Gym2Learn is a system aimed to support the training of metacognitive strategies for students' on-line text comprehension. In particular, the features of the system are used in two different phases: training about the metacognition tools (training phase) and using them during learning activities (executive phase). So, as may happen in a gym, the "gymnastics for learning" consists of following a series of practical exercises to use and control cognitive strategies for text comprehension and then using them through a web annotation system.
The training phase consists of a series of practical exercises with hypertextual pages, whereby students begin to familiarize with the use and control of some cognitive strategies for understanding hypertexts. During the executive phase students can surf freely through web sites proposed by teachers, or selected independently, and use the system support to apply metacognitive strategies; in this latter phase he can freely apply the cognitive strategies learned during the training phases, selecting portions of a text and associating them with different type of notes.
Every time students use a specific tool, documents synthesising their work done on hypertexts are dynamically produced; afterwards, these documents can be modified to create supports for revising topics studied and for memorizing them better. The data and documents produced by each student by means of the system are useful for teachers to monitor the work done both at procedural and content level. Moreover, this organization enables the student to constantly monitor all his comments inserted in note form on the web pages, thus increasing his control and awareness of the strategies used for text comprehension. All the annotations can be selected by the student to produce a "synthesys document" summarizing his annotation activity.
The system is integrated as an extension of the Firefox browser and allows the student to select parts of a text and link to them textual, video and audio notes; The annotations are modelled as a class of metadata. For the implementation of this architecture the system adopts Annotea and extends the RDF schema with the introduction of a specific namespace characterized by 4 types of annotation corresponding to the following comprehension strategies:
o previous knowledge;
o formulating hypotheses and verifying them during surfing;
o asking oneself questions and answering them to verify comprehension;
o identifying important parts of the text;
Each cognitive strategy is a type of annotation modeled according to an RDF schema (Kahan et al, 2002) in order to store properties about the strategy. This connection between comprehension strategy and type of annotation is implemented by extending the RDF schema with the metadata related to the properties of each comprehension strategy. In this way the action of creating an annotation corresponds to a specific comprehension strategy exercise that the student activates when he selects some texts on the document and uses a pop-up menu for activating the specific function.
Another feature of the system is the "web annotation chronology". This chronology is updated whenever the student adds a new note and allows him to monitor the evolution of his considerations associated to the text. The chronology clusters the notes according to the cognitive strategies used. For each note a preview of information is visualized , as well as the link to the web page containing the note. Moreover, the notes can be assembled to create a "synthesis document" that, initially generated automatically by the system, the student can freely modify. This document contains the notes selected from the chronology and related to previous knowledge, hypotheses and important parts of the text that the student has considered to be relevant for completing the task.
We have started to test the system in different types of schools and the preliminary results are encouraging when we consider students' performances and their answers to questionnaires designed to test their metacognitive levels. In the future we plan to study how this system can be extended to support collaborative learning experiences: the students will then have the opportunity to share notes and documents with their classmates and the teachers will be able to share the exercises they prepare for the training phase in order to create a repository containing materials for developing best practices in the field of metacognitive didactics.
The implementation of Gym2Learn is included in the project CORFAD
"Centro di competenza per la promozione e il testing di metodologie e prototipi di ambienti per l'Orientamento e la Formazione A Distanza", funded by the Industrial Department through the European Regional Operational Programme for Sicily 2000-2006
Contacts:
Giuseppe Chiazzese
e-mail: giuseppe.chiazzese
itd.cnr.it Web site:GYM2LEARN.
e-mail research group: gym2learn
itd.cnr.it