Gloria Yi-Ming Kao

Personalized blog content recommender system for mobile phone users

Compared to newspaper columnists and broadcast media commentators, bloggers do not have organizations actively promoting their content to users; instead, they rely on word-of-mouth or casual visits by web surfers. We believe the WAP Push service feature of mobile phones can help bridge the gap between internet and mobile services, and expand the number of potential blog readers. Since mobile phone screen size is very limited, content providers must be familiar with individual user preferences in order to recommend content that matches narrowly defined personal interests. To help identify popular blog topics, we have created (a) an information retrieval process that clusters blogs into groups based on keyword analyses, and (b) a mobile content recommender system (M-CRS) for calculating user preferences for new blog documents. Here we describe results from a case study involving 20,000 mobile phone users in which we examined the effects of personalized content recommendations. Browsing habits and user histories were recorded and analyzed to determine individual preferences for making content recommendations via the WAP Push feature. The evaluation results of our recommender system indicate significant increases in both blog-related push service click rates and user time spent reading personalized web pages. The process used in this study supports accurate recommendations of personalized mobile content according to user interests. This approach can be applied to other embedded systems with device limitations, since document subject lines are elaborated and more attractive to intended users.

Thinking style impacts on Web search strategies

Web searches entail complex cognitive processes influenced by individual differences, and users with similar cognitive or skill factors tend to develop multiple search strategies. The authors analyze such strategies in terms of level of thinking style (global versus local), search targets, and six search behavior indicators and report (a) a significant relationship between different thinking style levels and individual search target types and (b) that different thinking style level conditions can cause significant differences in search behavior performance regarding maximum depth of exploration, revisited pages, and Web pages visited for refining answers. The findings suggest that high global style users tend to disperse their targets to comprehend the search task while high local style users elaborate on a few specific topics. Furthermore, high global style users skim more, require less explicit answers, and are less likely to explore an issue in depth compared to high local style or bi-high style individuals. The results confirm that thinking style level is an important factor affecting search intention. To improve search experiences, search engine designers should incorporate human factors into their products so as to take advantage of personal learning approaches.

Enhancing the quality of peer review by reducing student “free riding”: Peer assessment with positive interdependence

Abstract Collaborative learning tasks have been hampered by problems of unequal participation such as the presence of a free rider or dominance by a member of a group. Researchers in the collaborative learning domain respond to these problems with approaches designed to establish personal accountability for each student and relations of positive interdependence between students. These two notions have been borrowed and integrated with the present approach, which is designed for use in both traditional and online peer assessment. The key assumption is that introducing a greater degree of positive interdependence and personal accountability into the assessment process may reduce or eliminate free riding, while with students performing their ratings individually, dominance is unlikely to be an issue. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic • A number of studies have found generally positive results for peer assessment. • When implementing peer assessment, teachers are faced with a number of threats, including favoritism, unfairness, distortion of marking, low-quality comments and a lack of engagement. • Numerous peer assessment tools have been developed to make assessment more fair for students. What this paper adds • The focus of this paper is on countering the threats of carelessness and favoritism. • The paper describes an innovative approach called “Peer Assessment with Positive Interdependence” (PAPI), which was designed to counter these threats and enhance the overall quality of peer review. • The PAPI approach encourages students to take a broader and more comprehensive perspective during peer assessment, enhancing their ability as “critical assessors.” Implications for practice and/or policy • PAPI enables students to benefit from the known advantages of peer assessment while minimizing threats to its effectiveness. • PAPI makes it possible to target particular instructional goals, through the use of different weightings at different stages of the learning process. • In particular, if teaching a class in which most students are “quality achievers” with only a few “critical assessors” teachers might adjust the weightings to promote the development of critical thinking skills. • Conversely, if the class contains a high number of “critical assessors” but only a small number of “quality achievers,” the weightings could be adjusted to focus more on the individual assignments.

