A Task Model for a Management Resource System ... - CiteSeerX

A Task Model for a Management Resource System Integrated in a Cooperative Learning Environment M. Lama, R. Amorim, E. Sánchez, A. Riera, J. Vila and S. Barro Department of Electrónica e Computación. University of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña. Spain e–mail: {lama,rramorin,teddy,vila,senen}@dec.usc.es B. Cebreiro and C. Fernández–Morante Department of Didáctica e Organización Escolar. University of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña. Spain. e–mail: {dobclusc,trek1671}@usc.es

Abstract. The resource accessibility problem in a cooperative learning environment can be stated as how both teachers and students can gain access to resources (information and hardware devices) not only from remote locations, but also from the classroom. In this paper we present a task model (TMo) that describes the services for a Resource Management System (RMS) to solve such problem. The model illustrates how to: 1) manage course information, and 2) operate hardware devices. As a modelling methodology we have resorted to CommonKADS.

1 Introduction Cooperative learning is an educational technique in which students collaborate in groups to acquire new knowledge, to learn social skills and/or to learn how to solve specific tasks [3]. In this approach, teacher responsibilities focus on supervising, in a non-directive manner, the evolution of student activity as well as proposing changes in activities with poor pedagogical results to improve learning performance. With this objective in mind, virtual environments, in which cooperation is achieved through appropriate graphical interfaces, have already been developed [4, 8, 7]. Our work differs from those virtual approaches by focusing on a classroom environment. We emphasize two main features: resource management and teacher–student interactions. In our approach each agent posses processing devices that grant access to both learning resources and communication facilities with other agents. In this paper we present a task model that describes the services for a Resource Management System (RMS) to solve the resource accessibility problem. It requires the identification of the human agents task model as a first step to determine what services the RMS should offer. The model, developed using CommonKADS methodology [6], is of special interest as long as it will help to refine the teacher task model (the main contribution of this paper). This refinement will be the starting point to develop a knowledge–based system that will support teacher´s decision–making about pedagogical actions needed to be taken.

2 Description of the Teaching environment Our teaching environment is constituted by a set of hardware devices intended to support teaching and cooperative learning tasks. According to their capabilities, those devices can be classified as follows (figure 1): • Teaching hardware resources. They are used by the teacher, and eventually by the students, in order to facilitate follow–up explanations. – Mimio. It acquires what is written on the blackboard and saves it as an image file. – Projector. It displays human agents presentations. • User devices. They provide graphical interfaces to gain access and control over the teaching environment resources. – Office computer. It is used by the teacher to handle course information (such as student data, teaching material, and so on), and to plan educational activities to be performed in the classroom. – Classroom computer. It is available for each student group in order to visualize and manipulate the information needed to elaborate the required materials during the educational activity. – Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). They are used by human agents to manage the hardware resources of the environment, to introduce/request personal data (calendars, educational materials, etc.), or to interact with other agents in order to share information in real time (to follow–up of explanations or to look for answers to evaluation forms). • Support devices. They provide to human agents transparent access operations to the environment resources. – Classroom server. It runs server–side software components that carry out low– level control of hardware resources [5]. Additionally, it enables the communication amongst the entities of the teaching environment. office computer1

office organization computerN server (RMS) INTERNET

LAN

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classroom computerN

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Figure 1: A teaching environment for cooperative learning.

– Organization server. It provides cooperative learning support services. It will be accessible from the classroom as well as from each teacher´s office. In the next section we describe the teacher task model, which is a necessary intermediate step to help us in order to identify the services provided by the organization server. Those services will constitute what we have called the Resource Management System (RMS). 3 The teacher task model In cooperative learning the teaching task can be considered as a planning problem: to describe the set of activities to be performed by the students within a certain period of time. This problem can be solved using a general class of methods known as propose–verify–criticise– modify (PVCM) [2]. It implies to perform a certain domain subtasks (figure 2): • Propose. Based on course information, the teacher defines pedagogical objectives and proposes an activity to be developed by the students to achieve these objectives. For each activity, student groups as well as material and resources for those groups are also specified. What is more, the teacher needs to plan possible changes in the activity in case of poor learning performance. • Verify. The teacher needs to keep track both student and group performance in the classroom. To do this, the teacher uses the PDA to annotate in–place observations. • Criticise. Based on human agents observations, the teacher evaluates the educational activity performance for each group and student. This evaluation can be eventually weighted by student feedback obtained through evaluation forms sent from the teacher’s PDA. • Modify. After evaluation, the teacher could decide to refine the current activity. Two possible actions can be considered: 1) to change the pedagogical material used by the students; and/or 2) to propose new teaching initiatives, which could consist on either brief explanations or negotiations with the students with regard deadlines or other schedule matters. Figure 2 shows the breakdown of the general tasks (propose, verify, criticise and modify) into domain subtasks (white ovals) as well as transfer functions (grey rectangles) [1]. The later represents interactions between the teacher and the other agents in the environment (students and RMS). For example, the teacher can either send information to other agents (present) or request information from them (obtain and receive). teaching solved by

