Teachers' Self-Regulated Learning Lesson Design: Integrating Learning from Problems and Successes

Teachers' design of a lesson is critical for helping their students develop academically effective forms of self-regulating learning (SRL) in classrooms. Using a quasi-experimental design, the researchers integrated systematic collaborative learning from problematic and successful experiences into teachers' preparatory programs and examined how such learning was associated with preservice physics teachers' SRL-based lesson design. The participants in this study were 132 preservice physics teachers during the practicum phase of their teacher education at four major research universities. Results indicated that preservice teachers who contemplated both problematic and successful experiences developed better SRL lesson-designing skills compared to preservice teachers who contemplated only problematic experiences. This study provides a new outlook for linking collaborative learning from problematic and successful experiences as a means of nurturing teachers' SRL, as well as suggesting implications and further research avenues.     

Leveraging new media skills in a peer feedback tool

Today's youth thrive in informal participatory communities where they not only consume but also act as contributors or producers. Through active participation they develop new media skills encompassing cultural competencies and social skills. In a participatory culture of learning, students' active contributions to their learning are stressed and peer feedback is considered an important component. In this paper we consider how to leverage aspects of these skills and the environments in which they are developed in the design of a peer feedback tool for students engaged in collaborative inquiry learning. The tool needs to be lightweight, and “playful” and draw on these participatory skills in order to entice and motivate students to give and receive feedback.     

Development of a peer‐assisted learning strategy in computer‐supported collaborative learning environments for elementary school students

This study explores the effects of Electronic Peer‐Assisted Learning for Kids (EPK), on the quality and development of reading skills, peer interaction and self‐concept in elementary students. The EPK methodology uses a well‐developed, synchronous computer‐supported, collaborative learning system to facilitate students' learning in Chinese. We first review the theoretical framework and architecture of EPK. This study aimed to compare students learning Chinese language arts activities online using EPK with students learning face‐to‐face in a classroom setting. Students' online interactions were coded into four patterns of peer interactions: task coordination, tutor behaviour, tutee behaviour and off‐task. The online activity type significantly influenced the online peer interactions. Students in the online peer‐assisted learning group outperformed the face‐to‐face group on reading skills. Students learning online showed significant growth in self‐concept, and this was especially true for students who were passive participants. These findings demonstrate that EPK is an effective tool that can enhance elementary students' reading, as well as promote positive self‐concepts.     

Teaching and Learning in Iraq: A Brief History

This article investigates the Iraqi educational system and the historical, political, religious, and cultural factors that have influenced teaching and learning in Iraq. It is based on the author's personal experience as an educator within the system for three decades. The author posits that Iraqi educators must establish a collaborative and cooperative endeavor for a reformation of the Iraqi educational system. The current educational system of rote memorization has governed Iraqi schools and universities for almost one century. The author envisions a new educational system that would be based on new teaching and learning approaches that cultivate students’ critical thinking skills, as well as teachers’ pedagogical skills.     

Problem-Based Learning Meets Case-Based Reasoning in the Middle-School Science Classroom: Putting Learning by Design(tm) Into Practice

This article tells the story of the design of Learning by Design(tm) (LBD), a project-based inquiry approach to science learning with roots in case-based reasoning and problem-based learning, pointing out the theoretical contributions of both, classroom issues that arose upon piloting a first attempt, ways we addressed those challenges, lessons learned about promoting learning taking a project-based inquiry approach, and lessons learned about taking a theory-based approach to designing learning environments. LBD uses what we know about cognition to fashion a learning environment appropriate to deeply learning science concepts and skills and their applicability, in parallel with learning cognitive, social, learning, and communication skills. Our goal, in designing LBD, was to lay the foundation in middle school for students to be successful thinkers, learners, and decisionmakers throughout their lives and especially to help them begin to learn the science they need to know to thrive in the modern world. LBD has students learn science in the context of achieving design-and-build challenges. Included in LBD's framework is a set of ritualized and sequenced activities that help teachers and students acclimate to the culture of a highly collaborative, learner-centered, inquiry-oriented, and design-based classroom. Those ritualized activities help teachers and students learn the practices of scientists, engineers, and group members in ways that they can use outside the classroom. LBD is carefully crafted to promote deep and lasting learning, but we have learned that careful crafting is not enough for success in putting a collaborative inquiry approach into practice. Also essential are fostering a collaborative classroom culture in which students want to be engaged in deep learning and where the teacher sees herself as both a learner and a facilitator of learning, trusts that with her help the students can learn, and enthusiastically assumes the roles she needs to take on.     

