaborative practices that
practitioners, as CoPs members, learn to use will
enable them to share knowledge and disseminate
best practices within their organisation and other
agencies; UMI-Sci-Ed CoPs are expected to create,
develop and disseminate new tools, systems,
resources based on applications developed via UMI
technologies. For creating and supporting the UMI-
Sci-Ed CoPs we have selected the model by Snyder
& Brigg (2003), as composed by the following
phases: a) discovering the potential, b) coalescing, c)
maturity/growth, d) advocacy/stewaderhip, and e)
transformation. Each stage has a number of
associated goals and activities or tasks. Identifying
issues that the CoPs will address, identifying the
target population, defining the roles and processes of
involving key stakeholders, recruiting participants
and identifying key content for CoPs are important
actions on following the aforementioned stages.
The UMI-Sci-Ed platform, therefore, is
intrinsically grounded on the concept of CoPs. For
the educational scenarios and the corresponding
applications developed using UMI technologies and
discussed in this paper the CoPs model is
demonstrated by the participation of students, their
teachers and mentoring UMI domain experts.
Exchanging of practices and experience,
problem solving activities regarding the design and
development of open software applications based on
IoT toolkits, reflection on current practices and
problems arising throughout the European teachers’
teaching practices, establishing liaisons between the
school and corporate sector through involvement in
projects around UMI technologies have been defined
as basic goals of the recently launched UMI-Sci-Ed
platform to support CoPs activities. High school
students also are going to be involved as future
engineers in designing and developing projects
based on specific educational scenarios; the structure
and format of educational scenarios has been
selected as the springboard for further leveraging
CoPs, triggering interaction among practitioners of
academia, corporate and school sector.
2.2 IoT Toolkit
To support training in the UMI domain a low-cost
hardware toolkit is used. It includes a Single Board
Computer (SBC) with an integrated microcontroller
and several peripherals such as sensors and
actuators. The hardware kit is accompanied by a
programming environment that enables young
students to realize their ideas, putting theory into
practice. Provided hardware kits, packed into proper
suitcases, will be donated to, selected schools for
teaching, educational experts for the development of
educational scenarios, and other stakeholders for
dissemination.
The final hardware kit is composed by: (a)
UDOO Neo Full SBC (https://www.udoo.org/udoo-
neo/), (b) a micro SD card with GNU/Linux OS pre-
loaded, (c) USB Kit for UDOO Neo, (d) a micro-
HDMI to HDMI cable, (e) a breadboard, (f) jumper
cables, (g) push-buttons, (h) a monochrome LED
matrix module, (i) a micro servo motor, (j) a mini
PIR motion sensor, (k) a set of blue, red, yellow,
green, RGB LEDs, (l) a set of resistors, (m) a
potentiometer, (n) an Infrared (IR) LED, (o) an IR
phototransistor, (p) a sensor of temperature and
humidity, (q) a light sensor (LDR), (r) an ultrasonic
ranging module, and (s) a gas sensor module.
The programming environment complements the
hardware toolkit and is going to be used to perform
the activities of the educational scenarios developed
by UMI-Sci-Ed research community. The UDOO
Neo Full SBC is able of operating by either the
GNU/Linux, or the Android operating systems. Its
official operating system is UDOObuntu, a
GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 14.04
LTS, equipped with some added software
components, like the Web Control Panel (WCP).
The WCP utility is accessible via a web browser. It
is designed to help users configure the SBC, develop
basic projects, and explore provided documentation.
WCP supports Ardublockly, a visual programming
editor for Arduino sketches. Students can develop
microcontroller applications by dragging and
dropping visual blocks, instead of typing statements.
Environment’s blocks collection is being enhanced
with extra blocks representing specific components
used in UMI-Sci-Ed educational scenarios.
