The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread adoption of hybrid classes, which bridge in-person and remote learners. However, hybrid classes often result in inactive communication among the participants. Towards resolving this serious problem, it is important to share atmosphere in classes, and to enhance presence and engagement of learners. This paper focuses on how presence of remote learners could be enhanced with a telepresence robot, which is controlled by remote learners. In this paper, we report a case study where we compared group discussion consisting of in-person and remote learners under two conditions: using only Zoom and using Zoom and a telepresence robot. The results suggest that the robot could increase remote learners' presence and engagement, making them feel as if they were in the same place. It is also suggested that the robot gives all the learners in a group more equal speaking opportunities rather than only Zoom.

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It is necessary for learners to properly use learning strategies according to learning phases/objectives, which improves the effectiveness and efficiency of learning. However, there are learners who persist in the use of a particular strategy even when they are taught a new appropriate strategy. In addition, they are not likely to emotionally apply the new strategy. To resolve this problem, it is necessary to alleviate their persistence. In this work, we have proposed a model of empathy, in which learners are expected to change the use of learning strategy through empathy for a peer learner who has the same experiences in persisting in the same strategy, overcoming the persistence, and making a success in the change of strategy. In this paper, we follow the model to design an interaction scenario with a social robot to alleviate learners' persistence, and demonstrate the robot interaction system that conducts the scenario. The results of the case study with the system suggest that the designed scenario allows learners to positively change their learning strategies.

In Web-based learning, learners are expected to investigate information through gathering and navigating Web resources, and to construct knowledge. In our previous work, we designed a model of Web-based investigative learning, which represents a learning process as a cycle of phases. We also developed a cognitive tool called iLSB (interactive Learning Scenario Builder) for scaffolding learning process as modeled. At present, on the other hand, learners can explore information by chatting with generative Al, which generates texts in a dialogue format. However, it is unclear about the context where generative Al is available for Web-based investigative learning, and about the effective use of generative Al. In order to examine the availability and effectiveness of generative Al, we have had case studies including the comparison between the use of iLSB and the use of generative Al. The results suggest that generative Al prevents learners from investigating sufficiently compared with iLSB, and the Web-based investigative learning model contributes to the proper use of generative Al for investigative learning. Furthermore, it is suggested that the use of generative Al is effective in exploring background knowledge about questions investigated and in organizing information for knowledge construction.

In recent years, a considerable number of studies have been made on learning with social robots as partner for learners. In these studies, robots are often assigned their roles in advance such as tutor, peer, or learners themselves. On the other hand, the roles assigned to the robots could give learners a cognitive bias to their own thoughts, emotions, attitudes, interaction ways, etc., related to learning. However, such role influence has not been sufficiently explored so far. In this work, we investigate this in the context where learners self-review their own presentation with a social robot. We have conducted a case study with the presentation robot we developed in our previous work. The robot reproduced learners’ presentation with two roles that were their peer and themselves. The results suggest that the role of robot as peer brings about more effective self-review in regard to reducing uncomfortableness in self-review and promoting awareness of points to be improved in presentation than the role as learners themselves.

In lecturing, lecturers need to control the attention of learners to maintain while monitoring their learning states. We have claimed that a robot as lecturer can properly conduct nonverbal lecture behavior to control learners’ attention and enhance their engagement compared with human lecturers. Although attention control is possible in shorter lectures, it would be more difficult for the robot to maintain learners’ attention in a longer lecture. This prevents them from becoming aware of an important part of the lecture contents to understand. In this work, we have been developing an interactive robot lecture system that interacts with learners to recover their attention and understanding when they overlook the lecture contents. To recover learners’ attention, the system first estimates their states of attention and understanding from their posture and gaze during lectures. Second, the system reconstructs a lecture scenario to generate an interactive lecture behavior, which combines non-verbal behavior about pause, walk, and repeat with paralanguage. The interactive behavior is implemented using a humanoid robot NAO. Third, the system provides questions about the slide contents for recovering their understanding when they lose their attention in spite of attention recovery.

