An intelligent learning diagnosis system for Web-based thematic learning platform

This work proposes an intelligent learning diagnosis system that supports a Web-based thematic learning model, which aims to cultivate learners’ ability of knowledge integration by giving the learners the opportunities to select the learning topics that they are interested, and gain knowledge on the specific topics by surfing on the Internet to search related learning courseware and discussing what they have learned with their colleagues. Based on the log files that record the learners’ past online learning behavior, an intelligent diagnosis system is used to give appropriate learning guidance to assist the learners in improving their study behaviors and grade online class participation for the instructor. The achievement of the learners’ final reports can also be predicted by the diagnosis system accurately. Our experimental results reveal that the proposed learning diagnosis system can efficiently help learners to expand their knowledge while surfing in cyberspace Web-based “theme-based learning” model.     

SweetWiki: A semantic wiki

Everyone agrees that user interactions and social networks are among the cornerstones of “Web 2.0”. Web 2.0 applications generally run in a web browser, propose dynamic content with rich user interfaces, offer means to easily add or edit content of the web site they belong to and present social network aspects. Well-known applications that have helped spread Web 2.0 are blogs, wikis, and image/video sharing sites; they have dramatically increased sharing and participation among web users. It is possible to build knowledge using tools that can help analyze users’ behavior behind the scenes: what they do, what they know, what they want. Tools that help share this knowledge across a network, and that can reason on that knowledge, will lead to users who can better use the knowledge available, i.e., to smarter users. Wikipedia, a wildly successful example of web technology, has helped knowledge-sharing between people by letting individuals freely create and modify its content. But Wikipedia is designed for people—today's software cannot understand and reason on Wikipedia's content. In parallel, the “semantic web”, a set of technologies that help knowledge-sharing across the web between different applications, is starting to gain attraction. Researchers have only recently started working on the concept of a “semantic wiki”, mixing the advantages of the wiki and the technologies of the semantic web. In this paper we will present a state-of-the-art of semantic wikis, and we will introduce SweetWiki, an example of an application reconciling two trends of the future web: a semantically augmented web and a web of social applications where every user is an active provider as well as a consumer of information. SweetWiki makes heavy use of semantic web concepts and languages, and demonstrates how the use of such paradigms can improve navigation, search, and usability.     

An investigation of coopetitive pedagogic design for knowledge creation in Web-based learning

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created a supportive environment for collaborative learning at the expense of student motivation and engagement. This study attempts to explore the development of a productive learning atmosphere in the context of Web-based learning. An experiment is conducted with university-level students having homogenous background and coursework by applying heterogeneous pedagogies that create either competitive or collaborative learning atmospheres. The differences in learning atmosphere bring about variations in social presence and enjoyment of learning. The findings show that “coopetition” (defined as collaboration within the group and competition between groups) was the best learning strategy because competition and collaboration stimulated different types of knowledge growth in the knowledge-creation spiral. Competitive learning atmospheres encourage students to develop higher analytic skills, while collaborative learning atmospheres prompt students to demonstrate higher synthetic skills. Because both atmospheres contribute to learning, this study has found that combining both pedagogies in constructing a coopetitive learning atmosphere not only contributes to analytic and synthetic skills, but also raises the overall knowledge level. The findings pinpointed the importance of creating a learning environment that integrates ICTs, learners’ backgrounds, courseware, and pedagogic considerations in the process of increasing knowledge levels.     

Seeking and providing assistance while learning to use information systems

Throughout their lives, people are faced with various learning situations, for example when they learn how to use new software, services or information systems. However, research in the field of Interactive Learning Environments shows that learners needing assistance do not systematically seek or use help, even when it is available. The aim of the present study is to explore the role of some factors from research in Interactive Learning Environments in another situation: using a new technology not as a means of acquiring knowledge but to realize a specific task. Firstly, we present the three factors included in this study (1) the role of the content of assistance, namely operative vs. function-oriented help; (2) the role of the user’s prior knowledge; (3) the role of the trigger of assistance, i.e. help provided after the user’s request vs. help provided by the system. In this latter case, it is necessary to detect the user’s difficulties. On the basis of research on problem-solving, we list behavioral criteria expressing the user’s difficulties. Then, we present two experiments that use “real” technologies developed by a large company and tested by “real” users. The results showed that (1) even when participants had reached an impasse, most of them never sought assistance, (2) operative assistance that was automatically provided by the system was effective for novice users, and (3) function-oriented help that was automatically provided by the system was effective for expert users. Assistance can support deadlock awareness and can also focus on deadlock solving by guiding task. Assistance must be adapted to prior knowledge, progress and goals of learners to improve learning.     

