| dc.description.abstract | The main challenge in Web-based learning setting is providing the opportunity and resources for discussion and collaborative knowledge construction to engage learners in acquiring, and applying knowledge in a context of learning and collaboration. Knowledge sharing is a key component of the formation of communities. Most online learning communities employ Web-based discussion forums to facilitate interactions and knowledge sharing. However, such forums are separated from the context of learning activities. Some learners don’t know how and what to ask questions, have context problems interpreting a posted question, or respond inappropriately without knowing the profile of questioners. Teachers would struggle to moderate and reply on discussion forums. Such forums also lack the ubiquity in support of voice postings and immediate delivery. Furthermore, when encountering a difficult in learning activity, learners are required to disrupt the learning context to locate adaptive knowledge. This disruption reduces learning performance. Thus, developing an effective support mechanism to help learners to locate their queries and contexts, find peer experts for collaborative knowledge building through a ubiquitous discussion forum, and acquire adaptive knowledge in a learning context, is crucial to facilitating knowledge sharing and learning performance.
This study presents a Web-based e-book interface that enables learners to annotate or enter queries in a text in which questions arise, where the query context is transferred to a discussion forum. The subsequent anchors of questions are linked to a discussion forum for actuating sustained participation. Meanwhile, based on learners’ knowledge level of specific concepts in the query context derived from a concept map, a mentor finder adopts similarity-based concept matching to recommend peer experts for collaborative knowledge building through discussions. Learners’ knowledge level can be analyzed based on Web-based portfolios. Whenever and wherever, learners can use smartphones to post a voice up, and access this ubiquitous discussion forum in an individual basis. This study also extends e-book with a contextual knowledge recommender that can support learners to locate adaptive references from a knowledge repository, when questions arise in a text. This knowledge repository comprises a web dictionary, discussion forum, and library of examples.
Experiments showed that weekly posting per student was from 0.25 up to 2.64, a clear increase in the level of discussions. Both postings related book topic and average length of discussion threads were also increased. 89.8% of students can easily locate questions and enter into discussion in a text where learning question encountered. Average reply of teaching assistants was decreased from 16 down to 5.4. 80% of students can automatically obtain suitable peer help regarding the problem. Only 57% of students said that it is simple to access forum by using smartphone. Students prefer PC to smartphone in campus. To summarize, 77.5% of students indicated that they benefited considerably by collaborative discussion in an e-book learning context through a ubiquitous forum. Students prefer accessing knowledge and joining discussions through this system to reading a conventional textbook. A positive correlation existed between amount of time spent for students using this system and their grade. | en_US |