• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.179-192
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• 2014

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.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.149-171
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• 2020

The period at university is to make decision about getting an actual job. As our society develops rapidly and highly, jobs are diversified, subdivided, and specialized, and students' job preparation period is also getting longer and longer. This study analyzed the log data of college students to see how the various activities that college students experience inside and outside of school might have influences on employment. For this experiment, students' various activities were systematically classified, recorded as an activity data and were divided into six core competencies (Job reinforcement competency, Leadership & teamwork competency, Globalization competency, Organizational commitment competency, Job exploration competency, and Autonomous implementation competency). The effect of the six competency levels on the employment status (employed group, unemployed group) was analyzed. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that the difference in level between the employed group and the unemployed group was significant for all of the six competencies, so it was possible to infer that the activities at the school are significant for employment. Next, in order to analyze the impact of the six competencies on the qualitative performance of employment, we had ANOVA analysis after dividing the each competency level into 2 groups (low and high group), and creating 6 groups by the range of first annual salary. Students with high levels of globalization capability, job search capability, and autonomous implementation capability were also found to belong to a higher annual salary group. The theoretical contributions of this study are as follows. First, it connects the competencies that can be extracted from the school experience with the competencies in the Human Resource Management field and adds job search competencies and autonomous implementation competencies which are required for university students to have their own successful career & life. Second, we have conducted this analysis with the competency data measured form actual activity and result data collected from the interview and research. Third, it analyzed not only quantitative performance (employment rate) but also qualitative performance (annual salary level). The practical use of this study is as follows. First, it can be a guide when establishing career development plans for college students. It is necessary to prepare for a job that can express one's strengths based on an analysis of the world of work and job, rather than having a no-strategy, unbalanced, or accumulating excessive specifications competition. Second, the person in charge of experience design for college students, at an organizations such as schools, businesses, local governments, and governments, can refer to the six competencies suggested in this study to for the user-useful experiences design that may motivate more participation. By doing so, one event may bring mutual benefits for both event designers and students. Third, in the era of digital transformation, the government's policy manager who envisions the balanced development of the country can make a policy in the direction of achieving the curiosity and energy of college students together with the balanced development of the country. A lot of manpower is required to start up novel platform services that have not existed before or to digitize existing analog products, services and corporate culture. The activities of current digital-generation-college-students are not only catalysts in all industries, but also for very benefit and necessary for college students by themselves for their own successful career development.