Exploratory Test of an Automated Knowledge Elicitation and Organization Tool
his paper combines the contents of two papers that were presented at the ITS 98 conference one focusing on knowledge representation (Shute, 1998) and the other describing a knowledge elicitation tool (Shute, Torreano, & Willis, 1998). There are three main purposes of this paper. First, as a means to stress instructional and assessment implications of different knowledge types, we will briefly overview knowledge representations. Second, we describe a novel cognitive tool designed to aid in knowle
Intelligent support for discovery learning
Using opportunistic learner modeling and heuristics to support simulation based discovery learning.,Doctoral dissertation, University of Twente. Enschede, The Netherlands: Twente University Press.
Antarctica as an Educational Resource
As an educational resource, Antarctica is extremely broad in scope with the potential to contribute to a number of study areas, from the sciences to history, sociology, and politics. Authored by molecular biologist Clive Evans at the University of Auckland, this Web site provides a convenient resource for introducing Antarctica into the classroom and could be adapted for a range of grade levels. Luckily for life science educators, the site focuses primarily on Antarctic biology, adaptation, huma
Stagecast Creator™ and Webct™: An integrated use of computer programming and a virtual learning en
This paper reports on an effort to use Stagecast Creator™ as a means for developing modelling skills among undergraduate students taking an introductory course in science that took place in a virtual learning environment (WebCT™). An inquiry-based curriculum was implemented, which guided students working in small groups to collect and study moon observations and construct a series of successive models of the moon phases using Stagecast Creator™. Students’ reflective journals and reports of s
Meanings for Fraction as Number - Measure by Exploring the Number Line
Construction of meanings for fraction as number-measure is studied during the implementation of exploratory tasks concerning comparison and ordering of fractions as well as operations with fractions. 12-year-old students were working collaboratively in groups of two with software that combines graphical and symbolic notation of fractions represented as points on the number line. Fractions as points and segments, ordering fractions as part of kinesthetic activities and abstracting the scaling of
Designing integrative scripts
Scripts structure the collaborative learning process by constraining interactions, defining a sequence of activities and specifying individual roles. Scripts aim at increasing the probability that collaboration triggers knowledge generative interactions such as conflict resolution, explanation or mutual regulation. Integrative scripts are not bound to collaboration in small groups but include individual activities and class-wide activities. These pre- and poststructuring activities form the dida
Collaboration Load
Does collaboration increase or decrease cognitive load during learning? On one hand, collaboration enables some degree of division of labour that may reduce cognitive load. On the other hand since interacting, expressing thoughts, monitoring anotherÂ’s understanding, grounding, etc., are mechanisms inducing some extraneous cognitive load, they may create cognitive overload and impede learning mechanisms. However this additional load may explain why collaboration sometimes leads to knowledge cons
Internet Scout Project
Developed by the University of Toronto Libraries, the Anatomia website offers a collection of about 4,500 plates and images of human anatomy from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library ranging in date from 1522 to 1867. Visitors can search the plates by entire plate description, artist, subject words, and/or plate title or can browse the plates by artist, title, or subject. By selecting the Anatomia highlights link, users can view images of importance due to their contributions to the advancement o
Decentralized Service Deployment for Collaborative Environments
In this paper we present the design of a system which allows service deployment in a small-sized group of computers distributed through the Internet. These groups are formed by users who share a common interest, and voluntarily yield their own resources for the achievement of the collaborative activities of the group. Having enough resources contributed by the members of the group, our system guarantees service availability and the fact that the deployment and execution of the services is carrie
Extending the Scope of Asynchronous Collaboration: a Matter of Being Autonomous and Self-sufficient
Asynchronous collaborative applications and systems have to deal with complexities associated with interaction nature, idiosyncrasy of groups and technical and administrative issues. Inclusion of requirements derived from them is costly (in time, resources and economically). Existing solutions addresses asynchronous collaboration via simplification of requirements and by using centralized models. In this paper we present LaCOLLA, a fully decentralized infrastructure for building collaborative ap
Educator's Guide to Hosting a Global Health Conference
