Designing and implementing peer formative feedback within online learning environments

With increasing need to achieve appropriate balance between learning support and self-regulation within the context of online learning, formative feedback has been identified as a viable means to achieve meaningful engagement. Specifically, this study sought to establish how peer–peer formative feedback was facilitated in an online course and to what extent this engaged students in meaningful learning experiences. This case study entailed an in-depth investigation into the design and implementation of an online course in a New Zealand university. The studied course was part of a postgraduate programme in continuing (in-service) teacher education. The study adopted a case study methodology with a bias on qualitative techniques. Online observations, analysis of the archived course discourse and interviews were utilised as sources of data. The data from multiple sources were subsequently triangulated to corroborate the evidence. The findings indicate that peer formative feedback promoted active learners’ participation and meaningful engagement. The findings further showed that opportunities for dialogic peer formative feedback promoted learning support and self-regulation.     

Socio-interactive practices and personality within an EFL online learning environments

Education and Information Technologies - A primary effort within the literature addresses the needs in acclimatizing dynamic, student-driven instruction to conceive a significantly enhanced online...     

Predicting student satisfaction and perceived learning within online learning environments

Student satisfaction is used as one of the key elements to evaluate online courses, while perceived learning is considered as an indicator of learning. This study aimed to explore how online learning self-efficacy (OLSE), learner–content interaction (LCI), learner–instructor interaction (LII), and learner–learner interaction (LLI) can predict student satisfaction and perceived learning. A total of 167 students participated in this study. Regression results revealed that the overall model with all four predictor variables (OLSE, LCI, LII, and LLI) was significantly predictive of satisfaction and perceived learning. The study found that LCI was the strongest and most significant predictor of student satisfaction, while OLSE was the strongest and most significant predictor of perceived learning. However, LLI was not predictive of student satisfaction and perceived learning. This study suggests that instructors employ strategies that enhance students’ OLSE, LCI, and LII. Research is needed to understand how LLI fosters student learning and satisfaction.     

Flirting,dating, and breaking up within new media environments

Although romantic and sexual relationships are an important aspect of young people's lives, research on how young people negotiate their love/sex relationships is lacking. New media environments provide a new context within which young people negotiate their love/sex relationships; however, what is negotiated is often not all that different from what was negotiated before the advent of new media technologies. Using an online discussion board and individual in-person interviews, this paper explores how young Australians, aged 18–25 years, engage with dominant gendered discourses to negotiate their love/sex relationships within the context of new media environments. Previous research suggests that young people make use of new media technologies to flirt with one another, to initiate new relationships, to maintain their relationships, and to fight and end their relationships. This paper focuses on young people's practices of mediated flirting, surveillance, and breaking up. It considers the creative and agentic ways young people use new media technologies in the negotiation of their love/sex relationships.     

The complexity of tool use in computer-based learning environments

Starting from Perkins’ (1985) framework, this study addresses tool use in a computerbased learning environment. In line with Perkins, first the effects of tool use on performance were investigated to gain insight into the functionality of the tools. Next, the influence of advice was studied to identify whether this advice could make students more knowledgeable with respect to the tools, and hence encourage them to make more (adequate) use of the tools. A third research question addressed learner related variables. The influence of metacognitive skills, goal orientation, and instructional conceptions on students’ tool use was investigated. An experimental design was used to address these research questions with one control group and two experimental groups, one with advice and one without advice. Results reveal that the tools were functional, the two experimental groups outperformed the control group. With respect to advice, the group of students receiving advice used tools more frequently and spent more time on their use. Finally, the study reveals mastery orientation to be an important variable. The more students are mastery oriented, the less they use tools.     

Evaluating the use of metaphor in online learning environments

Metaphor appears to be an innate tendency in human communication and can be shown to have significant potential when applied to the design of online learning environments. This paper describes and discusses an example of an online research methods learning resource that employs metaphoric navigation. Feedback from the tutors who design and populate the resource and from early pilots with student users is discussed. A particular focus for the discussion is the problem faced by sufferers of autism spectrum disorder, brain damage, and other cognitive disabilities that affect the comprehension of metaphor. Research that demonstrates that autistic tendencies also exist in members of the general population is also discussed as an important consideration in learning environment design. The paper concludes that there appears to be evidence that many people in the general population have traits associated with autism spectrum disorder that are likely to affect their engagement with online learning. This variation in approaches to learning strongly suggests that one single online environment is unlikely to facilitate learning equally in all students. Currently most learning sites and commercial and open source virtual learning environments offer some facility for customization of the interface, but no opportunity for students to choose from a range of environments in which to study. This paper argues that the creation of multiple learning environments which overlay the same learning content is a priority if we are to optimize the experience for the greatest number of learners and avoid exclusion due to disability or learning preferences.     

