Aurora Vizcaíno, Jose A. Olivas, Manuel Prieto

Laboratorio de Cognición, Colaboración y Aprendizaje

Departamento de Informática

Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Ronda de Calatrava 5

Ciudad Real 13071 España

Tel: + 34 926 295300 Fax: +34 926 295354

COVER PAGE

Many of our ordinary activities take place in common with others. As R. Joiner said, our personal knowledge is increased by means of the interaction processes. A more general concept is offered by L. S. Vygotsky with the notion of Zone of Proximal Development, defined as the distance between the actual development level settled by a problem solving capacity, and the potential development level determined by the problem resolution under the assistance of another –more capable – person or system.

On the other hand, the increase of information technology possibilities and particularly that from Computer Networks and Internet, allow us to build useful collaborative environments for learning.

Collaborative learning environments should:

• Provide new information, preferably related with learners actual knowledge levels.
• Assist learners orienting them in the right direction, and not allowing passive or endangering attitudes.
• Control and support communication, providing a mechanism for negotiation and conflict solution.

Considering these characteristics our group had developed a tool whose main objective is to provide a work methodology to develop procedural skills.

The system structure is client-server with an additional Knowledge Base Management structures that guarantees the correct use of communication tools and performs the Learning Orientation. The system guarantees enough liberty degrees and initiative for learners.

Communication components include facilities for instant, differed and seudo-differed information transactions.

Knowledge acquisition and representation consists on giving empty tables (using natural language and Fuzzy Logic) to the partners, to fill in by means of Cooperation and Negotiation processes, to get:

1. A list of all the objects of the problem, with its attributes and values. O-A-V-tables (Object-Attribute-Value).
2. All the possible actions with the objects involved and a brief description. A-O-D-tables (Action-Objects-Description).
3. A Knowledge Map: The sequence of operations to get the goal.

Then, the Knowledge Based Management Facility (KBMF) interacts with the team members, generating the corresponding algorithm. The system also uses an oriented graph containing a hierarchical taxonomy and the Learner’s Procedure Plan Editor. Figure 1 depicts the Plan Editor’s interface.

Figure 1

The client application must be autonomous in the sense that it must accomplish all tasks that don’t need the communication with others clients or with the KBMF.

The server have a structure of multiple layers, the lowest level is the Communications Core (see figure 2). The middle layer is oriented to Knowledge Management (acquisition and representation, KBMF) and the highest level is composed by a set of applications that will change depending of the ambient where the system is employed.

Figure 2: Server Structure

The first version of our system is the APIC-2 (figure 3) is a point to point system that allows the communication Chat, file transfer, whiteboard, e-mail, image shared, and video and audio transmission.

Figure 3: Apic-2 Interface

Nowadays, the most interesting features in our system are related with knowledge acquisition and representation. The uses of Fuzzy Logic in the KBMF let the partners use natural language to represent the knowledge.

The combination of O-A-V-tables (Object-Attribute-Value), A-O-D-tables (Action-Objects-Description) and Knowledge Map allows us to dynamic solutions. That is very important to get solutions for very different kind of problems.

Our group is now developing a tool based in a work methodology aiding construction of mental abilities and generalised problem-solving procedures. This new tool uses interactive synchronous distributed collaborations principles for learning.

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