A TOOL FOR TIME MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW EUROPEAN

HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

Olga Peñalba, Álvaro J. García-Tejedor, Yolanda Cerezo and J. Andrés Álvarez

Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Crta. Pozuelo-Majadahonda Km. 1,800, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain

Keywords: ICT supporting learning, Blended learning, European Space for Higher Education.

Abstract: The present education model is being modified according to the objectives of the European Space for

Higher Education. One of the main changes is the adoption of the European Credit Transfer System as the

criteria for measuring the workload of learning activities. Teachers should define the learning activities of

their courses so that the global workload of a group of students is balanced along the term or academic year.

And students should manage their time and organise their work to efficiently achieve the learning outcomes.

In this paper, we present a tool that assists both, teachers and students, in time management so that the new

education paradigm can be succesfully introduced. The paper also describes a first experience of the use of

this tool and the conclussions of the pilot test.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Bologna Declaration was an initiative of

twenty-nine signatory European states with the

objective of making European higher education

more compatible and comparable, more competitive

and more attractive for Europeans and for students

and scholars from other continents. Apart from this

common goal, the Bologna Declaration establishes

2010 as the deadline when de European Space for

Higher Education (ESHE) should be completed,

based on a set of specified objectives:

 The adoption of a common framework of easily

readable and comparable degrees,

 The introduction of a system based on two main

cycles, undergraduate and graduate

 The adoption of the ECTS (European Credit

Transfer System) as a compatible credit system

covering lifelong learning activities

 Quality assurance, with comparable criteria and

methods

 Mobility promotion for students, teachers and

researches by overcoming obstacles.

This implies important changes not only in the

organizational aspects of the Spanish university

system, but also in the pedagogical and

methodological aspects of knowledge transmission.

The main difference is that traditional methods

based on teaching must be substituted by new

methods based on learning. This means a significant

decrease in the face-to-face intruction hours, which

must be complimented with online learning and

other alternative activities and methods. This

approach is usually known as blended learning or b-

learning (Marsh, 2003).

For the success of this pedagogical model

(Picciano, 2008) in the context of the ESHE we have

identified two key requirements: on one hand,

students should be able to manage time and organise

their personal work and, on the other, teachers

should collaborate in scheduling the activities and

tasks of their courses so that the global workload of

the students is reasonably balanced along the

academic year or term.

In this paper, we present the Academic Diary, a

web-based tool to help both, students and teachers,

to manage time in order to facilitate the adoption of

the ECTS and the new education paradigm. This tool

has three main objectives:

 To support students in their time and tasks

management,

 To allow teachers and academic managers to

analyse workload distribution along the term for

every group of students, and

 To promote attendance to extra-curricular

activities, such as conferences, seminars, forums,

etc., by scheduling and integrating them in the

Academic Diary together with other curricular

events.

291

Peñalba O., J. García-Tejedor Á., Cerezo Y. and Andrés Álvarez J. (2009).

A TOOL FOR TIME MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 290-295

DOI: 10.5220/0001980502900295

 SciTePress

The next section of the paper analyses different

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

solutions for learning support. Section 3 describes de

main features of the proposed tool. Section 4 shows

a practical experience of the use of the tool in a

university course. Finally, the conclussions of the

work are presented.

2 ICT FOR LEARNING SUPPORT

ICT systems have been introduced in the teaching

activity since long. Examples of this are the use of

slices and other multimedia materials to enhance

learning experience in the classroom, electronic

synchronous and asynchronous communication

tools, like e-mail or chats or forums, the use of

internet to search for and retrieve infomation, etc.

(Tomei, 203)

The major use case of ICT in education can be

found in distance learning, where specific platforms

have been developed to integrate in one single

system the three basic components:

 Diffusion of materials (course material from

teachers to students and task results from

students to teachers)

 Communication (private conversations or

public discussions, synchronous or

asynchronous, collaborative work)

 Assessment of outcomes achievement.

