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October 2010 Volume 13 Number 4

Educational Technology & Society An International Journal Aims and Scope Educational Technology & Society is a quarterly journal published in January, April, July and October. Educational Technology & Society seeks academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage such systems. The articles should discuss the perspectives of both communities and their relation to each other:  Educators aim to use technology to enhance individual learning as well as to achieve widespread education and expect the technology to blend with their individual approach to instruction. However, most educators are not fully aware of the benefits that may be obtained by proactively harnessing the available technologies and how they might be able to influence further developments through systematic feedback and suggestions.  Educational system developers and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are sometimes unaware of the needs and requirements of typical teachers, with a possible exception of those in the computer science domain. In transferring the notion of a 'user' from the human-computer interaction studies and assigning it to the 'student', the educator's role as the 'implementer/ manager/ user' of the technology has been forgotten. The aim of the journal is to help them better understand each other's role in the overall process of education and how they may support each other. The articles should be original, unpublished, and not in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission to Educational Technology & Society and three months thereafter. The scope of the journal is broad. Following list of topics is considered to be within the scope of the journal: Architectures for Educational Technology Systems, Computer-Mediated Communication, Cooperative/ Collaborative Learning and Environments, Cultural Issues in Educational System development, Didactic/ Pedagogical Issues and Teaching/Learning Strategies, Distance Education/Learning, Distance Learning Systems, Distributed Learning Environments, Educational Multimedia, Evaluation, Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Issues, Hypermedia Systems/ Applications, Intelligent Learning/ Tutoring Environments, Interactive Learning Environments, Learning by Doing, Methodologies for Development of Educational Technology Systems, Multimedia Systems/ Applications, Network-Based Learning Environments, Online Education, Simulations for Learning, Web Based Instruction/ Training

Editors Kinshuk, Athabasca University, Canada; Demetrios G Sampson, University of Piraeus & ITI-CERTH, Greece; Nian-Shing Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.

Editors’ Advisors Ashok Patel, CAL Research & Software Engineering Centre, UK; Reinhard Oppermann, Fraunhofer Institut Angewandte Informationstechnik, Germany

Editorial Assistant Barbara Adamski, Athabasca University, Canada.

Associate editors Vladimir A Fomichov, K. E. Tsiolkovsky Russian State Tech Univ, Russia; Olga S Fomichova, Studio "Culture, Ecology, and Foreign Languages", Russia; Piet Kommers, University of Twente, The Netherlands; Chul-Hwan Lee, Inchon National University of Education, Korea; Brent Muirhead, University of Phoenix Online, USA; Erkki Sutinen, University of Joensuu, Finland; Vladimir Uskov, Bradley University, USA.

Advisory board Ignacio Aedo, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain; Mohamed Ally, Athabasca University, Canada; Luis Anido-Rifon, University of Vigo, Spain; Gautam Biswas, Vanderbilt University, USA; Rosa Maria Bottino, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy; Mark Bullen, University of British Columbia, Canada; Tak-Wai Chan, National Central University, Taiwan; Kuo-En Chang, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan; Ni Chang, Indiana University South Bend, USA; Yam San Chee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Sherry Chen, Brunel University, UK; Bridget Cooper, University of Sunderland, UK; Darina Dicheva, Winston-Salem State University, USA; Jon Dron, Athabasca University, Canada; Michael Eisenberg, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA; Robert Farrell, IBM Research, USA; Brian Garner, Deakin University, Australia; Tiong Goh, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; Mark D. Gross, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Roger Hartley, Leeds University, UK; J R Isaac, National Institute of Information Technology, India; Mohamed Jemni, University of Tunis, Tunisia; Mike Joy, University of Warwick, United Kingdom; Athanasis Karoulis, Hellenic Open University, Greece; Paul Kirschner, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands; William Klemm, Texas A&M University, USA; Rob Koper, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands; Jimmy Ho Man Lee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Ruddy Lelouche, Universite Laval, Canada; Tzu-Chien Liu, National Central University, Taiwan; Rory McGreal, Athabasca University, Canada; David Merrill, Brigham Young University - Hawaii, USA; Marcelo Milrad, Växjö University, Sweden; Riichiro Mizoguchi, Osaka University, Japan; Permanand Mohan, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago; Kiyoshi Nakabayashi, National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan; Hiroaki Ogata, Tokushima University, Japan; Toshio Okamoto, The University of Electro-Communications, Japan; Thomas C. Reeves, The University of Georgia, USA; Norbert M. Seel, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany; Timothy K. Shih, Tamkang University, Taiwan; Yoshiaki Shindo, Nippon Institute of Technology, Japan; Kevin Singley, IBM Research, USA; J. Michael Spector, Florida State University, USA; Slavi Stoyanov, Open University, The Netherlands; Timothy Teo, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Chin-Chung Tsai, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan; Jie Chi Yang, National Central University, Taiwan; Stephen J.H. Yang, National Central University, Taiwan.

Assistant Editors Sheng-Wen Hsieh, Far East University, Taiwan; Dorota Mularczyk, Independent Researcher & Web Designer; Ali Fawaz Shareef, Maldives College of Higher Education, Maldives; Jarkko Suhonen, University of Joensuu, Finland.

Executive peer-reviewers http://www.ifets.info/

ISSN ISSN1436-4522 1436-4522. (online) © International and 1176-3647 Forum (print). of Educational © International Technology Forum of & Educational Society (IFETS). Technology The authors & Society and (IFETS). the forumThe jointly authors retain andthe the copyright forum jointly of the retain articles. the copyright Permission of the to make articles. digital Permission or hard copies to make of digital part or or allhard of this copies workoffor part personal or all of or this classroom work for usepersonal is granted or without classroom feeuse provided is granted that without copies are feenot provided made orthat distributed copies are fornot profit made or or commercial distributedadvantage for profit and or commercial that copies advantage bear the full andcitation that copies on thebear firstthe page. full Copyrights citation on the for components first page. Copyrights of this work for owned components by others of this than work IFETS owned mustbybe others honoured. than IFETS Abstracting must with be honoured. credit is permitted. AbstractingTowith copy credit otherwise, is permitted. to republish, To copy to otherwise, post on servers, to republish, or to redistribute to post ontoservers, lists, requires or to redistribute prior specific to lists, permission requiresand/or prior a specific fee. Request permission permissions and/or afrom fee. the Request editors permissions at [email protected]. from the editors at [email protected].

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 Peer reviewed publications: Full length articles (4000 - 7000 words)  Book reviews  Software reviews  Website reviews All peer review publications will be refereed in double-blind review process by at least two international reviewers with expertise in the relevant subject area. Book, Software and Website Reviews will not be reviewed, but the editors reserve the right to refuse or edit review. For detailed information on how to format your submissions, please see: http://www.ifets.info/guide.php

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ISSN ISSN1436-4522 1436-4522. (online) © International and 1176-3647 Forum (print). of Educational © International Technology Forum of & Educational Society (IFETS). Technology The authors & Society and (IFETS). the forumThe jointly authors retain andthe the copyright forum jointly of the retain articles. the copyright Permission of the to make articles. digital Permission or hard copies to make of digital part or or allhard of this copies workoffor part personal or all of or this classroom work for usepersonal is granted or without classroom feeuse provided is granted that without copies are feenot provided made orthat distributed copies are fornot profit made or or commercial distributedadvantage for profit and or commercial that copies advantage bear the full andcitation that copies on thebear firstthe page. full Copyrights citation on the for components first page. Copyrights of this work for owned components by others of this than work IFETS owned mustbybe others honoured. than IFETS Abstracting must with be honoured. credit is permitted. AbstractingTowith copy credit otherwise, is permitted. to republish, To copy to otherwise, post on servers, to republish, or to redistribute to post ontoservers, lists, requires or to redistribute prior specific to lists, permission requiresand/or prior a specific fee. Request permission permissions and/or afrom fee. the Request editors permissions at [email protected]. from the editors at [email protected].

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Journal of Educational Technology & Society Volume 13 Number 4 2010

Table of contents Special issue articles Guest Editorial – One-to-One Learning in the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Age Chen-Chung Liu and Marcelo Milrad Learning Cultures on the Move: Where are we heading? Agnes Kukulska-Hulme

1-3 4-14

Students' Personal and Social Meaning Making in a Chinese Idiom Mobile Learning Environment Lung-Hsiang Wong, Chee-Kuen Chin, Chee-Lay Tan and May Liu

15-26

Social Knowledge Awareness Map for Computer Supported Ubiquitous Learning Environment Moushir M. El-Bishouty, Hiroaki Ogata, Samia Rahman and Yoneo Yano

27-37

Developing a Cross-media System to Facilitate Question-Driven Digital Annotations on Paper Textbooks Po-Yao Chao, Gwo-Dong Chen and Chih-Wei Chang

38-49

An Inquiry-based Mobile Learning Approach to Enhancing Social Science Learning Effectiveness Ju-Ling Shih, Chien-Wen Chuang and Gwo-Jen Hwang

50-62

Full length articles Facilitating Preservice Teachers' Development of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Ching Sing Chai, Joyce Hwee Ling Koh and Chin-Chung Tsai

63-73

The 3P Learning Model Mohamed Amine Chatti, Matthias Jarke and Marcus Specht

74-85

A Web Browser Interface to Manage the Searching and Organizing of Information on the Web by Learners Liang-Yi Li and Gwo-Dong Chen

86-97

Location Based Services for Outdoor Ecological Learning System: Design and Implementation Hsien-Sheng Hsiao, Chih-Cheng Lin, Ruei-Ting Feng and Kun Jing Li

98-111

Promoting Sixth Graders' Number Sense and Learning Attitudes via Technology-based Environment Der Ching Yang and Yi Fang Tsai

112-125

Contributing, Exchanging and Linking for Learning: Supporting Web Co-Discovery in One-to-One Environments Chen-Chung Liu, Ping-Hsing Don, Chen-Wei Chung, Shao-Jun Lin, Gwo-Dong Chen and Baw-Jhiune Liu

126-139

Information Technologies in Higher Education: Lessons Learned in Industrial Engineering Milagros Delgado-Almonte, Hernando Bustos Andreu and Liliana Pedraja-Rejas

140-154

The Dynamics of Online Communities in the Activity Theory Framework Bahar Baran and Kursat Cagiltay

155-166

A Performance-Oriented Approach to E-Learning in the Workplace Minhong Wang, Weijia Ran, Jian Liao and Stephen J.H. Yang

167-179

The Idea Storming Cube: Evaluating the Effects of Using Game and Computer Agent to Support Divergent Thinking Chun-Chieh Huang, Ting-Kuang Yeh, Tsai-Yen Li and Chun-Yen Chang

180-191

Cyberbullying Victimization among Turkish Online Social Utility Members Yavuz Akbulut, Yusuf Levent Sahin and Bahadir Eristi

192-201

Cognitive Conflicts and Resolutions in Online Text Revisions: Three Profiles Yu-Fen Yang

202-214

Challenges in Educational Modelling: Expressiveness of IMS Learning Design Manuel Caeiro-Rodríguez, Luis Anido-Rifón and Martín Llamas-Nistal

215-226

ISSN 1436-4522 1436-4522.(online) © International and 1176-3647 Forum (print). of Educational © International Technology Forum&ofSociety Educational (IFETS). Technology The authors & Society and the (IFETS). forum The jointly authors retainand thethecopyright forum jointly of theretain articles. the Permissionoftothe copyright make articles. digital Permission or hard copies to make of part digital or all orof hard thiscopies work for of part personal or allorofclassroom this work use for is personal grantedorwithout classroom fee provided use is granted that copies without arefee notprovided made or that distributed copies for are profit not made or commercial or distributed advantage for profitand or that commercial copies bear advantage the fulland citation that copies on the bear first page. the full Copyrights citation onfor thecomponents first page. Copyrights of this workfor owned components by others of than this work IFETS owned must by be honoured. others thanAbstracting IFETS mustwith be honoured. credit is permitted. Abstracting To with copy credit otherwise, is permitted. to republish, To copy to post otherwise, on servers, to republish, or to redistribute to post on to lists, servers, requires or to prior redistribute specifictopermission lists, requires and/or priora fee. specific Request permission permissions and/orfrom a fee. theRequest editors permissions at [email protected]. from the editors at [email protected].

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'Computer' and 'Information and Communication Technology': Students' Culture Specific Interpretations Jan Elen, Geraldine Clarebout, Frederick Kwaku Sarfo, Lambertus Philippus (Flip) Louw, Johanna PöysäTarhonen and Nick Stassens

ISSN ISSN1436-4522 1436-4522. (online) © International and 1176-3647 Forum (print). of Educational © International Technology Forum of & Educational Society (IFETS). Technology The authors & Society and (IFETS). the forumThe jointly authors retain andthe the copyright forum jointly of the retain articles. the copyright Permission of the to make articles. digital Permission or hard copies to make of digital part or or allhard of this copies workoffor part personal or all of or this classroom work for usepersonal is granted or without classroom feeuse provided is granted that without copies are feenot provided made orthat distributed copies are fornot profit made or or commercial distributedadvantage for profit and or commercial that copies advantage bear the full andcitation that copies on thebear firstthe page. full Copyrights citation on for the components first page. Copyrights of this work for owned components by others of this than work IFETS owned mustbybe others honoured. than IFETS Abstracting must with be honoured. credit is permitted. AbstractingTowith copy credit otherwise, is permitted. to republish, To copy to otherwise, post on servers, to republish, or to redistribute to post ontoservers, lists, requires or to redistribute prior specific to lists, permission requiresand/or prior a specific fee. Request permission permissions and/or afrom fee. the Request editors permissions at [email protected]. from the editors at [email protected].

227-239

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Liu, C.-C., & Milrad, M. (2010). Guest Editorial – One-to-One Learning in the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Age. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 1–3.

Guest Editorial – One-to-One Learning in the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Age Chen-Chung Liu1 and Marcelo Milrad2 1

Graduate Institute of Network Learning Technology, National Central University, Taiwan // [email protected] 2 Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies, Linnaeus University, Sweden // [email protected]

Technological advancements in ubiquitous computing and wireless communication combined with the rapid adoption of sophisticated mobile multimedia devices and applications have created new software tools for people to connect and interact; therefore changing the ways we communicate and collaborate. Educators and researchers are becoming increasingly aware of how mobile and ubiquitous technologies used in our daily life can be utilized for developing new tools that may have a significant impact on learning. Since 2003, research into one-to-one learning (http://www.g1to1.org/) has focused on those aspects related to the design, implementation and evaluation of tools (such as digital pens or computing devices) used to support individual and collaborative learning. Students in a oneto-one (1:1) learning scenario use handheld devices fitted with wireless communication capabilities to support various learning activities. The usage of handheld devices contributes to the creation of new patterns of interaction and classroom dynamics that may support learning in many ways: they connect the classroom to the outside world (Liu et al., 2008; Vavoula et al., 2009), facilitate social learning process (Liu & Kao, 2007; Roschelle, 2003; Zurita & Nussbaum, 2004), and contextualize the learning experience (Hsi, 2003; Vogel et al., 2010). One-to-one learning is based on the belief that people learn differently as a result of owning personal handheld computing devices (Chan et al., 2006). The attributes of these devices, including portability, connectivity and context sensitivity combined with sound pedagogical ideas can transform learning from being a merely productive knowledge acquisition process to an active social interaction activity. The argument that one-to-one computational environments may alter the way people learn is largely based on the ratio of students to computers and readiness for students to access the computers. The ready-at-hand personal devices might be able to change the teaching practices because teachers and students will probably no longer consider the computers irrelevant to learning and teaching (Soloway et al., 2001). Nowadays, after almost eight years since the notion of one-to-one learning was introduced, computational power is becoming available everywhere so that we can now have access to different services and the Internet from a wide variety of portable devices. The 1:1 ratio of students to computers in some educational settings has become reality. However, current technological and social environments in the classroom, compared to those that were present when the notion of one-to-one was proposed, have changed significantly. These changes need to be addressed in current research and practice of one-to-one learning. Regarding technological changes in the environments, students are learning in more versatile settings than before. For instance, students have multiple choices of personal devices, such as smart phones, laptops and e-books which can be integrated with other ubiquitous computing devices to support their learning. Together with pervasively embedded sensors and peripheral equipments, these personal handheld devices provide us with novel ways to interact with our surrounding both, from an individually and collaboratively perspective. For instance, students can interact with each other by using a tabletop computing environment (Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2010) or shared displays (Liu & Kuo, 2007) through the use of their personal devices. In this type of emerging learning environments, students will more often need to use multiple technologies to accomplish a learning task according to the perceived affordances of the technologies in use (Bollen et al., 2008). To better support such learning tasks, it is necessary to further investigate how students interact with learning contents, peers, teachers and parents through a variety of technologies. Regarding social changes, the accelerated pace of global adoption of smart phones provides a remarkable opportunity for making social mobile media an integral component of distributed learning environments (Multisilta & Milrad, 2009). As social web-based applications such as YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Flickr have become an important element in our culture, they may contribute to broaden the educational impact of mobile technologies because these applications may enable new forms of interactions mediated by social mobile media that facilitate learning and teaching practices. Learners may, for instance, tap social networks and recommendations for learning in pursuit of their interests over informal and formal settings. Students could share experiences and learn from a broader universe of user-generated content, beyond “prescribed” content provided by teachers or textbooks as it ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at [email protected].