In presentation, presenters are required to conduct non-verbal behavior involving face direction and gesture, which is so important for promoting audience's understanding. However, it is not simple for the presenters to use appropriate non-verbal behavior depending on the presentation contexts. In order to address this issue, this paper proposes a robot presentation system that allows presenters to reflect on their presentation through authoring the presentation scenario used by the robot. Features of the proposed system are that the presenters can easily and quickly author and modify their presentation, and that they can become aware of points to be modified. In addition, this paper reports a case study using the system with six participants, whose purpose was to compare the proposed system with the convention system in terms of complication for authoring the scenario. The results suggest that our system allows presenters to easily and quickly modify the presentation.

In Web-based investigative learning, learners are expected to construct wider and deeper knowledge by navigating a great number of Web resources/pages. In elaborately investigating an initial question, learners are expected to decompose an initial question into related question to be further investigated. However, it is difficult for learners to conduct question decomposition in concurrence with their knowledge construction. In our previous study, we have proposed a model of Web-based investigative learning, and developed the system named interactive Learning Scenario Builder (iLSB for short). Although iLSB could promote self-directed investigative learning, learners often decompose a question into unrelated sub-questions. This suggests the necessity of promoting reflection on question decomposition by diagnosing the appropriateness of question decomposition. Toward this issue, we have proposed a method for diagnosing the appropriateness of question decomposition with Linked Open Data (LOD). In this paper, we describe an adaptive prompting with diagnosed results for reflection on question decomposition. This paper also reports a case study whose results suggest the potential for promoting reflection on improper question decomposition.

It is difficult for unskillful researchers to self-review their own presentation. In self-review with their presentation video, they would feel quite uncomfortable due to their looks and voice on it. In order to address this issue, we developed a presentation avatar as virtual character on PC, which reproduced presentation researchers made, and which allowed them to self-review with less uncomfortableness. In the case study with the presentation avatar, we ascertained that it promoted self-review more significantly than presentation video. On the other hand, we also ascertained that unskillful researchers had difficulties in finding out points to be modified about nonverbal behavior. In addition, they would also have difficulties in minutely self-reviewing their presentation. Towards resolving these issues, we demonstrate a presentation robot, which reproduces presentation made by researchers, and which allows them to promote their engagement and awareness of points to be modified in self-reviewing. We also propose a model of research presentation behavior, whose purpose is to design a checklist including points to be reviewed. The results of a case study with the system suggest the potential of the presentation robot for promoting engagement in self-reviewing presentation.

In universities, lecturers often use presentation slides to present their lecture contents with non-verbal behavior involving paralanguage, gaze and gesture, which is so important for promoting learners' understanding. However, it is not simple for the lecturers to appropriately control non-verbal behavior depending on the lecture contents. This paper proposes a lecture robot, which substitutes for lecturers, and which reconstructs their non-verbal behavior conducted in their lecture. Towards such reconstruction, we have designed a model of presentation behavior in lecture. This paper also demonstrates a lecture robot system, which detects insufficient/inappropriate behavior to reconstruct and reproduce by following the presentation behavior model. In addition, this paper reports a case study using the system with 31 participants, whose purpose was to compare the video-recorded lecture conducted by a lecturer and the lecture reconstructed by the robot system. The results indicate that gaze, face direction, and pointing gesture for keeping and controlling learners' attention reconstructed by the lecture robot are more acceptable and understandable. It is also suggested that the robot could promote their concentration by means of eye contact with them, and that it has a potential to promote their understanding of the lecture contents.

