LINC: A WEB-BASED LEARNING TOOL FOR MIXED-MODE

LEARNING

Tang-Ho Lê, Ph.D.

Département d’informatique

Université de Moncton, 165 Massey Ave, Moncton, (N.B.)

CANADA, E1A 3E9

Jean Roy, B.Sc.

Département d’informatique

Université de Moncton, 165 Massey Ave, Moncton, (N.B.)

CANADA, E1A 3E9

Keywords: e-Learning, Collaborative Learning, Web-base Learning

, Theories of learning, Multi-user Authoring

System, Instructor Roles, Objectivist, Constructivist, Mixed-mode Learning.

Abstract: In this paper we discuss some bas

ic theories of learning and e-Learning. With the light of the appropriate

theories, we then describe the components and particular features of our e-Learning system, the Learn IN

Context System (LINC). This tool aims to be used in institution’s courses in mixed-mode learning. Finally,

we report our initial experimentation with this tool and some preliminary results and evaluation.

1 INTRODUCTION

The tool presented in this paper is developed to

apply both educational and e-learning theories which

are appropriate according to our point of view. This

tool is a Web-based learning tool used in mixed-

mode learning. This mode combines face to face

and distance approaches to education in that an

instructor meets with students in class, and a

resource-base of content materials (such as

multimedia files, video clips) and learning activities

(such as forum) are made available to students

through the web. To accommodate the researchers

in this domain, we will firstly discuss some related

theories, and then describe the tool with some

particular features, such as the content of the forum

(which is displayed in the foreground) is anchored to

each course’s topic in the background, and each

learner is assigned to a small group allowing both

the competitive and collaborative learning; finally

we will report our initial experimentation and

preliminary results and evaluation.

In the actual knowledg

e society with the

extensive use of the Web, one can find out

thousands published documents concerning a

general subject. To avoid repeating the same ideas,

we don’t hesitate to introduce in this paper several

quoted texts with references to the original

documents published on the Web by researchers in

the community.

2 THE BASIC THEORIES OF

LEARNING

All professors practice some educational theories in

their daily teaching, with or without consciousness.

To summary the bulky discussion about these

theories, we cite below some core ideas expressed

by the four tenor authors in the literature (text and

references extracted from the Rik Min’s Web site,

see the reference at the end of this paper):

• “Seeing the st

udent as active agent in learning

[…], constructivists are now emphasizing the

individuality of information processing where

each individual determines his or her own

conception of the world.” (Mason, 1988, p.

207).

• “Obj

ectivists believe that the mind mirrors

reality while constructivists maintain that the

154

e T. and Roy J. (2005).

LINC: A WEB-BASED LEARNING TOOL FOR MIXED-MODE LEARNING.

In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 154-160

 SciTePress

way in which the world is perceived is a product

of the mind (Jonassen, 1991). The assimilation

of new knowledge into an existing cognitive

structure is an idiosyncratic enterprise of

perceiving, interpreting and building of meaning

in the context of what an individual already

knows. […] The meaning that is generated by

each learner for material they see is individual

and cannot be controlled by the author (of that

material).” (Jonassen, 1988, p. 153).

• “In practice, an intermediate position may very

well be adopted and appears to be more the rule

than the exception. […] Instruction has thus to

be adapted to the learner, but also the learner

has to adapt to the instruction: instructional

designers and communication specialists have

to reckon with the idiosyncrasies of their

audience, but at the same time may require an

audience to be accessible to their messages. The

basis for this may be formed by sharing enough

fields of experience to understand each other

(see also Schramm, 1954).”

• “Where a risk exists that learners may derive

meaning other than intended from information,

new information should be embedded in a

context that shapes the possibilities for

interpretation into the desired direction

(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).”

Through these representative ideas, there is an

evident mutual complement for the two opposing

learning theories, the objectivists and the

constructivists – including cognitive and social

constructivists.

From our own point of view, on the one hand, we

agree that the learners often construct the new

knowledge according to the current state of their

mind; but in many courses, such as programming

courses, there are several (programming) rules the

students have to learn. In these cases, it is

unacceptable to let the learners change the rules

according to their own ways of “knowledge

construction”, because there is only one right rule’s

interpretation. Put in different words, we must guide

the learner’s knowledge construction. Moreover,

much of works has done from decades in the

Intelligent Tutoring Systems related to the causes of

the learner’s misconceptions or misunderstandings;

detect them and remedy them as soon as possible are

the responsibilities of the teachers.

