ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.

Engaging potential helpers in question resolving

on a networked discussion forum

Phuong Ha Thi Minh
1,*
, Po-Yao Chao
1
, K. Robert Lai
2


1
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Yuan Ze University, Chung-Li, Taiwan
1
Department of Information Communication, Yuan Ze University, Chung-Li, Taiwan
2
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Yuan Ze University, Chung-Li, Taiwan

*Corresponding author
135 Yuan-Tung Road, Chung-Li, Taiwan 32003, R.O.C.
Tel: +886-3-463-8800 Fax: +886-3-463-6416
e-mail: s1006065@mail.yzu.edu.tw, poyaochao@saturn.yzu.edu.tw, krlai@cs.yzu.edu.tw



ABSTRACT

In recent years, universities are able to provide
online courseware by carrying out virtual learning
environments. Learning through virtual environment
requires self-regulation so that students are motivated to
adopt self-regulatory strategies to improve their
knowledge. In self-regulated learning, help-seeking is an
important strategy, but many students fail to use it
appropriately [1]. Due to the requirements of supporting
help seeking behaviors, we build a web-based learning
system and engage potential helpers in the question
resolving process. The system suggests students
engaging helpers and inviting them to help. The system
is divided into 6 phases, so that students can easily
manage the question resolving process. When using the
system, students can: (1) select the slide and mark
confused regions, then pose the question on the
discussion forum; (2) invite experts and friends to help
in resolving problems by directly sending email; (3)
follow and monitor the status of posted questions during
process; and (4) evaluate the best responses of each
question, save them into their personal notes. From the
system, student can seek helps more conveniently.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, universities are able to provide
online courseware by carrying out virtual learning
environments. Learning through virtual environment
requires self-regulation so that students are motivated to
adopt self-regulatory strategies to improve their
knowledge. During learning process, students inevitably
confront problems regarding learning materials that
cannot resolve by themselves. For example, when
students do not know how to complete required
assignments, seeking help is needed because incomplete
assignments could affect their performance, grades, and
understanding. In class, students can face-to-face ask
questions to the teacher, but students may not express
their problems fully due to either limited time or their
question posing skill. Hence, students need help from
teachers, peers or other sources. However, their seeking
process is usually incomplete or even fails due to lacking
of information. Therefore, strategies for seeking help are
needed in learning process.
Help-seeking is regarded to be an important
strategy of self-regulated learning. Research finding
indicate that an adaptive help-seeking behavior fosters
learning outcomes [2]. Question generation is a
help-seeking behavior. Questioning directed toward
higher order thinking plays a central role in
comprehension, comprehension monitoring, self-testing,
and self-control [7]. However, according to researches,
students have obstacles in question generation when
trying to approach to helpers. They do not know who is
the potential person has good knowledge may help them.
On a common online discussion forum, students pose
questions and wait for the answers; however, the
feedbacks may be outdated, inappropriate or not
correspond to their confusion. Moreover, some students
may flinch from posing questions because they are afraid
of being thought as poor knowledge when asking
questions. In addition, students may not know how to
linguistically formulate their questions for exactly
expressing what is needed. When students cannot
capture lesson contents, their questions may be unclear
or shallow.
In affordance to support student asking questions
and improve the quality of questions through digital
system, many studies have been presented. These studies
provide a web-based forum system that student can pose
questions, express confusions on the content of
instructional materials. However, these web-based forum
only provide a place where student can discuss together,
it wasnt suggest particular helper that students are able
to communicate directly in order to require the help from
them. After students had posted question in forum, they
could not maintain process resolving obviously. Unlike
face-to-face, students got the responses immediately, in
online discussion forum, they didnt know the person
who help them to answer their questions and when
helper will help them exactly. It makes the time span for
ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.

question resolving is long, students may not monitor and
evaluate the question stage during process effectively.
Due to the requirements of supporting help
seeking behaviors, we build a web-based learning
system and engage potential helpers in the question
resolving process. The system suggests students
engaging helpers and inviting them to help. In this
system, we recommend expert and friend who have
more knowledge to help students in solving problems.
The system suggests students how to engage helpers and
invite them to help. To help students avoid asking
unclear or shallow questions, the system guides them to
capture the contents of paper slides or online courseware,
then pose related questions and post it into the online
discussion forum. The system also recommends similar
questions from other questioners so that students can
refer and find out the answer effectively.
In order to manage the question resolving process,
system divides this process into five phases. Student can
monitor each phase systematically and separately. The
system defines the status of question and determine what
specified actions at each phase. This mechanism could
help students to follow the whole resolving process,
from asking for help to getting and selecting useful
responses which address their difficulties. Based on this
process, system can evaluate and identify the good
helper effectively.
With the above characteristics, the system adopts
the cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.
According to Flawell (1979), whereas cognitive
strategies enable one to make progress in building
knowledge, metacognitive strategies enable one to
monitor and improve ones progress by evaluation of
understanding and application of knowledge to new
situation [3]. In the system, the mechanism suggests
formulating questions and engaging potential helper will
develop cognitive skills of students. In question
resolving process, the system enables students to
monitor, follow questions and evaluate the useful
responses. These activities are designed in the system
can help students promote their metacognitive skills.
When using the system, students can: (1) Select
the slide and mark confused regions, then pose the
question on the discussion forum; (2) invite experts and
friends to help them resolve problems by directly
sending email; (3) follow and monitor the status of
posted questions during process; and (4) evaluate the
best responses of each question, save them into their
personal notes.

