Improving effectiveness of dialogue in learning communities : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph. D. in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Abstract

In a learning community, conventional discussion forums are integral to webbased interventions in traditional classrooms as well as on-line learning environments. Despite popular belief that they are a great success in fostering deep and meaningful discussions and support active learning; research has found that there are millions of messages posted by users to express such an opinion, but it is hard to be directly delivered to all users. Finally there are millions of postings in databases across the country stored away and never reused. This thesis introduces a PhD student’s current research work. It proposes a distributed intelligent discussion forum system dedicated to supporting both students and teachers. The system is developed with the primary goal of reducing the number of problems associated with conventional discussion forum systems in web-based environments and improving the effectiveness of dialogue between students with each other and with teachers so that it can enhance each individual student’s ability to share and learn knowledge.