The role of design-principles in designing courses that promote collaborative learning in higher-education

Design-patterns and design-principles represent two approaches, which elicit design knowledge from successful learning environments and formulate it as design guidelines. The two approaches are fairly similar in their strategies, but differ in their research origins. This study stems from the design-principles approach, and explores how learning is affected by curriculum-materials designed according to two main design-principles: (a) engage learners in peer instruction, and (b) reuse student artifacts as resource for further learning. These principles were employed in three higher-education courses and examined with 385 students. Data analysis was conducted in two trajectories: In the “bird’s eye view” trajectory we used a “feature” unit of analysis to illustrate how learning was supported by features designed according to the two design-principles in each of the courses. In the “design-based research” trajectory we focused on one feature, a web-based Jigsaw activity, in a philosophy of education course, and demonstrated how it was refined via three design iterations. Students were required to specialize in one of three philosophical perspectives, share knowledge with peers who specialized in other perspectives, and reuse the shared knowledge in new contexts. Outcomes indicated that the design in the first iteration did not sufficiently support student ability to apply the shared knowledge. Two additional design-principles were employed in the next iterations: (c) provide knowledge representation and organization tools, and (d) employ multiple social-activity structures. The importance of combining several design-principles for designing curricular materials is discussed in terms of Alexander’s design-pattern language and his notion of referencing between design-patterns.     

The formation of learners’ semiosphere by authentic inquiry with an integrated learning object “Young Scientist”

An integrated learning object, a web-based inquiry environment “Young Scientist” for basic school level is introduced by applying the semiosphere conception for explaining learning processes. The study focused on the development of students’ (n = 30) awareness of the affordances of learning objects (LO) during the 3 inquiry tasks, and their ability of dynamically reconstructing meanings in the inquiry subtasks through exploiting these LO affordances in “Young Scientist”. The problem-solving data recorded by the inquiry system and the awareness questionnaire served as the data-collection methods.It was demonstrated that learners obtain complete awareness of the LO affordances in an integrated learning environment only after several problem-solving tasks. It was assumed that the perceived task-related properties and functions of LOs depend on students’ interrelations with LOs in specific learning contexts. Learners’ overall awareness of certain LO affordances, available in the inquiry system “Young Scientist”, developed with three kinds of patterns, describing the hierarchical development of the semiosphere model for learners. The better understanding of the LO affordances, characteristic to the formation of the functioning semiosphere, was significantly related to the advanced knowledge construction during these inquiry subtasks that presumed translation of information from one semiotic system to another. The implications of the research are discussed in the frames of the development of new contextual gateways for learning with virtual objects. It is assumed that effective LO-based learning has to be organized through pedagogically constrained gateways by manifesting certain LO affordances in the context in order to build up the dynamic semiosphere model for learners.     

Crossing the digital divide safely and trustingly: how ecologies of learning scaffold the journey

The article addresses the issue of learning to elearn in borderless programs in a globalised learning landscape and the associated problems of scaffolding the journey across the digital divide. The authors argue that the assumption underlying such courses is that cross-cultural programs are viable because they are conceived and designed to be ‘global’, and that they assume this design to be inclusive. Henning and Van der Westhuizen claim that the global discourse in most domains can take only marginal note of the need to infuse such programs with a local semiotic—a course design criterion for which they argue. They furthermore forward the notion that the majority of the world's prospective elearners need various bridging mechanisms in order to be able to access the broader discourse and that one of these mechanisms can be explored through the metaphor of “information ecologies” as proposed by Nardi and O'Day [Nardi, B.A., & O'Day, V.L. (1999). Information ecologies. Using technology with heart. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press]. They also conclude that issues of the learners’ trust in the course and its system need to be considered when contemplating programs for diverse target groups. By way of a case study, consisting of three portraitures of adult learners, they explore the limitations of assumed distributed cognition and claim that learning is, in reality, contained/constrained in the familiar local narrative of the novice adult elearners in a rural South African context. The case study illustrates how the resistance to technology and its power base becomes an obstacle for the students and how the support of peers becomes the main scaffolding mechanism for their entry into electronic learning environments. The findings thus show how the social context becomes the facilitator and the scaffold for elearning, more than technology and the curriculum itself.     

Finnish high school students’ readiness to adopt online learning: Questioning the assumptions

The Finnish high school system in rural areas is facing challenges because of a decreasing number of the students. This situation places new emphasis on online learning. Online learning offers new possibilities for high schools to provide equal learning opportunities for their students. This paper explores students’ readiness to adapt their studying habits in the networked high schools by outlining their beliefs about online learning. Beliefs are assumed to direct people’s actions, in this case activities concerning studying online. Three hundred second year high school students from Eastern Finland who had not had the experiences of learning online were studied. The findings suggest that students polarize into negative, neutral and positive groups based on their beliefs concerning online learning. Results also indicate that students’ knowledge about the possibilities of online learning is quite superficial. In contrast to theories about collaborative learning practices, students see online learning rather differently. Students with negative and neutral beliefs especially see online learning merely as a static “warehouse” of materials and study-alone learning tasks instead of offering possibilities for collaborative knowledge building.     

