Learning Communities as Supportive Environments for Individual Learners

1. Learning Communities as Supportive Environments for Individual Learners Learning Communities Workshop, Milano13/06/05 Hildegard Rumetshofer

2. Motivation and Goals The optimization of learner satisfaction depends on reaching people’s individual learning objectives. Individual learning success shall be supported by inspiring learning environments what can be expected in the age of information technology.

3. Outline • The Origin • Individualized Support • Learner-centred Online Learning • Personal Intelligent Learning Assistant • The Ambition • Community-centred Online Learning • The Challenges • Criteria, Needs and Requirements • Learning Objects • Ad-hoc Learning Communities • The Future

4. The Benefit: Individualized Support

5. The Origin: Learner-centred O-Learning • Know its • target learner • learning contents • learner‘s individualities • learner‘s objectives • learner‘s learning context Personal Intelligent Learning Assistant

6. The Origin: PILA (Personal Intelligent Learning Assistant)

7. The Benefits: Learning Communities • Support individual learners in • real-time collaboration • sharing learning material • learning experiences • solutions to similar problems • Broaden individual learner‘s horizon in • social contributions • building collaborative knowledge • soft skills • sharing sense of belonging • trust and expectations to communities

8. The Ambition: Community-centred O-Learning • Know its • target learner • learning contents • learner‘s individualities • learner‘s objectives • learner‘s learning context • learner‘s interests in learning community Extension of Personal Intelligent Learning Assistant

9. The Ambition: Community-centred O-Learning • Which criteria, needs and requirements are relevant to support individuals participating in learning communities? • Which kinds of learning objects are requested in the context of ubiquitous technologies? • How to provide the right ad-hoc learning community for individual learners but sharing common interests?

10. The Challenge: Criteria, Needs, Requirements • Expert onLearner • Individual differences • Motivation, emotions • Variations in society and culture • Concepts of social cognition • Expert onContent • Media • Severity • Granularity • Knowledge • Expert onTechnology • Independent in time, location and device • Student tracking • Allocation of meta-data and system adaptation • Machine learning

11. The Challenge: Extension of PILA – 2 Ways Extension of 1. layer Additional layer

12. The Challenge: Learning Objects • Target:selection, combination, sequencing of instruction according to • Learner‘s personality • Used ubiquitous technology • Participation in learning community • Meta-data:any chunk of information • Digital, non-digital • Image, text, video, educational game, sound

13. The Challenge: Ad-hoc Communities 8. user is informed about his user profile and what he can do next PILA2 registration PILA factory 2. provide info about learner & request creation of PILA 3. PILA is created PILA3 1. learner registers 4. PILA registers itself PILA docking station assessment center PILA1 6. user enters assessment centre 7. user profile in PILA is updated 5. user is informed about successful creation of PILA (and about the possibility to pass the assessment centre) host system PILA4

14. To Do: Future Work • Prototypical Implementation of PILA • Detailed identification of learner characteristics with respect to learning communities • Extension of the Multi-layer Semantic Maps with those characteristics (adaptation rules, learning objects) • Prototypical Implementation of Ad-hoc Learning Communities • Cooperation with interested Persons/Groups/Companies

15. Contacts Institute For Applied Knowledge Processing Johannes Kepler University Linz, Softwarepark Hagenberg Hildegard Rumetshofer (hrumetshofer@faw.uni-linz.ac.at)