Authoring and Recommendation of Collaborative Graphical Activities

International Journal of Computer & Applications Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 49-70

© 2008 Technomathematics Research Foundation

Authoring and Recommendation of Collaborative Graphical Activities in Context-based Adaptive M-Learning Estefanía Martín

Néstor Carrasco

Rosa M. Carro

Esc. Politécnica Superior Universidad Autónoma de Madrid C/ Tomás y Valiente 11 28049 Madrid, Spain [email protected]

ESCET Universidad Rey Juan Carlos C/ Tulipán s/n 28933 Madrid, Spain [email protected]

Esc. Politécnica Superior Universidad Autónoma de Madrid C/ Tomás y Valiente 11 28049 Madrid, Spain [email protected]

Abstract Authoring context-based adaptive m-learning environments, in which both individual and collaborative activities can be adaptively proposed to each user according to his/her context, is not an easy task. In order to recommend the most suitable activities to each student at each time, it is necessary to specify different types of activities, to create the multimedia resources to be presented, to provide the collaborative tools to be used by students and to specify the adaptation criteria. Student personal features, needs, behaviour or previous actions, and also their particular context at a certain moment, can be taken into account in the recommendation process. The work presented in this paper is focused, on the one hand, on helping teachers to create different collaborative activities to be accomplished through collaborative graphical editors. More specifically, teachers can configure the graphical editors themselves in an easy way by means of an authoring tool that we have developed. It also supports reusability, group formation and user action monitoring. On the other hand, the incorporation of the collaborative activities and editors created through this authoring tool within the context-based adaptive m-learning environment CoMoLE is described. The way in which activities are incorporated in CoMoLE and recommended to students in different contexts is explained too. Keywords: context-based m-learning, collaborative editors, authoring tools, CSCL

Motivation Many people use the Internet to look for information, either for working or for other purposes (entertainment, cultural information, learning, curiosity, and so on). Many of them use it for complementing their formation in a flexible way. Students usually E. Martín et al.

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interact with on-line educational resources alone, in their own time frame, and learn at their own pace. However, not everybody has the same goals, interests and needs. Therefore, it is convenient to adapt the information offered to each person according to these aspects. This is the main goal of adaptive hypermedia systems. In the area of education, adaptive hypermedia has been widely used for the development of adaptive Web-based courses where students are personally guided during their learning process, adapting both contents and learning paths to specific characteristics of the users [1]. By adapting course materials to student personal features and usage data [2], students can learn more in less time because contents are adapted to their needs. Some examples of adaptive hypermedia educational systems are: ELM-ART [3], AHA [4] and TANGOW [5]. On the other hand, collaborative learning [6] contributes to the reduction of student isolation in distance e-learning courses, and facilitates the development and improvement of social skills such as working in groups or communicating with others [7]. It also stimulates the development of personal skills such as making ideas explicit, arguing or interacting with other students to build a common solution and increases student motivation, participation and auto esteem [8]. Therefore, collaborative elearning systems can enrich traditional e-learning ones by supporting student on-line interaction, discussions about topics, cooperative problem resolution and collaborative knowledge construction. A selection of systems supporting collaborative learning interaction management is presented in [9]. The interaction of users in these environments is different from that of face-toface learners, since distance learners must adapt their interaction to the features and capabilities of the available tools and the other way around. Furthermore, in Web-based education it is very important to make sure that the activities to be carried out, as well as the tools provided to the users, have been designed according to the user needs, so that they feel comfortable interacting with the educational environment. Regarding collaborative systems, it is also convenient to adapt collaborative issues taking into account the student features and behavior to facilitate collaborative learning. For example, students with a textual learning style usually prefer to propose solutions and discuss by writing texts. However, visual students typically prefer to create diagrams and draw their proposals. Therefore, it is important to offer different types of collaborative tools within collaboration workspaces adapted to distinct types of students. Some works focus on visual languages for argumentation and discussion, as well as visual tools for simulation and scientific modeling, such as those presented in [10] [11]. A general distributed visual language environment that allows specifying shared workspace environments for different domains is presented in [10]. Cool Modes is presented in [11] and includes a platform and tool environment to facilitate coconstructive activities. Students elaborate graph representations based on visual languages and add semantic structures. The system is able to integrating multi-purpose structuring tools with specialized domain-related functions to support collaborative discovery learning. Finally, ModellingSpace [12] supports synchronous and asynchronous collaboration for problem solving through modeling, and has been used in different applications, such as the one described in [13], in which ModellingSpace is used to capture observed phenomena in abstract models. Other research works related to adaptation in Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL) systems are COALE [14], WebDL [15] o COLTANGOW [16]. COALE is an environment for collaborative learning where different exercises as well as the appropriate partners for each collaborative activity are

