Download collaborative concept mapping at the tabletop

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT MAPPING AT THE TABLETOP
TECHNICAL REPORT 657
ROBERTO MARTINEZ, KALINA YACEF AND JUDY KAY
JULY, 2010
Collaborative Concept Mapping
at the Tabletop
Roberto Martinez, Kalina Yacef, Judy Kay
ABSTRACT
Concept mapping is a technique where users externalise
their conceptual and propositional knowledge of a domain in a way that can be readily understood by others. It
is widely used in education, so that a learner’s understanding is made available to their peers and to teachers.
There is considerable potential educational benefit in
collaborative concept mapping, and the tabletop is an
ideal platform for this. This paper describes Cmate, a
tabletop collaborative concept mapping system. We describe its design process and how this draws upon both
the principles of concept mapping and on those for creating educational applications on tabletops.
students to integrate new information with previous theoretical knowledge [4] and to make tacit and private
knowledge public [2]. Novak's research also indicates
that building concept maps in a collaborative environment leads to greater learning and superior maps. Multitouch tabletops appear to have the potential to encourage
collaboration, affording fluid interaction and improved
access to information [5], important characteristics in
ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and
presentation]: User Interfaces. - Graphical user interfaces, Input devices and strategies, Interaction styles,
Screen design.
General terms: Design, Human Factors
Keywords: Information interfaces and presentation, Interaction styles.
INTRODUCTION
Concept mapping is an important educational technique
that provides an excellent means for a learner to externalise knowledge of a particular domain and to get meaningful understanding of new information [1]. Moreover,
concept maps are metacognitive tools that foster the development of strategies for organising knowledge, and
facilitating communication of understanding [2]. They
basically include: the concepts of the domain; propositions, indicated by a labelled line linking two concepts;
and use of layout, with the most general concepts at the
top, more specialised ones lower and similar concepts at
the same level and close to each other. Propositions are
the key elements of concept maps because each one
shows the learner's conception of the relationship between a pair of concepts [3]. An example is shown in
Figure 1, where the most general concept is Plants and
this is in three propositions, Plants have Roots, Plants
have Leaves, Plants have Stems, and the concepts Roots,
Leaves and Stems are less general than Plants and at a
similar generality level to each other. Strong results indicate that concept mapping, used as a tool for guiding
education combined with cooperative learning, helps
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Figure 1: Example of concept map built with CmapTools from [1]
educational contexts.
We are exploring learner support for building concept
maps on a tabletop. Concept mapping is a cognitively
demanding task. This means that one valuable approach
for making use of the tabletop for concept mapping involves two stages. In the first stage, students use an existing, validated desktop concept-mapping tool to construct
individual maps. The learner would then come to the
table to discuss these, identifying the similarities as well
as the differences. This might mean that one person
changes their mind, altering their own map. At other
times, the learners may not be able to agree. For example, in a biology task, one student's map may have the
proposition "a whale is a mammal" while another student
may have the proposition "a whale is a fish". One might
convince the other to change, or they may agree to disagree. We aim to create a tabletop interface that can support this process.
We present Cmate (Concept Mapping at an Adaptive
Tabletop for Education), an interface designed to support
learners in a form of discussion based on comparing personal understanding as captured in personal concept
maps. Our design and its evaluation draws on principles
of concept mapping, rethinking the usual interfaces to
address the limitations and affordances of tabletops, to
design an interface that should allow the users to focus
on their core task of concept mapping [6]. The design
also was guided by design heuristics: general usability
heuristics [6], heuristics for interactive tabletop software
[7] and specific guidelines for collaborative interactions
at a tabletop [8]. We aim to encourage learners to reflect
on their own knowledge representations and to support
learners in building a common, shared and accurate concept map.
ing environment that helps learners and their teachers
gain a clearer understanding of the learner's knowledge
and misconceptions. The foundation of our approach is
to support learners in discussion about their individual
concept maps, to identify areas of consensus and disagreement. We support this by maintaining each individual's map as well as the collaboratively created group
map.