PVCM

propose activity

obtain course information

select pedagogical objectives

criticise activity

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determine educational planning

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receive student observats

specify course observations

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obtain evaluation

select student evaluation

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Figure 2: The teaching task model.

refine current activity

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4 The RMS task model The RMS task breakdown is based on the transfer functions identified in the teacher TMo. Each transfer function can therefore be associated to a RMS task (or service), whose execution will induce an action on a resource of the environment. In this way, the RMS task model represent, through appropriate transfer functions, human agent needs to access to resources in the environment. The tasks of this model can be easily classified considering the resource under their control: • Information management. It presents the teacher the required course information: student data, list of pedagogical objectives, pre–designed activity templates, or the current educational activity. This kind of tasks also include services to solve teacher–student interactions: student requests for additional material or resources needed to perform the proposed activity, teacher requests for student answers to evaluation forms sent during the development of the educational activity or even to negotiate a common agenda with regard to the scheduling of additional lectures, and so on. • Access to hardware resources. This means interaction with hardware resources in order to send/acquire information regarded teaching explanations. In addition, these tasks can forward information to PDAs in order to facilitate teaching follow–up. Figure 3 shows the TMo of the RMS, which support teacher operations as well as teacher– student interactions. In this model the resource management task has not been associated to any general method for solving it. This is consistent by considering that RMS activation will be based on human agents demand. 5 Discussion We have already implemented and validated the RMS capabilities with regard on communication between devices and low–level control of hardware resources. The task model of the teacher is also under current enhancement confirming PVCM resolution method as a suitable one to describe the general teaching methodology in cooperative learning. On this regard, the PVCM methods describe the professor–students interactions by which the learning activity is conducted. These interactions are represented by the verify task as well as the criticise–modify task. They constitute the main difference when compared with classical learning methodologies, in which interactions typically take place at the end of each lecture. The model completion, resource management teacher

present course information obtain student information

obtain objective list

obtain students evaluation

obtain current activity

obtain course information

obtain planning features

present current activity

obtain information of activity

provide evaluation form

receive evaluation results

students

students

present student evaluation

present calendar to agents resolve calendar problems

manage activity changes

manage hardware device

manage agent calendars

students teacher

present data to agents resolve device interaction

Figure 3: The RMS task model with regard to its interaction with the teacher.

students teacher

present activity changes students

however, cannot be guaranteed yet. New domain tasks, and thus new RMS services, will be possible detected as long as we explore all interaction possibilities amongst the entities of the environment. Our RMS is the previous and necessary step for the design and implementation of a knowledge–based system to support most of the professor activities: course scheduling, student effort evaluation, resource allocation, and so on. Finally, RMS is also required 1) to validate the professor knowledge model, and 2) to assess the feasibility of resource management in a complex cooperative learning environment. References [1] J. Akkermans, R. Gustavsson, and F. Ygger. An integrated structured analysis approach to intelligent agent communication. In J. Cuena, editor, Proceedings of the IFIP 1998 World Computer Congress, IT&KNOWS Conference. Chapman & Hall, 1998. [2] B. Chandrasekaran. Design problem solving: A task analysis. AI Magazine, 11(4):59–71, 1990. [3] D. Johnson, R. Johnson, and E. Holubec. The new circles of learning: Cooperation in the classroom. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1994. [4] K. O’Neill and L. Gomez. The collaboratory notebook: A networked knowledge–building environment fot project learning. In Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hipermedia & Telecommunications (ED–MEDIA’94), 1994. [5] J. Riera, A.and Vila and S. Barro. A PDA classroom computer system. In C. Montgomerie and J. Viteli, editors, Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hipermedia & Telecommunications (ED–MEDIA’01), 2001. [6] G. Schreiber, H. Akkermans, A. Anjewierden, de Hoog. R., N. Shadbolt, W. Van de Velde, and B. Wielinga, editors. Knowledge Engineering and Management: The CommonKADS Methodology. MIT Press, Boston, 1999. [7] A. Shabo, K. Nagel, and M. Guzdial. JavaCAP: A collaborative case authoring program on the WWW. In R. Hall, N. Miyake, and N. Enyedy, editors, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL’97), 1997. [8] D. Shuters and D. Jones. An architecture for intelligent collaborative educational systems. In B. Boulay and R. Mizoguchi, editors, Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED’97). IOS Press, 1997.