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happens in traditional classroom settings. Therefore, a new line of research and practice, that highlights both the aforementioned social and technological changes in order to support and amalgamate contemporary social learning theories, will become more and more imperative than before. The aim of this special issue is thus to expose the results of current research and emergent learning practices that address the aforementioned issues. The base of the articles described in this issue features a selection of the best research papers presented at the Conference on Classroom, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Technologies Enhanced Learning (CUMTEL) held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2009) that took place at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in December 2009. In the paper entitled “Learning Cultures on the Move: Where are we heading”, Kukulska-Hulme addresses the change of key competences in the lifelong learning culture and lists how mobile technologies can be helpful to satisfy the calls for these new competences in terms of language learning. It is argued that “mobile language learning is faced with many opportunities in terms of promoting a lifelong learning culture in society and aiding individuals in their efforts to have learning experiences that fit their needs”. This line of reasoning is consistent with the pedagogical design proposed by Wong, Chin, Tan and Liu where students learn language by making meaning on real-life contexts using smartphones. The results presented in this paper indicate that mobile technologies have the potential to transform passive language learning into an active and authentic learning experience. This special issue includes also two studies which present new educational applications and interactions patterns enabled by mobile and ubiquitous technologies. Both of these studies address the integration of environmental objects that are used to enhance the interaction between learning contents, peers and teachers. The work carried out by El-Bishouty, Ogata, Rahman and Yano presents a social learning scenario in which a social network has been enhanced by wireless sensor technologies. By sensing and computing the learners’ surrounding environment, ubiquitous computing technologies and a software application are combined in order to recommend peer helpers who may be more likely to fit to the learners’ context and tasks. The results of their study demonstrate that the proposed mobile and ubiquitous computing environment is helpful to enhance social learning through increasing the awareness of learning contexts and peer helpers. In the second study that describes the work carried out by Chao, Chen and Chang, ubiquitous technologies were applied in an individual learning scenario. In their study, paper textbooks and computers were integrated by the use of digital pens to transform reading into a goal-directed learning activity. Their study addresses the integration of the affordances of paper and computers: paper supports an easy-to-read medium while computers provide questions to guide students to read. The results of this study suggest that the design of oneto-one learning activities and environments should take into consideration the affordances of different learning devices in order to maximize the effect of each individual device in the interactions that are part of the overall learning flow. The descriptions of the two studies above, demonstrate that students need to deal with multiple learning devices and digital media, as well as different modes of interaction in order to complete a learning task. In order to achieve their learning goal, students may need to go through a cognitive process which is slightly different from the one performed without such many devices. It is therefore necessary to further investigate one-to-one learning approaches supported by mobile technologies looking at the human factors that influence the cognitive process using those learning devices. In the study presented by Shih, Chuang and Hwang, the authors explore how multiple sources of information, including the information in the surrounding environment and those provided by the PDAs, may influence the cognitive load of students who have different knowledge level. The results of this study suggest some initial pedagogical guidelines for implementing one-to-one learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies. Such type of investigations may help us to re-think the principle of “Less is More” (Buxton, 2001) and to reflect upon what is really helpful or harmful in one-to-one learning environments.

References Bollen, L., Giemza, G., & Hoppe U. (2008). Flexible analysis of user actions in heterogeneous distributed learning environments. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5192, 62-73. Buxton, W. (2001). Less is More (More or Less). In P. Denning (Ed.), The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology in Everyday Life, New York: McGraw Hill, 145–179.

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Chan, T.-W., Roschelle, J., Hsi, S., Kinshuk, Sharples, M., Brown, T., Patton, C., Cherniavsky, J., Pea, R., Norris, C., Soloway, E., Balacheff, N., Scardamalia, M., Dillenbourg, P., Looi, C. K., Milrad, M., & Hoppe, U. (2006). One-to-one technologyenhanced learning: An opportunity for global research collaboration. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 1 (1), 3-29. Dillenbourg, P., & Jermann, P. (2010). Technology for Classroom Orchestration. In M. S. Khine & I. M. Saleh (Eds.), The New Science of Learning: Computers, Cognition and Collaboration in Education, Berlin: Springer, 525-552. Hsi, S. (2003). A study of user experiences mediated by nomadic web content in a museum. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19 (3), 308–319. Liu, C. C., & Kao, L. C. (2007). Do handheld devices facilitate face-to-face collaboration? Handheld devices with large shared display groupware to facilitate group interactions. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23 (4), 285-299. Liu, C. C., Tao, S. Y., & Nee, J. Y. (2008). Bridging the gap between students and computers: supporting activity awareness for network collaborative learning with GSM network. Behaviour and Information Technology, 27 (2), 127-137. Multisilta, J., & Milrad, M. (2009). Sharing Experiences with Social Mobile Media. Proceedings of the 11th international Conference on Human-Computer interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, New York: ACM, 1-3. Roschelle, J. (2003). Keynote paper: Unlocking the learning value of wireless mobile devices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19 (3), 260-272. Soloway, E., Norris, C., Blumenfeld, P., Fishman, B., Krajcik, J., & Marx, R. (2001). Handheld devices are ready-at-hand. Communications of the ACM, 44 (6), 15-20. Vavoula, G., Sharples, M., Rudman, P., Meek, J., & Lonsdale, P. (2009). Myartspace: Design and evaluation of support for learning with multimedia phones between classrooms and museums. Computers & Education, 53 (2), 286-299. Vogel, B., Spikol, D., Kurti, A., & Milrad, M. (2010). Integrating mobile, web, and sensory technologies to support inquiry-based science learning, Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Wireless, Mobile, and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 65-72. Zurita, G., & Nussbaum, M. (2004). A constructivist mobile learning environment supported by a wireless handheld network. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20 (4), 235-243.

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Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2010). Learning Cultures on the Move: Where are we heading? Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 4–14.

Learning Cultures on the Move: Where are we heading? Agnes Kukulska-Hulme Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK // [email protected] ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the globally recognized cultural move towards a more learner-centred education and discusses the implications for the adoption of mobile technologies and design for learning. Current expectations vis-à-vis learner attributes, skills and competences are explored. The pervasiveness of mobile technologies is precipitating these developments, whilst also generating a distinct mobile culture where learners take mobility and context-awareness as starting points and become more visible as innovators, creators and producers. Language learning, one of the most popular application areas of mobile learning, provides fertile ground for the growth of this phenomenon. The paper reviews several innovative language learning applications and concludes by indicating the directions in which we are heading.

Keywords Mobile learning, Learner-centredness, Learner-led innovation, Competences, Language learning

Introduction Technology is fundamentally changing how we teach and learn. Is this assertion true? It is something many would wish to believe, as education struggles to re-shape itself in response to the perceived challenges of the early 21st century. Certainly, “too many educational institutions still lack serious leadership engagement with the innovative application of digital technologies” (Laurillard, 2007: xvi), but there are bottom-up change processes at work, with many researchers and education professionals exploring more effective approaches to ‘design for learning’ (Beetham & Sharpe, 2007) and learners becoming more engaged as co-creators of experiences and resources. The evolution of ‘learning cultures’ is one of the manifestations of change. The term ‘learning culture’ is often used as a means to promote a positive and active disposition towards learning in society or in organisations, focusing on helping people to develop the habit of learning throughout their lives (e.g. DELNI, 1998). A project aimed at improving learning in Further Education in the United Kingdom concluded that “The most effective way to improve learning is to change learning cultures” (Hodkinson et al., 2005: 1); this meant recognizing that ‘what works’ is often context-specific. The project found that “Often the good pedagogy researchers observed did not fit official criteria. More support for a tutor’s individual approach that is sensitive to the surrounding learning culture could be combined with staff development strategies that encourage the sharing of expertise” (ibid:1). The lesson from this is that we have to face the plurality of learning cultures and find ways to value the individuals who are closely involved. This would also apply to learning cultures emerging around particular technologies and media. Educators are nowadays able to share expertise and to learn informally from one another through social media and online support. Likewise learners, in formal and informal settings, are taking advantage of online social spaces for learning and mutual support. Mobile access enlarges those communities and networks, and perhaps it is starting to play a role in connecting them, too; for example, individuals’ status updates are increasingly shared across applications. Yet it takes more than technology to connect people in ways that are sensitive to existing and emergent learning cultures. Learners are increasingly in a position to engage in educational activities motivated by their personal needs and circumstances, including those arising from greater mobility and travel, and to draw on the resources of communities of like-minded learners. ‘Context-awareness’, that is, awareness of one’s surroundings and their potential to provide information and rich learning experiences, becomes a starting point for learning. Context-aware learning is about enabling learners to use personal and social technologies to draw on aspects of their environment, including people who can join in or help, approaching the environment as a dynamic learning resource (see Luckin, 2010). Contextaware technologies can also detect a learner's presence in a particular place, or in relation to other people and objects nearby, and adapt the learning experience accordingly.

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This leads to a variety of uses of technology, inside and outside the classroom, in flexible and spontaneous forms of learning and sometimes with ‘lifelong learning’ as an ambitious goal. Foreign language learning, arguably very well suited to lifelong and mobile learning, is a good case in point. By looking at how language learning is changing, we can see the transformation that is possible as well as the challenges that need to be understood. Language learning is increasingly an everyday activity integrated with life, as travel becomes more commonplace and use of the Internet means that everyone will stumble upon opportunities to read and connect in other languages. This paper analyzes recent developments in the cultural move towards a more learner-centred education and discusses the implications for the adoption of mobile technologies and design for learning, noting the effects of widespread mobile technology use and the directions in which this is taking us. When learners become the focus, expectations change. Learner attributes, skills and competencies come under scrutiny and need to be explored. The pervasiveness of mobile technologies appears to be precipitating these developments. At the same time, the combination of mobile technology and mobility generates a mobile culture where learners’ specific needs in relation to their current location and context become important stimuli for learning designs. Our ongoing research with mature learners and teachers, summarized in this paper, provides insights into emergent practices with mobile technologies that have implications for all those involved in the design of learning technology and working in education. This new reality is shown in relation to language learning, where a range of novel applications is emerging, with potential for much more innovation if the unique characteristics of mobile learning are fully realized.

Learner-centred Education and 21st Century Learners Although learner-centred education is not new (see Rubin, 1975; Brandes & Ginnis 1986; Pulist, 2001), in some of its earlier interpretations teachers were the true focus of attention rather than learners. In his book on the learnercentred curriculum, Nunan (1988) writes that the curriculum is “what teachers actually do” (p. 1). He goes on to advise that the first step in the curriculum process should be the collection of information about learners, but notes that “the most valuable learner data can usually only be obtained in an informal way after relationships have been established between teachers and learners” (ibid, p. 5). In practice, for example when large numbers of students are involved, this can be hard to achieve. As classes grew larger, but before widespread use of technology, it was difficult to obtain learner data, to know what individual learners required and how they wished to learn; nowadays it should be more feasible to accomplish this, although it still requires effort. Online education has been at the forefront of such developments, with various webbased tools being designed to assess learner preferences and their readiness for a particular learning modality (e.g. Diaz & Bontenbal, 2001). In an effort to help both learners and teachers, Nakamura et al. (2002) developed a multimedia communication system allowing learners to select materials according to their interests and preferences, while at the same time helping teachers to become more learner-aware. Beaven (2009) reported on the successful use of blogs as a communication medium between teachers and learners, a way to carry on a conversation in between formal learning sessions. Mobile technology is still underused in this respect, perhaps due to unresolved issues in the use of mobile devices for informal teacher-learner communication when classes take place in a formal setting – issues such as privacy, information overload, prohibition of use in some establishments, and a lack of trusted guidelines on acceptable conduct. Nevertheless, the fact that learners are carrying personal tools which can be used for learning and communication (typically cell phones and music players; perhaps tablets and e-book readers in the near future), means that mobile technology acts as a catalyst for an inquiry into learner preferences, skills and study behaviours (Kukulska-Hulme & Pettit, 2007). What we expect of learners is changing, partly due to the pervasiveness of technology. So, what do we expect of our learners nowadays? If a “changed and more experienced person” is the major outcome of learning (Jarvis, 2006: 132), what transformations are educators hoping to achieve? There are many answers to these questions, but recent initiatives suggest some forward-thinking ideas in education at all levels. Several examples of emergent thinking are worthy of mention. In the UK schools sector, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce developed the Opening Minds framework which aims to help schools provide young people with “the real world skills or competencies they need to thrive in the real world” (RSA Education, 2010), in an alternative to a strictly subject-based curriculum. Used in over 200 schools, Opening Minds 5

was developed in response to a belief that the way young people were being educated was becoming increasingly detached from their needs as citizens of the 21st century. It is based on five sets of competencies that can be developed in projects or ‘umbrella’ units; the competencies are: Citizenship, Learning (learning how to learn), Managing Information, Managing Situations, and Relating to People. These competencies put emphasis on active engagement and participation. In the US, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2009), an organization that advocates the enhancement of core academic subjects through the development of a range of vital skills, has elaborated the Framework for 21st Century Learning. This Framework describes the skills, knowledge and expertise students must master to succeed in work and life, covering three areas: Learning and Innovation (creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration); Information, Media and Technology (information, media and ICT literacies); and finally, Life and Career (this includes flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and crosscultural skills, productivity and accountability, leadership and responsibility). The MILE Guide Self-Assessment Tool (2009) shows the envisaged outcomes of this 21st century skills development, stating that ultimately students will be "active collaborators” in the teaching and learning process, acting as co-creators of knowledge along with other students, teachers and education leaders, engaging with project work and inquiry-based learning. Similar sentiments are expressed in the UK higher education sector, where the Higher Education Academy (HEA) put forward the idea that universities need to improve “the nexus between research and teaching” (HEA, 2009). To help realize this goal, it is argued that all undergraduate students in all higher education institutions should experience learning through, and about, research and inquiry. Drawing together international experience in developing undergraduate curricula focused on student research and inquiry, Jenkins and Healey (2009) state that the goal is “to move more curricula in the direction of developing students as participants in research and inquiry, so that they are producers, not just consumers of knowledge” (Jenkins & Healey, 2009: 6). Expectations can also be identified in relation to non-formal and informal learning. In the lifelong learning sector, the European Commission has a strategy to foster the recognition of these types of learning and Youthpass has been provided as a tool to record learning outcomes gained in international educational projects, enabling participants in these projects to describe what they have done and the skills they have acquired. The framework sets out eight ‘key competences’ (Youthpass, 2009: 20):  Communication in the mother tongue  Communication in foreign languages  Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology  Digital competence  Learning to learn  Social and civic competences  Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship  Cultural awareness and expression On the basis of a survey of early 21st century initiatives, we can begin to form a picture of what is expected of learners, or what is the ideal learner today. From an educators’ perspective, a number of learner skills, attributes and competences emerge:  Active, inquiring, analytical  Engaged citizens  Equipped with research and inquiry skills  Exercise independent critical judgment  Co-creators and producers of knowledge  Able to function effectively in the real world  Able to communicate and cross language boundaries or cultural boundaries  Motivated and equipped to continue learning over a lifetime Many educators aspire to use new technologies in ways that will enable such competences, skills and attributes to be strengthened or to emerge. As mobile technology becomes ever more pervasive, the question arises as to whether it can enable learners to demonstrate or develop these traits. One way to approach this question is to look at how learners are already using their personal mobile devices for life and learning, to see if there is any kind of match between the nature of these mobile device uses and the characteristics that educators would wish to promote. The 6

next section gives an account of learner-driven practice and innovation and what can be deduced from the ways learners are using mobile devices to support their studies and in other areas of their lives.