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recommended to students. However, students are free to choose the next exercise to be done in a collaborative activity, as well as their partners. The main goal in WebDL is to facilitate user access to services, making collaboration among members of the same group easier. It focuses on adaptive support for navigation and collaboration. Finally, COL-TANGOW is an adaptive Web-based system that supports the dynamic generation of adaptive collaborative Web-based courses. These courses are generated at runtime by selecting, at every step and for each student, the most suitable collaborative activities to be proposed, the time when they are presented, the specific problems to be solved, the most suitable partners to cooperate with and the collaborative tools provided to the students. Currently, the widespread development of mobile and wireless technologies have leaded to the creation of new Web-based mobile systems to support the execution of different types of activities from any place at any time through diverse devices. The accomplishment of certain activities can be influenced by the user context. For example, it would be inappropriate to propose collaborative activities to be supported through complex interfaces to students when they have not a suitable device to accomplish them (i.e. if they are using their PDA or mobile phone); it also would not be suitable to propose them the realization of a difficult and time-consuming activity when they have not enough available time; or it would be inappropriate to propose them a synchronous collaborative activity when their partner/s are not connected at the same time. Contextbased adaptation techniques have been developed to support the selection of the most suitable activities for a user, as well as the most appropriate tools to support activity realization, according to his current context [17]. One of the most referenced definitions of context is presented in [18]: “context is any information could be used to characterize the situation of an entity”. In our research, context refers to user location, available time and reachable devices, although its scope could be extended. In [19], a survey of research on context-aware systems and applications is presented, looking in depth at types of contexts used, models of contextual information, ways of collecting this information and applications that adapt to the changing context. Some examples of Web-based mobile systems have been developed. In [20], two examples of context-based recommended systems are presented: an intelligent advertisement board and a museum guide. Both applications have in common the property of being able to adapt their behaviour according to particular context attributes when their values change. A context-based filtering process is proposed in [21]. It is based on the current user’s physical context (location, device and application), user’s organizational context (group, role, member, calendar, activity, shared object and process) and general pro-files. General profiles are the descriptions of a potential context that might characterize the user’s real situation. Filtering rules should apply accordingly. The filtering process identifies the general profile to be applied and selects the awareness information. This context-based filtering process is devoted specifically to collaborative activities and the characteristics to be taken into account in the user’s context (both physical and organizational) are pre-established. In the context of mobile-learning, a pedagogical and technical approach to support learning activities both outside the school and in the classroom is presented in [22]. Students use PDAs with GPS cards to record bird observations about natural environment. When they are back at school, students are asked to analyze and process the empirical data they have captured using personal computers. JAPELAS is a contextaware language learning support system for Japanese polite expressions learning. This system provides learners with the appropriate polite expressions according to their

