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The Ecological Approach: Purpose-based Capture and Use of Information about Learners |
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Dr. Gord McCalla ARIES Lab Department of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan |
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Recently there has been much discussion of how educational material can be represented in learning objects and collected in repositories. In this talk I will argue that much of this discussion has paid too little attention to learners' end use context. I will put forward an approach to the design of learning object repositories that shows promise to allow information about learners' actual interactions with learning objects to be naturally captured and used in a multitude of ways to support learners (and teachers) in achieving their goals. The approach is based on two ideas: (i) transforming learning objects into learning agents, actively able to negotiate their interactions with one another and with personal agents representing learners; and (ii) attaching models of learners to the learning objects they interact with and then mining these models for patterns that serve various purposes. A learning object repository built on these lines essentially becomes an ecological system, evolving and changing as more and more is known about learners and their interactions with the learning objects in the repository. This ecological approach not only has interesting implications for e-learning research, but perhaps also can provide insights for semantic web research. The ecological approach is being explored by the University of Saskatchewan node in the LORNET project, a new NSERC research network investigating many aspects of learning object repositories.
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