Learners as innovators What can we learn from the ways in which learners use mobile devices? In 2005-9, the JISC e-Learning Programme in the UK funded a series of studies under the ‘Learner Experiences of e-Learning’ theme. The publication ‘In Their Own Words’ (JISC, 2007), which summarizes the first stage of the programme, describes an “under-researched and imperfectly understood world of the learner in a digital age” (p.3), and goes on to explain how the funded projects aimed to fill this gap. The studies considered the use of all e-learning technologies by students. Mobile devices were included, and in fact mobile phones, laptops and PDAs were found to be widely used to support learning. It was claimed that the mix of new technologies used by students and traditional ones supplied by course tutors and institutions was shifting patterns of study and causing a mismatch between the expectations of academic staff and the study habits of learners. Another finding from these studies was that peer support provided by informal networks of friends and family, using a range of communication technologies, provided “an underworld of communication and information-sharing invisible to tutors” (p.11). How can tutors find out more about this activity? The report recommends establishing “a culture of listening to learners” (p.24). In the second stage of the programme, a synthesis report confirmed that learners value the use of personal technologies in institutional settings (Sharpe & Lessner, 2009). All this points to a rising tide of mobile technology use against a backdrop of institutions and teachers who are curious about this aspect of their students’ lives but have little information about it. In the first phase of their research on young people entering university, Jones et al. (2010) collected information about access to mobile devices, though not the detail of particular uses; they report that among these students, the laptop and the mobile phone are not yet universal “…but the vast majority of students make extensive use of mobile technologies and computing facilities for communication and for access to course materials and resources” (p. 20). Ito, Okabe & Matsuda (2005) have written about uses of the mobile phone amongst young people in Japan, where it is regarded above all as a personal accessory enabling constant social connection. During 2006-9, we undertook a series of studies focusing on more mature learners (typically over the age of 25), to investigate their use of mobile technologies in various spheres of life, including learning. The learners were either using devices that had been lent to them for the duration of the project (Kukulska-Hulme & Pettit, 2008; Pettit, & Kukulska-Hulme, 2008), or they were using their own devices (Kukulska-Hulme & Pettit, 2006; Pettit, & KukulskaHulme, 2007; Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2009). Our interest in older learners is partly determined by our involvement in distance education, which has traditionally attracted a majority of students in their 30s, 40s and 50s. However, there are also other reasons why more mature learners are interesting to research, in particular because they are more likely to lead more complex, multitasking lives, with more experience of work-related mobility and travel. Being older, they are likely to be able to use their past experience to make sense of current experience, reflecting on what worked well in terms of their past learning and what didn’t. Admittedly, experience can be a double-edged sword: the extent to which we can free ourselves of our past is a debateable point, according to Jarvis (2006, p. 128). We may be too heavily influenced by it! Nevertheless, our inclination to look at mature learners is shared by the Thema project (Robinson et al., 2008), which explored the experiences of Masters students in technology-rich environments. The researchers explain: Master's students are of particular interest because of their varied educational history (some are recent graduates; others may be returning to study after a long period) and life situation (part-time students may have work and/or family commitments). In addition, a substantial number will be planning to embark on doctoral programmes and thus are making the transition from taught to independent study (Robinson et al., 2008). From our surveys and interviews with mature learners using mobile devices, as referenced above, we have amassed a considerable amount of detail of learner experiences; some general findings and reflections are worth sharing here: 

Collectively there are countless ways to use a personal mobile device to support learning. This may seem self-evident, yet there is an important point here. Owners of personal technologies do not normally receive training in their use; instead, they learn informally from friends, work colleagues and family. A 7

more complete picture of possible uses of mobile technologies to support learning would perhaps enable learners to make better purchasing decisions and to take greater advantage of the devices already in their pockets. 

Photo-sharing could be a route to informal learning and then formal learning with others. Taking photographs and sharing them with others is a highly popular activity which is facilitated by camera phones, photo sharing sites, and the relative ease with which photos may be posted on blogs. Users report liking the supportive feedback obtained by having others comment on posted photos. It may be a relatively nonthreatening way to begin to turn an informal interest into more formal study.



Usability of mobile devices is learner- and context-dependent. Many learners are perfectly happy to read on a tiny screen, whilst for others this is a major barrier. User experience also depends on lighting, ambient noise, environment of use. Learners want free and reliable wireless access to the Internet; this is often a major factor in continued use of a mobile device or its rejection. Commuters’ experiences are liable to change without warning, e.g. when new types of seating are introduced on buses or trains.

Table 1. Examples of personal mobile device uses, reported by learners Australia Send photos of landmarks to friends to find out where I am Create e-resources with audio such as Powerpoint presentations Record things on my iPhone and replay them in the iPod function Hong Kong Use the dictionary, listen to news to learn English Take photos of billboard advertisements and pictures in reference books Download a lot of books for reading Portugal Enter contests and use my mobile to answer quizzes Listen to podcasts and class summaries Record music samples, share music with my students Sweden Listen to educative radio shows Learn songs and words of songs Make calls to friends who are experts in a diversity of fields United Kingdom Send texts and pictures to the Moblog community Listen to BBC podcasts while I cycle to work Read blogs when waiting for dentist who has free wifi in surgery Through our international survey undertaken during 2008-9 in Australia, Hong Kong, Portugal, Sweden and the UK (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2009), we have continued to gather examples of mobile technology use in relation to life and learning. The motivation behind this research is to capture early signs of where new practices are emerging, that may spread elsewhere, and second, to identify local factors that may influence learner choices and actions. The overall aim is to raise awareness of learner experience with mobile technologies, in a world where educators need to develop their understanding of international students whose home experience will in some way impact on their technology choices and expectations when they study abroad. The research has yielded interesting examples that can help start conversations between teachers and learners, in the spirit of listening to learners and promoting mutual understanding (Table 1). These examples of personal mobile device use show that learners are actively using their cell phones, smartphones, PDAs and mp3 players to create, collect and access useful resources, to communicate inventively in a variety of ways with other individuals and communities, and to make best use of time wherever they happen to be. Over the period of our research to date (2005-10), new activities have gradually started to be mentioned more frequently, which can be grouped under five headings (Table 2). These point to the emergence of social and community interaction, mobile Internet access, use of multiple media, location-based activity and usercreated content. An awareness of these developments can shift perceptions of what can be done with mobile tools, draw attention to the possibility of connecting informal and formal learning, and of course it raises questions about what this means for 8

teachers, curricula, institutions, and for education systems more broadly – how these practices may impact on teaching and learning. Considering the expectations that educators have of 21st century learners, as outlined in the previous section, it is possible to see how personal use of mobile technologies might support these aspirations. Admittedly, reported learner activity does not readily reveal the thought processes and motivations behind learners’ actions, nor the extent to which a specific activity is representative of a competency, skill, attribute or expertise. To establish this more fully, in-depth research will be needed. Nevertheless, there are indications that mobile devices are instrumental in giving learners scope to adopt an active stance in relation to the process of learning and to develop their initiative, digital competence, knowledge production and communication. There is more work to be done in looking underneath the surface of these categories, to investigate whether there is an alignment between educators’ and learners’ perspectives on what is involved. For example, is there agreement on what constitutes ‘communication’ in mobile environments and what types of communication are educationally valuable? Furthermore, mobility and physical context are apparent in learners’ accounts of their uses of mobile devices, whereas educators’ expectations make little reference to how these aspects may impact on how learners behave and what they are expected to achieve. Table 2. New activities emerging during the period 2005-10 social/community interaction  the use of use social apps on the phone (e.g. Facebook)  being part of microblogging communities, e.g. Twitter mobile Internet access  browsing websites  reading news multimedia uses  watching movies and TV shows  listening to audio books, podcasts, and vodcasts location-based activity  using GPS to find places  using location-based services user-created content  filming an event to create a resource  creating podcasts It can be argued that the pervasiveness of mobile technologies is generating a distinct culture where learners repeatedly use mobility and awareness of their immediate context as starting points for keeping social contact alive, accessing fresh content, getting local information and becoming visible as creators and producers of content. These developments have special meaning for language learning, as will be discussed in the next section.

Will mobile learning change how languages are learnt? Foreign language learning has always been pursued both as a serious, long-term commitment, and as a more ad-hoc activity connected with travel, work, business, leisure and personal contact with speakers of other languages. ‘Culture’ has a special significance in language learning, being a core concept inseparable from language – although this is not always apparent when language learning is reduced to memorizing sets of supposedly equivalent words and phrases, as still too often happens at beginner level. The ways in which ICT and the online and mobile worlds are affecting language itself, are also the concerns of academic study (e.g. Kenning, 2007; Baron, 2008). Language learning is proving to be one of the more popular application areas of mobile learning, with a multitude of mobile resources available for formal and informal learning and practice. However, many of these materials merely reproduce conventional approaches to teaching and learning; too many are not designed for a mobile learning experience except in the sense that content has been packaged differently. Ros i Solé (2009) rightly proposes a more ambitious agenda for language learning, which “addresses questions about social habits and the resulting sense of the language learning self” (p. 138) and which has situated learner experience as its focus.

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There are some promising signs of new beginnings. New tools include the CapturaTalk (2010) software for mobile phones, designed for people who struggle to read, by enabling them to have text read out on their phone. Its users are typically people with disabilities such as dyslexia, but also those learning English. They can capture text from books, signs, leaflets and so on, using the camera on the phone, and immediately check words in the online dictionary as well as listening to the text. This approach is conducive to situated, immersive learning where the learner interacts with his/her surroundings whilst having the ability to adapt the learning experience to personal needs. In a contextaware application, Ogata et al. (2010) propose a computer assisted language learning environment (TANGO) that detects physical objects around the learner using RFID tags, and assigns questions to the learner related to the detected object, in order to improve vocabulary knowledge; the environment also allows the learners to share their knowledge. This development focuses on the learner’s mobility and interaction in a designated space. Personalization is at the heart of a tool developed by Chen & Hsu (2008), a PDA-based intelligent mobile learning system (PIMS) which recommends English news articles to learners based on their reading ability and provides appropriate explanations of vocabulary. A personal approach is also advocated by Pemberton, Fallahkhair & Masthoff (2005), who investigated the use of interactive television (iTV) for supporting second language learning amongst independent adult learners, emphasizing the need to fit in with these learners’ approaches to media use in language learning, and suggesting a solution using the mobile phone in conjunction with iTV to facilitate informal language learning from up-to-date authentic materials broadcast on television. Another interesting approach is the development of mobile learning resources based on ‘crowdsourcing’, that is, production by many distributed individuals willing to put in time and effort for free. The Smart.fm Mobile Study Dictionary has been designed by Joseph (2009), who is learning Japanese; this uses a crowdsourcing approach which combines mobile content with materials on language and culture produced by like-minded learners and shared via a community site. In a similar vein, Pemberton, Winter & Fallahkhair (2010) have developed CloudBank, a collaborative mobile knowledge sharing system for language learners that combines the characteristics of personal and contextual use, informal learning, user-generated content and content syndication, together with a social network. This mobile and web-based crowd-source information system is designed to help international students further their knowledge and understanding of local language and culture in the country where they are studying. Self-direction and community-based learning underlie Michelsen’s (2008) proposed design of a mobile digital revision space where learning is based around a virtual community of practice, enabling second language learners to revise on the go for the Cambridge First Certificate in English exam. Collaborative, situated, learner-directed learning is demonstrated by Comas-Quinn, Mardomingo and Valentine (2009) in their project involving a mobile blog for sharing experiences of a foreign language and culture. In a formal school setting, Ogata et al.’s (2008) mobile environment for language learning outside the classroom (LOCH) enables a teacher to assign field activities that involve students sharing individual knowledge and experiences; the aim is to integrate students’ real world needs with knowledge acquired in the classroom. All the above mobile tools, in their different ways, place the learner at the centre of the situated language learning experience; some have a special focus on culture, but there is more to be done in this respect. The end of the 20th century marked the beginning of a European initiative to encourage cross-cultural communication and lifelong learning. The European Language Portfolio, or ELP (Council of Europe, 2010a), aims to support lifelong language learning and to promote understanding and tolerance across languages and cultures by providing a way to record and reflect on skills in any language, no matter how the skills have been acquired. The Council of Europe recommended that further tools should be developed to encourage learners to reflect critically on their responses and attitudes to experiences of other cultures. The ‘Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters’ fulfils this role. It invites users to reflect critically upon their own memorable intercultural experiences, and helps them to analyse these experiences in light of the most defining aspects of each encounter. According to the Autobiography website (Council of Europe, 2010b), an intercultural encounter can be an experience between people from different countries or between individuals from other cultural backgrounds in the same country. Users of the Autobiography are meant to describe specific intercultural encounters in which they have taken part, analyse their experience, and identify different aspects of their current intercultural competence by referring to: Attitudes (attitudes and feelings towards the whole experience), Behaviour (interpretation of another’s behaviour as well as the behavioural patterns of the learner); Knowledge and skills (knowledge about otherness and how people act in intercultural contact situations; the skills applied); and Action (taken as a result of analysing the intercultural encounter) (Council of Europe, 2010b). The Autobiography was designed to be used across the curriculum in school or any other educational context contributing 10

to lifelong learning, including as a self-evaluation and development tool. Although the ambition is laudable, it is difficult to imagine individuals using this tool by themselves, in everyday life for instance. Nevertheless the reflective framework is interesting, and the prospect of ‘action’ holds promise that a tool such as the Autobiography could promote change. If it were to be adapted for use on mobile devices, so that it could be used to capture intercultural encounters immediately after they had occurred and to share the experience and the reflection with others, and perhaps if it were integrated with a language learning facility, it might have a greater chance of being used.

Future Directions: Where are we heading? A mobile culture is one where mobility, awareness of context, and learners’ specific needs become genuinely important stimuli for adoption of mobile technologies and innovative design for learning. We have seen that educators’ expectations with regard to 21st century learners encompass many competencies that can be developed through the use of mobile devices, but there is a need for more explicit mapping between what is expected of learners and how mobile technology can help realize these goals. Learners want to make best use of time, wherever they happen to be; yet educators are not used to thinking about time use and the realities of their learners’ lives. The time and context dimensions need to feature both in design for learning and in future plans detailing which attributes, skills and competences should be identified or developed in learners, since learning will become increasingly timesensitive and context-specific. Generic competences are still valid, but they also need to be related to ways in which they can be acquired, and mobile technologies will become an integral part of how this happens. Learners who are proactive and innovative in their use of personal mobile devices can point the way to the future, however the majority of learners will have to be alerted to the possibilities that exist. Both educators and learners need to realize that mobile technology is substantially different from desktop computing in its essential connection to mobility and the contexts in which it is used. Increasingly, learners will use mobility and awareness of their immediate context as starting points for keeping social contact alive (who is nearby?), accessing fresh content (what resources are available here?), getting local information (what’s interesting here?) and becoming visible as creators and producers of content (what can I contribute?). In this way, they can develop essential skills and competences as 21st century learners, but most of them will need guidance in how to do it. A culture of listening to learners will involve finding out about their current practices with mobile technologies and seeking to extend them or channel them in the right direction. Language learners and teachers will need to understand, and be equipped for, self-directed, situated learning. They will then be in an excellent position to share this expertise with others, including those from other disciplines. Mobile language learning is faced with many opportunities in terms of promoting a lifelong learning culture in society and aiding individuals in their efforts to have learning experiences that fit their needs. Recently developed tools make language learning more tailored to the individual whilst at the same time they facilitate access to a community of learners for mutual support or co-creation of resources. They take advantage of the unique characteristics of mobile learning, such as the potential for situated, immersive learning where learners interact with their immediate surroundings and have the ability to adapt the learning experience to personal needs. There is scope to develop more collaborative informal language learning; use of the mobile Internet; location-aware content; learner-driven content creation; to integrate mobile language learning with other subjects; to develop mobile language learning games; and to facilitate authentic communication practice and capturing real cross-cultural communication issues as they arise when people and their cultures are in contact with one another. However the mere presence and pervasiveness of mobile devices may not be enough to realize this potential. The broad aims and the local cultures of language learning will need to be adapted as well. This is a considerable challenge but a worthwhile undertaking.