These platforms, usually called Learning

Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning

Environments (VLE), have changed the traditional

distance learning into online learning or e-learning.

One of the most popular LMS is Moodle

(http://www.moodle.org), an open source system

that is being used by more than a million education

institutions around the world with the purpose of

supporting and complimenting face-to-face

instruction.

In the last decade there has been a wide research

initiative in the European Union promoting the use

of e-learning platforms in universities as a support

for the teaching and learning activities (Pls Ramboll

Management, 2004).

Some of the more cutting edge research lines are

t-learning (Baldi, 2006) and m-learning (Petrova,

2007), aiming to extend learning experiences to

television and mobile devices; game-based learning

(Aldrich, 2005), or virtual reality and 3D approaches

to learning (Livingstone, 2005) .

Within the scope of the SUMA project, we have

analysed the desire functionality in a specific b-

learning tool and several new componentes have

already been designed and developed. These

components are connected to the LMS Moodle,

extending its functionality to cope with the

management of some elements specific to b-learning

and face-to-face instruction.

In this paper, we present one of these

componentes, the Academic Diary, and a pilot test in

a university course.

3 A TOOL FOR TIME

MANAGEMENT

The Academic Diary is basically a calendar that

combines different types of events related to the

academic activity. Users must be registered to use

the tool, and every user has its specific set of events,

depending on its role and the courses he is enrolled

in. Apart from student, teacher and administrator

roles (present in most learning virtual systems), the

tool defines another role call academic manager.

This tool retrieves data from its own database, as

well as from the LMS Moodle. All the events related

to a course in Moodle are imported in the Academic

Diary and shown to the corresponding teachers and

studentes together with other personal or global

events.

In the development of the tool we have used

ActiveCalendar, a PHP Class that generates

calendars (year, month or week view) as a HTML

Table (XHTML-Valid). The source code is free. It

can be modified or passed under the conditions of

the GNU Lesser General Public License, published

by the Free Software Foundation.

We have modified the design of this PHP class,

changing the design using CSS (Cascade Style

Sheets), modifying some of the functions of the

Class, adding new functionalities in the insertion of

events, creating the daily view and adding the

navigation system in the weekly view. We have

adapted the database for its use with PostgreSQL

and adding new fields. To decrease loading times

when showing the calendar or changing among the

views, we have implemented AJAX functions, that

asynchronously (using JavaScript) retrieve

information from other files.

3.1 Roles

The presented tool distinguishes among three types

of roles with different permissions. All of them are

allowed to add, edit or delete personal events.

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 Students can view all the events that are related

to their courses, group, programme degree or

those concerning the global university

community.

 Teachers have the same permissions as the

students in the Academic Diary. However, the

tool retrives information from Moodle, where the

teacher can create activities (tasks, questionaries,

chats, etc.) or insert events in the calendar that

will be displayed in the Academic Diary to the

corresponding students.

 Academic managers have a more active

role in the tool, being in charge of adding events

that concern different users groups, like clases

timetables, periods of vacations, extra-curricular

events, etc.

3.2 Events

The tool manages four groups of events.

 Personal events are created by any user and can

be seen, edited or removed only by the user that

created them. They are intended to allow the use

of the tool as a personal calendar as well.

 Curricular events are those related to a certain

course, for example an exam, a deadline for task

delivering or a change in the course schedule

activities. These events come from Moodle,

where a teacher introduces them, except

comprehensive exams’ dates, which are

introduced in the Academic Diary by an

academic manager.

 Extra-curricular events are related to other

complementary activities that take place in the

university context: conferences, seminars, sports

meetings, forums, etc. They are introduced only

by an academic manager, and may apply to all

the users or only the students and teachers of a

certain degree program, group or course.

 Academic calendar events signal periods of

classes, periods of vacations, periods of

comprehensive exams, and other official dates

along the academic year. Only an academic

manager can introduced them in the calendar, as

well as the courses’ timetables.

3.3 Views

The user can choose among three different views.

