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Design and Management of Material Sharing System for UbiquitousVocabulary Learning

Xin Jin, Masatoshi Ishikawa, Keiichi Kaneko, Haruko Miyakoda and Norihide Shinagawa

Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan50007646135@st.tuat.ac.jp, {masato-i, k1kaneko, miyakoda, siena}@cc.tuat.ac.jp

Abstract

In our project, we are developing a system that helps learners in vocabulary acquirement. In the sys-tem, learners can create their own materials for mobilelearning, and they can also exchange their materials.This paper focuses on a sub system, SIGMA, to shareand exchange materials among learners. In addition,SIGMA enables learners to give evaluation scores and

comments to all learning materials stored in the system. In this paper, we will discuss the management policy of the system based on the reliability of the evaluationscores given by the learners to select appropriatelearning materials. From the result of our experiment,we concluded that the evaluation scores have some re-liability but an instructor should guide the learners.

1. Introduction

When acquiring vocabulary, it is said to be effectiveto memorize words with related images and sounds as

well as to spend time on repetitive memorization activi-ties [4], [5]. We have developed a system called PHI(Personal Handy Instructor) with which learners canacquire vocabulary at anywhere and anytime by usingiPods, and discussed its effectiveness [1]. Furthermore,we have developed a system, PSI (Personal Super-Imposer) that helps creation of learning materials forPHI, and we have succeeded in reducing the heavy loadof learning material creation imposed on instructors [2].We have also examined the effectiveness of the learn-ing materials created by PSI.

There are many previous and related works with re-

spect to mobile learning and/or vocabulary acquirementbased on information technology. From the survey, weconcluded that we should provide a system where 1) alearning material created by a learner can be uploadedand distributed to reduce the burden of material crea-tion, 2) a learner can create a learning material easily tocollect many learning materials, and 3) a learner can e-valuate the materials created by others to encourage thecreation of learners. According to this conclusion, we

have developed a system, SIGMA (Special-Interested-Group Material Accumulator). In this paper, we willdiscuss the reliability of the evaluation scores given bylearners for selection of appropriate learning materialsand the management policy of the system.

2. System and materials

2.1. Vocabulary learning system

In this subsection, we will explain the vocabularylearning system, PHI (Personal Handy Instructor),based on iPods. In PHI, a five-second movie is used foreach word as a learning material. Figure 1 shows a flowof vocabulary learning by PHI. First, the learner selectsmaterials from a material list managed by PHI. Thechosen materials are copied to a folder called vocabu-lary book. Then, the learner downloads the materialsinto iPod by dragging and dropping the folder onto theiTunes window. PHI has the learning history of thelearner and it can display the number of acquired words

to encourage the sustainable learning of the learner.

Figure 1. Personal handy instructor

2.2. Personal superimposer

PSI is a system that supports in the creation of learning materials by learners. By providing the systemwith a five-second movie related to the word, spellingand meaning, learning materials can automatically becreated. Since the learners may use the system to createtheir own materials, the burden of instructors is greatlyreduced because it would not be necessary for them tosolely prepare a large number of materials beforehand.

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Furthermore, a high learning effect can be anticipatedbecause the learners themselves are involved in cre-ating the materials (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Personal SuperImposer Online

2.3. Vocabulary learning materials

Figure 3 shows snapshots of materials. From a pre-liminary experiment, we fixed the length of materials to

be five seconds so that learners can browse the materi-als repeatedly without stress. The pronunciation is re-peated twice in the material. The first and the secondpronunciation start from one and three seconds after thebeginning of the movie, respectively. The spelling isdisplayed from the beginning, whereas the meaning twoseconds afterwards. By postponing display of themeaning, we expect that a learner concentrates on thespelling at first, and connects it to the pronunciationand the movie for memorization.

Figure 3. Examples of Learning Materials

3. Learning material accumulator

3.1. Design

We have designed the SIGMA system so that learn-ers can register their own learning materials, and down-

load the materials created by other learners. In addition,we added a function that allows learners to evaluate thelearning materials and to give comments to them be-cause user-driven reputation systems are often usefulwhen there are many materials [3]. In the designingprocess, we encountered two problems: selection of ap-propriate materials and exclusion of malicious learners.

To help learners to select appropriate learning mate-rials from the material list, we introduced material eval-

uation by learners into the system. A learning materialis evaluated by asking learners a question: Do you rec-ommend this learning material to other people? Thenthey answer it by selecting one of the seven choices:Absolutely Yes, Yes, Relatively Yes, Neutral,Relatively No, No, and Absolutely No. The an-

swers are changed into scores from +3 to

3, and theiraverage is calculated for the evaluation score of thematerial. In the process of evaluation, learners are re-quested to use nicknames to establish anonymity to ex-clude some bias based on human relation. In addition,learners are able to browse comments of learning mate-rials. From this function, learners can find out advan-tages of materials that cannot be identified only by theirevaluation scores.