2.3 Software Platform
In the context of the defined characteristics of the
CoPs framework discussed above such as domain,
community and practice, UMI-Sci-Ed platform tools
had to be aligned with these characteristics so as to
cater for an array of members’ and community’s
needs: e.g., content management, communication
and collaboration. Identifying the body of
knowledge in such an important field as UMI has
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80

been important in the sense of incorporating a
variety of content presentation and sharing tools, in
the repository of UMI-Sci-Ed platform. Coaching
and mentoring processes are also quite important in
the sense of building these through simple but
flexible tools such as collaboration and
teleconferencing tools. The first version of the UMI-
Sc-Ed platform strategically involves simple and
practical IT tools; however, the actual use of the
UMI-Sci-Ed platform environment during the
launched pilot activities is expected to lead to the
environment’s expansion based on already selected
and more sophisticated tools; as time evolves, new
information will be introduced as well as new ideas
and techniques that could be incorporated into the
practice.
Therefore, the software platform
1
offers a
number of services which effectively support the
formation and management of CoPs using
collaboration tools such as forums, blogs, wikis and
access to social media. The platform repository
includes various forms of content such as UMI
projects and results developed by the students,
research results on educational approaches and
methodologies, links to tools for information
extraction, management and diffusion of the
produced knowledge.
The portal is the front-end of the platform
providing an interaction space for all stakeholders.
The approach of a user’s dashboard is followed
(Figure 1) where user’s information is clearly
provided and is associated with relevant content
(created by the user, recent used content, etc.).
Figure 1: UMI-Sci-Ed portal UI.
The “UMI project” content type allows users to
upload to the platform their UMI projects or
download projects created by other groups. Each
UMI project has a number of specification fields to
assist searching and comprehension of the
1
https://umi-sci-ed.cti.gr
corresponding applications: title, tags, short
description, difficulty level (easy, intermediate and
advance are the possible values), learning outcomes,
hardware required for the development of the
project, photos, YouTube video (about the project),
source code, rating (users can rate the project, 1 to 5
scale), other documents (any other files related to the
project), and related content (users can create links
to other content of the platform, related to that UMI
project).
UMI-Sci-Ed software platform is developed
using open source technologies such as HTML,
PHP, JavaScript and MySQL. The core of the
platform is based on Drupal 7, an open source CMS
with a variety of contributed modules and themes
from the community. Platform’s user interface is
based on the Bootstrap 3 theme for Drupal.
Bootstrap 3 themes provide a clean, lightweight and
responsive user interface, so the users can access
platform’s services also from mobile devices.
2.4 Services
Problem oriented project pedagogy (POPP) is a
pedagogical framework that incorporates a series of
integrated didactical principles as the basis for the
design of the learning environment: problem
formulation, enquiry of exemplary problems,
participant control, joint projects, interdisciplinary
approaches, and action learning (Dirckinck-
Holmfeld, 2002). In this pedagogical approach, the
learning is situated, meaning is created from the real
activities of daily living and working, and
knowledge is created in and through working
together with a common purpose. POPP requires
that the participants in the learning environment
engage in a shared enterprise through the process of
problem formulation and solution, and develop a
shared repertoire of actions and discussions. This
framework takes into consideration pedagogical,
technological and sociability issues that are
important in establishing functional CoPs (Barab et
al., 2002). Participants' roles and responsibilities can
vary between central and peripheral, participation
based on their degree of knowledge, interests, and
experience with a particular problem and project. As
such, it is a vehicle for the development of CoPs and
interdependencies among the participants
The UMI-Sci-Ed platform offers services that
are aligned with the POPP framework and support
the goals of many different user roles according to
their requirements as well as the CoPs literature.
Content Management Services. Content and media
sharing are central to the operation of CoPs.
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81

Therefore UMI-Sci-Ed platform supports various
forms of content management from typical file
organization in folders to metadata annotated
resource filtering. Given the large amount of data the
UMI-Sci-Ed needs to handle it is required to provide
the proper functionality to organize and navigate
such kind of content. In UMI-Sci-Ed the following
content management services are supported:
 Management of educational content
 Management of student project specification
and results
 Management of UMI app store
 Management of career
opportunities/advertising
 For all the above categories of content
management metadata editing is a provided
feature especially for large document
repositories.
