| dc.description.abstract | This paper describes a software tool to assist groups of people in the classification and identification of real world objects called the Classification, Identification, and Retrieval-based Collaborative Learning Environment (CIRCLE). A thorough literature review identified current pedagogical theories that were synthesized into a series of five tasks: gathering, elaboration, classification, identification, and reinforcement through game play. This approach is detailed as part of an included peer reviewed paper. Motivation is increased through the use of formative and summative gamification; getting points completing important portions of the tasks and playing retrieval learning based games, respectively, which is also included as a peer-reviewed conference proceedings paper. Collaboration is integrated into the experience through specific tasks and communication mediums. Implementation focused on a REST-based client-server architecture. The client is a series of web-based interfaces to complete each of the tasks, support formal classroom interaction through faculty accounts and student tracking, and a module for peers to help each other. The server, developed using an in-house JavaMOO platform, stores relevant project data and serves data through a series of messages implemented as a JavaScript Object Notation Application Programming Interface (JSON API). Through a series of two beta tests and two experiments, it was discovered the second, elaboration, task requires considerable support. While students were able to properly suggest experiments and make observations, the subtask involving cleaning the data for use in CIRCLE required extra support. When supplied with more structured data, students were enthusiastic about the classification and identification tasks, showing marked improvement in usability scores and in open ended survey responses. CIRCLE tracks a variety of educationally relevant variables, facilitating support for instructors and researchers. Future work will revolve around material development, software refinement, and theory building. Curricula, lesson plans, instructional materials need to be created to seamlessly integrate CIRCLE in a variety of courses. Further refinement of the software will focus on improving the elaboration interface and developing further game templates to add to the motivation and retrieval learning aspects of the software. Data gathered from CIRCLE experiments can be used to develop and strengthen theories on teaching and learning. | en_US |
