Ontological descriptions of receiver states for sharing knowledge in learning service design

Recently, the viewpoint of service has become widespread. In learning domains, service providers have been required to adopt the viewpoint and to provide values co-created by teachers and learners. However, production by a service provider means the generation of potential value, whereas usage by a service receiver implies the generation of real value. That is, a receiver creates value independent of the value generated by a provider. Indeed, value co-creation takes place in a joint sphere where providers and customers interact with each other. Thus, service providers must attempt to generate the potential value through service design and play a role of co-producer of the real value in the interactions between the providers and the receivers. In the current study, we developed an ontology to share the knowledge on value co-creation and the information related to the interactions between the providers and the receivers. In concrete terms, we proposed ontological descriptions of receiver states for sharing knowledge in learning service design, and conceptualized elements of consensus building and value co-creation, according to the conceptual model of value co-creation proposed in a previous study. In addition, concepts pertaining to academic emotions are also described to represent contents of consensus building. Then, we demonstrated instances of a consensus building, which is extracted from conversations during counseling by a teacher (mentor) and a learner. As a result, we obtained a metamodel for co-design processes in the learning service design, and a conceptual framework of the knowledge sharing on learning states including academic emotions by the ontological descriptions.