Besides content management other collaboration
services are evolved around content. Several such
services are included in UMI-Sci-Ed platform:
 Collaborative document authoring
 Collaborative UMI app authoring
 Manage discussion forum content
 Manage blogs/microblogs content
 Manage wikis content.
 Support social bookmarking
 Import on-line content libraries
Project Coordination Services. Here we have
services that implement the project management
module that support the creation of a project,
allocation of tasks including documents (e.g. the
informed consent of the participants) and organising
activities with relevant information. Managing a
calendar of events is mandatory so that all CoPs
members can be informed of scheduled tasks and
find information on previous tasks and meetings.
Each user can add a new event to the platform and
can visit the calendar section where all events are
presented. Access rights can be also defined i.e., for
a new event a user could set the group audience and
visibility properties so that the calendar’s view can
be only seen by members that have access rights.
Evaluation of tasks and project milestones
assessment are also provided. Since the participants
in a project may create artefacts to solve problems of
practice various decision making tools can be used
to assist this process (e.g. rank ideas, establish
consensus, systematically analyse information
through series of steps).
Member Feedback and Research Services.
CoPs workings are facilitated by allowing their
members to provide feedback in the form of rating a
type of content, providing comments, and finding
information according to the ratings and access
frequency of their colleagues. For a large content
repository, like the UMI-Sci-Ed repository, such
feedback can be a powerful service to quickly
discover the most appropriate content (e.g. a UMI
project with specific characteristics and rating) and
assist the comprehension on the details of
development and usage of such a content.
Polls and surveys services are provided to
facilitate participation to the workings of a
community task from a broader group of users.
Different types of questions are supported such as
select options, likert-scale, and date and text fields.
Analysis of the results is also provided (number of
submissions per component value, calculations, and
averages).
Social Media Sites Services. Although content
management systems such Drupal Commons
provide basic services to build social networking
capabilities within the UMI-Sci-Ed platform
mainstream social media such as Facebook and
Linkedin could also be exploited by CoPs for their
collaboration and interaction. As a design decision, a
mix of both worlds can bring more benefits where
the basic activities are supported by the platform and
in addition some discussions and activities are
extended into external social networking systems.
Some of the mainstream platforms (e.g. Facebook)
support programming linkages to their systems
through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
to allow custom integration.
Supporting Utility Services.
A number of
supporting utility services are provided in the UMI-
Sci-Ed platform:
Login: Allowing user authentication either in the
traditional way or login via Web-wide authentication
services (e.g. authentication from social networking
sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin).
Existing open standards are used such as OpenID or
OAuth.
Access rights setting: Different roles may have
different access rights on the stored content.
Characterize content visibility: A key feature of
this service is a versatile set of access controls that
facilitates imposing a variety of privacy policies.
The dynamicity of the environment allows for
setting access permissions on a fine-grain level
allowing a post to be shared to a specific group of
users and the next one to be shared with all the
participants of a network.
Notification receive: Notifications are important
for the operation of an active CoP. Various forms of
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notifications are supported such as e-mails, SMSs
and social network notifications.
Web metric reports: Metrics reports provide
information about the ways visitors (members and
non-members) access, use, and benefit from CoPs
content. At the initial stage of evaluating UMI-Sci-
Ed platform, it is important metrics reports to
provide statistics on the number of new members,
total number of page views, average number of page
views per visit, average number of messages posted
per week, total number of messages posted, etc.).
Submit UMI app to execution: Instead of the user
downloading a UMI project, this is an advanced
feature that is supported by the platform’s
middleware where the user can submit remotely the
application to the h/w platform.
