COLLABORATIVE CREATION OF AUTHENTIC EXAMPLES WITH LOCATION FOR U-LEARNING Yen-Hung Kuo Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (R.O.C.) Qing Tan, Kinshuk School of Computing & Information Systems, Athabasca University, Canada Yueh-Min Huang Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (R.O.C.) Tzu-Chien Liu Graduate Institute of Learning and Instruction, National Central University, Taiwan (R.O.C.) Maiga Chang School of Computing & Information Systems, Athabasca University, Canada ABSTRACT Giving examples to students or letting students give examples is important in ordinary instruction. However, it is difficult for teacher to provide work-out examples to students since the proper examples are depending on the contexts and varying with students’ life experiences and knowledge. In order to deal with the limitation of ordinary classroom, the study develops a collaborative example-creation platform for students to generate, explain and share their own examples of learning concept by mobile devices. Additionally, the sources of the generated examples are derived from real world, that is, every example is authentic example and presents a specific instance of the theoretical concept. Through the creation and share of authentic examples, students can not only elaborate their existing concepts but also construct their concepts from single or multiple work-out examples. Except for the collaborative creation platform, we have also implemented a Learner Agent residing in students’ cell phones for assisting students to create authentic examples. With the agent, a created authentic example is attached with its location information, which indicates where the authentic example happened, and other students can learn something form the example with location information or go to the location to experience the example if they are interested in that. It can help the students easily understand the learning concept. KEYWORDS Authentic example, Collaborative creation, Learner agent, Location awareness, Mobile learning. 1. INTRODUCTION Based on the objectivism, it is important for instructors to provide examples to students in order to explain new concepts of curricula. Through the examples, students could understand the concepts by connecting with their previous experiences. On the other hand, as per constructivist approach, it is essential to let students raise appropriate positive or negative examples for demonstrating their understanding of a concept. In the manner, students will not only be assisted in conceptual understanding but will also help instructors assess their learning process. Example could be formed in many shapes, which depend on the different applicative contexts. In 1979, Kant proposed two discernible uses of example. The first is theoretical, an example is a particular of matter of logic which under a broader concept. The second is practical, that is, the example plays a particular instance of a practical rule (Lovlie, 1997). When we put the example in learning context, the example would profit students by either objective or constructive manner(s). In objectivism, for example, Reder and ISBN: 978-972-8924-58-4 © 2008 IADIS 16