Conclusion In this paper we analyzed recent developments in learner-centred education, in relation to mobile learning and with reference to cross-cultural understanding and language learning. Language learning is chosen as a prime example of a lifelong learning pursuit and it has a special role to play in promoting understanding of different cultures and highlighting issues of cross-cultural communication. 11

A number of recent education initiatives and investigations suggest what is expected of learners in the early 21st century. In parallel, learners are tentatively developing their own vision of how they wish to learn, through the ways they use technology to support learning. Our ongoing research with mature learners, summarized here, provides insights into emergent practices with mobile technologies, which suggest that personal devices may be helpful tools in developing initiative, digital competence, and skills in knowledge production and communication. They also point the way towards applications that will help learners keep social contact alive, enable them to access fresh content and local information on the move, and support them as creators and producers of content. The pervasiveness of mobile technology is certainly changing how we teach and learn. Mobility is a great instigator of change. Language learning, so relevant across all generations, can help bring about a lifelong learning culture, but new materials and tools must pay more attention to learners’ real needs in context, in the situations in which they arise. Support for reflection on intercultural encounters is equally important. It seems that learners will increasingly lead the way by sourcing and producing their own resources and software tools. However their pedagogical expertise is necessarily limited. Consequently, the new learning culture should be a shared project between learners and teachers.

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Ros i Solé, C. (2009). The Fleeting, the Situated and the Mundane: Ethnographic Approaches to Mobile Language Learning (MALL). In G. Vavoula, N. Pachler & A. Kukulska-Hulme (Eds.), Researching Mobile Learning: Frameworks, Tools and Research Designs (pp.137-150), Oxford: Peter Lang Verlag. RSA Education (2010). The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce - Education projects, Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://www.thersa.org/projects/education. Rubin, J. (1975). What the Good Language Learner can Teach Us. TESOL Quarterly, 9, 41-51. Sharpe, R., & Lessner, E. (2009). Support and Synthesis report, Retrieved August 16, 2010, from https://mw.brookes.ac.uk/ display/JISCle2/Support+and+Synthesis. Youthpass (2009). Bonn: SALTO-YOUTH Training and Cooperation Resource Centre, Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://www.youthpass.eu/en/youthpass/.

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Wong, L.-H., Chin, C.-K., Tan, C.-L., & Liu, M. (2010). Students' Personal and Social Meaning Making in a Chinese Idiom Mobile Learning Environment. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 15–26.

Students' Personal and Social Meaning Making in a Chinese Idiom Mobile Learning Environment Lung-Hsiang Wong1*, Chee-Kuen Chin2, Chee-Lay Tan2 and May Liu2 1

Learning Sciences Lab., National Institute of Education, Singapore 2 Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, Singapore [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] *Corresponding author ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a design research study in Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) that emphasizes learner created content and contextualized meaning making. In learning Chinese idioms, students proactively used smartphones on a 1:1 basis to capture photos of the real-life contexts pertaining to the idioms, and to construct sentences with them. Subsequently, in-class or online sharing and discussions on the contexts took place, which would enhance the students' understanding of the proper usage of the idioms. The learning design is grounded in seamless learning that encompasses in-class formal learning and out-of-class informal settings, and personal and social learning spaces. Our analysis of the student artifacts in both product- and process-oriented aspects reveal the students’ cognitive process and learning strategies during the course of content creation. The students' ongoing, open-ended, personal-to-social meaning making process and artifacts have shown some indicators of seamless language learning that has the potential of transforming language learning into an authentic learning experience.

Keywords Mobile assisted language learning, Seamless learning, Meaning making, Learner created content

Introduction In language learning, “closed,” mechanical exercises restrict information to only “correct” answers that are unlikely to remain in permanent memory (Stevick, 1996). On the contrary, bringing in student-generated materials (Kindt, 1999) could stimulate students or help to focus their attention, thus facilitating the creation of an open learning environment. When learners become contributors, they demonstrate informed participation to explore large problem spaces, learn from their peers and create new understandings (Fischer & Ostwald, 2002). This paper reports on a study of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore. We facilitated a Primary 5 (11-year-old) class to study and apply 29 common Chinese idioms. Apart from in-class idiom lessons with contextualized learning activities, the students were each assigned a smartphone which they were allowed to access 24x7 throughout the nine-week period of the study. They carried out photoblogging-like activities by using their smartphones to take photos in their daily lives, and then made sentences with the idioms, and subsequently posted them onto a wiki space for sharing and peer review. This MALL design emphasizes students' proactive association of the contexts that they encounter in the physical world with the Chinese idioms (considered a special form of vocabulary) that they have learned. In this paper, we focus on investigating the students' individual-to-social learning process throughout the intervention, which could be attributed to the process of multimodal, student artifact-focused, ongoing, open-ended meaning making in the context of vocabulary learning. The students' learning processes that we observed and the artifacts that they have delivered suggest a compelling direction for MALL – seamless language learning.

Literature Review Constructivist approach in vocabulary (idiom) learning In recent decades, we witness a paradigm shift in language learning theories from behaviorism to a communicative approach (Salaberry, 1996). In addition, prior studies in the second language (L2) classroom have suggested the importance of the negotiation of meaning, also known as social meaning making, in L2 development (Long, 1985). ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at [email protected].

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However, the social context has been undervalued as an arena for collaborative L2 learning. Where meaning appears fixed, immutable, to be sent and received, what is lost is the collaborative nature of meaning making (Savignon, 1991). As a fundamental component of language learning, vocabulary learning is often delivered in conventional ways, such as providing abstract definitions and sentences taken out of the context of normal use. (Miller & Gildea, 1987). Such pedagogical strategies may pose greater problem for learning of context-dependent vocabularies. The complex nature of context-dependent vocabularies, such as idioms and proverbs, may result in highly context-dependent appropriateness of their usage (Deng, 2001). There are many possible real-life contexts where such vocabulary could suitably (or unsuitably but often mistakenly) be used, which are almost impossible to be prescribed in a simple definition. A reform of vocabulary learning is in progress. In particular, Miller and Gildea’s (1987) vocabulary teaching experiment showed that children acquire vocabulary faster with the method used out of the school, by relating words to ordinary conversation, than with the traditional methods based upon abstract definitions and sentences taken from external contexts. Similarly, Nation (2001) proposes three psychological processes for successful vocabulary learning: noticing (a word is highlighted as being salient text input), retrieving (repeat encountering of the word) and creative/generative (a previously encountered word is used in a slightly different context). The three-stage model stresses the importance of the coupling of language input (receptive learning) and output (productive learning), and the learners' creative/generative usage of the learned vocabulary in alternative contexts. Liu (2008) illustrates the application of this model for idiom learning. However, his instructional designs are restricted to conventional paperbased classroom work, such as highlighting and discussing the idioms used in a given passage (noticing), taking a fill-in-the-missing-idioms quiz (retrieving), and making sentences using idioms (generative).

Mobile technology for vocabulary learning As authentic learning, i.e., learning activities that are framed around real-life contexts, comes into the picture of language learning (e.g., Mishan, 2005), Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) becomes a viable solution to the blending of the language learners' learning environment into their real-life contexts. Prior research on mobile learning has shown that the mobility and connectivity of the devices enable students to become an active participant, not a passive receiver, in learning activities (Looi, et al., 2010). The recent development of MALL demonstrates a similar tendency. One particular focus is on learner-created contents in authentic environments. Three such examples are reported by Joseph, Binsted and Suthers (2005), Hasegawa, Ishikawa, Shinagawa, Kaneko and Miyakoda (2008), and Looi, et al. (2009). All the three studies empowered the learners to create vocabulary learning contents in the forms of vocabulary-captioned photos or videos to illustrate individual words that they have learned. We will revisit these designs in the “Discussion” section.

Seamless Learning Recognizing both the importance and the limitation of formal, in-class language learning, language learning theorists have been advocating the integration of formal and informal language learning (Titone, 1969). On the other hand, the ready-to-hand mobile devices, which could function as a personal learning hub (Looi et al., 2009), creates the potential for an evolution of technology-enhanced learning. This evolution is characterized by seamless learning spaces (Chan et al., 2006), marked by continuity of the learning experience across different environments (formal and informal contexts; individual and social learning, etc.) and emerging from the availability of one device or more per student (“one-to-one”) for 24x7 access. In particular, the integration of individual and social learning could be further enhanced by blending mobile and Web 2.0 technologies to bring to the students the situated mobile learning experiences that take into account both the students' everyday tasks and socio-constructivism (Winters, 2007). In this regard, we are keen to tap on the technology-enhanced seamless learning framework to effectively carry out the modern language learning pedagogies for the e-generation.

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Study Description Our school-based design research study of “Move, Idioms!” (成语,动起来!) took place during July-September 2009. We designed a customizable learning process to engage students in ongoing Chinese idiom learning and sentence making activities. A class of 40 Primary 5 students, with mixed abilities in Chinese Language, participated in the study. Each of them was assigned a HTC TyTN II smartphone running MS Windows Mobile 6, with built-in camera, Wi-Fi access, Internet browser and English/Chinese text input. Twenty-nine idioms were selected from the students’ Chinese textbooks as the idioms to learn. Sponsored by a Taiwanese digital content developer, mobileoptimized comic animations that depict the meanings of the learned idioms could be assessed by the students anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, we adopted a wiki service PBWorks (http://www.pbworks.com/) to create the wiki space for photo/sentence sharing and peer reviews. Apart from standard wiki features such as multi-user content editor and page history, an online forum-style comment tool is incorporated on each wiki page. Figure 1 depicts the process of our learning design. The four-activity process is iterative and encompasses formal and informal learning settings, individual and social learning spaces, receptive and productive activities, and the use of both mobile and Web 2.0 technologies (i.e., learning takes place in both the physical world and the cyberspace).

Figure 1. The mobile-assisted idiom learning process The processes of the four activities are described below: Activity 1 – In-class contextual idiom learning (formal setting; physical and social learning space): The classroom/in-campus activities, co-designed by the participating teacher and the researchers in the form of lesson plan, are conducted with the aim of effectively carrying out the noticing and retrieving processes in Nation's (2001) framework as well as motivating and preparing students to engage in subsequent out-of-school activities (generating). During each lesson, six new idiomatic animations are shown to the class (also accessible by the students after school) (receptive). The teacher then conducts contextualized learning activities such as facilitating the students to take photos in the campus to illustrate the idioms (productive). Activity 2 – Out-of-class, contextual, independent sentence making (informal setting; physical, individual and productive learning space): Students carry the mobile phones assigned to them 24x7. Apart from watching the animations repeatedly, students identify or create contexts in their daily lives which could be associated with the idioms. They then take photos, make sentences by using the idioms to describe the photos, and post them onto a class 17

wiki space. In the wiki space, we create one wiki page for each idiom covered in the class for students to post their photos/sentences. This offers convenience for comparing student-identified contexts and their sentences pertaining to the same idioms. Activity 3 – Out-of-class, online peer learning (informal setting; cyber- and social learning space): Students learn (receptive) from and perform peer reviews on the wiki by commenting on (with the PBWorks comment tool), correcting or improving their peers' sentences (by modifying the sentences posted on the wiki pages) (productive). Due to technical constraint, they only carry out these activities with PC's or laptops at home or in school, not the handhelds. Activity 4 – In-class consolidation (formal setting; social and receptive learning space): Possible activities include class-wide or small group discussions on selected sentences made by the students, or polls for “the most popular photo/sentence” on each “idiom page”. During the nine-week study, the teacher conducted five “idiom lessons” (Activity 1) in the first five weeks with oneweek intervals. In the first three lessons, the students enacted some of the idioms for peers to take photos. In the last two lessons, the students captured images to illustrate idioms within the campus. In between, the students carried out Activity 2 and 3. The teacher then facilitated Activity 4 in the seventh week. Students worked in groups of five, with each group being assigned an “idiom page” to discuss and identify erroneous uses of idioms with respect to the contexts in the photos or the sentences made, and to provide recommendation in correcting or improving the sentences. The students returned the smartphones to the school upon the completion of the study. We executed a data collection and analysis plan to evaluate the study, which is listed below, (1) We conducted pre- and post-tests to assess the students’ learning gains in the target idioms, i.e., proper idiomcontext associations. (2) We administered pre- and post-questionnaires to investigate the students’ perceptions and behaviors in learning Chinese, learning Chinese idioms and the use of InfoComm Technology (ICT) and mobile devices in learning. (3) We conducted pre- and post-interviews with two high-, two medium- and two low-ability students (in terms of their academic performances in Chinese class) selected by the teacher to find out their perceptions and experience in their participation in the learning activities. These six students are referred to as “target students” in the following text. (4) We took field notes and video recordings during the in-class activities for further analysis of classroom activities. (5) We analyzed the student artifacts and online interactions (see the sub-section of “Analysis of the Student Artifacts” below). (6) We administered yet another post-questionnaire for the students to self-report their various thinking processes in creating individual artifacts in order to unveil how personal meaning making may take place during such content creation activities. Each student was given a printed copy of her own photo/sentence sets and she was asked to choose one of the three possible thinking processes below that best described each case: a. With an idiom in mind  object finding/manipulation or scenario enactment  photo taking b. Object/human/scenario encountering  associating with an idiom  photo taking c. Object encountering/manipulation or scenario encountering/enactment  photo taking  associating with an idiom Due to space constraint and since this paper focuses on the analysis of the students’ meaning making processes and products, we will not cover the abovementioned (1) and (2).

Findings Constructivist approach in language learning Within the nine-week period, the 40 students contributed a total of 453 photo/sentence sets, revised sentences for 124 times, and posted 134 comments. However, the variation in the statistics of individual students' contributions was huge (mean = 12.0, SD = 25.9), as the top contributor posted 151 photo/sentence sets while 70.0% of her peers 18

contributed less than 1 photo/sentence set per week in average. The students' participation levels were more consistent in offering sentence revisions (mean = 3.1, SD = 7.3) and comments (mean = 4.5, SD = 3.4). Our observation and our interactions with the teacher and the students throughout the study and our post-interviews had helped us to identify the challenges that had resulted in the varied levels of participation among the students, which are discussed below:  Affection issue: Many students showed great engagement during the in-class activities but when it came to the after school informal setting, they did not treat the smartphone as a learning tool but more a toy. As what we have found out from the post-interviews, after enthusiastic exploration of the smartphone functionalities in the initial period, many of the students had resorted to play online or installed games apart from carrying out the instructed activities.  Technical issue: Some students often encountered and were frustrated by the technical problems in posting photos and sentences to the web via their handhelds.  Parental attitudes: Fearing of misplace or damage, many parents forbad the students from bringing the smartphones out of their home except for bringing them to school. According to the post-questionnaire results, only 43.2% of the students’ parents had let them bring along the smartphones all the time, 48.6% did not allow that at all, and only 2 (8.1%) students were permitted to carry the smartphones for special occasions such as family outings. That defeated the purpose of 24x7 seamless learning and narrowed the contexts that the students could associate the idioms with. Indeed, 83.2% of the contributed photos taken outside campus took place within the students' home. As a learning design informed by the seamless learning framework which implies the necessity of changing students' epistemological belief and the nurturing of self-directed learning, it is unrealistic to expect a significant breakthrough in the students within nine weeks. Despite all that, after analyzing the student artifacts and their peer learning process, we found that the design has shown great potential, which we shall elaborate in the following sub-sections.

Analysis of the student artifacts (product-oriented analysis) While the earlier activities – teacher's explanation and students' viewing of the idiomatic animations – could be attributed as transfer of encoded meanings of the idioms, it only serves as starting points for the students' subsequent ongoing, open-ended meaning making (Hedley, 1992) with the aim of rectifying, internalizing and enriching their understanding of the idioms, and the language as a whole. With their artifacts, the students demonstrated their creativity in making up contexts that associate with specific idioms. We analyzed all the 453 photo/sentence sets and classified them into 12 categories with respect to two dimensions, namely, types of physical setting and types of meaning making. Table 1 features examples of different types of photo/sentence set with the original idioms underlined in the students’ Chinese sentences – some sentences contain grammatical errors but we preserve them in their originality. To benefit international readers, we translated the sentences into English with the translations of the idioms underlined. Types of physical setting refer to the sources of the physical setting captured by each photo (natural setting, physical object manipulation, human enacted scenario, or previously published materials such as book illustrations, TV screenshots or images on the Internet). Types of meaning making refer to how the associated sentence reflects the student's personal meaning making on the photo (i.e., the relationships between the photo content and the sentence content), which could be literal meaning making, extended meaning making and creative meaning making. Here is how we distinguish the personal meaning making types:  Literal meaning making: The sentence demonstrates a direct description or interpretation of the photo context – all the elements stated in the sentence are visible in the photos.  Extended meaning making: The sentence demonstrates a logically deductive interpretation on the photo context – there are elements in the sentence which are invisible in the photos but they are logical deductions from the photo context. For (E), (F), (G), (H) in Table 1, the additional elements are house cleaning, scoring full marks, a theft, and catching a fish, respectively. 

