Introduction of My Master Thesis

If we see a common group meeting scenario four colleagues sitting around a table with several pads and pens. Typically this arrangement works very well. Everyone have there own resort. A pad of paper and pens to write and to share the ideas upon.





It is easy to observe how natural this arrangement is as one person share information with other with a little effort, and how user can augment another’s idea and share it back without disrupting the flow of the meeting. However when a small group is trying to collaborate around a single format of input for example on a single pad of paper, several problems arise the cost of group dynamic to be awkward and frustrating. This single entry point to the collective contribution causes two members to always be queuing ideas and manage to get it turn with the outfacing questions. If one has too dominance in his own ideas that can be very difficult for the others to contribute.



Another common meeting arrangement occurs at the whiteboard. Ordinarily there’s one person on the board who is drawing out of the problem, all the others are trying to contribute.





Again this person can be becoming gross to his own ideas making it difficult for the others to participate. In which case the other participants may break away and began working among them, whether it is an inner active or traditional whiteboard that can be very awkward to see the control from the person operating on the board and it rarely happens. Another problem with this arrangement is collusion with the person at the whiteboard gets in the way and the other observing, this is even more of a problem with several people working at the board together.



Becoming more and more familiar is the orientation of the small group working around a single screen such as a laptop or tablet; again we have a single entry point, in this arrangement the mouse. As you can see it’s easy for them to observe what’s on screen but it’s difficult to take turns in interacting with what’s on screen because of the awkwardness of the exchanging of the controls and handing the mouse from one user to another.





Typically the user in control of the mouse becomes in gross into the task leading the other users without any way to contribute.

SOLUTION


So how do we do with these problems, particularly how do we overcome the frustrations only having one mouse when interacting with digital information on the screen or as I discuss with the whiteboard having a one pen. This research designs new technologies that can support groups working in together and particular to trying facilitating more equal participation.

We developed a framework of the multiple entry points that’s intended to help us in the form design of these new work spaces. But what is the meaning of multiple entry point well an entry point is invitation in the physical, digital space for anyone to part. And when we think about the design is how we can create multiple entry points that different people can enter the workspace and take part. This contrast is in previous cases is only one single entry point via the mouse or the pen.

In order to implement the multiple entry point framework we examine several technologies and autumnally chosen Tabletop using the diamond spin software package.

We use the tabletop with the diamond spin software to implement a prototype for this task, in which the images that can select are small icons of the sides of the tabletop. What to do in that just simply using the finger tips can slide these images into the middle of the tabletop and allow each other to look it these, to compare them and to select them. So what we found that is much more participation from all over the group members taking place particularly there are a lot of turn taking and what we called it turn inviting and this is where one member will invite another to take part; for example to comment an image, or to select an image, or to scroll and image or to place an image.





This type of setup where you have different entry points encourages that type behavior which is quite different as that of other previous setups. So in this case the users have no problem in sharing, passing or trading in order to refine there selections through different icons on the tabletop. So everyone in the group is being very active in finding there own way to participate. This change makes the transitions between various jobs fluid and easy, so if one user decided to change roles, it has no negative effect on the others.


So in concluding, this physical digital arrangement provides more entry points for users to make contribution and therefore allows a various types of the users to contribute in the way that they are most comfortable. The results shown that there’s a strong possibility that providing a space that has multiple entry points for contribution can faster more accurate able decision making in small groups. We planned to further this research and determine if a multi entry points framework can be implemented in such a way as generalize some of our findings. One of the first steps in doing this will be to continue to extend the work space and offer more channels for people to participate in ways which make them more comfortable.

Tabletop groupware systems combine the real efforts of collaboration of the people around the multi-touch, multi-user system in which the people can do work collaboratively to achieve a certain task. In order to manipulate user’s hands and fingers are recognized and tracked using the gesture recognition component of the Tabletop, by means of computer vision algorithms applied to the video camera stream of the table area.


As Cooperative learning is one of the best researched of all teaching strategies. The results show that students who have opportunities to work collaboratively, learn faster and more efficiently, have greater retention, and feel more positive about the learning experience.

Conceptual maps are visual representation of graph like structure that represents the knowledge consists of concepts and the relationship between them. In the Concept Mapping process, the first step is the identification of the problem, after identification the focus question are identifying and listing the most important or “general” concepts that are associated with the topic, ordering the concepts from top to bottom in the mapping field, means that the general concepts are on the top in the hierarchy and less general are at the bottom of tree. Then adding and labeling linking phrases. Once the preliminary Concept has been built, cross-links are identified and added, and a review of the map for completeness and correctness is performed.