Web geometry laboratory: case studies in Portugal and Serbia

The role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education is well recognised – learning environments where the ICT features included are being proposed for many years now. The Web Geometry Laboratory (WGL) innovates in proposing a blended learning, collaborative and adaptive learning Web-environment for geometry. It integrates a well-known dynamic geometry system providing an adaptive environment where face-to-face activities can be combined with computer-mediated activities, in a collaborative or stand-alone, synchronous or asynchronous, classroom or homework way. The WGL collaborative environment allows each student to capitalise on one another's resources and skills. Its adaptive module gives to each teacher the ability to assess the geometric level of each student, allowing the teacher to build the individual profile and/or learning paths. In this paper we begin describing what are the goals that support the development of such an environment, the goals that support our beliefs in the usefulness of such an environment for the teaching and learning of geometry, after which we describe the environment and the case studies already conducted.     

Teachers’ perceptions of the benefits and the challenges of integrating educational robots into primary/elementary curricula

Twenty-first century education systems should create an environment wherein students encounter critical learning components (such as problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills) and embrace lifelong learning. A review of literature demonstrates that new technologies, in general, and robotics, in particular, are well suited for this aim. This study aims to contribute to the literature by studying teachers' perceptions of the effects of using robotics on students' lifelong learning skills. This study also seeks to better understand teachers' perceptions of the barriers of using robotics and the support they need. Eleven primary/elementary teachers from Newfoundland and Labrador English Schools District participated in this study. The results of this study revealed that robotics is perceived by teachers to have positive effects on students' lifelong learning skills. Furthermore, the participants indicated a number of barriers to integrate robotics into their teaching activities and expressed the support they need.     

Rethinking Learner Support: The challenge of collaborative online learning

The use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an integral part of the design of distance taught courses raises interesting challenges to our thinking about course design and learner support. These have typically been conceptualised as two complementary but distinct systems in distance education, characterised by different practices often carried out by different groups of staff. Where CMC is designed as an integral part of the course, with collaborative learning as essential to assessment and study, this separation breaks down. The design of online activities is integral to both learner support and the course content, with new possibilities for open and distance learning as a result. Where the learning group itself is a resource for study and personal development, it also becomes feasible to orientate courses and programmes towards local teams and communities. Online tutors play a key role and need to develop 'the technology of conversation' and expertise in the design of activities, as part of their facilitator role.     

The collaborative apprenticeship model: Situated professional development within school settings

Professional learning is a social enterprise where peers rely on the expertise and support of one another to adopt innovative practices. Reciprocal interactions in a community of practice, where teachers take responsibility for each other's learning and development, may provide an effective means of supporting situated professional learning. We propose a collaborative apprenticeship model featuring reciprocal interactions as an approach to promote professional development, encouraging peer-teachers to serve as modelers and coaches of strategies and ideas aimed at improving instruction. collaborative apprenticeship is designed to help teachers learn and implement new teaching skills and strategies through four development phases, beginning with implementation of best practices from a mentor to the development of their own. Teachers, in turn, contribute new ideas to their teaching environment and become future mentors in order to sustain skills and strategies across a community of teachers. In addition to the model, we discuss various influences related to affect, beliefs, environment, culture, cognition, and personality that characterize the nature of reciprocal interactions in order to stimulate collaborative apprenticeship.     

