Seeking optimal confusion: a review on epistemic emotion management in interactive digital learning environments

Emotions play a significant part in students’ learning experiences within complex educational environments. However, the impact of emotional experiences on effective learning is not straightforward. For example, being confused during learning may be perceived as an adverse event. There is, however, considerable research evidence suggesting that confusion can also be a productive aspect of a student's learning processes. Despite this, research also suggests that when confusion is persistent it can become harmful, promoting learner frustration or boredom. Key challenges for the design of interactive digital learning environments (IDLEs) are to detect and assess students’ emotions and to tailor the environment accordingly. In this paper we examine, from a review of the literature, the implications of learners’ confusion that can occur in IDLEs. Strategies for managing students’ confusion will then be discussed and examples of features enhancing learning in IDLEs will be suggested.     

Confusion can be beneficial for learning

We tested key predictions of a theoretical model positing that confusion, which accompanies a state of cognitive disequilibrium that is triggered by contradictions, conflicts, anomalies, erroneous information, and other discrepant events, can be beneficial to learning if appropriately induced, regulated, and resolved. Hypotheses of the model were tested in two experiments where learners engaged in trialogues on scientific reasoning concepts in a simulated collaborative learning session with animated agents playing the role of a tutor and a peer student. Confusion was experimentally induced via a contradictory-information manipulation involving the animated agents expressing incorrect and/or contradictory opinions and asking the (human) learners to decide which opinion had more scientific merit. The results indicated that self-reports of confusion were largely insensitive to the manipulations. However, confusion was manifested by more objective measures that inferred confusion on the basis of learners’ responses immediately following contradictions. Furthermore, whereas the contradictions had no effect on learning when learners were not confused by the manipulations, performance on multiple-choice posttests and on transfer tests was substantially higher when the contradictions were successful in confusing learners. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

In search of attributes that support self-regulation in blended learning environments

Blended forms of learning have become increasingly popular. Learning activities within these environments are supported by a large variety of online and face-to-face interventions. However, it remains unclear whether these blended environments are successful, and if they are, what makes them successful. Studies suggest that blended learning challenges the self-regulatory abilities of learners, though the literature does little to explain these findings; nor does it provide solutions. In particular, little is known about the attributes that are essential to support learners and how they should guide course design. To identify such attributes and enable a more thoughtful redesign of blended learning environments, this systematic literature review (n?=?95) examines evidence published between 1985 and 2015 on attributes of blended learning environments that support self-regulation. The purpose of this review is therefore to identify and define the attributes of blended learning environments that support learners’ self-regulatory abilities. Seven key attributes were found (authenticity, personalization, learner-control, scaffolding, interaction, cues for reflection and cues for calibration). This review is the first to identify and define the attributes that support self-regulation in blended learning environments and thus to support the design of blended learning environments. This study may serve to facilitate the design of blended learning environments that meet learners’ self-regulatory needs. It also raises crucial questions about how blended learning relates to well-established learning theories and provides a basis for future research on self-regulation in blended learning environments.     

Designing a constructive learning activity with interactive elements: the effects of perspective-shifting and the quality of source material

When teachers or instructors create computer-based learning environments, they often solely consider technical aspects of interactivity. As a consequence, learners’ main role is to respond to requests of the learning environment (e.g. by answering multiple-choice questions). This aspect of interactivity is, however, not sufficient to understand the complex benefits of interactivity for learners’ knowledge acquisition. In order to create a higher level of interactivity, an instructional task that encourages learners to design learning materials for fellow learners is used in this paper. We will show that this instructional task can induce interactive elements because learners are encouraged to take not only their own perspective into account when designing. In addition, we investigated if the quality of source material affects knowledge acquisition in design tasks. In a two-by-two design, students (n?=?108) had to design either a learning environment for others (i.e. to perform perspective-shifting), or a representation of acquired knowledge for themselves (no perspective-shifting) with less or more coherent information sources. Results indicate that performing perspective-shifting can be a powerful technique for eliciting interactive learning behavior and, thus, for learning. The quality of information sources does not influence knowledge acquisition to a great extent.     

