News & Events (2007)

Argunaut Presence at Online Educa Berlin, November 2007

Educa Online Berlin is the key annual networking event for the international technology-supported learning and training industry. It is the industry’s largest international forum, attracting high-level decision makers from education, business and government sectors. The overall attendance is estimated at around 2000 delegates from more than 90 countries, making this event the most comprehensive annual meeting place for e-learning and distance education professionals. Participants are high-level decision makers from education, business and government sectors. Sharing a booth with the Kaleidoscope NoE's representatives in the event, Argunaut members presented the project using a demo of the ARGUNAUT system, looping videos, posters and PowerPoint presentations. During this presentation, brochures were distributed and contacts were made with dozens of visitors.

At the same physical location as Educa (the Hotel Intercontinental in Berlin), but two days earlier, representatives of our project attended the final Kaleidoscope NoE’s symposium. Indeed, ARGUNAUT and Kaleidoscope have shown mutual awareness in various opportunities in the past, both through common partner UDE and contacts established by Pouliadis, which eventually resulted in this participation.

Argunaut presence at the CSCL and AIED conferences, July 2007

a) CSCL is one of the most important conferences when it comes to the field of computer supported collaborative learning (e.g., the e-discussions that Argunaut plans to support the moderation of). CSCL2007's focus was on the interrelations among technology, individual cognition, and social cognition. The focus was not only on software, but on the theories and pedagogical practices that imbue these technological tools in the context of collaborative learning, issues which are at the heart of the Argunaut project. Hundreds of researchers and developers from all over the world (including European countries) attended this conference and some of them attended the Argunaut presentations.

b) AIED deals with top quality research in cognitive science and intelligent systems for educational computing applications. The Argunaut attendance at AIED2007 provided us with opportunities for the dissemination of our ideas and cross-fertilization of information and ideas from researchers in the many fields that make up this interdisciplinary research area, including: artificial intelligence, other areas of computer science, cognitive science, education, learning sciences, educational technology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and the many domain-specific areas for which AIED systems have been designed and built.

Related publications:

• De Groot, R., Drachman, R., Hever, R., Schwarz, B.B., Hoppe, U., Harrer, A., De Laat, M., Wegerif, R., McLaren, B.M., & Baurens, B. (2007). Computer Supported Moderation of E-Discussions: the ARGUNAUT Approach. (In the Proceedings of CSCL 2007.)
• Gil, J., Schwarz, B. B., & Asterhan, C. S. C. (2007). Intuitive moderation styles and beliefs of teachers in CSCL-based argumentation. (In the Proceedings of CSCL 2007.)
• Harrer, A., Hever, R., & Ziebarth, S. (2007). Empowering researchers to detect interaction patterns in electronic discussion and collaboration. (In the Proceedings of AIED 2007.)
• Hever, R., De Groot, R., De Laat, M., Harrer, A., McLaren, B.M., & Scheuer, O. (2007). Combining Structural, Process-oriented and Textual Elements to Generate Awareness Indicators for Graphical E-discussions. (In the Proceedings of CSCL 2007. )
• McLaren, B. M., Scheuer, E., De Laat, M., Hever, R., De Groot, R., & Rose, C. P. (2007). Using Machine Learning Techniques to Analyze and Support Mediation of Student E-Discussions. (In the Proceedings of AIED 2007.)

The first teachers' design workshop for Argunaut was held on the 15^th of May 2007 in Jerusalem.

During this workshop, teachers from the Ziv School and university students with experience in e-moderation were presented with several visualization options for indicators of important e-discussion aspects (such as participation, connectivity, social network, etc.). The participants filled out questionnaires to state their opinions and preferences regarding these visual presentations and their possible contribution to e-moderation. Furthermore, the participants annotated two graphical e-discussions, pinpointing aspects they see as important to the discussion. These data will be analyzed by the HUJI team and will contribute to the continuing improvement of the Argunaut tools.

First Argunaut pre-releases (0.1 and 0.1.5 beta) available online, May-June 2007:

The tech team is pleased to announce the first release of the Argunaut System. It is still a beta, which needs a lot of testing and bug-fixing, but the functionality is fixed for the first release (version 0.1).

A new build (version 0.1.5) of the Argunaut System, has been released in June, including bug corrections and several changes.

More information and a change log can be found on the Installation Instruction and Documentation page in the Argunaut System folder¹.

¹ _{The links above are currently limited to our members and select testers, but will hopefully become available to the public in the near future.}