A Notification Manager to support collaborative learning in LMS Moodle

A Notification Manager to support collaborative learning in LMS Moodle Leovy Echeverría *

Ruth Cobos

Facultad de Ingeniería Informática Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Montería Montería, Colombia [email protected], [email protected]

* Department of Computer Science Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain [email protected]

Mario Morales Department of Mathematics and Statistics Universidad de Córdoba, Montería Montería, Colombia [email protected] Abstract—The main purpose of this paper is to present an awareness information service called Notification Manager. The implementation of the manager is embedded into the Learning Management System Moodle. The aim of the Notification Manager is to support student-student interactions in collaborative learning tasks performed by students and instructors into the system. To test the implemented manager, an experimentation was carried out with students from the Simulation course at the Faculty of Informatics Engineering at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, UPB-Montería (Colombia) in the second semester of 2013.

information such as other participants’ locations in the shared space (where are they working?), their actions (what are they doing?), the interaction history (what have they already done?), and their intentions (what are they going to do next?)” [11]. On the other hand, Gutwin and Greenberg (2002) define workspace awareness as “the up-to-the-moment understanding of another person’s interaction with the shared workspace”. In this definition the researchers emphasize in two aspects. First, workspace awareness is awareness of people and how they interact with the workspace. Second, workspace awareness is limited to events happening in the workspace [10].

Keywords- Collaborative Learning; Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL); Notification Manager; Moodle

Additionally, the Learning Management Systems (LMS) are emerging systems that have several aspects to support teaching process. For instance, the Moodle (www.moodle.org) system is a LMS widely used in the academic and corporate field. This system has been improved through the development of new services [17, 21].

I.

INTRODUCTION

Collaborative learning has many advantages and uses compared to others learning theories [5, 6]. In this sense, computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) appeared for supporting collaborative learning as an alternative to help in traditional learning methods [14]. This has been letting the researchers’ community develop several CSCL environments and applications to support collaborative learning tasks. In research studies, a great amount of CSCL environments and tools are reported, as a result of the abundant research performed in this field. Besides, it is frequently to find new functionalities embedded in these environments for supporting the well-known awareness information services [9, 10, 23]. In according with the reviewed literature, the awareness concept can be defined as “to be aware”, conscious, not ignorant, having knowledge or being well informed [8]. In the context of groupware systems and CSCL environments, several authors have been developing several definitions about awareness. On one hand, Gutwin and Greenberg (1995) state that “group awareness is maintained by keeping track of

In this article, we propose the development of a new awareness service called “Notification Manager”. This manager intends to support student-student interactions in collaborative learning tasks performed by students and instructors into the Moodle system. For the implementation of the proposed awareness service, we selected four information elements from four types of awareness: group, tasks, workspace and social awareness. The paper is structured as follow. Next, the State of the Art is presented. Section III presents a general description of the developed Notification Manager and its implementation in the Moodle system. In Section IV, the experimentation is explained. The Section V presents the main results and discussions. Finally, the paper ends with some conclusions and future research issues (Section VI).

978-1-4799-3190-3/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 3-5 April 2014, Military Museum and Cultural Center, Harbiye, Istanbul, Turkey 2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) Page 492

II.

A. Awareness Services Awareness is a very complex concept. The community of researchers in this area has been investigating about the definitions and the type of awareness services [9, 10, 11, 23]. We present several descriptions from the literature about of the awareness, group awareness and asynchronous change awareness. Awareness:

x

As the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, awareness term can be defined as “to be aware”, conscious, not ignorant, having knowledge or being well informed [8]. Awareness is the knowledge of other people’s tasks that is necessary for a person can complete her/his part of a group activity [11].

Group Awareness: x

Is the information that is required for the participants of a work group, with the aim to perform the activities in a good manner. This information is about the shared artifacts and the group process [11].

Asynchronous change awareness: x

“Is the capacity of a person to monitor the changes made to a collaborative document or graphical workspace by other participants over time” [23].

B. Types of Awareness Services In Table I, the information associated with the types of Awareness Services and their information elements is presented. The showed information is the result of the analysis from the research works in [9, 10, 11, 23]. TABLE I. TYPES OF AWARENESS SERVICES TYPES OF AWARENESS SERVICE Group, Social And Workspace Awareness

Informal Awareness

Identity (Who?) Actions (What?) Processes (How?)