But, on the other hand, we have enough teaching

experiences to know that learning only occurs if the

learner does some efforts. These efforts allow

establishing or modifying the required links between

the short-term memory (related to the new

knowledge) and the long-term memory (related to

the existing knowledge). To facilitate these efforts,

several ways can be taken; for example, “through

conversations about a subject matter which serve to

make knowledge explicit,” (Kearsley, 2002), or

“One type of collaboration that is commonly

encouraged in academic online learning courses is

discussion board interaction. […] The power of this

practice is evident to anyone who has ever

participated in such a forum. Collaboration also

supports active participation through group projects

and reinforces important practical skills like group

communication, project management, conflict

resolution, and group brainstorming.” (Galarneau,

2004).

Experiences tell us that we should offer as much

as possible opportunities to the learners to actively

engage them in the learning process; for example, by

talking from their mouths the learned concepts, by

practicing the rules (or procedures), and by

discussing with us and between them about the

underlying topics. “From a constructivist point of

view, the pedagogical emphasis is on collaboration

and discussion. Consequently, lecturers must

engage students in a dialogue about the curriculum

and the subject matter to be covered. Students are

invited to contribute to the dialogue and are given

opportunities to express their interests and learning

goals.” (Otting and Zwaal, 2003).

In addition, we have also apply the well-known

and proven theory of Gagné et al. (1992) about the

teaching of procedural knowledge, which will be

better done if it is accompanied by demonstrations.

Thus, for an e-Learning mode, some multimedia

materials must be created, for example, the

animation Flash files or some video clips that are

easy to get for any domain. As noted by Clark and

Mayer (2002), “Multimedia presentations encourage

learners to engage in active learning by mentally

representing the material in words and pictures and

by mentally making connections between the

pictorial and verbal representations”. Learning

theories abound that also support these ideas.

“Imagery has been shown to facilitate recall in many

studies,” and Dual Coding Theory suggests

“recall/recognition is enhanced by presenting

information in both visual and verbal form.”

(Kearsley, 2002).

3 THE BASIC THEORIES OF E-

LEARNING

In his paper, Nichols (2003) notes “It is unlikely that

e-Learning practice will continue to evolve unless

the theoretical underpinnings of e-Learning are

explored and debated, providing a wider platform

and a common philosophy for e-Learning

development. […] Skinner’s behaviourism, Piaget’s

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155

cognitive constructivism and Vygotsky’s social

constructivism can all be facilitated through e-

Learning”. He also talks about the use of interactive

media resource in e-Learning: “Indicative

interactivity is typified by the use of button rollovers

and site navigation. Clicking a button to start an

animation or turn the page is indicative interactivity

(the ability to fly a virtual plane in a realistic virtual

environment is simulative interactivity)”. From

these perspectives, he proposes ten general

hypotheses as the foundation of e-Learning theories.

Among them, we are interesting in the hypotheses

#5 and #6 as followed:

- "e-Learning can be used in two major ways; the

presentation of education content, and the

facilitation of education processes". The

fundamental applications of e-Learning include

digital materials storage and distribution

(presentation) and synchronous and asynchronous

communication, simulative interactivity,

multimedia, and access tracking (processes) – each

of which is subject to multiple applications of use

and innovation.

- "e-Learning tools are best made to operate within a

carefully selected and optimally integrated course

design model." There is general agreement across

existing education literature that

collaborative

dialogue and communication with instructors are

major contributors toward successful learning.

Several recent projects confirm these hypotheses.

For example, Britain (2004) states that: “Whilst

learning is an effortful and active process of

knowledge construction that humans perform quite

naturally, not all learners are equally capable of

effective and efficient learning on their own.

Indeed, most if not all, benefit from some level of

guidance and support”. In the same line of thought,

Lopez-Islas (2004), in his report on a wingspread

project with 22 online courses, defines

“Collaborative learning (CL), as a participatory

learning mode, is a process of social construction of

knowledge that takes place in the context of

communities of inquiry. Besides a cognitive

component – the social construction of knowledge

process – there are two additional elements that play

a significant role in the functioning of a community

of inquiry: the social presence and the teaching

presence.” Finally, as reported in the experience of

the Cardean University (Gunawardena, 2004),

“interaction was an add-on feature, and students did

not see its relevance to meeting the course

objectives”. Thus, for an effective student

collaboration, the course designer must focus on

community building (rather than on individual) as

the central concept. The role of instructor in CL is

important, because the personal qualities required

for an effective CL team as described in (Soller et

al., 1998), such as participation, social grounding,

conversation skills, group processing, and

promotional interaction, are so ideal that not every

student can have them. The experimentation with

our e-Learning tool described below aims to confirm

these two mentioned hypotheses.

