Showing papers by "Shyan-Ming Yuan published in 2001"

Web-based peer assessment : feedback for students with various thinking-styles

Abstract: This study used aptitude treatment interaction design to examine how feedback formats (specific vs. holistic) and executive thinking styles (high vs. low) affect web-based peer assessment. An Internet-based (anonymous) peer-assessment system was developed and used by 58 computer science students who submitted assignments for peer review. The results indicated that while students with high executive thinking styles significantly improved over two rounds of peer assessment, low executive students did not improve through the cycles. In addition, high executive students contributed substantially better feedback than their low executive counterparts. In the second round of peer assessment, thinking style and feedback format interactively affected student learning. Low executive students receiving specific feedback significantly outperformed those receiving holistic feedback. In receiving holistic feedback, high executive thinkers outperformed their low executive counterparts. This study suggests that future web-based peer assessment adopts a specific feedback format for all students.

Web-based peer review: the learner as both adapter and reviewer

Abstract: This study describes an effective web-based learning strategy, peer review, used by 143 computer science undergraduate students in an operating systems class at a Taiwanese university. Peer review, based on social constructivism, can be easily implemented via the authors' well-developed web-based peer review (WPR) system. Through peer review, the authors hope to form an authentic learning environment similar to an academic society in which a researcher submits a paper to a journal and receives reviews from society members before publication. Students using this learning strategy are expected to develop higher level thinking skills. The WPR system functioned in the following roles in this study: (1) an information distribution channel and management center for assignment submissions and peer review; (2) a forum for peer interaction and knowledge construction; and (3) storage for knowledge construction procedures. An evaluation of learning effects and students' perceptions about peer review during the spring of 1998 revealed that students not only performed better under peer review, but also displayed higher level thinking skills, i.e., critical thinking, planning, monitoring, and regulation. Students perceived peer review as an effective strategy that promoted their learning motivation. However, merely being an effective reviewer or an effective author may not excel in a peer review environment. The most effective individual appears to be the strategic adapter who effectively constructs a project, adjusts to peers' comments, and serves as a critical reviewer as well.

Students' use of web-based concept map testing and strategies for learning

Abstract: The study reported in this paper developed and evaluated a web-based concept map testing system for science students. Thirty-eight Taiwanese high school students were involved and it was found that their performance on the system was not significantly related to their achievement as measured by traditional standard tests. Their views about the use of the system, in general, were positive. An analysis of students' future use of the system and their motivation and learning strategies revealed that those with more critical thinking metacognitive activities and an effort regulation management strategy showed more willingness to use the online testing system. Moreover, students with high test anxiety showed a preference to be tested through the system.

A Networked Peer Assessment System Based on a Vee Heuristic.

Abstract: This study implements a networked peer assessment system based on the use of a Vee heuristic. Using this system, students submit their homework (relating to designing science activities)via the underlying network facility. They then assess each other's homework by offering suggestions – again, through the network. Students then modify their original designs based on the suggestions that they receive. This procedure is repeated for two or three consecutive rounds. In this process, each student functions as an author, a reviewer, and an adapter. This learning model allows students to further develop their critical thinking skills. Preliminary peer assessment results revealed that the networked peer-assessment model and Vee heuristic facilitated pre-service science teachers to continuously progress when designing science activities.

Web based peer assessment: attitude and achievement

Abstract: The specific features of the Web-based peer assessment are to utilize Internet resources to facilitate contacts between individuals and information, to assist in brainstorming among individuals, and to generate more meaningful learning at the higher education level. In this research, authors focus predominantly on attitudes of computer science students toward Web-based peer assessment using NetPeas as the interactive channel and management center. NetPeas is a Web-based peer assessment system implemented for two-way anonymous peer assessment. In an evaluation held in spring 1999, this study recruited a sample of fifty-eight computer science undergraduate students enrolled in an operating systems class in a research university of Taiwan. Attitudes toward Web-based peer assessment were measured by a post-test questionnaire, including several affective components, for example, "satisfied" or "unsatisfied" about the Web-based peer assessment. The result demonstrated that; (1) significantly more students favored this new learning strategy; and (2) students with positive attitude outperformed those with negative attitude. No matter positive attitude toward Web-based peer assessment brings about higher achievement or higher achievement promotes positive attitude, teachers must take care of students' subjective feelings in enhancing effective Web-based peer assessment.