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situation (i.e. meeting room, office) and their personal information. It is focused on supporting only the learning of the Japanese language [23]. Two different mobile adaptive learning systems are presented in [24]. In the first one, adaptation is based on the learner knowledge, the time available for studying and location-related features related to concentration level. The second one provides easy access to commonly used files, applications and tasks, according to use location. The features taken into account for adaptation process are limited to the student’s knowledge, the time available for studying and the locations characteristics. Both of them are centred in the concept of location. IWT, an e-learning platform that supports simple and intelligent courses, is presented in [11ectel]. For each student, an intelligent course generates the best learning path starting from the student model, mainly based on the acquired knowledge and his/her learning preferences. Furthermore, users can collaborate and communicate among them through messages, forums, chat, content sharing and videoconferencing, even if they are using different devices. This e-learning platform is only focused on courses, not in collaborative environment where people collaborate with other purposes. Finally, a context-based adaptive hypermedia system for m-learning is presented in [25]. This system is able to recommend each student, at a certain time and from a set of activities, the most suitable activities according not only to the student personal features or behaviour but also to his context at that time. Yet the authoring of context-based adaptive m-learning environments, in which both individual and collaborative activities can be adaptively proposed to each user, is not an easy task. The most suitable activities might be selected for each student at each time according not only to their personal features, needs, behaviour or previous actions, but also to their particular context at a certain moment (i.e. device used, available time or location) Therefore, there is a need of specifying different types of activities, of creating the multimedia contents associated, of providing the collaborative tools to be used by students and of specifying the adaptation criteria to be considered in the recommendation process. Since this type of learning environments support the accomplishment of collaborative activities, one issue to deal with consists on the creation of collaborative workspaces to support the realization of different collaborative activities. Some steps have previously been taken in this direction. Dynamic generation of adaptive collaborative workspaces, starting from a set of problems to be solved and collaboration tools, is supported in [16]. In this case, the most appropriate statements and tools are selected in order to dynamically compose the collaboration workspace according to the specific activity to be carried out and also to the students involved, taking into account their features and needs (such as their level of knowledge or their learning style). These collaborative activities are included into adaptive collaborative Web-based courses. The specification of the adaptation decisions to generate different workspaces dynamically is supported. Course elements, their organization, problem statements and collaborative tools are specified independently. This facilitates the reuse and maintenance of components. It is easy to add, remove or modify a collaborative task, a set of tools to be used in a workspace or a problem to be solved collaboratively. In addition, the impact of learning styles [26] as well as that of personality and intelligence [27] on group formation and student performance has been analysed in different courses, with the aim of obtaining grouping criteria to form groups automatically. However, sometimes using a set of available collaboration tools is not enough. In many occasions, teachers would like to have specific tools to support particular activities. For example, with respect to activities to be supported through collaborative

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graphical editors, instead of providing the users with a complex tool plenty of icons and functionality it would be useful to have configured editors with smaller sets of icons specifically intended for each particular task accomplishment. .In such way, students will have available the specific icons that they would need to represent task solution and will not be distracted or even overloaded because of the big amount of icons, many of which can be useless for their task. The creation of collaborative graphical editors is a complex task for teachers, most of which do not have enough technical knowledge to develop them. Managing issues such as synchronism or concurrency is pretty hard. Describing collaborative activities in terms of computer software, organising workgroups and developing multimedia materials to be used for task accomplishment also requires a lot of effort. Therefore, it is necessary to provide solutions that: i) are transparent to teachers regarding low-level collaborative issues, and ii) give them the possibility of creating or reusing already defined activities and multimedia elements to compose new graphical editors. In this way, teachers do not need to start from the scratch when specifying new collaborative workspaces, but can take advantage of elements already stored. The work described in this paper is focused, on the one hand, on helping teachers to create different collaborative activities to be accomplished through collaborative graphical editors and, more specifically, to configure the graphical editors themselves in an easy way by means of an authoring tool that we have developed. This tool supports the reuse of activity wordings and graphical elements to compose new activities and graphical editors. Furthermore, taking into account that maybe not all the activities are suitable of being accomplished by every user at each time (the user context can change), it is appropriate to generate different collaborative workspaces and to select the activities to be tackled by students according to their current context. The tool also includes functionality to configure collaborative workgroups and to monitor student actions while accomplishing the collaborative activities proposed. In this way, the details of the underlying software are hidden to support the work of non-technical expert teachers, making the time spent in the authoring process decrease. On the other hand, the paper describes the incorporation of collaborative activities and editors created through the authoring tool presented, within the contextbased adaptive m-learning environment CoMoLE [25]. The way in which these activities are incorporated in CoMoLE and recommended to students in different contexts is explained too. CoMoLE supports the recommendation of individual and collaborative activities to each user at each time by considering the user features, behaviour and context. It also supports the adaptation and accomplishment of these activities: the list of recommended activities and the corresponding collaborative workspaces are dynamically generated at runtime. This paper is structured as follows: the details of the authoring tool itself, as well as examples of the creation of different graphical editors through the authoring tool (sometimes variations of the same activity) to support the realization of activities to be proposed in different contexts will be presented in section 2. The basics of the recommendation process, as well as the process itself, taking as example both the collaborative activities specified in previous section and other individual activities to be proposed to students, will be explained in section 3. Finally, conclusions and future work will be described in section 4.

