Jen-Kai Liang’s research while affiliated with National Central University and other places

In 2004, a city-wide weather wireless sensor network, Taipei Weather Inquiry- Based Learning Network, composed of sixty school-based weather sensor nodes and a centralized weather archive server was established to facilitate students having weather science inquiry-based learning. The network covers the whole Taipei City, collects the city's weather status, and opens the weather data to the general public. A series of annual weather inquiry-based learning tournaments was held since 2006 to engage the students to use the network's resource. Until now, there have been 171 registered teams which include 447 grade 4-9 students and 220 teachers involved in it. The study of the tournaments data indicated that the usability of the network was satisfied.

In 2004, a city-wide weather wireless sensor network, Taipei Weather Inquiry-Based Learning Network, composed of sixty school-based weather sensor nodes and a centralized weather archive server was established to facilitate students having weather science inquiry-based learning. The network covers the whole Taipei City, collects the city's weather status, and opens the weather data to the general public. A series of annual weather inquiry-based learning tournaments was held since 2006 to engage the students to use the network's resource. Until now, there have been 171 registered teams which include 447 grade 4-9 students and 220 teachers involved in it. The study of the tournaments data indicated that the usability of the network was satisfied.

With advances in information technology, wireless communication and mobile devices most recently applied to education. The wireless technology enhanced classroom (WiTEC) integrates wireless local area network, mobile learning devices, and client-server architecture to support instruction and learning activities. This paper introduces a framework that involves three learning activity levels, namely learning function, learning episode, and learning flow, as a basis on which to design an integrated system that supports various types of learning activities in WiTEC. A teacher can use this system to generate new learning flows before class and to implement them during class. A two-stage evaluation was conducted in three elementary classes to investigate the usability and feasibility of the proposed system. The participating teachers indicated that the use of three learning activity levels eases the burden of preparing, implementing and reviewing instruction and learning activities.

In this study, an English contest event with across-classroom mode was held in the connected classroom equipped with wireless remote controller (EduClick). The learning scenario of contest event embedded into event-driven learning model is designed by integrating activity-centered design and learner-centered design to conduct students to learn individually before event and collaboratively participate with classmates during the event stage. The contest event is held by the activity-centered design. A Web site with Web-based content and online testing system is built by learner-centered design. We desire the students to learn for participating in the event. Connected classroom is an environment constructed by connecting classrooms located in the same or different schools, or schools of different countries. More various learning activities could be held in the environment. Here, we built a prototype of connected classroom using the simplest wireless and mobile technologies and held contest event.

Human activities are always driven by events. Event-driven learning refers to learning taking place during the preparation process of the event, not necessarily during the participation process of the event. In the study, the authors extend the previous research "EduClick" and design the learning model of the event-driven learning. They process a competition using EduClick to drive the students' learning interests. Students can do goal setting, learn actively by themselves during the preparing period, and then accumulate enough strength to participate the competition event. They hold an across-classroom competition event, and hope students' learning motivation can be driven by the event.

This study develops a specific interactive response system (IRS), called EduClickk, to overcome or alleviate obstacles of classroom interactions. Particularly, several interaction-supporting modes of EduClick are flexibly combined and applied to in-class instruction and learning activities. More than 800 elementary teachers in Taiwan have used EduClick and, in this study, some of the participating teachers were surveyed through questionnaires and interviews. Evaluation results of the application indicate that using EduClick during instruction and learning can increase the utility rate and time of classroom computer, enhance students' motivation and attention, as well as promote teaching quality.

Integrating Interactive Response System (IRS) with a classroom computer is an inexpensive and promising means to overcoming or alleviating obstacles of in-class teacher-student and peer interactions. Unfortunately, such potential applications are often neglected. Accordingly, this study identifies IRS's features, investigates the merits and limitations of applying existing IRSs to instruction and learning, and further interprets how IRS's existing features can be elaborated and generates more useful features for instructional application based on three finished research: 1. developing a more powe rful IRS, called EduClick II, to support various types of classroom activities and interactions, 2. expanding IRS to a network-supported environment to facilitate teachers' developing and sharing of pre-authored IRS-based materials , students' review of the materials and their in-class response on the IRS after class, and parents' understanding of their child's performance in using IRS, and 3. expanding IRS to other advanced devices, which could possess IRS's existing features.

This study tries to apply wireless technologies to build a highly interactive environment. For this purpose, this study first identifies four types of interaction between the members in the technology-embedded classroom contexts, including: (1) face-to-face interaction; (2) computer-mediated interaction: (3) human-computer interaction; and (4) personal device supported simultaneous group interaction. In our analysis, each type of interaction above has its advantages and limitations, and there is no one who can achieve all instructional goals. So, the second purpose of this study is to integrate wireless local area network (WLAN), electronic whiteboard, interactive classroom server, and resource and class management serve to build a highly interactive learning environment, which can support members to flexibly proceed any type of interaction to achieve specific instructional goals. Finally, this study integrates the learning environment design with one of traditional pedagogical models-the Jigsaw? Model to demonstrate how such highly interactive learning environment can best promote instructor's teaching and students' learning.

This paper describes the design framework and some development issues of the project, LISA (learning IS active), which uses a network of computers to teach freshmen for the course `Introduction to Computer Science'. The research is inter-disciplinary in nature, comprising computing, multimedia, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer network, etc. For example, different medium information provides multiple learning cues for the students while techniques of artificial intelligence allow the system to better adapt to individual student's needs. A novel element of this research is to engender student's initiatives or motives to learn by engaging the student in a learning environment with rich social context. Some pilot studies of the project have been conducted