Desktop multimedia environments to support collaborative distance learning

Desktop multimedia conferencing, when two or more persons can communicate among themselves via personal computers with the opportunity to see and hear one another as well as communicate via text messages while working with commonly available stored resources, appears to have important applications to the support of collaborative learning. In this paper we explore this potential in three ways: (a) through an analysis of particular learner needs when learning and working collaboratively with others outside of face-to-face situations; (b) through an analysis of different forms of conferencing environments, including desktop multimedia environments, relative to their effectiveness in terms of meeting learner needs for distributed collaboration; and (c) through reporting the results of a formative evaluation of a prototype desktop multimedia conferencing system developed especially for the support of collaborative learning. Via these analyses, suggestions are offered relating to the functionalities of desktop multimedia conferencing systems for the support of collaborative learning, reflecting new developments in both the technologies available for such systems and in our awareness of learner needs when working collaboratively with one other outside of face-to-face situations

The relationship of (perceived) epistemic cognition to interaction with resources on the internet

Information seeking and processing are key literacy practices. However, they are activities that students, across a range of ages, struggle with. These information seeking processes can be viewed through the lens of epistemic cognition: beliefs regarding the source, justification, complexity, and certainty of knowledge. In the research reported in this article we build on established research in this area, which has typically used self-report psychometric and behavior data, and information seeking tasks involving closed-document sets. We take a novel approach in applying established self-report measures to a large-scale, naturalistic, study environment, pointing to the potential of analysis of dialogue, web-navigation – including sites visited – and other trace data, to support more traditional self-report mechanisms. Our analysis suggests that prior work demonstrating relationships between self-report indicators is not paralleled in investigation of the hypothesized relationships between self-report and trace-indicators. However, there are clear epistemic features of this trace data. The article thus demonstrates the potential of behavioral learning analytic data in understanding how epistemic cognition is brought to bear in rich information seeking and processing tasks

Use of scenario evaluation in preparation for deployment of a collaborative system for knowledge transfer - the case of KiMERA

This paper presented an approach for the evaluation of a collaborative system, after the completion of system development and software testing but before its deployment. Scenario and collaborative episodes were designed and data collected from users role-playing. This was found to be a useful step in refining the user training, in setting the right level of user expectation when the system started to roll-out to real users and in providing feedback to the development team

Child Welfare Partnership for Research and Training: A Title IV-E University/Community Collaborative Research Model

University-community partnerships are increasingly recognized as valuable in educating students for professional practice and bridging the gap between research and practice. This manuscript describes the evolution and design of a university-community partnership between a School of Social Work in one urban university and local child welfare agencies: the Child Welfare Partnership for Research and Training (CW-PART). This local partnership illustrates types of opportunities and outcomes that emerge when state and local entities leverage greater results from federal funding through partnerships with local universities. The manuscript describes 1), the community-engaged framework used to inform the overall approach and partner roles; 2) evolution of the model from early partnered research successes; 3) core elements of the CWPART university-community partnered research model, and 4) preliminary lessons learned from the pilot phase of model

Achieving success in collaborative research: the role of virtual research environments

Due to various challenges and opportunities such as globalisation of research agenda and advancements in information and communication technologies, research collaborations (both international and national) have become popular during the last decade more than ever before. Within this context, the concept of Virtual Research Environments is an emerging concept looking at addressing the complex challenges associated with conducting collaborative research. The research reported within this paper investigated how the success factors of collaborative research can be achieved by deploying a Virtual Research Environment

Security in online learning assessment towards an effective trustworthiness approach to support e-learning teams

(c) 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.This paper proposes a trustworthiness model for the design of secure learning assessment in on-line collaborative learning groups. Although computer supported collaborative learning has been widely adopted in many educational institutions over the last decade, there exist still drawbacks which limit their potential in collaborative learning activities. Among these limitations, we investigate information security requirements in on-line assessment, (e-assessment), which can be developed in collaborative learning contexts. Despite information security enhancements have been developed in recent years, to the best of our knowledge, integrated and holistic security models have not been completely carried out yet. Even when security advanced methodologies and technologies are deployed in Learning Management Systems, too many types of vulnerabilities still remain opened and unsolved. Therefore, new models such as trustworthiness approaches can overcome these lacks and support e-assessment requirements for e-Learning. To this end, a trustworthiness model is designed in order to conduct the guidelines of a holistic security model for on-line collaborative learning through effective trustworthiness approaches. In addition, since users' trustworthiness analysis involves large amounts of ill-structured data, a parallel processing paradigm is proposed to build relevant information modeling trustworthiness levels for e-Learning.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Program Evaluation in the Context of Debates in the Field: The Evaluation of PR-CETP

This paper rationalizes the selection of the concept of energy as the central theme of a new capstone course aimed at science education majors. It describes the goals of the course and the activities that preceded the course design and led to the selection of the topics, of the educational materials, and of the teaching methodologies. It presents a sequential description of the manner in which the conceptual knowledge of energy was to be developed. The specific experiments, interactive demonstrations and other educational materials utilized for the conceptual development of the concept of energy in context are described and referenced. The course objectives are described, as well as the instruments utilized to assess student learning. It also presents the activities utilized to assess the course, in addition to the modifications made to the course syllabus based on this assessment

The energy to engage: wind farm development and community engagement in Australia

This report reviews what is known about community engagement in wind energy industry and identify what we still need to understand. After briefly presenting the relationship between wind farms and society as a significant one, we will recapitulate what strains that relationship and how community engagement can address it. We will point out that divergent models of community engagement are currently available to analysts and practitioners; that companies around the world are increasingly shifting towards more collaborative forms of engagement; that Australian business in the wind energy industry and planning authorities have some catching-up to do if they are to align themselves with such a global trend; and that the gap between declarations of principle advocating tighter collaboration betweenwind farm developers and communities and the actual practice on the ground has left some critics wondering whether those declarations are just rhetorical stratagems geared to placate public opinion

A HCI principles based framework to assess the user perception of web based Virtual Research Environments. Special issue on Capacity building for post disaster infrastructure development and management

Due to various challenges and opportunities such as globalisation of research agenda and advancements in information and communication technologies, research collaborations (both international and national) have become popular during the last decade more than ever before. Within this context, the concept of Virtual Research environments(VRE) is an emerging concept looking at addressing the complex challenges associated with conducting collaborative research. Even though concept of VRE is at its infancy, it is important to assess user perception about those, both to establish its success of uptake and future development strategies. However, to date, there is no formal method established to evaluate VREs .This paper reports a strategy adopted within an international collaborative research project (EURASIA) to evaluate its custom built VRE, VEBER, using the well known Computer Human Interaction principles