2.5 User Interaction Design
User interaction design took into account five key
dimensions which also constitute the evaluation
criteria for the platform’s usability tests during the
pilots:
Navigation: Refers to the specification and
assessment of all the necessary tools and facilities
(e.g., navigation menu, search mechanisms, links,
etc.) that assist the navigation of users through the
UMI-Sci-Ed platform, enabling them to reach the
needed information and services quickly and
effectively.
Organization: Refers to the structure of
platform’s content which is divided into logical and
unambiguous groups. Each group contains related
information. The structure of the portal is made
simple and operational. There are 3 main working
areas: main navigation menu; user’s menu
containing links to login/registration, etc.; and
content area where the actual content of the platform
is presented. The structure of the content enables the
application of simple rules such as the three click
rule (no more than three clicks to access content)
and one click rule (no more than one click to
contribute content).
Ease of Use and Communication: Refers to the
cognitive effort required to use the UMI-Sci-Ed
portal and to the availability of useful information
which facilitates communication with the
administrator and the leaders of the various
community groups. The approach of a user’s
dashboard is followed where user’s information is
clearly provided and is associated with relevant
content (created by the user, recent used content,
etc.). This approach allows easy interaction with the
portal by different groups of users.
Design: This refers to the aesthetics of the portal
design which includes the suitable design of portal’s
areas and pages, and the proper use of photos,
images, fonts and colours. Finally, page layout and
style is consistent throughout the portal.
Content: Refers to the assessment whether the
portal provides the information required by the
users. For example, educational information and
scenarios need to be up-to-date and often updated
with relevant information. The information should
be sufficient and relevant to CoPs needs, e.g. content
is clear and concise, terms are unambiguous.
3 UMI-SCI-ED EDUCATIONAL
SCENARIOS
3.1 Scenario Structure
The use of educational scenarios is quite broad,
targeted at all levels of typical and vocational
training education and training. There are limited
examples of extending STEM curriculum by
employing scenario based e-learning opportunities
using state of the art technologies. Educational
theories support learning approaches that make
learning engaging and meaningful, however the
experientalism approach is linked to improving
student performance. Experientalism is grounded in
the idea that experience is the source of knowledge;
providing students the opportunity to engage with
each other and with science content by experiencing
an authentic scenario. Scenario based learning
provides an important framework for active learning
(Elmore et al., 2003). For successful integration of
STEM education, there are several characteristics
that have to be implemented. The four major
features of STEM education include STEM being
collaborative, hands–on, problem solving and
project-based (Carnegie Science Center, 2014). To
launch orchestrating the learning process the UMI-
Sci-Ed Educational Scenario Template has been
developed; the template as the core instructional
tool, has been designed to encapsulate all important
components of the learning process. In UMI
education we need to design “user experiences”.
Figure 2 presents the UMI-Sci-Ed Educational
Scenario Template components (Fragou et al.,
2017).
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83

Figure 2: Schematic view of the Educational Scenario
Template for UMI-Sci-Ed.
3.2 Educational Scenario “My
Classroom’s Social Panel”
The educational scenario “My Classroom’s Social
Panel” deals with Ubiquitous Computing in the
context of UMI technologies. It is based on active
exploration and adheres to the principles of
reflective learning and peer learning, while further
developing students’ skills and knowledge
acquisition, as well as attitude development. Its
major learning objectives are: (a) the introduction of
14-16 year old students to web development
technologies, (b) the realization of the value of UMI
technologies and ICT applications, and (c) the
adoption of a positive point of view as future
professionals and citizens. Further learning
outcomes are: (a) the orchestration of the
exploitation of digital and printed media to support
and disseminate a cause or project, (b) the
comprehension of the benefits of collaboration and
group work, (c) the utilization of effective work
habits, (d) the appraisal of the potential of web
applications, (e) a hands-on survey of the benefits of
free/libre open source software, in order to cultivate
a positive opinion towards its use.