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Authoring of Collaborative Activities and Workspaces As it was explained previously, creating collaborative graphical activities to be proposed to students when interacting with context-based adaptive environments is not an easy task. With the aim to facilitate the creation of collaborative graphical activities and to group students in workgroups, an authoring tool has been developed. It helps teachers to specify the activities to be accomplished through collaborative graphical editors, as well as to describe the editor features. Collaborative graphical editors are created once at design time and configured at runtime according to the activities to be supported. The purpose is to support the generation of editors with specific icons to build a solution for a certain problem (i.e., if the problem consists of building a logical circuit, the icons to be used to represent the solution to the problem will be logical gates with linkers to connect them). The collaborative editor toolbar is made up of elements as well as links to mark the relationships between them. The authoring tool developed allows teachers to create sets of collaborative activities and to managing existing ones. Next, the process of creating a new set of collaborative graphical activities and defining collaborative workgroups for the different activities are explained. With the aim to illustrate the authoring process, a sample scenario will also be described.

Creating Collaborative Activities Collaborative graphical activities are related to specific topics. Each topic relates to a certain subject. When proposing a new set of collaborative graphical activities, it is necessary to: -

Create a new set of activities related to a certain subject. Insert the topics to which collaborative activities will be associated. Specify the elements of each collaborative graphical editor that represents the elements to be used by students to solve the collaborative activity. Group students to accomplish the new set of collaborative graphical activities created.

If a teacher creates a new set of activities dealing with a certain subject, the authoring tool presents a simple interface (see figure 1a) including buttons to select the action to be performed: inserting or deleting topics related to the subject; adding or removing students and creating workgroups; saving the current specification of this set of activities; or going back to the main menu of the authoring tool. When the new set of activities related to a certain subject is defined, the teacher can insert topics related to it through the topic menu. The creation of a set of activities related to “Geometry” is presented in figure 1b. When the teacher clicks on the button labelled “add topic”, a pop-up window appears to ask the name of the new topic. If the teacher wants to delete a certain topic, he must only select the topic from the list and click on “delete topic” button.

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Figure 1a. Main menu of the authoring tool


Figure 1b. Inserting topics

The next step consists of creating the collaborative graphical activities. Each collaborative graphical activity is composed by the following attributes: -

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Identifier: name to identify the activity in the system. Short description. Wording of the problem to be solved or the activity to be done. Icons to be used by students when interacting within the configurable collaborative graphical editor (images or pictures representing elements and linkers between them, to be included into the shared work area by them to represent the solution of the problem). Deadline, indicating when the collaborative activity should be finished.

Let us suppose that a teacher of “Geometry” wants to create a new set of activities where students must: -

Compose new figures starting from a given set of geometrical elements. Calculate the perimeter of a certain figure composed by squares, given the size of these squares. Build symmetrical figures. Match geometrical elements with their corresponding number of sides. Build creative shapes, which allow students to enjoy and develop their imagination.

