Learners’ perceptions of instructional design practice in a situated learning activity

This case study investigated learners’ perceptions of value from participating in a learning activity designed to model professional instructional design practice. Learners developed instructional design products for a corporate client in the context of a classroom-based course. The findings indicate that learners perceived different kinds of value which varied according to the degree of integration of learners’ goals with client’s goals, ranging from (a) co-constituted value (in which learners perceived the value of their participation as being inextricably bound to creation of value to the client) to (b) satisficing value (in which learners engaged with the activity so as to generate value for themselves while providing sufficient or good enough value to the client) to (c) salvage value (in which learners did not participate in the activity in the manner intended, but attempted to salvage some personal value from their participation). A framework relates these learners’ perceptions of value to three main features of such learning activities: what you do, how you do it, and who you are accountable to. The relative worth of these different kinds of value is discussed, and proposals for influencing learner perceptions of value are presented.     

Learners’ perceptions and illusions of adaptivity in computer-based learning environments

Research on computer-based adaptive learning environments has shown exemplary growth. Although the mechanisms of effective adaptive instruction are unraveled systematically, little is known about the relative effect of learners’ perceptions of adaptivity in adaptive learning environments. As previous research has demonstrated that the learners’ view towards a learning environment strongly influences their learning outcomes and learning process, it can be discussed whether program-defined adaptivity is not only effective because of the underlying learner models, but also because the adaptivity is perceived and experienced as such by the learners. In this study, we apply the cognitive mediational paradigm and hypothesize that perceptions of adaptivity mediate the relation between adaptive instruction and learners’ motivations and learning outcomes. The results do not fully support the claim of the cognitive mediational paradigm. Both adaptivity and perceptions were related to motivation, but learners’ perceptions did not act as a mediating variable.     

Online self-assessment with feedback and metacognitive knowledge

The present work describes an experience of educational innovation in a university context. Its aim was to determine the relationship between students’ frequency of use of online self-assessment with feedback and their final performance on the course, taking into account both learners’ motivation and perceived usefulness of these resources for their learning process. Furthermore, we studied the relationship between metacognitive variables and academic performance and/or execution of activities aimed at learning the course content. To this end we created self-assessment material with the Hot Potatoes educational program and assessed the degree to which students took advantage of the tool, their satisfaction with it and their perceived knowledge, using ad hoc questionnaires. The results indicate better academic performance in those students that use interactive self-assessment. It should be pointed out that even students with low motivation levels made use of this teaching tool. Finally, a relationship was found between metacognitive variables and students’ effort and performance. We discuss the need to include self-assessment in the curriculum, with a view to improving students’ metacognitive knowledge.     

Improving self-regulation, learning strategy use, and achievement with metacognitive feedback

Comprehension of science topics occurs when learners meaningfully generate relationships and conceptions about what they read. In this generation process, learners’ cognitive and metacognitive regulation is one of the most critical factors influencing learning. However, learners are not always successful in regulating their own learning, especially in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) where they are alone. Based on this rationale, the present study was designed to examine the effects of two scaffolding strategies—generative learning strategy prompts and metacognitive feedback—on learners’ comprehension and self-regulation while learning the human heart system in a CBLE. Participants were 223 undergraduate student volunteers. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to conceptualize and empirically test a model that explains mediating processes among variables. Results revealed that the combination of generative learning strategy prompts with metacognitive feedback improved learners’ recall and comprehension by enhancing learners’ self-regulation and better use of highlighting and summarizing as generative learning strategies.     

THE DYNAMICS OF LEARNING SCIENCE IN EVERYDAY CONTEXTS: A CASE STUDY OF EVERYDAY SCIENCE CLASS IN KOREA

With recognition of the importance of scientific literacy for the nation and yet the increasing students’ disinterest in science through school science curriculum, the Korea Science Foundation launched an innovative program called ‘Everyday Science Class (ESC)’ in partnership with universities and local government offices in 2003. In this work, we introduce the structure and dynamics of the ESC program in K-district through examining (1) how everyday contexts helped learners’ perceptions and attitudes toward science and (2) how the dynamics of learning environments effected learners’ learning process. We employed interviews and video recording of classes for data collection. To analyze the data, we used the process of thematic coding to understand the outcomes and effects of ESC program. The research findings showed that everyday context and a unique environment of learning with parents in the ESC program could bring forth learners’ understandings on the connection between science and their everyday lives and positive attitudes toward science learning. We also found that there were certain issues to be taken into account in terms of children’s cognitive development for further development.     

