Fridolin Wild

Towards Ubiquitous Learning

This paper explores the effect of computerized scaffolding and different forms of scaffolds on small groups’ collaborative discourse. We developed a computerized scaffolding system that uses an attention management system to support metacognitive activities in small groups. We previously found that the scaffolding stimulates the group’ metacognitive activities and enhances individual metacognitive knowledge. Moreover different forms of scaffolds have differential effects on learning that cannot be explained by quantitative differences in the groups’ metacognitive activities. Therefore, we investigate to qualitative differences in the groups’ collaborative discourse in this study. We found that groups receiving scaffolding had significantly less ignored metacognitive episodes. Groups receiving problematizing scaffolds had significantly less ignored metacognitive episodes and more co-constructed metacognitive episodes compared to groups receiving structuring scaffolds. These findings indicate that scaffolding indeed positively influenced collaborative discourse and intensive collaborative discourse seems to explain the differential learning effects of different forms of scaffolds.

Mashups by orchestration and widget-based personal environments Key challenges, solution strategies, and an application

Purpose – Mashups have been studied extensively in the literature; nevertheless, the large body of work in this area focuses on service/data level integration and leaves UI level integration, hence UI mashups, almost unexplored. The latter generates digital environments in which participating sources exist as individual entities; member applications and data sources share the same graphical space particularly in the form of widgets. However, the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. The authors call such an integration “widget orchestration” and the resulting application “mashup by orchestration”. This article aims to explore and address challenges regarding the realization of widget‐based UI mashups and UI level integration, prominently in terms of widget orchestration, and to assess their suitability for building web‐based personal environments.Design/methodology/approach – The authors provide a holistic view on mashups and...

Investigating Unstructured Texts with Latent Semantic Analysis

Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is an algorithm applied to approximate the meaning of texts, thereby exposing semantic structure to computation. LSA combines the classical vector-space model — well known in computational linguistics — with a singular value decomposition (SVD), a two-mode factor analysis. Thus, bag-of-words representations of texts can be mapped into a modified vector space that is assumed to reflect semantic structure. In this contribution the authors describe the lsa package for the statistical language and environment R and illustrate its proper use through examples from the areas of automated essay scoring and knowledge representation.

Components of a research 2.0 infrastructure

In this paper, we investigate the components of a Research 2.0 infrastructure. We propose building blocks and their concrete implementation to leverage Research 2.0 practice and technologies in our field, including a publication feed format for exchanging publication data, a RESTful API to retrieve publication and Web 2.0 data, and a publisher suit for refining and aggregating data. We illustrate the use of this infrastructure with Research 2.0 application examples ranging from a Mash-Up environment, a mobile and multitouch application, thereby demonstrating the strength of this infrastructure.

Mashups and widget orchestration

The mashup era has emerged in response to the challenge of integrating existing services, data sources, and tools to generate new applications. Mashups are usually realized either through a seamless integration, in which only the resulting application is known by the end-users, or through integration of original applications, data sources, and tools, particularly in terms of widgets, into the same graphical space, in which participating applications and data sources are identifiable by the end-users. The former composes a unified functionality or data presentation/source from the original sources. The latter generates a digital environment in which participating sources exist as individual entities, but the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. We call such an integration widget orchestration. In this paper, we provide a holistic view on the mashup era and a theoretical grounding for widget-based digital environments, we elaborate on key challenges for realizing such environments and (semi-)automatic widget orchestration, and we introduce our solution strategies. We identified following challenges: widget interoperability, user-behavior mining, and infrastructure. We introduce functional interfaces (FWI) for application interoperability, exploit semantic web technologies for data interoperability, and investigate the possibility of employing workflow/process mining techniques, along with Petri nets as a formal ground, for user-behavior mining. We outline a reference platform and architecture, compliant with our strategies, to foster re-usability of widgets and development of standardized widget-based environments. We have implemented a prototype for a Widget-based Personal Learning Environment (WIPLE) for foreign language learning in order to demonstrate the feasibility of our solution strategies, framework, and architecture.

Indirect Revenue Models for E-Learning at Universities — The Case of Learn@WU

This paper addresses the recent discussions on business models for e-learning. Throughout this paper, we contribute to this discussion by presenting evidence for the sustainability of e-learning projects at universities by discussing three cases of revenue models in the context of Learn@WU. The cases include an advertising, a sponsorship, and a content distribution model. The paper shows that there is a significant potential for revenue, but one revenue model is hardly enough to cover the cost. The size of project seems to be the crucial factor that influences sustainability of e-learning revenue models.

CONSPECT: monitoring conceptual development

This paper describes and evaluates CONSPECT, a service that analyses states in a learner’s conceptual development. CONSPECT combines two technologies – Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Network Analysis (NA) into a technique called Meaningful Interaction Analysis (MIA). It uses LSA for the language analysis and NA to provide visualisations of the semantic relatedness information calculated by LSA. CONSPECT was designed to help both learners and tutors monitor conceptual development. This paper reports on the verification activities undertaken to show how well LSA matches humans in clustering similar concepts. The verification used the edit distance between card sorts to quantitatively evaluate the service.

Building Blocks for a Smart Space for Learning^TM

This case study summarizes the demonstration of a semantic network of interoperable educational systems referred to as Smart Space for Learningtrade. We started connecting several educational nodes in projects such as Elena, Prolearn, and Icamp. Integration was achieved by using the interaction standard SQI, common schemas for querying and results presentation, and query exchange language, e.g. QEL. The paper particularly focuses on how heterogeneous nodes can be made interoperable by reusing generalizations of mediating components - building blocks for a Smart Space for Learningtrade

iCamp: the educational web for higher education

iCamp is an EC-funded research project in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) that aims to support collaboration and social networking across systems, countries and disciplines in higher education. The concept of an iCamp Space will build on existing interfaces and integrate shared community features. Interoperability amongst different open source learning systems and tools is the key to successful sustainability of iCamp. The content for this collaboration within social communities is provided via distributed networked repositories including, for example, content brokerage platforms, online libraries, and learning object databases. The innovative pedagogical model of iCamp is based on social constructivist learning theories. iCamp creates an environment for a new way of social networking in higher education that puts more emphasis on self-organised, self-directed learning, social networking and cross-cultural collaboration.

Semantic mash-up personal and pervasive learning environments (SMupple)

Personal Learning Environments have emerged as a complementary, even challenging, paradigm to Adaptive Learning Systems. We consider the mash-up era as an appropriate approach for a successful realization of digital personal learning environments. However, mash-ups are also accompanied by critical technical and usability challenges. In this paper, we try to identify some of these challenges and present our solution approach which results in Semantic Mash-up Personal and Pervasive Learning Environments (SMupple).