Many researchers on educational technology have extended the field of
study from stand-alone learning environment to group collaborative
learning environment. Although advantages of collaborative learning over
individual learning are well known, the collaborative learning is not
always effective for a learner. Educational benefit that a learner gets
through the collaborative learning process depends mainly on interaction
among learners. The interaction is partly influenced by relations among
members of learning group, which suggests that how to form an effective
group for the collaborative learning is critical to ensure educational
benefit to the members.
Our research objectives include constructing a collaborative learning
support system that detects appropriate situation for a learner to join in
a collaborative learning session, and forms a collaborative learning group
appropriate for the situation dynamically. To fulfill these objectives, we
have to consider the following:
- How to detect the appropriate situation to start a collaborative
learning session and to set up the learning goal,
- How to form an effective group which ensures educational benefits to
the members of the group, and
- How to facilitate desired interaction among learners in the learning
group.
We have discussed item 1 in our previous papers [Ikeda97, Supnithi99], and now focuses on
item 2 [Inaba99, Inaba2k]. When we have
clarified item 2 and extracted the desired interaction in the group, we
would consider item 3.
There are many theories to support the advantage of collaborative
learning. For instance, Observational learning, Constructivism,
Self-regulated learning, Situated learning, Cognitive apprenticeship,
Distributed cognition, Cognitive flexibility theory, Sociocultural
Theory, Zone of proximal development, and so on. If we select a theory
from these and form a learning group based on the theory, we can expect
effective collaborative learning with the strong support of the theory.
However, it is difficult to understand all theories because these theories
are derived from a wide research area including pedagogy, sociology and
psychology. Moreover, we can expect different educational benefits based
on these learning theories, and observe various kinds of interaction
between learners through collaborative learning process. Due to the
diversity, it is difficult to list the learning theories effective to gain
a specific educational benefit for a learner, and to compare the theories
to form a suitable collaborative learning group for the learner.
Therefore, we have been constructing a system of concepts to represent
collaborative learning sessions mentioned in these learning
theories. We call the system of concepts ``Collaborative Learning
Ontology''. Now, we focus on ``Learning Goal Ontology'' which
is a part of the Collaborative Learning Ontology. The concept ``Learning
Goal'' is one of the most important concepts for forming a learning group
because each learner joins in a collaborative learning session to attain a
learning goal. The Ontology will be able to make it easier to form an
effective learning setting and to analyze the educational functions of a
learning group.
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