Delayed Understanding and Staying in Phase: Students’ Perceptions of their Study Situation

Findings are presented from a study of undergraduate students’ experiences of understanding in first-year engineering. At the end of their first year of study 86 Swedish students of electrical engineering and computer science were asked to reflect in writing on their experiences of studying and learning. Fifteen of them also took part in interviews which explored in some detail their experiences of understanding in relation to perceived constraints of the teaching-learning environment. The analyses of the students’ written accounts and the interview data focused on the students’ experiences of studying and of understanding in relation to course work in engineering. The majority of the students reported problematic first-year experiences and testified to a sensation of ‘falling out of phase’ with their studies. This sensation was frequently coupled with a lag in coming to understand course material, which may be characterised in terms of delayed understanding. The notion of delayed understanding is discussed in relation to ideas about students’ perceptions of the learning environment and the impact that those perceptions might have on students’ opportunities to reflect on learning material and develop a solid understanding of course material in engineering education. In conclusion, it is suggested that the the notion of delayed understanding captures the complications of a study situation in which a perceived lack of time to reflect on learning material obstructs students’ understanding of course material in engineering, and also points up a more general aspect of learning observing that time to reflect on previous experiences is an essential component of the process of coming to understand learning material in a particular educational setting.     

The effects of levels of elaboration on learners’ strategic processing of text

In the current work, we examined learners’ comprehension when engaged with elaborative processing strategies. In Experiment 1, we randomly assigned students to one of five elaborative processing conditions and addressed differences in learners’ lower- and higher-order learning outcomes and ability to employ elaborative strategies. Findings indicated no significant differences among conditions on learning outcomes. However, learners better able to employ elaborative processing strategies performed better on outcome measures. Experiment 2 extended this research and addressed whether there would be differences across elaborative processing conditions in learners’ comprehension at delayed testing. We also examined the role of motivation in performance and strategy use. Findings indicated no differences on the outcome measures at delayed testing; however, there were significant differences in learners’ performance on an integration outcome at immediate testing. In addition, significant positive correlations were indicated for several outcome measures, strategy use and mastery orientation. Future research should further consider instructional scaffolds to promote learners’ strategic processing and critical individual difference variables as they effect elaborative processing.     

Computer Technology Integration and Student Learning: Barriers and Promise

Political and institutional support has enabled many institutions of learning to spend millions of dollars to acquire educational computing tools (Ficklen and Muscara, Am Educ 25(3):22–29, 2001) that have not been effectively integrated into the curriculum. While access to educational technology tools has remarkably improved in most schools, there is still concern about instructional integration of computer technology to support student learning. Appropriate integration of computer tools constitutes a major change in people’s lives; technology integration is a complex phenomenon that involves understanding teachers’ motivations, perceptions, and beliefs about learning and technology (Woodbridge, ). Although computer technology has a great potential to reform or even transform education, barriers come in the way of achieving success especially with student learning. This paper presents an overview of technology use in education with a focus on barriers to computer technology integration. Further, this paper provides suggestions to maximize the benefits of learning with computer technology.     

Investigating strategies for using related cases to support design problem solving

Case-based learning has long been used to bring students into contact with the complexity of real-world situations. Despite this popularity and considerable history, research into how case analysis can support future problem-solving has been limited. The study reported in this paper investigated learners’ understanding of multimedia instructional design and development derived from the analysis of two richly detailed cases, and how this understanding then supported learners in their own design projects. A qualitative case study approach was used to follow a class of Masters students engaged in a technology-supported, case-based learning environment. Student work from case analysis, group project and reflective tasks was the key data source, complemented by interviews with students and their instructor, observations of class meetings, and the collection of online discussion list records and electronic resource files. The study found that the case analysis task raised learners’ awareness of design approaches and project management strategies, and that discussion and reflection play critical roles in developing students’ understanding. The study also highlighted some limitations of the case approach, suggesting the need for strategies that support learners’ thinking and reasoning.     