Group structure Awareness

Identity (Who?) Actions (What?) Processes (How?) Intentions (Future) Identity (Who?) Location (Where?) Actions (What?) Processes (How?) Reasons (Why?)

STATE OF THE ART

The current section presents the basis of the Awareness Services in terms of its definitions, the types of Awareness Services and the integration of these services in several learning environments.

x

Tasks Awareness

INFORMATION ELEMENTS (SPECIFIC QUESTION) Identity (Who?) Location (Where?) Actions (What?) Processes (How?) Interactions (When?) Intentions (Future) Identity (Who?) Location (Where?) Actions (What?)

Asyncrhonous change Awareness

Knowledge Awareness

Identity (Who?)

As we mentioned in the introduction of this paper, we selected four information elements from four type of awareness: group, tasks, workspace and social awareness. These types of awareness and their information elements are highlighted in the Table I. C. Awareness Services in CSCW and CSCL environments, Knowledge Management Systems and Learning Management Systems For analyzing the use of Awareness Services in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Knowledge Management (KM) Systems and Learning Management Systems (LMS), it is important to identify the advantages of awareness and the way how these types of services support the collaboration processes. In CSCW environments, a collaboration process is made by mean of four sequential processes: co-presence, awareness, communication and collaboration. [20]. As [20], the co-presence gives us the sensation that we are in a shared workspace with someone at the same time. Awareness allows us to identify each others’ tasks. In the communication, we can exchange messages. Finally, in the collaboration process, we can share and complete a specific activity with other users. In CSCL environments, the implementation of awareness services is very relevant for an effective collaborative learning. As [12], the collaborative learning is the way how the people take part in coordinated works to resolve a problem or to perform a specific activity in a group manner. In this context, the more relevant type of awareness for the students are: social, tasks and conceptual awareness. Besides, the workspace awareness is proposed in [11]. More in detail: x

Social awareness provides information associated with the relationship into the groups to carry out the learning activities.

x

Tasks awareness show information about how the students complete the tasks.

x

Conceptual awareness refers to how the knowledge affects the students’ activities in a team work.


x

Workspace awareness is the knowledge of students’ interactions in a shared workspace.

Moreover, as the researches presented in [22], the KM Systems area has some challenges for the future implementation of this type of systems: i) constructing perspectives on knowledge from threaded discussions, ii) distinguishing learning tasks, iii) representing collaborative perspectives, iv) converging ideas, v) negotiating agreement vi) encouraging system use, vii) scaffolding learning practices. x

x

x

x

x

Constructing perspectives on knowledge from threaded discussions: some KM Systems consist mainly of tools such as chats, forums, etc, with typed nodes and other complementary software. However, it is important to design systems to support both knowledge construction and collaboration with a structure of personal and group perspectives. Distinguishing learning tasks: most of the students prefer to participate in discussions, replying freely without thinking in our proper ideas. But, the correct construction of knowledge implicates distinct several tasks such as brainstorming, articulating, reacting, organizing, analyzing and generalizing. Representing collaborative perspectives: it is important that the true construction of knowledge is supported in three basis perspectives or views: group, personal and comparison perspectives. Converging ideas: it is a common problem in the most of KM Systems because the tree structure obligatory to support standard threaded discussion is insufficient for collaboration. In this sense, collaboration involves both divergence (brainstorming) and convergence (negotiation, synthesis, summary, etc). Negotiating agreement: the students need to feel that their opinions are listened and their ideas will be accepted as group positions.

x

Encouraging system use: the main issue of KM Systems is that some people do not want to use these systems. Due to people are undecided to accept another type of communication technology. For this reason, it is recommended do not impose these systems.

x

Scaffolding learning practices: the social practices are fundamental features to support collaborative learning. A practice is the set of tacit procedures that are culturally adopted by a community [22].

Finally, some research studies about LMS have been centering in the use of the open-source systems. These studies provide relevant information about the analysis of Moodle [18] and others LMS such as Blackboard [15], LAMS [3], Sakai [16], ANGEL Learning Management Suite [1], DotLRN [16], ATUTOR Learning Management Tools [2], CLAROLINE [4], DOKEOS [7] and WEBCT [19]. In this context, Moodle has many benefits recognized for the research community compared with others LMS [13, 15, 16].