In the work of my project I have tried to present a tool for developing the Concept maps which can be used by the group of students on a multi-touch, multi-user system. The tool can provide all the necessary functions through which the students can make the Concept Map collaboratively on the tabletop.

The tool that I am going to develop can help the students to build the Concept maps in a real system of multi-user, multi-touch technology. The interface is real time interface through which students can collaboratively place there ideas in the form of maps.

Tips for Better Learning Groups

Below is a checklist of things that groups can do to function better. If appropriate for your class, distribute to your students.

I. Before the group begins:
Expect to learn, to enjoy, and to discover.
Team up with people you don't know.

II. As the group begins:
Make a good first impression.
Build the team.
Do something that requires self-disclosure.
Take interpersonal risks to build trust.
Establish team goals as appropriate.
Start thinking about group processing.

III. While the group is in existence:
Work at increasing self-disclosure.
Work at giving good feedback.
Get silent members involved.
Confront problems.
Apply lessons from class work.
Work on issues in the group even if they appear at first to be just between two members.
Don't assume you can't work with someone just because you don't like or respect them.
If the group can't solve a problem, consult the instructor as a group.
Regularly review your data.
Vary the leadership style as needed.

IV. Wrapping up the group:
Summarize and review your learning from group experiences.
Analyze the data to discover why the group was more effective or less so.
Provide final feedback to members on their contribution.
Celebrate the group's accomplishments.

Collaborative Learning and its Benefits

Collaborative Learning : -

The concept of collaborative learning is the grouping and pairing of students for the purpose of achieving an academic goal. The term "cooperative learning" refers to an instruction method in which students at various performance levels work together in small groups toward a common goal.

44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning : -

1. Develops higher level thinking skills
2. Promotes student-faculty interaction and familiarity
3. Increases student retention
4. Builds self esteem in students
5. Enhances student satisfaction with the learning experience
6. Promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter
7. Develops oral communication skills
8. Develops social interaction skills
9. Promotes positive race relations
10. Creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning
11. Uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability
12. Encourages diversity understanding
13. Encourages student responsibility for learning
14. Involves students in developing curriculum and class procedures
15. Students explore alternate problem solutions in a safe environment
16. Stimulates critical thinking and helps students clarify ideas through discussion and debate
17. Enhances self management skills
18. Fits in well with the constructivist approach
19. Establishs an atmosphere of cooperation and helping schoolwide
20. Students develop responsibility for each other
21. Builds more positive heterogeneous relationships
22. Encourages alternate student assessment techniques
23. Fosters and develops interpersonal relationships
24. Modelling problem solving techniques by students' peers
25. Students are taught how to criticize ideas, not people
26. Sets high expectations for students and teachers
27. Promotes higher achievement and class attendance .
28. Students stay on task more and are less disruptive
29. Greater ability of students to view situations from others' perspectives (development of empathy)
30. Creates a stronger social support system
31. Creates a more positive attitude toward teachers, principals and other school personnel by students and creates a more positive attitude by teachers toward their students
32. Addresses learning style differences among students
33. Promotes innovation in teaching and classroom techniques
34. Classroom anxiety is significantly reduced
35. Test anxiety is significantly reduced
36. Classroom resembles real life social and employment situations
37. Students practice modeling societal and work related roles
38. CL is synergystic with writing across the curriculum
39. CL activities can be used to personalize large lecture classes
40. Skill building and practice can be enhanced and made less tedious through CL activities in and out of class.
41. CL activities promote social and academic relationships well beyond the classroom and individual course
42. CL processes create environments where students can practice building leadership skills.
    

Constructivism, a theory of building Knowledge

Constructivism is the construction of new understanding as a combination of prior learning, new information, and readiness to learn. Individuals make choices about what new ideas to accept and how to fit them into their established views of the world.

In a Constructivist Classroom...

Student autonomy and initiative are accepted and encouraged.

By respecting students' ideas and encouraging independent thinking, teachers help students attain their own intellectual identity. Students who frame questions and issues and then go about analyzing and answering them take responsibility for their own learning and become problem solvers.

The teacher asks open-ended questions and allows wait time for responses.

Reflective thought takes time and is often built on others' ideas and comments. The ways teachers ask questions and the ways students respond will structure the success of student inquiry.

Higher-level thinking is encouraged.

