We describe how the technical and methodological innovations developed at the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, can contribute to education. The spectrum of innovations range from software applications to schematic models and intercultural collaboration. The research has been multidisciplinary: experts from different domains have shaped the realization of the innovations.
Jeliot [2] is an innovative tool for learning to understand the inner processes of programs. It works on the Web and it can visualize algorithms or Java programs written by the user. Traditionally, algorithm animation [1] has been applied for demonstration purposes. However, an interactive animation available for students is more useful for learning. Jeliot goes one step further: the learner constructs an interactive animation by himself, which leads to still deeper understanding.
The key idea of Jeliot is simple but powerful. Each data type has a collection of ready-made visual representations. The user submits his algorithm to Jeliot and selects a representation for each variable he wants to animate. Jeliot compiles the algorithm to an applet, which shows animated operations performed on the selected variables.
Jeliot is a representative example of a student-centered learning technology: the learner can interactively analyze the consequences of different solutions or the process of decision making. Besides supporting studies in comprehensive school level, Jeliot is well-suited for university students. An ideal setting is a data structures laboratory course. The adaptivity of Jeliot makes it also a potential environment for many distance learning settings. In practical experiments Jeliot has proven to be useful.
The crucial pedagogical idea of Jeliot is student involvement. Jeliot encourages a student to work on his own problem, even a very preliminary one. Therefore, Jeliot is a tool for open problem solving: the student is not only solving a given programming assignment, but defining his own problem, and studying its behavior. This approach can also bridge the traditional gap between research and teaching at the university. Even a freshman can act like a researcher when analyzing a simple, but meaningful algorithmic problem.
Also other than algorithmic problems can be visualized using tools similar to Jeliot. In other disciplines, various phenomena can be modeled as processes. Given an appropriate language to define the dynamics of these processes, the functional principle of Jeliot could be applied to produce visualizations to these phenomena.
Compared to simulation, our point of view is algorithm-oriented. Instead of modeling a phenomenon by for example differential equations and observing the phenomenon with given parameters, we describe a process step-by-step, using a programming language. This approach gives a student tools to look into the details of the phenomenon, instead of using a formula which usually hides the details under its beautiful cover.
Behind the hype, agents are merely pieces of software helping and acting on the behalf of the user. In computer-supported education they can provide a personal, closer to optimal learning process to each individual learner. Although our project has been aimed at advancing special education, there is obvious transfer to non-disabled education, even to the education at the university. Innovations developed in this learning environment schema include a general description language for unconstrained development of learning materials, and a novel approach of adapting to the needs of people with disabilities.
The learning environment will include a software agent for every learning environment participant [4]. The first prototype agent supporting the learners is implemented. It offers a browser-like interface to the learning materials. The learning material can have significantly more functionality than HTML with interactive temporal aspects.
The openness of the environment enables various subject domains to be included in the material. The preparation of meaningful learning material has always been laborous. In our framework, the environment supports open-source learning materials: the material can reside on any Web-server, enabling universal access.
The assessment of every learner is ensured by building a learner profile from every learner according their actions during a learning session. The learner profile is primarily used by the agent in guiding the learner towards the learning goals, but the profiles can also be used for learner assessment by special teachers, neuropsychologists or therapists because of the possibility to present the profiles in a graphical form.
Concept mapping [5] is a useful method for a learner in his process to comprehend and interpret a complex subject. The original paper-and-pen approach suffers from physical limitations like the size and the two-dimensional nature of a sheet. In addition, it is not easy for a human to track all possible relationships between the nodes of a large map. Computer-aided concept mapping overcomes these difficulties [6].
Computers help the learner to maintain several views containing various aspects and details. The map can be implemented as a hypergraph, where a node may lead to a more detailed subgraph or to another related hypergraph. A node can lead even to a web page. Moreover, the computer-aided approach promotes collaborative uses of concept mapping both locally and over a network. We have developed an extension [7] of HTML allowing an easy integration of the concept maps with other materials on the Web.
Traditionally, a concept map is of a static nature. The computer makes it possible to apply concept mapping to dynamic phenomena, like processes, and algorithms. Animation gives means to change the highlighting of a map or to show the different phases of the evolving understanding. Thus concept mapping software can be used as a teaching tool. The teacher draws a map beforehand and present the animated construction of the map step by step during the lecture.
When considering the construction of a concept map, it is natural to present the history of a map as a script. Scripts offer several ways to observe and evaluate learning processes. A teacher finds out how his students perceive the topic of study as a map, and he can concentrate on problematic details.
Computers make it easy to compare maps of a student group. The maps of the students can be merged to one map, which is then compared with the teacher's map. The group can be divided to subgroups based on similarities of maps.
Evaluation of the learning process is one of the problems of computer-aided learning. When integrating a learning program with concept mapping software, it is possible to evaluate the learner throughout the learning process provided that the construction a concept map is required to proceed in the material. Then the learner does not necessarily notice that he is evaluated. An important advantage is that the system is able to react to misunderstanding early.
During the Spring 98 the Department of Computer Science, Univ. of Helsinki, initiated a distance education project with the University of Dar Es Salaam. It was a pilot project aiming at discovering possibilities and risks of a collaborative learning project where learning objectives and materials were designed and implemented in close cooperation between two groups, communicating with each other over the internet [3]. The topic of learning was the Java programming language. Although this project revealed more of difficulties in such a project than succeeded in its learning goals, the experiment did rise international interest. Subsequent project has been initiated between the universities of Marseille, Uppsala and Helsinki.
One of the key issues of the project was to encourage the students to work both as teachers and learners, and enhance the quality of the learning outcomes this way. Originally, the students from Helsinki were taking a course in computer uses in education and were learning the potential of the internet in distance education, whereas the Tanzanian students were learning Java. However, at the same time the Finnish students were also teachers of the Java language. In the preliminary project, the Tanzanian students had no role as teachers, a problem to be corrected in future projects.
Networking with its shared resources not only offers a new role for the university teacher as a mentor, tutor, coach, or supporter of the learning process, but it also increases the diversity among the students. In an ideal case, each student can contribute to the educational process with his own learning style. Thus, the learners' community no more consists of a homogeneous group of equally oriented students, but of individual learners who simultaneously participate in several learning groups, maybe with a different role in each one.
There are obvious couplings with the projects mentioned: Jeliot is useful also in distance education and concept maps with scripting are suitable in computer-aided adaptive learning environments by enhancing the usability and helping the learning and evaluation processes. Of course, adaptive learning environments can be distributed over a network as well. In fact, every project contributes something to other projects. Therefore we can say that the potential of framework described above is vast, but still unexploited. The research continues with interdisciplinary teams. However, it is worth noticing that at last the state-of-the-art computer science can and will provide genuine contribution in improving and cultivating higher education.
Jaakko Kurhila
Department of Computer Science
P.O. Box 26 (Teollisuuskatu 23)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
tel. +358 9 708 44664
fax +358 9 708 44441
kurhila@cs.helsinki.fi