Creative meaning making: The sentence demonstrates a twisted, perhaps creative, abstract or metaphorical reinterpretation on the photo context – other photo viewers may not interpret the photo in the same way. For 19

example, in photo (I), there is no sign of feeding and eating in the photo and yet the student made up the “plot” of feeding the geese with bread. Sentence (J) turns the photo of two mouse devices into a metaphor as the student imagined that they were collided animals. Table 1. Various types of photo contexts and students' meaning making Natural setting Physical object Human-enacted scenario Previously published manipulation materials

Literal meaning making

(A)这里有两只一模一样 的螃蟹。 These two crabs are as alike as two peas.

Extended meaning making

(E)妈妈一整天把家里打 扫得干干浄浄之后就精 疲力尽地躺在沙发上。 After a full day of house cleaning, mom lays exhausted on the sofa.

Creative meaning making

(I)鹅们津津有味吃我们 给的面包。 The geese enjoyed eating the bread we provided with relish.

(B)那些车横冲直撞,真 是不知道他们怎么驾车! Those cars are romping about. I really doubt the drivers’ driving skills.

(C)小青正在睡觉,小蓝不 想吵到小青所以她轻手轻 脚地走了过去。 Xiaoqing is sleeping, and Xiaolan passes her by quietly so as not to disturb her.

(D)老板怒气冲冲地样子 好可怕。 The boss’s furious look was very scary.

(G)小明偷了伟德的钱包, 伟德火冒三丈对小明拳打 (F)小明手舞足蹈因为他得 脚踢起来。 Knowing that Xiaoming has 了一百分。 stolen his wallet, Weide beat Knowing that he scored full Xiaoming up in his rage. marks, Xiaoming dances with joy.

(H)明明抓到鱼儿时就眉开 眼笑。 Mingming grinned from ear to ear when he managed to catch the fish.

(J)它们俩横冲直撞,最后 意外发生了! They were romping against each other and in the end resulted in an accident.

(L)整个小岛绿茵环抱,鸟 语花香,吸引了很多游人 前来度假。 Surrounded by green plants and joyous sceneries, the tiny island has been attracting many tourists to spend holidays there.

(K)现在三更半夜,我不想 吵醒爸爸妈妈。可是我想 吹一吹哨子所以我以为我 掩住耳朵,听不到了。没 想到,爸爸听到了出来骂 我。他说:“掩耳盗铃没 用的。” It is midnight but I want to blow the whistle without waking up mom and dad. Therefore, I plug my ears. However, dad hears me and comes out to scold me, "It is no use to bury your head in the sand."

(photo source: http://www.pconline.com.cn/)

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The variety of photos/sentences reflected the students' greater attention to their surroundings and their more conscious attempts to associate their daily experiences with the idioms. Their sense of the lack of natural contexts to take idiom-related photos was compensated by their creativity in manipulating physical objects, enacting situations, or appropriation of relevant published materials as resources. In addition, the post-questionnaire results indicate that the students may have extended, perhaps sub-consciously, their mental habit of idiom-and-real-life-context association beyond the course of the intervention, as 75.0% of them “agree” or “strongly agree” that “after participating in the learning activities, I think of Chinese idioms more often in my daily life.”

Students’ cognitive process in creating their artifacts (process-oriented analysis) The categorization of the student artifacts in terms of photo contexts and meaning making types was a productoriented analysis of the student artifacts. As stated before, we have also administered another student postquestionnaire for self-reporting of their cognitive processes in creating individual artifacts. We compiled the descriptive statistics of the three types of cognitive processes and yielded (n = 453):  (Type 1) With an idiom in mind  object finding/manipulation or scenario enactment  photo taking: 170 (photo/sentence sets) or 37.5%  (Type 2) Object/human/scenario encountering  associating with an idiom  photo taking: 150 or 33.1%  (Type 3) Object encountering/manipulation or scenario encountering/enactment  photo taking  associating with an idiom: 133 or 29.4% The major distinction among these three types of cognitive process is in the entry points of the idioms. A Type 1 process could be attributed to the mentality of conscious, learning objective-driven school assignment doing. One target student’s claim during the post-interview may illustrate the strategy, “I took photos at home … usually started with an idiom, and then thought about what to photograph.” Photo/sentence set (B), (C), (G), (J), (K) in Table 1 are some of the examples of the results of Type 1 processes. Type 2 could take place anytime and anywhere in the students’ daily life, with or without our learning activities. However, it was such activities that motivated the students to consciously try associating their encounters with the idioms. (D), (E), (F), (H), (L) in Table 1 exemplify such incidental learning. One more example produced by a target student is the photo in Figure 2(M) (The sentence: 小熊筋疲力尽地躺在沙发睡觉。[Exhausted, the bear falls asleep on the sofa]). During the post-interview, the student elaborated, “My sister left the teddy bear on the sofa. I saw it lie there and imagined that it was tired.”

(M) (N) Figure 2. Two student artifacts that exemplify Type 2 and Type 3 cognitive processes Finally, Type 3 delays the context-idiom-association to a later time. It is more likely to take place during family outings or student group photo-taking activities. As such activities were rare chances for them to access to specific locations or work with their classmates, students often attempted to maximize their photo-taking sessions (by taking as many photographs as possible), rather than spending extra time to switch between the kinesthetic activities of photo-taking and the cognitive activities of context-idiom association in-situ. Therefore, the photo-taking activities became the occasions almost purely for resource collection while their linguistic learning only took place after they returned to their computers to make sentences. (A), (I) in Table 1 are illustrations of these. Another example is the photo in Figure 2(N) (The sentence: 姐姐眉开眼笑地笑因为妈妈让她玩电脑游戏。[My sister grins from ear to ear because mom allows her to play computer game.]). The author informed us during the post-interview, “A classmate visited me at home. She played with my smartphone. She took many photos casually and I was photographed. After she left, I checked the stored photos. When I saw this photo, I thought I could ‘use’ 眉开眼笑.” 21

There were several cases where individual students make multiple sentences using different idioms with the same photo, and post the photo repeatedly on various wiki pages corresponding to the associated idioms. Most of such cases are the results of Type 3 processes. Figure 3 shows an example of such many-idioms-to-one-photo associations by a target student. She made four sentences out of the same photo, namely, 1. 2. 3. 4.

孔雀闷闷不乐地搖屁股。The peacock shakes her buttocks moodily. 孔雀兴高采烈地找食物吃。The peacock is looking for food in great delight. 五颜六色的身体配得上这只孔雀。The colorful body matches this peacock well. 孔雀聚精会神地找食物吃。The peacock is completely absorbed in food finding.

Figure 3. Photo for an example of many-idioms-to-one-photo associations by a student As we found out through the post-interview, the student took the photo of peacocks (and many others) during a family outing at a farm, and saved sentence making till she returned home and logged on to the wiki space. The process of making alternative meanings to the same context (photo) is certainly an indication of her imagination and creativity. Our further analysis of the three types of processes suggests that each type of these processes would correspond to a vocabulary learning strategy. We consider Type 1 the easiest process and could serve as an entry-level activity for newcomers to such photo taking / sentence making activities; Type 2 the highest level process as such immediate retrieval of the relevant idioms require the students’ internalization of their learned idioms. Type 3, therefore, may serve as a bridging strategy between the first two.

Peer learning activities Besides producing their artifacts, the students carried out two types of peer learning - learning from peers and learning with peers. In terms of learning from peers, when a student visits or posts a photo/sentence set on one particular wiki-based “idiom page”, she would go through the photos/sentences pertaining to the same idiom posted by her peers, which may lead to a mental comparison of the contexts and the grammar among the sentences. This is a form of incidental learning as the student would either learn from better sentences, or identify and correct her peers' grammatical errors or wrong use of idioms, which may lead to learning with peers activities where students discuss about their peers' contributions. As the statistics presented in the earlier section indicate the students' relatively consistent levels of participation in peer learning activities (sentence revisions and comments), students who had been less active in sharing photos and sentences may have still engaged in peer learning activities, in the forms of negotiation of form (grammatical errors) and negotiation of meaning (idiom usage) (e.g., Lyster & Ranta, 1997), and therefore achieved learning objectives to different extents. Nevertheless, the students' asynchronous online discussions on the idiom usage were limited in general. We believed that the lack of training in this aspect was the main reason. As such, we advised the teacher to apply some online forum facilitation strategies (e.g., Wong & Looi, 2010) by tactfully commenting on student artifacts at the right time and in the right ways to give space for the students to engage in meaningful discussions. In addition, the teacher promoted class-wide discussions on selected student artifacts during “idiom class” 3 and 4, and eventually conducted 22

in-class consolidation (Activity 4) in the 7th week. The students performed much better when they carried out smallgroup discussions in Activity 4. They managed to identify all the incorrect usages of the idioms on the pages assigned to the respective groups and offered sensible recommendations to correct or improve the sentences. This finding seems to imply that small-group face-to-face discussions would yield better outcomes as compared with asynchronous online discussions if the students have not yet acquired the skills of peer reviews – although their relatively low linguistic ability and efficacy were two other possible factors.

(O)

(P) (Q) Figure 4. Four student photos posted on the idiom page of “东倒西歪”

(R)

We take the idiom page of “东倒西歪” as an example. Figure 4 features selected student artifacts posted on the page, whose corresponding sentences are: (O) 这个橱柜上的东西摆得东倒西歪。The objects in the cupboard are rickety. (P) 我的水壶东倒西歪,翻倒了。 My bottle is rickety and has lied down. (Q) 哥哥的书柜的书东倒西歪,非常乱!The books in my brother's bookcase are rickety and disordered! (R) 哥哥把书桌弄得东倒西歪。 My brother makes his study desk rickety. Kovecses and Szabco (1996) define idioms as linguistic expressions whose overall meaning (figurative/idiomatic meaning) cannot be predicted from the meanings of the constituent parts (literal meaning). For some Chinese idioms, however, their applicable contexts have to take the literal meanings into account. For example, the idiom “东倒西歪” figuratively means “rickety” or “shaky”, and literally means “leaning eastward (right-hand side) and tilting westward (left-hand side)” (usually referring to multiple objects leaning toward multiple directions). When the students encountered the photo/sentence sets in Figure 4, they agreed that (O) was a correct use of the idiom (objects leaning toward both left- and right-hand sides in the cupboard) while (R) was wrong (the paper was messily left on the table, but not “rickety”). A student proposed a correct alternative idiom “乱七八糟” (messy). On the other hand, (P) and (Q) had generated some debates. For (P) – a student argued that it was a wrong use of the idiom as the bottle has already lain down and therefore it is no longer rickety. However, we re-examined the associated sentence and discovered out that it could mean “the bottle had been rickety and now finally lay down”, and the photo merely shows the consequence, not the previous state. We found this artifact acceptable, though it is necessary to explain to the students that the idiom does not apply to what the photo itself depicts. Finally, we found the books in photo (Q) either stand still or lean toward only one direction, thus questioning the suitability of using the idiom to describe it. All in all, this is a visual-oriented idiom. The students' multimodal artifacts had helped us in visualizing their understanding or detecting their misconceptions in the meaning and applicable contexts of the idiom – something that the conventional ways of assessing them by, for example, sentence making alone, may not thoroughly achieve. Indeed, we noticed that some of the student artifacts offer seemingly error-free sentences but their corresponding photos suggest otherwise. The students' meaningful face-to-face discussions showed that they were on the right track to carry out social meaning making – to bring forward their “individually made” meaning on the idioms in-class and during phototaking/sentence-making activities to their learning community. This personal-to-social meaning making process has effectively pushed the boundary of the learning materials. The students' self-identified contextual uses of the idioms (some of which have caught us by surprise as we have never thought of using the idioms in such contexts) have become rich resources for the students to perform bottom-up, inductive constructivist learning on the idioms.

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Discussion Researchers have been investigating the facilitation of improvisation and/or creative learner output of various forms as a potentially effective means of language learning. In our study, the mobile technology was a key element in supporting in situ improvisation and creative output such as taking appropriate pictures in contexts to illustrate the idioms under study. While such language learning activities could be carried out without technological support, it is the mobile affordance of in situ data collection (the digital camera function) that offers them the ease of generating their artifacts (e.g., artifacts created with Type 3 cognitive process) and helps their peers and the teacher to visualize their idiom-and-context associations (e.g., (R) in Figure 4). In other words, the deployment of the mobile technology has made our students paying greater attention to, and perhaps reflecting more upon, the physical world that they are experiencing in their daily life. As rising above the shared artifacts are the key to achieve students' deep learning of the idioms (the in-class consolidation), the incorporation of the Web 2.0 (wiki) technology further enhances their social learning space by “affording” them rapid artifact revisions and interactions. The blended usage of the mobile and Web 2.0 technologies would provide the students with a holistic language learning experience that seamlessly integrate their learning experience in both physical and cyberspace contexts. In addition, the learning design reinforces a principle of language (and other subjects) learning – make errors work for the students and not against them (e.g., Rubin & Thompson, 1982). In our study, an idiom page that contains both the correct and ambiguous or erroneous idiom-and-context associations would turn out to be an excellent platform for student discussion. It is important that the teacher holds back her corrective comments to encourage debates among students on diversified views. This is indeed what makes our work unique from similar prior studies by Joseph, Binsted and Suthers (2005) and Hasegawa et al. (2008). Both earlier works treated the learner-created content as the end, which would then become static learning materials accessible by their peers online. Our seamless language learning design was in fact inspired by the English preposition lesson reported in Looi et al. (2009) where learner content is merely the means for fostering further social meaning making. Nevertheless, the preposition learning activity was confined to a one-off school-based formal lesson with brief student presentations and discussions took place after the photo taking activities, and each student artifact was treated as a standalone piece of material for the class to judge whether it is correct or wrong. Instead, our design brings the personal and social meaning making activities beyond the school fences and the school hours, and blends the learning process into students’ daily life. In addition, we emphasize the comparisons and contrasts of similar student artifacts to facilitate knowledge co-construction. Together with the activities of watching idiomatic animations, this seamless language learning process fulfils Nation's (2001) threestage process for (essentially personalized) vocabulary learning, and extends it to involve social learning. We foresee such a personalized-to-social learning activity process to be applied to the learning of other school subjects – such as in science learning, students may take photos of objects with different material types encountered in their daily life, categorize and post them onto the wiki for peer discussions. However, the challenges faced in our study have helped us identify the gaps between the pure formal learning style of Looi et al. (2009) and our hybrid formal-informal learning style. In the study, our intention of leveraging on general digital natives' eagerness to share their real-life experiences 'on-the-fly', mediated by Web 2.0 (Prensky, 2004) and mobile devices, did not take off. Based on our observation, the 11-year-old target students were in general keener on game-playing than blogging. We believe that additional orientation strategies are needed in the early stage to motivate the students in the informal learning activities.

Conclusions In this paper, we report a study within the MALL paradigm that focuses on both learner content creation and seamless learning. From the students’ artifact generation to peer learning activities, we observed a trajectory of noticing-retrieving-generating process, and personal-to-social meaning making, which we wish to analyze further to unveil its relation with Chomsky's (1986) distinctions between Internal- and External-language learning. We are also keen to relate the three types of students’ cognitive process: emerging from their artifact creation activities to linguistic psychology. We believe that these prospective theoretical studies of our learning design and the data collected may inform us to refine the pedagogy and scaffolds. 24

While the results of the study are promising, much work need to be done to ensure the students' learning motivation and enthusiasm at the in-class mobile assisted learning could be extended to off-campus when they are assigned handhelds 24x7. Students need to nurture personalized and collaborative learning as a habit of mind and treat their handhelds as both a lifestyle device and a learning device – although we argue that our seamless learning activity framework has the potential to become a means of cultivating the students in such beliefs. Still, with proper design and implementation of seamless language learning, we foresee the potential for MALL to reform language learning by using mobile devices as individual students' personal learning hubs, and further synergize the formal and informal, as well as the personal and social language learning spaces.

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the Office of Educational Research, National Institute of Education under OER 14/09 WLH. We would like to thank Jr-Shi Tzeng, Chee-Kit Looi, Jing Yan, Ying Zhan, Cheng Gong, Boon-Pei Tay, and the Principal, the teachers and the students of Nan Chiau Primary School for their support in the study.