The constructivist teacher challenges students to reach beyond the simple factual response. He encourages students to connect and summarize concepts by analyzing, predicting, justifying, and defending their ideas.

Students are engaged in dialogue with the teacher and with each other.

Social discourse helps students change or reinforce their ideas. If they have the chance to present what they think and hear others' ideas, students can build a personal knowledge base that they understand. Only when they feel comfortable enough to express their ideas will meaningful classroom dialogue occur.

Students are engaged in experiences that challenge hypotheses and encourage discussion.

When allowed to make predictions, students often generate varying hypotheses about natural phenomena. The constructivist teacher provides ample opportunities for students to test their hypotheses, especially through group discussion of concrete experiences.

The class uses raw data, primary sources, manipulatives, physical, and interactive materials.

The constructivist approach involves students in real-world possibilities, then helps them generate the abstractions that bind phenomena together.

Software Requirement Specification

1. Functionality

2. External Interfaces

3. Performance

4. Attributes

5. Design Constraints

Compare two different conceptual maps

why compare two different conceptual maps???

Students are given some preliminary information such as a list of concepts, or an initial arrangement of concepts. This is often the case in classroom examples, where concept maps are used to assess student learning about a particular subject.
To compare different maps we counts levels of hierarchy, matches corresponding hierarchical clusters, and automatically identifies cross-links would be useful for concept map evaluation.

In comparison of two conceptual maps we…………

Evaluates the skeleton of the concept maps, asking only whether the concepts are connected to one another in the same way

Focuses on the agreement of the linking proposition used to define the relationship between each matching pair of concepts

Up to what degree the concepts, links and directionality of relations match

For teachers who want to see how their students are doing, this allows quite an efficient way to do it. As different students have different way of thinking to understand the logic of specific knowledge, the teacher can easily see her students’ progress, strengths and weaknesses and can help her in future studies.

Problem: Graph to tree conversion

I have found one algorithm which convert graphs into trees like structures:

The link of that algorithm is:

http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/content-model.html

Infact this algorithm convert "RDF graph" which is the sameone as "concept maps" to trees.

So we dont re-invent new algorithm for the conversion of graphs to trees, because the main part of my work is to build the concept maps application on the table top that students can build and collaborate with each other.

How to convert conceptual maps into trees

Problem::

From the point of view of the matching task, the biggest problem is how to convert the conceptual maps into trees for semantic matching!

Project Specfication

PROJECT SPECFICATION

Background Information

"Without the cooperation of its members society cannot survive, and the society of man has survived because the cooperativeness of its members made survival possible.... It was not an advantageous individual here and there who did so, but the group. In human societies the individuals who are most likely to survive are those who are best enabled to do so by their group."
(Ashley Montagu)

Cooperative learning is one of the best researched of all teaching strategies. The results show that students who have opportunities to work collaboratively, learn faster and more efficiently, have greater retention, and feel more positive about the learning experience.

Joseph Novak, a Cornell University professor who developed the idea in the 1960’s about Conceptual mapping. Conceptual maps are visual representation of graph like structure that used by the teachers to allow the children represents the knowledge consists of concepts and the relationship between them. These maps are hierarchical like structures.

In the Concept Mapping process, the first step is the identification of the problem, after identification the focus question are identifying and listing the most important or “general” concepts that are associated with the topic, ordering the concepts from top to bottom in the mapping field, means that the general concepts are on the top in the hierarchy and less general are at the bottom of tree. Then adding and labeling linking phrases. Once the preliminary Concept has been built, cross-links are identified and added, and a review of the map for completeness and correctness is performed.

Motivation for the Project

The motivation of this project is to facilitate the development of tabletop application that allows a group of students or more to cooperatively develop conceptual maps which containing all necessary features of collaboration and knowledge sharing. The new system will bring all necessary functions for the students to collaboratively interact with each other on a tabletop to build concept maps

Project Goals and Scope

The goal of this project is develop a Tabletop application in “C #” and “Microsoft s wpf (Windows Presentation Foundation). The application allows a group of students or more to cooperatively develop conceptual maps on the tabletop. The developed application will provide different features to the students to create, edit, and delete concept maps on the tabletop.

How Results must be evaluated

When the application of tabletop will be ready, we will take different tests with the group of students in order to check that up to what extent they will create concept maps on tabletop.

Related Works

There are lot of research going on about the collaborative management of digital maps. Like TabulaTouch can sense multiple points of contact on surfaces of different shape andsize, where gestures can be recognized and become expressive actions.The first case of study has been tabulaMaps, an application for the collaborative management of digital maps that features the intuitive roto-translation approach.