Mining learning social networks for cooperative learning with appropriate learning partners in a problem-based learning environment

Many studies have identified web-based cooperative learning as an increasingly popular educational paradigm with potential to increase learner satisfaction and interactions. However, peer-to-peer interaction often suffers barriers owing to a failure to explore useful social interaction information in web-based cooperative learning environments. This easily leads to learners being unable to seek appropriate learning partners for facilitating effective cooperative learning. This problem frequently causes poor learning effectiveness in web-based cooperative learning environments. Generally, instructor assigned or learner selected learning peers cannot ensure to compose suitable learning partners for individual learners in cooperative learning environments. A suitable learning partner can help the learner, who is learning in the personal way and encounters the difficulty, to solve problems. Inappropriate learning partners cannot only easily lead to poor learning interaction and achievement, but can also lead to the meaning of cooperative learning being lost. Although many web-based learning systems have already been developed to assist cooperative learning, supporting peer-to-peer interaction in computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) is still immature. As a result, this study presents a novel scheme for recommending appropriate learning partners for individual learners utilizing mining of learning interactive social networks in a cooperative problem-based learning (PBL) environment. Results of this study show that the proposed scheme helps encourage learners to interact with learning peers more actively and positively, and facilitates learning performance in a cooperative PBL environment.     

The differential impact of observational learning and practice-based learning on the development of oral presentation skills in higher education

The present study focuses on the design and evaluation of an innovative instructional approach to developing oral presentation skills. The intervention builds on the observational learning theoretical perspective. This perspective is contrasted with the traditional training and practice approach. Two sequencing approaches – learners starting with observational learning versus learners starting with practice opportunities only – were compared. It was hypothesised that learners starting with observational learning would outperform learners in the practice only condition. The results suggest a significant differential impact on development of oral presentation skills. This impact of the observational learning training approach is only found in a limited number of evaluation criteria. Results additionally suggest that students are highly motivated to learn this type of skill. Interaction effects between student characteristics and instructional interventions were not significant.     

Cultivating better learning attitudes: a preliminary longitudinal study

Abstract

The use of flipped classrooms, blended learning environments and the application of technology has been extensively studied and reported in the literature, but the impact of learning activity design on cultivating better learning attitudes has rarely been explored. A rapid adoption of ‘e-schoolbag’ in basic education in China has been observed in recent years. Its impact on academic performance varies from different ways of e-schoolbag adoption. We conducted a two-year longitudinal study to review the relationship between learning behaviours and academic performance in a primary school with a blended learning environment, and investigated how interventions through learning activity redesign could improve the academic performance by cultivating better learning attitudes. The results show that learning attitudes are positively related to academic performance with proper learning activity design. It is therefore suggested that teachers’ interventions through learning activity redesign can cultivate better learning attitudes and thus improve academic performance for learners.     

Design and usability assessment of a dialogue‐based cognitive tutoring system to model expert problem solving in research design

Technology provides the means to create useful learning and practice environments for learners. Well‐designed cognitive tutor systems, for example, can provide appropriate learning environments that feature cognitive supports (ie, scaffolding) for students to increase their procedural knowledge. The purpose of this study was to conduct a series of usability tests of a dialogue‐based design framework for the presentation of domain knowledge and assess how it can be used to actively engage learners in learning about research methods. Three formal usability assessments and an instructor adoption assessment were conducted during the development of the tutoring system. Each usability assessment employed diverse data collection methods to ensure broad and in‐depth coverage of findings. The findings revealed that the dialogue metaphor enabled natural and participatory interactions between the system and users. The feedback prompts or hints and support resources provided opportunities for learning during the process of problem solving. Future research to extend the support of usability assessments is also discussed.     

Knowledge organization through multiple representations in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments provide learners with multiple representational tools for storing, sharing, and constructing knowledge. However, little is known about how learners organize knowledge through multiple representations about complex socioscientific issues. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate learners’ knowledge organization (KO) through multiple representations in a CSCL environment. We designed a learning unit on nuclear energy and implemented it with a group of 20 college students. The participants used a web-based hypertext KO platform that incorporated three representational modes: textual, pictorial, and concept map. The platform interlinked learners’ knowledge entries based on similar keywords. Utilizing mixed methods research we analyzed the individual entries and the knowledge base to determine KO both at the individual and the collective levels. We found that the density of the knowledge base was high; the learners mostly benefited from their text- and concept map-based entries, though the picture-based entries were also an important means for connecting entries with similar content and hence creating a dense knowledge base. Our results suggest that KO with multiple representations can create a more comprehensive knowledge base. Using distinct analytical approaches will allow CSCL researchers to better identify KO both at the individual and collective levels.     