The educational scenario guides students to the
development and utilization of an artifact that
handles a microcontroller equipped Single Board
Computer (SBC) and a LED matrix module, as
presented in Figure 3. The SBC operates a LAMP
server (running on GNU/Linux, using an Apache
web server, a MySQL database server, and a PHP
scripts pre-processor) which supports polling by
students. SBC’s microcontroller drives a LED
matrix hardware module to display voting statistics.
Figure 3: Block diagram of scenario’s artifact.
The educational scenario is completed in six
two-hour sessions, the activities of which are
described in the following lines. In the first session
the teacher presents a brief introduction to UMI
technologies. Students install an image of system
software on a micro SD card; operate the SBC, and
install the intranet (LAMP) server software. They
confirm the good operation of the implementation
via a trivial web application.
During the second session students install a
prototype web application that serves as a voting
system. They alter application’s source code
accordingly, so that it works properly on the given
SBC and network setup. They operate and test their
voting application. The application allows any user
to vote and see the poll results, by exploiting the
application’s web interface. Students investigate the
applications of peer teams, present aspects of their
implementation and reflect on their experience.
The third session concerns the design of a circuit
that drives a LED matrix module. At first students
use special software to draw the circuit. Later they
construct the LED matrix circuit with actual
hardware. They transfer, parameterize and execute
the source code of a microcontroller application that
drives the LED matrix. They observe other teams’
circuits, present their artifact and discuss about the
procedure in the classroom.
In the fourth session students bridge the web and
the microcontroller applications. They modify the
voting web application’s source code to cooperate
with the microcontroller driven LED matrix, which
now displays positive votes using the matrix’s
LEDs. They test the good operation of the
implementation, observe peer teams’ work, present
their solution and discuss their problems and ideas in
the classroom.
During the fifth session students change their
SBC’s intranet address to an internet address using a
dynamic DNS solution. They decide on a poll
subject and disseminate a prompt to their peers in
the school community, asking them to express their
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opinion by voting. Students reflect by discussion of
this procedure.
The sixth and final session concerns the
collection and analysis of poll data, and the
definition of poll results. Students write a press
release to communicate the poll findings. They
disseminate it through school’s website, social
media, and possibly local media. They close the
sessions by reflecting on all activities.
In the context of this scenario the broad CoPs
schema shaped by researchers, users, teachers and
domain experts intends to provide youngsters with:
(a) project planning skills and problem-solving skills
(apart from the programming skills as presented in
the scenario), (b) acquaintance with the processes
and products involved in the life cycle of a UMI
application as faced in the context of a software
company, (c) implementation of technological,
communicational and working skills involved so as
to perform effectively the role of a designer and
developer in UMI applications, (d) acquaintance
with important problems that UMI developers face
on distributing in a large market scale applications.
3.3 Educational Scenario “Thermal
Radiation Absorption”
The aim of this specific scenario is to explore the
Physics laws and the related theory behind the
absorption of thermal radiation on surfaces of
different colour and material. The students by first
configuring and then using the appropriate hardware
and software components are able to measure,
observe and explain the details of the different
behavior of materials regarding thermal radiation
absorption.
Its major learning objectives are: (a) to bring
about problem solving skills that are connected with
UMI technologies and STEM practice, (b) to
elaborate on synthesis, analysis, critical thinking and
decision making, (c) to provide an insight on how
UMI technologies could be used as a means for
updating educational practice, and (d) to support
students in developing UMI projects through
experts’ feedback on specific problems.
The educational scenario and the UMI
application developed can be examined from 4
different views:
One view is the educational which is related to
the planning and implementation of the school
activity with the selection of the topic, the
presentation of the science theory behind the topic,
and the organization of the course structure. Another
view is the technical view which has to do with the
UMI application development process in terms of
hardware and software artifacts and involving an
engineering approach which includes phases such as
problem statement, requirement analysis, design,
implementation, and testing of the solution. A third
view is the design of the experiments on the science
topic, involving the procedures, instructions,
execution steps, observations and discussions. The
final view is the research view which involves the
hypothesis statement, design of questionnaires, their
completion by the students, the data analysis and the
conclusions drawn.