 In the Month view (see Figure 1) only the event

type is shown. The rest of information is

displayed on an emerging block, when the mouse

is placed on top of the event.

Figure 1: Month View.

 The Weekly View (see Figure 2) is the default

view. It only shows the next 7 days starting on

the present date. For every event, its name and

start and end time or duration are shown. Each

type of event is differenced by the background

color. If we place de cursor on top of an event a

more extended description is displayed. When

we click in a day the tools changes to the

corresponding daily view.

Figure 2: Weekly View.

 The Daily View shows all the information of the

events of the corresponding day. It also allows

users to delete o edit their own personal events.

In all the views, the navigation and insertion of

personal events are possible.

A TOOL FOR TIME MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

293

Figure 3: Detail of Weekly View.

4 PILOT TEST

A pilot experience is being now performed to check

the feasibility of our approach. In this section we

describe the main goals, framework and analysis

methodology used along the experience.

This research activity is carried out within the

scope of a wider initiative at the Universidad

Francisco de Vitoria. It aims to improve learning

processes by using IT in the academic environment

accordingly to ESHE specifications and

requirements.

4.1 Project Goals and Breakdown

The pilot test focuses on using the Academic Diary

Tool under real conditions and fully exploits its

possibilities as an element of a b-learning platform.

Since ESHE impose a looser and more

independent learner-teacher relationship we

considered a primordial need to help them planning

face-to-face and homework assignments, scheduling

deadlines and live sessions.

An additional functionality is to provide students

with a supporting tool to keep them in contact with

course and university activities.

Finally, Academic Diary can also help teachers

to organize and equally distribute homework

assignments so avoiding overloads due to the

concurrence of several activities over the same time

period.

The development of the pilot test fits the

following work breakdown structure:

 Design and planning of the pilot course

 Customization of the b-learning tool

accordingly with users requirements

 User (teachers and students) training

 A pre-course on-line survey to collect

information about study practices and attitude

towards IT technologies

 Pilot course

 A post-course on-line survey

 Personal interviews with teachers to collect

their impressions

 Analysis of data collected (surveys, interviews

and information provided by the tool).

4.2 Operational Framework

Pilot group is made up of 25 students of Excellens, a

bilingual program that combines two undergraduate

studies (Law and Business Administration) plus a

grade in Professional Leadership.

The pilot experience has been planned within the

first term of 2008-2009 academic year. Seven

modules, belonging to different fields of studies will

be included in the experience.

Teachers’ information management (events,

tasks, news) is carried out by a group manager.

As far as students are concerned, Excellens

requires full dedication and a personal compromise

as there are plenty of out-of-program activities

designed for students to get a rich academic and vital

experience. People in this workgroup require good

time and task management techniques and tools.

Class assistance is almost 100% as it is mandatory in

order to be included in continuous assessment

process.

4.3 Results

4.3.1 Pre-course Analysis

The pre-pilot test survey shows a student profile

characterised by a high concern about time

management. Some significant data are: 90% of the

students declare to be aware of how they use their

time, 70% design a plan for their activities and 70%

have an appointment calendar and use it on a regular

basis.

Following this line, 8% of the group considers

that their schedule is overloaded mainly because: 1)

amount of work proposed by teachers (50%) and 2)

low task coordination among teachers (85%)

All the students are experts and heavy Internet

users, but only 70% has Internet access at home.

They have a low profile as far as computer

knowledge is concerned but again they are heavy

users of new communication technologies.

Finally, almost 90% of them recognize not to

have previous knowledge of what ESHE and the

ECTS imply.

On the contrary, teachers profile is quite assorted

in reference to field of study and computing

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knowledge. Their knowledge of what EEHS means

is quite high. The entire group is aware of the need

of changing accordingly to ESHE proposals. They

also know about the consequences of overloading

students with an incorrect task distribution. Their

experience with internet or IT support is rare and the

needed special training courses to get acquired with

the b-learning platform.

4.3.2 Workload Distribution Analysis

One of the main activities of this pilot experience

has been the analysis of students’ workload along

the term.

