Cognitive perturbation through dynamic modelling: a pedagogical approach to conceptual change in science

While simulations have widely been used to facilitate conceptual change in learning science, results indicate that significant disparity or gap between students' prior conceptions and scientific conceptions still exists. To bridge the gap, we argue that the applications of computer simulation in science education should be broadened to enable students to model their thoughts and to improve and advance their theories progressively. While computer simulations are often used to offer opportunities for students to explore scientific models, they do not give them the space to explore their own conceptions, and thus cannot effectively address the challenge of changing students' alternative conceptions. Findings from our recent empirical study reveal that, firstly, dynamic modelling using the environment WorldMaker 2000 in conjunction with the use of a cognitive perturbation strategy by the teacher was effective in helping students to migrate from their alternative conceptions towards a more scientifically inclined one; secondly, the pathways of conceptual change across groups were idiosyncratic and diverse. Respecting students' ideas seriously and providing cognitive perturbation at appropriate junctures of the inquiry process are found to be conducive to fostering conceptual change. In this paper, we will report on the details of the pedagogical approach adopted by the teacher and portray how students' conceptions change during the entire process of model building.     

Leveraging a personalized system to improve self-directed learning in online educational environments

Many students who participate in online courses experience frustration and failure because they are not prepared for the demanding and isolated learning experience. A traditional learning theory known as self-directed learning (SDL) is a foundation that can help establish features of a personalized system that helps students improve their abilities to manage their overall learning activities and monitor their own performance. Additionally, the system enables collaboration, interaction, feedback, and the much-needed support from the instructor and students' peers. A Web 2.0 social-technology application, MediaWiki, was adopted as the platform from which incremental features were developed to utilize the fundamental concepts of SDL. Students were able to customize content by setting specific learning goals, reflecting on their learning experiences, self-monitoring activities and performances, and collaborating with others in the class. SDL skills exist to some degree in all learners, this study finds that students' SDL abilities can improve when a course adopts a personalized and collaborative learning system that enables the students to be more proactive in planning, organizing, and monitoring their course activities.     

Chinese undergraduate students' perceptions of mobile learning: Conceptions,learning profiles,and approaches

Close links between students' conceptions of and approaches to learning were established in the past research. However, only a few quantitative studies investigated this relationship particularly with regard to mobile learning (m‐learning). The correlation between learners' conceptions and approaches to m‐learning was analysed using a partial least squares analysis applied to data obtained from a sample of 971 undergraduate students in China. The results indicated that students' conceptions of m‐learning could be classified into reproductive, transitional, and constructive levels. Students may hold multiple m‐learning applications than a predominant one; hence, examining m‐learning as one monolithic entity may provide limited information. Latent profile analysis identified four learning profiles based on students' preferred m‐learning applications: passive, mixed, surface‐supportive, and high‐engagement.. Moreover, a general trend was observed, whereby students with reproductive and surface‐supportive learning profiles showed a tendency to adopt surface approaches, whereas those expressing constructive and mixed learning profiles were more inclined to adopt deep approaches. Interestingly, students with transitional conceptions and high‐engagement learning profiles tended to take both surface and deep approaches.     

Patterns of students' collaborations by variations in their learning orientations in blended course designs: How is it associated with academic achievement?

Background

While a number of learner factors have been identified to impact students' collaborative learning, there has been little systematic research into how patterns of students' collaborative learning may differ by their learning orientations.

Objectives

This study aimed to investigate: (1) variations in students' learning orientations by their conceptions, approaches, and perceptions; (2) the patterns of students' collaborations by variations in their learning orientations and (3) the contribution of patterns of collaborations to academic achievement.

Methods

A cohort of 174 Chinese undergraduates in a blended engineering course were surveyed for their conceptions of learning, approaches to learning and to using online learning technologies, and perceptions of e-learning, to identify variations in their learning orientations. Students' collaborations and mode of collaborations were collected through an open-ended social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire.

Results and Conclusions

A hierarchical cluster analysis identified an ‘understanding’ and ‘reproducing’ learning orientations. Based on students' learning orientations and their choices to collaborate, students were categorized into three mutually exclusive collaborative group, namely Understanding Collaborative group, Reproducing Collaborative group and Mixed Collaborative group. SNA centrality measures demonstrated that students in the Understanding Collaborative group had more collaborations and stayed in a better position in terms of capacity to gather information. Both students' approaches to learning and students' average collaborations significantly contributed to their academic achievement, explaining 3% and 4% of variance in their academic achievement respectively. The results suggest that fostering a desirable learning orientation may help improve students' collaborative learning.     