One of the experiments designed included the
use of a desktop incandescent lamp as a heat source
and paperboards placed underneath the lamp (Figure
4).
Figure 4: Educational Scenario “Thermal Radiation
Absorption” software and hardware components.
The distance, position and angle of the material have
to be specific according to the instructions and
experiment scenario. Under the material a thermistor
is placed to monitor its temperature. From the
platform UI students can configure the experiment
variables and parameters and give the command to
start the measurements. When the lamp is turned on
a timer is set typically to 1 min or more depending
on the scenario. During the experiment the students
are able to observe the temperature graphs displayed
depending on the behavior of the material they test
each time. So they have the opportunity to make
observations, to compare, to reflect or to ask
questions and discuss with their teacher.
The open source s/w platforms used to develop
the application include:
 Node-red which is an IoT s/w platform that is
used to integrate devices, APIs and on-line
services with applications. We used this
platform to build the user interaction
environment of the application, to control
devices like the lamp, and to gather values
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from the sensors in order to store them in the
DB.
 The influxDB which implements our
database to store the sensor measurements.
 The Grafana, which is the s/w tool used to
create diagrams and graphs in order to
visualize the sensor measurements.
Figure 5 shows the system deployment diagram
with the main nodes and their connections as well as
the deployment of the software components. The
diagram shows that the microprocessors are
connected to breadboards through the General-
purpose input/output connections, the laptop can
access the microprocessors through the VNC
protocol, WiFi access is available, while all nodes
can reach the Internet via a tablet and a 4G
connection. There is also a machine-to-machine
communication between the two microprocessors
and between them and the tablet by using the MQTT
Protocol and a mosquitto broker.
Figure 5: UMI application deployment diagram.
4 PRELIMINARY EVALUATION
A preliminary evaluation of the approach presented
took place in a 2-day workshop in a secondary
school in Athens with the participation of 14
students (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Evaluation process data.
The first day was introductory and included
activities such as setting up the equipment,
presenting the subject of the course, exploring the
features of the IoT and middleware platform and
configuring the UMI application to be used in the
experiments.
The students were asked to answer a pre
workshop questionnaire. The purpose was to assess
students’ previous knowledge about the course topic,
their experience, and relation to technology, as well
as attitudes and receptiveness concerning the use of
UMI technologies in formal education. The students
replies showed that: a) all of them had adequate
familiarity with technology; b) but they did not
know much about the microprocessor boards and
had little knowledge about IoT; and c) they had a
positive attitude and expectation regarding the UMI
enhanced educational activity.
In the second day the designed experiments were
conducted and the UMI application was used to
measure, display and record temperature changes
under different conditions and various materials in
order to have a hands-on experience regarding
thermal radiation absorption mechanisms and make
associations with the relevant physics laws.
On the educational part active exploration
techniques was possible to apply in line with the
principles of reflective and peer learning. For
example, the students were asked through
worksheets to explore the factors that affect thermal
absorption i.e., distance of material from the heat
source, material colour/thickness, position angle,
heating duration and amplitude, heat type (radiation,
current, conduction, combination), ambient
temperature, surface/material temperature etc. They
repeated the experiment by changing one factor each
time, measured the temperature and compared the
results to identify causality or correlations. A playful
and participatory approach to increase engagement
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through gamification was also possible. Given
certain task characteristics each team picked the
materials that they believed can satisfy the requested
properties and behaviour, and validated their
hypothesis by using the UMI application. The teams
that reached closer to the specifications won.
At the end of the second day the students were
asked to complete a post workshop questionnaire.
The purpose was to evaluate on the one hand the
robustness of the application in terms of technical or
usage problems that may have been encountered and
on the other hand to assess the students’ impressions
after using the UMI application regarding the
learning process.