Everyone already has their community beyond the screen: reconceptualizing online learning and expanding boundaries

A constructivist learning paradigm emphasises authenticity as a required condition for learning. However, the design of an online learning environment is ultimately separate from learners’ real-life environments, it is inevitably challenging to make online learning authentic. In this article, the author aims to propose an alternative way of conceptualizing online learning and its boundaries, based on a double-layered Community of Practice model as a means to facilitate authentically constructivist online learning. The model conceptualizes online learning as interlinked processes of participation and socialization in multiple communities across online- and offline-“layers” of learners’ lives. The model guides online course designers in expanding the perceived boundaries of the course environments they design to include learners’ offline learning contexts. Instead of having an exclusive focus on providing learners with constructivist learning opportunities within a non-authentic course environment, the model suggests helping learners to engage in more personalized social learning activities situated in their everyday lives. The paper presents data from a series of case studies drawn from the author’s work that has examined students’ learning experiences in different kinds of online courses, unpacking and answering the central question of what authentically constructivist online learning looks like in each case. With a more holistic conceptualization of online learning, which recognizes and supports online learners’ simultaneous presence across internal and external communities, instructional designers may be able to facilitate learners’ more authentically constructivist learning experiences.     

The Integration of Personal Learning Environments & Open Network Learning Environments

Learning management systems traditionally provide structures to guide online learners to achieve their learning goals. Web 2.0 technology empowers learners to create, share, and organize their personal learning environments in open network environments; and allows learners to engage in social networking and collaborating activities. Advanced networking mechanisms, UGC, flat-structured architectures, RSS, and social tagging, permit online learners to define their own learning structures. This article reports an online course built within multiple Web 2.0 technologies designed to empower learners to construct their own personal learning environments within open network learning environments. Lessons learned, examples, and critical issues are discussed. This paper concludes that effective instructions should prepare “online” learners to become “network” or “open network” learners.     

Listening for Silence in Text‐Based,Online Encounters

This article addresses the ways in which learners’ silence plays out within asynchronous and synchronous text‐based, online communication. Our study takes an ethnographic perspective in examining how learners and instructors in two online courses use and interpret silence. The ways in which those learners and instructors eventually integrated silence into their online communication were interpreted as non‐participation, confusion, marginalization, and thoughtful reflection. These findings have implications that are relevant to instructors’ efforts to create constructive online learning environments and view silence as an important aspect of social presence. We thus propose the need for the development of a deeper analysis—both empirical and theoretical—on the notions of online silence, social presence, and communication.     

Cultivating critical game makers in digital game-based learning: learning from the arts

Digital games have the potential of being a transformative tool for applying constructionist principles to learning within formal and informal learning settings. Unfortunately, most recent attention has focused on instructionist games. Connected gaming provides a tantalizing alternative approach by calling for the development of games that are both instructive and modifiable by learners. If game design is to be used as a pedagogical tool in this manner, emphasis should be placed on the concurrent development of critical makers. In this paper, we advance the notion of connected gaming through positing a conception of a critical maker. To accomplish this, we look to the arts as a domain where pedagogical approaches are in place from which the game-based learning community can draw insights from, along with an overview of the potential challenges and opportunities that may accompany any attempt to develop critical makers.     

Feedback as dialogue: exploring the links between formative assessment and social software in distance learning

The paper explores the relationship between formative assessment and social software. Formative assessment practices though beneficial for student learning become marginalised and constrained in open and distance learning environments in higher education. Feedback is a key factor in formative assessment and learners can benefit from the deployment of emerging technologies and the opportunities for participation and dialogue afforded by social software. This paper explores and proposes a conceptual framework for this relationship. The claim is that the social dimensions of emerging technologies – specifically, blogs and wikis – allow for formative assessment practices to be re‐invented or at the very least facilitated by essentially participative and student‐focussed interventions. A comparison of these technologies against formative assessment mechanisms identifies the types of processes that these new tools might best support to encourage effective feedback approaches that both empower the learner and enhance their learning experience.     