SYSTEM DESIGN

1. Question phases management
According to Piagets theory, the mismatch
between external information and a leaners internal
knowledge structures cause cognitive disequilibrium [4].
Due to the gaps between prior knowledge and the new
information, students may not comprehend course
materials, hence confusions may arise. Therefore, the
confusion will be transformed into a form of question in
the question formulation phase; students can capture
these confusion problems and formulate questions.
Figure 1 shows the question resolving process which
consists of 5 phases: question formulation, question
invitation, question response, question evaluation and
question note. The question invitation phase suggests
students engaging specific helper to resolve questions
after formulated. Additionally, once being posted,
other helpers may view these questions and help the
student to deal with problems in responding question
phase. This phase may enhance the interaction,
discussion and collaboration among community
members in the system. Here, the process of asking and
answering those particular questions serves as the meta-
cognitive strategy for helping students to monitor their
understanding of the material [5].
Helpers responses can be evaluable during
discussion. In the question evaluation phase, the
responses from specific helpers such as experts, friends,
classmates or others are evaluated by questioners.
Based on the evaluation, questioners can find the best
answers. During the evaluation, the questioners might
assess the contribution of responses, which benefits the
construction of knowledge [9]. This response evaluation
mechanism is one of most important components which
contribute to the decision of the expert helper in system.

Figure 1: Question resolving process

After evaluating to find the best responses,
students can save them into their note in question note
phase. Research found that making notes and summary
help students establish their owner knowledge
architecture [8] and create effective knowledge
structures. The proposed questioning resolving phase
makes questions resolved systematically and separately.
Students can follow to each phase, get the expected
responses and manage their learning resources
effectively.

2. System architecture
Figure 2 shows the overall system architecture.
The system is web-based learning environment, consists
of paper slide regarding to course materials, online
discussion forum, potential helpers, learning database.
The system suggests the implementing steps, arriving
tasks for the planning and management of their learning
resource. The system provide online discussion forum to
facilitate student to monitor, follow and to solve their
comprehension questions. Students can mark the
ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.

confusion contents in slide and formulate questions
based on that specific confused region. The question
together with confusion region in slide can be post on an
online discussion forum. Students can send emails and
invite helpers to answer their questions. By this way,
students know exactly the helpers may provide the help,
and also can track the responding process from the
helpers.



Figure 2: System architecture

The system notifies students of the latest responses
when helpers answer. Student can monitor the current
status of question during process. Following the question
responding process, students can evaluate and determine
satisfied responses which address their need. Students
can also mark the useful answers and save into their
notes for future reference. Most of phases in the question
resolving process, from question formulation to question
note, will be stored in the learning database.

2.1 Support for discussing with potential helpers
Students in blended learning courses were more
likely to seek help from formal source (e.g., teachers)
and felt less threatened by doing so [6]. But in virtual
learning environment, this can be difficult for students.
Students seek helps to resolve their problems by posting
questions and expecting answers on common discussion
forum. But students are usually in passive state when
waiting the feedback because either nobody has
responsibility for answering questions or they do not
know how to communicate with specific helpers.
Therefore, the system supports students in approaching
potential helpers and discussing together to solve
difficult problems.
As illustrated in Fig 3, the system recommends
community helpers by displaying expert group and
friend group so that students can invite to help easily.
The expert group includes expert helpers who are
determined as having better background knowledge
and/or learning quality. And the friend group shows list
of students added as friend in the system.
When students select paper slide on lesson
combobox, the system will show both name of related
experts and name of students friends. When seeing the
suggestion about helpers from the system, students can
determine who is able to support them in question
resolving. Suggesting helpers is prominent benefit in the
system; this creates favorable conditions for students
when seeking helps during learning process.
After selecting confusion regions and write
question contents, students can tick off the checkbox of
helpers that they invite to help them. When students
click the Invite Expert and Friend button, the system
will display a confirmation box. Students click on OK
button when they agree to invite the helper and click on
Cancel button otherwise. If student click on OK
button, the system will automatically send the question
to experts and friends by email and post out to forum
simultaneously.




Figure 3: Invite helpers to help

In the interface of the invited helpers, the system
shows summary of invitations from questioners. The
invitation information includes the name of questioner
and number of invitations. Based on the summary
information, the helper may know the students are
requiring helps. The expert can click on each green
button in invitation items to view details and answer the
question. This mechanism supports experts in managing
the required help information and guide students to
resolve difficult problems effectively.
Select helpers Invite helpers
ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.