Students' use of web-based concept map testing and strategies for learning: A web-based concept map testing system

Abstract: The study reported in this paper developed and evaluated a web-based concept map testing system for science students. Thirty-eight Taiwanese high school students were involved and it was found that their performance on the system was not significantly related to their achievement as measured by traditional standard tests. Their views about the use of the system, in general, were positive. An analysis of students’ future use of the system and their motivation and learning strategies revealed that those with more critical thinking metacognitive activities and an effort regulation management strategy showed more willingness to use the online testing system. Moreover, students with high test anxiety showed a preference to be tested through the system.

Design of a networked portfolio system

Abstract: Portfolio assessment Portfolio assessment is a systematic means of accumulating and commenting on homework samples by students. Such samples can display or clarify the learning processes of a particular student. Correspondingly, peer assessment enhances a student’s important skills (eg, problem solving) and motivation to learn, thus making it an excellent assessment strategy to evaluate adult learners. Peer assessment can also be performed through a networked system. In this study, the system incorporates two distinct functions: one focusing on peer-assessment with the other focusing on portfolio-assessment. Functions designed to facilitate peer-assessment include on-line submission of work, on-line grading and the ability to view suggestions from peers. At the end of a semester, the portfolio-assessment allows students to select their best-written assignment.

An enhanced thread synchronization mechanism for Java

Abstract: The thread synchronization mechanism of Java is derived from Hoare's monitor concept. In the authors' view, however, it is over simplified and suffers the following four drawbacks. First, it belongs to a category of no-priority monitor, the design of which, as reported in the literature on concurrent programming, is not well rated. Second, it offers only one condition queue. Where more than one long-term synchronization event is required, this restriction both degrades performance and further complicates the ordering problems that a no-priority monitor presents. Third, it lacks the support for building more elaborate scheduling programs. Fourth, during nested monitor invocations, deadlock may occur. In this paper, we first analyze these drawbacks in depth before proceeding to present our own proposal, which is a new monitor-based thread synchronization mechanism that we term EMonitor. This mechanism is implemented solely by Java, thus avoiding the need for any modification to the underlying Java Virtual Machine. A preprocessor is employed to translate the EMonitor syntax into the pure Java codes that invoke the EMonitor class libraries. We conclude with a comparison of the performance of the two monitors and allow the experimental results to demonstrate that, in most cases, replacing the Java version with the EMonitor version for developing concurrent Java objects is perfectly feasible. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A GA-based dynamic personalized filtering for Internet search service on multi-search engine

Abstract: This paper proposed a methodology based on the genetic algorithm (GA) to provide a novel way for searching via the Internet with a multi-search engine. The proposed system provides a WWW interface for users to enter the keyword. The system connects to the Octopus to get all links and contents. According to the user profile, the system dynamically trains the weights of each keyword by GA, and sorts all the links to adopt 10 best-fit to the user. When the user had browsed the first viewing page and gave the system some feedbacks, the system than utilizes the user's feedbacks to re-train the weights of each remaining keywords. After the training, it uses the new weight combination for the keywords set to determine the order of the remaining links to prepare the next viewing page, and so on. The experiments show that it is suitable for those people that want to collect comprehensive information via the Internet.

Experiencing NetPeas: Another Way of Learning

Abstract: This study implement networked peer assessment in designing and, in doing so, develops a networked peer assessment model as well. Based on the proposed model, a networked peer assessment system is designed as its main frame in conjunction with an optional Vee diagram used as its interface to facilitate designing. In this system, students turn in their homework via a friendly web browser. Students assess each other's homework by offering comments through the Internet. Students then reflect and modify their homework based on those comments. This procedure is repeated for k (k?1) consecutive rounds, based on the schedule. In this process, students act as an adaptive learner, author, and reviewer. This learning model allows students to further develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Results revealed that the networked peer assessment model facilitated students to continuously progress when learning to design work.

A framework for integrating information retrieval on CORBA

Abstract: We propose a flexible architecture for querying various information sources on the Internet and WWW through distributed object paradigms We propose an integrated information retrieval (IIR) method based on CORBA. The design of the IIR interface follows the style of the common object service specification (COSS). The objective of design of IIR is not only to provide the programmer with a uniform interface to code a software application with the capability of querying a variety of information sources on the Internet, but also to provide a flexible and extensible environment for the system developer to add new agents to the system facility. Since the architecture of IIR is of an N-tier client/server model and its interface is uniform, any specific application that needs to retrieve information or mine data from the Internet need only easily initiate the query operation of an agent via IIR.