Unreal PowerPoint: Immersing PowerPoint presentations in a virtual computer game engine world

At a recent conference on games in education, we made a radical decision to transform our standard presentation of PowerPoint slides and computer game demonstrations into a unified whole, inserting the PowerPoint presentation to the computer game. This opened up various questions relating to learning and teaching theories, which were debated by the conference delegates. In this paper, we reflect on these discussions, we present our initial experiment, and relate this to various theories of learning and teaching. In particular, we consider the applicability of “concept maps” to inform the construction of educational materials, especially their topological, geometrical and pedagogical significance. We supplement this “spatial” dimension with a theory of the dynamic, temporal dimension, grounded in a context of learning processes, such as Kolb’s learning cycle. Finally, we address the multi-player aspects of computer games, and relate this to the theories of social and collaborative learning. This paper attempts to explore various theoretical bases, and so support the development of a new learning and teaching virtual reality approach.     

MCLP-based methods for improving “Bad” catching rate in credit cardholder behavior analysis

Cardholders’ behavior prediction is an important issue in credit card portfolio management. As a promising data mining approach, multiple criteria programming (MCLP) has been successfully applied to classify credit cardholders’ behavior into two groups. In order to better control credit risk for financial institutes, this paper proposes three methods based on MCLP to improve the “Bad” catching accuracy rate. One is called MCLP with unbalanced training set selection, the second is called fuzzy linear programming (FLP) method with moving boundary, and the third is called penalized multi criteria linear programming (PMCLP). The experimental examples demonstrate the promising performance of these methods.     

Collaborative environments and task design in the university

This paper is a revision of the field of the so called “Computer supported collaborative learning”, showing its potentialities as well as some of the problems. It also makes an analysis of the types of task that are well designed to be collaborative, in the thread to find “genuine interdependent” tasks and not just subtasks that are only joined. At last, it raises some difficulties encountered when trying to think collaborative learning as a form of group proximal development zone.     

A human-assisted knowledge extraction method for machining operations

This paper deals with a human-assisted knowledge extraction method to extract “if…then…” rules from a small set of machining data. The presented method utilizes both probabilistic reasoning and fuzzy logical reasoning to benefit from the machining data and from the judgment and preference of a machinist. Using the extracted rules, one can determine the values of operational parameters (feed, cutting velocity, etc.) to ensure the desired machining performance (keep surface roughness within the stipulated range (e.g., moderate)). Applying the presented method in a real-life machining knowledge extraction situation and comparing it with the inductive learning based knowledge extraction method (i.e., ID3), the usefulness of the method is demonstrated. As the concept of manufacturing automation is shifting toward “how to support humans by computers”, the presented method provides some valuable hints to the developers of futuristic computer integrated manufacturing systems.     

Performance analysis of GAME: A generic automated marking environment

This paper describes the Generic Automated Marking Environment (GAME) and provides a detailed analysis of its performance in assessing student programming projects and exercises. GAME has been designed to automatically assess programming assignments written in a variety of languages based on the “structure” of the source code and the correctness of the program’s output. Currently, the system is able to mark programs written in Java, C++ and the C language. To use the system, instructors are required to provide a simple “marking schema” for each given assessment item, which includes pertinent information such as the location of files and the model solution. In this research, GAME has been tested on a number of student programming exercises and assignments and its performance has been compared against that of a human marker. An in-depth statistical analysis of the comparison is presented, providing encouraging results and directions for employing GAME as a tool for teaching and learning.     

Surveying instructor and learner attitudes toward e-learning

The trend of using e-learning as a learning and/or teaching tool is now rapidly expanding into education. Although e-learning environments are popular, there is minimal research on instructors’ and learners’ attitudes toward these kinds of learning environments. The purpose of this study is to explore instructors’ and learners’ attitudes toward e-learning usage. Accordingly, 30 instructors and 168 college students are asked to answer two different questionnaires for investigating their perceptions. After statistical analysis, the results demonstrate that instructors have very positive perceptions toward using e-learning as a teaching assisted tool. Furthermore, behavioral intention to use e-learning is influenced by perceived usefulness and self-efficacy. Regarding to learners’ attitudes, self-paced, teacher-led, and multimedia instruction are major factors to affect learners’ attitudes toward e-learning as an effective learning tool. Based on the findings, this research proposes guidelines for developing e-learning environments.     

An empirical analysis of the antecedents of web-based learning continuance

Like any other product, service and Web-based application, the success of Web-based learning depends largely on learners’ satisfaction and other factors that will eventually increase learners’ intention to continue using it. This paper integrates the concept of subjective task value and fairness theory to construct a model for investigating the motivations behind learners’ intention to continue using Web-based learning. The model theorizes that four components of subjective task value (i.e., attainment, utility, intrinsic, and cost) and three dimensions of fairness (i.e., distributive, procedural, and interactional) affect learners’ satisfaction. We also argue that satisfaction and four distinct components of subjective task value influence learners’ intention to continue using Web-based learning. The hypothesized model is validated empirically using data collected from 202 learners of a Web-based learning program designed for continuing education. The results showed that attainment value, utility value, intrinsic value, distributive fairness, and interactional fairness exhibited significant positive effects on satisfaction. Utility value and satisfaction play significant roles in shaping learners’ intention to continue using Web-based learning.     

Facilitating interactions through structured web-based bulletin boards: A quasi-experimental study on promoting learners’ critical thinking skills

This experimental study investigated the effectiveness of structured Web-Based Bulletin Board (WBB) discussions in improving the critical thinking (CT) skills of learners involved in veterinary distance learning, as well as their attitudes toward learning via WBBs. The two dependent variables were learners’ CT skills and their attitudes toward learning via WBBs. The learners’ CT skills were examined in different ways: (a) quantitative method: California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) to holistically investigate the changes in learners’ CT skills, and (b) qualitative method: Interaction Analysis Model to investigate learners’ interaction patterns in different phases of the WBB discussions. Detailed information about inter-rater reliability, the training of the coders, and the coding process is provided. The findings indicated that structured WBBs significantly improved learners’ CT skills and attitudes toward learning via WBBs.     

An artificial intelligence system of trouble diagnosis for aircraft engines

:Reported here is about the trouble diagnosis system for AN-24 aircraft engine which has been realized by inputting the experiences of the repair mechanics or experts of the engine as a computer software.The system is composed of following four sections which are called “model” ; a phenomena model, an inference model, a learning model, and an interpretation model.Therefore, the system is called as “model diagnosis system”. These four models are relatively independent which makes parallel operation, easy debugging, and addition of new knowledge possible.

The experience of the engine experts has been stored initially to outer knowledge base in the computer. Intermidiate knowledge which arises on the process of the inference is treated at inner knowledge base. The inner knowledge base adopts a blackboard structure. This makes the system not only able to diagnose the vague preconditioned reason, but also to diagnose the unpreconditioned one by learning. The validity of the system was proved from some experiments.     

The role of social presence in learner-centered communicative language learning using synchronous computer-mediated communication: Experimental study

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between media, learners’ perception of social presence, and output in communicative learning using synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). In this study, we developed four types of SCMC: videoconferencing (image and voice), audioconferencing (voice but no image), text chat with image (image but no voice), and plain text chat (no image and no voice). Each system allows learners to be conscious of and utter a target formulaic expression. I investigated the effect of each system on psychological perception and productive output as well as the relationship between perception and output. The results show that image and voice promote consciousness of natural communication and relief, while a text-mediated system enhances confidence in grammatical accuracy. In order to clarify the relationship between media, affective side, and output, path analysis was conducted using SPSS Amos 7.0. The results indicated that voice communication strongly affects both learners’ affective side and output. The existence of a partner’s image enhances the consciousness of natural communication, which leads to a number of self-corrections, an aspect of learning performance. However, voice communication has a negative effect on confidence in grammatical accuracy.     

Teaching e-commerce Web page evaluation and design: a pilot study using tourism destination sites

This study explores a teaching method for improving business students’ skills in e-commerce page evaluation and making Web design majors aware of business content issues through cooperative learning. Two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design were assigned tasks that required cooperation to investigate whether a minimum of formal training and interaction between the two groups would result in an increase in the “design” students’ awareness of content issues in page design, and an improvement in the “tourism” students’ ability to evaluate Web pages related to tourism. The results showed only slight improvements, suggesting that either the amount of cooperative learning must be increased or some formal instruction must be introduced.     

Fast incremental learning methods inspired by biological learning behavior

Model-based learning systems such as neural networks usually “forget” learned skills due to incremental learning of new instances. This is because the modification of a parameter interferes with old memories. Therefore, to avoid forgetting, incremental learning processes in these learning systems must include relearning of old instances. The relearning process, however, is time-consuming. We present two types of incremental learning method designed to achieve quick adaptation with low resources. One approach is to use a sleep phase to provide time for learning. The other one involves a “meta-learning module” that acquires learning skills through experience. The system carries out “reactive modification” of parameters not only to memorize new instances, but also to avoid forgetting old memories using a meta-learning module.This work was presented, in part, at the 9th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 28–30, 2004