Collaborative learning as a collective competence when students use the potential of meaning in asynchronous dialogues

The aim of this study is to examine and to describe how student teachers engaged in courses in web-based learning environments over a period of 40-weeks develop a collective competence to collaborate. The collective competence of collaboration is defined as the level of learning ability a group of students express when using dialogues as a tool for their own and other’s learning in a web-based learning environment. The students’ contributions to the course assignments, the group responses and the collaborative discussions and dialogues were analysed and interpreted based on Bakhtin’s and Rommetveit’s theories on dialogic interactions and meaning potentials. The results describe three different levels at which students use dialogues as a tool for learning when they collaborate within the group.     

Facilitating application of language skills in authentic environments with a mobile learning system

We uncovered two critical issues in earlier studies: (a) some studies have shown that mobile learning technology is not beneficial for all students due to complexity of learning environments and student prior knowledge, skills, and experience and (b) familiarity of students with the authentic environments in which they learn using mobile technology did not receive much attention in earlier studies. To address these issues, we designed three learning tasks for a class of 26 junior high school students. The students applied language skills by completing the tasks in authentic environments individually in a first task, loosely collaborating with peers in a second task, and tightly collaborating with peers in a third task. A mobile learning system was also designed in this study to support students to accomplish the tasks. The aim of this study was to explore students' learning experiences using the learning system, their perceptions towards the system, and to assess how differently the students perform on the three tasks. According to our design, in the first task, the students took pictures of objects and described them orally or in writing using the mobile learning system. In the second task, after the students completed assignments, each student received comments from a partner through the system. In comments, the partner indicated flaws in student assignments and suggested how to fix them. In the third task, the students completed assignments, shared them using the system, and then exchanged comments with their partners face to face regarding issues related to their completed assignments and suggested how to improve them. Such learning behaviours in the three tasks enabled the students to practise writing and speaking skills. Our results demonstrate that most of the students highly valued our learning system and intend to use it in the future. Furthermore, the results show that the students performed best when they collaborated; namely, student performance was enhanced the most after the third task that required tight collaboration. Based on our results, we learned that students' familiarity with authentic environments is very important and beneficial for their learning. In addition, we learned that even in complex environment, less skilled and experienced students with low prior knowledge can perform well when they tightly collaborate with more skilled and experienced students with high prior knowledge, and our learning system can facilitate such collaboration.     

Use of blogs in pre-service teacher education to improve student engagement

Web 2.0 technologies allow average computer users to be able to publish on the Internet without having to know complex computer technical knowledge, which gives these technologies powerful potential to facilitate student engagement in various learning environments. However, a knowledge gap exists in the literature related to factors affecting student engagement with Web 2.0 technologies. The purpose of this study is to understand factors affecting student engagement in a pre-service teacher education program that uses blogs to expand in-class discussions about technology integration. First year pre-service teachers in a mathematics education department participated in the study. Data were collected with a survey that was developed to measure student engagement with blog use. Results show that student motivation, reasons to use blog in the course, and level of challenge perceived by the students affect students' engagement with blog use. Gender and technical ability of students do not impact students' engagement. As a result, blogs can be utilized to expand in-class discussions equally well for all students.     

Fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school

Computer technologies develop at a challenging fast pace. Formal education should not only teach students basic computer skills to meet current computer needs, but also foster student development of informal learning ability for a lifelong learning process. On the other hand, students growing up in the digital world are often more skilled with computer technologies than their teachers. We describe an online course design project in which a group of students designed an online health course for their middle school, and teachers played the roles of facilitators and learners. We suggest fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school as a supplemental method of formal computer education to address the shift in educational context and as a place offering opportunities for students to work on real-life projects and solve real-life problems.     

Design and evaluation of a learning environment to effectively provide network security skills

Information system security and network security are topics of increasing importance in the information society. They are also topics where the adequate education of professionals requires the use of specific laboratory environments where the practical aspects of the discipline may be addressed. However, most approaches currently used are excessively static and lack the flexibility that the education requirements of security professionals demand. In this paper we present NEMESIS, a scenario generation framework for education on system and network security, which is based on virtualization technologies and has been designed to be open, distributed, modular, scalable and flexible. Finally, an example scenario is described and some results validating the benefits of its use in undergraduate computer security courses are shown.     

Inventing motivates and prepares student teachers for computer‐based learning

A brief, problem‐oriented phase such as an inventing activity is one potential instructional method for preparing learners not only cognitively but also motivationally for learning. Student teachers often need to overcome motivational barriers in order to use computer‐based learning opportunities. In a preliminary experiment, we found that student teachers who were given paper‐based course material spent more time on follow‐up coursework than teachers who were given a well‐developed computer‐based learning environment (CBLE), leading to higher learning outcomes. Thus, we tested inventing as an instructional method that may help overcome motivational barriers of teachers' use of computer‐supported tools or learning environments in our main experimental study (N = 44). As a computer‐based environment, we used the ‘Assessment of Learning strategies in Learning journals’. The inventing group produced ideas about criteria to evaluate learning strategies based on student cases prior to the learning phase. The control condition read a text containing possible answers to the inventing problem. The inventing activity enhanced motivation prior to the learning phase and assessment skills as assessed by transfer problems. Hence, the inventing activity prepared student teachers to learn from a CBLE in a motivational as well as cognitive way.     

公用开放型计算机实验室的管理和维护

公用开放型计算机实验室是一个面向全校服务的实验部门,我校2004年新建立了计算机教学实验中心,作为高等院校信息技术的教学的主要场所．承担全校计算机基础与专业课的上机教学、考试和科研任务,这一切都对计算机实验室从软件到硬件,从管理到维护提出了新的挑战,怎样使实验室充分发挥作用,确保实验室教学的正常的运行和机房软硬件系统的安全,提高实验室教学质量,如何科学化,现代化,自动化管理和维护计算机实验室成为实验室人员探讨和研究的课题。     

Real-time collaboration of virtual laboratories through the Internet

Web-based learning environments are becoming increasingly popular in higher education. One of the most important web-learning resources is the virtual laboratory (VL), which gives students an easy way for training and learning through the Internet. Moreover, on-line collaborative communication represents a practical method to transmit the knowledge and experience from the teacher to students overcoming physical distance and isolation. Considering these facts, the authors of this document have developed a new dynamic collaborative e-learning system which combines the main advantages of virtual laboratories and collaborative learning practices. In this system, the virtual laboratories are based on Java applets which have embedded simulations developed in Easy Java Simulations (EJS), an open-source tool for teachers who do not need complex programming skills. The collaborative e-learning is based on a real-time synchronized communication among these Java applets. Therefore, this original approach provides a new tool which integrates virtual laboratories inside a synchronous collaborative e-learning framework. This paper describes the main features of this system and its successful application in a distance education environment among different universities from Spain.     

Does peer assessment in on-line learning environments work? A systematic review of the literature

There is an increase use of Peer Assessment (PA) approaches in On-line Learning Environments to support students and teachers on educational process. However, the community still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how Peer Assessment behaves within these educational environments, since there are no studies that make an analysis of the researches which has been conducted in this context, analysing the benefits and disadvantages of the use of Peer Assessment. