Context Aware Ubiquitous Learning Environments for Peer-to-Peer
Collaborative Learning
Stephen J.H. Yang
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
National Central University, Taiwan, No.300, Jung-da Rd. JhongLi, Taiwan, 320
Tel: +886-3-4227151-35308
Context Aware Ubiquitous Learning Environments for Peer-to-Peer
Collaborative Learning
Stephen J.H. Yang
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
National Central University, Taiwan, No.300, Jung-da Rd. JhongLi, Taiwan, 320
Tel: +886-3-4227151-35308
Fax: +886-3-4222681
jhyang@csie.ncu.edu.tw
ABSTRACT
A ubiquitous learning environment provides an interoperable, pervasive, and seamless learning architecture
to connect, integrate, and share three major dimensions of learning resources: learning collaborators,
learning contents, and learning services. Ubiquitous learning is characterized by providing intuitive ways
for identifying right learning collaborators, right learning contents and right learning services in the right
place at the right time. Our context aware ubiquitous learning environment consists of three systems,
namely peer-to-peer content access and adaptation system, personalized annotation management system,
and multimedia real-time group discussion system. Since the effectiveness and efficiency of ubiquitous
learning heavily relies on learners’ surrounding context, in this paper, we will address a context model and
context acquisition mechanism for collecting contextual information at run time. We have built a context
aware ubiquitous learning environment and in this paper we will address how this newly designed
environment can fully support the needs of peer-to-peer collaborative learning.
Keywords
Ubiquitous learning, Context aware, Peer-to-peer, Collaborative learning
Introduction
Various learning systems have been developed in the past decade; the majority of these systems are implemented
either with client-server architecture or are centralized server based. The client-server and centralized server
approaches are metaphors of student-teacher and repository centric which reflect real world learning scenarios in
which teachers act as the content producers while students act as the content consumers.
The ubiquitous learning environment provides an interoperable, pervasive, and seamless learning architecture to
connect, integrate, and share three major dimensions of learning resources: learning collaborators, learning
contents, and learning services (Chang, & Sheu, 2002; Cheng, et. al., 2005; Haruo, et. al., 2003). Ubiquitous
learning is characterized by providing intuitive ways for identifying right collaborators, right contents and right
services in the right place at the right time based on learners surrounding context such as where and when the
learners are (time and space), what the learning resources and services available for the learners, and who are the
learning collaborators that match the learners’ needs (Ogata, & Yano, 2004; Zhang, Jin, & Lin, 2005; Takahata,
et. al., 2004). As a result, the effectiveness and efficiency of ubiquitous learning heavily relies on the
surrounding context of learners. We define the term “context” from two perspectives, one is from the learners,
and the other is from the learning services. From the learners’ perspective, context is defined as the surrounding
environment affecting learners’ Web services discovery and access, such as learners’ profiles and preferences,
the network channels and devices learners are using to connect to the Web, etc. From the services perspective,
context is defined as the surrounding environment affecting learning services delivery and execution, such as
service profiles, networks and protocols for service binding, devices and platforms for the service execution, etc.
Typical learning services for ubiquitous learning are device and network detection services; location tracking
services; calendar and social activities services; and content access services.
Virtual learning communities are information technology based cyberspaces in which individual and
collaborative learning is implemented by groups of geographically dispersed learners and providers of
knowledge to accomplish their goals of learning. There are no agreements on what constitutes a virtual learning
community. However, it has gained widespread acceptance that virtual learning communities are knowledge
based social entities where knowledge is the key to their success (Bhatt, 2001; Malhotra, 2000). An important
activity in a virtual learning community is the collaboration. Many virtual learning communities strive to attract
new members or encourage members to learn and to contribute knowledge. However, the knowledge per se does
not assure the success of virtual learning communities. It is the collaborative efforts made by the learners and
collaborators to manage the knowledge, to enrich the knowledge reservoir, and to help each other accumulate
their knowledge in their domain that is central to the continuous growth of the virtual learning communities.
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Collaboration in virtual learning communities characterizes itself by heavily relying on interaction among the
collaborators (Edwards, 2002; Biström, 2005). The collaborators can be instructors and learners, the interaction
can be resources discovery, access, and sharing, as well as group communication and discussion, or simply any
collaboration which has occurred among the instructors and learners. In addition, the collaboration should be
enacted inside and outside of classrooms without limitation of space and time; it can be over the Internet and
beyond the geographical boundary. Nevertheless, such collaboration environment is generally not supported by
conventional learning environments. Typical learning services for collaboration in virtual learning communities
are content, access of certain learning subjects; making studying notes and annotation on learning subjects;
group discussion, brainstorming for knowledge creation and sharing.
Compared with the client-server and centralized approaches, peer-to-peer network makes each peer play as both
client and server (Aberer, 2002; Li, Lee, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003; Gnutella, http://www.gnutella.com/), so
each peer can access and be accessed of material maintained on the peer If a peer cannot find the material it
required from its neighbors, the neighbors will query their neighbors for more resources, in such a way, the peerto-
peer network can find resources in a layered multicast to increase the hit rate of finding materials that peers
want. In addition, due to progress of device and communication technology, we can now implement peer-to-peer
network under any network channel., This make peer-to-peer network particularly suitable for implementing
ubiquitous learning environments for collaborative learning (Brase, & Painter, 2004; Nejdl, et. al., 2002;
Biström, 2005; Edutella, http://edutella.jxta.org/).