The graph at the lower left in Figure 7 depicts
the questionnaire results using a cumulative scoring
scale method (Likert scale 1-5). Almost all students
conveyed a clear benefit in understanding the theory
and its connection to practical use through UMI
applications. They also expressed a preference for
using the IoT toolkit in combination with
configurable software programs compared to
traditional analogue instruments and manual
recordings. We also surveyed whether the students
realized that the approach presented was not
representing a monolithic system serving a single
purpose but a platform that can be adapted,
configured and used in many other Physics
experiments. The majority of the students embraced
that view which justifies the point that such systems
can be accepted as learning tools in school
communities.
In general the students were satisfied with the
UMI application and expressed their interest to
interact with more applications like this. In addition
they found the educational scenario to be helpful, the
tasks performed useful and rated positively the
overall learning experience.
This preliminary evaluation showed that the
UMI approach is promising and can be developed to
a valuable educational tool empowering students
learning experiences. Even with this form of limited
evaluation it was possible to test several aspects of
the UMI-Sci-Ed platform including the versatility of
the IoT toolkit towards supporting the circuit design
and implementation of educational scenarios as well
as the supporting services of the software platform
including delivering of educational material on UMI
technologies, sharing of UMI applications, gathering
and storing experimental data, supporting polls and
surveys and disseminating results and experiences
via social media.
Figure 7: UMI application evaluation results.
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5 RELATED WORK
The multifaceted nature of UMI-Sci-Ed platform to
promote science education creates an intersection
with different tool areas such as online CoPs
management, computer-supported collaborative
learning (CSCL), learning management systems
(LMS) and IoT platforms. Although there is no
complete match of each of the above tool areas with
the target of our platform there are certain aspects of
them that are merged in the UMI-Sci-Ed platform.
Although it is quite frequent that social
networking tools are used to build online CoPs, on
the other hand, it is not common to identify general
purpose platforms that suit the needs of any CoP
(Gunawardena et al., 2009). In this context the
tendency is that CoPs platforms are built on demand
for specific domains, or CoPs members use one or
more different tools according to the task at hand
(e.g. DISCUSS, twitter, YouTube, Moodle, wikis,
and forums).
In response to the popularity of Web 2.0
technologies, LMSs evolved to include features such
as blogs and wikis (Dalsgaard, 2006); it has been
recognized, that the majority of LMSs introduced
friction for instructors, trying to reuse and share
course materials. To adhere to these market needs,
tools for establishing collaboration between software
community members so as to process code or
software development material, have been recently
introduced and developed, such as GitHub (Wu et
al., 2014). Environments as such provide social and
collaborative features in conjunction with distributed
version control. GitHub is a popular Web based
social code sharing service that utilizes the Git
distributed version and control system. The rationale
of circulating educational material and collaborating
on this basis for further developing software
applications is quite important in an effort to
develop a culture of collaboration, transparent and
active, for teachers, practitioners, educational policy
makers involved in this creative and dynamic
process.
Lamer et al. (2017) suggest the use of robotics as
an enabling ICT platform for promoting STEM
education. The multidisciplinary nature of the
robotics field offers the opportunity for young
children to enhance their creativity and problem-
solving abilities. An open framework is proposed
(ER4STEM) to bring together the main stakeholders
of educational robotics i.e. teachers, educational
researchers and providers of educational robotics in
terms of a common ground based on an activity
centered repository. The framework offers different
perspectives and approaches such as learning
through making to trigger the curiosity and interest
of students about science and technology.
Lehman et al. (2015) discuss the use of
HUBzero, an open software platform operated by
Purdue University in US to support scientific
collaboration, for the development of STEMEdhub
which is a tool for collaboration, research and
education in STEM domain. STEMEdhub users can
find resources such as lessons plans, simulations and
publications in the content repository. Moreover,
using search engines they can find the most
appropriate content in terms of topic, field domain,
grade level or rating scores. The hub supports the
concept of groups as the main organization unit to
elaborate on the capabilities of the platform. A group
can define a custom template design for unique view
of the interface and associate key terms with STEM
resources. The use of collaboration tools such as
wikis, blogs, discussion forums, calendars, and
project management allow groups to build various
communities among their members.
