Promotion of Self-Assessment for Learners in Online Discussion Using the Visualization Software

Abstract

This chapter describes a method of self-assessment for learners in a collaborative discussion. The authors propose this method of self-assessment in an online discussion and examine its effectiveness through the development and evaluation of a software program in order to visualize the discussion on a Bulletin Board System (BBS). The software, referred to as the “Bulletin board Enrollee Envisioner” (i-Bee), can visually display the co-occurrence relation between keywords and learners. Thus, i-Bee can display content-wise contributions made by each learner to the discussion. In addition, i-Bee can display the recent level of participation of each learner and the frequency of the learner’s use of each keyword. Through the evaluation, the authors revealed that i-Bee enables students to assess and reflect upon their discussion, understand the condition, and reorganize their commitment in a discussion that reflects their learning activity.