Characterizing navigation in interactive learning environments

Interactive learning environments (ILEs) are increasingly used to support and enhance instruction and learning experiences. ILEs maintain and display information, allowing learners to interact with this information. One important method of interacting with information is navigation. Often, learners are required to navigate through the information space of an ILE, a process which can be quite difficult and cognitively exacting as the information space becomes very large and complex. Proper design can make this process less exacting and, at the same time, facilitate better learning of the information space. However, this is not easy to do, especially for ILEs. Frameworks can assist in the effective analysis and design of interactive environments. However, there is lack of conceptual frameworks for guiding the analysis and design of navigation in ILEs. This paper tries to address this issue by presenting a framework which can be used to characterize navigation within ILEs. To create this framework, this paper brings together research from various disciplines, such as human-computer interaction design, educational multimedia design, cognitive technologies and learning sciences. This framework prescribes a three-stage process for designing and analyzing navigation: 1. content structuring; 2. information navigation modeling; 3. interface presentation structuring. By bringing these three stages together, it is intended to provide a conceptual framework to assist and guide designers in the proper analysis and design of navigation in ILEs.     

The development and recovery of social capital through community-based adult learning

This paper explores the connection between participation in community-based adult learning (CBAL) and the development of social capital. It is based on a life-history study of participation in community-based adult learning opportunities undertaken in two local authority areas in Scotland. A life-history approach was chosen in order to ensure that the learners' perspectives were at the heart of the research while taking account of the context in which learning took place. Two semi-structured life history interviews were carried out with each of 10 learners and data were analysed in three stages, which led to the identification of cross-cutting themes. The paper explores the learners' experiences of participating in CBAL as described by them. It confirms for CBAL what has been established previously for other types of adult learning, namely that participation can support the development of social capital for some learners. Furthermore, it is argued that other learners were able to recover decreased or lost social capital through their participation. The paper contributes to an understanding of community-based adult learning as part of the continuum of lifelong learning opportunities, as it illustrates the potential of CBAL not only to support the development of social capital, but also to help learners recover capital that might have decreased through their life circumstances.     

Cognitive requirements for learning with open-ended learning environments

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) use the capabilities of technology to provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic problem solving; generate, test, and revise hypotheses; explore and manipulate concepts; and reflect on what they know. By design, such environments require sophisticated levels of cognitive functioning. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze assumptions underlying learner-centered, technology-based environments in light of how well learners appear to meet the cognitive demands for engaging them. Implications for design include the following considerations: (a) direct learner attention to key variables and visual cues; (b) prompt and guide connections to prior knowledge; and (c) provide explicit scaffolding of metacognition and teaching-learning strategies.     

Maker culture and Minecraft: implications for the future of learning

Collaborative learning environments found with gaming communities can provide excellent structures to study the way that learners act within informal learning environments. For example, many of these gaming communities encourage gamers to create videogames and virtual world walkthroughs and commentaries. Walkthroughs and commentaries provide gamers information that helps them in game play. We refer to this process of walkthrough creation as digital maker culture. This study explored the phenomena of digital maker culture through a multiple case study design by examining five Minecraft walkthrough creators who created walkthrough repositories on YouTube. Findings suggest multiple levels of experience are needed when players are involved in digital maker communities. These multiple levels of experience are (a) to engage in creating designs for immediate prototypes, (b) to belong to cultural environments that foster collaboration and sharing, and (c) use common design standards. This has implications that could inform innovative instructional practices with digital tools in school environments, in order to foster a more collaborative, participatory classroom experience.     

Designing Adaptive Interventions for Online Collaborative Modeling

One of the characteristics of collaborative learning is that it offers opportunities for learners to reflect and justify their work, to compare, understand and criticize their peers' work, and to iterate through these processes as needed. This paper presents a design of a system that supports learners in taking advantage of these collaboration affordances in the context of collaborative modeling. The main focus is the automatic generation of adaptive interventions for the process of qualitative modeling of physical phenomena. Students interact with the learning environment by running a simulation, using visual tools for qualitative modeling, and communicating with each other through special tools and free text. The system tracks and analyses learners' activities that relate to the subject matter tasks as well as to the communication between the learners and generates interventions accordingly. The layered interventions are designed also to integrate communication and content issues.     

学习者对远程学习、数字化学习与在线学习环境认知差异的实证研究

在当前教育领域内,远程学习、数字化学习与在线学习环境这些专业术语并不少见,学习者和相关研究人员在面临这些专业术语时往往会存在一些理解上的偏差,在使用过程中也会存在一些困惑,因此很有必要对这些术语进行深入研究。目前数字化学习、在线学习与远程学习环境领域相关的研究较多,他们之间的差异不仅仅是表达术语层面,重要的是不同学习环境的侧重点和呈现特点有一定的差异。为此,我们通过实证方法分析研究该问题,总结学习者是如何认识这些学习环境的。结果表明,不同学习者对数字化学习、在线学习与远程学习环境有不同的期望和认知。