Learning Material Bookmarking Service based on Collective Intelligence

Keeping in line with the recent changes in the information technology environment, the online learning environment that supports multiple users' participation such as MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) has become important. One of the largest professional associations in Information Technology, IEEE Computer Society, announced that "Supporting New Learning Styles" is a crucial trend in 2014. Popular MOOC services, CourseRa and edX, have continued to build active learning environment with a large number of lectures accessible anywhere using smart devices, and have been used by an increasing number of users. In addition, collaborative web services (e.g., blogs and Wikipedia) also support the creation of various user-uploaded learning materials, resulting in a vast amount of new lectures and learning materials being created every day in the online space. However, it is difficult for an online educational system to keep a learner' motivation as learning occurs remotely, with limited capability to share knowledge among the learners. Thus, it is essential to understand which materials are needed for each learner and how to motivate learners to actively participate in online learning system. To overcome these issues, leveraging the constructivism theory and collective intelligence, we have developed a social bookmarking system called WeStudy, which supports learning material sharing among the users and provides personalized learning material recommendations. Constructivism theory argues that knowledge is being constructed while learners interact with the world. Collective intelligence can be separated into two types: (1) collaborative collective intelligence, which can be built on the basis of direct collaboration among the participants (e.g., Wikipedia), and (2) integrative collective intelligence, which produces new forms of knowledge by combining independent and distributed information through highly advanced technologies and algorithms (e.g., Google PageRank, Recommender systems). Recommender system, one of the examples of integrative collective intelligence, is to utilize online activities of the users and recommend what users may be interested in. Our system included both collaborative collective intelligence functions and integrative collective intelligence functions. We analyzed well-known Web services based on collective intelligence such as Wikipedia, Slideshare, and Videolectures to identify main design factors that support collective intelligence. Based on this analysis, in addition to sharing online resources through social bookmarking, we selected three essential functions for our system: 1) multimodal visualization of learning materials through two forms (e.g., list and graph), 2) personalized recommendation of learning materials, and 3) explicit designation of learners of their interest. After developing web-based WeStudy system, we conducted usability testing through the heuristic evaluation method that included seven heuristic indices: features and functionality, cognitive page, navigation, search and filtering, control and feedback, forms, context and text. We recruited 10 experts who majored in Human Computer Interaction and worked in the same field, and requested both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the system. The evaluation results show that, relative to the other functions evaluated, the list/graph page produced higher scores on all indices except for contexts & text. In case of contexts & text, learning material page produced the best score, compared with the other functions. In general, the explicit designation of learners of their interests, one of the distinctive functions, received lower scores on all usability indices because of its unfamiliar functionality to the users. In summary, the evaluation results show that our system has achieved high usability with good performance with some minor issues, which need to be fully addressed before the public release of the system to large-scale users. The study findings provide practical guidelines for the design and development of various systems that utilize collective intelligence.

집단지성 기반 학습자료 북마킹 서비스 시스템

최근 IT 환경의 변화에 따라 웹 서비스를 기반으로 대규모 사용자 대상의 상호 참여적인 MOOC(Massive Open Online Courses)과 같은 온라인 교육 환경이 부상하고 있다. 그러나 온라인 교육 시스템은 원거리로 학습이 이루어짐에 따라 학습자의 자발적 동기를 꾸준히 유지하기 어려우며, 또한 학습자 간에 지식을 공유하고 공유한 지식을 활용하는 기능이 부족하다. 이러한 문제를 극복하기 위해 구성주의적 학습이론과 집단지성에 기반하여 학습자가 보유한 학습자료를 공유하고 개인화된 학습자료 추천을 받을 수 있는 학습자료 북마킹 서비스인 WeStudy를 구현하였다. 위키피디아(Wikipedia), 슬라이드쉐어 (SlideShare), 비디오렉쳐스 (VideoLectures) 등 현존하는 집단지성 기반 서비스들의 주요 기능으로부터 필요한 집단지성 기능들을 검토하였으며, 본 서비스의 주요 기능으로 1) 리스트 및 그래프 형태의 학습자료 리스트 시각화, 2) 개인화된 학습자료 추천, 3) 보다 상세한 학습자료 추천을 위한 관심 학습자 지정 등을 도출하여 시스템을 설계하였다. 이후, 웹 기반으로 구현된 세 가지 주요기능 별로 개량된 휴리스틱 사용성 평가 방법을 통해 개발된 시스템의 사용성 평가를 실시하였다. 10명의 HCI 분야 전공자 및 현업 종사자를 대상으로 정량적 및 정성적인 평가 결과, 세 가지의 주요 기능에서 전반적으로 사용성이 우수한 것으로 판정되었다. 주요 기능 별 정성적인 평가에서 도출된 여러 마이너 이슈들을 반영할 필요가 있으며, 향후 대규모 사용자를 대상으로 본 서비스를 보급하고 이용할 수 있도록 제공하여 자발적인 지식 공유 환경을 조성할 수 있을 것으로 전망된다.