References Chan, T. W., Roschelle, J., Hsi, S., Kinshuk, Sharples, M., Brown, T., et al. (2006). One-to-one technology-enhanced learning: An opportunity for global research collaboration, Research and Practice in Technology-Enhanced Learning, 1 (1), 3-29. Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of Language. It's Nature, Origin and Use, New York: Praeger. Deng, C. (2001). The common mistakes in the usage of idioms and the solutions. Learning Language, 1, 40-41 (In Chinese). Donato, R. (1994). Collective scaffolding in second language learning. In: J. P. Lantos & G. Appel (Eds.), Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research (pp.33-56), Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Fischer, G., & Ostwald, J. (2002). Transcending the information given: designing learning environments for informed participation. Proceedings of International Conference on Computers in Education 2002 (pp.378-381), Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE CS Press. Hasegawa, K., Ishikawa, M., Shinagawa, N., Kaneko, K., & Mikakoda, H. (2008). Learning effects of self-made vocabulary learning materials. Proceedings of IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age 2008 (pp.153-158), Lisbon: IADIS. Hedley, J. (1992). Surviving to speak new language: Mary Daly and Adrienne Rich. Hypatia, 7 (2), 40-62. Hobbs, R. (2001). Expanding the concept of literacy. In R. Kubey (Ed.), Media Literacy in the Information Age: Current Perspectives (pp. 163-186), New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Joseph, S., Bisted, K., & Suthers, D. (2005). PhotoStudy: Vocabulary learning and collaboration on fixed & mobile devices. Proceedings of IEEE International Workshop on Mobile Techonology in Education 2005 (pp.206 -210), Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE CS Press. Kindt, D. R. (1999). Using students’ own conversation cards in large EFL classes: A preliminary report. Academia: Literature and Language, 66, 171-193. Kovecses, Z., & Szabco, P. (1996). Idioms: a view from cognitive semantics. Applied Linguistics, 17 (3), 326-355. Liu, D. (2008). Idioms: Description, Comprehension, Acquisition, and Pedagogy, New York: Routledge. Long, M.H. (1985). Input and second language acquisition theory. In S.M. Gass & C.G. Madden (Eds.), Input in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 377-393), Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Looi, C.-K., Wong, L.-H., So, H.-J., Seow, P., Toh, Y., Chen, W., Zhang, B., Norris, C., & Soloway, E. (2009). Anatomy of a mobilized lesson: Learning my way. Computers & Education, 53 (4), 1120-1132. Looi, C.-K., Seow, P., Zhang, B., So, H.-J., Chen, W., & Wong, L.-H. (2010). Leveraging mobile technology for sustainable seamless learning: a research agenda. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42 (1), 154-169. Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 37-66. Miller, G. A., & Gildea, P. M. (1987). How children learn words. Scientific American, 257, 94-99. Mishan, F. (2004). Authenticating corpora for language learning: a problem and its resolution. ELT, 58 (3), 219-227. 25

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials, Bristol: Intellect Books. Nation, P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Prensky, M. (2004). The emerging online life of the digital natives. Retrieved September 10, 2010, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf. Rubin, J., & Thompson, I. (1982). How to Be a More Successful Language Learner, Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Sagvinon, S. J. (1991). Research on the role of communication in classroom-based foreign language acquisition: On the interpretation, expression, and negotiation of meaning. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Foreign Language Acquisition Research and the Classroom (pp.31-45), Lexington, MA: D.C. Health. Salaberry, M. R. (1996). A theoretical foundation for the development of pedagogical tasks in computer mediated communication. CALICO, 14 (1), 5-36. Song, Y., & Fox, R. (2008). Using PDA for undergraduate student incidental vocabulary testing. Research on Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20, 290-314. Stevick, E. (1996). Memory, Meaning and Method: A View of Language Teaching (2nd Ed.), Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Titone, R. (1969). Guidelines for teaching second language in its own environment. The Modern Language, 53 (5), 306-309. Winters, N. (2007). periLEARN: contextualised mobile learning in the era of Web 2.0. Proceedings of IADIS International Conference on Mobile Learning 2007 (pp.89-95), Lisbon: IADIS. Wong, L.-H., & Looi, C.-K. (2010). Online discussion and e-mentoring strategies in continuing education courses. In: E. M. W. Ng (Ed.), Comparative Blended Learning Practices and Environments (pp.146-169),. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

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El-Bishouty, M. M., Ogata, H., Rahman, S., & Yano, Y. (2010). Social Knowledge Awareness Map for Computer Supported Ubiquitous Learning Environment. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 27–37.

Social Knowledge Awareness Map for Computer Supported Ubiquitous Learning Environment Moushir M. El-Bishouty, Hiroaki Ogata*, Samia Rahman and Yoneo Yano Department of Information Science and Intelligent Systems, The University of Tokushima, Japan // [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Social networks are helpful for people to solve problems by providing useful information. Therefore, the importance of mobile social software for learning has been supported by many researches. In this research, a model of personalized collaborative ubiquitous learning environment is designed and implemented in order to support learners doing learning tasks or activities. It utilizes RFID technology to detect the surrounding environmental objects and then provides social knowledge awareness map for peer helpers dynamically according to the detected objects. The map visualizes the learners’ surrounding objects, peer helpers and the strength of the relation in the social network perspective. It is experimentally tested and evaluated in a small special community. The quantitative and qualitative data of the experiment indicate the important role of the map in augmenting the collaboration between the learners.

Keywords Knowledge awareness map, Social network, Computer supported ubiquitous learning, Personalization, Recommendation

Introduction Educational technology is now growing rapidly in order to satisfy the learner’s needs. Learning at anytime and anywhere is one of the strongest trends that researches focus on. A ubiquitous computing environment enables people to learn at anytime and anywhere. Ubiquitous computing is a model of human–computer interaction that enhances the computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment in invisible way. The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it (Weiser, 1991). A ubiquitous computing environment utilizes a large number of cooperative small nodes with computing and/or communication capabilities such as handheld terminals, smart mobile phones, sensor network nodes, contact-less smart cards, and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)…etc (Sakamura and Koshizuka, 2005). The RFID tag makes it possible to tag almost everything, replace the barcode, help computers to be aware of their surrounding objects and to detect the user’s context (Borriello, 2005). We believe that, in the near future, RFID tags will be attached to almost all products; therefore we will be able to learn at anytime and anywhere from every object by scanning its RFID tag. The RFID system (Klaus and Rachel, 2000) consists of a tag, which is made up of a microchip with an antenna, and an interrogator or reader with an antenna. The reader sends out electromagnetic waves. The tag antenna is tuned to receive these waves. The chip modulates the waves that the tag sends back to the reader and the reader converts the new waves into digital data. The challenge in the information-rich world is not to provide information at anytime and at anywhere but to say the right thing at the right time in the right way to the right person (Fischer, 2001; Fischer and Konomi, 2005). The use of ubiquitous computing tools within a situated learning approach is recommended to facilitate the students’ attainment of curricular content, technology skills, and collaboration skills (Lin et al., 2005). The main characteristics of Computer Supported Ubiquitous Learning (CSUL) are permanency, accessibility, immediacy, interactivity, and situating of instructional activities (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis, et al., 2002). However, the fundamental issue is how to provide learners with the right information at the right time in the right way. Hence, the ubiquitous environment should be personalized according to the learner’s situation. Personalization can be defined as the way in which information and services can be tailored in a specific way to match the unique and specific needs of an individual user (Renda and Straccia, 2005).

ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at [email protected].

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Many teachers and learners believe that learning by doing (Schank, 1995) is one of the best ways for learning. In learning by doing model, the teachers identify a specific set of skills to teach, embed that skills in a task, an activity, or a goal that the student will find it interesting or motivational, then the teachers can evaluate the learner’s understanding and skills according to how much the learner successes to reach to the goal. While the learner is doing a task, he usually looks for some knowledge. In order to get help from another learner you have to be aware of his interests and past actions. Therefore, it is very difficult to find suitable partners at the beginning of the collaboration. Dourish and Bellotti (1992) defined awareness as the understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for your own activity. Collaborative awareness is frequently achieved by means of lightweight messaging tools and dynamic information displays that function as notification systems (Carroll et al., 2003). Knowledge Awareness (KA) is defined as awareness of the use of the knowledge (Ogata et al., 1996). KA has a close relation to the learner’s curiosity (Ogata and Yano, 2000). KAM (Knowledge Awareness Map) graphically displays KA information. It provides the learner with information about the others’ activities in the shared knowledge space. While a learner is doing learning task or activity, he usually looks for some knowledge. In a ubiquitous learning environment, it is very difficult for a learner to know who has this knowledge even though they are at the same place. In this case, the learner needs to be aware of the other learners’ interests that match his request (El-Bishouty et al., 2010). This paper presents a model of personalized collaborative ubiquitous learning environment in order to support learners doing learning tasks or activities. It utilizes RFID tags to detect the surrounding physical objects and provides personalized recommendations based on the detected objects. It provides the learner with social knowledge awareness map for the peer helpers. The map visualizes the learners’ surrounding environmental objects, peer helpers and the strength of the relation in the social network perspective. The learner can contact, interact, and collaborate with the peer helpers to address the learning goal. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. A background about the social networks in learning systems is presented, after that the proposed model is illustrated, followed by an explanation of the recommendation methodology, then the software prototype is described, after that the concept of the social KAP is presented, followed by the procedure and the discussion of the evaluation phase, and finally the conclusion is illustrated.

Social Networks in Learning In CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), researchers are interested in the role of social networks among the members of an organization. Clement stated that users developed informal collaborative networks to learn how to use a new software (Clement, 1990). Private networks are thus important for people to solve problems by providing helpful information. A number of studies indicated that one of the most effective channels for gathering information and expertise within an organization is its informal network of collaborators, colleagues and friends; such a network is called a Help Network (Eveland et al., 1994). Therefore, it is very important for network members to use interpersonal connections effectively in the course of their activities (Ogata et al., 2001). In an organization, however, information seeking is not straightforward information transfer. Colleagues choose not to go to the channel of the highest quality of information, but rather to go to the channel of the highest accessibility (Allen, 1977). Accessibility is concerned with the psychological costs in the potential lack of reciprocity between giving and obtaining information. The importance of mobile social software for learning has been supported by many researches. Knight (2005) highlights the importance of situated learning support by defining learning as a social practice in which learners develop their identity through participation in specific communities and practices. Anderson (2005) has also emphasized the importance of social software for learning. Mobile social software offers the learner an opportunity to become a part of a learning community and at the same time enables learning in authentic contexts. Mobile social software applications combine virtual and real-world support for social interactions and collaboration in a real-world context. Additionally, learners themselves seem to be enthusiastic about using the mobile devices for collaboration and communication (Jong et al., 2008). Bull et al. (2001) presented I-Help system to facilitate the communication among learners; the user models are used to match students who can help each other in their learning. Each user has a personal agent, which uses its owner’s student model as a source of information for negotiating help sessions with other users, through their respective personal agents. Various information types are modeled: knowledge, interests, cognitive style, eagerness, 28

helpfulness, interaction preferences, opinions of peers and user actions. Awareness features within iHelp Courses can be classified into two categories: collaboration awareness and consequential awareness (Brooks et al., 2006); whereas, the learner is not able to be aware of the accessibility of other learners. PERKAM system (El-Bishouty et al., 2007) provides the learners with three different types of Knowledge Awareness Map, which visualizes the environmental objects, the educational materials and the peer helpers’ space. It supports the learners with personalized recommendations based on the detected objects and the physical location. However, the social relation of the learners is not considered in the learner model. In contrast with these systems, following the vector space model, the recommendation in the proposed environment is based on the learner’s profile, location and the social network as well. It allows the learner to be aware of accessibility of the other learners in terms of the social relation, in addition to the physical distance. We believe that this may increase the chance of establishing collaborations between the learners, which advances the development of their social networks.

A model of personalized collaborative ubiquitous learning environment Consider the following scenario (as an example), it is based on learn-by-doing model that enables students to work towards desired goals, which exploits the fact that “people typically learn during their experiences while addressing desired goals” (Schank, 1995). Learner1 (Figure1 and Figure 2) is a research student in a genome center. She is concerned with the purification of DNA by using DNA purification robot. This robot is the main instrument she depends on in this experiment. She studied theoretically the way of operating it but she does not have enough practical experience in using it. She has to deal with it by using the available instruments and chemicals, or the whole run may be destroyed which consists of very expensive materials. O b j e ct s

L ea r n e r 1

Figure 1. Learning environment In this case, the proposed system recognizes the surrounding objects in addition to the location, and then recommends best-matched peer helpers who have faced this situation before or at least have enough related knowledge. She contacts and collaborates with them to address the experimental goal. The main principle underlying the peer helper recommendation in the proposed environment is based on the learner’s profile, location and the social network as well. On the one hand, the learner’s profile formulates the learner’s interests and experiences; on the other hand, the social relation and the relative physical distance represent the accessibility. Around this principle, the model consists of the following items (as shown in Figure 2).

Learner Consider the set L of learners l where l  L. Each learner lj has his own profile lpj where lpj  LP. The learner’s profile represents his interests and experiences, it is represented as a set of keywords, and it is determined from the following sources:  Learner’s explicit registration: the learner introduces his personal information and his interesting topics.

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  

Learner’s academic level: the system detects the knowledge that the learner gained from his past academic records. Learner’s actions: the system records the learners’ actions while using it. Learner’s folder: the learner’s folder contains the educational materials that the learner is aware of or intending to gain it. For every learner l  L there is a folder f  F where F is the set of folders.

l2

L

l3

l4

LP

lp2

lp3

lp4

F

f2

f3

f4

M

m1

m2

m3

m4

K

E

e1

e2

e3

e4

l1

Figure 2. The model of the environment

Educational Material It represents the available educational materials that the learner may refer to during his learning process. Consider the set M of the educational materials m; such as books, video lectures…etc. Each material mj is represented as a set of keywords k  K. These keywords indicate the educational material contents. It is clear that more than one educational material can share one or more keywords.

Environmental Object The environmental objects surround the learner during his study. The learner may use one or more of them during his learning process. Consider the set E of the environmental objects e. Each object is represented as a set of keywords.

Recommendation Methodology We assume that the knowledge space consists of a number n of unique keywords, which can be represented as a vector of keywords (El-Bishouty et al., 2008). For ease of presentation, following the well-known vector space model (Salton and McGill, 1983), each item in this model can be represented as a vector, which is corresponding to the keyword vector.

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Consider that the number of users is g, and the learner’s profile lpj of a learner lj, can be represented as a vector of weights that represent the importance of each keywords, where wji is corresponding to ki and 0  w ji  1 . For ease of presentation, wji is calculated by the following formula:

w ji 

the number of occurance of ki in lp j the total number of keywords in lp j

It is worth noting that our weight formula can be extended to consider more parameters. Therefore, the learner’s profile matrix can be represented as shown is Table 1(a). Table 1. (a) Learner’s profile matrix. (b) Educational material matrix. (c) Environmental object matrix k1

k2 …… ki……kn

k1

k2 …… ki……kn

k1 k2 …… ki….…kn

lp1

w11 w12…………...w1n

m1

w'11 w'12………...w’1n

e1

d11 d12………….....d1n

lp2

w21 w22…...……...w2n

m2

w’21 w’22…...…...w’2n

e2

d21 d22…...………..d2n

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

lpj

wj1 wj2...… wji…...wjn

mj

w’j1 w’j2... w’ji…...w’jn

ej

dj1 dj2...… dji……...djn

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

lpg

wg1. wg2……….....wgn

mv

w’v1. w’v2………..w’vn

er

dr1. dr2……………..drn

Whenever a learner acquires new knowledge (such as: using new objects, referring to new educational materials, getting new credits), the corresponding set of keywords will be added to his profile; consequently, the weight of each keyword in the learner’s profile matrix will be updated according to the previous formula. In a similar way, the educational material can be represented as a vector of weights that represent the importance of each keywords, where w’ji is corresponding to ki and 0  w' ji  1 . Whereas, w’ji is calculated by the following formula:

w' ji 

the number of occurance of ki in m j the total number of keywords in m j

Therefore, the educational material matrix can be represented as shown is Table 1(b). Consider that the number of the environmental objects is r, and the environmental object ej can be represented by a vector of occurrence of keywords where dji is corresponding to ki and it takes the value one if a certain keyword ki belongs to this object, otherwise it takes the value zero. Therefore, the matrix of the environmental objects can be represented as shown is Table 1(c).