4 LINC: AN ONLINE AND IN

CONTEXT LEARNING TOOL

4.1 Some particular features

Galarneau (2004) notes that: “The hallmark of the

constructivist approach is the creation of a learning

environment that allows learners to construct their

own knowledge via active participation and

reflection, rather than simply being offered

information”. From a technical point of view,

according to Kirkley (2004), “it is critical that

researchers have the necessary tools to examine

student interactions and address issues related to real

world applications as well as theory development”.

These ideas about online CL systems are realized by

several web-based techniques. For example, one

may integrate a chat window or a forum through a

public or private communication channel. But

theses features, separated from the underlying

learning context, are resemble to an interactive and

communication system; that justifies the developing

of our “in context” system as described below.

Moreover, to design a good e-Learning tool for

CL we must avoid some common issues rising from

applying or developing them. For example, (1) the

teachers fear to apply them in the classroom

(because the loss of control in the classroom); (2) the

students resist to collaborate together (because the

lack of familiarity with CL techniques and class

management), and (3) one of the obstacles for the

implementation of collaborative activities is that

students are accustomed to working competitively,

not cooperatively (Bosworth, 1994).

With lessons learned from our past projects and

the above experimentations from others, we have

developed an online CL system called LINC (Learn

IN Context) to be used in a mixed-mode learning

(i.e. in parallel with our face to face course). Some

features of this system are:

• Instructor and learner’s roles are dependant on

the learning content. If it is the concept learning

or task learning, then the instructor’s roles is

more evident as animator, facilitator, and

questioner. If it is a project realisation, then the

learner’s role will be more important and the

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instructor can play the role of clarifier, mediator,

explainer, etc.

• Group size is manageable for communicating.

Ideally, the size should be small enough to

facilitate the solution tracing, and to allow an

effective group animation. We hide each

individual learner under a group label and limit

the number of groups at most six; that helps to

eliminate the learner’s embarrassment and

encourages both the collaboration in each group

as well as the competition between groups.

• The forum for participants is directly

implemented by a foreground window so that the

learning context permanently exists on the

interface. The messages exchanged between

participants are anchored to each topic; whenever

the topic changes, the email box’s content

changes too. At the end of a course, the

instructor can trace all messages to understand

what the learners’ difficulties are and how the

learners reach the final response or solution.

Thus, the next course’s content may be

improved.

• Time control is flexible. Instead of a fix

appointment with the presence of all learners, we

use a deadline control approach or asynchronous

learning system. Learners could work at their

own pace, at times convenient to them. At

anytime a learner can open the email box to read

solutions (opinions) of members in her/his group

and then write his/her own suggestion. The

system keeps the email boxes’ content updated.

When it is necessary or at the deadline, the

instructor intervenes by giving some remarks,

statistics, conclusion, animating the group and/or

announcing a bonus.

4.2 The LINC components

The LINC system has three components with

different functionalities and interfaces. The first

component is a multi-user online authoring system,

which allows at most six team’s members

(instructional designers) to collectively create the

lesson’s contents that include demonstrations

(multimedia files) and referenced documents on the

Web or preloaded on the server. This component is

separated software, which has been used in several

educational projects (Lê and Lamontagne, 2002,

2003). It allows to easily structure the lessons in a

task-oriented fashion and to save them in the

graphical knowledge networks (XML files). Each

network (figure 1) includes several related nodes

which can be clicked on to open a text frame (figure

5) with several slots. The last slot is reserved for the

question, in which a good designer must layout a

suitable question that stimulates the reflection of the

learners about the underlying subject matter. On the

main interface (figure 1) with two course’s designers

(photos on the left), the first icon on the upper left

which is the project management tool, gives the

project team leader full control on the current

project, e.g. he can create a new project (figure 3),

and then add users and lessons to this project, and

later edit users and lessons in the project editing

interface (figure 4).

Another interesting functionality is the message

board where designers can communicate with each

other to accomplish their collaborative work by

clicking on a display picture; if the display picture

clicked represents the user oneself, she/he will then

be able to send messages over the network.

Otherwise, she/he can only read the messages.

Figure 1: Example of a Knowledge Network

A user can also modify her/his own profile

(Figure 2), i.e. her/his picture and password, by

clicking on the third icon from the right in figure 1.

During a working session, a user can only access

her/his designated nodes. This control mechanism is

set up by the team leader using the Control Access

Table accessible for him only.

Figure 2: Profile updating interface

Figure 3: Interfaces to add a new project and users

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157

Figure 4: Project editing interface

The second component is a kind of Learning

Management System, the platform in which online

courses as well as accompanied files (teacher’s

photo, multimedia files) are assembled before the

online dissemination.

