ON-DEMAND HELP SYSTEMS BASED ON

WEBBLE TECHNOLOGY

Jun Fujima and Andrea Hofmann

Fraunhofer IDMT, Children’s Media Dept., Erfurt, Germany

Keywords:

Meme media, Webble technology, Interactive laboratories, Help systems, Help-seeking.

Abstract:

As many researchers pointed out, conventional help systems are not used or useless. In this paper, we introduce

new functionality into the conventional on-demand help systems to create an effective help system. Proposed

functionality is based on Webble technology. In the Webble technology, every part of application or compound

documents can be reusable components. We use this feature positively in the composition of help documents

to enrich functionality of help systems. By using this feature, the contents in help documents can be highly

interactive as well as reusable by users for other purposes. We have shown deferent types of help systems

and its usage in the Webble-based e-learning environment. Users can extract a part of the help documents and

reuse it on their own environment.

1 INTRODUCTION

Conventional help systems tend to be provided as a

document-based system contains texts and images.

Owing to the development of hyper media or Web

technology, sometimes help documents systems con-

tain audio, videos, and even interactive tools.

However, as many researchers pointed out, con-

ventional help systems are not used or useless. The

reasons for less-usefulness of help systems vary from

contents quality to users’ psychological problems, but

one main reason might be that current help systems

could not help users in reality. When a user opens a

help document, the user has to read or watch the doc-

ument, translate it, and understand it by the user self.

All these activities need to be done by users with their

motivation. Otherwise, help documents are just wait-

ing and do nothing.

A question here is how we could change this sit-

uation by new technologies. If help systems support

users in the activities, they could be really helpful.

What functionalities could make uses’ help-seeking

behavior more effective?

We have tried to apply the Meme Media

idea (Tanaka, 2003) to e-learning domain. Meme Me-

dia is an approach for realizing media on computers,

which works as Meme (Dawkins, 1976). The Webble

technology (Kuwahara and Tanaka, 2009) is the latest

Meme Media platform. In the Meme Media platform,

all computing resources such as texts, images, videos,

or tools are represented as visual components called

meme media objects. We have developed a Web-

based learning playground based on Webble technol-

ogy called the Solar Biker Laboratory (Fujima et al.,

2010). It is an educational playground which has a

construction kit. Users can construct a solar biker

components in the laboratory.

In this paper, we introduce new functionality into

the conventional on-demand help systems. First, we

survey current research on help systems to ﬁnd out

what the conventional approach for help systems is

and what kinds of help systems can be effective. Sec-

ond, based on the survey, we introduce prototypical

implementation of the help system in the Solar Biker

Laboratory. In the Webble technology, every part of

applications or compound documents can be reusable

components, which means the parts are decompos-

able and reusable by users in any situations. We

use this feature positively in the composition of help

documents to enrich functionality of help systems.

Proposed features allow help documents to contain

highly interactive contents such as working examples.

Users can not only interact with the embedded exam-

ples but also extract a part of the help documents and

reuse it on their own environment for applying given

examples to the real solution.

433

Fujima J. and Hofmann A..

ON-DEMAND HELP SYSTEMS BASED ON WEBBLE TECHNOLOGY.

DOI: 10.5220/0003347204330436

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 433-436

ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2 ELABORATION ON HELP

SYSTEMS

Help systems are commonly used to assist users in

the use of software programs. The research studies

on which deals with the design of assistance systems

show that many computer programs have a help func-

tion. Some of them demonstrate a certain correlation

between help-seeking and learning effect of learners,

which is effective help use is related to better learning

outcome (see (Aleven et al., 2003)). However, some

evidence suggests that help feature is often not used

appropriately.

Aleven et al. (2003) pointed out the many reasons

for the lack of effective help use separately in system-

related factors and learner-related factors. They de-

noted one of the reasons is that the user assumes to

get fewer points to a solution even if the user uses the

help function. In addition, as a learner-related factor,

they also suggested that some users might be afraid

to look stupid from other people, because they could

not solve some tasks without a help. Bartholom´e et

al. (2004) indicated also a clear tendency of the using

behavior that users with higher prior knowledge are

more likely to use a help than users with lower prior

knowledge.

Delisle and Moulin (2002) also described the im-

plementation of further research in the design of help

systems. Even in their opinion, help functions in

various software programs do not be helpful. They

mainly dealt with the human-computer interaction

problems and perceived the computer as a supporter

of users in solving tasks. In their opinion, major func-

tions of help systems are providing answers to the

questions of the user and information about the func-

tionality of the software. Certainly, they also come to

the conclusion that few little studies have been con-

ducted especially for how to detect users’ questions

to respond appropriately and how to motivate users to

use help systems.

In the studies of Aleven et al. (2003), different

help systems are closer looked. They come to the con-

clusion that on-demand help can lead to better learn-

ing results. Their system encourages the user to ask

some questions to the system at any time when the

system can respond with hints for ﬁnding a solution.

They state that abstract hints get the best effect for

users with high-cognitivedevelopmentwhile concrete

hints lead to the greatest effect for users with low-

cognitive development. They also pointed out that

overuse of hints brings low outcome in learning. In

the paper, it is pointed out repeatedly that most ap-

proaches to help systems are still too little explored,

and only guesses could be established.

However Bartholom´e et al. (2004) proposed a

context-sensitive help and a glossary function for

a computer-based interactive learning environment.

