119,254 research outputs found

    Using Smartphones and Mobile Web 2.0 to Create a Mobile Computing Platform for Tertiary Education.

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    Today’s smartphones are mobile multimedia computers, in Nokia’s words: “It’s what computers have become”. Smartphone manufacturers have seen the potential to partner with online social software (Web2.0) sites (e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Vox, Ovi etc…) to produce a mobile computing platform to capture and share our daily lives with friends and family, anywhere, anytime. These tools can be utilized within tertiary education to create context independent collaborative learning environments. Pedagogical design of learning experiences using mobile web2.0 allows a tutor to create rich learning environments for students beyond the classroom or lecture theatre. This paper illustrates this by analysing students responses to a third year Product Design project that transformed a traditionally paper-based learning journal into an interactive, collaborative, online eportfolio using mobile web2.0 technologies facilitating an explicit social constructivist pedagogy. Students were provided with a Nokia N95 smartphone, a bluetooth folding keyboard, and a 1GB 3G data account. They created an online eportfolio, and used the smartphones to capture and record learning events and ideas from a variety of contexts. The learning outcomes included the development of a far more media rich and critically reflective collaborative experience than was previously possible using traditional approaches

    Sociality and Skill Sharing in the Garden

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    Gardening is an activity that involves a number of dimensions of increasing interest to HCI and CSCW researchers, including recreation, sustainability, and engagement with nature. This paper considers the garden setting in order to understand the role that collaborative and social computing technologies might play for practitioners engaging in outdoor skilled activities. We conducted participant observations with nine experienced gardeners aged 22-71 years. Through this process, we find that gardeners continuously configure their environments to accommodate their preferences for sociality. They share embodied skills and help others attune to sensory information in person, but also influence learning through the features in their garden that are observed by others. This paper provides an understanding of sociality in the garden, highlights skill sharing as a key domain for design in this space, and contributes design considerations for collaborative technologies in outdoor settings.Comment: 13 page

    Towards a generic platform for developing CSCL applications using Grid infrastructure

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    The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of using CSCL component-based software under a Grid infrastructure. The merge of these technologies represents an attractive, but probably quite laborious enterprise if we consider not only the benefits but also the barriers that we have to overcome. This work presents an attempt toward this direction by developing a generic platform of CSCL components and discussing the advantages that we could obtain if we adapted it to the Grid. We then propose a means that could make this adjustment possible due to the high degree of genericity that our library component is endowed with by being based on the generic programming paradigm. Finally, an application of our library is proposed both for validating the adequacy of the platform which it is based on and for indicating the possibilities gained by using it under the Grid.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    Enhancing learning through opening the group model in a synchronous computer-based environment.

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    This research seeks to apply the concepts of collaborative learning and open learner modelling in order to find out whether seeing their own group learner model helps learners improve their learning in a computer-based collaborative learning environment. There is previous work on giving back information about learning performance as a group but very little, if any, empirical work on the benefits of a group open learner model (GOLM). A major benefit of collaborative learning is to encourage learners to learn further from what they cannot achieve when do it by themselves but they can manage with another. Combining this with viewing and judging the information about learning found in a learner model, it was expected that this would increase their learning awareness in order to improve their learning performance. Without such group learner models, learners might not improve their learning performance in the collaborative learning environment as much as they might. To find out whether opening the group learner models helped learners to improve their learning performance we developed a system called 'GOLeM', and we focused on the learner's score on learning concepts and their degree of confidence in their answer. GOLeM was used as a learning environment to test for evidence in relation to two comparisons of individual performance. The first was a comparison of individual performance between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment. The second respect was to compare the results of learning in two different computer-based collaborative learning environments which were only different in terms of whether or not the learners could see their group learner model. The content of number-conversion is chosen for the domain knowledge. Dialogue games and sentence openers are used to implement a chat-tool to exchange beliefs between peers. Bar charts and textual explanations are used as external representations of learning performance as a group. The system was implemented and tested in two versions: paper-based, for the plausibility of the content and the user interface; and computer-based, for comparing the learning results among three different learning environments regarding the two respects above. To make sure what we built was valid – in terms of suitable content applied to the right target group of learners, we did several tests. These tests consist of a questionnaire with multiple choice questions applied to a small group of participants some of whom have a background in computing, and some have no background in computing. The questionnaire was examined for the suitability of its content and for the target group. A modified questionnaire was used with 122 participants who have a background in computing to validate in relation to the difficulty level and item discrimination. Five questions were selected as representative of the domain knowledge for a paper-based design and applied to six pairs of learners for the suitability of the questions and the number to be used, time taken, user interface, etc before developing the computer-based version. Regarding the comparison between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment, the results show there is a significant difference at the 5% level in terms of learning concept-score and degree of confidence in favour of individual learning performance of learners in collaborative learning environment. Considering the comparison of learning between the two computer-based collaborative learning environments, participants who are able to see their learning performance as a group learner models both before the group test and after each item of the group test, have a slightly higher concept-score and improved degree of confidence than those who cannot see these learner models. Moreover there evidence regarding the participant's self-assessment and peer-assessment, their opinion of the helpfulness of seeing the group learner model and their satisfaction in using this system confirms that further study in this area is justified. It leads to the conclusion that in these specific circumstances, learners benefit more from learning and seeing their group learner model. However the evidence that we have here is not sufficient to answer whether it is likely to be true that other systems like this will always lead the better learning. As a result, we plan to continue our work in both similar and different directions to improve the strength of the conclusion that providing group learner model in a computer-based collaborative learning environment helps learners to benefit from learning. The thesis mainly contributes to both CSCL and AIED communities for further study of GOLeM itself. Regarding the AIED community, GOLeM can be used for the further study on the benefits of seeing learning performance as a group learner model both before and after performing a group-test. Regarding the CSCL community, using this GOLeM with either a larger or a wider variety of groups of learners focusing on knowledge contribution during the group-test for the concrete evidence to support that social interaction has an impact on collaborative learning. The evidence that we have found suggests that being able to see a GOLM improves learning. Though this evidence is not statistically significant, this thesis has provided the most thorough empirical examination of the benefits of a GOLM so far

    Global Teamwork: A Study of Design Learning in Collaborative Virtual Environments

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    With the recent developments in communication and information technologies, using Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) in design activity has experienced a remarkable increase. In this paper we present a collaborative learning activity between the University of Sydney (USYD), and the Istanbul Technical University (ITU). This paper shares our teaching experience and discusses the principles of collaborative design learning in virtual environments. Followed by a study on students’ perception on the courses and collaborative learning in both universities, this paper also suggests future refinements on the course structure and the main areas of collaborative design learning. Keywords: Collaborative Design; Collaborative Virtual Environments; Design Teaching And Learning</p

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

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    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
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