Regulating group cognitive conflicts using intelligent agents in collaborative M-learning

Abstract

Group cognitive conflicts occur when a learner in a collaborative mobile learning environment becomes aware of a discrepancy between his/her existing cognitive framework and new information or experience. The cognitive conflicts stimulate the learning process by making an individual to move from his/her learning sphere and participate with others in the learning process. However, there is a big challenge on how students handle and resolve conflicts during collaborative learning. Intelligent agents have been used in this paper to provide support for group interactions by regulating the group conflicts. An experimental design with one control group and two experimental groups (role playing and guided negotiation) is used to compare levels of group knowledge construction. The findings showed improved levels of knowledge construction where regulated conflicts were used compared to where they were not used.