Distributed Collaborative Learning

中国語四声弁別を自習するためのCAIシステムを開発して,インタネットを通して中国語の初級課程の日本人大学生に提供している.予習と練習と復習の用途や,聴取の難しさの違う2音節語の単語表を,各学生の実力に合わせて適切に選ぶことによって,目標に達するまでの学習時間を縮めるのに役立てる.CAIシステムの設計には,中国語声調の精密な音響学的データを活用し,提示する単語表の編集方法も,日本人学生の声の高さの知覚の不慣れに配慮した.とくに,聴覚的な声調弁別の手掛かりに声の高さの変化パタンを視覚的に提示している.約100人の学生の試験の成績から,四声弁別の学習途中の誤りの特性を解析して,CAIシステムの構成の参考にした.このCAIシステムによる練習の前後での成績の向上を40人の学生で調べた結果,学習が遅れた学生の自習の補助手段として有効であることが確かめられた.

In a distributed system, which consists of an unknown number of processors, it is important to derive an appropriate number of processors by which the good schedule length is obtained by a task scheduling. Many task clustering heuristics have been proposed to determine the number of processors and to minimize the schedule length for scheduling a directed acyclic graph (DAG) application. However, those heuristics are not aware of the actual number of existing processors. As a result, the number of processors determined by an existing task clustering may exceed that of actually existing processors. Therefore, conventional approaches adopt merging of each cluster for reducing the number of clusters at the expense of decreasing degree of task parallelism. In this paper, we present a static cluster size determination method, which derives the lower bound of the cluster size with considering the DAG structure and the task size to data size ratio to suppress the schedule length with the small number of processors. Our experimental evaluations by simulations show that the lower bound of each cluster size determined by the proposed method has a good impact on both the schedule length and the processor utilization. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.

Mobile devices such as mobile phone, PDA, music player and game player are becoming to play an important role in today's communication, education and entertainment. Text typing with these small mobile devices is a challenging research topic for daily work such as emailing, word processing, browsing or searching information, note taking and adding a new contact address into a phone book and so on. In this paper, we propose a new text input interface for Khmer (language of Cambodia) for mobile devices using clickwheel like Apple iPod. We used our proposed Positional Prediction (PP) text input concept for predicting possible combinations of a consonant and vowels or a syllable, and named the new text input interface PP_Clickwheel (Positional Prediction with Clickwheel). We held user study for PP_Clickwheel with ten native participants in Phnom Penh city, Cambodia to judge its user-friendliness based on first-time users' typing speed. The results are acceptable and positive for the current version of PP_Clickwheel prototype. © 2010, The Institute of Image Electronics Engineers of Japan. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the symbol presentation method for Universal Design (UD). Current symbol presentations for UD focus on how to design a simple and perceptible symbol for as many users as possible. As a result, the same symbol is presented to every user and therefore some users with specific attributes (e.g., color-blindness, cultural or physical conditions) can not perceive the symbol appropriately. Thus, we propose the user-adaptive symbol presentation in which optimal components (color, shape and background) for a symbol is automatically selected using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We also present how compatibility among those components should be taken into account in order to be intuitively perceivable as a whole pictogram. The experimental comparisons show that our proposed user-adaptive symbol presentation has considerable improved satisfaction related to visual effects and distinction of color/shape than the conventional approach. © 2010 IEEE.

This paper presents the interactive web interface for inquiring about the long-term care insurance system in Japan. In Japan, health care services provided by the long-term care insurance system takes costs depending on the health care level. Although the system has been revised several times, such revision made the system more complex, so that a web-based system by which every people can accurately and easily ask about the long-term care insurance system is needed. Thus, the proposed interface in this paper has two points to achieve the requirement. First point is to show only basic information related to selected options on the web page. The second point is that dependencies (parent-child) among each category for inquiring should be presented on the web page to make the user understand each ranges of the category meaning. The experimental evaluation shows that our proposed presentation method using the web interface has advantage on perception among categories, human error, and user-friendliness. © 2010 IEEE.

In a distributed system, which consists of an unknown number of processors, it is important to derive an appropriate number of processors by which the good schedule length is obtained by a task scheduling. Many task clustering heuristics have been proposed to determine the number of processors and to minimize the schedule length for scheduling a directed acyclic graph (DAG) application. However, those heuristics are not aware of the actual number of existing processors. As a result, the number of processors determined by an existing task clustering may exceed that of actually existing processors. Therefore, conventional approaches adopt merging of each cluster for reducing the number of clusters at the expense of decreasing degree of task parallelism. In this paper, we present a static cluster size determination method, which derives the lower bound of the cluster size with considering the DAG structure and the task size to data size ratio to suppress the schedule length with the small number of processors. Our experimental evaluations by simulations show that the lower bound of each cluster size determined by the proposed method has a good impact on both the schedule length and the processor utilization. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.

