Supporting peer interaction in online learning environments

This paper reports two studies into the efficacy of sentence openers to foster online peer-to-peer interaction. Sentence openers are pre-defined ways to start an utterance that are implemented in communication facilities as menu’s or buttons. In the first study, typical opening phrases were derived from naturally occurring online dialogues. The resulting set of sentence openers was implemented in a semi-structured chat tool that allowed students to compose messages in a freetext area or via sentence openers. In the second study, this tool was used to explore the students’ appreciation and unprompted use of sentence openers. Results indicate that students hardly used sentence openers and were skeptical of their usefulness. Because both measures were negatively correlated with students’ prior chat experience, optional use of sentence openers may not be the best way to support students’ online interaction. Based on these findings, alternative ways of using sentence openers are discussed and topics for further research are advanced

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in STEM Domains: Towards a Meta-synthesis

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research has become pervasive in STEM education over the last several decades. The research presented here is part of an ongoing project to construct a meta-synthesis of CSCL findings in STEM domains. After a systematic search of the literature and article coding, cluster analysis results provided a frame for sampling from this literature in order to examine effects of CSCL. This preliminary meta-synthesis addresses the three key pillars of CSCL: the nature of collaboration, the technologies that are employed, and the pedagogical designs. CSCL tools and pedagogies typically improve collaborative learning processes along with achieving other learning and motivational goals

Hardware and software in smart decision rooms

Since the last decade research in Group Decision Making area have been focus in the building of meeting rooms that could support the decision making task and improve the quality of those decisions. However the emergence of Ambient Intelligence concept contributes with a new perspective, a different way of viewing traditional decision rooms. In this paper we will present an overview of Smart Decision Rooms providing Intelligence to the meeting environment, and we will also present LAID, an Ambient Intelligence Environment oriented to support Group Decision Making and some of the software tools that we already have installed in this environment

Collaboration in the Semantic Grid: a Basis for e-Learning

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking, and aid navigation of resources before, after, and while a collaboration occurs. While the primary focus of the project has been supporting e-Science, this paper also explores the similarities and application of CoAKTinG technologies as part of a human-centred design approach to e-Learning

Reason Against the Machine: Future Directions for Mass Online Deliberation

Designers of online deliberative platforms aim to counter the degrading quality of online debates. Support technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing open avenues for widening the circle of people involved in deliberation, moving from small groups to "crowd" scale. Numerous design features of large-scale online discussion systems allow larger numbers of people to discuss shared problems, enhance critical thinking, and formulate solutions. We review the transdisciplinary literature on the design of digital mass deliberation platforms and examine the commonly featured design aspects (e.g., argumentation support, automated facilitation, and gamification) that attempt to facilitate scaling up. We find that the literature is largely focused on developing technical fixes for scaling up deliberation, but may neglect the more nuanced requirements of high quality deliberation. Current design research is carried out with a small, atypical segment of the world's population, and much research is still needed on how to facilitate and accommodate different genders or cultures in deliberation, how to deal with the implications of pre-existing social inequalities, how to build motivation and self-efficacy in certain groups, and how to deal with differences in cognitive abilities and cultural or linguistic differences. Few studies bridge disciplines between deliberative theory, design and engineering. As a result, scaling up deliberation will likely advance in separate systemic siloes. We make design and process recommendations to correct this course and suggest avenues for future researchComment: Adjusting title and abstract to arxiv metadat

Ontological Approaches to Modelling Narrative

We outline a simple taxonomy of approaches to modelling narrative, explain how these might be realised ontologically, and describe our continuing work to apply these techniques to the problem of Memories for Life

Education and social development current pedagogical trends

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of education on social development in order to understand the dynamic relationship between these two concepts. Current pedagogical trends and their impact on learning and development are analysed. Primary emphasis was placed on raising social responsibility on the part of educators and institutions to raise awareness of the socioeconomic and ethical inequalities issues in the new generations of students. Indications of future work conclude the paper

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N