Moodle is constantly growing as a result of the contribution of the developers and researchers. Specifically, this system has been improved through the integration of new functionalities. However, Moodle has some constraints. For instance it does not have implemented awareness information services. III.

THE NOTIFICATION MANAGER

A. General Description We have considered four concepts associated with the present research work: i) workspace, ii) topics, iii) tasks and iv) knowledge artifacts. x

Workspace: it is the shared space by students and instructors where they perform the collaborative tasks in the Moodle course. Each workspace can contain different topics.

x

Topic: it is comprised by several learning tasks and knowledge artifacts.

x

Task: it is the activity scripted by the instructor and completed by students in a topic. In the Moodle system the students can perform the following collaborative tasks: i) submit entries, ii) submit comments to other classmates’ entries and iii) submit ratings to other classmates’ entries.

x

Knowledge artifact: it is the resource that allows students add content to specific topics in the Moodle course. Moodle supports a range of knowledge artifacts such as files, links, books, pages, etc.

The Notification Manager embedded into the LMS Moodle retrieves information from the student-student interactions into the system. This information is related to the collaborative tasks completed by the students in the knowledge artifacts of their fellow classmates in the shared workspace. The mentioned manager has a set of rules that trigger the information through the notifications. These rules determine the type of notification that can be sent to the students. The students can receive two types of notifications: i) notifications about submitted comments to their entries and ii) notifications about submitted ratings to their entries. Moreover, these notifications are displayed through the graphical user interface of the system. The notifications contain detailed information about four elements associated with group, tasks, workspace and social awareness. These notifications intend to answer the following questions: x

Identity (Who performed the collaborative learning tasks?)

x

Location (Where were performed the collaborative learning tasks?)

x

Actions (What collaborative learning tasks were made?)

x

Interactions (When were performed the collaborative learning tasks?)


B. Description of the implementation in Moodle For the implementation of the Notification Manager, we developed a new component as a Moodle Activity Module [18]. This component was developed using PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor), HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language) and MySQL. Besides, it was integrated in the system as a “block” plug-in. The Fig. 1 shows a screenshot with the Notification Manager integrated in the Moodle system.

Fig. 2. Screenshot with a Report of Students’ Activities

x

Fig. 1. Screenshot of the Notification Manager in Moodle

The mentioned component supports two functionalities in the manager as follows: x

Report of Activities: it presents detailed information about the collaborative learning tasks completed by the students in the system. This report can be read by the instructor. The Fig. 2 shows a Report with the Activities completed by the students. In this Figure, the students’ names are in the first column, the number of comments per student is in the second column, the number of ratings per student is in the third column and the total number of activities per student is presented in the fourth column.

Report of Notifications: it has two views. The student’ view and the instructor’ view. The student’ view shows a report of the received notifications by the student. He/she can read the notifications about both submitted comments and ratings to their entries. The Fig. 3 shows a Report with the notifications received by a student. In this Figure, the date and time of each activity are in the first column, the description of the activity is in the second column and the notification about the activity is in the third column.

Fig. 3. Screenshot with a Report of notifications received by a student


When a student chooses a notification about a submitted comment to his/her entry, he/she can read the comment wrote by his/her fellow classmate. And when a student chooses a notification about a submitted rating to his/her entry, he/she can see the rating submitted by his/her fellow classmate. Finally, the instructor’ view presents a students’ report with the Notifications received by the students (See Figure 4). In the Fig. 4, the students’ names are in the first column, the number of notifications about comments per student is in the second column, the number of notifications about ratings per student is in the third column and the total number of notifications per student is presented in the fourth column. Besides, the instructor can pick a student’ name, and he/she can see a detailed report of the notifications received by the selected student.

submitted comments and ratings to other fellow classmates’ programs. The Moodle system has been sending notifications to students about the submitted comments and ratings. These notifications are sent through the Notification Manager. Besides, the students answered a satisfaction questionnaire. The aim of this questionnaire was to know the results of the collaborative work completed by the students in Moodle, to determine whether the notifications sent by the manager helped to increase the student-to-student interactions in the system and to analyze whether these notifications improved the learning tasks performed by the students. The results obtained in the questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Finally, to determine the effect in the students’ performance of the notifications sent by the manager, we had compared the obtained final grades by a group of students (control group) that performed the same collaborative learning tasks in a previous Simulation course in Moodle system without the Notification Manager, with the obtained final grades by the students in the current Simulation course (treatment group). For this purpose, the two sample t-test was used. Both the students in the control group and the students in the treatment group were enrolled in the “Simulation” course at the Faculty of Informatics Engineering. And it was not made a random selection of the students, because all the enrolled students in both courses participated in the experience. V.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