To create these five collaborative activities, the teacher must give value to the attributes of each of them through the corresponding interface (as the one presented in figure 2). For each activity, he must specify its description and provide the wording of the problem to be solved. Furthermore, the teacher must either provide new icons/images or select them from those stored in the system (previously uploaded by any teacher to be used in other activities). The number of the graphical components to be used in each activity can vary, since each activity can require a different number of icons/images to be solved. Finally, setting values for each activity deadline attribute is not required in this step. It can be set either by the teacher at any time or by team-leaders when they want to mark the activity as completed (more details will be given below).

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Figure 2. Management of collaborative graphical activities

In figure 2, a snapshot of the authoring tool is presented. It corresponds with collaborative graphical activity management. A list of the sample collaborative activities can be seen in the upper part of the interface. At each time, there is only one active activity, marked in blue colour. The buttons situated at the bottom of the interface allow teachers to add and delete collaborative activities to/from the list. The two buttons at the upper left-hand side of the page allow teachers to access to the previous menu and to add new icons to the active activity, respectively. Each activity has a short text description and a problem wording associated. The icons and images needed to perform the activity are presented in the left side. Each set of icons and images can be different; the teacher is the responsible either to provide them or to select them from the list of graphical elements previously uploaded (see figure 3). In figure 2, two versions of the activity “Symmetry” are shown. Each of them has different graphical elements associated. When students select this activity, the most suitable version will be selected at runtime depending on the device used to accomplish it. If students use a PDA, “Symmetry 1” activity will be presented, since the complexity of the task regarding graphical and interface requirements are adapted to this device. However, activity “Symmetry 2” will be offered to students having a PC or laptop. Once the teacher has finished defining the activity “Symmetry 1” he proceeds to specify activity “Symmetry 2”, starting from the previous one. He can add new icons by pressing the button “Upload an image” and selecting the corresponding icon through a file dialog window as the one shown in figure 3. If he wants to reuse any icon, he can select it from the set of icons uploaded before, also available.

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Figure 3. Uploading and reusing graphical elements

After new activities have been created, the authoring tool gives the teacher the opportunity to manage them and interact with them by: i) adding, deleting or modifying the activity wordings and the graphical elements associated with them, ii) deleting collaborative activities, and, more interesting, iii) simulating the collaborative workspaces that will be dynamically built according to activity definitions.

Creating Workgroups The next design step consists of specifying the workgroups involved in the different collaborative graphical activities. The authoring tool supports the insertion of data about students and the association of students to collaborative activities (see figure 4). For instance, let us suppose that there are two students: Anthony and Catherine. As it can be seen in the figure 4, Anthony has been assigned five activities: building figures, estimating perimeters, “Symmetry 2” activity, matching graphical elements and building creative shapes. Not everybody has to perform the same activities. Through the authoring tool, different activities can link to each student. Teachers must only select the student and the set of activities to be proposed to him. The corresponding workspaces will be generated at runtime and they will contain the corresponding list of pending activities for each user.

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Figure 4. Grouping students and assigning roles in workgroups

It is also possible to associate diverse roles to students in each workgroup. In this authoring tool, two roles have been defined: team-leader and regular-member of the group. If a student has the team-leader role associated in a certain activity, he has the privilege to mark this activity as finished. A student can be team-leader in a certain group and regular-member in other workgroups. If homogeneous groups are desired, the team-leader role can be associated to all the group members. Figure 4 shows a snapshot of the pop-up window that supports the assignment of the team-leader role or the regular-member role for Catherine (highlighted in blue colour in the user list). Although groups are currently formed by teachers, automatic-grouping mechanisms can also be incorporated, such as those developed previously [16], in which different grouping criteria can be used [26] [27].

