Interactivity in Video-based Models

In this review we argue that interactivity can be effective in video-based models to engage learners in relevant cognitive processes. We do not treat modeling as an isolated instructional method but adopted the social cognitive model of sequential skill acquisition in which learners start with observation and finish with independent, self-regulated performance. Moreover, we concur with the notion that interactivity should emphasize the cognitive processes that learners engage in when they interact with the learning environment. The four-component instructional design (4C/ID) model is used to define a set of cognitive processes: Elaboration and induction enable learners to construct schemas, whereas compilation and strengthening enable learners to automate these schemas. Pacing, cues, control over appearance, prediction, working in dyads, personalized task selection, and reflection prompts are identified as guidelines that might support learners to interactively construct schemas. Personalized task selection with part-task practice helps learners to interactively automate schemas.     

Formative assessment: translating high-level curriculum principles into classroom practice

The curriculum is the totality of experiences which are planned for young learners through their education, wherever they are being educated. It determines the ethos of the school as a learning community, curriculum subjects and areas, interdisciplinary learning, and opportunities to attain personal and learning goals. An effective curriculum, which meets the needs of the twenty-first century learner improves numeracy and literacy, promotes health and well-being, and supports the social and technical skills required for learning, life and work (lifelong learning). Relatively recent developments in the policy frameworks of numerous nations have seen the implementation of an interactive style of teaching and learning called formative assessment. Formative classroom assessment is a potentially powerful instructional process because the practice of sharing assessment information that supports learning is embedded into the instructional process by design. This article uses a range of sources, including policy and framework documentation relating to the development and implementation of a curriculum which drives interactive assessment practices designed to make evidence of learning visible as assessment data with potentially lifelong effects. The purpose of this article is to delineate a ‘formative curriculum’ designed to drive classroom practices that create responsible citizens, confident individuals, effective contributors, and successful learners.     

远程教育英语专业学习资源的实用性设计

学习资源作为远程学习者学习的主要内容,其设计的优劣会直接影响学习者的学习兴趣、学习动力、学习成效和满意度。优化远程教育学习资源的实用性设计是保持远程学习者在学率的重要途径。通过对远程开放教育英语专业学习者在学习资源使用、学习时间利用、教学互动参与等方面的调查和访谈发现：远程学习者仍以课程教材为主、以配套光盘和学习指导书及在线学习资源为辅展开课程学习,但是学习者无法对学习资源按需查取;学习者倾向于使用简短的视频课件资源,但面临时间占有率和信息处理强度的挑战;学习者由于英语专业的特殊性很难进行实质性的个性化学习和教学互动。因此,开放大学在新一轮的英语专业学习资源设计过程中,应以教材为中心,将各种形式的学习资源进行一体化设计和精细划分,对网络视频课应分类设计、系列制作、微型呈现,对网络学习平台应减少级数,促进全国范围内远程学习者的信息共享和多维互动学习。     

论现代远程教育系统的交互

在远程教育中，交互性是决定教育质量的一个重要因素，交互活动直接影响着远程课程的学习效果。现代远程教学模式以现代通信网络为支撑平台，是一种以交互式为中心的自学习模式，它是未来教学模式的主流。交互方式的选择与应用，是进行远程教育课程教学设计的关键组成部分，需要教育工作和课件开发的共同参与和设计。交互技术飞速发展，新技术的出现与应用推动了远程教育的交互方式的变革和交互性的加强。对远程教育活动的交互性评价是衡量远程教育过程质量的一个重要方面，可以从教育的社会本质、教育效果和教育目标、课件、教育和学习等多方面进行评价分析。     

Promises of Interactivity: Aligning Learner Perceptions and Expectations With Strategies for Flexible and Online Learning

The discourse of flexible and online learning echoes with terms such as communication, collaboration, engagement and interactivity. Of these, interactivity is frequently used to refer to an inherent quality of the medium and learning environment, with an underlying assumption that the interactive characteristics of communication with other learners or content objects is beneficial to the learning process. However, interactivity as a concept has received comparatively little research attention. To provide further insights into the dynamics of interactivity, this study reports on an investigation to ascertain the different ways people perceive interactivity, and the extent to which that interactivity adds value to the learning process. Based on a qualitative analysis of responses from 68 participants, it was found that participants indeed had specific expectations of interactivity that were not only consistent with theoretical frameworks of learning but also provided insights for the design of online collaborative learning environments.     

