University

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University Politehnica of Bucharest

• Artificial Intelligence and
• Multi-Agent Systems Laboratory
• http//turing.cs.pub.ro/ai_mas

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University Politehnica of Bucharest

• Founded in 1818
• Comprises 13 faculties specialised in several
  domains of engineering sciences
• Houses 37 Research Centres, among which 4 were
  recognized as Centres of Excellence at national
  level and 8 grew into Multi-User Research
  Infrastructures with the support of the Romania -
  World Bank Program.
• Has bilateral co-operation agreements with 74
  universities from Europe, America, Asia and
  Africa
• Is member of international academic organizations
  such as CESAER, EUA, IAU, AUF
• Actively participates in RD international
  programmes like COST, FP5, FP6, CORINT, NATO,
  Socrates, etc.

http//www.pub.ro
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Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science

• Created in 1966
• Offers degrees in Computer Science and System
  Science
• Undergraduate and graduate programmes
• Bachelor of Science in
• Computer Science and Engineering
• Automatic Control and Applied Informatics
• Master of Science programmes
• Ph.D. programmes

http//www.acs.pub.ro
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Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science

• Department of Computer Science and Engineering
• Department of Automatic Control and Systems
  Engineering
• Department of Control and Industrial Informatics
• Excellence in teaching and research
• Scientific research, as well as design,
  consulting, and expertise activities are carried
  out in
• Research centers
• Research laboratories and research groups

http//www.acs.pub.ro
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AI-MAS Laboratory

• Cognitive multi-agent systems
• coordination mechanisms
• automated negotiation
• MAS architectures
• multi-agent learning
• Models of affective computing
• Constructive e-learning
• Agent-based tools for cooperative learning and
  tele-working

http//turing.cs.pub.ro
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AI-MAS

• The targeted areas of applications are
• organisation coordination
• e-commerce
• mobile environments
• virtual environments for learning
• CSCW
• The AI-MAS Laboratory is member of FP6 AgentLink
  III Network of Excellence for Agent-Based
  Computing, and was also a member of FP5 AgentLink
  II

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AI-MAS - Partnerships

• LIPN, Université Paris Nord, Institut Galilée
• EU Socrates Programme, E-learning project
• École Nationale Superiéure des Mines de
  Saint-Etienne
• EU Socrates Programme, Theses en co-tutelle
• École Polytechnique de l'Université de Nantes
• DEA-ECD between EPUN and UPB, E-learning project,
  EU Socrates Programme

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Some projects
I-TRACE PROJECT, 1st Partners Meeting, Catania,
November 25-26, 2005

• Projects financed by the World Bank
• A system for organisational design and
  coordination using intelligent agents, 1999-2002
• Education Program on Intelligent Agents
  Technology, 2001-2002
• International projects
• Agents intelligents, Grant of AUF, 2001-2002
• Continuous Education Program on Intelligent
  Agents Technology and Knowledge Processing,
  Socrates-Erasmus IP, 2001
• Représentation logique des connaissances pour les
  agents intelligents, Grant of AUF, 1999-2000
• Participation in the current EU projects
• Central European Centre for Women and Youth in
  Science, FP6, 2004-2007
• EU-NCIT NCIT Leading to EU-IST Excellency, FP6,
  2005-2007

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One of our current projects

• Research on emotional agents
• Emotions have been shown to have an important
  impact on several human processes such as
  decision-making, planning, cognition, and
  learning
• Focus research on
• An artificial tutor endowed with synthesized
  emotions according to a BDE (Belief-Desire-Emotion
  ) model (developed by our group)
• Analyzes possible student reactions my means of
  an emotion sensing glove and how these reactions
  may be influenced by the tutor actions

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Proposed contribution to I-TRACE

• A1. Investigate the use of pen-based input and
  graphical interaction to understand how
  annotational capabilities may be used for
  educational activities
• What does exist? (documentation)
• Integration of annotation techniques in an
  on-line module of the course DSA
•  A2. Study of the impact of hand-written
  note-taking, sketching, and graphical annotation
  on learner's preferences, learning styles, and
  the provided added value
• Study cognitive/learning styles
• Study of the impact of hand-written note-taking,
  sketching, and graphical annotation on learning
  styles  
• A3. Evaluation of the interfaces allowing
  pen-based graphical interaction based on the
  outcome of A1.
• Conduct several experiments with a target group
  of 50 students at DCS

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Proposed contribution to I-TRACE

• A4. Use of pen based input and graphical
  interaction for creating cognitive (mind) maps
  for
• summarising lectures
• supplementary readings
• A5. Evaluation of the added value and impact of
  the use of cognitive maps on increasing
  efficiency of the learning process
• Conduct several experiments with a target group
  of 20 students at DCS
• A6. Study of different aspects related to
  standardization and interoperability and drawing
  directions for a set of proposed standards
  relevant to pen-based graphical interaction in
  ODL (LET) to be sent to ISO/JTC1/SC36.
• ?? depending on available results

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Learning styles

• Tennant (1988) defined cognitive styles as "an
  individuals characteristic and consistent
  approach to organizing and processing
  information"
• In many situations, cognitive styles and learning
  styles are used interchangeably.
• Generally, cognitive styles are more related to
  theoretical or academic research, while learning
  styles are more related to practical
  applications.
• A major difference between these two terms is the
  number of style elements involved. Cognitive
  styles are more related to a bipolar dimension
  while learning styles are not necessarily
  either/or extremes.
• There are several classifications of cognitive
  styles, according to different dimensions.
• Cognitive/learning styles in the literature have
  been viewed in three major respects structure,
  process, or both structure and process (Riding
  Cheema, 1991 Squires, 1981 Tennant, 1988
  Wilson, 1981).

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Learning styles
I-TRACE PROJECT, 1st Partners Meeting, Catania,
November 25-26, 2005

• Active learners understand new information by
  doing something with it.

• Reflective learners prefer to think about new
  information first before acting on it.

• Intuitive learners prefer discovering new
  relationships and can be innovative in their
  approach to problem solving.

• Sensing learners like learning facts and solving
  problems by well established methods.

• Verbal learners understand new information best
  through written and spoken words.

• Visual learners understand new information best
  by seeing it in the form of pictures,
  demonstrations, diagrams, charts, films, and so
  on.

• Sequential learners understand new information in
  linear steps where each step follows logically
  from the previous one.

• Global learners tend to learn in large jumps by
  absorbing material in a random order without
  necessarily seeing any connections until they
  have grasped the whole concept.

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Mind maps

• Mind (cognitive) mapping can help understand and
  remember the important issues in a lecture or
  readings

• Mind mapping involves writing down a central idea
  and thinking up new and related ideas which
  radiate out from the centre.
• By focusing on key ideas written down and then
  looking for branches out and connections between
  the ideas, students are mapping knowledge in a
  manner which helps them understand and remember
  new information.

Picture from the Academic Support Division of
James Cook University
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Proposed output

• An interactive collaborative course module and
  assessment module on Data Structures and
  Algorithms Y1
• A set of good practices of use of hand-written
  note-taking, sketching, and graphical annotation
  of teaching materials in Computer Science with
  focus on DSA Y1
• A minimal set of relevant features for
  characterising the learners preferences and the
  learning style, particularly focussed on
  graphical interaction techniques. - Y1 end Y2
  beginning
• An interactive module to construct cognitive maps
  using pen based input Y2
• A set of relevant good practices of use of
  cognitive maps to enhance learning efficiency
  Y2
• Survey results of A3 and A5. Y1 and Y2
• We shall also bring our contribution to project
  Website, by providing relevant materials, to the
  reports elaborated by the project, and
  dissemination of results.