Towards a Service-Oriented Architecture for Giving Feedback in Informal Learning Environments

[unpublished paper]Feedback has is a part of continuous interaction between learners and their learning environment. It cannot be simplified to self-assessment and rewarding; it also adds tension that motivates the learners on their engagement on learning processes from the very beginning. Feedback relies on the learners’ previous actions as well as on the interaction context in which an action occurs. In this paper we propose service components and a service orchestration for a service oriented architecture (SOA) that are aligned to the process of providing feedback by adopting architectural concepts of context-aware applications. Using services instead of fully embedded layers, allows easier integration of components into existing systems at different levels. We describe a method how this is achieved for web-based systems by using state-of-the-art and standardised technology.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org

Using induction to generate feedback in simulation based discovery learning environments

Abstract. This paper describes a method for learner modelling for use within simulation-based learning environments. The goal of the learner modelling system is to provide the learner with advice on discovery learning. The system analyzes the evidence that a learner has generated for a specific hypothesis, assesses whether the learner needs support on the discovery process, and the nature of that support. The kind of advice described in this paper is general in the sense that it does not rely on specific domain knowledge, and specific in the sense that it is directly related to the learner’s interaction with the system. The learner modelling mechanism is part of the SimQuest authoring system for simulation-based discovery learning environment