William Hafner

Project-based, asynchronous collaborative learning

The value of collaboration as a tool to promote learning is becoming increasingly more evident. Students engaged in collaborative efforts typically retain the information being learned longer by becoming more actively engaged in the learning activity. There is evidence that collaborative activities foster higher-order thinking skills such as analytical reasoning, synthesis, and evaluation. Furthermore, students work in an environment that better prepares them to meet the challenges inherent in succeeding in the workforce. Constructivism in the form of project-based learning has likewise been shown to foster increased retention of material and greater depth of learning. When combined with collaborative assignments, students have demonstrated greater retention and enhanced capability of transferring concepts to practice. Promoting collaboration in a classroom setting is difficult and often resisted by both teachers and students. This difficulty is magnified for courses offered in an online learning environment. Although there are a number of applications available to enable real-time communication, the immediacy and intimacy of person-to-person interaction is difficult to replace. The non-verbal cues that comprise a large part of everyday communication are largely lost through even the richest online environment. As a result, educators are faced with a dilemma: both students and academic institutions are flocking towards courses offered via an asynchronous learning network, but there is no clear understanding of how to foster collaboration, one of the most promising pedagogical tools. Although asynchronous online environments certainly lack the intimacy and immediacy inherent in face-to-face settings and simulated to an extent by synchronous applications, meaningful collaborative assignments are still possible. The proposed paper details a five-step systems approach for fostering project-based, collaborative learning in an asynchronous learning environment. The steps are illustrated with examples from a graduate-level course in multimedia systems in which asynchronous collaboration was a featured assignment.

Peer Evaluations of Collaborative Learning Experiences Conveyed Through an Asynchronous Learning Network

The value of project-based, collaborative learning activities has been well established in the literature. For both students and faculty, fair and meaningful evaluation of the collaborative assignment is an overarching concern. Since the group-interaction elements of this type of assignment are of great interest - especially in terms of measuring such constructs as group productivity, division of labor, and teamwork skills and detecting instances of social loafing - evaluation cannot be based solely on the instructors assessment of the final product produced by the team. A blending of instructor, self, and peer assessment is indicated but the problems associated with gathering, weighing, and analyzing the data from such a multi-faceted evaluation are quite daunting. There is, however, little consensus on what data is available and how it can be effectively processed to facilitate evaluation of the teamwork in collaborative learning activities conducted in an ALN. The goal of this study was to develop a reliable and valid instrument for conducting self and peer evaluations of the teamwork aspect of a project-based, collaborative learning assignment.

Engineering an online course: applying the ‘secrets’ of computer programming to course development

Colleges and universities are increasingly migrating towards utilising the World Wide Web to convey at least part of, and in many cases, their entire curricular offering. Despite this trend there is little support for the professors responsible for translating courses refined over a career in the classroom for delivery via the Web. Teachers who are experts in their subject area and masters of their craft when in a classroom find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to relearn how to teach in a new environment with little or no support. Development of an online course is, in many significant aspects, analogous to developing a computer product. The procedures and tools utilised in the software engineering field to manage computer software development, therefore, offer promise for developing online courses. This paper explores the potential of one process developed for the software engineering field-the System Development Lifecycle (SDL)-as a tool to effectively design and develop online college courses.

Phishpin: An Identity-Based Anti-phishing Approach

Phishing is a social engineering technique used to fraudulently acquire sensitive information from users by masquerading as a legitimate entity. One of the primary goals of phishing is to illegally carry fraudulent financial transactions on behalf of users. The two primary vulnerabilities exploited by phishers are: Inability of non-technical/unsophisticated users to always identify spoofed emails or Web sites; and the relative ease with which phishers masquerade as legitimate Web sites. This paper presents Phishpin, an approach that leverages the concepts of mutual authentication to require online entities to prove their identities. To this end, Phishpin builds on partial credentials sharing, & client filtering to prevent phishers from masquerading as legitimate online entities.

Control Structure in Project-Based Asynchronous Collaborative Learning

Although project-based, collaborative learning (PBCL) activities have been established as effective learning experiences, they have been shown to be difficult to implement, especially in an asynchronous, distributed environment. Students and faculty alike have shown resistance to team-based exercises, citing numerous management concerns such as equitably distributing the work, assessing the performance of the individuals comprising the team, and resolving conflicts within the team. One major issue has been how to establish control within the team. Control structure refers to the manner in which responsibility for executing the tasks associated with the role is assigned. Control structure within a (PBCL) assignment can vary on a continuum from an entirely democratic model to an autocratic model. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of the type of control structure on team functioning by comparing both performance in and attitude toward PBCL in democratically and autocratically controlled teams

Assessing collaborative, project-based learning experiences: Drawing from three data sources