RELATED WORK
We illustrate the key features of the project in a scenario:
let us have two learners, A and B. they are requested to
build personal concept maps about a topic using its personal ontology about a particular topic. These initial concept maps can well be constructed using pencil and paper
or applications such as VCM [12] and CmapTools, that
export the concept maps using flat files or CXL (Concept
Mapping Extensible Language) format. The next step is
to enrich the concept mapping building process through
collaborative actions performed at a tabletop; in this
point is when Cmate enters the scene. The individual
concept maps A and B are preloaded into Cmate. When
the interface is first launched two rosizable user menu
copies, two black holes to delete components [14] and a
concentric blank work area is presented to the users. A
user menu has two kinds of buttons: colored buttons and
correspondent labeled buttons. Colored buttons are for
drawing and are related with a particular user layer (see
Figure 2, yellow and orange) and there is one that is related with the group layer (red button). Now learner A
decides to add a concept that he used during the individual construction phase; He can perform this action by
picking its color and then drawing a circular gesture,
similar to a number 6, on the screen. After the gesture is
recognized, a personalised rosizable list of concepts appears. Then, Learner A selects a concept. In this way
both users could add its personal concepts and linking
words by drawing a line between two different concepts.
In this way, both learners can add concepts and linking
words in the same interface but in three different layers:
one for each user, and an additional for the concepts and
propositions in which both users are agree. Finally,
Learner A selects the labeled button (with the title
Learner 1 in figure 3) from the user menu to highlight
the links and propositions he added. The correspondences between both concept maps are indicated in red
lines. Then Learner A picks the button with the label all
to see the general layer for having a broad idea of the
whole topic. As a result, learners A and B merge their
concept maps unifying the similarities between them but
presenting in different layers the differences.
Multi-touch tabletops applications have been developed
to encourage groups of learners to work together in solving learning tasks. For example, Oppl & Starty [9] developed a hybrid tool for concept mapping using real world
labeled tokens as concepts and digital unlabeled relationships between them. Do-Lenh et al. [10] found that collaborative concept mapping at a tabletop shows insignificant learning effects compared with concept mapping on
a single desktop computer. However, analysing just the
outcomes obtained from experiments does not provide
insights into the reasons for these outcomes, ignoring the
processes within the collaboration and the ways that the
interface affected the outcomes. Having a group of people working together does not necessarily imply that they
will be collaborating; therefore, mechanisms for encouraging collaboration should be considered in the design of
such kind of tools [11]. There are two documented examples of systems that focus on supporting the learning
process related with concept mapping. The first approach
was proposed by Cimolino et. al. [12] who created VCM,
an application that aids students to rethink their actions
while concept mapping by presenting feedback messages
to the students if they forget to create links for important
concepts or if they do not consider hierarchical relationships between them. Another successful approach is Betty’s brain [13], which combines a form of executable
concept map, with learning by teaching Betty, to promote
metacognition as learners reflect on their own externalised knowledge model.
USER VIEW AND DESIGN OF CMATE
Our system, Cmate, aims to afford a new form of learn-
Figure 2: Two people using Cmate
Our approach at this first stage is to enable small groups
of learners to externalise their knowledge, reflect on the
similarities and differences with other learners’ propositions and solve the conflicts in a manner that could lead
them to better learning outcomes. Through this strategy
we also leave freedom in the selection of concept and
linking phrases maintaining the concept mapping Novakian style that gives this tool its usefulness in education
settings and gives Cmate a balance between flexibility
and formalism [15].
IMPLEMENTATION
Cmate has been written in Python and OpenGL using
PyMT, an open source library for developing multi-touch
applications which offers a wide spectrum of tools such
as gesture recognisers, layouts, sliders and containers.
The application is hardware independent but has been
tested in multitouch tabletops. Implementing applications
based on these libraries allows users to manipulate
unlimited number of widgets in parallel on the same tabletop interface.
nario, our application allows using previously generated files as the source of the ontology of the group
concept map. For now we avoided to use a keyboard,
physical nor emulated, for maintaining the interface as
simple as possible [6].
The design of our tool is firstly oriented by the following
concept mapping guidelines: 1) concept maps have a
hierarchical structure and the root concept represents the
topic of the map; 2) concepts and linking phrases are as
short as possible, 3) a concept map is a representation of
individual understanding of a topic [15].
We now describe the features of the system in detail,
explaining its structure in terms of underlying software
and the way in which it is used. Scott et.al. [8] suggest
guidelines to build a tabletop system that encourages
collocated collaborative work. We addressed some of
this guidelines, and adapted the heuristics given by Nielsen [6] and Apted et.al. [7] to design and implement our
interface. We also describe below the features that are
related with each guideline:
 Consideration for arrangement of users [8]. Users
using Cmate are able to view and interact with the table at any position. Cmate is not a non-oriented interface because of the nature of concept mapping itself.
