Collaborative Creation of Authentic Examples with Location for U-Learning presented at the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Mult Conference on Computer Science & Information Systems 2008 in Amsterdman, Netherlands, July 22-27, 2008

Abstract

Giving examples to students or letting students give examples is important in ordinary instruction. However, it is difficult for teacher to provide work-out examples to students since the proper examples are depending on the contexts and varying with students’ life experiences and knowledge. In order to deal with the limitation of ordinary classroom, the study develops a collaborative example-creation platform for students to generate, explain and share their own examples of learning concept by mobile devices. Additionally, the sources of the generated examples are derived from real world, that is, every example is authentic example and presents a specific instance of the theoretical concept. Through the creation and share of authentic examples, students can not only elaborate their existing concepts but also construct their concepts from single or multiple work-out examples. Except for the collaborative creation platform, we have also implemented a Learner Agent residing in students’ cell phones for assisting students to create authentic examples. With the agent, a created authentic example is attached with its location information, which indicates where the authentic example happened, and other students can learn something form the example with location information or go to the location to experience the example if they are interested in that. It can help the students easily understand the learning concept.