http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1261 Wed, 22 May 2013 05:50:03 GMT 2013-05-22T05:50:03Z http://dspace.ou.nl:80/retrieve/30446/CELSTEC_logo2.gif http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1261 http://hdl.handle.net/1820/4423 Title: COalitions in COOperation Networks (COCOON): Social Network Analysis and Game Theory to Enhance Cooperation Networks Authors: Sie, Rory Description: Sie, R. L. L. (2012). COalitions in COOperation Networks (COCOON): Social Network Analysis and Game Theory to Enhance Cooperation Networks (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). September, 28, 2012, Open Universiteit in the Netherlands (CELSTEC), Heerlen, The Netherlands. Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/4423 2012-10-02T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/4193 Title: Awareness Support for Knowledge Workers in Research Networks Authors: Reinhardt, Wolfgang Abstract: Knowledge workers all over the world are using a plethora of tools to carry out their daily working tasks thereby creating and consuming an ever-increasing amount of data. They are members of several scientific communities at the same time and connected in so-called Research Networks. Because of this fast growing amount of information, it is getting increasingly difficult for knowledge workers to stay aware of relevant content, people, activities, and events for their daily work. Knowledge workers are facing information overload and are in need of tools and techniques that help them to stay on a high awareness level. Awareness support tools may help to reduce the information overload and make knowledge workers more informed about their dynamic working context. In this thesis we explore the needs of knowledge workers from stakeholder interviews to identify their activities and interactions in interconnected Research Networks. Based on these findings we propose a layered model of awareness that describes the overall awareness of individuals in Research Networks. In two empirical studies, we apply Artefact-Actor-Networks to describe the semantic connections between content and people in Research Networks by analyzing social media artifacts and scientific publications. Moreover, we visualize the resulting networks and show how researchers can be more aware of activities and interactions in their Research Networks with the selected approach. Based on these results, we designed a widget-based dashboard that is meant to support researchers' awareness in their daily working routine. Finally, we present a future scientific event management system that addresses the identified awareness issues by offering technical solutions that are inspired by the empirical findings and the tested prototypes. We demonstrate how the integration of classic event management features from social networking sites can help strengthening the ties between researchers and lead to enhance awareness of relevant information. This thesis shows that awareness of researchers in Research Networks can be enhanced by tools that take into account the roles and actions of knowledge workers in general as well as the specific needs and features of awareness support of researchers. Description: Reinhardt, W. (2012). Awareness Support for Knowledge Workers in Research Networks (Doctoral dissertation). April, 05, 2012, Open University in the Netherlands (CELSTEC), Heerlen, The Netherlands. Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:02:19 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/4193 2012-03-19T12:02:19Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/3411 Title: The Mind's Eye on Personal Profiles - How to inform trustworthiness assessments in virtual project teams Authors: Rusman, Ellen Abstract: The central research question of this thesis is: How to inform trustworthiness assessments of virtual project team members in the initial phase of collaboration?; There is common agreement that the availability of personal information and the possibility to interact informally at the start of a project accelerates the trust formation process. This goes for face-to-face as well as for virtual project teams. However, there is no shared understanding as to what information is critical for this acceleration and why it is so. Acceleration of the trust formation process is beneficial, as interpersonal trust is one of the key factors influencing performance in face-to-face as well as virtual teams. When little or no trust exists within a team, serious collaboration problems are bound to occur. Virtual project teams experience more problems with interpersonal trust formation than face-to-face teams. This is likely to be due to the diminished availability of information and its computer-mediated character. Once we know what information is important for trustworthiness assessments and why it is so, we could use it for the design of measures to accelerate the formation of interpersonal trust. To investigate the central research question we combined a theoretical (top-down) with a practical, design-oriented (bottom-up) research approach. We concluded our research with an evaluation. Description: Rusman, E. (2011). The Mind's Eye on Personal Profiles - How to inform trustworthiness assessments in virtual project teams (Doctoral dissertation). June, 17, 2011, Open University in the Netherlands (CELSTEC), Heerlen, The Netherlands. Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:12:14 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/3411 2011-06-29T09:12:14Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2750 Title: Paving the Way for Lifelong Learning. Facilitating competence development through a learning path specification Authors: Janssen, José Abstract: Efficient and effective lifelong learning requires that learners can make well informed decisions regarding the selection of a learning path, i.e. a set of learning actions that help attain particular learning goals. In recent decades a strong emphasis on lifelong learning has led educational provision to expand and to become more varied and flexible. Besides, the role of informal learning has become increasingly acknowledged. In light of these developments this thesis addresses the question: How to support learners in finding their way through all available options and selecting a learning path that best fit their needs? The thesis describes two different approaches regarding the provision of way finding support, which can be considered complementary. The first, inductive approach proposes to provide recommendations based on indirect social interaction: analysing the paths followed by other learners and feeding this information back as advice to learners facing navigational decisions. The second, prescriptive approach proposes to use a learning path specification to describe both the contents and the structure of any learning path in a formal and uniform way. This facilitates comparison and selection of learning paths across institutions and systems, but also enables automated provision of way finding support for a chosen learning path. Moreover, it facilitates automated personalisation of a learning path, i.e. adapting the learning path to the needs of a particular learner. Following the first approach a recommender system was developed and tested in an experimental setting. Results showed use of the system significantly enhanced effectiveness of learning. In line with the second approach a learning path specification was developed and validated in three successive evaluations. Firstly, an investigation of lifelong learners’ information needs. Secondly, an evaluation of the specification through a reference (sample) implementation: a tool to describe learning paths according to the specification. Finally, an evaluation of the use and purpose of this tool involving prospective end-users: study advisors and learning designers. Following the various evaluations the Learning Path Specification underwent some changes over time. Results described in this thesis show that the proposed approach of the Learning Path Specification and the reference implementation were well received by end-users. Description: Janssen, J. (2010). Paving the Way for Lifelong Learning. Facilitating competence development through a learning path specification. September, 17, 2010, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2010-36. ISBN 978-90-79447-43-5 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2750 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2184 Title: Tags and self-organisation: a metadata ecology for learning resources in a multilingual context Authors: Vuorikari, Riina Abstract: This thesis studies social tagging of learning resources in a multilingual context. Social tagging and its end products, tags, are regarded as part of the learning resources metadata ecology. The term “metadata ecology” is used to mean the interrelation of conventional metadata and social tags, and their interaction with the environment, which can be understood as the repository in the large sense (resources, metadata, interfaces and underlying technology) and its community of users. The main hypothesis is that the self-organisation aspect of a social tagging system on a learning resource portal helps users discover learning resources more efficiently. Moreover, user-generated tags make the system, which operates in a multilingual context, more robust and flexible. Social tags offer an interesting aspect to study learning resources, its metadata and how users interact with them in a multilingual context. Tags, as opposed to conventional metadata description such as Learning Object Metadata (LOM), are free, non-hierarchical keywords that end-users associate with a digital artefact, e.g. a learning resource. Tags are formed by a triple of (user,item,tag). Tags and the resulting networks, folksonomies, are commonly modelled as tri- partite hypergraphs. This ternary relational structure gives rise to a number of novel relations to better understand, capture and model contextual information. This thesis first provides two exploratory studies to better understand how users tag learning resources in a multilingual context and to find evidence on the “cross-boundary use” of learning resources. The term cross-boundary use means that the user and the resource come from different countries and that the language of the resource is different from that of the user’s mother tongue. The second part introduces a trilogy of studies focusing on self-organisation, flexibility and robustness of a social tagging system using empirical, behavioural data captured from log-files and user’s attention metadata trails on a number of learning resource portals and platforms in a multilingual context. Description: Vuorikari, R. (2009). Tags and self-organisation: a metadata ecology for learning resources in a multilingual context. Doctoral thesis. November, 13, 2009, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2184 2009-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2107 Title: Placement Support for Learners in Learning Networks Authors: Kalz, Marco Abstract: Accreditation of prior learning (APL, in the Netherlands referred to as EVC) enables institutions to offer personalized learning arrangements which take into account the prior learning of individuals. Unfortunately, this placement process of learners is time-and cost-intensive and cannot be scaled up easily to meet higher