Teaching through Simulation: Epidemic Dynamics and Public Health Policies

A growing number of epidemiologists are now working to refine computer simulation methods for diseases as a strategy for helping public policy decision-makers assess the potential efficacies of tactics in response to newly emerging epidemics. These efforts spiked after the SARS outbreak of 2002– 2003. Here we describe our attempt to help novice researchers understand epidemic dynamics with the help of the cellular automata with social mirror identity model (CASMIM), a small-world epidemiological simulation system created by Huang et al. in 2004. Using the SARS scenario as a teaching example, we designed three sets of instructional experiments to test our assumptions regarding (i) simulating epidemic transmission dynamics and associated public health policies, (ii) assisting with understanding the properties and efficacies of various public health policies, (iii) constructing an effective, low-cost (in social and financial terms) and executable suite of epidemic prevention strategies, and (iv) reducing the difficulties and costs associated with learning epidemiological concepts. With the aid of the proposed simulation tool, novice researchers can create various scenarios for discovering epidemic dynamics and for exploring applicable combinations of prevention or suppression strategies. Results from an evaluative test indicate a significant improvement in the ability of a group of college students with little experience in epidemiology to understand epidemiological concepts.

Designing a networked-sharing construction environment

Introduction Some Internet-based concept mapping systems, whether they emphasize cooperative or individual knowledge construction, have been developed to enhance knowledge construction. For example, in the study of Chiu, Huang, and Chang (2000), 3 to 5 students were grouped to cooperatively construct a concept map through a discussion on-line. Unfortunately, students could “hitchhike” on the work of others due to the innate drawbacks within groups. Many web-cooperative learning studies (eg, Sun and Chou, 1996) also reported when managing group learning on the Internet, teachers might be confronted by some problems of unequal participation, such as free rider or dominance of any one member in a group. In sum, there is no easy way to ensure students’ accountability of their work.

Customizing scaffolds for game-based learning in physics: Impacts on knowledge acquisition and game design creativity

Abstract Scaffolds in games have the potential to facilitate learning effects in addition to assisting the gaming process. However, studies on game-based science learning usually only adopt questionnaires to evaluate scientific concepts, and use interviews or observations to assess problem solving ability, neglecting the importance of investigating game-making outcomes. We customized a digital game, “Crayon Physics Deluxe,” with varied scaffolding designs to evaluate their effects on science learning. A total of 126 participants were divided into four groups: demonstration scaffolding, non-scaffolding, marking critical features scaffolding, and the no-game group. Learning outcomes were examined in terms of physics knowledge acquisition (in the form of concept maps) and design creativity (in the form of game episode designs). Students were asked to transform their roles from problem solvers to problem designers, which might not only demonstrate their ability to solve scientific problems, but also develop their creativity potential in designing scientific puzzles. The results indicated that the marking critical features scaffolding group performed significantly better than the demonstration scaffolding group in both conceptual knowledge acquisition and the sensitivity dimension of design creativity, while the group with demonstration scaffolding scored higher in the flexibility dimension of design creativity. These findings suggest that proper scaffolds could be designed to function as learning scaffolds rather than just as gaming scaffolds, and different learning purposes require various scaffolding designs. The content of the scaffolds, as well as the timing of their provision should be carefully designed according to the game features to achieve specific instructional purposes.

Learning to build network-oriented epidemic simulation models in epidemiology education

Epidemic simulations and intervention strategy assessments are attracting interest in light of recent and potential outbreaks of infectious diseases such as SARS and avian flu. Universities are using computational modelling and simulation tools to teach epidemiology concepts to students, but integrating domain-specific knowledge and building network-based simulation models are difficult tasks in terms of teacher preparation and learner evaluation. To illustrate challenges to creating network-oriented models in epidemiology education, we introduce an architecture based on demographic and geographic data for building network-oriented epidemic simulation models, and describe our experiences simulating the transmission dynamics of three infectious diseases in Taiwan.

A multi-source book review system for reducing information overload and accommodating individual styles

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the multi-source book review system (MBRS). MBRS was designed to reduce information overload using the internet and to accommodate different learner preferences. Design/methodology/approach – The authors experimentally compared MBRS with the Google search engine. MBRS first gathers reviews from online sources, such as bookstores and blogs. It reduces information overload through an advanced filtering and sorting algorithm and by providing a uniform user interface. MBRS accommodates different learning styles through various sort options and through adding video-mediated reviews. Findings – Results indicate that, compared with Google, MBRS: reduces the information overload associated with searching for online book reviews; increases users finding satisfactory book reviews; and allows users to find reviews more quickly. In addition, more than half of the participants found video-mediated book reviews more appealing than traditional text-ba...