A community of inquiry-based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka,Indonesia

This study focused on the civic education course at Universitas Terbuka (UT). Its purpose was to design a new approach for the online tutorial for the course by analyzing the literature related to online and distance education and investigating participant feedback on the current offering of the course and tutorial, which is a compulsory course in all programs at UT. The study draws from the community of inquiry framework, which promotes a social constructivist approach as well as teaching about democracy by example. This model is intended to create meaningful learning experiences for students in a reformulated civic education course, in which they would learn to think critically through interacting with classmates, experiencing collaborative learning, and supporting fellow students in learning activities and processes. In this model, learning is seen as occurring within the community through the interaction of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence where, students are able to develop civic competences, namely civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic dispositions, as well as experience a democratic interaction that forms the core of civic interactions in a democratic society.     

Promoting effective e-learning practices through the constructivist pedagogy

Although rapid advances in technology has allowed for the growth of collaborative e-learning experiences unconstrained by time and space, technology has not been heavily infused in the activities of teaching and learning. This article examines the theory of constructivism as well as the design of e-learning activities using constructivist principles. The manner in which constructivist theory supports e-Learning is explored, and extrapolating from this pedagogical theory, some implications are provided to model effective practices of the characteristics and capacities of this powerful learning environment.     

Wikipedia as a platform for impactful learning: A new course model in higher education

In January 2014, 62 students graduated from the first for-credit course dedicated to Wikipedia. Learning focused on improved consumption of information, and collaborative construction of knowledge using the Wikipedia platform. This paper investigates the design and implementation of this course model, while highlighting the benefits and challenges to students & faculty. In addition to 128 medical articles in Hebrew Wikipedia, already viewed over 1.4 million times, students reported a unique learning experience that sharpened their collaborative skills as well as academic skills. This paper also presents the findings of a related study that focused on students’ learning experience, long-term impact and productive teaching practices. The study results helped fine-tune the pedagogical and administrative aspects of the course, influencing both teaching practices and the learning experience. Finally, the course is discussed in a wider educational perspective, presenting insights regarding reuse of the model, scaling possibilities and suggestions for further research.     

Experiential learning,self-beliefs and adult performance in Senegal

Ability to update skills constitutes a key element in the process of improving adults' performance. Professional skills are usually updated through engagement in active learning by connecting prior experiences to new ones and also sharing information with others through reflection and hands-on activities. Such learning processes can be achieved through experiential learning. Experiential learning can lead to creation of retrievable knowledge, which can be applied to their daily professional activity. Results of this study indicated that experiential learning needs to be rooted in the culture and values of the social environment in which adults live. Further, individual characteristics may influence the impact of experiential learning on adult professionals' abilities to reach higher levels of performance. A random sample of 126 farmers was selected. Data were collected through a questionnaire and were examined by quantitative as well as qualitative data analysis techniques.     

Learning Design – creative design to visualise learning activities

The focus on quality improvements by institutions for better online and blended teaching can be delivered in different ways. This article reports on the implementation of this process and the approaches taken first, in terms of the design of new learning materials, and second, when reviewing the existing curriculum. The study aims to ascertain whether the combination of a collaborative, networked approach at the initial design stage, augmented with visualisations, has changed the way educators design their courses at The Open University, UK. Analysis of 148 learning designs shows both before and after the introduction of Learning Design, which of the pedagogic decisions that educators made substantially changed. Courses that were designed after the introduction of Learning Design were more focused on the development of a range of skills and included fewer assimilative activities (reading, watching videos and listening to audio). Our findings suggest that by visualising the design upfront, educators focused less on traditional teaching patterns, such as the ‘teach, practice, apply’ model. Remarkably, just by visualising initial decisions and working in collaborative workshops, educators created more student-centred and creative designs aimed to develop a range of skills which support students in both their studies and the workplace. Further studies are needed to establish whether these pedagogic decisions have an impact on student outcomes and whether these findings can be replicated in different institutions.     