demands. Much work needs to be undertaken even before the potential learner makes a commitment to enter a study. Not only the assessment of an APL portfolio is time-consuming; literature shows that learners are unsure what to put in their portfolios for the APL procedure. Technological support may help reduce time and costs involved in this process and to improve the quality of the APL process. In this thesis we explore the application of advanced text mining and statistical natural language processing to offer a solution for these procedures which can be used in traditional APL procedures and informal learning networks. Based on the identification of three different situations which depend on the availability of data from learners we focus on the most complicated case where no (meta)data about the learners and the target learning content exists. A prototype model of a placement web-service for lifelong learning is proposed that is able to function as a supporting service by pre-analyzing documents in the APL procedure and by assisting in deciding whether these documents are relevant or irrelevant for the target course or study programme. This service employs in its core a reduced vector space model similar to Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). While LSA uses very large corpora, in this thesis we evaluate the use of dimensionality reduction methods with smaller domain specific corpora. For this purpose we empirically evaluate the use of dimensionality reduction on the basis of two exemplary small corpora. We demonstrate that a combination of filtering strategies, the use of multiple criteria and dimension reduction that takes into account the variance accounted can help maximize performance. Based on these finding we have conducted a study with real learner data. Data is collected in a psychology course of the Open University of the Netherlands. The results of this study show that the application of dimensionality reduction techniques for APL procedures is a promising supporting method to decide about relevancy of learner portfolios. Based on these results we introduce two technological artifacts that have been developed during the project and which allow us to evaluate the approach in several different environments and to extend our approach on the different placement support situations introduced at the beginning of the thesis. Description: Kalz, M. (2009). Placement Support for Learners in Learning Networks. October, 16, 2009, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:43:18 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2107 2009-11-02T12:43:18Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2084 Title: Navigation Support for Learners in Informal Learning Networks Authors: Drachsler, Hendrik Abstract: Learners increasingly use the Internet as source to find suitable information for their learning needs. This especially applies to informal learning that takes place during daily activities that are related to work and private life. Unfortunately, the Internet is overwhelming which makes it difficult to get an overview and to select the most suitable information. Navigation support may help to reduce time and costs involved selecting suitable information on the Internet. Promising technologies are recommender systems known from e-commerce systems like Amazon.com. They match customers with a similar taste of products and create a kind ‘neighborhood’ of likeminded customers. They look for related products purchased by the neighbors and recommend these to the current customer. In this thesis we explore the application of recommender systems to offer personalized navigation support to learners in informal Learning Networks. A model of a recommender system for informal Learning Networks is proposed that takes into account pedagogical characteristics and combines them with collaborative filtering algorithms. Which learning activities are most suitable depends on needs, preferences and goals of individual learners. Following this approach we have conducted two empirical studies. The results of these studies showed that the application of recommender systems for navigation support in informal Learning Networks is promising when supporting learners to select most suitable learning activities according to their individual needs, preferences and goals. Based on these results we introduce a technical prototype which allows us to offer navigation support to lifelong learners in informal Learning Networks. Description: Drachsler, H. (2009). Navigation Support for Learners in Informal Learning Networks. October, 16, 2009, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2009-37. ISBN 9789079447312. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:47:29 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2084 2009-10-26T12:47:29Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2062 Title: Contextual support of social engagement and reflection on the Web Authors: Glahn, Christian Abstract: This thesis analyses the role of context for supporting self-directed and self-organised learners on the web. The goal of the related project was to develop novel approaches to provide feedback on learning actions in knowledge domains and social environments that are not pre-structured for instruction. For this purpose simple visualizations of learner activity, so called indicators, were added to web-based information systems. The research question of this thesis is whether the perception of such indicators is context related. The thesis reports on exploratory design research and consists of two parts. The first part covers the theoretical and conceptual research. The second part analyses effects of indicators that were observed in the