The Ontogeny of Social Information Gathering

When facing the unknown, humans tend to consult others for guidance. This propensity to treat others as information sources has wide-ranging implications, being in part responsible for the breadth and depth of our world knowledge. As yet, little is known concerning when and how young children acquire this important skill. Social referencing and communicative abilities in infancy have been interpreted by many as reflecting precocious social information-seeking ability, but the evidence is far from compelling and equally compatible with an attachment regulation interpretation. While the evidence indicates that infants as young as 12 months are good consumers of social information, it falls well short of demonstrating that they are active seekers of that information. Moreover, genuine social information seeking requires an implicit conception of the knowledge-ignorance distinction, and existing research on children's theories of mind suggests that such a conception is most likely not available in infancy. For these reasons, we argue for a developmental account of social information-gathering ability, one that is consistent with the larger body of evidence concerning sociocognitive abilities in infants and young children.     

Sense of community, perceived cognitive learning, and persistence in asynchronous learning networks

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between sense of community and cognitive learning in an online educational environment. Study participants consisted of 314 students enrolled in 26 graduate education and leadership courses taught at a distance using the Blackboard.com^SM e-learning system. Study results provided evidence that a significant relationship exists between classroom community and perceived cognitive learning. Online learners who have stronger sense of community and perceive greater cognitive learning should feel less isolated and have greater satisfaction with their academic programs, possibly resulting in fewer dropouts.     

Learning words from knowledgeable versus ignorant speakers: links between preschoolers' theory of mind and semantic development

Two studies addressed whether children consider speakers' knowledge states when establishing initial word-referent links. In Study 1, forty-eight 3- and 4-year-olds were taught two novel words by a speaker who expressed either knowledge or ignorance about the words' referents. Children showed better word learning when the speaker was knowledgeable. In Study 2, forty-eight 3- and 4-year-olds were taught two novel words by a speaker who expressed uncertainty about their referents. Whether the uncertainty truly reflected ignorance, however, differed across conditions. In one condition, the speaker said he made the object himself and thus, he was knowledgeable. In the other condition, the speaker stated that the object was made by a friend and thus, expressed ignorance about it. Four-year-olds learned better in the speaker-made than in the friend-made condition; 3-year-olds, however, showed relatively poor learning in both conditions. These findings suggest that theory-of-mind developments impact word learning.     

On the neuropsychology of metamemory: Contributions from the study of amnesia and dementia

Neurologic syndromes in which there is impaired deficit-awareness (termed “anosognosia”) provide useful observations for understanding the nature of metacognition and its neurobiologic correlates. Anosognosia can occur in various disorders, including stroke, head injury, particular amnesic syndromes, and various dementing illnesses (e.g., Alzheimer's disease). Research on anosognosia for memory impairment is important both for its clinical implications and for its contributions toward understanding the neural correlates of, and processes by which, persons are aware of, monitor, and develop beliefs about their own memory functioning (i.e., metamemory). Following a brief introduction to anosognosia, a review is provided of research on awareness of memory deficit in persons with neurologic amnesia or dementia syndromes. Particular emphasis is placed upon the examination of how different experimental methods shed light on specific questions about metamemory impairment.     

Informationssysteme in der Medizin

Die Medizin ist gepr?gt sowohl durch ihren besonderen unmittelbaren und existenziellen Bezug zu Menschen als auch durch ihre zunehmende ?konomische Bedeutung. Ein Medizinisches Informationssystem ist das umfassende System aller Informationsverarbeitung einer medizinischen Einrichtung oder Region. W?hrend die Architekturprinzipien des rechnerbasierten Teils solcher Informationssysteme wenige Besonderheiten aufweist, bündelt das Management dieser Informationssysteme viele Herausforderungen und Probleme, die wegen der besonderen Bedeutung der Medizin besondere Priorit?t bei der L?sung haben müssen.     

Learning scientific reasoning with the interactive computer

In this paper I report on a set of ten programs, the Scientific Reasoning Series. These programs take an area difficult to deal with in conventional science courses, the nature of scientific reasoning, and make it accessible to a much wider group of students. The aim of this material is to make improvements in scientific reasoning for all students over about 10 years old. The programs are highly interactive, adapting to the needs of the individual user. They are also motivationally strong, because of formative evaluation within public library environments. About 20 hours of student material is available. We argue that this material has important suggestions for the future of science education.     

Online Course Design in Higher Education: A Review of National and Statewide Evaluation Instruments

This research identifies six online course evaluation instruments used nationally or in statewide systems. We examined the characteristics (i.e., number of standards and criteria) and coded the criteria that guide the design of online courses. We discussed the focus of the instruments and their unique features.     

A tool for monitoring the development of written English: T-unit analysis using the SAWL

The article reports the development of the Structural Analysis of Written Language (SAWL), an instrument designed for use by classroom teachers in objectively documenting the ability of children to write in English. The SAWL allows teachers to use T-unit analysis to quantitatively assess language improvement regardless of whether the student writes perfect English, flawed English, and/or generates "wordstrings" with minimal English structure. The SAWL introduces two new indexes of linguistic maturity, morphemes per T-unit (MTU) and the word efficiency ratio (WER). The SAWL also allows teachers to (a) objectively compare a child's written composition with printed material and (b) make a seamless comparison of a student's written English across his or her academic life using the same indexes of measurement.     

Scaffolding Peer-questioning Strategies to Facilitate Metacognition During Online Small Group Discussion

Meaningful discussion that facilitates reflective thinking can be initiated when learners raise thoughtful questions or provide critical feedback; however, generating effective questions requires a certain level of domain knowledge and metacognitive skills of the question-askers. We propose a peer-questioning scaffolding framework intended to facilitate metacognition and learning through scaffolding effective peer-questioning in online discussion. This framework assumes that novice students who lack domain and metacognitive knowledge can be scaffolded to generate meaningful interactions at an early stage of learning and the resulting peer-generated adaptive questions can facilitate learners’ metacognition. Thus, this study investigated the effects of providing online scaffolding for generating adaptive questions to peers during online small group discussion. A field experimental time-series control-group design was employed as a mixed model for the research design. Thirty-nine college students from an online introductory class on turfgrass management participated in the study. The findings revealed that the scaffolds were useful to increase the frequency of student questioning behavior during online discussion. For some students, the online guidance reportedly served as “a starting point” to generate questions when they had difficulty asking questions. However, the guidance did not improve the quality of questions and thus learning outcomes. The interview data indicated that peer-generated adaptive questions served a critical role in facilitating learner’s reflection and knowledge reconstruction. Further study should focus on the quality improvement of peer-generated questions while considering adaptive and dynamic forms of scaffolding and intermediate factors such as prior knowledge, metacognition, task complexity, and scaffolding type.