Lecture Notes in Computer Science- P87 potx

Schemes of learning portfolios formation In the system we designed, there are three learning activities which are represented in the learning portfolios: 1 sharing and using learning res

for generating the raw data used in further analysis steps to compute the chosen indi-cators Then the raw data is put into the analysis method and is processed there After the analysis, the high and low level indicators are produced In the end, indicators which are represents by a certain tool constitute the learning portfolios Moreover, for the concrete utilization of the indicator norms can be applied These norms which define desired values and behaviors are used for meta-cognition or guiding

Fig 5. Schemes of learning portfolios formation

In the system we designed, there are three learning activities which are represented

in the learning portfolios: 1) sharing and using learning resources, 2) sharing and using learning fruits, 3) interactions and communications in online virtual forums The indicators in the three kinds of learning activities are described in the case study section The system by far mainly uses quantitative statistics method to analyze the raw data, and represents indicators in learning portfolios with participation diagrams

3 System Implementation

The standard Object-based software engineering methods were adopted to implement the system The procedures of implementation mainly went thought three phases Firstly, PowerDesigner 12, a powerful, visual and easy-to-use enterprise modelling tool, was used to create the requirement model with use case and entity-relation diagrams

Secondly, PowerDesigner 12 automatically converted the entity-relation model into the class model, and efficiently generated the SQL scripts As we know, the class model shows more details of the static system structure than the module architecture does, and can be used to generate the code frames which shortens the cycle of devel-opment; the SQL scripts can be used further to create the target database in MySQL 5.0 which is an open source relation database management system

Thirdly, the programs on Web server (Apache 2.0) were coded with PHP which is

a webpage script language For JPGraph is an Object-Based Graph creating library for PHP, We directly take advantage of its functions to create numerous types of statisti-cal graphs in learning portfolios module

Learning activity

Indicator System Interface

Learning Portfolio

Indicator

What should

be available?

What is available? What do we want achieve?

Data flow Constraints Influence

The participants were 32 graduate students majoring educational technology in the south china normal university, who took the course of research methods of educa-tional technology The teacher is a famous professor who has studied CSCL for many years, and three doctor candidates took on the research assistant The learning theme chosen is about data collection and analysis of qualitative research method The study was conducted within 5 weeks after the participants were introduced the OTBCL model and functions of the system The procedures of this study were carried out strictly according to OTBCL model

The purpose of the case study is to seek the varying rules of participation in group lifecycle According to the five stages of group lifecycle in collaborative learning proposed by Tuckmann [3], we divide the period of theme learning into five phases, each phase is about one week In this paper, we explain how to analyze the rules of participation in the two kinds of learning activities: 1) sharing resources, 2) communi-cating in online virtual forums

4.1 Analysis of Sharing Resources

The variation of the number of resources shared shows the dynamic process of col-laborative learning In this activity, we proposed the hypothesis that a group does not perform well if its members share resource in the last two stages of the group lifecy-cle In this system, the results of resources shared were automatically summarized in tables, as shown in table 1

Table 1 The results of statistics of sharing resources



Remark 1 S: sum of resources, Pr: group private resources, Pu: class public re-sources

The data in the table1 can not intuitively shows the varying rules and tendency of reading resources in the group lifecycle, so the system generated the line plots Obvi-ously, Figure 6 clearly shows the variations of participation in sharing resources activ-ity of group 5 and group 8 during group lifecycle

Fig 6 Variations of participation in reading resources of group 5 and group 8

From the line plots in figure 5, we can easily discover that the peak of sharing re-sources of group 5 lies in the fourth stages, but that of group 8 lies in the second stages In the case of group 5, it means that the members of the group did not begin to passively collect and share their resources until the last two stages But, in the effi-ciently collaborative learning, the actions of sharing resources are centralized in the first two stages In addition, the hypothesis is also verified by the task-based perform-ance evaluation: the performperform-ance of group 8 is evidently better than that of group 5

4.2 Analysis of Participation in Online Virtual Forums

As we know, efficient communications in online virtual forums can facilitate the knowledge construction So learning portfolios should provide indicators which can measure the levels of knowledge building In this system, content analysis was used to perform the function In the analysis, each note was classified as belonging to one of five levels of the interaction analysis model [5] In the case study, because knowledge test and application is not the goals of the leaning theme, the system only outputted the results of analysis of the first three levels The results are shown in the figure 7 The variation of number of notes in group lifecycle can explain whether mem- bers of a group devote themselves to communicate, and can indicate which stage is

Fig 7 Content analysis of communications in online virtual forums

Fig 8 Variations of communications of forums in group lifecycle

centralized by the efforts of members From the results depicted in the figure 8, we can inspect two kinds of interesting phenomena: 1) Except that of group 1, the peak of participation emerged in the fourth stages of group lifecycle It means that it is the assignments that force student to take efforts to communicate each other in the fourth stage 2) Except in group 1 and group 3, the number of notes posted by members in the third stage is less than in the other stages It shows that the learning motivation of members diminish from the first stage to the third stage Therefore, the teacher should take effective measures to change the situation

5 Conclusions and Future Work

This paper makes several contributions Firstly, an online theme-based collaborative learning model (OTBCL model) was proposed, which can guild teachers to imple-ment thematic learning or collaborative learning supported by internet Secondly, the design and implementation of a powerful system based on the OTBCL model were described in detail Especially, the principles achieved in the design of system archi-tecture, user interface and learning portfolios module are very useful for developing online collaborative learning system Lastly, a case study was introduced which ex-plains how to intuitively evaluate the varying rules of participation during group life-cycle and the levels of knowledge construction with statistical diagrams

Researchers in CSCL fields claimed that there are three kinds of collaborative management tools: mirroring tools, monitoring tools and guiding tools [9] In the system, the selected indicators in the learning portfolios module are belong to the first two kinds, which means teachers would depend on their experiences in CSCL when make decisions in their instruction Therefore, as for the future of the system, new analysis method need be adopted to analysis the participation and communication of members of a group, such as social network analysis [10], focus group interview and

so on Then, it is necessary to carry out many additional experiments to summarize many causal norms Supported by the norms, the system can automatically and effec-tively generate useful guides in formative evaluations, which will reduce the burdens

of teacher and provide learning scaffolds for students

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