A portable real-time extension set for Java

Abstract: Since the fourth quarter of 1999, the authors engaged in a project where Java was employed to build the real-time control program inside a plastic-injection-molding machine. However, at that time, since the official real-time Java standard-the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) from the Sun Microsystems was still under development, no RTSJ-compliant Java virtual machine was available. To satisfy our requirement, we designed and implemented a real-time extension library for enhancing the Java virtual machine that was already available in the real-time operating system we used. Our extension library has the following advantages: First, the underlying Java virtual machine needs no modification to accommodate it. Second, this extension library is easy to be ported to any other priority-based real-time operating systems. Third, the core of this extension library is basically derived from the subset of the RTSJ public draft, and thus our real-time control program can be move to a forthcoming RTSJ-compliant Java virtual machine without much difficulty. In brief, our work may help suggest ways of implementing RTSJ, or the notion of (degrees of) "minimal" compliance/support of RTSJ based on non-RTSJ Java virtual machines. In this paper, we show the requirement, application programming interface, and implementation of this extension library, and discuss its influence on timing.

The real inventor of the monitor concept: a short note to correct the SP&E paper entitled 'An enhanced thread synchronization mechanism for Java'

Abstract: Several days ago, we received an e-mail from Professor P. Brinch Hansen. He mentioned that the paper we published [1] incorrectly attributes the invention of the monitor concept to C. A. R. Hoare. After checking the paper of Hoare in 1974 about monitors [2], we found that Hoare just further developed the original ideas of P. Brinch Hansen. Before this, P. Brinch Hansen had published in two papers the original concept of monitor in 1972 and 1973 [3,4]. In these two papers, P. Brinch Hansen offered the concepts of queuing variables and shared classes, which are the fundamentals of the subsequent monitor notation. In order to make sure of our points, we checked some books on concurrent programming and operating systems. We found that some famous computer scientists also believe that the invention of the monitor concept is P. Brinch Hansen’s achievement [5,6]. Hence, we would like to apologize to the inventor of the monitor concept, P. Brinch Hansen and to the Journal’s editors and readers.

Content Request Markup Language (CRML): A Distributed Framework for XML-Based Content Publishing

Abstract: Construct web applications to provide dynamic, personalized web contents with high scalability and performance is a challenge to the software industry in the next century. In most available solutions, load balancing and caching mechanisms are introduced in front of web servers to reduce workload. In this paper we present Content Request Markup Language (CRML), an enabling technique for distributed XML processing at the content level. CRML is a language based on emerging XML standards, XSLT and XPATH, to publish XML-based content over HTTP protocol. It provides hints to construct a distributed framework to support parallel XML-based content publishing. In addition, the content from databases or other sources could be cached before or after processing in block or page level. With the parallel content publishing and the caching mechanism, the CRML could provide a high performance platform for fully customized web service.

Using Networked Workshop System to Enhance Creative Design

Abstract: This study examined the usefulness of networked workshop instructtion, an instructional method that emphasizes presentation, discussion, evaluation, and knowledge construction. In workshop instruction, web-based peer assessment was used to evaluate students' performance. Twenty-four computer and information science graduate students enrolled in a course "Web and Data-base Integration" and were assigned to nine teams. Each team was instructed to design a web-based system capable of performing certain functions. Functioning similar to how researchers and scientists would in a workshop, participants orally presented their ideas and web-based peer assessment was conducted to increase critical feedback during a team designs their own product. One creative products and qualitative comments from professors were presented to demonstrate the students' high quality achievement.

Content Request Markup Language (CRML): a Distributed Framework for XML-based Content Publishing.

Abstract: Construct web applications to provide dynamic, personalized web contents with high scalability and performance is a challenge to the software industry in the next century. In most available solutions, load balancing and caching mechanisms are introduced in front of web servers to reduce workload. In this paper we present Content Request Markup Language (CRML), an enabling technique for distributed XML processing at the content level. CRML is a language based on emerging XML standards, XSLT and XPATH, to publish XML-based content over HTTP protocol. It provides hints to construct a distributed framework to support parallel XML-based content publishing. In addition, the content from databases or other sources could be cached before or after processing in block or page level. With the parallel content publishing and the caching mechanism, the CRML could provide a high performance platform for fully customized web service.