Mobile devices such as mobile phone, PDA, music player and game player are becoming to play an important role in today's communication, education and entertainment. Text typing with these small mobile devices is a challenging research topic for daily work such as emailing, word processing, browsing or searching information, note taking and adding a new contact address into a phone book and so on. In this paper, we propose a new text input interface for Khmer (language of Cambodia) for mobile devices using clickwheel like Apple iPod. We used our proposed Positional Prediction (PP) text input concept for predicting possible combinations of a consonant and vowels or a syllable, and named the new text input interface PP_Clickwheel (Positional Prediction with Clickwheel). We held user study for PP_Clickwheel with ten native participants in Phnom Penh city, Cambodia to judge its user-friendliness based on first-time users' typing speed. The results are acceptable and positive for the current version of PP_Clickwheel prototype. © 2010, The Institute of Image Electronics Engineers of Japan. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the symbol presentation method for Universal Design (UD). Current symbol presentations for UD focus on how to design a simple and perceptible symbol for as many users as possible. As a result, the same symbol is presented to every user and therefore some users with specific attributes (e.g., color-blindness, cultural or physical conditions) can not perceive the symbol appropriately. Thus, we propose the user-adaptive symbol presentation in which optimal components (color, shape and background) for a symbol is automatically selected using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We also present how compatibility among those components should be taken into account in order to be intuitively perceivable as a whole pictogram. The experimental comparisons show that our proposed user-adaptive symbol presentation has considerable improved satisfaction related to visual effects and distinction of color/shape than the conventional approach. © 2010 IEEE.

This paper presents the interactive web interface for inquiring about the long-term care insurance system in Japan. In Japan, health care services provided by the long-term care insurance system takes costs depending on the health care level. Although the system has been revised several times, such revision made the system more complex, so that a web-based system by which every people can accurately and easily ask about the long-term care insurance system is needed. Thus, the proposed interface in this paper has two points to achieve the requirement. First point is to show only basic information related to selected options on the web page. The second point is that dependencies (parent-child) among each category for inquiring should be presented on the web page to make the user understand each ranges of the category meaning. The experimental evaluation shows that our proposed presentation method using the web interface has advantage on perception among categories, human error, and user-friendliness. © 2010 IEEE.

Recently, due to the increasing popularity of the Chinese language and the lack of an efficient learning method in conventional education, the need for more effective computer-assisted learning systems is being recognized. The Department of Letters, Arts and Science at Waseda University has developed a CD-ROM based Chinese Learning System that focuses on listening drills. This has showed its effectiveness through trials conducted in 2002. Based on these results, a web-based version of this Chinese Learning System that allows one to conduct self-learning over the Internet has also been developed. With this system, efficient lecture production and effective delivery of multimedia learning materials are realized with the use of the recently developed Multimedia Lecture Description Language.

Recently, due to the increasing popularity of the Chinese language and the lack of an efficient learning method in conventional education, the need for more effective computer-assisted learning systems is being recognized. The Department of Letters, Arts and Science at Waseda University has developed a CD-ROM based Chinese Learning System that focuses on listening drills. This has showed its effectiveness through trials conducted in 2002. Based on these results, a web-based version of this Chinese Learning System that allows one to conduct self-learning over the Internet has also been developed. With this system, efficient lecture production and effective delivery of multimedia learning materials are realized with the use of the recently developed Multimedia Lecture Description Language.

最近,中国語学習への関心が以前にも増して強くなっている.しかし,従来の学習方法ではあまり良い効果が得られていないのが現状であり,より効果的な中国語学習システムの需要が増えている.早稲田大学文学部では,リスニングを中心としたCD-ROM型中国語学習システムを開発し,2002年に行われた中国語の一斉授業でこのシステム有効性を実証してきた.この研究成果をもとに,さらに学習者がインターネット上でいつでもどこでも利用でき,また自分のペースで自学自習できるようにすることを狙いとして,ウェブ版中国語学習システムを開発した.本学習システムでは,マルチメディアウェブ教材記述言語を用いることにより,マルチメディアを駆使した教材を比較的容易に作成でき,かつ各メデイアを同期・連動させ,インターネットを介して効果的に配信することを可能としている.