Abstract
One of the main difficulties during the design of collaborative learning activities is adequate group formation. In any type of collaboration, group formation plays a critical role in the learners’ acceptance of group activities, as well as the success of the collaborative learning process. Nevertheless, to propose both an effective and pedagogically sound group formation is a complex issue due to multiple factors that influence group arrangement. The current (and previous) learner’s knowledge and skills, the roles and strategies used by learners to interact among themselves, and the teacher’s preferences are some examples of factors to be considered while forming groups. To identify which factors are essential (or desired) in effective group formation, a well-structured and formalized representation of collaborative learning processes, supported by a strong pedagogical basis, is desirable. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to present an ontology that works as a framework based on learning theories that facilitate group formation and collaborative learning design. The ontology provides the necessary formalization to represent collaborative learning and its processes, while learning theories provide support in making pedagogical decisions such as gathering learners in groups and planning the scenario where the collaboration will take place. Although the use of learning theories to support collaborative learning is open for criticism, we identify that they provide important information which can be useful in allowing for more effective learning. To validate the usefulness and effectiveness of this approach, we use this ontology to form and run group activities carried out by four instructors and 20 participants. The experiment was utilized as a proof-of-concept and the results suggest that our ontological framework facilitates the effective design of group activities, and can positively affect the performance of individuals during group learning.
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Notes
An improvement of group performance does not guarantee an improvement of learning (Dillenbourg 2002).
Such a scheme should be understood as a suggestion to improve the quality of CL and not as imposed rules.
More information about this framework can be found in http://edont.qee.jp/omnibus/
W(A)-goal: W stands for the Whole-group and A stands for Arrangement.
The Role Holder concept is a very deep concept to treat roles adequately in ontologies. Further information about the definition of this concept can be found in (Mizoguchi et al. 2007).
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Acknowledgement
We would like to thank the reviewers and editors of the ijCSCL for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also would like to thank the Nippon Foundation, the Association of Nikkei & Japanese Abroad, JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), IBM Research and the Department of Knowledge Systems (MizLab) for their financial and technical support.
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Isotani, S., Inaba, A., Ikeda, M. et al. An ontology engineering approach to the realization of theory-driven group formation. Computer Supported Learning 4, 445–478 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-009-9072-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-009-9072-x