Recently, there has been increasing opportunities to utilize presentation documents consisting of slides as learning contents via the Web services such as SlideShare. In learning a presentation document, the learners generally need to select a number of slides from the document, which describe what they want to learn or should learn. However, it is not so easy to find out the slides to be learnt since what each slide represents is not concisely stated and the connections between the adjacent slides are not explicitly expressed. They accordingly take more time for learning, and finish learning with incomplete knowledge. In order to address this issue, this paper introduces a model of how to understand the presentation document. We also propose a map for visualizing the logical connections between the slides, which follows the model. This map helps learners identify the sequence of slides to be learnt from the presentation document, and allow them to comprehend the structure embedded in the document in shorter time. In addition, this paper reports a case study for generating the visualization map.

In this work, we have focused on experiential learning in field trip. In the field trip, we think experiential knowledge from field trip could be obtained, augmented, and strengthened via the following three phases: pre-trip (planning), trip (investigation), and post-trip (augmentation and presentation). However, learners often fail to investigate historical and cultural spots as planned due to some accidents. In addition, their interests in the spots could change during the trip, and then the new goals may arise. So, it is not easy for the learners to obtain their experiential knowledge as expected. In this paper, we demonstrate an experiential learning environment on iPad called Retrip. Retrip provides the learners with several scaffolds for seamlessly obtaining, augmenting, and presenting their experiential knowledge from trip planning to presentation.

We have proposed a computer assisted peer review in a presentation rehearsal. In order to help the peers review the presentation, it reproduces the presentation mainly with the information embedded in the visual slides. However, the presenter generally uses not only the slides but also oral explanations in the presentation to transfer his/her knowledge and opinions to the audiences. The reproduction is accordingly inadequate for the peer review due to the lack of the oral information. This paper discusses how to reproduce a presentation with the slide and oral information.

The main issue addressed in this paper is how to improve the learning situation of self-directed learning on resource finding and organization from the Word Wide Web. In this paper, we have firstly proposed a multi-layer map model that visualizes basic learning behaviors when using the internet for locating and organizing learning resources. It provides learners with the structures of the found resources, the tools for their semantic management, and also an easy way to share the resources via the map representation. A system based on the proposed model has also been developed, that enables individual learners to easily locate suitable learning resources from the Web by referring resource maps and also to organize them as personal topic maps. By referring to a community topic map which merges all the personal topic maps created by individual self-directed learners, the learners can share their own resources and collect those of other learners into their learning topics. As a result, the learners re-organize their personal topic maps by taking the resource from the community topic map, and at the same time contribute to the community topic map through their personal topic maps. A case study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the system produced several positive results which validated our hypothesis.

The purpose of presentation rehearsal is to enable a presenter to be aware of insufficiency or incompleteness of his/her knowledge and refining the knowledge. In our study, we have proposed a framework of the presentation rehearsal support system to assist the peers to review the presentation in the rehearsal, and have developed a prototype system. In the review work of our system, a reviewer make annotations with text, but it sometimes hiders the peers from giving explicit and practical review comments for a presenter. Therefore, we attempt to apply a visual annotation method for computerized presentation rehearsal system. In this paper, we propose the visual-oriented annotation method for review works in our computerized presentation rehearsal support system.

The main topic addressed in this paper is to help a novice graduate/undergraduate student compose his/her presentation document by means of presentation schema that represents heuristics for presenting research contents to be shared by laboratory members. The key idea is to propose a model of presentation structure, which represents roles of and sequences among presentation slides included in the documents with metadata. Following this model, the presentation schema is defined as a typical presentation structure for the laboratory members. This paper accordingly introduces a technique based on association rule mining for automatically extracting the presentation schema from the repository of the documents accumulated in the laboratory. In addition, we report case studies for investigating how to configure the thresholds of the mining and how the schema extracted is valid in comparing the ones between different laboratories.

In order to properly create presentation documents as research activity, it is necessary to get and accumulate experiences in composing the semantic structure that represents what to present and how to sequence the contents presented. However, it is not easy for novice researchers because they have fewer experiences in creating presentation documents. This paper proposes scaffolding for composing the semantic structure of presentation documents with presentation schema that is typical semantic structure embedded in the presentation documents accumulated in a research group. The results of a case study suggest that the schema-based scaffolding contributes to creating presentation documents.