To exclude malicious learners, the SIGMA systemmanages learners by accounts and surveys their behav-iors. For instance, SIGMA can detect a learner whouses multiple nicknames and gives affirmative or nega-

tive scores to some specific materials. SIGMA can alsodetect a learner who registers very poor or inadequatematerials by checking the average score of each ac-count. Based a report by the system, an instructor cangive appropriate guidance to the malicious learners.

3.2. Implementation

SIGMA is a Web application that uses Apache, PHP,and MySQL. Figure 4 shows the main frame of theSIGMA system. Without any login operation, a learnercan browse the evaluation scores and comments of learning materials, and also download learning materi-als from the list in Figure 4. Moreover, an authorizedlearner can register and manage his/her own materials,create word tests, and give evaluation scores and com-ments to all materials after login operation. SIGMA hasa test function by which score histories of authorizedlearners are stored.

A management tool is prepared for instructors in theSIGMA system. The tool has functions for accountmanagement, vocabulary management, authorizedlearners behavior management, and score management.

Figure 4. Main frame of SIGMA system

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3.3. Management

In putting the SIGMA system into practice, there aretwo choices with regard to its learning environment: 1)an environment such as SNS, in which blog and bulle-tin board systems are provided so that learners can

form a community to learn voluntarily; 2) an environ-ment such as a classroom, where instructors take thelead and give appropriate pieces of advice to learners.

The former has the merit of reducing the burden of instructors, but we are not yet quite sure of the effectsof autonomous learning. In the next section, we reporton our preliminary findings.

4. Evaluation

To investigate the possibility of autonomous learn-ing environment by learners, we measured the correla-tion between the evaluation scores by learners and theeffects of learning materials taking 23 undergraduateand graduate school students in our university as sub-

jects. The experiment is conducted as follows: 1) Sub- jects were divided into Group A (13 subjects) andGroup B (10 subjects); 2) Group A subjects browsed62 learning materials in the word list we prepared, andthey gave evaluation scores to them; 3) Group B sub-

jects selected unfamiliar words from the word list; 4)We selected 13 words from the unfamiliar words thatthe subjects in Group B selected so that the evaluationscores of the corresponding materials are scatteredevenly; 5) Each subject in Group B learns the selected10 words for 10 minutes by the materials; 6) Tests areconducted for subjects in Group B just after and twoweeks after the learning activity. We selected the reten-tion rates of materials to represent their effects.

Figure 5 shows the result of the experiment. Thecorrelation coefficient between the average evaluationscores and the retention rates of the meaning of thelearning materials turned out to be 0.41 meaning thatthere is weak positive correlation between them. Theresult seems to suggest that the average scores havesome reliability, but it is preferable to assign an instruc-tor to a learning environment based on the SIGMAsystem to manage it as a classroom.

5. Conclusion and future works

SIGMA, the sub system in our learning system forvocabulary acquirement, enables learners to give evalu-ation scores and comments to all materials. Hence, inthis paper, we conducted an experiment to investigatethat the evaluation scores of materials correctly reflecttheir effects. As a result, the correlation coefficient of

Figure 5. Average Evaluation Scores and RetentionRates (2 Weeks After) of Learning Materials

the scores and the effectiveness was 0.41 and we con-cluded that the average evaluation scores have some re-liability, but it is preferable to as-sign an instructor to alearning environment based on the SIGMA system.

Future works include an extension of categorizationof learning materials by giving parts of speech, keywords, and so on to them.

Acknowledgements

This study is partly supported by the Special Coor-dination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology,Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology (MEXT) Japan. It is also partly supportedby MEXT Fund for Promoting Research on SymbioticInformation Technology.

References

[1] S. Amemiya, K. Hasegawa, K. Kaneko, H. Miyakoda, andW. Tsukahara, Long-term Memory of Foreign-wordLearning by Short Movies for iPods, Proceedings of the 7th

IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Tech-nologies , July 2007, pp. 561 563.

[2] M. Ishikawa, K. Hasegawa, S. Amemiya, K. Kaneko, H.Miyakoda, and W. Tsukahara, Automatic Creation of Vo-cabulary Learning Materials from Short Movies, Proceed-ings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate,Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education , Oct. 2007, pp.6044 6051.

[3] P. Resnick, R. Zeckhauser, E. Friedman, and K.Kuwabara, Reputation Systems', Communications of the ACM , Vol. 43, No. 12, 2000, pp .45 48.

[4] N. Schmitt, and M. McCarthy (editors), Vocabulary: De-scription, Acquisition and Pedagogy , Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005.

[5] A. Wright, Pictures for Language Learning , CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005.

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