The value of project-based, collaborative assignments has been established both theoretically and empirically in a significant body of literature. This type of learning experience has been shown to promote long-term retention of material, foster the higher-order cognitive activities such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and introduce the student to an experience that closely models the environment he or she will encounter in the workforce. Students and faculty, however, indicate that fair and meaningful evaluation of the collaborative assignment is an overarching concern. Since the group-interaction elements of this type of assignment are of great interest - especially in terms of measuring such constructs as group productivity, division of labor, and teamwork skills and detecting instances of social loafing - evaluation cannot be based solely on the assessment by the instructor of the final product produced by the team. A blending of instructor, self, and peer assessment of the entire collaborative process is indicated. The problems associated with gathering, weighing, and analyzing the data from such a multifaceted evaluation are quite daunting. There is, furthermore, little consensus on what data is available and how it can be effectively processed to facilitate evaluation of the teamwork in collaborative learning activities conducted in an ALN. The goal of this study was to develop a reliable and valid instrument for conducting a three-pronged (instructor, self, and peer) evaluation of project-based, collaborative learning assignments.

ACLE: A Communication Environment for Asynchronous Collaborative Learning

The popularity of distributed learning and the continued growth in the number of colleges and universities offering courses delivered entirely via asynchronous learning networks (ALN) are unquestioned. There is little agreement on what constitutes the online environment. The ALN environment is quite immature and many of its components have evolved ad hoc in the form of attempts to mirror the traditional, face-to-face setting. The problems associated with the lack of analysis, planning, and design in developing the infrastructure for an ALN are evident in the tools to support student-to-student communication in collaborative learning activities. This study addresses this rather poorly directed developmental process by answering the following research questions: 1) What criteria are applicable for a communication system to support asynchronous collaborative? 2) How can those criteria be developed and validated? 3) How can those criteria be met in a product? 4) How can that product be evaluated?

Error Occurrence: Successful versus Unsuccessful Unlearning in Individuals

Previously, a worker may have been able to learn a set of skills that would last during his occupational lifetime. However, the need for constant skill changes in todays environment has created difficulties for individuals who must unlearn, store and use knowledge in a new process to update the old. As knowledge grows exponentially, todays workers must keep pace with changes. Industry advancements create need for unlearning old competencies. Without changes to maintain competency, the amount of wasted time, additional energy and resources required will continue to increase at an alarming rate. To reduce these impacts, systemic change through individual unlearning is necessary. The challenge is to develop and implement new knowledge. However, the literature regarding the unlearning process and its relationship to knowledge management has not been conceptualized. Confusion regarding the concept of unlearning remains a persistent problem because a clear definition at either the organizational or individual level does not exist. A recommendation for study of open problems may attempt to: 1) investigate and collect descriptive characteristics of individual unlearning; 2) develop and propose a clear definition of individual unlearning; 3) examine the collected characteristics to determine which characteristics contribute to unsuccessful individual unlearning.

eCAD: a knowledge-based course engineering system

Colleges and universities have increasingly migrated towards utilizing the World Wide Web to convey at least a part and, in many cases, their entire curricular offering. Despite this trend, there is inadequate support for the professors responsible for restructuring the courses they have refined over a career in the classroom for delivery via the Web. Teachers who are expert in their subject area and masters of their craft when in a classroom find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to relearn how to teach in a new environment with little or no support. The process of planning and developing a course for delivery in an online environment is, in many significant aspects, analogous to the processes required to develop a software system. Both situations require the developer to manage resources through a series of steps with the goal of designing a product that effectively utilizes the computer to solve a problem. The procedures and tools used in software engineering to manage software system development, therefore, offer promise for developing online courses. Computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools are of special interest by virtue of the support afforded the development process through computerization. This paper offers an architectural overview of a knowledge-based, course engineering system: eCAD (electronic Course Analysis & Design). The requirements for the system, the manner in which those criteria were developed and validated, and system design are detailed. A working prototype is also presented.

Uncertainty reasoning for service-based situational awareness information on the Semantic Web

Accurate situational assessment is key to any decision making especially crucial in military command and control, air traffic control, and complex system decision making [1]. Endsley [2] describes three dependent levels of situational awareness, (1) perception, (2) understanding, and (3) projection. This research is focused on Endsleys [2] second-level situational awareness (understanding) as it applies to service-oriented information technology environments in the context of the Semantic Web. Specifically, this research addresses the problem of developing accurate situational assessments related to the status or health of IT services especially composite, dynamic IT services, when some of Endsleys [2] first level (perceived) information is inaccurate or incomplete. This research plans to use Costas [3] probabilistic Web ontology language (PR-OWL) framework to build an ontology that supports reasoning with service-oriented information in the context of the Semantic Web and then assess the effectiveness of the developed ontology.