Akiko Inaba

An Ontology Engineering Approach to the Realization of Theory-Driven Group Formation

One of the main difficulties during the design of collaborative learning activities is adequate group formation. In any type of collaboration, group formation plays a critical role in the learners’ acceptance of group activities, as well as the success of the collaborative learning process. Nevertheless, to propose both an effective and pedagogically sound group formation is a complex issue due to multiple factors that influence group arrangement. The current (and previous) learner’s knowledge and skills, the roles and strategies used by learners to interact among themselves, and the teacher’s preferences are some examples of factors to be considered while forming groups. To identify which factors are essential (or desired) in effective group formation, a well-structured and formalized representation of collaborative learning processes, supported by a strong pedagogical basis, is desirable. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to present an ontology that works as a framework based on learning theories that facilitate group formation and collaborative learning design. The ontology provides the necessary formalization to represent collaborative learning and its processes, while learning theories provide support in making pedagogical decisions such as gathering learners in groups and planning the scenario where the collaboration will take place. Although the use of learning theories to support collaborative learning is open for criticism, we identify that they provide important information which can be useful in allowing for more effective learning. To validate the usefulness and effectiveness of this approach, we use this ontology to form and run group activities carried out by four instructors and 20 participants. The experiment was utilized as a proof-of-concept and the results suggest that our ontological framework facilitates the effective design of group activities, and can positively affect the performance of individuals during group learning.

How Can We Form Effective Collaborative Learning Groups

Our research objectives include constructing a collaborative learning support system that detects appropriate situation for a learner to join in a collaborative learning session, and forms a collaborative learning group appropriate for the situation dynamically. In this paper, we describe a system of concepts concerning learning goals expected to attain by learners through collaborative learning process with justification by the learning theories. With the ontology, it will be possible to compare and synthesize the learning theories to design the collaborative learning settings.

Learners’ Roles and Predictable Educational Benefits in Collaborative Learning

To facilitate shared understandings of several models of collaborative learning, and collect rational models of effective collaborative learning, we have been constructing a system of concepts to represent collaborative learning sessions relying on existing learning theories. We call the system of concepts Collaborative Learning Ontology, and have been extracting and representing models inspired by the theories with the ontology. In this paper, as a part of the ontology, we concentrated on clarifying behavior and roles for learners in collaborative learning sessions, conditions to assign appropriate roles for each learner, and predictable educational benefits by playing the roles. The system of concepts and models will be beneficial to both designing appropriate groups for collaborative learning sessions, and interaction analysis among learners to assess educational benefits of the learning session.

EASE : evolutional authoring support environment

How smart should we be in order to cope with the complex authoring process of smart courseware? Lately this question gains more attention with attempts to simplify the process and efforts to define authoring systems and tools to support it. The goal of this paper is to specify an evolutional perspective on the Intelligent Educational Systems (IES) authoring and in this context to define the authoring framework EASE: powerful in its functionality, generic in its support of instructional strategies and user-friendly in its interaction with the author. The evolutional authoring support is enabled by an authoring task ontology that at a meta-level defines and controls the configuration and tuning of an authoring tool for a specific authoring process. In this way we achieve more control over the evolution of the intelligence in IES and reach a computational formalization of IES engineering.

An interaction analysis support system for CSCL: an ontological approach to support instructional design process

We can observe various kinds of interaction among members of a learning group during a collaborative learning session. It is difficult for even human users to analyze them in order to clarify what types of collaboration have occurred in the session and what educational benefits have been expected for the members through the session. So, we propose an interaction analysis support system that helps users to abstract the essence of interaction from raw protocol data, and to understand what types of collaboration have occurred in the session, and then infers educational benefits expected to be gained by the members through the interaction process.

Towards Shared Understanding of Metacognitive Skill and Facilitating Its Development

Our research objective is to organize existing learning strategies and systems to support the development of learners’ metacognitive skill. It is difficult to organize them because the term metacognition itself is mysterious and ambiguous. In order to achieve the objective, we first organize activities in cognitive skill and metacognitive skill. It enables us to reveal what activity existing learning strategies and systems support as metacognitive skill or what activity they do not support. Next, we simplify existing learning strategies and systems by ontology. It helps us to understand what of learning strategies and support systems is respectively different, and what of them is respectively similar. It will contribute to a part of an instructional design process.

A collaborative-learning support function to harness organizational intellectual synergy

Intellectual synergy is a major source of high competitive power for an organization. Through the authors research project, we have been developing an environment, Kfarm, to support creating/inheriting organizational intellect. Characteristic features of Kfarm include a dual loop model which represents ideal processes of knowledge-level communication among personnel to create/inherit organizational knowledge. In this paper, they focus on collaborative learning support functions of Kfarm. This research seeks to clarify the essential role of collaborative learning in an organization and provide an appropriate opportunity for collaborative learning for organization members. Attaining the goal requires construction of a design model of collaborative learning and realization of design support functions into Kfarm. This paper first introduces learning aspects of organizational activities, Then, it roughly outlines Kfarm while focusing on collaborative learning support functions.

Supporting Interaction Analysis for Collaborative Learning

Many of software designers of CSCL environment have been suffering from complex and subtle educational requirements offered by clients. One of major causes of the problem they face is the lack of shared understanding of collaborative learning. We do not know what design rationale of CSCL environment is and even do not have common vocabulary to describe what the collaborative learning is. In this research, we are aiming at supporting such complex instructional design (ID) process of CSCL environment. To fulfill the aim we have been constructing an ontology to represent CSCL session[1,2]. The ontology will work as both vocabulary to describe the session and design patterns referred to during the instructional design process. To represent learning scenarios using the ontology will facilitate users’ shared understandings and reuse the scenarios. It is useful to store and provide effective learning scenarios as design patterns. As the first step to fulfill our aim, we adopt learning theories as foundation to analyze, design, and develop the learning sessions. The design patterns inspired by the theories provide design rationale for CSCL design.

A step towards integration of learning theories to form an effective collaborative learning group

We are aiming at building a sophisticated ontology through a survey of existing learning theories. On top of that, our research objectives include constructing a collaborative learning (CL) support system that detects appropriate situation for a learner to join in a CL session, and forms a CL group appropriate for the situation dynamically. To fulfill these objectives, we have to consider the following: 1. How to detect the appropriate situation to start a CL session and to set up the learning goal, 2. How to form an effective group which ensures educational benefits to the members of the group, and 3. How to facilitate desired interaction among learners in the learning group. We have discussed item 1 in our previous papers, and now focus on item 2.