But a new paradigm for hierarchical structure was implemented. We choose a concentric hierarchy in which
the most centered concept is the best representative of
the topic of the map. Also we added some circular
lines as a reference for users to arrange the concepts
that should share the same hierarchical level. Following the design guidelines given in [7, 8] every single
component of the interface is presented in the best orientation given the adequate gesture to add a concept
and all other components can be reoriented at once by
touching the blank spaces of the screen or by manually
rotating particular components.
 Support simultaneous user actions [8]. One of the
main drawback in research made to discover the benefits of tabletops in collaborative work is that is not easy
to find the equilibrium between the individual spaces
allowed by concurrently multitouch tabletops, and the
integration of collaborative activities in a shared way;
this issue can be noticed in [10]. Cmate is natively
supporting multitouch interactions given the adequate
hardware, but offers a sort of personal space in form
of a personal layer. Users are encouraged to take turns
while adding personal concepts or connection links,
but they could be working simultaneously while working in the general layer. Through this approach the
group could decide between both focusing on explaining the subject of matter or to solve the agreements and
conflicts between their ideas.
 Support transitions between tabletop collaboration
and external work [8]. As described above in the sce-
Figure 3: Visualisation of 2 merged concept maps
using Cmate. In this case, the concept map from
Figure 1 is highlighted and enriched by the combination of a second concept map.
 Support transitions between activities [8]. Cmate addresses this guideline allowing users to perform the actions on the interface by using only one or two fingers
gestures. This actions include concepts and propositions creation, layer selection, drawing lines to link
concepts, rearrangement of components and resizing/sliding menus,
 Support transitions between individual and collaborative work [8]. In collaborative concept mapping sharing common concepts and propositions is essential.
Our approach aims to establish a balance between individual knowledge and group shared knowledge. We
introduce the idea of using layers to merge in one single concept map shared propositions to better visualise
the concepts applied across different perspectives. Depicting the frontier between individual and consensus
ideas could lead further research in concept mapping
from the educational perspective.
 Minimise human reach [6, 7]. In a collaborative environment the orientation and position of the objects are
important issues. For this reason, all concepts, linking
words, menus and the black hole are user-controlled
moveable to all areas of the table. Moreover, for our
interface it doesn't matter if users move around the table since all the concept map elements can be rotated
by drawing a specific gesture.
 Use large selection points [7]: we added big touching
areas behind the concepts, and the linking words for
permitting users naturally identify the areas that can be
touched to move or rotate the elements. Menus are
highly dependant on rotation and the size of the but-
tons and labels to be suitable to all kind of people. All
menus in the application are surrounded by wide areas
for rosizing them [14].
 Manage interface clutter [7]; we took the black hole
idea from[14]. In this way we match the abstract idea
with the real world to disappear concepts or propositions that fall in the metaphoric black hole. Also we
use personalised gesture based lists to add new elements to the interface as required.
EVALUATION
We conducted qualitative usability inspections to analyse
the system using a think aloud formative evaluation. We
included four expert users in order to see how a user
comprehends the different layer levels to represent concept maps using personal ontologies and, at the same
time, building a common and accurate concept map.
As a result of the exercise we obtained valuable feedback
pertinent to the usability of our system. The users were
motivated and explored all the characteristics that the
interface offers. They expressed that the interface helped
them to merge their ideas in form of propositions and
visualise their personal work in context of the collaborative work performed by the group. Users detected a
heavy load of work by deleting components using the
black hole; consequently, we have to extend the use of
gestures for eliminating components, and even better, for
all repetitive actions. Also, the presence of two user
menu copies, a complex component, originated confusion
about the functionality of the buttons for drawing personal concepts and linking words. Finally, we were suggested to provide feedback after pressing a button and
improve the system to reorient the concept map elements
and the entire concept map at once based on how real
negotiation occurs in real life round table discussions.
CONCLUSIONS
We have constructed Cmate, a system for visualise multiple concept map representations and, at the same time,
build a more accurate and precise shared concept map
through active collaborative work and group agreement
and disagreement resolution on the similarities and differences between the personal concept maps.
In the future, the application can use the Mimio Capture
pen system or the DiamondTouch for implementing logging mechanisms of every action that is performed during the concept mapping process to support perform further educational research. The nature of concept mapping
makes our application suitable for many learning fields
such as, science, history, express opinions and personal
experiences or even for learning a new language. Also
we will devise specific heuristics for this user interface
and consider the inclusion of more natural gestures for
performing actions, add a keyboard input interface and
tackle the observations obtained in the qualitative evaluation.
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