Dynamic Generation of Collaborative Workspaces Once collaborative graphical activities have been described through the authoring tool, different collaborative workspaces are dynamically generated for each student at each time. When a student accesses to the application that supports the accomplishment of collaborative graphical activities, a workspace is dynamically generated starting from its description and also from the information about both the students that want to interact through it and the activities in which they are involved. Figure 5 shows an example of a collaborative workspace generated for a student who plays the team-leader role in activity “Build figures”. The workspace is composed by five areas, each of them containing: -

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A list with the collaborative activities to be performed by this student, presented in area one (see c in figure 5). Statement or wording of the activity selected by the student, presented in area d. Toolbar, including components (icons and images, representing elements or linkers) to be used for composing the solution to the collaborative activity. Other icons, 57


-


such as hand-icon, resize-icon and close-icon, are also included in this bar to allow the student to, respectively, move, resize or delete elements and linkers in/from the collaborative workspace. For team leaders, the finish-icon is also included to allow them to finish the collaborative activity. All the components are part of the toolbar on the left side of the collaborative workspace (ein figure 5). Shared working area with the collaborative graphical editor, placed in the main area (f in figure 5). This area will be updated with all the changes done by the students of the same workgroup. Finally, information messages sent by the application to connected users are presented at the bottom of the interface, in area g (i.e. connection of a partner, actions over icons and so on).

Initially, the information presented in this page (problem wording and components to be used) is related to the first activity of the list of student pending activities. If the student wants to work in another activity, she must choose it from the list of activities presented in area c. Then, the wording of the problem selected is presented in area d; the icons related to this activity are presented in area e; and the current state of the activity is loaded in the main area of the interface in the collaborative shared work area f. This application manages all the actions performed by students in different workspaces, and stores the state of the shared work area for each activity and workgroup each time a change is made. If a student moves from one activity to other, the application checks the current state of the second task and presents it to the student (activity wording and the icons), including the work developed by all the members of the same workgroup until that precise moment in the main area of the interface.

c

d

f

e

g Figure 5. Example of a collaborative workspace generated

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When performing a collaborative activity, students can: i) insert a new element in the collaborative workspace, ii) select, move or resize one element from those already included in the shared work area, or iii) delete one of the elements already included in the shared area. The results of each action are immediately shown to all the group members. Students connected to the application receive feedback about both the actions performed by their partners and their connection status in the message area, situated at the bottom of the page (see area g in figure 5). Team leaders can annotate an activity as finished by clicking on the finishbutton. When taking this action, all the group members receive a message in area g and a popup window is opened to inform them that the task is finishing within five minutes, since the deadline has been established by the team leader. When this period of time passes, the activity is marked as finished and no member of the group can modify the solution to this problem. Apart from team leaders, teachers can also decide the time at which activities should be considered as finished. Teachers can also take other actions apart from finishing a specific activity of a certain group. They can also monitor student actions, look at the content of the shared work area or generate a PDF file with the evolution and result of each activity (see right-hand side of the authoring tool main interface in figure 6). These actions can be accomplished by clicking in the corresponding buttons of the authoring tool.

Figure 6. Monitoring student’s actions through the authoring tool

Both the authoring tool and the application used to accomplish collaborative graphical activities have been implemented in Java. Library iText has been used to support the generation of PDF files from the solutions provided by the students in the authoring tool. In the student application, a specific package has been developed to control the concurrency when two or more students of the same group are interacting to solve collaborative graphical activities. It models the producer-consumer problem and implements the reader-writer problem when they interact at the same time. E. Martín et al.

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Context-based Activity Recommendation The collaborative graphical activities created using the authoring tool presented in the previous section can be incorporated within the context-based adaptive m-learning system CoMoLE [25]. CoMoLE supports the recommendation and realization of different types of activities when users are interacting with this m-learning environment though diverse devices and in different contexts. When supporting the realization of activities from different places and though diverse devices by users, it is important to consider that their context may change. This should be taken into account, on the one hand, to manage continuity in the learning process and, on the other hand, to be able to propose different activities according to that context. For example, if a user has only twenty minutes available before her class and she connects to CoMoLE through her PDA, she should not be proposed a longlasting or complex activity. When the same student connects to the system later on, from home though her PC, it seems reasonable that the activities ruled out, previously not recommended due to the student context (device used and available time), will be proposed. The basics of CoMoLE, the way in which these collaborative graphical activities are incorporated and how these activities with other types are recommended to students in different contexts are explained next.

