528,493 research outputs found

    Methodological challenges for collaborative learning research

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    Research on collaborative learning, both face-to-face and computer-supported, has thrived in the past 10 years. The studies range from outcome-oriented (individual and group learning) to process-oriented (impact of interaction on learning processes, motivation and organisation of collaboration) to mixed studies. Collaborative learning research is multi-disciplinary. This introduces a multitude of theoretical accounts for collaborative learning, accompanied by a broad spectrum of methods to study processes and outcomes of collaboration. This special issue will provide an overview of methods that are at the core of current research effort, but also identifies opportunities and problems to sensibly combine methods into mixed method approaches

    Virtual Environments for Training: From Individual Learning to Collaboration with Humanoids

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    The next generation of virtual environments for training is oriented towards collaborative aspects. Therefore, we have decided to enhance our platform for virtual training environments, adding collaboration opportunities and integrating humanoids. In this paper we put forward a model of humanoid that suits both virtual humans and representations of real users, according to collaborative training activities. We suggest adaptations to the scenario model of our platform making it possible to write collaborative procedures. We introduce a mechanism of action selection made up of a global repartition and an individual choice. These models are currently being integrated and validated in GVT, a virtual training tool for maintenance of military equipments, developed in collaboration with the French company NEXTER-Group

    Collaborative knowledge creation in the higher education academic library

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    Collaboration has become a core competency of the 21st century workforce. Thus, the need of collaboration is reshaping the academic library in higher education to produce competent future workforce. To encourage collaboration in the academic library, knowledge commons that integrate technology to infrastructure and system furniture are introduced. The article examines college students’ collaborative activities for knowledge creation at a university academic library via a survey, using the theory of organizational knowledge creation. It analyzed student group activities, based on the four types of activities in knowledge creation. A total of 385 undergraduate students completed the survey. The survey results indicated that the most frequent group activity is individual-oriented activity, followed by socialization activity, creating contents as a group, and group learning activity. However, when analyzed by frequent activities by the same users, the majority of users were doing all four activities, followed by individual-oriented activity only, and individual-oriented and socialization activities. The results revealed different trends in the engagement of the four knowledge creation activities between knowledge workplace and the academic library. Several implications to encourage collaborative activities are suggested

    Australian mental health consumers' contributions to the evaluation and improvement of recovery-oriented service provision

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    Background: one key component of recovery-oriented mental health services, typically overlooked, involves genuine collaboration between researchers and consumers to evaluate and improve services delivered within a recovery framework. Method: Eighteen mental health consumers working with staff who had received training in the Collaborative recovery Model (CrM) took part in in-depth focus group meetings, of approximately 2.5 hours each, to generate feedback to guide improvement of the CrM and its use in mental health services. Results: Consumers identified clear avenues for improvement for the CrM both specific to the model and broadly applicable to recovery-oriented service provision. Findings suggest consumers want to be more engaged and empowered in the use of the CrM from the outset. Limitations: improved sampling procedures may have led to the identification of additional dissatisfied consumers. Conclusions: Collaboration with mental health consumers in the evaluation and improvement of recovery-oriented practice is crucial with an emphasis on rebuilding mental health services that are genuinely oriented to support recovery

    Improvisational Movement Practice: A Model For Collaborative Processes

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    My research explored the impact of movement improvisation on collaborative group projects and processes. I sought to discover how an improvisational movement practice impacts the group dynamic and energy, the relationship between the participants, and the daily lives of the individual participants outside of the project. I asked: If a group engages in a regularly scheduled improvisational practice, will the tools and mindsets instilled by improvisation aid in a shift from product-oriented work to process-oriented work and collaboration? Does this change engender a lower-stress environment? Does this change engender a higher satisfaction level?Undergraduate Research ScholarshipInternational Research GrantArts Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embargoAcademic Major: Danc

    Ethnic Diversity and Organizational Performance: Assessing Diversity Effects at the Managerial and Street Levels