Groups, Group Cognition & Groupware

Groupware refers to programs and softwares that help people work together collectively while located remotely from each other. Such software systems as email, calendaring, chatting belong to Groupware category.

Microsoft Exchange is the typical example of Groupware, which facilitate calendar sharing, e-mail handling, and the replication of files across a distributed system so that all groupware users can view the same information.

There are two different chat patterns of Groupware technique:

i) Expository narrative

ii) Exploratory inquiry

The Expository narrative involves one person dominating the interchange by contributing more and longer texts, for example if one person in a group finds the solution of given problem, he just distibutes his solution and all the persons in the group have different reasoning on that solution. In Expository narrative, Cooperation analogy involves in which people divide the work up, each working by themselves on their own part and then joining their partial solutions together for the group solution.

In Exploratory inquiry the group members work together to explore a topic. In Exploratory inquiry , Collaboration analogy involves which involves a group of people working on something together.

In an online chat discussing a series of 11 math problems given to the students and collaborate them in a chating room group.

From the result, i was clearly shown that the
problems answered by the students more correctly in a group as that in individuals.

Also its observed from the test that

i) In some cases, everyone proposed the same answer and it was easy to establish a consensus.

ii) In some other cases, only one person proposed an answer and the others simply went along with it

iii) In more interesting cases, when someone proposed an answer that contradicted other people’s opinions or was questionable for some other reason, the proposer was required to give an explanation, justification or accounting of their proposal.

If researchers studying the use of groupware focused on processes of collaboration and the methods that groups used to solve problems, as opposed to treating exclusively individuals as cognitive agents then research methods might focus more on conversation analysis , video analysis and their application to discourse logs than on surveys and interviews of individual opinions.

There are some suggestions for groupware design principles like

a) The group work visible and persistent so that everyone in the group can easily see what has been accomplished by all members.

b) Patterns of references among proposals, adjacency pairs and responses between different group members could also be displayed.

c) The groups should be like Virtual Workspaces.

d) The group memebers in a group provide computational support to the work of their users.

e) Groupware can provide structured access to information, tools and other resources available on the Internet.

f) Groupware could facilitate the building of open-ended networks of individual, group and community connections, or the definition of new sub-communities.

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The Unless Switch: Adding Conditional Logic to Concept Mapping for Middle School Students

Concept maps can be used for both teaching and assessment purposes. It has been demonstrated that showing students a concept map detailing the structure of a domain better prepares students to assimilate information from that domain.

Betty's Brain is a learning-by teaching environment where students "teach" Betty by constructing a concept map that models relations between domain concepts. Betty then assesses her knowledge in a performance venue, such as by taking a quiz. Based on how well Betty performs, students can revise their agent’s knowledge.

Betty implements both uses of concept maps. Students receive a passage and are asked to teach it to Betty. As a novice learner, Betty forces students to formalize their knowledge by having them create concept maps in order to teach it. These concept maps can then be assessed by
comparing them to an expert concept map. How well the student’s map matches the expert map determines how well the student has structured his or her knowledge

We also consider about the incorporating conditional logic into Betty. There are two goals for that:

i) Develop an interface that reflects the semantic structure people naturally use to think about
thresholds and activation states.

ii) Represents the reasoning within Betty’s concept maps.

The notion of thresholds within a concept map. Students often create multiple nodes representing different levels of the same concept and link them together.

For example, in the domain of water ecosystems, students sometimes create both an “algae” and a “more algae” node to indicate that increasing “algae” increases the amount of oxygen in a pond, but that “more algae” decreases the amount of oxygen. In this case, Betty tells the students that it is confused about the relationship between the two nodes and asks them to resolve the conflict.

INITIAL PROTOTYPE

We used triangle in the initial prototype to show the state of the source node.

Arrows leading from each state to the target node
Red color indicates the high state

Green color indicates the normal state

White color indicates the low state

For example, if we increase nitrogen, and nitrogen is high (red state), we decrease plant growth.

But in first prototype the students complained that, having scattered colored triangles throughout the concept map made it difficult to see the overall structure due to the clutter.

2nd Prototype

In this prototype we investigate the application of statecharts instead of triangles. At the high level, statecharts look vary similar to concept maps. The boxes in a state chart represent a state and the processes that happen within that state.

But in the case of state chart representation, students still exhibited confusion about whether to treat the boxes as states or nodes.

