Does the Web Contain Pedagogically Informed Materials? The COSREW Outcomes.

Web resources allow a learner to have more opportunities for study at any time and any place. It is still difficult, however, for learners to choose the right study materials to match their desired learning. A competence-based system for recommending study materials from the Web (COSREW) is proposed, based on the learner's competences. COSREW generates a list of learning paths, and extracts search terms from the competence statements on the chosen learning path. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate COSREW's recommendations. The first explored the differences between search engines and the qualities of the study material links in helping learners achieve their competences. The second experiment explored the differences between search keywords, and the third experiment compared COSREW with freely- browsing learning modes. The results showed that the Web is currently not a good resource for a pedagogically informed competence-based system, since Web pages predominantly comprise text-based subject matter content with little support for learning competence or capability.

[1]  Hugh C. Davis,et al.  Transforming a Competency Model to Assessment Items , 2008, WEBIST.

[2]  Judy Kay,et al.  MOOCs: So Many Learners, So Much Potential ... , 2013, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[3]  Lester Gilbert,et al.  Principles of E-Learning Systems Engineering , 2007 .

[4]  Dietrich Albert,et al.  Competence-based Knowledge Structures for Personalised Learning , 2005, ELeGI Conference.

[5]  Ana Gabriela Maguitman,et al.  Assessing Conceptual Similarity to Support Concept Mapping , 2002, FLAIRS Conference.

[6]  Leslie J. Briggs,et al.  Principles of Instructional Design , 1974 .

[7]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[8]  David Carlson,et al.  Modeling XML Applications with UML: Practical e-Business Applications , 2001 .

[9]  Hugh C. Davis,et al.  Transforming a Competency Model to Parameterised Questions in Assessment , 2008, WEBIST.

[10]  Donald L. Kirkpatrick,et al.  Implementing the Four Levels: A Practical Guide for Effective Evaluation of Training Programs , 2007 .

[11]  Chuansheng Chen,et al.  Response Style and Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Rating Scales Among East Asian and North American Students , 1995 .

[12]  R. Garland.  The Mid-Point on a Rating Scale: Is it Desirable? , 1991 .

[13]  Terry Anderson,et al.  Interaction for lifelong learning , 2004, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[14]  David H. Jonassen,et al.  Task Analysis Methods for Instructional Design , 1998 .

[15]  P. Ramsden.  Learning to Teach in Higher Education , 1991 .

[16]  D. Mcclelland.  Testing for competence rather than for "intelligence". , 1973, The American psychologist.

[17]  Demetrios G. Sampson,et al.  Competence Models in Technology-Enhanced Competence-Based Learning , 2008 .

[18]  Michael D. Gordon,et al.  Finding Information on the World Wide Web: The Retrieval Effectiveness of Search Engines , 1999, Inf. Process. Manag..

[19]  Charles M. Reigeluth,et al.  Instructional-design Theories and Models : A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Volume II , 1999 .

[20]  J. Everett,et al.  Response Styles in a Cross-Cultural Managerial Study , 1984 .

[21]  Andreas Zimmermann,et al.  An Operational Definition of Context , 2007, CONTEXT.

[22]  G. Cheetham,et al.  Professions, Competence And Informal Learning , 2005 .

[23]  Adam Kilgarriff.  Googleology is Bad Science , 2007, Computational Linguistics.

[24]  M. David Merrill,et al.  Instructional Design Theory , 1971 .