Figure 5: Example of a Text Frame

The third component is a tool that generates the

Web pages by interpreting the xml files containing

the learning material. The tool translates the xml

files into “jsp” files and sends them to the web

server. These pages are presented to learners via the

Internet. Its interface has the form of a standard

Web page with the index of the actual lesson at the

left, which corresponds to the Knowledge Network

illustrated in the figure 1, with the actual topic’s

content displayed at the right. In the Figure 6 one

can see the hyperlink words “Reference” and

“Demo” below the instructor’s photo to display the

referenced document and to activate the multimedia

demonstration (video clip, Flash file, etc.). There

are also some highlighted words in the text; by

passing the mouse over these words, a small yellow

box will appear to explain the concept or to give a

definition.

The forum for discussion between students can

be opened by clicking on one of the six mailboxes

icons labelled from “Group A” to “Group F”.

Figure 7 illustrates a window of exchanged

messages from members of a group. We repeat that

each mailbox’s content is anchored to the

corresponding topic of the lesson. Thus, we can

lately trace the student’s knowledge evolution.

Figure 6: The LINC Learner’s Interface

Finally, the three hand-icons are for the

instructor’s intervention when it is necessary. If the

red Stop-hand icon is highlighted, the discussion is

going too far from the underlying topic; the

instructor gives then a sign to call back the learners.

If the yellow Attention-hand icon is highlighted, the

discussion may be in the wrong way, the instructor

gives then some hints to help the learners. And

when the green Good-hand is highlighted, the

instructor encourages the learners to continue on the

actual track or to promise a bonus, an award, etc.

We note that his/her role in the case of a similar

course is more suitable as animator, facilitator, and

questioner, i.e. less important than the learner’s role

in the learning process.

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Figure 7: The LINC Learner’s Forum

5 INITIAL EXPERIMENTATION

AND RESULT

We have used this e-Learning tool in a trimester

programming course of our university. We have

created ten lessons using the authoring system and

fifteen Flash files for the demonstrations

accompanied each lesson. The course is given for

thirty six students of the first year. In each meeting

in the classroom, we access to the Web site and

project the Web pages on a big screen. After the

class, the students are encouraged to using the LINC

at home or in laboratory to review lessons and to

collaborate with the group’s members to respond to

questions by using the LINC’s forum. There are six

groups with six students per group. We consider the

LINC as a new pedagogical resource allowing to

enhancing the learning in the classroom. With this

tool, we offer to students more opportunities to

exchange their opinions on the subject matter. They

can do that comfortably at home and at times

convenient to them.

We know that a successful collaborative learning

should be a problem-based learning. That is, the

learners have to collectively resolve a concrete

problem. However, the actual course is not a

workshop, nor having some projects to be realized.

Thus, it is difficult to motivate the students. We

then try to do something similar to a problem-based

learning by elaborating the appropriate questions for

each lesson, and encouraging students to answer

these questions. If a group has a right answer, all

members in this group will benefice the same bonus.

In the first two weeks, the questions haven’t

bonus’s promising, and because of the timidity

(most the students don’t meet together before the

course) and some students have technical problem to

access to the site, so any student participated to the

forum. From the third week, we announced a

specific bonus for each question. The participation

rate then augmented day by day, from 30% to 70%

and may be more now. Comparing with the past

trimesters, we observed a relative profoundness in

the learning. What is more evident is that the

appointments we normally have with students are

reduced, because they can now directly post their

questions on the forum to other group’s members.

By following the forum, we also recognize the real

knowledge level of students, and the more

importance is that, through their messages, we can

easily detect some misconceptions or

misunderstandings about the subject matter; so we

can clarify them in the next meeting.

At the end of the course, we had distributed a

questionnaire to collect students’ evaluation about

this tool. Generally speaking, we state that there

was the satisfaction of almost every student. With

this result as well as the evident advantage for the

instructor, we believe that the LINC software is very

useful, to both learners and teacher, and thus, we

confirm the two hypotheses mentioned above. In the

next future, we plan to use it in more courses and we

will have a full evaluation of it.

6 CONCLUSION

In summary, basing on some appropriate theories of

learning and e-Learning, as well as on the lesson

learned from the projects’ experiences reported by

several researchers, we have developed the LINC, a

Web-based learning tool. This system presents

lessons to learners with multimedia demonstration

files, which are very necessary for the learning of

procedural knowledge. In addition, there is a

discussion forum integrated in the system, which

allows six small groups of learners and an instructor

to exchange messages related to every lesson’s topic

without leaving the learning context; this way can

increase the learning effectiveness and avoid certain

problems in the collaborative learning, at the same

time, it encourages the competition between groups.

The LINC is now in its experimenting phase of

mixed-mode learning. The preliminary result is very

positive. In a near future, we will report its

deployment in more courses with the concrete

results and data collection to effectively evaluate all

other aspects of it.

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