On-line synchronous scientific argumentation learning: Nurturing students' argumentation ability and conceptual change in science context

The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in effectiveness between two on-line scientific learning programs – one with an argumentation component and one without an argumentation component – on students' scientific argumentation ability and conceptual change. A quasi-experimental design was used in this study. Two classes of 8th grade students (the experimental group) received the on-line scientific argumentation learning program about chemical reaction, and the other two classes of 8th grade students (the control group) received the same on-line scientific learning program about chemical reaction, but without argumentation, for two weeks. All 140 students were administered the scientific conception test, conceptual change test, and argumentation test before, one week after, and eight weeks after learning. In addition, the experimental group students' on-line argumentation process was collected. Results showed that the students of the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group, regardless of scientific conceptions, conceptual change, and argumentation. Regression results indicated that hold of scientific conceptions is the best predicator for students' conceptual change, followed by argumentation ability. The quantity and quality of scientific arguments that students generated in a series of argumentation questions improved across the four topics. In addition, students also successfully changed their conceptions from pre- to post-driving questions across four topics. This clearly demonstrates that students' argumentation ability and conceptual change were both facilitated through receiving the on-line Synchronous Argumentation science learning program.     

Facilitating student-driven constructing of learning environments using Web 2.0 personal learning environments

Web 2.0 Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are becoming a promising area of development in e-Learning. While enhancing students' control over the entire learning process including constructing learning environment appears to be an essential objective of introducing Web 2.0 PLEs to education, there is little consensus on how to attain this objective. In this paper a theory-informed model to facilitate students' engagement in constructing their learning environment using Web 2.0 PLEs is proposed and evaluated. The model consists of four components: student's control dimensions, student-centric instructional approaches, the learning potential of Web 2.0 tools and services, and technology enhanced learning activities. This model is used to conduct a design-based research in the context of a first grade class in a secondary school in the Netherlands consisting of 29 students (18 girls and 11 boys, aged 11–13 year). The results suggest that the model can facilitate students' engagement in constructing their learning environment through influencing communication between teacher and students, involving students in adding tools, resources, and people into their learning environment, and enhancing their feeling of ownership over their learning environment.     

Designing on‐demand education for simultaneous development of domain‐specific and self‐directed learning skills

On‐demand education enables individual learners to choose their learning pathways according to their own learning needs. They must use self‐directed learning (SDL) skills involving self‐assessment and task selection to determine appropriate pathways for learning. Learners who lack these skills must develop them because SDL skills are prerequisite to developing domain‐specific skills. This article describes the design of an on‐demand learning environment developed to enable novices to simultaneously develop their SDL and domain‐specific skills. Learners received advice on their self‐assessments and their selections of subsequent learning tasks. In the domain of system dynamics – a way to model a dynamic system and draw graphs depicting the system's behaviour over time – advice on self‐assessment is provided in a scoring rubric containing relevant performance standards. Advice on task selection indicates all relevant task aspects to be taken into account, including recommendations for suitable learning tasks which meet the individual learner's needs. This article discusses the design of the environment and the learners' perceptions of its usefulness. Most of the times, the learners found the advice appropriate and they followed it in 78% of their task selections.     

Can more interactivity improve learning achievement in an online course? Effects of college students' perception and actual use of a course-management system on their learning achievement

This study aims to investigate how interactivity influence learners' use of interactive functions in the course-management system (CMS) and their online learning performance. A two-tier mediation framework is proposed to examine the mediating effects of different actual-use records concerning the CMS's interactive functions. Data are collected from 381 undergraduate students who enrolled in a general-education asynchronous online course from three universities in Taiwan. The results indicate that the relationships among students' self-reported use of interactive functions, students' perceptions of the usefulness of interactive functions, and students' actual-use logs have some direct influences on students' online learning performance (online-discussion scores, exam scores, and group-project scores). In addition, students' actual-use logs (the number of times of log-ins to the online course, the number of times students read learning materials, and the number of postings on the discussion board) have a mediated effect on students' self-reported frequency of logging into the CMS, students' self-reported frequency of using the learner–instructor/learner–learner interactive functions, and online learning performance. The findings and implications could constitute a useful guide for educational practitioners and designers concerned with the effective integration of interactivity into future online courses.     