The impact of a thinking skills intervention on children's concepts of intelligence

The study reported was part of a large thinking skills intervention for 11–12-year-old children. This paper focuses on the impact of a thinking skills intervention on children's understandings of intelligence. A total of 178 children (n = 86 girls and n = 92 boys) across six schools participated in the study. Children were individually pre-tested in the classroom using written tasks designed to tap concepts of intelligence (definitions, characteristics, causes of intelligence, and the stability of intelligence: entity versus incremental concepts) and a variety of thinking skills. Schools were allocated into one of three intervention conditions: control condition; individual condition; collaborative learning condition. Children in the individual and collaborative learning conditions participated in an 8-week thinking skills intervention. Children in the individual condition worked individually on tasks to apply the thinking skills whereas learners in the collaborative condition applied the thinking skills on tasks in groups of four. Following the thinking skills intervention all children were individually post-tested using the pre-test measures. The results showed that the intervention had an impact on children's understanding of intelligence. In particular, the collaborative learning intervention led to most improvement in concepts of intelligence. The results are discussed with reference to theories of intelligence concepts and thinking skills interventions.     

Extending the classroom walls: using academic blogging as an intervention strategy to improve critical literacy skills with elementary students

‘Academic blogging’ is a way of extending the primary classroom walls and enhancing learning through collaborative reflective responses to open-ended questions from prescribed text. Students learn from each other, develop critical literacy skills, voice their opinions and ask questions through blogging. This pedagogical approach broaches the areas of social media etiquette, cognitive dissonance, Information Communication Technologies, collaborative learning and utilises virtual conversations to deepen student's understanding of text. Through the methodology of Action Research with the spiral steps of; Plan, Act, Observe and Reflect an intervention strategy is devised to improve the critical literacy skills of Year 5 students in the comprehension skills of metacognition and reflection. A strategy was devised that involved the creation of a class blogosphere to share reflective insights on a class novel. While the children's results were positive using this intervention strategy the teacher's own learning as an educator and researcher is evident through this action research project.     

Lifelong learning: Formal,non-formal and informal learning in the context of the use of problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments

The evolving technological landscape in the digital era has a crucial influence on lifelong learning and the demand for problem-solving skills. In this paper, we identify associations between formal, non-formal and informal learning with sufficient problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments (TRE). We focus on adults' problem-solving skills in TRE as a novel approach to investigate formal, non-formal and informal learning based on data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. This programme measured 16–64-year-old adults' proficiency in problem-solving skills in TRE. The total sample size was 61 654 individuals from 13 European countries. Our results clearly indicate that the skill levels of more than 50% of adults aged 16–64 years old seem to be insufficient to cope effectively in TRE. The findings suggest that the learning ecologies of adults are a combination of formal, non-formal and informal learning activities. The overall level of problem-solving skills in TRE was higher among individuals who indicated that they have participated either formal or non-formal learning activities, compared to those who have not. However, interestingly, the association between formal learning and problem-solving skills in TRE was not major. Instead, our results clearly indicate that informal learning seems to be highly associated with sufficient problem-solving skills in TRE. In practice, we outline those formal, non-formal and informal learning activities that adults perform when applying the skills in TRE. By recognising these activities undertaken by sufficient problem solvers, we can promote lifelong learning skills. Our findings can also be used as a starting point for future studies on lifelong learning.     

The design and implementation of learning paths in a learning management system

Learning paths have the potential to play an important role in the way educators serve their learners. Empirical research about learning paths is scarce, particularly in a secondary education setting. The present quasi-experimental study took place in the context of a biology course involving 360 secondary school students. A 2?×?2 factorial research design was adopted. Learners were engaged in learning activities in a learning path. These learning activities (1) differed in design and (2) were either undertaken individually or collaboratively. Gender was considered as a critical co-variable, given the focus on science learning. All learning paths were developed on the basis of visual representations, but in the experimental design conditions, learners worked with learning paths designed according to Mayer's multimedia guidelines (2003). Multilevel analyses were applied to study the impact on learning outcomes according to the design of learning paths, the individual/collaborative setting, and the co-variable gender. The study provides empirical evidence that both the design and the group setting (collaborative versus individual) have an impact on learning outcomes. Although there was no main effect, several significant interaction effects with gender were found. The results are helpful to direct research about the design and implementation of learning paths in a secondary school setting and underpin the relevance of representation modes in science learning.