Basics of CoMoLE CoMoLE supports the recommendation and accomplishment of different types of learning activities such as reading explanations, observing examples, making tests, doing exercises, solving problems collaboratively, downloading electronic material for their study, asking for a tutoring meeting with the teacher, sending/receiving messages to/from partners of the same work-group, and so on. Each learning activity can be atomic, composed by others, related among them, or independent. When a learning activity is defined as composed, the corresponding relationship between itself and its sub-activities must be established. Moreover, activities have multimedia contents associated to each of them, and collaborative tools to support the interaction between members of the same group. Each activity can be devoted to everybody, to certain types of users, or only to users in particular contexts. These adaptation capabilities are defined by means of adaptation rules. There are three different modules for processing the adaptation rules, each of them responsible to check a different type of rules. With the aim to select the most suitable activities and the contents related to them for each student and group at each time, it is needed to store data about users and groups. This information will be stored in user and group models. It is possible to save both static information, such as the user level of knowledge, learning style, language, information about members of the same workgroup or activities in which they are involved, as well as dynamic information, such as their evolution during the learning process (i.e. activities performed, results obtained, opinions about previous collaborative works) or their context (physical location, available time to accomplish learning activities, devices used to interacting with the system, roles in collaborative activities). Dynamic information is updated accordingly while students and groups are interacting with the system.

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Furthermore, it is necessary to store information about the adaptation capabilities in order to select the most suitable activities for each user. CoMoLE supports three different types of adaptation: − Defining different relationships between activities and adapting the navigational guidance offered (direct guidance, free navigation, several alternative links offered or a mixture of these three strategies) to different types of students when tackling a set of related activities. − Providing general instructions related to the (un)suitability of certain types of activities in specific contexts. These instructions can be different for distinct types of students. − Establishing different requirements for activities so that if they are not satisfied they are not proposed to students. These requirements can be related to the user context, previous actions or personal features. Different requirements can be established for different types of students. All the information about users, groups, activities, contents, collaborative tools, relationships between them and adaptation decisions are managed by the adaptation mechanism implemented in CoMoLE with the aim to support the recommendations of the system and the realization of individual and collaborative learning activities. This information must be specified in the design phase and it is stored in XML files that will be processed by CoMoLE when the students interact with it.

Design Process in CoMoLE With the aim to illustrate the design process in CoMoLE and the incorporation of the collaborative graphical activities described in the previous section to a new course, the example of the “Geometry” course will be completed. The first task to be carried out during the design phase is deciding the features to be considered in the adaptation process for selecting the most suitable activities for each student. Each characteristic is identified by its name and its possible values. These values can be numerical or stereotypes. If a characteristic is numerical, the possible values are ranks with minimum/maximum values. In the case of stereotypes, it is necessary to specify two or more possible values. With the aim to help the teacher with the creation of this type of learning environment, there is an XML configuration file that contains a set of adaptation features with their potential values. Some of the characteristics defined in this file are: i) device used: PC, PDA, laptop or mobile phone; ii) time available: between 0 and 24 hours; iii) physical location: home, class, lab, others; iv) level of knowledge: novice or advanced; and v) kind of information desired: general or detailed. Teachers can use these features with adaptation purposes, add or modify the possible values for them, or define new ones. In our example, let us suppose that the teacher wants to consider four features: the device used by students, their level of knowledge, their learning style and their available time. In this case, he can use predefined parameters corresponding to these features (including the default possible values for each of them), and the predefined feature “time”, specifying the ranks of values (minimum/maximum) to be used.