Final Prototype

In the final design, instead of thinking about the concept maps, we used "unless" clauses because this protype is a more natural way of presenting the information than that of Ist and 2nd prototypes.

Second, it emphasizes the normal relationship (nitrogen increases plant growth), and indicates that the alternative is atypical (unless it is too high). Our previous prototypes gave equal emphasis to all states. Finally, it does not require illustration of state changes.

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CMAPTOOLS: A KNOWLEDGE MODELING AND SHARING ENVIRONMENT

Concept mapping is a process of meaning-making. It contains a list of concepts (events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label ) and organizing it in a graphical representation where pairs of concepts and linking phrases.

CmapTools (http://cmap.ihmc.us/) is a software kit developed at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) which is used to:

i) Construct Concept Maps.

ii) Capabilities of annotation of of the maps with additional material such as images, diagrams, video clips and other such resources.

iii) It provides the capability to store and access concept maps on multiple servers to support knowledge sharing across geographically-distant sites.

The CMap tools have two concepts:

a) The use of concept mapping for knowledge elicitation ( a toolkit for knowledge acquisition)

b) The use of collaboration and sharing the knowledge among the participants.

The objectivies of CMap tools are:

i) CMap tool having user friendly interface and anyone can make a verity of concepts maps.

ii) CMap enable users to graphically express their understanding of a domain of knowledge.

iii) CMap provides the collaborative learning environments in order to share the knowledge of all ages.

iv) CmapTools was designed based on a modular architecture, in which components can be added or removed as needed from a Core module.

The CMap tool contains the very powerful distributed peer to peer features of collaboration of files, documents and knowledge. This tool automatically find new places in the network and also provides the public places where user can his knowledge models.

There are two types of collaboration types on designing the maps.

i) asynchronous collaboration (don’t need to be working on the maps at the same time)

ii) synchronous collaboration (two or more users are working on the maps at the same time)

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Research Paper Use of Concept Mapping Techniques and Technologies for Education and Performance Support

I have read the research paper about the Conceptual mapping techniques, the history of conceptual maps, structure of conceptual maps, usage in Educational, Business, and Governmental areas, comparison of conceptual maps with other mapping technologies and softwares or tools in which conceptual maps delevelop.

Conceptual maps are visual representaion of graph like structure that represents the knowledge consists of concepts and the relationship between them.


In the Concept Mapping process, the first step is the identification of the problem, after identification

The focus question are identifying and listing the most important or “general” concepts
that are associated with the topic, ordering the concepts from top to bottom in the
mapping field, means that the general concepts are on the top in the hierarchy and less general are at the bottom of tree. Then adding and labeling linking phrases. Once the preliminary Concept has been built, cross-links are identified and added, and a review of the map for
completeness and correctness is performed.

Conceptual maps used in Educational, Business, and Governmental areas,

In Educational areas one of the original uses of conceptual mapping is the assessment of what a learner knows. It also used to to improve affective conditions for learning, and to teach critical thinking.

In Business, and Governmental areas Concept Mapping can be used for knowledge capture – for the elicitation of expert knowledge that an organization might wish to preserve and share with others.

Concept Maps with other types of mapping systems, such as Knowledge Maps, Cognitive Maps, and Mind Maps. The Concept Map representation subsumes all the other types of graphical
representations of knowledge. The great thing with the concept mapps that it has not such limited rules or limitations like in all other mappings.

There are huge number of softwares and tools which support to build Conceptual maps (graph like structures): like Inspiration, SMART Ideas, Hypersoft Knowledge Manager,
Axon Idea Processor, LifeMap etc. There are some other softwares which is regarding to
Semantic Networking Tool and Mind Mapping Tools.

Project Milestones

In the meeting with Massimo Zancanaro (my supervisor of Conceptual Mappings) on 20th May 2008 , he gave some idea about the Concept Maps, Cooperative learning and Conceptual maps.

1. Concept Maps.

The concept maps is the graph like technique used by the teachers to allow the children to build the maps, and to understand the relationship between the maps or concepts. These maps are in tree like hierarchical structures.

2. Cooperative learning

The idea of cooperative learning is that the people work better in the group as compared to work in alone or individual. The idea was given by the teachers for students to learn better in the group activities and in assignments.

*** I have to build the application in tabletop in order to work together (collaborate) to share concepts.

3. Conceptual Matching

The conceptual matching is the technique of matching two graph like structures in order to pick out the similarities or differences of concepts between the two graphs.