At the end of the experimentation, we could corroborate that the students received an average of seven notifications about submitted comments to their programs and an average of three notifications about submitted ratings to their programs. This let us to conclude that the students were more motivated to write comments to other fellow classmates’ programs than to submit ratings to other fellow classmates’ programs.

Fig. 4. Screenshot with a Report of Students’ Notifications

IV. EXPERIMENTATION In the second semester of 2013 academic year in the “Simulation” course at the Faculty of Informatics Engineering at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, UPB-Montería (Colombia), the students and the instructor of this course has been using Moodle to perform collaborative learning tasks during the “laboratories of simulation” topic. During this topic the students have to perform three collaborative learning tasks: i) submit collaborative programs, ii) submit comments to other classmates’ programs, and iii) submit ratings to other classmates’ programs. Nowadays, each student had submitted six programs in the system, and they had

The results of the satisfaction questionnaire showed that the 53.8% of students agreed that to write comments help them to learn new concepts. The 69.2% of students argued that to write comments help them on the one hand, to find successes and errors in the completed programs, and on the other hand, to compare contents. And, the 61.5% of students agreed that to write comments help them to learn in a group manner. Finally, the 69.2% of students felt that the notifications sent by the manager were accurate and useful in their learning processes. For analyzing the students’ performance in both control group and treatment group, the results of two sample t-test with a significance level of 10% showed that there is a significant difference in the mean values between two groups. The grade average of the treatment group is greater than the grade average of the control group. The values of the grade average were 2.383 and 1.887 respectively. This allowed us to corroborate that the Notification Manager had a positive effect in the students’ performance. The performance in the treatment group was greater than the performance in the control group.


VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK In this paper, we had presented a Notification Manager. This manager is an awareness information service to support student-student interactions in collaborative learning tasks completed by students and instructors in a LMS. The manager was integrated into the LMS Moodle through the development of a new component as a Moodle Activity Module.

notifications about other collaborative learning tasks completed by the students in the Moodle system.

An experimentation was shown in this document with the aim to test the developed manager. Nowadays, the implementation of the Notification manager has been tested in the course of “Simulation” from Faculty of Informatics Engineering, at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Montería, Colombia).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was partly funded by the Spanish National Plan of R+D, project number TIN2011-24139, by the Autonomous Community of Madrid, e-Madrid project, number S2009/TIC-1650, by UPB-Montería project number 13309/11-G007 and “Carolina Foundation” Scholarship.

On the one hand, the students submitted their knowledge artifacts (programs) in the system, and they have been submitting comments and ratings to other classmates’ artifacts (programs) in a specific topic: “laboratories of simulation”. The Moodle system has been sending notifications to students through the Notification Manager. These notifications are about the submitted comments and ratings. In order to analyze the results of the experimentation the students answered a satisfaction questionnaire. The results from the questionnaire were examined using descriptive statistics. On the other hand, the current study tried to determine the effect of the notifications sent by the manager in the students’ performance. It was possible, through the comparison of the final grades of a students’ control group in a previous Simulation course in Moodle (this group was not influenced by the Notification Manager), with the obtained final grades by the students in the current Simulation course. For this, the two sample t-test was used. The results of the satisfaction questionnaire showed that to write comments to other fellow classmates’ programs was the most representative collaborative learning task performed by the students in the system. In this context, the 69.2% of students argued that this task help them to find successes and errors in the programs, to compare contents, and to learn in a group manner. Besides, these students felt that the notifications received were beneficial for their learning process in the system. This let us verify that the students felt more motivated to interact with their classmates.

Finally, we will test the implementation doing other research studies with students at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Montería) and other Colombian universities such as Universidad del Valle-UNIVALLE (Cali).

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Additionally, the students’ performance that completed the collaborative learning tasks in the Moodle system with the Notification Manager was greater than the students’ performance of the control group. This allowed us to corroborate that the manager help to the students’ learning process to be better.

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