This article follows previous research works on the possibility of applying online social networks for educational purposes, and mainly focuses on how Facebook is being used as a platform to... Show More

This article follows previous research works on the possibility of applying online social networks for educational purposes, and mainly focuses on how Facebook is being used as a platform to communicate among students of a student development project run by a local tertiary institute in Hong Kong which aimed to facilitate promotion and foster participation and interaction. The study takes on the perspectives from 7 student coaches and evaluate on the positive achievement as well as difficulties in promoting self-initiated holistic development via Facebook from 2011 to 2013. The study shows that instant interaction between participants and student coaches via Facebook leads to faster and more effective information circulation compared to traditional communication channels such as email, posters or bulletins. However, the lack of proactive discussions initiated by participants themselves, and the difficulties in establishing and maintaining active interactions between coaches and participants had been observed. Such passive practice by participants has hindered the effectiveness of fostering self-initiated holistic development.

This paper compares two projects that adopted social bookmarking (SB) technology in different educational contexts at the same institution, a large, research-intensive university in the north of... Show More

This paper compares two projects that adopted social bookmarking (SB) technology in different educational contexts at the same institution, a large, research-intensive university in the north of England. The first study used social bookmarking in a multicultural postgraduate class to increase interactivity within the whole class and to produce an archive of course-related online resources to engage potentially isolated students. The second study used social bookmarking to support first year undergraduate students' independent research activities, to facilitate collaboration and to aid the tutor's preparation for seminar classes. The paper provides an outline of the two studies, including a description of the pedagogic approaches adopted in them, developments in the pedagogy over time and evaluative and usage data that were collected. The discussion focuses on five main issues: SB literacy; SB benefits; SB costs and risks; SB pedagogy; and SB alternatives.

Cognitive diagnosis is aimed at inferring the degree of cognitive state from observations. This paper considers cognitive diagnosis as an instance of model-based diagnosis, which has been studied in... Show More

Cognitive diagnosis is aimed at inferring the degree of cognitive state from observations. This paper considers cognitive diagnosis as an instance of model-based diagnosis, which has been studied in artificial intelligence for many years. The model-based cognitive diagnosis we present runs on a model of students' courses in terms of knowledge items that they may learn, tests them and helps them to understand their faults in cognition, and thus improves their learning performance in an E-learning environment. To do so, courses are formally defined as set of knowledge items with requirement constraints, and associated with a set of exam questions. Moreover, the authors introduce Bayesian net to build a model of cognitive diagnosis, using probabilistic inference on it to help a student understand what knowledge item he/she does not master, and the recommendations like what should be done next. Experimental results show that the group of students with such understanding can improve their testing performance greatly in an E-learning environment. Although the demo system has been integrated with a specific computerized adaptive testing system, the general technique could be applied to a broad class of intelligent tutoring systems.

E-learning, knowledge sharing, creativity design and collaborative innovation are all concepts that are key elements of this case study. There is a particular focus here on the question of what role... Show More

E-learning, knowledge sharing, creativity design and collaborative innovation are all concepts that are key elements of this case study. There is a particular focus here on the question of what role design should play in innovation. Other key topics include the role of e-learning and of long life learning. Such roles are not always easy to explain, since they differ from case to case, but Design in Italy is – and will increasingly become – a definite value and a competitive tool. Design can and must be a fundamental part of every single company's production, communication and distribution strategy. Every e-learning platform launched by Università Telematica San Raffaele Roma's “Design for Business & Business for Design” is intended to demonstrate that design is neither a sole interest nor an exclusive prerogative of large companies or those operating in sectors that have traditionally been design oriented. In fact, design-driven education and innovation is a basic lever for competitiveness and internationalization that is available in every sector. Creating an e-learning platform is an important way of building a designing and community identity; a significant chance to meet and a landmark not only for professionals, but also for creative people working outside established enterprises.