Instructional scaffolds for learning from formative peer assessment: effects of core task,peer feedback,and dialogue

Formative peer assessment is an instructional method that offers many opportunities to foster students’ learning with respect to both the domain of the core task and students’ assessment skills. The contributions to this special issue effectively address earlier calls for more research into instructional scaffolds and the implementation of dialogic features in formative peer assessment. However, open issues remain regarding the role of assessment criteria, the benefit of formative peer assessment for transferable knowledge and skills, the role of metacognitive and cognitive processes in the provision and reception of peer feedback, and the proposed benefit of more interactive forms of formative peer assessment. Addressing the latter issue in particular, a framework of three dimensions of increasing interactivity is proposed in order to guide future research. These three dimensions comprise the learner’s engagement with the core task (low interactivity), the provision and reception of peer feedback (medium interactivity), and the learner’s engagement with argumentation, tutoring, and co-construction in dialogue with peers (high interactivity).     

Instructional design using an in-house built teaching assistant robot to enhance elementary school English-as-a-foreign-language learning

This paper presents a design for a cutting-edge English program in which elementary school learners of English as a foreign language in Taiwan had lively interactions with a teaching assistant robot. Three dimensions involved in the design included (1) a pleasant and interactive classroom environment as the learning context, (2) a teaching assistant robot designed and built by the researchers as instructional technology (instructional tool/medium), and (3) the need for improved motivation and learning outcomes and positive learning experiences of the students as the core research problem. This Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) led to better pedagogical effects on learning and teaching by (1) employing a vivid, enjoyable teaching approach; (2) adopting practical, interesting learning materials; and (3) creating a natural, enjoyable learning context. Both quantitative and qualitative findings of this study indicate that the students' English learning experiences were enhanced, as were their motivation and learning outcomes as a result of this HRI. This paper, instead of merely suggesting design criteria for robots, provides a set of instructional design guidelines that other researchers can follow to create an innovative and enjoyable English classroom that employs an interactive robot as an assistant for enhancing English acquisition while simultaneously reducing the pressure and teaching load of the English instructors.     

Supporting learning with interactive multimedia through active integration of representations

When learners explore dynamic and interactive visualisations they are often not able to interact with them in a systematic and goal-oriented way. Frequently, even supporting learners in processes of discovery learning does not lead to better learning outcomes. This can be due to missing pre-requisite knowledge such as the coherent mental integration of the pictorial and symbolic sources of information. In order to support learners in this process, we encouraged them to interactively and externally relate different static sources of information to each other before exploring dynamic and interactive visualisations. We evaluated the benefit of this instructional support in two experimental studies concerning the domains of statistics and mechanics. It revealed that the active integration of static representations before processing dynamic visualisations resulted in better performance and can provide a basis for a more systematic and goal-oriented experimentation behaviour during simulation-based discovery learning.in final form: 16 November 2004     

Individual and co-operative learning with interactive animated pictures

Computer-based multimedia learning environments make it possible to present interactive animated pictures, which can be manipulated for active exploratory learning and which allow the dynamic behavior of complex subject matter to be displayed. Due to the large range of possibilities for exploratory interaction, such learning environments seem well suited for co-operative learning in which different learners analyse the presented subject matter from different perspectives. This paper first describes a theoretical framework for learning from texts and pictures together with an analysis of possible effects of animation and interactivity on knowledge acquisition. It then presents two empirical studies in which knowledge acquisition from interactive animated pictures was compared with knowledge acquisition from static pictures under the conditions of individual learning (Study I) and of cooperative learning (Study II). In Study I, learning with interactive animated pictures resulted in a superior encoding of detail information, but did not facilitate performance of mental simulation tasks. In Study II, learning with interactive animated pictures resulted both in inferior encoding of detail information and poorer results in mental simulations. These findings and the analysis of discourse protocols of subjects’ co-operation suggest that exploratory learning with interactive animated pictures is associated with extraneous cognitive load and that this load can be further increased by the co-ordination demands of co-operative learning. Although animated pictures may provide external support for mental simulations, they do not appear to be generally beneficial for learning, because they can prevent individuals from performing relevant cognitive processes.     

How Levels of Interactivity in Tutorials Affect Students' Learning of Modeling Transportation Problems in a Spreadsheet

Do students learn to model OR/MS problems better by using computer‐based interactive tutorials and, if so, does increased interactivity in the tutorials lead to better learning? In order to determine the effect of different levels of interactivity on student learning, we used screen capture technology to design interactive support materials for modeling and solving the transportation problem in a spreadsheet. A controlled experiment was carried out and the results indicate a general support for the effectiveness of interactive tutorials in enhancing students’ learning of modeling concepts. However, the study also found that excessive interactivity increased the cognitive load for the students and hindered their learning by making it difficult for them to consolidate concepts, integrate previous knowledge, and create meaningful mental models of the process.     