Learners’ Responses to the Demands of Conceptual Change: Considerations for Effective Nature of Science Instruction

Much has been written about how effective nature of science instruction must have a significant explicit and reflective character. However, while explicitly drawing students’ attention to NOS issues is crucial, learning and teaching the NOS are essentially matters of conceptual change. In this article, how people learn and learners’ responses to the demands of conceptual change are used to explain how students may exit from instruction with fundamental NOS misconceptions left intact or only slightly altered, despite being explicitly and reflectively attended to more accurate ideas. The purpose of this concept paper is to set within a theoretical framework of learning, and bring some coherence to, what has rapidly become a large body of empirical research regarding effective NOS instruction. Toward these two ends, this article: (1) illustrates how a conceptual change framework can be used to account for learners’ responses to NOS instruction and what teachers might do to promote understanding NOS and transferring it to new contexts; (2) characterizes popularly advocated NOS instructional approaches along a continuum marked by increasing connection to the workings of science, and decreased ability to dismiss NOS lessons as extraneous to authentic science; and (3) proposes that NOS instruction would likely be more effective if teachers deliberately scaffolded classroom experiences and students’ developing NOS understanding back and forth along the continuum.     

Mathematics, computers, and young children as a research-oriented learning environment for a teacher candidate

The advent of computer technology in the classroom raised the issue of its appropriate use by teachers and their students alike. It has been recommended that teacher education programs provide more opportunities for teacher candidates’ use of technology including teaching their own technology-enhanced lessons. With a goal of integrating scholarship into student teaching, a teacher candidate enrolled in a graduate program in childhood education carried out a technology-enhanced research project within a professional development school. Examining the impact of the project on the teacher candidate, this article describes how one’s pedagogical content knowledge and technological competence can be developed through a research-oriented teaching experience. The article also demonstrates the emergence of a community of practice that shares the goal of providing learning spaces for the teacher candidate and young children in the context of mathematics enrichment with computers.     

Electronic Portfolios in Teacher Education: A Case Study of Early Childhood Teacher Candidates

The use of electronic portfolios is increasingly becoming popular in teacher education programs. The electronic portfolio allows learners to express their work and take ownership over their own ability to plan and assess and reflect upon their learning during a specific period of time. While many teacher education programs have adopted electronic portfolios in order to meet accreditation requirements, others use electronic portfolios to develop and improve on students’ technology skills—train students on how to better use technology in instruction and student assessment. Irrespective of the reasons for adoption, there is the need to assess students’ perceptions of electronic portfolios, and especially to explore the benefits and challenges students face in using electronic portfolios in their course work. Using a qualitative research design, the current study explored teacher candidates’ attitudes toward electronic portfolios and the differences that electronic portfolios bring to their profession. Such a study is necessary to help administrators identify students’ needs to ensure that they are gaining the maximum benefits from the use of electronic portfolios in their programs of study.     

Learning from Learning Kits: gStudy Traces of Students’ Self-Regulated Engagements with Computerized Content

Researching self-regulated learning (SRL) as a process that evolves across multiple episodes of studying poses large methodological challenges. While self-report data provide useful information about learners’ perceptions of learning, these data are not reliable indicators of studying tactics learners actually use while studying, especially when learners are young children. We argue that self-reports about SRL need to be augmented by fine-grained traces that are records of learners’ actual activities as they study. We describe how gStudy software unobtrusively collects detailed trace data about learners’ use of study tactics as they engage with content presented in learning kits—collections of documents (e.g., texts, graphics, video clips) and tasks (e.g., notes, concept maps) on which learners operate to study. We suggest that trace data can advance research about how learners select, monitor, assemble, rehearse, and translate information to learn it, and provide raw materials for mapping SRL and its effects. Examples from the Life Cycles Learning Kit that supports grade 1 students learning about the life cycles of humans and frogs are given.

Self-processes and learning environment as influences in the development of expertise in instructional design

A major challenge for learning theories is to illuminate how particular kinds of learning experiences and environments promote the development of expertise. Research has been conducted into novice-expert differences in various domains, but few studies have examined the processes involved in learners’ expertise development. In an attempt to understand the development of expertise in instructional design (ID) among graduate students, this study aimed to investigate (1) the patterns of expertise development among ID learners over an extended period; (2) the roles of expert modelling, peer feedback, self-reflection and participation in a supportive learning community in learners’ expertise development; and (3) the interactions of individual differences and the learning environment in learners’ expertise development. A qualitative design was used to investigate students’ expertise development across a range of dimensions. The participants were two cohorts of 11 graduate students in a program on instructional psychology and design. Data, including observations, interviews, design documents, metacognitive essays and peer feedback, were collected for triangulation and in-depth analysis. The results showed that the two cohorts exhibited similar patterns in their ID expertise development. These development processes were influenced by both self-processes and social influences. Self-processes are determined by the perceptions, motivation and prior knowledge that students bring into the learning environment. Social influences are characterised by a learning community that encourages peer interactions and feedback and is supported by expert modelling and scaffolding.     

