Abstract:
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Context awareness is a necessary feature for mobile collocated
collaborative learning. In this paper we describe how requirements for contextaware
cooperative learning activities are derived from the jigsaw technique
augmented with the use of mobile devices, applications to support the activities
of groups, and tools to provide context-awareness to detect group formation.
The emergence of groups is detected based on the location of the students
within the classroom, but this information has to be careful filtered to evaluate
the degree of uncertainty and protect from erroneous estimations. A three-phase
strategy to manage uncertainty by identifying possible sources of uncertainty,
representing uncertain information, and determining how to proceed under the
presence of uncertainty is used for this propose. These requirements are
validated and confirmed in experiments with students working together in the
classroom, measuring neutral or positive effects on learning and the usefulness
of introducing mobile devices, group support applications, and context awareness.
The ratio of unwanted interruptions to users made by the system is used to
evaluate the utility of the system. Results show that by managing uncertainty,
location estimation becomes more reliable, thus increasing the usefulness of the
learning application. |