Figure 4: The summary of invitation from questioners

2.2 Support for formulating questions
On traditional learning forum, some students who
ask question are beginner and their knowledge is limited.
They usually do not know how can formulate question
that can express the difficulty problems obviously and
fully, it makes other students may feel difficult to
understand. Doing some interviews in classroom, we can
see when students confront the difficult problem; they
can transform it into question immediately and discuss
with their friends to find out the responses. Students
either do not understand all the content of slide or they
need only the explanation of problem which they doubt.
The system suggests students may formulate question
focus on their confusion on slide.






Figure 5: Formulate the question
As shown in Fig 5, we divided slide into 9 regions,
each region is selectable by clicking the regions which
students are confused. The marked confusion regions are
highlighted with green color. The student can write the
question content based on the marked areas. With these
confusion regions are marked, the questions of student
would be expressed clearly and specifically. Moreover,
with the mark slide, helpers can understand questioner
problems and provide feedback.
Prompting information influences students
help-seeking activities during the running of the course.
Prompts are questions or elicitations which aim to
induce meaningful learning activities by eliciting
learning strategies and learning activities that the
students are capable of, but do not show spontaneously
[10]. In the system, the prompt is elicited by
recommending similar questions related to slide which
the student is asking. When reading these questions
responses, students can find their solutions or understand
problems more clearly to pose good quality question.
After posting the question, students can see their
questions are shown in forum.
As shown in figure 6, in the system, questions are
categorized according to your questions, follow,
not follows group.






Figure 6: Display the posted question of students

All the questions are posted by questioners will be
displayed in the your questions tab. The posted
questions will be displayed with title consist date of
question post, question identifier, status, description, and
the details of questioner. Students can monitor and
manage the current status, the latest feedback and
question updates when helpers make new responses.
The follow tab includes questions which students are
following. Students can stop follow the questions if they
find out these questions do not correspond to their
problems. Students can view other students questions in
not follow tab. If they are interested in the question of
other students, they may join in responding immediately.
Other students invite the help
Display questioner Display slide
Display question Display questions status
Mark confused regions

Write question

Display similar questions
ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.



Figure 7(a): Question resolving process. (b) System state

2.3 Support for maintaining question resolving
process
In this system, we divide question resolving
process into 4 states: formulated and invited, responded,
evaluated, and encoded (Figure 7 b). The questioner
initiates and manages each phase of question
corresponding to each one state represent in the system.
The system displays the state can help students manage
question resolving process conveniently in each phase
(Figure 7 a).
Repressing the status of question by icons provides
students with guidance in question resolving and helps
them develop a processing priority. Each status in
question corresponds to each phase in question resolving
process, based on status, students can identify the current
action of the question and perform their regarding task
quickly. For example, the question published state
corresponds to the time when students mark the
confusion regions, formulate question and invite helpers
to answer. The progress icons can guide students to the
final state of question resolving and help them assess the
comprehension regarding instructional materials.




Figure 8(a): Question phase management
Figure 8 (a) shows interface displays the
summative status report of all questions they are asking
and following and number of invitations from other
students. Students can know the distribution of
question phases and tackle with different strategies
accordingly. In Question and Follow item, students
can see blue button displays the total question of each
phase that they have posted and green button displays
other students questions that they are following. This
mechanism can help student follow their questions
information in each phase effectively.
Figure 8 (b) shows the response of all helpers in
the system. Each helper in system when responding
question will have different roles which are assigned
based on the invitation of helpers. For example,
questioner is Judy; she invites expert and friend to help
answer the question. In this case, David is the expert,
when he responds; the system suggests he recommends
his response is good direction for Judy. Judy can review
and find answer from his feedback. This function
anonymous reply seemed useful for helpers to provide
advice or feedback. The student can identify helpers
response as the advice for direction or the answer of the
question.


Figure 8(b): Answers the question
Questioner asked Questioner followed
ICDC 2012 2012 International Conference on Digital Content. Tainan, Taiwan.

Figure 8(c) shows the response is selected as useful.
When the questioner decides to evaluate the answer, he
will tick on checkbox of appropriate answers from other
students and mark them as useful. Based on this
evaluation, students can find the best solution to resolve
difficult problems. This evaluation is possible to define
the quality of student responded question. During
question resolving process, both questioners and helper
may better understand about the problem, find out the
appropriate answers. This makes enhance the
collaboration between them.


Figure 8(c): Evaluate responses which are useful
Based on the results of question evaluation phase,
students draw conclusion from relevant answers. The
student organizes the useful answer into their note. After
evaluating the answer in question evaluation state,
students can save all useful responses in their portfolio
learning. The questions and the useful answers organized
as notes were beneficial to questioner and the students
following them. They would copy notes in the system
and annotate the notes on their textbox or slide. Student
use these notes for future references to finish the
assignment or prepare the test in class.

3. Conclusion
This research tries to develop a web-based learning
system to engage potential helpers in question resolving.
The system recommends students to approach specific
helpers. It can help students in seeking helps more
conveniently. Students can express problem directly to
helpers who have better knowledge and expect
appropriate responses. In the system, student can capture
contents of paper slides, formulate related questions, and
send questions to helpers by email. Students can follow
question resolving phases and be notified about the latest
status of posted questions during the processes. This
system supports students seek helps easily in networked
discussion forum.

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