Group Formation Using Multi Objectives Ant Colony System for Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Collaborative learning is widely applied in education. One of the key aspects of collaborative learning is group formation. A challenge in group formation is to determine appropriate attributes and attribute types to gain good group results. This paper studies the use of an improved ant colony system (ACS), called Multi Objective Ant Colony System (MOACS), for group formation. Unlike ACS that transforms all attribute values into a single value, thus making any attributes are not optimally worth, MOACS tries to gain optimal values of all attributes simultaneously. MOACS is designed for various combinations of attributes and can be used for homogeneous, heterogeneous or mixed attributes. In this paper, sensing/intuitive learning styles (LSSI) and interests in subjects (I) are used in homogeneous group formation, while active/reflective learning style (LSAR) and previous knowledge (KL) are used for heterogeneous or mixed group formation. Experiments were conducted for measuring the average goodness of attributes (avgGA) and standard deviation of goodness of attributes (stdGA). The objectives of MOACS for homogeneous attributes were minimum avgGA and stdGA, while those for heterogeneous attributes were maximum avgGA and minimum stdGA. As a conclusion, MOACS was appropriate for group formation with homogeneous or mixed.