This guide uses biology, health, and world study topics to engage students in global health issues and solutions from experiential and multidisciplinary perspectives. The guide offers an outline of how to organize and host a "Global Health Conference," and provides suggestions regarding logistics and instructions as well as resource materials for preparing and organizing a student conference. The Global Health Conference is a school event where students present display boards and two-page essays
Normalising Geometrical Constructions: A Context for the Generation of Meanings for Ratio and Propor
This paper describes aspects of 13 year-olds’ activity in mathematics as emerged during the implementation of proportional geometric tasks in the classroom. Pupils were working in pairs using a piece of software specially designed for multiple representation (symbolic and graphical) of the variation in parametric procedures with dynamic manipulation of variable. In this paper we discuss children’s use of normalising, an activity in which children ‘correct’ the geometrical figures while devel
An examination of two types of timeline, linear vs. staggered: a mixed method approach
This study conducted as follow-up study to evaluate effects of two different time-based interfaces, linear and staggered. This study also tries to reveal usersÂ’ preferences when they look for information in two different computer-based timeline. Explanatory mixed method design was implemented. In the first part, quantitative, there were 42 subjects. Results shows no significant difference between two types of computer-based time-line in terms of task completion time and answer accuracy. In the
Internet Scout Project
The Understanding the Universe Web site is part of Discovery.com's excellent educational resource DiscoverySchool.com site and is a joint effort with the American Museum of Natural History. This attractive site contains three major sections. The It's Awesome page has a time line of the universe that links to the Universe in One Year page -- a great way of learning the difficult concept of geologic time by showing that, if the history of the universe was compressed into one year, modern humans wo
Training programme for geography teachers
This paper contains a description of a Geography teacher-training program for in-service education. The program is a variant for incorporating the methodology of the Minerva- project “Innovative Didactics via Web-based Learning” (further abbreviated as IDWBL) so that the Geography teachers at work can be adequately prepared for integrating ICT in geography education at secondary schools via web-based education. The theme may seem at first glance as a variation of a known subject… But for the
The LEAP Authoring Tool: Supporting complex courseware authoring through reuse, rapid prototyping, a
An important goal of current work in computer-based learning environments is to develop systems that combine the richness and effectiveness of an individually crafted intelligent tutoring system (ITS) with the generality and flexibility of a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) authoring tool. Our effort to achieve this goal is demonstrated in the Learn, Explore and Practice (LEAPsm) ITS shell and its courseware development component, The LEAP Authoring Tool (LAT). The LAT was developed for use b
Obstacles to the development of conceptual understanding in observational astronomy: the case of spa
Simple everyday phenomena like the day - night cycle and the sequence of four seasons are taught at the higher level of elementary education and the lower level of secondary education in Cyprus. Even though there is no specific subject dedicated to Astronomy or spatial reasoning, the day – night cycle, the sequence of the four seasons and the sequence of the lunar phases are part of the national curriculum of Geography. For this reason, the construction of conceptual understanding in basic Astr
Toward Computer-Based Support of Meta-Cognitive Skills: a Computational Framework to Coach Self-Expl
We present a computational framework designed to improve learning from examples by supporting self-explanation ö the process of clarifying and making more complete to oneself the solution of an example. The framework is innovative in two ways. First, it represents the first attempt to provide computer support to example studying instead of problem solving. Second, it explicitly coaches a domain-general, meta-cognitive skill that many studies in cognitive science have shown to greatly improve le
Verbal Coaching During a Real-time Task
TRANSoM is a collaborative effort among university and industry researchers aimed at producing an intelligent tutoring system for training pilots of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). ROVs are unmanned, tethered, underwater vehicles used in a range of applications such as inspection, search and salvage, and mine countermeasures. Pilots have to learn to maneuver the ROV, keeping track of its tether and its surroundings, using little more than a video camera and sonar. To minimize workload while a
Narrative Evolution: Learning from Students' Talk about Species Variation
Learners do not always enjoy productive interactions with Multimedia Interactive Learning Environments. Their attention can be distracted away from the educational focus intended by designers and teachers through poor design and operational inadequacy. In this paper we describe a study of groups of learners using a multimedia CD-ROM research tool called Galapagos. This tool was developed to enable us to observe groups of learners interacting with different versions of the same multimedia content