design studies that were related to this thesis. Part 1 has three chapters: “three pillars for research”, “smart indicators to support the learning interaction cycle”, and “smart indicators of learning interactions”. Part 2 has three chapters that cover three studies analysing interaction footprints and the effects of indicators on engagement and reflection of self-directed and self-organised learners. The chapters are: “visualisation of interaction footprints for engagement in online communities” , “implications of writing, reading, and tagging on the web for reflection support of self-directed learning”, and “a tag cloud for the reflective self-directed learner” . The general discussion links the two parts of this thesis on the grounds of the three key questions that were raised earlier in the thesis. The findings indicate that it is possible to develop and provide targeted solutions for supporting selfdirected, self-organised and incidental learning. The results suggest that the data from underlying sensors themselves are not providing contextual information for a learner, but that it is a result of aggregation of the data. Description: Glahn, C. (2009). Contextual support of social engagement and reflection on the Web. Doctoral thesis. September, 18, 2009, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:34:50 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/2062 2009-10-19T08:34:50Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1530 Title: Design and Implementation Strategies for IMS Learning Design Authors: Vogten, Hubert Abstract: The IMS Learning Design (LD) specification, which has been released in February 2003, is a generic and flexible language for describing the learning practice and underlying learning designs using a formal notation which is computer-interpretable. It is based on a pedagogical meta-model (Koper & Manderveld, 2004) and supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies. It supports adaptation of individual learning routes and orchestrates interactions between users in various learning and support roles. A formalized learning design can be applied repeatedly in similar situations with different persons and contexts. Yet because IMS Learning Design is a fairly complex and elaborate specification, it can be difficult to grasp; furthermore, designing and implementing a runtime environment for the specification is far from straightforward. That IMS Learning Design makes use of other specifications and e-learning services adds further to this complexity for both its users and the software developers. For this new specification to succeed, therefore, a reference runtime implementation was needed. To this end, this thesis addresses two research and development issues. First, it investigates research into and development of a reusable reference runtime environment for IMS Learning Design. The resulting runtime, called CopperCore, provides a reference both for users of the specification and for software developers. The latter can reuse the design principles presented in this thesis for their own implementations, or reuse the CopperCore product through the interfaces provided. Second, this thesis addresses the integration of other specifications and e-learning services during runtime. It presents an architecture and implementation (CopperCore Service Integration) which provides an extensible lightweight solution to the problem. Both developments have been tested through real-world use in projects carried out by the IMS Learning Design community. The results have generally been positive, and have led us to conclude that we successfully addressed both the research and development issues. However, the results also indicate that the LD tooling lacks maturity, particularly in the authoring area. Through close integration of CopperCore with a product called the Personal Competence Manager, we demonstrate that a complementary approach to authoring in IMS Learning Design solves some of these issues. Description: SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2008-27 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:58:31 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1530 2008-11-10T07:58:31Z http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1267 Title: Supporting the tutor in the design and support of adaptive e-learning Authors: Van Rosmalen, Peter Abstract: The further development and deployment of e-learning faces a number of threats. First, in order to meet the increasing demands of learners, staff have to develop and plan a wide and complex variety of learning activities that, in line with contemporary pedagogical models, adapt to the learners’ individual needs. Second, the deployment of e-learning, and therewith the freedom to design the appropriate kind of activities is bound by strict economical conditions, i.e. the amount of time available to staff to support the learning process. In this thesis two models have been developed and implemented that each address a different need. The first model covers the need to support the design task of staff, the second one the need to support the staff in supervising and giving guidance to students' learning activities. More specifically, the first model alleviates the design task by offering a set of connected design and runtime tools that facilitate adaptive e-learning. The second model alleviates the support task by invoking the knowledge and skills of fellow-students. Both models have been validated in near-real-world task settings. Description: SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2008-07 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:40:58 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1267 2008-05-29T14:40:58Z