Making learning whole: an instructional approach for mediating the practices of authentic science inquiries

This design experiment aimed to answer the question of how to mediate the practices of authentic science inquiries in primary education. An instructional approach based on activity theory was designed and carried out with multi-age students in a small village school. An open-ended learning task was offered to the older students. Their task was to design and implement instruction about the Ice Age to their younger fellows. The objective was collaborative learning among students, the teacher, and outside domain experts. Mobile phones and GPS technologies were applied as the main technological mediators in the learning process. Technology provided an opportunity to expand the learning environment outside the classroom, including the natural environment. Empirically, the goal was to answer the following questions: What kind of learning project emerged? How did the students’ knowledge develop? What kinds of science learning processes, activities, and practices were represented? Multiple and parallel data were collected to achieve this aim. The data analysis revealed that the learning project both challenged the students to develop explanations for the phenomena and generated high quality conceptual and physical models in question. During the learning project, the roles of the community members were shaped, mixed, and integrated. The teacher also repeatedly evaluated and adjusted her behavior. The confidence of the learners in their abilities raised the quality of their learning outcomes. The findings showed that this instructional approach can not only mediate the kind of authentic practices that scientists apply but also make learning more holistic than it has been. Thus, it can be concluded that nature of the task, the tool-integrated collaborative inquiries in the natural environment, and the multiage setting can make learning whole.     

Enhancing learning outcomes in computer-based training via self-generated elaboration

The present study investigated the utility of an instructional strategy known as the query method for enhancing learning outcomes in computer-based training. The query method involves an embedded guided, sentence generation task requiring elaboration of key concepts in the training material that encourages learners to ‘stop and think’ about the information already presented before proceeding to new concepts. This study also investigated the effect of varying the level of elaboration (low or high) prompted by the queries. Fifty-one undergraduate students from the general psychology department subject pool at a major university in the southeastern United States received instruction on the basic principles of flight via one of three versions of a computer-based tutorial (no query, low-level elaboration query, or high-level elaboration query). Participants had no prior knowledge or previous experience with the aviation domain. A one-way between-groups design was employed, with the query method serving as the independent variable and a sample size of 17 per condition. Dependent variables included knowledge organization, knowledge acquisition, and instructional efficiency. Overall, results showed that incorporating low-level elaboration queries into the training resulted in improved organization, integration, and application of task-relevant knowledge and higher instructional efficiency. High-level elaboration queries consistently failed to produce significantly better post-training outcomes, possibly due to the increased cognitive load imposed on learners during training. The discussion centers on theoretical and practical implications for promoting and assessing learning outcomes in computer-based training.     

The Development of Prospective Secondary Biology Teachers PCK

In order to understand how prospective teachers develop knowledge for teaching, researchers must identify the types of knowledge that are integral to effective science teaching. This case study investigated how 4 prospective secondary biology teachers’ science teaching orientations, knowledge of science learners, and knowledge of instructional sequence, developed during a post-baccalaureate teacher education program. Data sources included a lesson planning task and two interview-observation cycles during the participants’ year-long internship. Over the course of a year, the participants’ science teaching orientations were based primarily on their K-16 learning experiences, and were robust and highly resistant to change. The prospective teachers became more aware of student learning difficulties, and therefore, developed more elaborated knowledge of the requirements of learning. They consistently sequenced instruction in ways that gave priority to transmitting information to students. Prospective teachers’ development of knowledge of student understanding of science and instructional sequence were congruent with their science teaching orientations. Implications are given for teacher education and future research.     

The expertise reversal effect in prompting focused processing of instructional explanations

Providing prompts to induce focused processing of the central contents of instructional explanations is a promising instructional means to support novice learners in learning from instructional explanations. However, within research on the expertise reversal effect it has been shown that instructional means that are beneficial for novices can be detrimental for learners with more expertise if the instructional means provide guidance that overlaps with the internal guidance provided by the prior knowledge of learners with more expertise. Under such circumstances, prompts to induce focused processing might even be detrimental for learners with expertise whose prior knowledge already provides internal guidance to learn from explanations. On this basis, we aimed at experimentally varying expertise by developing prior knowledge. Specifically, we used a preparation intervention with contrasting cases to enhance learners’ prior knowledge (expertise). Against this background, we tested 71 university students in a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design: (a) Factor of expertise. Working with contrasting cases to develop prior knowledge and expertise to provide internal guidance to learn from instructional explanations (with vs. without), (b) Factor of prompts. Prompts to induce focused processing of the explanations (with vs. without). The results showed that prompts to induce focused processing fostered conceptual knowledge for novice learners whereas prompts hindered the acquisition of conceptual knowledge for learners with expertise that was developed by working with contrasting cases beforehand. Moreover, measures of subjective cognitive load and learning processes suggest that the instructional guidance provided by prompts compensated for the low internal guidance of novice learners and overlapped with the internal guidance of learners with expertise.     

