PBL3.0:Integrating Learning Analytics and Semantics in Problem-Based Learning

This paper presents the PBL3.0 project that aims at enhancing Problem Based Learning (PBL) with Learning Analytics (LA) and Learning Semantics (LS) in order to produce a new educational paradigm and pilot it to produce relevant policy recommendations. To this end, the project will reach the following objectives and corresponding specific goals: 1) Construct a new educational approach that combines a well-established learning strategy like PBL with novel technologies in learning like LA in PBL respecting legal and ethical considerations (PBL_LA), 2) Design a semantic model for PBL_LA, which will enable the annotation of learning resources in order to easily integrate them to the PBL approach and enable their discoverability when setting personalized learning pathways, 3) Adapt a set of open source software tools for supporting PBL_LA and the semantic model based on existing Learning Management Systems, analytics tools, and an intuitive semantic annotation tool, 4) Create relevant, semantically annotated educational material and perform trials at various sites in order to draw evidence-based conclusions, 5) Produce relevant policy recommendations for PBL_LA that could raise the quality in education and training, 6) Create an organic ecosystem of among others organizations, researchers, educators, students with an interest in PBL_LA. Finally, the project will develop a Community of Practice, where institutions and individuals from across Europe will be able to exchange knowledge and expertise on LA, learning semantics, innovative learning tools and approaches. This aims to support transnational cooperation and mutual learning on forward-looking issues between key stakeholders to provide solutions to current challenges in education and training

Interaction patterns over time in online discussion

The following study aimed at exploring and understanding how higher education students develop interconnections and interaction patterns over time during an online collaborative task using a form of online discussion. A micro-genetic study was carried out by zooming in into four groups of students that showed extreme grading results in their final product. The study took place in a Psychology course at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) where 63 students participated in a two-week online discussion using two different interactive tools. These two different types of online discussion did not appear to affect students' interaction patterns, but groups using the Annotation tool did focus more on cognitive matters, while the space for discussion at the UOC had a more balanced focus on both social and cognitive dimensions. Continuous and meaningful feedback also proved to provide important conditions for this type of online collaborative task, which requires students to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem over time

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

Utilizing Consumer Health Posts for Pharmacovigilance: Identifying Underlying Factors Associated with Patients’ Attitudes Towards Antidepressants

Non-adherence to antidepressants is a major obstacle to antidepressants therapeutic benefits, resulting in increased risk of relapse, emergency visits, and significant burden on individuals and the healthcare system. Several studies showed that non-adherence is weakly associated with personal and clinical variables, but strongly associated with patients’ beliefs and attitudes towards medications. The traditional methods for identifying the key dimensions of patients’ attitudes towards antidepressants are associated with some methodological limitations, such as concern about confidentiality of personal information. In this study, attempts have been made to address the limitations by utilizing patients’ self report experiences in online healthcare forums to identify underlying factors affecting patients attitudes towards antidepressants. The data source of the study was a healthcare forum called “askapatients.com”. 892 patients’ reviews were randomly collected from the forum for the four most commonly prescribed antidepressants including Sertraline (Zoloft) and Escitalopram (Lexapro) from SSRI class, and Venlafaxine (Effexor) and duloxetine (Cymbalta) from SNRI class. Methodology of this study is composed of two main phases: I) generating structured data from unstructured patients’ drug reviews and testing hypotheses concerning attitude, II) identification and normalization of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs), Withdrawal Symptoms (WDs) and Drug Indications (DIs) from the posts, and mapping them to both The UMLS and SNOMED CT concepts. Phase II also includes testing the association between ADRs and attitude. The result of the first phase of this study showed that “experience of adverse drug reactions”, “perceived distress received from ADRs”, “lack of knowledge about medication’s mechanism”, “withdrawal experience”, “duration of usage”, and “drug effectiveness” are strongly associated with patients attitudes. However, demographic variables including “age” and “gender” are not associated with attitude. Analysis of the data in second phase of the study showed that from 6,534 identified entities, 73% are ADRs, 12% are WDs, and 15 % are drug indications. In addition, psychological and cognitive expressions have higher variability than physiological expressions. All three types of entities were mapped to 811 UMLS and SNOMED CT concepts. Testing the association between ADRs and attitude showed that from twenty-one physiological ADRs specified in the ASEC questionnaire, “dry mouth”, “increased appetite”, “disorientation”, “yawning”, “weight gain”, and “problem with sexual dysfunction” are associated with attitude. A set of psychological and cognitive ADRs, such as “emotional indifference” and “memory problem were also tested that showed significance association between these types of ADRs and attitude. The findings of this study have important implications for designing clinical interventions aiming to improve patients\u27 adherence towards antidepressants. In addition, the dataset generated in this study has significant implications for improving performance of text-mining algorithms aiming to identify health related information from consumer health posts. Moreover, the dataset can be used for generating and testing hypotheses related to ADRs associated with psychiatric mediations, and identifying factors associated with discontinuation of antidepressants. The dataset and guidelines of this study are available at https://sites.google.com/view/pharmacovigilanceinpsychiatry/hom

