Juan-Diego Zapata-Rivera

Inspecting and Visualizing Distributed Bayesian Student Models

Bayesian Belief Networks provide a principled, mathematically sound, and logically rational mechanism to represent student models. The belief net backbone structure proposed by Reye [14,15] offers a practical way to represent and update Bayesian student models describing both cognitive and social aspects of the learner. Considering students as active participants in the modelling process, this paper explores visualization and inspectability issues of Bayesian student modelling. This paper also presents ViSMod an integrated tool to visualize and inspect distributed Bayesian student models.

Supporting Negotiated Assessment Using Open Student Models

During the last two years our research on open student models have led us to experiment with visualization and inspection of Bayesian student models - ViSMod, and employing conceptual maps as a representation of the student through ConceptLab, a knowledge construction and navigation system. Although previous work have given us interesting results, several questions remain to be solved, such as: How open should be the student model to better enhance the learning process?; How should students and teachers interact with the model?; Are students and teachers willing to interact with the model or it should be done as part of a supervised learning activity? In order to solve some of these questions, this thesis explores different scenarios in which open student modelling can be used as means of supporting reflection, negotiated assessment, and enhance the learning process.