Unpacking students' conceptualizations through haptic feedback

While it is clear that the use of computer simulations has a beneficial effect on learning when compared to instruction without computer simulations, there is still room for improvement to fully realize their benefits for learning. Haptic technologies can fulfill the educational potential of computer simulations by adding the sense of touch. Visuohaptic simulations may not only help students visualize these concepts, but they may also have the capability of enriching the learning experience and enhancing retention. To provide additional insights about how students conceptualize abstract and difficult concepts in science, this study proposes a sequencing approach. The research questions are: (1) what are undergraduate students' ways of conceptualizing electric fields through haptic feedback? And (2) what are undergraduate students' perceptions of using visuohaptic simulations for their learning of electric force concepts? Participants included nine undergraduate students who participated in a think aloud procedure. Data were analysed qualitatively using open coding followed by axial coding. The results suggest that students' conceptualized electric force concepts through embodied haptic experiences by inferring force–distance relationship, sign inference, shape of field and indirectly inferring the concept of electric potential. Students also perceived the value of using visual plus haptic simulations to help them understand and retain concepts.     

Students' perceptions and designs of simple control systems

This study examines students conceptions and designs of simple control systems. A framework is presented that characterizes the cognitive models generated by the students for simple opening/closing systems in terms of an increasing differentiation of both structural and functional aspects of the systems: from an undifferentiated general input/output model, up to a complete causal model. The students' conceptions, missing conceptions, and misconceptions of the control systems are described and analyzed at three main levels: device knowledge, perception of the control process, and perception of information-flow within the system. The implications of this study are discussed for the learning of technological concepts, the instructional use of building and programming kits (e.g., Lego-Logo), and our research agenda.     

F-TCKT：融合遗忘因素的深度时序卷积知识追踪模型

智慧教育中，对学生的知识水平进行追踪是很重要的技术之一。传统的深度知识追踪方法的主要关注点集中在循环神经网络(recurrent neural network, RNN)上，但RNN存在梯度消失或者梯度爆炸的问题，并且很多知识追踪方法没有考虑到学习过程中遗忘行为对结果的影响。针对以上问题，为了准确地预测学生的知识水平，提出了一种融合遗忘因素的深度时序卷积知识追踪模型(temporal convolutional knowledge tracking with forgetting, F-TCKT)。该模型引入了三个影响学生遗忘行为的因素，包括学习相同知识点的时间间隔、学习的时间间隔和同一知识点的学习次数。首先利用全连接网络计算得到表示学生遗忘程度的向量并与学生的答题记录进行拼接，然后使用梯度稳定的时间卷积网络(temporal convolutional network, TCN)和注意力机制预测学生下一次答题正误的概率。经实验验证，与传统方法相比，F-TCKT具有更好的预测性能。     

Exploring feedback and student characteristics relevant for personalizing feedback strategies

Personalized tutoring feedback is a powerful method that expert human tutors apply when helping students to optimize their learning. Thus, research on tutoring feedback strategies tailoring feedback according to important factors of the learning process has been recognized as a promising issue in the field of computer-based adaptive educational technologies. Our paper seeks to contribute to this area of research by addressing the following aspects: First, to investigate how students' gender, prior knowledge, and motivational characteristics relate to learning outcomes (knowledge gain and changes in motivation). Second, to investigate the impact of these student characteristics on how tutoring feedback strategies varying in content (procedural vs. conceptual) and specificity (concise hints vs. elaborated explanations) of tutoring feedback messages affect students' learning and motivation. Third, to explore the influence of the feedback parameters and student characteristics on students' immediate post-feedback behaviour (skipping vs. trying to accomplish a task, and failing vs. succeeding in providing a correct answer). To address these issues, detailed log-file analyses of an experimental study have been conducted. In this study, 124 sixth and seventh graders have been exposed to various tutoring feedback strategies while working on multi-trial error correction tasks in the domain of fraction arithmetic. The web-based intelligent learning environment ActiveMath was used to present the fraction tasks and trace students' progress and activities. The results reveal that gender is an important factor for feedback efficiency: Male students achieve significantly lower knowledge gains than female students under all tutoring feedback conditions (particularly, under feedback strategies starting with a conceptual hint). Moreover, perceived competence declines from pre- to post-test significantly more for boys than for girls. Yet, the decline in perceived competence is not accompanied by a decline in intrinsic motivation, which, instead, increases significantly from pre- to post-test. With regard to the post-feedback behaviour, the results indicate that students skip further attempts more frequently after conceptual than after procedural feedback messages.     

