JZUS - Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE

Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE A 2004 Vol.5 No.11 P.1343-1351

http://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.2004.1343

A novel self-organizing E-Learner community model with award and exchange mechanisms

Author(s): YANG Fan, SHEN Rui-min, HAN Peng
Affiliation(s): Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Corresponding email(s): fyang@mail.sjtu.edu.cn, rmshen@mail.sjtu.edu.cn, phan@mail.sjtu.edu.cn
Key Words: Self-organizing, E-Learner community, Award, Exchange, Multi-agent

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Abstract: How to share experience and resources among learners is becoming one of the hottest topics in the field of E-Learning collaborative techniques. An intuitive way to achieve this objective is to group learners which can help each other into the same community and help them learn collaboratively. In this paper, we proposed a novel community self-organization model based on multi-agent mechanism, which can automatically group learners with similar preferences and capabilities. In particular, we proposed award and exchange schemas with evaluation and preference track records to raise the performance of this algorithm. The description of learner capability, the matchmaking process, the definition of evaluation and preference track records, the rules of award and exchange schemas and the self-organization algorithm are all discussed in this paper. Meanwhile, a prototype has been built to verify the validity and efficiency of the algorithm. Experiments based on real learner data showed that this mechanism can organize learner communities properly and efficiently; and that it has sustainable improved efficiency and scalability.

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