Recommendation of peer helpers For a certain task t, consider that a learner is using a number h ( h  r ) of environmental objects. This task can be represented as a vector of occurrence of the keywords that belong to the task environmental objects. Therefore, the Profile-Based Recommendation Score (PBRS) function of a peer helper lj for a task t is calculated from the following formula: n

PBRS t (l j )   w ji si , where 0  PBRS  1 i 1

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In addition, we assume that the relative physical distances between any two different locations p and q, (denoted RPDpq) are predefined in the system where 0  RPD  1 . In case that RPD is equal or close to 1, it means that p is so close to q. Therefore, the recommendation score function of a peer helper lj for a certain task t (denoted PHRS) is represented as a linear equation of the profile-based recommendation score function and the relative physical distance as follows:

PHRS t (l j )  [ PBRS t (l j )] *  [ RPDpq ] *  Where p denotes the task location, q denotes the peer helper’s current location, and α and β are constants defined by the user according to his priority. The greater the recommendation score function, the more recommended the peer helper.

Recommendation of educational materials In a similar way, the Content-Based Recommendation Score (CBRS) function of an educational material mj for a task t is calculated from the following formula: n

CBRS t (m j )   w' ji si , where 0  CBRS  1 i 1

Therefore, the recommendation score function of an educational materials mj for a certain task t (denoted EMRS) is represented as a linear equation of the content-based recommendation score function and the relative physical distances as follows:

EMRSt (m j )  [CBRS t (m j )] *  [ RPDpq ' ] *  Where q’ denotes the educational material location. The greater the recommendation score function, the more recommended the educational material.

Software Prototype In the proposed environment, each learner uses a PDA device connected to the Internet through wireless connection, each device is equipped with a RF (Radio Frequency) reader, and for every object and place, there is RFID tag attached to identify it. During the implementation of the system prototype, the limited CPU speed and memory capacity of PDA devices is taken into consideration. In order to get high performance software, most of the computing processes are done on the server side. The main application is a web-based client-server application, which dynamically visualizes the social KAM and provides the learners with an easy tool to exchange messages. The map is an embedded flash object developed using Macromedia Flash ActionScript.

System Architecture Figure 2 illustrates the system architecture; it consists of the database and the models of learners, physical objects, locations and educational materials, in addition to the following modules:  Message system: It provides the learner with an easy tool to exchange messages with other learners. Consequently, it keeps track of the interactions between the learners.  Detection manager: It detects the location and the objects that surround the learner and updates the learner model according to the received information.  Recommender system: It calculates the recommendation score functions, and provides the best-matched peer helpers and educational materials.  Map generator: It prepares the metadata of the KAM.  Map visualization: It visualizes the KAM.

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Server Side

Learners

Message log

Learner model

Objects

Object model

Message system

Physical map

Location model

Detection manager

Educational materials

Material model

Recommender Map generation

Map visualization

Exchange message

Read RFID

Display KAM

Client Side (PDA)

Figure 3. System architecture

Social Knowledge Awareness Map The social KAM visualizes the peer helpers in the acceptability perspective. Hence, the acceptability is expressed in terms of social relations and physical distances. According to the recommendation score function of the peer helpers, the system recommends the best-matched and nearest peer helpers for a certain task. Then, the system calculates the frequency of interaction (FOI) between the learner who is doing that task and each of the peer helpers. Whenever the learners exchange messages using the system, the FOI is increased. It indicates the strength of social relation between the learners. Consider a learner li and a peer helper lj, nij denotes the total number of exchanged messages between the two learners, and Ni represents the total number of exchanged messages between li and all other learners. FOI is calculated as follows: n FOI (li , l j )  ij , where 0  FOI  1 Ni The system visualizes the top three peer helpers who have the highest FOI. In the case of FOI equals zero, the system recommends a mediator. A mediator is a learner who has social relation with both the learner doing the task and the peer helper. The role of the mediator is to establish a new connection between the learners. This map displays two dimensions knowledge space of the peer helpers who are using the system and have knowledge about the learner’s task. As shown in Figure 4, the map represents the strength of the social relation of peer helpers in one dimension, and how far their physical locations are from the learner’s location in the other dimension. In addition, the map shows the set of detected objects that the task consists of as symbol icons according to the object type. White-blue circles denote the peer helpers. When the learner selects a peer helper by clicking on a white-blue circle, the circle color is changed to dark-blue color and the peer helper’s name and photo are displayed. Also, the objects that the selected peer helper is aware of are highlighted. Therefore, the learner can at once be aware of the peer helper’s social relation, relative physical distance and experiences. The learner can recognize the peer helper from his name or photo. For unfamiliar peer helper (unknown person for the learner), the map shows a mediator (denoted by a red circle) who has social relationship with both the learner and the peer helper. By clicking on compose-button, the learner can send instant message attached with the map to the appropriate peer helper asking for help and/or inviting him to discuss it face to face if his location is at a nearby area. Also, the learner 33

can send a request to a mediator in order to introduce him for unfamiliar peer helper. The peer helper/mediator can look at the map, see the learner’s photo, recognize the task objects, and notice his position regarding the peer helpers; then he can reply to the learner’s message or forward it to another peer helper. Physical Distance

Selected Peer (Far and Unfamiliar)

Close and Familiar Near and Unfamiliar

Mediator Selected Peer’s Photo

Learner’s Photo

Selected Peer’s Name

Social Distance Compose Message to Selected Peer

Learner’s Task Objects

Selected Peer’s Experiences

Figure 4. Social KAM

Evaluation In order to evaluate the role of the social KAM in augmenting the collaboration in the ubiquitous environment, we experimentally tested and evaluated it in a small community. A group of 21 (9 fourth year undergraduate, 11 master and 1 PhD) students from the department of information science and intelligent systems were involved in this experiment. The time of the experiment was the first week of the new academic year, where a group of new students have just joined a research group. Therefore, it was expected that a lack of communications between some of the participants could be arisen for unfamiliarity issue. Procedure In the experiment, the system was applied in PC (Personal Computer) assembling domain, where all participants were interested in exchanging experiences about PC components. At the beginning of the experiment, each participant was asked to fill in a pre-questionnaire. In order to measure their knowledge and experiences about PC assembling, the participants rated their experiences in plugging different PC components, for example VGA card, Hard Disk Drive, RAM Module…etc. On the other hand, each participant rated the strength of social relation between him and each of the other participants. Based on that questionnaire, the participants were divided into two groups:  Expert group: 7 students who were experts and had strong knowledge about PC assembling.  Beginner group: 14 students who did not have any previous experience about PC assembling. In the first phase of the experiment, each learner from the beginner group was assigned a task. A task consisted of a set of PC components. The beginner was asked to use the social KAM and choose a peer helper to contact and exchange knowledge about the task. In this phase, no mediator was recommended by the system. Consequently, the expert group was asked to login into the system and interact with the learners’ requests. In the second phase, the system suggested mediators for unfamiliar peer helpers; the participants were asked to repeat the first phase of the experiment and interact with peer helpers through mediators if possible. After that, all participants from both groups (expert and beginner) were asked to fill in a post-questionnaire in order to obtain the learners’ reflections and comments. 34

Results and Discussion During the experiment, the participants exchanged 175 messages. All participants collaborated actively with each other. They exchanged knowledge about computer hardware. Most of the messages related to the assigned task, however, many learners asked general questions. It implies that the map excited the learners’ two types of curiosity: particular curiosity and extensive curiosity (Hatano and Inagaki, 1973). By analyzing the message log, a help network was developed and enriched. Also, it was noticed that new connections were established between the learners in the second phase of the experiment. Figure 5 represents the social network extracted from the exchanged messages between the participants in the first phase (left side) and in the second phase (right side). Whereas, each node represents a participant number, and each line (connection) indicates that at least one message was exchanged between the two end nodes. As an example, let us consider learner number 18, in the first phase he had only one connection with learner number 3. However, in the second phase 3 new connections were established with learners 1, 13, and 20. In addition, in some cases in the first phase, a peer helper played as a mediator, checked the social KAM, and introduced another peer helper who had much knowledge about a beginner’ request. Table 2 shows the post-questionnaire results, it consists of 8 questions; Q1 to Q5 were measured using five-point Likert scales varied from ‘1- strongly disagree’ to ‘5- strongly agree’. Q6 to Q8 received a value ‘Yes‘ or ‘No‘. Also, the participants were asked to comment on their answers and to provide some suggestions for improving the map. From Q1, the participants agreed that the map (as a whole) provided them with enough information about the peer helpers and efficiently visualized that information in the limited size of the PDA device. More specifically, Q2 to Q4 presented the learners’ acceptance of the three elements of the map: social relation, physical distance, and experiences, respectively. However, the mild rates were related to the learners’ suggestion to show a numerical recommendation score of each peer in order to aid in choosing the appropriate peer helpers.

Phase 1

Phase 2 Figure 5. Social Network

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

Table 2. Post-Questionnaire results Question Social KAM efficiently visualizes enough information about peer helpers? Social KAM is helpful to be aware of a peer helper’s social relation? Social KAM is helpful to be aware of a peer helper’s physical distance? Social KAM is helpful to be aware of a peer helper’s experiences? Social KAM is helpful to establish collaborations between the learners?

Q6 Q7 Q8

You did successful interactions with other learners using the system? Social KAM is easy to be recognized? A mediator is helpful to establish collaboration with unknown learner?

Mean 4.2 3.5 3.9 3.3 3.9 PCT 85% 75% 95%

Q5 and Q6 showed the obvious impact of the map in introducing peer helpers and establishing collaborations. Some learners asked to display more peer helpers, however, we worried about the overlapping problem that might let it difficult to recognize the map; whereas, Q7 indicated that the map was not so easy to be recognized by all 35

participants. From Q8, the participants strongly confirmed the important role of the proposed mediators in augmenting the collaboration between the learners. Many other comments were received from the participants; most of them were related to the user interface, they were looking for larger map size, bigger object icon and text font size, and more peers; however, we were restricted by the PDA limited screen size. The participants suggested showing indicators for a peer who was received a message, message status, and the number of exchanged messages. Also, they recommended allowing them to rate the peer helpers according to their satisfaction of the collaboration with each of them. The above results show that the social KAM facilitates providing peer helpers in the social network perspective. The exploration of social networks is essential to find capable helpers at the beginning of the collaboration (Ogata et al., 2001). The map provides opportunities for efficient help network building. By using the proposed system, the learners were able to exchange messages and to hold conversations, which are the key element for constructing knowledge in collaborative tasks (Sharples et al., 2007). It is obvious that letting a learner be aware of the social relation with other learners has a strong impact in finding the suitable partner. The mediator has a valuable effect in augmenting the collaboration among the learners because it is helpful to establish a new collaboration. The proposed system can enhance the social learning process through increasing the opportunity of collaboration.

Conclusion In this paper a model of personalized collaborative ubiquitous learning environment is presented in order to support learners doing learning tasks or activities. It utilizes RFID tags to detect the surrounding physical objects and provides personalized recommendations based on these objects. The proposed system provides a social knowledge awareness map for the peer helpers. The map visualizes the learners’ surrounding environmental objects, peer helpers and the strength of the relation in the social network perspective. According to the proposed recommendation score function of the peer helpers, the system recommends the best matched and nearest peer helpers for a certain task. Then, the system visualizes the top three peer helpers who have the highest frequency of interaction. Also, the system recommends mediators. A mediator is a learner who has social relation with both the learner and the peer helper who is able to establish a new connection between the two learners. In order to evaluate the role of social KAM in augmenting the collaboration in ubiquitous environment, we experimentally tested and evaluated it in a small community. The quantitative and qualitative data of the evaluation experiment confirmed the important role of the map and the mediators in augmenting the collaboration among the learners. The map allows the learner to be aware of accessibility of the other learners in terms of the social relation, in addition to the physical distance, which enhance the chance of establishing collaborations among them. Such enhancement can further advance the development of their social networks. In the future, we are planning to enhance the KAM according to the learners’ comments and suggestions in order to make it more efficient, rich and adaptive. Also we are planning to allow the learners to reuse the constructed knowledge during the collaboration for future learning.

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Chao, P.-Y., Chen, G.-D., & Chang, C.-W. (2010). Developing a Cross-media System to Facilitate Question-Driven Digital Annotations on Paper Textbooks. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 38–49.

Developing a Cross-media System to Facilitate Question-Driven Digital Annotations on Paper Textbooks Po-Yao Chao1, Gwo-Dong Chen2* and Chih-Wei Chang2 1

Department of Information Management, Ching Yun University, Taiwan Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] *Corresponding author 2

ABSTRACT Research on note taking in pedagogical settings has received considerable attention. However, the awkwardness of integrating information across different media formats may present physical and cognitive barriers that prevent students from effectively organizing annotations from both printed and digital content while studying paper textbooks. The purpose of this paper is to develop a cross-media annotation system that incorporates a paper textbook with a computer as an integrated whole to facilitate the question-driven organization of annotations. While taking notes, students can digitally extract printed text and organize the copied passages based on guiding questions, all by using digital pens. Students can also link Internet-based learning resources to printed content to supplement their print-based studies. A user-based formative evaluation was conducted to assess the new functions of the cross-media annotation system and to explore their influence on students’ notetaking behavior and performance. The results show that the new functions may facilitate the retention of key concepts of the paper textbooks and may improve knowledge construction based on explicit learning goals.

Keywords Question-driven annotation, digital pen, cross-media system, paper textbook, note-taking

Introduction Research on note-taking in pedagogical settings has received considerable attention. The benefits of note-taking arise from its two functions: encoding (process) and product (external storage). The encoding function can increase recall of notes by encouraging meaningful transformation of the input information. The product function assists in rehearsal of notes, which can help learners consolidate noted information (Kiewra, 1985). Although these functions can support cognitive performance regardless of the instructional media format, educational communities should pay careful attention to note-taking practices for paper textbooks due to the widespread use and significant roles of the paper textbooks. According to Weiss et al. (2000), most high school science teachers in the USA used at least one commercially published textbook in their classes. Textbooks can help teachers with course preparation (McCutcheon, 1981; Thornton, 1991), support students in collaborative learning tasks, and facilitate knowledge acquisition (e.g., Garner, 1992; McDonald, Le, Higgins, & Podmore, 2005; van Boxtel & van der Linden, 2000). The strategy of note-taking generally consumes higher cognitive resources compared to other key information isolation strategies (Piolat, Olive, & Kellogg, 2005). Consequently, its usefulness seems more limited than these popular information isolation strategies (e.g., the underlining strategy, see Flippo & Caverly, 2000). Studying with physical and digital instructional materials simultaneously exacerbates the limitations of note-taking because students need to organize information from multiple sources in different media formats (Strømsø & Bråten, 2003). The awkwardness of integrating information from different media formats (e.g., print, Internet web pages) and the need to coordinate multiple cognitive processes, such as comprehension, writing, cross-reference, across different media formats may increase physical and cognitive barriers. These barriers may prevent students from organizing annotations from printed and digital contents effectively when studying from paper textbooks. Many digital annotation techniques and tools have been proposed to enhance the usefulness of note-taking strategies online (for a review, see Ovsiannikov, Arbib, & Mcneill, 1999; Wolfe, 2002). However, annotation supports for digital materials alone may not meet students’ needs when they take notes on both digital and printed instructional materials. The note-taking barriers caused by different media formats will require students to expend additional effort either by digitizing their hand-written annotations to organize them online or by printing out digital notes in order to affix them to paper books. Meta-cognitive strategies and augmented-reality techniques may have the potential to reduce these cognitive and physical barriers. Research has shown that meta-cognitive strategies can ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at [email protected].

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direct learners to establish learning goals and help them assess their progress toward these goals (Flippo & Caverly, 2000). These strategies include inserting questions designed to stimulate and guide critical thinking (see Rickards & Denner, 1978), thereby focusing the learner’s attention on specific aspects of the learning materials (Rouet & VidalAbarca, 2002). The guidance of these inserting questions may reduce cognitive barriers while students organize their notes. Augmented-reality and digital pen techniques also provide the potential to incorporate a paper textbook with a computer (e.g., Wellner, 1993) or a digital pen (e.g., Liao, Guimbretière, & Hinckley, 2005; Liao, Guimbretiere, Hinckley, & Hollan, 2008). These advanced techniques may reduce the physical barriers between paper and computer, making annotation organization across different media formats feasible. The purpose of this paper is to develop a cross-media annotation system that incorporates a paper textbook with a computer as an integrated whole to facilitate question-driven organization of annotations. During note taking, students can extract printed text digitally and organize the copied passages based on guiding questions using digital pens. Students can also link Internet-based learning resources to printed content to help them answer the guiding questions and to facilitate future review.