An empirical investigation of students' behavioural intentions to use the online learning course websites

With the development of the Internet in the era of knowledge‐driven economy, e‐learning is experiencing rapid growth. The online learning course websites are drawing more attention as well. This research combines the innovation diffusion theory and the technology acceptance model, and adds two research variables, perceived system quality and computer self‐efficacy to propose a new hybrid technology acceptance model to study students' behavioural intentions to use the online learning course websites. This research finds that compatibility, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived system quality and computer self‐efficacy were critical factors for students' behavioural intentions to use the online learning course websites. By explaining students' behavioural intentions from a user's perspective, the findings of this research help to develop more user‐friendly websites and also provide insight into the best way to promote new e‐learning tools for students.     

Using the known to chart the unknown: A review of first-language influence on the development of English-as-a-second-language spelling skill

Currently, there is a practical demand and necessity for research on how English-as-a-second language (ESL) learners acquire literacy skills, such as spelling. One important issue of this research agenda is how ESL learners apply first-language knowledge to learning to spell in English. Twenty-seven studies were reviewed that investigated the influence of the first language on ESL learners’ development of English spelling skill. Evidence was found for both positive and negative transfer of first-language knowledge and processes to ESL learners’ English spelling. These results are in agreement with theoretical propositions about the interdependence between first- and second-language academic skills [e.g., Cummins, J. (1981). In California State Department of Education (Ed.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework (pp. 3–49). Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination, and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles]. The findings are discussed in relation to the ESL learner’s first-language proficiency level and distance between first language and English. Comparisons are drawn between ESL learners’ and English monolinguals’ spelling development and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Modelling benefits-oriented costs for technology enhanced learning

The introduction of technology enhanced learning (TEL) methods changes the deployment of the most important resource in the education system: teachers’ and learners’ time. New technology promises greater personalization and greater productivity, but without careful modeling of the effects on the use of staff time, TEL methods can easily increase cost without commensurate benefit. The paper examines different approaches to comparing the teaching time costs of TEL with traditional methods, concluding that within-institution cost-benefit modeling yields the most accurate way of understanding how teachers can use the technology to achieve the level of productivity that makes personalisation affordable. The analysis is used to generate a set of requirements for a prospective, rather than retrospective cost-benefit model. It begins with planning decisions focused on realizing the benefits of TEL, and uses these to derive the likely critical costs, hence the reversal implied by a ‘benefits-oriented cost model’. One of its principal advantages is that it enables innovators to plan and understand the relationship between the expected learning benefits and the likely teaching costs.

Students’ communicative behavior adaptability in CSCL environments

By the proliferation of online courses, the social dimension of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is becoming more important than before. Research shows that communicative behavior adaptation to the computer medium is a critical issue in CSCL social relationship development. Two dominant theories in the CSCL field, social information processing theory and adaptive structuration theory, argue that individuals do not simply receive the technology passively but they adapt their behavior to increase benefits from the technology. This paper develops an instrument in order to operationalize the notion of individual’s communicative behavior adaptability in CSCL. Through an exploratory factor analysis performed on a small sample of post graduate students of an online degree in an Australian university, three factors have been unveiled: (1) individual perception of self-representation, (2) individual perception of compatibility, and (3) individual perception of the use of computer technology. Identification of these factors is expected to facilitate understanding of individuals’ social behaviors in CSCL environment, which in turn will guide the design of CSCL systems. In addition, the paper examines the relationships between the extracted factors and four environmental factors: learner’s characteristics, course characteristics, instructor characteristics, and technology characteristics. The results show that none of these characteristics strongly affect perception of self-representation or perception of the use of computer technology. On the other hand, a strong relationship was found between perception of compatibility and learner’s and course characteristics. The reliability as well as validity of the study is examined and findings are discussed. These findings will provide further insights into the design process of CSCL systems.