New Challenges for Educational Research: studying the individual within learning environments

Human behavior cannot and should not be studied independently of the social and cultural context in which it occurs. This is particularly true when it comes to the study of classroom projects or to the implementation of new technologies, since their true target is the whole classroom ‐‐ the cloud of interrelated activities, curricula, social interactions, teacher's actions, learning tasks and more. To understand learning in innovative classrooms one needs to study the whole classroom learning environment and the way it and the individuals in it interactively change. Unfortunately, due to tradition, to the absence of a coherent theory of classrooms as units of analysis, and the absence of a rigorous methodology, the target of research is still the individual. I present here a systemic view of classrooms and a tentative list of its seven generic components. The emphasis, though, is on their interrelations, that is on their configuration. The approach proposed here complements the one commonly employed. Whereas research is usually concerned with patterns of differences among group means or individuals, I propose to examine differences in patterns, whereby interventions affect the configuration of components, not just their isolated contents. To do that, I propose the employment of Guttman's Small Space Analysis, and illustrate the case with a science teaching project and some of its ‘systemic’ data. The challenge I present is to shift our foci from the sole study of the individual to the rigorous study of individuals in interaction with whole learning environments.     

Trends in the use of affective computing in e-learning environments

Education and Information Technologies - Considering that emotions have a great impact on motivation, reasoning, and decision making, affective computing methods, that were designed to attempt to...     

Computer use within a play-based early years curriculum

Early years curricula promote learning through play and in addition emphasise the development of computer literacy. Previous research, however, has described that teachers feel unprepared to integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and play. Also, whereas research has suggested that effective computer use in the early years is associated with adult direction, further research suggests adult presence can inhibit play and reduce children's engagement. Focusing on 12 settings following the Welsh play-based Foundation Phase, this paper explores teachers' experiences of integrating computer use into classroom practice, children's levels of engagement with computer activities and how playful children perceive computer use to be. Teachers confidently delivered a variety of computing experiences. Children consistently rated these activities as play regardless of adult presence and demonstrated moderate to high levels of engagement. Findings and the features of observed practice are discussed in relation to the teachers' role as a play partner and the successful co-construction of the play-based curriculum.     

Microcomputer Software

Dr John Hegarty is head of the Computer Applications to Special Education (CASE) Unit at Keele University, Staffordshire, which supports the effective use of technology for people with learning difficulties through action research, consultancy and staff training. He describes robot advances which should help future school and college leavers in their daily lives.     

Tool use in open learning environments: In search of learner-related determinants

Open learning environments (OLEs) assume that learners are good self-regulators. In such environments, learners have a large amount of control and decide on the use of different support devices (i.e. tools). However, research clearly suggests that, because students often do not possess the necessary regulation skills, they cannot decide what tool might be beneficial for their learning. This contribution deals with the impact of three metacognitive variables on tool use in OLEs: students’ regulation activities; help-seeking behaviour; and instructional conceptions. Results reveal that these student characteristics affect tool use and that their impact is moderated by environmental factors, especially advice.     

What counts as knowledge: learning to use categories in computer environments

In this article, I develop a perspective on learning as multilayered phenomena. I take a socio-genetic approach in order to understand human activity and to show how categories are a fundamental part of learning in a specific type of institutional practice. In the empirical section, student dialogue is analysed in relation to a set of categories taken from scientific discourse. The analysis illustrates how categories in the progressive inquiry model could guide students towards a more systematic orientation to problem solving.     

Conceptual models of programming environments: how learners use the glass box

The first part of this paper reviews the criteria offered by du Boulay, O'Shea and Monk (1981) for designing a coneeptual model of a programming environment for teaching novices programming. It argues that although the criteria offered, namely simplicity and visibility, are helpful, these criteria alone are not sufficient as they do not address the choice of which aspects of the conceptual model are to be presented to the learner. In order to address this issue it is necessary to carve up the conceptual model differently and to distinguish different aspects. One important aspect for novices is a functional view, as this will help them develop programming plans. A new complementary categorisation is offered which offers three views of the conceptual model: namely state, procedure and function, and adds a new criterion, namely consistency. Two languages designed for novices using the general criteria of du Boulay, O'Shea and Monk are then analysed in detail, firstly using du Boulay et al.'s criteria, and secondly using the proposed categorisation. Data from novices learning to program in the two languages shows that although the languages had been satisfactorily designed according to du Boulay et al.'s criteria, a number of learning difficulties remained, which were satisfactorily accounted for by the new categorisation.     

The role of group work using computational exploratory learning environments within children's learning in science

Specializations: science education, educational computing, science teacher education.