Shallow strategy development in a teachable agent environment designed to support self-regulated learning

To support self-regulated learning (SRL), computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) are often designed to be open-ended and multidimensional. These systems incorporate diverse features that allow students to enact and reveal their SRL strategies via the choices they make. However, research shows that students' use of such features is limited; students often neglect SRL-supportive tools in CBLEs. In this study, we examined middle school students' feature use and strategy development over time using a teachable agent system called Betty's Brain. Students learned about climate change and thermoregulation in two units spanning several weeks. Learning was assessed using a pretest–posttest design, and students' interactions with the system were logged. Results indicated that use of SRL-supportive tools was positively correlated with learning outcomes. However, promising strategy patterns weakened over time due to shallow strategy development, which also negatively impacted the efficacy of the system. Although students seemed to acquire one beneficial strategy, they did so at the cost of other beneficial strategies. Understanding this phenomenon may be a key avenue for future research on SRL-supportive CBLEs. We consider two hypotheses for explaining and perhaps reducing shallow strategy development: a student-centered hypothesis related to “gaming the system,” and a design-centered hypothesis regarding how students are scaffolded via the system.     

Towards an analysis framework for investigating students' engagement and learning in educational blogs

Educational blogs are currently gaining in popularity in schools and higher education institutions, and they are widely promoted as collaborative tools supporting students' active learning. However, literature review on educational blogging revealed a lack of a complete and consistent framework for studying and assessing students' engagement and the impact of blogging on students' learning. This study reports on the application of an analysis framework for evaluating blogging learning activities, based on two well‐documented models, those of Community of Inquiry (CoI) and Social Network Analysis. The framework proposed is examined through an empirical study involving 21 K‐9 students, coming from two classes, in Greece. This investigation shed light into the different ways of students' engagement in a blog‐based project, namely their social and cognitive presence that supported the development of a CoI and learning. The results suggest that the students, through their different roles in the blog, achieved higher thinking and cognitive levels.     

Analysing the role of a pedagogical agent in psychological and cognitive preparatory activities

There is a lack of studies that examine the role of a pedagogical agent on student development in a specific learning situation that involves psychological and cognitive preparatory activities in high school settings. We examined the effectiveness of pedagogical agent (APT) cognitive and affective feedback on learner motivation and well-being. We applied an experimental research design, involving 45 fourth-year high school students, divided in experimental and control groups (APT vs. human tutor). We performed a quantitative analysis to collect and analyse data of students using our APT. APT cognitive feedback had a positive effect on students' motivation for learning by encouraging students' proposals and initiatives and arousing students' interest in the topic. In addition, APT affective feedback fostered an appropriate emotional climate and creative environment for learning by enhancing students' curiosity, creativity and confidence for carrying out the activity, while reducing students' negative emotions such as boredom and anger. This study provided us useful insights about the affective (and cognitive) competencies that a virtual affective pedagogical agent needs to have in order to support students' mental and emotional health throughout a learning situation. Yet, further research is needed to consolidate these findings and make APT more adaptive to different learning situations.     

Wireless sensors application in smart English classroom design based on artificial intelligent system

In the traditional intelligent English classroom teaching, the efficiency of students' learning is often affected by many external environments, such as the influence of learning environment, the influence of students' own condition, and the influence of teachers' teaching mode. In view of these problems, we propose a wireless sensor network technology intelligent teacher management system, which can reduce the influence of the above factors on students' learning efficiency and improve students' learning efficiency. Make students more focused on learning. The system can monitor the state of students through wireless sensors. When the students are in bad condition, the system can adopt certain measures to enhance the enthusiasm of students. At the same time, the state of students and the state of the classroom will be recorded in the internal background system, the system managers can timely monitor the state of students and teachers, and give some guidance and feedback to students and teachers. This learning system is based on machine-free learning and sensor development. It can adjust the classroom environment to suitable conditions and make students more motivated to learn. Teachers can also have a more stable play, will not cause waste of classroom time and attention loss and other phenomena. When students feel tired or sleepy in class, the management system can also actively remind students. Observing the students' state at all times in the traditional classroom will lead to the teacher's distraction, but the teacher has to observe the students' state while lecturing. This may affect teachers and affect their teaching level, and the use of this automated classroom detection technology can solve such problems. Machine learning is to improve the calculation method through various experiences, which is also a problem in the field of artificial intelligence.     