Related works Several prototypes incorporating computing devices with paper documents have been developed (e.g., Chao & Chen, 2009; Klemmer, Graham, Wolff, & Landay, 2003; Liao et al., 2005; Luff, Heath, Norrie, Signer, & Herdman, 2004; Wellner, 1993; Yeh et al., 2006). These systems demonstrate the integration of computers, handheld devices, or digital pens with physical paper artifacts. DigitalDesk (Wellner, 1993) was a seminal prototype that successfully combined the advantages of both computing devices and physical paper documents. The prototype allowed users to extract numbers from printed pages for calculation and supported collaboration among remote users. Books with Voices (Klemmer et al., 2003) was a useful paper book that enabled direct access to video clips by scanning tagged barcodes on paper pages. This prototype demonstrated a simple but effective technique to link multimedia with a paper transcript. Chao and Chen (2009) proposed a prototype system that integrated paper textbooks, desktop computers and mobile phones to resolve comprehension difficulties. This prototype system demonstrated mechanisms that allowed students to take notes and ask questions via mobile phones. Luff et al. (2004) proposed a useful linking mechanism that allowed users to access digital resources simply by touching a co-axial electronic pen to a paper surface. Although this is similar to a real paper-and-pen interface, the electronic pen can only initiate a request to explore supplementary information; learners cannot annotate a paper document using this electronic pen. Liao et al. (2005) and Yeh et al. (2006) further allowed manipulation of digital documents by drawing command gestures on printouts with a digital pen on printouts. However, these pen-based prototypes only allowed integration in batch mode; the prototypes could not present organization results from computing devices in real-time, which restricted its usefulness for real-time information organization. Several note-taking tools have been developed to facilitate the creation or organization of notes (e.g., Brotherton & Abowd, 2004; Hadwin & Winne, 2001; Hwang, Wang, & Sharples, 2007; Rau, Chen, & Chin, 2004; Robinson et al., 2006; Schilit, Golovchinsky, & Price, 1998). Pen-based techniques were used to create hand-written annotations for in-class or after-class studying (e.g., Brotherton & Abowd, 2004; Schilit et al., 1998). The techniques seemed to encourage active reading or reviewing of digital articles or slides due to their facilitation of automatic capturing and digitalization of hand-written notes. Some web-based annotation systems allowed learners to underline relevant text or group notes into pre-defined categories (e.g., Hwang et al., 2007; Rau et al., 2004). These pen-based and webbased studies suggest that highlighting important text, organizing ideas into categories, or operating with pen-based gestures could lead to positive learning enhancement. Some organization facilities for note-taking (e.g., Hadwin & Winne, 2001; Robinson et al., 2006) also showed that guidance in the form of questions or partial notes could help students engage in purposeful note-taking activities. The abovementioned studies call for a new mechanism which can interactively coordinate information between paper artifacts and computing devices. In other words, the pen-based approaches above should support students to interactively extract paper text as digital annotations and manage these annotations on a computer device. Additionally, the studies above did not focus on the learning intervention which can improve the learning effect with the cross media. To address these issues, this study proposed a method which provides guidance in the form of questions. The proposed method may help students revise their annotations based on the guiding questions. It is 39

hoped that the pen-based approaches together with the pedagogical method can facilitate question-driven annotation in paper-based reading practice.

Interaction design The previous section addressed the technical needs of pen-based approaches and the pedagogical method to achieve a purposeful learning. For these needs, this study proposes a cross-media annotation system to enhance learning from both technical and pedagogical perspectives. As shown in Figure 1, the computer screen prompts questions that may help a student set learning goals. Such pedagogical method can transform individual learning into a question-driven learning practice. In such practice, the student can perform digital pen gestures (e.g., quote, underline or tap) on the physical paper surface to extract the passage and organize the clipped text on the computer screen to answer the questions. Pen strokes initiated on the paper surface are captured and translated by Gesture Interpreter into commands and parameters (e.g., coordinate sets of pen strokes on the physical paper surface). Annotation Manager executes the commands that transform parameters based on a mapping table into digital annotations. It then adds the digitized sentences to their annotations of the target question. Students can purposefully include these sentences to answer the questions. In addition, when they discover a useful web page, they can link it to the target question.

Figure 1. System overview of a cross-media annotation system Students can execute computer commands located in the surrounding areas of the computer screen. As shown in Figure 1, these commands are arranged by four compass directions and aim to help students manage their annotations through digital pen gestures. The computer commands allow students to (a) edit their annotations; (b) add a link between printed contents and Internet web pages; and (c) browse their annotations by scrolling up and down the screen. A Pegasus™ digital pen (PC NoteTaker) is employed in the cross-media annotation system. As shown in Figure 2(a), a paper textbook is coupled with an ultrasonic signal receiver. Any digital pen gesture or stroke on the paper surface can be captured and processed. A toolbar containing frequently used functions (e.g., next page, previous page) is docked beside the paper pages. These functions can be activated by tapping on the toolbar with the digital pen. Although the digital pen signals are currently transmitted in real-time to a computer through a USB cable, it is believed that new wireless technologies will overcome this constraint in the future. When a student taps on a keyword or page title, the computer screen responds with Annotation Manager (Figure 2b), which allows students to modify the content or organization of digital annotations. The target question is highlighted in red and surrounded with the computer commands. Students can use digital pen gestures on a paper surface to execute these commands in order to manipulate or browse their annotations. For example, students can use pen gestures on a paper surface to browse the next page of annotations or to activate editing program for digital annotations. The system may enhance learning because it addressed not only the technical issue but also the pedagogical method involved in the learning scenarios where both paper and computers are used. Regarding the technical issue, this system may provide a set of intuitive digital pen gestures that enable students to integrate cross-media content. 40

Regarding the pedagogical method, the system may facilitate question-driven reading practice. The effects of such approach are detailed below.

Figure 2. (a) Paper textbook and digital pen, and (b) guiding questions and computer commands on computer screen

Facilitating question-driven reading practice The system may facilitate a question-driven reading practice by encouraging purposeful annotations. Students use digital pen gestures to extract a passage and then copy the extracted sentences into a target question. For example, when a student finds a sentence on a paper textbook relevant to a question on the computer screen, the student can select the target question and copy the relevant sentence into the question. As shown in Figure 3, a student uses a pen gesture indicating a quotation mark to quote a passage. The passage is then copied automatically into the target question. Due to the intuitive interface, students may encounter little difficulty with this action. The students can also transform their answers into digital notes for online editing. The new function may facilitate purposeful annotation by encouraging students to explicitly identify the relationship between textbook text and questions in mind.

Figure 3. Extracting a passage with a digital pen

Supporting integration of cross-media content The system may also help students to integrate learning contents on different media. There are three steps to link textbook content to external digital resources. As shown in Figure 4, a student first copies a URL to a computer clipboard. Typically, a student achieves this step by simultaneously pressing the Ctrl and ‘c’ keys in the Windows 41

system. The second step requires a student to initiate a “Link” command by tapping on a toolbar (also see Figure 2) or performing a specific pen gesture. Finally, the student leaves a visual symbol on the paper surface and taps on it to connect that symbol with the target Internet webpage. To make such a visual indicator, students can circle a keyword, make an annotation, or even decorate it with personal stickers. The webpage is also grouped into the target question. Students can revisit linked resources by tapping on the visual symbols on paper or by popping out questions for examining the digital resources. The linking mechanism can help students organize annotations among print and digital materials.

Figure 4. Linking textbook content to relevant Internet resources

System design To support the goals aforementioned, this study proposes a technical design, which can recognize digital pen gestures, to enable students to perform question-driven reading activity on paper. Moreover, we also design a paperbased hyperlink mechanism to help students integrate paper-based contents with digital learning resources.

Pen gestures recognition To allow students to perform question-driven reading activity on paper and manage their digital annotations, two corresponding types of digital pen gestures are proposed: paper annotation and computer control. The paper annotation pen gestures aim to transform sentences on physical paper into digital annotation. For example, as is shown in Figure 5(a), a consecutive ‘left quote’ and ‘right quote’ pen strokes on a paper surface allow students to copy the sentence as a digital note. The computer control pen gestures are used to initiate computer commands in the areas surrounding a digital note. In the case of Figure 5(e), the computer commands are arranged in cardinal directions (as shown in Figure 5d). Students can perform a directional double tapping pen gestures to execute the corresponding computer command. For example, to request the “Edit” command in Figure 5(e), a student should tap twice, moving toward the west (Figure 5b). Figure 5(c) demonstrates another example of executing the “Next” command. Of the various pen strokes, dot gestures (e.g., a single tap on a paper surface) seem the fastest for pen users to perform (Goldberg & Richardson, 1993); we believe they are simpler than drawing a line. To distinguish scribbles from dot-based pen gestures, the distance, duration and relative position of pen strokes are analyzed. Distance span and relative positions of a tapping sequence are important factors in recognizing digital pen gestures as directional tapping to initiate commands. For example, two consecutive taps on the same location within a short time span can be treated as a typical non-directional double-tapping gesture. Two consecutive taps in different locations over a 42

short distance and within a short time span indicates the direction of the first tap toward the second tap (see Figure 5b, Figure 5c). The proposed digital pen gestures can enable the Gesture Interpreter and Annotation Manager (see Figure 1) to respond in real-time to a student’s cross-media annotation organization.

Figure 5. Digital pen gestures for pen-paper-computer interaction (a) ‘quote’ pen gestures to digitally copy a sentence from a paper surface; (b) a directional double tapping pen gesture moving west; (c) a directional double tapping pen gesture moving south; (d) four compass directions are employed to represent the selection of computer commands in (e)

Paper-based hyperlinks Paper-based hyperlinks are employed in the system to help students maintain relationships between printed contents and digital learning resources. Due to the static nature of paper content, the system needs a paper-based hyperlink to allow links across different media. To provide such mechanism, this study proposes a mechanism with which students can use headings, keywords, printed icons, or user-created visual aids on a paper surface as hyperlinks to link to Internet web pages. Tapping on these paper-based hyperlinks with digital pens will activate the Annotation Manager (Figure 1), so students can review the corresponding Internet web pages.

Figure 6. (a) Paper-based hyperlinks, and (b) Data structure of a mapping table The paper-based hyperlinks aim to provide a mechanism that allows students to establish links among relevant learning resources. The mechanism is designed for students to collect or organize digital resources. Students can draw a circle, annotate, or use a sticker to provide a visual cue for relevant learning resources. For example, as shown in Figure 6(a), a student creates two paper-based hyperlinks on a paper surface. The students use a circle symbol and a sticker as visual cues to inform that there are supplementary digital resources for exploration. To allow 43

students create their own hyperlink, the system records the location, where the hyperlink was placed, by using the upper-left and lower-right coordinates of the hyperlink. The place of the hyperlink and the target Internet web page is associated with a mapping table as shown in Figure 6(b). With the mapping table, the system will display the corresponding Internet web page on the computer screen when a student uses digital pen to tap within the hyperlink on the paper.

Methods A user-based formative evaluation was conducted to assess the new functions of the annotation system and to explore their influence on students’ note-taking behavior and performance. According to Flagg (1990), user-based evaluation can help to gather information from target users to improve the design of a curriculum support system. Therefore, the goal of the formative evaluation is to help designers of the cross-media annotation system improve the system’s quality and usefulness in its early development stage.

Participants, learning materials and treatment Twelve graduate students majoring in computer science participated in the user evaluation. All participants are male ranging in age from 22 to 24 years. During the evaluation, they were asked to study a five-page economics textbook and seven Internet web pages. An economics teacher identified 15 key concepts from the paper economic textbook as well as 12 key concepts from the Internet web pages. The reasons for using an economics textbook were twofold. First, most participants in the evaluation were unfamiliar with the field of economics. Second, students often needed to refer to other examples or diagrams to understand an equation or economic model. Six of participants were assigned to the experimental group (cross-media group) while the other six students were the control group (traditional group). Students in the cross-media group studied the paper economics textbook using the cross-media annotation system. Their paper economics textbooks were integrated with a digital pen that connected to a laptop. Each student in the traditional group used a normal pen and a laptop to study the paper economics textbooks. All participants were prompted with seven open-ended guiding questions on their laptop screens that covered important concepts in the textbooks.

Procedure and data analysis All participants were asked to take a pre-test before the formative evaluation. The pretest contained six multiplechoice questions. In the first session (session 1), as shown in Figure 7, the cross-media (experimental) group was first shown a video demonstrating how to use the system to take notes while studying the paper textbook. They were given 20 minutes to practice, and then both groups were shown seven guiding questions on their laptop computers. In the following 50 minutes, the cross-media group could use a digital pen to collect relevant resources for the given questions by extracting sentences or linking to Internet web pages. The traditional (control) group could only annotate their paper textbooks with normal pens and edit the text file containing the seven questions with a computer editor. Both groups were asked to take a 20-minute comprehension test immediately after the study period. The test contained five yes-or-no questions and three multiple-choice questions. After the test, each student in cross-media group had a 30-minute semi-structured interview. They were asked to describe how they use the cross-media annotation system to complete their tasks. The students’ responses to the interview were further probed to invite increasingly detailed descriptions. Both groups continued the evaluation a week later in a second session (session 2). They were asked to review the paper economics textbooks for 30 minutes. During their review, all students could revise or retrieve their annotations made in the first session to facilitate review in their reading environments. A 20-minute semi-structured interview followed, in which participants were asked to describe how they had used the available devices to review the learning materials. For the next 30 minutes, both groups were asked to take a recall test. They were asked to write down everything learned from the paper textbook. Finally, participants in the cross-media group were asked to complete an open-ended questionnaire to explore student’s perception of the reading environment.

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To achieve a better understanding of how the students learned in the two settings, the economic teacher reviewed the students’ answers in the recall test. Based on the review, the teacher identified the numbers of key concepts recalled by the students. While identifying these concepts, the teacher also further analyzed how and how many guiding questions could be answered by their response to the recall test. These results can help to reveal the influence of the cross-media annotation system on recall structures because the students had to write down and may group their key points in order to answer the questions in the recall test. The two interviews consisted of detailed descriptions of students’ use of the cross-media annotation system and their reasons for using it. We identified common themes from these descriptions and from the open-ended questionnaires. Due to the small sample size (n = 6 for each group), a nonparametric methodology (Mann-Whitney’s U test) was employed for the comparative analysis of the students’ learning achievement. The result from the comparative analysis of comprehension test was integrated with the comparative results of the students’ comprehension test which were revealed in the scores of the eight questions of the comprehension test.

Figure 7. Procedure for the user-based formative evaluation

Results During the user evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative data were integrated to achieve better understanding of the implication of the cross-media annotation system. First we report the results of the comprehension and recall tests. Then we discuss the results from the interviews and open-ended questionnaires about the cross-media annotation system.

Comprehension and recall tests The pre-test result shows that the cross-media and the traditional group did not show significant difference in their background knowledge before the evaluation. All the participants could not answer questions correctly due to their lack of background knowledge about economics. However, the results of comprehension test, which are shown in Table 1, reveal that, the cross-media group had higher average comprehension scores than the traditional group, although the difference was not statistically significant (U = 12.5, p = .345). Additionally, the number of key concepts recalled by the cross media group were higher than those recalled by the traditional group (U = 2.5, p = .013). Regarding the structures of students’ recall contents, students in cross-media group answered more questions in their recall tests than the students from traditional group (U = 2, p = .009). The results of the recall tests may indicate that students’ retention and organization of the key concepts in the textbook were enhanced by the crossmedia annotation system. Students in cross-media group seemed more likely to construct their knowledge according to a more concrete goal.

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Table 1. Performance differences between participants supported by cross-media annotation systems and those supported by traditional settings Performance Cross-media M (SD) Traditional M (SD) Ua (p) Comprehension scores 81.25 (17.23) 70.28 (21.88) 12.5 (.345) Key points recalled 15.17 (2.92) 8 (4.51) 2.5 (.013)* Questions answered by grouping key points 6.17 (.98) 3.33 (1.63) 2 (.009)** a Computed value of Mann-Whitney test. *p