Po-Sheng Chiu

The design and implementation of a meaningful learning-based evaluation method for ubiquitous learning

If ubiquitous learning (u-learning) is to be effectively developed and feasibly applied to education, it is necessary to evaluate its effectiveness. Yet to achieve a sound evaluation, a particular paradigm must be employed to fit the problem domain. Toward this end, the authors of this study have adopted a meaningful learning paradigm. Meaningful learning is often regarded as the ultimate learning status for a learner, regardless of the learning environment. Interestingly, several characteristics of u-learning are also linked to attributes of meaningful learning. For example, both u-learning and meaningful learning emphasize the authentic and active of the learning activity. Therefore, it is important to investigate the applicability of a meaningful learning paradigm for evaluating the efficacy of u-learning. The method proposed here evaluates u-learning along both macro and micro aspects, and in an effort to make u-learning more sustainable. By employing a case study, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by showing the advantages and disadvantages that are common to both u-learning and meaningful learning. Moreover, we also provide suggestions for instructors and designers so that they can promote the quality of u-learning.

A Meaningful Learning Based u-Learning Evaluation Model

In recent years, there has been a dramatic proliferation of research concerned with the ubiquitous learning (u-learning). The u-learning systems have to be continuously evaluated and improved for ensuring the system reliability. Therefore, this work based on meaningful learning aspect to propose a u-learning evaluation model. The model blends features of u-learning and meaningful learning to construct a hierarchy decision model. According to the hierarchy structure, domain experts can develop AHP-based questionnaire survey to collect learnerspsila opinions. Following that, system developers can realize the relative strength and weakness of the u-learning system from a meaningful learning viewpoint by analyzing the surveyed data, and they can further to improve and refine current u-learning systems accordingly. Consequently, existing u-learning systems can be revalidated by our evaluation model, and then based on the produced suggestions to improve toward the meaningful learning.

The effectiveness of the meaningful learning-based evaluation for different achieving students in a ubiquitous learning context

In recent years, fueled by the rise of mobile technology, ubiquitous learning has shown great potential in various disciplines, especially in context-aware environments. However, improper applications of this learning approach may also lead to inefficient learning and even reduced learning effectiveness. It is thus necessary to assess whether a ubiquitous learning project is able to achieve the aim of meaningful learning, so as to empower learners in scaffolding their knowledge students with different levels of achievement, especially low-achieving ones. This study aims to investigate the impact of a meaningful learning-based evaluation method on ubiquitous learning, in order to enhance the target system. A quasi-experiment is designed for this purpose, in which the post-evaluation and refined ubiquitous learning activities are adopted for the experimental group, in contrast to the control group, which works without the proposed evaluation method. The findings show that the evaluating ubiquitous learning using the meaningful learning paradigm can significantly enhance learning effectiveness, especially for low-achieving students, although the gains were not so significant for the high-achieving students, as seen in the posttest. Moreover, no significant differences in learning effectiveness were found between the experimental and control groups. The results of the posttest showed that the low-achieving students in the experimental group significantly outperformed those in the control group. This study suggests that the functions of a learning system may be need to be further enhanced to better suit the needs of low-achieving students, and that the use of a meaningful learning-based evaluation method is an effective way to find out what needs to be improved. We aim to investigate the impact of a meaningful learning evaluation method.The evaluation method can reveal the advantages and disadvantages of u-learning.Meaningful learning benefits learning effectiveness of low-achieving students.

The Effect of Situated Mobile Learning on Chinese Rhetoric Ability of Elementary School Students

This study developed a situated writing mobile learning (SWML) based on situated learning theory. We attempted to realize whether the situated writing via mobile learning activity could improve learners’ Chinese rhetoric ability which includes hyperbole, description, repetition, personification, and simile. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effectiveness of the practice of learners’ Chinese rhetoric ability via SWML. The research method was a pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design. The participants consisted of 70 sixth grade students in an elementary school in southern Taiwan. The results showed that although the abilities of hyperbole, description, repetition, personification, and simile were not statistically significant, but the mean gain scores of the experimental group were higher than the comparison group. Besides, the ability of description was statistically significant. Finally, the findings suggested that SWML could help students’ delineation skill in Chinese rhetoric.

Implementation and evaluation of mobile e-books in a cloud bookcase using the information system success model

– To continue to develop and improve cloud e-bookcases, the purpose of this paper is to implement a cloud e-bookcase and modifies the information systems (ISs) success model to make it capable of assessing this system. It also provides suggestions for future systems development. , – This study implements a cloud bookcase and uses the IS success model to evaluate user intention and satisfaction with the system. It also develops a success model for the cloud bookcase. , – The results of study indicate that user satisfaction and intention with regard to using the system are positively related to net benefits. In other words, increasing user satisfaction and intention with regard to using the system will have a positive effect on the benefits users receive from doing so. , – Users think the functions and services of the cloud bookcase can indeed help them search for and organize information about electronic books. However, they are not satisfied with the information quality. Therefore, further work is needed to identify any important factors that this study did not investigate. This study suggests that the quality of a system’s functions and guide service have to be upgraded in order to increase user satisfaction with and intention to use the system. , – This study implements a cloud bookcase and uses the IS success model for verification. An overall explanatory power of 77.9 percent is achieved with this approach. User satisfaction with and intention to use the system are independent from each other, and the results caused by various factors can be separately identified. The findings of this study have considerable practical value.