Teaching New Product Development Using the ‘CityCar’ Simulation

Innovation management is an important subject which needs to be taught effectively in business schools and on engineering degrees. One of the key topics – new product development (NPD) – is complex and is challenging to teach. Management simulations are thought to provide a good mechanism for teaching intricate and practical topics and so an NPD simulation was developed – the CityCar. This paper describes empirical research on how students' perceptions of NPD change as they complete the CityCar exercise. Overall, the research shows that simulations have significant potential in teaching NPD. The changes in students' perceptions provide evidence that the CityCar exercise achieves its intended learning outcomes in demonstrating the importance of technical and commercial knowledge and the need for a disciplined management process in NPD.     

Motivation factors and barriers to the continuous use of blended learning approach using Moodle: students' perceptions and individual differences

ABSTRACT

Practitioners of blended learning encounter challenges on how to cater students individual needs and to increase their motivational involvement with the system. Therefore, this study aims to identify and evaluate the motivation factors and barriers that influence students' decisions to continue using blended learning based on Moodle platform. The study proposes a research model to gain a better understanding of students' behavioural attitudes, motivations, and barriers to the continuous use of blended learning. In addition, a multi-group analysis was conducted to examine individual differences between students from three different universities in Palestine. The findings provide a comprehensive understanding of students' behaviours and the investigated factors of the proposed model were truly significant in forming students' perceptions and reflecting their decisions to continue using such learning approach. Features of blended learning system were found to be the most significant motivational antecedents in relation to influencing students' perceptions and involvements in the learning environment, while perceived behavioural control and subjective norms were found to be the primary factors driving students' continuous use. Finally, the findings shed light on the impact of individual differences on students' perceptions and usage behaviours and suggest that these differences could be leveraged to provide adaptive usage decisions.     

The effect of pedagogical GAME model on students' PISA scientific competencies

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of a pedagogical model of digital games on students' scientific competencies that are advocated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). As a single game-based learning strategy may not be enough to enhance such competencies, the online game in the current study incorporated the design of the proposed pedagogical gamification, assessment, modeling, and enquiry (GAME) model. The participants were 69 sixth grade students at one primary school in Taiwan. A quasi-experimental design was adopted. The experimental group students learned with the GAME model, whereas the comparison group students only learned with traditional learning way. The results showed that the learning gain in scientific competencies of the experimental group was better than those of the comparison group. This study revealed that the GAME model has potential to promote students' PISA scientific competencies. It is suggested that the integral GAME model may serve as one kind of strategies to enhance students' scientific competencies.     

An Extensible Heterogeneous Network Embedding Framework for Knowledge Tracing

Knowledge tracing is of great significance for providing better personalized learning guidance and has thus attracted extensive research attention in recent years. The task of knowledge tracing is to model students'' learning process on the basis of historical exercise records and trace students'' knowledge proficiency, thereby predicting students'' performance on future exercises or recommending exercises for better proficiency. Existing methods focus on either the skill level or the exercise level, ignoring the relationships among exercises and Knowledge Components (KCs). The classical single-factor models include the Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT) {model} and the Dynamic Key-Value Memory Network (DKVMN) model. Although a few models, such as the Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) model and the Knowledge Proficiency Tracing (KPT) model, utilize the Q-matrix to improve model performance, most of them ignore the interaction among KCs, not to mention models that do not use the Q-matrix. Inspired by the recent success of network embedding, this paper presents a heterogeneous network embedding framework for knowledge tracing called HNEKT that takes both exercises and KCs into account. To adapt to the application of knowledge tracing, this paper also proposes several meta-paths to generate meaningful node sequences for network embedding. Besides, it explores other side information as well to improve the extensibility and effectiveness of the proposed model. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the HNEKT model.