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    As the public sector workforce becomes more ethnically diverse and as government agencies make attempts to "manage" that diversity, the importance of understanding how diversity affects workplace interactions and work-related outcomes increases. Little public sector research has examined the impact of diversity on performance outcomes. This paper seeks to fill this gap by studying the effects of the ethnic diversity of managers and street level bureaucrats on work-related outcomes. We use basic in-group/out-group theories from psychology to form hypotheses relating diversity to performance. The results of diversity research using social identification and categorization theory and similarity/attraction theory led us to form the hypothesis that greater levels of ethnic diversity among public managers and street-level bureaucrats will lead to lower organizational performance, when the task requires significant coordination and collaboration. Diversity research that uses the information and decision-making theory, while scant, led us to form a second hypothesis that greater levels of ethnic diversity among public managers and street-level bureaucrats will lead to higher organizational performance, when the task does not require significant coordination and collaboration. Our results were mixed. We found support for the first hypothesis with respect to street-level bureaucrats but not for managers. The results did not support our second hypothesis -- we actually found an opposite relationship for street-level bureaucrats from what we expected. Overall, the results support previous research that suggests that increased levels of ethnic diversity can lead to process-oriented difficulties in the workplace and negatively affect workrelated outcomes. Working Paper 06-3

    Learning to Collaborate by Grouping: a Consensus-oriented Strategy for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

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    Multi-agent systems require effective coordination between groups and individuals to achieve common goals. However, current multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods primarily focus on improving individual policies and do not adequately address group-level policies, which leads to weak cooperation. To address this issue, we propose a novel Consensus-oriented Strategy (CoS) that emphasizes group and individual policies simultaneously. Specifically, CoS comprises two main components: (a) the vector quantized group consensus module, which extracts discrete latent embeddings that represent the stable and discriminative group consensus, and (b) the group consensus-oriented strategy, which integrates the group policy using a hypernet and the individual policies using the group consensus, thereby promoting coordination at both the group and individual levels. Through empirical experiments on cooperative navigation tasks with both discrete and continuous spaces, as well as Google research football, we demonstrate that CoS outperforms state-of-the-art MARL algorithms and achieves better collaboration, thus providing a promising solution for achieving effective coordination in multi-agent systems

    Virtual Data in CMS Analysis

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    The use of virtual data for enhancing the collaboration between large groups of scientists is explored in several ways: - by defining ``virtual'' parameter spaces which can be searched and shared in an organized way by a collaboration of scientists in the course of their analysis; - by providing a mechanism to log the provenance of results and the ability to trace them back to the various stages in the analysis of real or simulated data; - by creating ``check points'' in the course of an analysis to permit collaborators to explore their own analysis branches by refining selections, improving the signal to background ratio, varying the estimation of parameters, etc.; - by facilitating the audit of an analysis and the reproduction of its results by a different group, or in a peer review context. We describe a prototype for the analysis of data from the CMS experiment based on the virtual data system Chimera and the object-oriented data analysis framework ROOT. The Chimera system is used to chain together several steps in the analysis process including the Monte Carlo generation of data, the simulation of detector response, the reconstruction of physics objects and their subsequent analysis, histogramming and visualization using the ROOT framework.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages, LaTeX, 7 eps figures. PSN TUAT010. V2 - references adde

    The evolution of research on collaborative learning

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    For many years, theories of collaborative learning tended to focus on how individuals function in a group. More recently, the focus has shifted so that the group itself has become the unit of analysis. In terms of empirical research, the initial goal was to establish whether and under what circumstances collaborative learning was more effective than learning alone. Researchers controlled several independent variables (size of the group, composition of the group, nature of the task, communication media, and so on). However, these variables interacted with one another in a way that made it almost impossible to establish causal links between the conditions and the effects of collaboration. Hence, empirical studies have more recently started to focus less on establishing parameters for effective collaboration and more on trying to understand the role which such variables play in mediating interaction. In this chapter, we argue that this shift to a more process-oriented account requires new tools for analysing and modelling interactions

    XEL Group Learning – A Socio-technical Framework for Self-regulated Learning

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    We describe XEL-Group Learning, a socio-technical framework for socially oriented e-learning. The aim of the presented framework is to address the lack of holistic pedagogical solutions that take into account motivational theories, socio–technical factors, and cultural elements in social learning networks. The presented framework provides initiatives for collaboration by providing a dynamic psycho-pedagogical recommendation mechanism with validation properties. In this paper, we begin by highlighting the socio-technical concept associated with socially-oriented e-learning. Next, we describe XEL-GL’s main mechanisms such as group formation and the semantic matching framework. Moreover, through semantic similarity measurements, we show how cultural elements, such as the learning subject, can enhance the quality of recommendations by allowing for more accurate predictions of friends networks
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