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Next, the teacher must provide information about global information which will be stored in a new XML file. This information refers to general features to be considered, such as the languages in which the contents will be provided, a short description of the main subject to which activities are related (one description per language), the features that will be considered in the adaptation process and the identifiers of activities that students will perform. Regarding adaptation features, the teacher can establish priorities between the characteristics to be used with adaptation purposes. This priority will be taken into account to select the most suitable versions of multimedia contents and collaborative tools to be offered. In the case of collaborative activities, the teacher can select the possible roles to be adopted by users, and the group size preferred, if grouping is done automatically. Finally, the teacher must select which type of adaptation capabilities, from the three available, will be used. Figure 7 shows an XML file from our sample scenario. It shows the four features (knowledge, learning style, available time and devices used) that will be taken into account to select the most suitable activities for each student at each time. Values for the level of knowledge, learning style and the device used are defined as a set of discrete values. However, the available time is defined as a numerical feature. Furthermore, the level of knowledge and the student learning style have more priority than the characteristics related to user context. Regarding collaborative activities, two possible roles have been defined: team-leader and regular member. Besides, it has been decided that the teacher is the responsible to constitute the workgroups (versus automatic group formation) and also that the groups will be formed by two to four users. Finally, the teacher decides that the three different types of adaptation capabilities available will be used to select the most suitable activities for each user at each time (this information is included in the first line of the corresponding XML file, as shown in figure 7). Next, the teacher must specify the learning activities to be proposed to students. In our example, eight activities will be defined: -

Activity “Geometry theory and examples”, which is composed by four subactivities: i) points, straight lines and angles; ii) triangles and quadrilateral shapes; iii) perimeters and iv) areas. Simulations about Geometry concepts. The collaborative graphical activities defined in the previous section. Have a look at additional multimedia material about Geometry.

Each activity has a type, description and deadline for its realization (or maximum time to be finished). Moreover, it has multimedia contents associated. Different versions of the contents to be presented to the students when interacting with each learning activity can be associated to the same activity, each of them adapted to particular user features (including context). For example, in the case of the collaborative graphical activities defined in the previous section, two of them have different versions of multimedia contents intended for different devices (such as computer or PDA). Regarding collaborative activities, it is also necessary to decide: whether the activity will be synchronous; the description of the activity to be carried out; and the collaborative tools to be used to perform it. Information about workgroups, such as their size (minimum/maximum) and member roles (if defined) can also be specified. Finally, it is possible to delegate group formation task on the system, so that groups are dynamically generated. All this information is also stored in XML files.

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Figure 7. XML file specifying global features of the set of activities related to Geometry subject

The next design step consists of specifying the adaptation to be carried out. As it has been stated before, three different types of adaptation are supported. The teacher can establish the relationships among the different activities related to the set of activities (if any). Any activity can split in several sub-activities. Both the sub-activities and the relationships among them can be different depending on the user for which the activities are intended. This is represented by means of structural rules based on those that constitute the basis of TANGOW formalism [5]. These rules have been extended to support expressions in which several operators (AND/OR/NOT) can be combined in more complex conditions.

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In our sample scenario, let us suppose that the teacher defines two structural rules that represent two different ways in which the theoretical activity about Geometry can be split (see table 1). Id

Condition

Guidance

Activity

c

knowledge=novice

direct

TGeom

d

knowledge=advanced

free

TGeom

Sub-Activities Point_Line_Angle, Triangle_QuadShapes, Perimeters, Areas Triangle_QuadShapes, Perimeters, Areas

Table 1. Structural rules for “Geometry” course

Rule c indicates that students without previous knowledge must perform the four subactivities in strict order. However, advanced students will accomplish only three of them and they will choose the accomplishment order (see rule d). Teachers can also provide general recommendations related to the (un)suitability of certain types of activities in specific contexts. This type of adaptation is represented by context-based rules, associated with the whole set of activities that compose a certain course. The activation conditions of these rules are related to context features and rules indicate the type of activities recommended or not recommended in those contexts. For example the context-based adaptation rule shown in table 2 indicates that collaborative activities will be recommended to students with active learning style when they have more than fifteen minutes available, while theoretical and review activities will be proposed to reflective students if they have less than fifteen minutes available. In this case the recommendation is based on student learning style and available time. The criteria for recommendations can also vary depending on the user features, even for users in the same contexts. In this case, context-related conditions would be the same for the set of rules while user-related conditions would vary. Id

User-related conditions

Context-related conditions

Type

c

lstyle_ar = active

time>15

Collaborative

d

lstyle_ar= reflective

time