The STEM4youth project builds a repository of
educational content and teaching scenarios with a
goal to make science education and scientific career
more attractive for youngsters (Brzozowy et al.,
2017). Various methodologies and tools such as
learning by experiment, demonstrations, social
media and games are employed to present the
scientific challenges in several disciplines and their
impact in everyday life. The STEM4youth approach
emphasizes the social dimension and the career
prospects associated with the science education by
indicating the specific skills that are developed.
IoT platforms like Arduino and Raspberry PI
provide tools through their web portals for creating
and maintaining their communities. Such tools
include forums with topics spanning from hardware
and software to education and tutorials, wikis, blogs,
newsletter, etc. Project repositories created and
documented by the users are also maintained.
Furthermore, Arduino Creative Technologies in the
Classroom, or CTC, is a program focusing on STEM
teaching for students of secondary education in
collaboration with their teachers. The program
provides IoT resources, learning materials and
educational services to enable participants to create a
more hands-on learning experience in the topics of
programming, mechanics and electronics.
Although the UMI-Sci-Ed platform shares
common characteristics and goals with the above
approaches and other online portals that collect and
present STEM educational material and provide
collaboration support to active groups (e.g., Scientix,
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88

eTwinning, Micro:bit and Make World) it is
diversified by integrating under a common
technological environment CoPs management and
the UMI/IoT technical tools to assist students both
acquiring relevant competences and being motivated
in pursuing a career in related domains. On the
operational level, the integration of the UDOO Neo
IoT platform allows to perform remote management
of the device, visualize the data, and trigger actions
as a result of rules on the received data.
Another differentiation of UMI-Sci-Ed platform
is its orientation in instructional design: the
educational scenario as a flexible structure has been
the basis for designing the platform mechanism for
leveraging UMI-Sci-Ed communities. CoPs’
members create groups on the basis of designed
educational scenarios and further negotiate and
experiment on their implementation and splitting in
smaller projects in a variety of educational contexts.
6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
The UMI-Sci-Ed platform aims to bring together
practitioners, students, school teachers, instructional
designers, academics and IT specialists, who
actually are going to act as members of the UMI-
Sci-Ed CoPs, brought together on the basis of
participating in on line activities, problem solving
and exchanging reflection and experiences in the
context of educational scenarios that incorporate
UMI technologies, in order to cultivate relevant
competences on high school students.
The hypothesis examined and partially explored
in this work is that the students studying science
topics can be empowered by using UMI applications
developed in the context of model educational
scenarios as students are provided with meaningful
opportunities to participate in the learning process
such as in terms of building applications that are
relevant to the subject they like and having vivid
interactions within student groups in a way that
practical experiences can provide them a rich
context to grasp scientific knowledge.
The work presented here is part of a set of initial
activities that are required to lay the ground for
UMI-Sci-Ed pilot studies. In this first cycle the
expectation is to test parts of the approach in local
schools. Field research will follow in educational
conditions in 5 different countries (Norway, Finland,
Italy, Ireland and Greece) in order to justify the
proposed methodology. The research sample
includes five schools from each country and about
25 students per class.
The participation of the students, the teachers
and the school community members is expected to
produce several outputs. Variables to be analysed
include usability, motivation interest, knowledge and
engagement. Media include surveys, interviews,
observations and cognitive tests.
The collected quantitative and qualitative
feedback elements are going to be analyzed to
construct knowledge about the whole process. An
evaluation framework that will assess the impact of
such activities in terms of learning gains is also
expected.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The UMI-Sci-Ed project has received funding from
the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under grant agreement No
710583.
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