Explor@Graph Scenarios Editor – Designing a Collaborative Task Aude Dufresne Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, H2J 3P6
[email protected] Abstract The Explor@Graph system is tool where scenarios are designed as conceptual graphs, and used as an LMS. It is integrated to a forum for collaborative tasks.
1. Introduction The Explor@Graph system described in the panel (P1-6) was developed in a Computer Human Interface perspective to be easy and flexible to use since
designing a scenarios is an open tasks. It is being used here to represent the Ranking of Planets Scenario. Designing the scenarios can easily be done top down, first describing the activities, adding description of resources and then adding links to them in the graphs. To represent the scenarios, we used five graphs, which are linked one to another. One for the general scenario (figure 1), one for representing the concepts (mostly planets), one for each theme (figure 2) and one for the professor tasks’ description and resources.
Figure 1. Scenario for ranking the planets Privileges can be defined to reserve access to graphs. Graphs are not mutually exclusive, nodes can appear in two graphs when it is relevant. Figure 1 presents the main scenario and its activities, with composition and precedence links being represented with colors. Shapes are used to distinguish types of nodes (activities, resources or concepts), icons to represent the type of resource. For each node, description and properties can be edited to be accessed by learners (figure 3), but they may also serve for the professor to describe the content of a resource to be developed. Here timing information, size of resources or other metadatas can be entered. For resource node, a resource may be picked locally using browse or linked using the Learning Object Repository developed at LICEF. Existing nodes can be inserted in a graph, like general instructions, which appear in other graphs.
Figure 2. Theme A graph with its specific resources
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06) 0-7695-2632-2/06 $20.00 © 2006
IEEE
questions for the questionnaire and rules to decide if the order is right. If it is, a message is sent to the teacher and feedback can be given in the environment using a message and the evaluation properties of the test node. The learner can then proceed to the discussion, where the teachers will announce the winner and discuss about the process, errors and the solution.
Figure 3. Right click Properties of the activity node “Ranking the Planets”
2. Integration of collaborative activities For discussions we used the forum AGORA, a general one and sections reserved for each group. We did not have a chat and though we could have given a list of chat addresses for each group, we saw the interest in having private forum for groups, in the same environment as the general forum. And the forum, when used synchronously, is almost like a chat. For collaborative activities, each node is automatically linked to a search in the forum, using “Right click/Forum”. The teacher defines sections in the Forum having names similar to graphs and nodes in graphs using the words that he expect will be useful for keywords search. For example, we defined the Graph The Planets and a node is defined for each Planets, so a search can be done for each in the forum using search. Other concepts could be added and searched, or the teachers can leave the students find the important searching concepts themselves to be used directly in the Forum. Learners can use the annotation field in the properties to take private notes about the planets.
3. Supporting the activities In Explor@Graph questions to the user can be defined, the answer then becomes part of the user model. Events and can be linked to support actionscontrol elements of the environment, click on a node, open its properties, show an avatar with a message. In the teacher graph (Prof), we added a node that he can click to launch the test (figure 4). Then we use
Figure 4. Using support to communicate with students The “Prof graph” is accessible only to teachers. In it, advices are given using resources or dynamic support. How he can supervise the activity? When to launch the test? How to help the students? Graphs may be duplicated and adapted by the teachers if they want to reuse them for similar activities [1] .
4. Discussion The teachers can see the mean progression in graphs. He can watch the evolution of the discussion, evaluate contributions of each students using the search, add his evaluation on contributions and add his comments or cues. The forums are kept, with their evaluations and content. The interaction trace is only kept on the student desktop for now, but we are working to integrate and keep user models. Not all the needed functionalities are accessible, for example, the integration of evaluation coming from the teachers is not. But the system is certainly very easy to use to describe activities, concepts, to link resources and even integrate support. If a more structure method is needed, the ontology can be constrained and models of correct scenarios can serve as models, with interactive support.
5.
References
[1] Villiot-Leclerc, E. and Dufresne, A., "Supporting the Design of Socio Constructivist Scenarios with ExploraGraph," presented at EDMedia2005, Montréal, Canada, 2005.
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06) 0-7695-2632-2/06 $20.00 © 2006
IEEE