This help provides the user a possibility for using the

help whenever any decision must be taken. The help

is also linked to a glossary which contains deﬁnitions

of terms and procedures. An advantage of this ap-

proach is that the user is always made aware of access

to help if he cannot solve a task alone. However, some

users might feel disturbed by this if they have ever re-

ceived the same hint or if they do not need any help.

Moreover, evenwith the aid of the glossary, some spe-

ciﬁc questions of users would not be answered but be

only obtained deﬁnitions and declarations. Neverthe-

less, they recommended the context-sensitive help as

a support in the process of decision-making tasks, al-

though it does not contribute to a deeper learning.

The analysis of various studies and papers shows

that still no general solution has been found for devel-

oping a help system. All mentioned approaches have

their advantages and disadvantages. However, we

could also indicate that, for general interactive learn-

ing environments, a combination of an on-demand

help and a glossary function could be a valuable help

system. Presumably the main problem is that there are

still no results, how to animate user for using a help

function more effectively. To enhance users’ motiva-

tion for using helps, help systems should be highly

useful, and users should have no disadvantages in us-

ing help functions. There are still some open prob-

lems such as how to detect appropriate timing for ef-

fective help use.

3 HELP SYSTEM IN THE SOLAR

BIKER LABORATORY

The Solar Biker Laboratory has multiple panels in-

cluding a workspace and a repository. Users can in-

stantiate a component by picking up an icon from

the repository and dropping it at the workspace. In

the workspace, users can freely operate components

like moving, copying, deleting, and combining com-

ponents for contracting a solar biker.

Based on the discussion on section 2, we decided

to implement an on-demand help system in the Solar

Biker Laboratory. We introduce the help system im-

plemented in the Solar Biker Laboratory. In the early

work (Fujima et al., 2010), we showed a basic idea of

help documents using Webble technology. In (Jantke

and Fujima, 2010), we discussed advanced use and

possible variance of help documents’ settings. Fol-

lowing those ideas, we implemented multiple types

of help documents. Users can access each help docu-

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

434

ment through a help search panel where users can en-

ter a keyword to retrieve a necessary help document.

3.1 Basic Idea of Help Documents

The basic idea of help documents in the solar biker

laboratory is based on the structure and reusability of

components on the Webble technology. In a Webble-

based system, all parts can be reusable at runtime just

by copying, dragging and dropping objects. Even

help documents may be operational by users or learn-

ers.

copying

pasting

A learner’s playground

Help document

Figure 1: The basic idea of help documents in the Solar

Biker Laboratory.

Figure 1 shows the basic concept of users’ interac-

tion with help documents. Besides some instruction

descriptions, the help document contains a working

construction of a solar biker. The user can copy a part

of the construction, and drag-and-drop it on his work-

place for combining his construction.

3.2 Help for Each Component

Figure 2 shows examples of glossary-type help docu-

ments. Each document consists of a name of a compo-

nent, its description, and an actual component. A de-

scription explains only about the corresponding com-

ponent, what the component is or what kinds of slots

the component has. Since users can take the embed-

ded component and use it in their workplace, these

documents work not only as help documents but also

as cabinets for taking out a component.

3.3 Instructional Help

Figure 3 shows a help document contains an instruc-

tion about how to use a Cloud component. It in-

cludes an experimental construction that users can

Figure 2: Help documents for Sun and Motor.

A learner’s playground

Help document

Figure 3: The instructional help document.

play around in the help document. A user can put the

cloud component on the experimental construction to

see how it works. In addition, the user can also put

the cloud on his or her playground to apply it on his

intermediate construction.

In section 2, it is pointed out that some users

might overuse help systems and then learning effect

would be restrictive. In the instructional help case,

it also would occur if uses always reuse composite

parts without considering. As discussed in (Jantke

and Fujima, 2010), we can consider setting up some

constraints for user operations in help documents to

realize different types of user guidance. This type of

help documents is considered having much possibil-

ity to user guidance or user assistance applicable for

different learning styles or didactic methods.

ON-DEMAND HELP SYSTEMS BASED ON WEBBLE TECHNOLOGY

435

3.4 Context-sensitive Help

Novice users tend to lost what to do next because the

lack of the domain knowledge or the lack of skills. To

help such users in the construction process of a solar

biker, we established a context-sensitive help system.

When a user need a help, the user may click the

“help” button on the workplace. Then, the system au-

tomatically detects the structure of the user’s interme-

diate construction, compare it with the structure of the

complete solar biker, and ﬁnally pop up some instruc-

tion messages

Figure 4: The solar biker laboratory snapshot.

Figure 4 shows a snapshot of a displayed instruc-

tional message. Because the user’s construction has

no sun and clouds, the system tells the user to add a

sun and a cloud on the environment.

Current implementation of instructional help only

supports text-based messages. However, to make it

more effective for the novice users, it would be possi-

ble to utilize compound documents containing work-

ing constructions.

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, ﬁrst, we elaborated the current research

on help systems and pointed out that this domain of

development of effective help systems is still worth

tackled. There are lots of remaining research ques-

tions in both didactically and technologically.

Then, we introduced the current implementation

of help systems in the Solar Biker Laboratory. By

applying the Webble technologically to the help sys-

tems, uses can reuse contents in help documents with

their functionality. Contents providers or teachers can

easily provide users help documents with working ex-

amples.

This is still ongoing work, so we need lots of em-

pirical studies for evaluating the effectiveness and

usefulness. In addition, we would like to explore

how those new features effects or changes users help-

seeking behavior.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present research and development has been par-

tially supported by the Thuringian Ministry for Cul-

ture (TKM) within the project iCycle under contract

PE-004-2-1.

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