IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - April 2023 - 9

perspectives, and teams with homogeneous learning perspectives
and heterogeneous personalities are formed via
clustering into smaller sizes in a range from three to five.
However, the existing research ignores the uncertainty
of learners' abilities and fails to comprehensively assess
learners' abilities. More important, there is no generalized
framework for solving LC-LTF problems in different application
scenarios.
Problem Statement
In practice, course-based learning and project-based
learning have different requirements for LTF. Thus, they
are viewed as two types of different LC-LTF problems in
this article.
LC-LTF for Course-Based Learning
(Type 1 LC-LTF)
In course-based learning, learners study course-related
theoretical knowledge and practical skills. However, teachers'
energy is limited, and they cannot give timely responses
to every learner, due to a large number of learners.
Taking Hunan Normal University as an example, one class
usually consists of around 40~70 learners. Therefore, it is
necessary to form learning teams and develop collaborative
learning.
For this type of LC-LTF problem, we first evaluate
learners' ability according to several indicators and
select n learners with a high overall ability to be the leaders
for n teams. Obviously, if team members often come
into conflict with this leader because of different personalities
and habits, we can hardly expect the leader to play
an important role in the collaborative learning process.
Thus, it is critical to identify the learners as compatible
with the leader. Just based on the assumption that " learners
with a higher degree of compatibility with the leader
will lead to a more satisfactory collaborative learning
outcome, " other learners are assigned to the n teams
under conflict constraints to ensure an optimal overall
collaborative learning effect. This type of problem is
shown in Figure 1.
It is meaningful to discover the subjective and objective
conflicts among learners to optimize LTF. Subjective
conflict shows the willingness of learners to team with
one another [1]. Teams formed by avoiding subjective conflicts
consider all the learners' preferences and improve
the efficiency of collaborative learning. Objective conflicts
are obtained by analyzing the compatibility among learners
based on their characteristics in a learning team. For
example, for the neuroticism characteristic in personality
conflicts [22], two learners with high assessment values
are probably in conflict. If this conflict is ignored, the
formed learning teams might not improve the learning efficiency
of the members. It may even lead to negative behaviors,
such as quarrels and emotional abuse, which greatly
affect the learning quality of learners.
LC-LTF for Project-Based Learning
(Type 2 LC-LTF)
In project-based learning, groups of learners are usually
limited to about 20 to 30. At the beginning of a course,
teachers publish some practical projects with different
ability requirements regarding knowledge and skills. There
is a mock example of a project description in Table 2.
Considering the differences among projects, the selection
criteria for leaders vary from project to project. One
learner has different matching degrees for different projects.
Thus, first, it is necessary to rightly evaluate the
matching degree of a learner for a project according to its
ability requirements. Based on the evaluation results,
some appropriate learners are selected as the leaders,
and these leaders will play an important role in the
Table 2. The ability requirements
of projects.
Project
Health management
system via blockchain
Exercise system via
cognitive diagnosis
SSM: Spring, SpringMVC, MyBatis.
Ability Requirements
Blockchain, medical knowledge,
Java, and SSM development
framework
Cognitive diagnosis, recommendation
algorithm, and Python
Skills to be Mastered
Assign
......
Learners
......
Learners
2
1
[[0.0, 0.1], [0.2, 0.3], ...]
Proficiency
[[0.6, 0.7], [0.5, 0.6], ...]
.........
m [[0.2, 0.3], [0.8, 1.0], ...]
Assign
.........
Figure 1. LC-LTF for course-based learning.
April 2023 IEEE SYSTEMS, MAN, & CYBERNETICS MAGAZINE
9
Learner-Learner Conflicts
Member Leader Member
Learning Team 1
Learner 1 Learner 2
.........
Member Leader Member
Learning Team 2
Learners
Evaluation
Constraints
Formulation
Team
Formation
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