Domain expertise and the effectiveness of dynamic simulator interfaces in the acquisition of procedural motor skills

Previous research into the effectiveness of dynamic versus static instructional design paradigms has reported divergent findings. Dynamic instructions have been shown to be more effective in teaching novel procedural skills. In contrast, the apparent benefit of dynamic over static instructions has been attributed in other studies to the cognitive capabilities and previous knowledge of the learner. Can the benefit of dynamic instruction persist in learners with domain expertise on learning novel tasks? In this paper, we report the result of an experiment that shows that irrespective of the learner's previous knowledge, dynamic instructions retain a significant effectiveness over statics for teaching intra‐domain novel task performance. Twenty‐four participants with domain expertise were divided into three independent groups to perform a procedural motor task following treatment with different training interfaces. After controlling for spatial abilities and excluding previous specific‐to‐task knowledge, we observe that participants that trained with interfaces containing dynamic content recorded better task performance measures than others using non‐dynamic interfaces. This suggest that within the context of motor skill acquisition, dynamic instructional interfaces can yield significant increases to post‐learning task performance measures, which is independent of the learner's cognitive capabilities or previous knowledge.     

异步交互工具的交互潜能——一项关于异步交互中教学交互结构模型的研究

本文将社会网络分析法(SNA)用于两个教学案例,从教学交互的角度对异步交互中教师和学生组成的交互群体的交互模型和结构进行了系统的分析.研究认为,为了更加有效地利用异步交互促进在线学习,教师需要有针对性地对在线学习中的交互进行设计和准备,并在教学过程中充分发挥学生在交互过程中的主动性,提高对学生的关注程度.此外,结合使用多种交互工具,也可以有效地提高在线学习中教学交互的质量和效率.     

论有效教学的十个要义——教学设计的视角

从教学设计的视角看,有效教学的基本要义涉及促进一般发展与特色发展相得益彰,共同发展与差异发展协调平衡;形成知己、知事与知人相统一的专长;实现可应用于具体学科领域的一般原则或策略的具体迁移;强调学习中生成意义,以满足学习本质上内外协调、表里贯通的要求;坚持学教统一,调动师生两个方面的积极性,努力做到从扶到放、扶放有度,逐渐撤除支架,同时致力于创设友好的学习环境,使之物理环境宜人、心理环境舒畅与技术环境通达;教学时应面向完整任务,聚焦解决问题,通过整体设计与有序设计的结合,真正实现教学目标、教学方法和教学评估三者匹配一致。     

Application of bayes’ theory in designing computer‐based adaptive instructional strategies 1

Presented are variables and conditions for design of a computer‐based adaptive instructional system. The design strategy uses Bayes’ theory of conditional probability to determine an instructional sequence according to individual student characteristics and needs. The adaptive strategy uses prior estimates based on student pretask and on‐task performance in an algorithm that makes selections of instructional sequence from a table of generated values. The computer system provides a dynamic environment which updates each students on‐task learning progress and modifies the instructional sequence accordingly. The purpose of this adaptive strategy is to improve the effectiveness of the learning environment, resulting in reductions in student learning time while improving task acquisition.     

基于ISM与AHP的学习者在线学习投入影响因素研究

在线学习投入程度影响在线学习质量,探究在线学习投入影响因素对于改善在线学习效果具有重要意义。将解释结构模型（ISM）和层次分析法（AHP）相结合,在文献研究与专家访谈基础上建立在线学习投入影响因素多层次结构,确定各层级因素的综合权重系数。研究结果表明：学习动机、自我效能感和教学方法是最直接影响因素,网络技术环境、学习动机、自我效能感、教师参与度、学习支持服务和在线交互环境为最主要影响因素。提出引导和激励在线学习者,提供良好的情感支持;提升教师存在感和参与度,提供充足的教师支持;营造积极的在线交互环境,提供多元的学习支持等策略,提升学习者在线学习投入。     

Two instructional aids to optimise processing and learning from instructional explanations

Although instructional explanations are commonly used to introduce learners to new learning content, previous studies have often shown that their effects on learning outcomes are minimal. This failure might partly be due to mental passivity of the learners while processing introductory explanations and to a lack of opportunity to revise potential misunderstandings after working on introductory explanations. Against this background, we provided learners with two instructional support measures to optimise the introduction of new principles and concepts by providing instructional explanations in the domain of management theory: (a) prompts designed to induce inferences that are focused on the central content of the explanations, and (b) remedial explanations that are adapted to the learners’ knowledge gaps. We tested their effects in a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design with the following factors: (a) prompts designed to induce focused processing (with vs. without), and (b) remedial explanations (adapted vs. random). The participants consisted of 80 psychology students. We found that the prompts fostered both the share of deep-oriented processing and the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. The beneficial effect of prompts on conceptual knowledge was mediated by the number of inferences that learners generated in response to the prompts. In addition, we found that prompts also fostered the instructional efficiency of providing instructional explanations. The provision of adapted remedial explanations, however, fostered neither deep-oriented processing nor the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. We conclude that prompts designed to induce focused processing can foster deep-oriented processing as well as both the effectiveness and efficiency of learning from instructional explanations.