Computational Modeling and Analysis of Knowledge Sharing in Collaborative Distance Learning

This research aims to support collaborative distance learners by demonstrating how a probabilistic machine learning method can be used to model and analyze online knowledge sharing interactions. The approach applies Hidden Markov Models and Multidimensional Scaling to analyze and assess sequences of coded online student interaction. These analysis techniques were used to train a system to dynamically recognize (1) when students are having trouble learning the new concepts they share with each other, and (2) why they are having trouble. The results of this research may assist an instructor or intelligent coach in understanding and mediating situations in which groups of students collaborate to share their knowledge.     

Understanding knowledge-sharing breakdowns: a meeting of the quantitative and qualitative minds

Abstract The rapid advance of distance learning and networking technology has enabled universities and corporations to reach out and educate students across time and space barriers. Although this technology enables structured collaborative learning activities, online groups often do not enjoy the same benefits as face‐to‐face learners, and their instructors often do not have time to actively support and mediate the online collaboration. This article demonstrates our capacity to computationally model, analyse, and support online student interaction, in particular knowledge sharing. A unique combination of qualitative analysis and artificial intelligence methods was designed to (a) recognize when students are having trouble learning the new concepts they share with each other, and (b) understand why they are having trouble, so that we might assist an instructor or intelligent coach in mediating group knowledge‐sharing activities.     

Crossing complex boundaries: transnational online education in European trade unions

Abstract Collaboration across boundaries in work and learning is increasingly a feature of networked organisation. We present a framework for analysing learning events as encounters across multiple boundaries of differing types, significance, role and severity. These boundaries may provide either/both obstacles to, and opportunities for, learning. Tutors and learners may negotiate these various boundaries with a variety of digital practices and artefacts. We apply this provisional framework of boundaries, artefacts and practices to the case of transnational trade union education, in which tutors and course participants negotiate a complex mix of boundaries. We identify ways in which practices and tools can have consequences for multiple boundaries and conclude that this approach provides a way to unpack some of the complexity of interactions in transnational learning situations and offers a framework to identify effective tools and practices.     

How media choice affects learner interactions in distance learning classes

In this research we explore aspects of learning, social interaction and community across online learning, also known as distance learning, in higher education. We measure the impact of online social networking (OSN) software versus traditional learning management system (LMS) software. Guided by a theoretical model for how individuals learn and interact within online communities, we measure student perceptions of learning, social interaction and course community before and after our interventions. Survey instruments measure perceived learning, social interaction and community, which we further explore using social network analysis (SNA). Survey results identified that students experienced higher levels of perceived social interaction and course community and, overall, had higher levels of satisfaction with OSN software than those using LMS software. Along this line, SNA results corroborated that OSN software yielded a higher number of interactions, providing a more engaging learning experience.     

Re-embodying Online Composition: Ecologies of Writing in Unreal Time and Space

Using the ecological theories of writing proposed by Marilyn Cooper's “The Ecology of Writing” (1986) and Margaret Syverson's The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition (1999), this article describes a multi-step assignment sequence designed to engage online first year composition students across the ecological breadth of their writing and learning environments. The goal of the project is twofold: enriching students’ writing processes with a sophisticated understanding of the social situatedness of knowledge and rhetoric, we can simultaneously create high-functioning learning communities in an otherwise disembodied online learning space, not by upgrading our technological tools but by pedagogically guiding learners toward ecological and productively collaborative interactions with one another.     

Exploring students’ learning experience in an international online research seminar in the Synchronous Cyber Classroom

The development of computer-mediated communication enables teaching and learning to take place across geographical boundaries. An online synchronous learning environment with cyber face-to-face features affords students the sense of learning together online. This study reports a novel design of organizing a 16-week seminar for doctoral students across Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and Taiwan in the Synchronous Cyber Classroom, an online synchronous learning environment. Students’ learning experiences were explored from the perspective of students’ interactions with students, instructors, and the content, based on which the perception of being in a learning community was formed. This article reports how this international online research seminar was organized, how students’ learning experience was analyzed, and what we learned about students’ learning in this international online research seminar.     

The effect of reflective learning e-journals on reading comprehension and communication in language learning

This study focused on the use of reflective learning e-journals in a university web-based English as a foreign language (EFL) course. In the study, a multimedia-based English programme comprising fifteen different units was delivered online as a one-semester instructional course. Ninety-eight undergraduate students participated, and they were divided into two groups: the treatment group used reflective learning e-journals, while the control group completed content-related exercises. The study investigated the effects of reflective learning e-journals and how students used them to aid learning. Results show that when learning from web-based instruction, students who used reflective learning e-journals outperformed students who did not do so in terms of reading comprehension. Using reflective e-journals improved the academic performance of learners in the online course. In addition, journal writing students claimed that they also improved their organisational skills and writing abilities through their reflective learning e-journal writing and found the journal writing to be a very helpful tool in reviewing the course and preparing for the exam.     

The use of prototypes to bridge knowledge boundaries in agile software development

Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or complete failure of software development projects. Prior researchers have reported that software prototypes can be used to help bridge knowledge boundaries between team members in traditional software development settings, yet their use in an agile development setting remains unexplored. Agile development centers the interactions between team members on emerging representations of the prototype whose properties are prone to change over time. Therefore, we conducted an in‐depth study of an agile development project to enhance our understanding on how software prototypes are used as boundary objects in a distributed team setting. Our analyses of team member interactions during 46 virtual meetings that took place over a period of 6 months revealed four different prototype use practices (exemplifying, contrasting, relating, framing) that were effective in bridging syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic knowledge boundaries. We also provide empirically grounded evidence of how variations in object properties can afford different use practices, how the use practices take advantage of these properties, and how object properties are reshaped through these use practices as different types of knowledge boundaries are bridged. These findings bear important implications for research on prototypes as boundary objects in software development in particular and boundary object use in general.     

EduXs: multilayer educational services platforms

How to use the online social learning communities to improve quality and quantity of interactions in physical social learning communities is an important issue. This work describes the design and implementation of multilayer educational services platforms that enable learners to establish their own online social learning communities and integrate their online social learning communities into a large public social learning portal site—EduCities. Multilayer educational services platforms were designed to integrate various individual online social learning communities, and to map these communities into physical social learning communities. This work proposes and implements an architecture called EduXs, and integrates it with K-12 social learning communities. One year after the EduXs system was released on the Internet, 1,849 schools, 15,772 classes, and 130,908 individuals in Taiwan had registered to use the system to construct their own online social learning communities. Among these registered users, 18.8% of registered schools, and 24.7% of registered classes continue to use the system. Evaluation results indicate that the system is accepted by teachers and students.