Technologies to enhance self-directed learning from hypertext

With the growing popularity of the World Wide Web, materials presented to learners in the form of hypertext have become a major instructional resource. Despite the potential of hypertext to facilitate access to learning materials, self-directed learning from hypertext is often associated with many concerns. Self-directed learners, due to their different viewpoints, may follow different navigation paths, and thus they will have different interactions with knowledge. Therefore, learners can end up being disoriented or cognitively-overloaded due to the potential gap between what they need and what actually exists on the Web. In addition, while a lot of research has gone into supporting the task of finding web resources, less attention has been paid to the task of supporting the interpretation of Web pages. The inability to interpret the content of pages leads learners to interrupt their current browsing activities to seek help from other human resources or explanatory learning materials. Such activity can weaken learner engagement and lower their motivation to learn. This thesis aims to promote self-directed learning from hypertext resources by proposing solutions to the above problems. It first presents Knowledge Puzzle, a tool that proposes a constructivist approach to learn from the Web. Its main contribution to Web-based learning is that self-directed learners will be able to adapt the path of instruction and the structure of hypertext to their way of thinking, regardless of how the Web content is delivered. This can effectively reduce the gap between what they need and what exists on the Web. SWLinker is another system proposed in this thesis with the aim of supporting the interpretation of Web pages using ontology based semantic annotation. It is an extension to the Internet Explorer Web browser that automatically creates a semantic layer of explanatory information and instructional guidance over Web pages. It also aims to break the conventional view of Web browsing as an individual activity by leveraging the notion of ontology-based collaborative browsing. Both of the tools presented in this thesis were evaluated by students within the context of particular learning tasks. The results show that they effectively fulfilled the intended goals by facilitating learning from hypertext without introducing high overheads in terms of usability or browsing efforts

Enhancing student learning journeys with semantically annotated content

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThere is an increasing interest in developing existing Special Educational Needs (SEN) teaching methods due to recent concerns regarding the number of SEN pupils in schools. Communication is difficult for students when they have little or no clear speech. Consequently, a range of communication systems are used as an alternative to speech, including symbols, pictures or gestures. Importantly, helping students to better communicate also improves their education, friendships and independence. However, it is acknowledged that creating these educational resources is time consuming and expensive, and the learning results are not recognised as being as effective as required. Semantic Web technology has had an impact in the educational field and offers the required linkages for more engagement with Web content. There is, however, a considerable gap in Semantic Web research between the contributions in the mainstream educational field and research undertaken into special educational needs (SEN) students. This thesis presents an augmented World Wide Web (WWW) vision utilising annotation to more effectively support diverse special educational needs students. Students are supported in part by a SEN Teaching Platform (SENTP), one artefact from this design science research. Poetry is used as a website teaching material because of its significant impact on special needs students as it is a difficult topic to understand. The first stage of the research is to select the appropriate tools for testing annotation techniques in a real SEN environment. Later, a design of the proposed SEN teaching platform is built based on a Semantic Web annotation tool (Amaya) coordinated with a web application. Design is evaluated by conducting a pilot study in schools caring for special needs students (SEN). Evaluations were carried out at two schools, interviewing nine participants (Teachers, Teaching Assistant) in the UK. SENTP is tested for using Semantic Web technology to benefit the education of SEN students by utilizing Semantic Web annotation tools. This research further improves the SENTP with additional support for cognitive load using specific annotation formats within the Amaya annotation tool. Field testing is carried out at six UK schools with twenty-two participants being interviewed. Cognitive load principles are shown to improve both learning and class behaviour, also supporting teachers in the production of educational content. The pilot study and field testing results reveal that the proposed approach is effective. Following this, designed artefacts are synthesised within a wider design blueprint that articulates how this new world of annotated digital media is designed, deployed and consumed. Finally, SENTP ontology is created using OWL language and Protégé 5. The main goal of this ontology is to produce a wider design SENTP ontology that can be adapted to wider teaching purposes