To calculate working hours it is necessary to

previously estimate the face-to-face/autonomous

work time ratio for each learning activity.

Autonomous work is devoted to resolve exercises,

prepare notes, documents or oral presentations,

study for exams, etc.

The following table shows the ratios defined, by

general consent, by the different teachers that

collaborate in the project. These ratios may vary,

however, from one discipline or module to another.

Table 1: Face-to-face/ autonomous work time ratio.

Activity Ratio

Lectures 0,5

Seminars 0,25

Cases study 2

Discussions 1

Homework

(group/individual)

Labs 0,5

Tutorship 1

Extra-curricular

activities

Exams 10

Figure 4 shows the number of working hours per

week (October-December period) for a common

student. Blue bars represent face-to-face hours while

red ones show autonomous work, as deduced from

the activities planned in the Academic Diary.

Some conclusions can be obtained out of this

graphic:

1) Total working hours per week exceed the

desired one (40 hours/week)

2) Activities distribution over time is not well

done as heavy peak loads can be appreciated

3) Hours of autonomous work are not directly

proportional to the amount of face-to-face hours.

This analysis (considering the activities of all

courses the students are enrolled in) shows how the

16Oct‐22

Oct

23Oct‐29

Oct

30Oct‐5

Nov

6Nov‐12

Nov

13Nov‐19 

Nov

20Nov‐26

Nov

27Nov‐3

Dec

4Dec‐10 

Dec

11Dec‐17

Dec

43,5

40,25

37,6

Presentialhours Non‐Presentialhours

Figure 4: Working hours per week.

Figure 5 shows an analysis of student’s time

distribution per activity (Exams, extra-curricular

activities, tutorship, labs, homework, discussions,

cases study, seminars and lectures), along the same

periods considered in Figure 4.

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

16Oct‐22

Oct

23Oct‐29

Oct

30Oct‐5

Nov

6Nov‐12

Nov

13Nov‐19

Nov

20Nov‐26

Nov

27Nov‐3

Dec

4Dec‐10

Dec

11Dec‐17

Dec

Lecture Seminars Casesstudy Discussions Homework

Labs Tut or sh ip Extra‐curricular Exams

Figure 5: Student’s time distribution per activity.

number of different activities increases as the term

goes by, so requiring a better and tighter

coordination, like the one the proposed tool can

provide.

4.3.3 Post-course Analysis

As the pilot test is still going on, there is no student

feedback yet. However, preliminary interviews with

teachers allow us to draft early conclusions of the

study.

General evaluation is good both, as a tool for

better planning course activities as well as a way to

approach and increase their knowledge of the ECTS

A TOOL FOR TIME MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

295

concept and its consequences in the academic

activity.

The Academic Diary helps teachers to organise

curricular and extra-curricular activities so avoiding

peaks of workload. When planning an activity, they

can take into account the ones proposed by their

colleagues, thanks to the information provided by

the tool, and make better decisions in relation to the

activities scheduling.

5 CONCLUSIONS

B-learning requires IT support to enhance the

experience of the student as a member of a learning

community under the model of the incoming ESHE

where autonomous work is encouraged out of the

physical space of the classroom. The Academic

Diary proves to be an adequate tool to support

learning and teaching requirements under ESHE

paradigm, allowing teachers to analyse the workload

of students, and promoting a collaborative

organization of the learning activities among all the

teachers of a group. This will be a key factor in the

success of the adoption of the new education

paradigm.

The analysis of the information provided under

the Academic Diary paradigm has been the starting

point for some teachers to propose new directions of

future work, as follows:

1) Building of multidisciplinary activities combining

requirements of several disciplines in order to reduce

students’ workload.

2) Assignation of new task to students taking into

account the number and type of other concurrent

tasks.

3) Decreasing of lectures with a concomitant

increase of other methodological approaches.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of

Industry, Tourism and Trade for supporting this

research (Project SUMA, FIT- 350503-2007-8).

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