Development and evaluation of the mobile library service system success model: A case study of Taiwan

– The purpose of this study is to develop and analyse the usage status, level of satisfaction and success model of a mobile library service system in Taiwan. The research results could serve as a reference for the development, evaluation and improvement of libraries’ mobile services. , – This study designed a mobile library service system and used the informational system success model to evaluate its use status and level of satisfaction and, thus, to develop a success model for a mobile library service system. , – Results showed that students’ level of satisfaction with the mobile library service system had a positive correlation with the usage status indicated that the system could help them to improve their work efficiency, such as by reducing time spent searching for books and cost of obtaining electronic resources. The students also expressed a willingness to continue using the mobile library service system. , – In general, the students thought that the mobile library service system could reduce the time needed to search for book-related information, but that the service quality should be improved. Therefore, this study suggests that the education and training of system service personnel should be enhanced and that easy-to-use functions be provided to promote the users’ level of satisfaction and willingness to use the system. , – This study developed a mobile library service system and invited students studying in the National University of Tainan, in southern Taiwan, to be the subjects in an experiment, with a goal to evaluate the success of a model mobile library. The findings showed that the overall explanatory power (R2) of this model was 55 per cent and, thus, that the findings of this work have practical significance.

The design and implementation of a Mobile Library APP system

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to increase usage rate of libraries in universities and colleges, this study developed a Mobile Library APP System and analyzed users’ usage and level of satisfaction. The analysis results served as the reference for the development and improvement of libraries in universities and colleges’ mobile information systems. Design/methodology/approach – This study developed a Mobile Library APP System and probed into and evaluated college students’ usage and level of satisfaction with the system by using questionnaire. Individual interviews were carried out to find out their standpoints and opinions about their library usage via mobile technology. Findings – The analysis of experiment results showed that students’ attitude toward the Mobile Library APP System was highly positive. This indicated the system certainly assisted them in increasing their work efficiency and their willingness in continuously using this APP system in library-relevant activities. Practical implicat...

A video annotation learning approach to improve the effects of video learning

ABSTRACT Digital video has become a popular instructional media, which makes students more enthusiastic about the subjects they are learning. However, students may not be able to receive these benefits if the videos present the information they contain too quickly. To overcome this problem, this study proposed a video annotation learning system, by which learners can annotate and highlight the interesting or important contents to make them more memorable. A quasi-experiment was conducted on a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed learning approach. Eye-tracking technology was used to examine students’ learning process, and assess whether the use of annotations increased their attention. The findings reveal that the proposed approach could encourage students to concentrate more on the critical parts of the instructional video, and thus resulted in better learning performance than the conventional approach to using videos.

The development of a decision support system for mobile learning: a case study in Taiwan

While mobile learning (m-learning) has considerable potential, most of previous strategies for developing this new approach to education were analysed using the knowledge, experience and judgement of individuals, with the support of statistical software. Although these methods provide systematic steps for the implementation of m-learning strategies, they do not consider the correlations among the key success factors. This study aims to develop a decision support system for m-learning, and design m-learning activities that combine lessons in Chinese rhetoric with an outdoor learning activity at the National University of Tainan, in Taiwan. To verify the feasibility and value of the proposed decision support system for m-learning, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was used to analyse the three types of participants in this case study – college students, system developers and instructors from related fields. The evaluation indexes of the success factors of m-learning were used to obtain the opinions of each participant. The relative weight of each evaluation index was calculated, and the entire weight system of the indexes was established, which can then be used as a strategic tool for m-learning development.

The Effect of Peer’s Progress on Learning Achievement in e-Learning: A Social Facilitation Perspective

Electronic learning (e-Learning) is the next generation of learning. It provides comprehensive supports to students and can overcome geographical and time limitations compared to traditional classroom learning. There is a dramatic difference between traditional classroom learning and e-Learning. One of the significant discrepancy is the nature of the social context, which is a main research issue in this study. The lack of in-person contacts in e-Learning does not isolate students from the social thoroughly, yet with the assistance of technology, there is still room for much more creative learning activities that facilitates interactivity between students. Therefore, in this study, social presence theory and social facilitation theory were reviewed and designed to examine the influence of information about peers’ progress on students’ learning effect. Forty-four students of an elective course in a senior high school at Tainan City, Tainan participated in the experiment. The result shows that students’ learning effect is affected by information about peers’ progress, and results were discussed with social presence theory and social facilitates theory. Displaying of information about peers on e-Learning system can have influence on students. Consequently, students’ learning can more or less be influenced by controlling the display of peer information.