Themenheft: Electronic Commerce

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Learning at workstations in two different environments: A museum and a classroom

Our study compared the learning and motivational outcome of one educational approach in two different learning environments, a natural science museum and a classroom, drawing on studies about the effects of field trips on students’ learning and motivation. The educational intervention consisted of an introduction phase in the classroom and subsequent learning at workstations, either in the museum or the classroom. 190 secondary school students participated in the quasi-experimental design. We assessed knowledge and understanding by using a pre-, post- and retention-test design, and applied subscales of the ‘Intrinsic Motivation Inventory’ to consider motivational aspects. Students of the museum-group learnt more compared to the classroom-group, whereas motivation differed only in one subscale of the motivation test, with higher scores for the museum-group. Results are discussed in terms of the overall added value of field trips for school curricula.     

Efficacy of Two Different Instructional Methods Involving Complex Ecological Content

Teaching and learning approaches in ecology very often follow linear conceptions of ecosystems. Empirical studies with an ecological focus consistent with existing syllabi and focusing on cognitive achievement are scarce. Consequently, we concentrated on a classroom unit that offers learning materials and highlights the existing complexity rather than following linear conceptions. We developed an educational unit consisting of 14 individual lessons (”ecosystem lake”) with the aim of increasing pupils’ cognitive achievement in 8th and 9th grade secondary schools. To evaluate our approach, we chose a quasi-experimental design and five teachers with ten classes participated in our study. A matched-pair tandem-design was provided by five German teachers using first his/her conventional approach in one class (instruction-1; control group) and second, our modern ecological approach in their second class (instruction-2). Pupils subjected to the latter performed better, i.e., achieved higher scores, especially in the delayed post-test. Further, we found a teacher effect and an interaction between treatment (i.e., whether treatment or control class) and the teacher regarding the class test. Teachers had a significant influence on the learning outcome irrespective of the educational unit, i.e., some teachers generally produced higher achievement than others. Further, the interaction showed that some teachers coped better with their traditional teaching. Nevertheless, in retention (delayed post-test) all classes of the modern approach scored higher than the traditionally taught ones. Boys and girls benefited equally from our program and pupils from the modern approach rated the educational unit better. Figure 1 Overview over the educational unit “ecosystem lake”     

Methodik, Sprachen und Grundlagen des Software Engineering

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Kind und Jugendlicher in der Gemeinschaft Internationale Werktagung in Salzburg vom 31. Juli bis 4. August 1936

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Erfassung von Schülerselbsteinschätzungen zum schulbezogenen Sozial- und Lernverhalten – Validierung der Schülereinschätzliste für Sozial- und Lernverhalten (SSL)

The Self-Report Checklist for Social and Learning Behaviour (SSL) is a student questionnaire comparable to the Teacher Report Checklist for Social and Learning Behaviour. The SSL assesses ten facets of social and learning behaviour using self-reports by students. The present study of 1267 students aged 9 to 19 years examines the factorial structure, psychometric properties and validity of this questionnaire. The reliabilities (Cronbach’s Alpha, retest) of all ten scales were sufficiently good and the postulated factorial structure was found in exploratory as well as in confirmatory factor analysis. Correlations of SSL-scales with scales of the Differencial Aggression Questionnaire and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire as well as with grades in German and mathematics indicated mainly convergent and divergent validity. Furthermore, positive correlations were found to corresponding teacher ratings.     

Investigating the impact of observation errors on the statistical performance of network-based diffusion analysis

Experiments in captivity have provided evidence for social learning, but it remains challenging to demonstrate social learning in the wild. Recently, we developed network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA; 2009) as a new approach to inferring social learning from observational data. NBDA fits alternative models of asocial and social learning to the diffusion of a behavior through time, where the potential for social learning is related to a social network. Here, we investigate the performance of NBDA in relation to variation in group size, network heterogeneity, observer sampling errors, and duration of trait diffusion. We find that observation errors, when severe enough, can lead to increased Type I error rates in detecting social learning. However, elevated Type I error rates can be prevented by coding the observed times of trait acquisition into larger time units. Collectively, our results provide further guidance to applying NBDA and demonstrate that the method is more robust to sampling error than initially expected. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://lb.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.