The main issue addressed in this paper is how to augment knowledge to be learned through experiences in fieldwork. Our approach to this issue is to provide learners with awareness (Unknown Awareness UA for short) of information after their learning, which has not been obtained during the fieldwork and which is unknown to them, and to help them augment their experiential knowledge with the UA information. This paper demonstrates a knowledge augmentation system, which automatically generates a Web album with the map showing the fieldwork route followed and locating the photos/memos taken during the fieldwork from the experience log made with GPS and digital camera. The system appropriately extracts UA information related to the experience log from the Web to present it on learners’ demand in the user interface. The results of the case study suggest that UA information tends to promote augmentation of experiential knowledge.

The main topic in this paper is how to effectively help research group members share and reuse presentation documents. The key idea is to propose a presentation semantics framework, which represents semantic roles of and relations among presentation slides with metadata. We then discuss a machine learning technique for analyzing the semantics roles and relationships automatically from the repository of the documents accumulated in the research group. This paper also demonstrates interactive Web services that recommend the metadata to be attached to the documents newly made, and that diagnose the presentation semantics of the documents.

There currently exist a lot of Web resources, which are useful for learning. However, it is hard for learners to learn the Web resources since the hyperspace is not always well-structured. Our approach to this issue is to mine collective knowledge from a group of learners who learned the Web resources to reconstruct the hyperspace including useful pages and links to be learned. This paper proposes a collective knowledge mining method that can extract these pages and links from learning histories gathered from the group of learners.

Navigation planning is an important meta-cognitive process for self-directed learning in hyperspace. However, it is hard for learners to accomplish it. The main issue addressed in this paper is how to develop navigation planning skill. This paper describes a cognitive apprenticeship approach to this issue, which enables learners to accumulate experiences of navigation planning process with cognitive tool. In particular, we propose a learner-adaptable scaffolding method, in which functions of the tool can be fadable according to their planning skill. The results of the case study suggest that it allows learners to fade functions of the cognitive tool to develop their navigation planning skill.

The main topic addressed in this paper is to support researchers and students to make, share, and reuse their presentation documents. The presentation documents are well-organized information for their research. However, it is not so easy to share and reuse such documents since the semantic structure of the documents are not explicitly represented. In order to resolve this issue, we propose a presentation semantics model which represents roles and relations among the presentation objects in the presentation document. We also introduce a presentation support service for editing the presentation semantics and for designing a new presentation document as a Web 2.0 service.

The peer review in a presentation rehearsal enables the presenter to be aware of the insufficiency or incompleteness of his/her knowledge and to refine his/her knowledge, presentation materials, and oral expressions. However, it is not so easy for the peers to review the presentation in a fruitful way, and it is not easy for the presenter to review the results from the peers to refine his/her knowledge. Our approach to the issues is to utilize realtime-created hypervideo technique for the peer review support. In this paper, we describe a design of review support in the presentation rehearsal with realtime-created hypervideo. We also describe details of some technical issues and its implementation of a prototype system as solutions.

Self-directed learning often finishes with incomplete knowledge. It is hard for learners to be aware of the knowledge incompleteness. Our approach to this problem is to enable them to publish their knowledge to get reviews from peers. However, it is not easy for the peers to review the published knowledge. This paper addresses the issue of how to help the peers review the published knowledge compared with their knowledge. Such comparative assessment could be driven with consciousness of the difference between the learners' knowledge and the peers' knowledge. This paper also describes a case study whose purpose was to ascertain whether the comparative assessment could be facilitated. The results suggest that peer review with consciousness of the knowledge difference produces more comments appropriate and effective for learners.

The main topic addressed in this paper is how to help learners select some instructive hypermedia-based learning resources according to their learning contexts from the Web. Our approach is to provide a digital library for web-based learning called e-Learning Library, which includes learning resource repository, local indexing, and adaptive navigation support. This aims to promote their learning with diverse learning resources involving a certain topic.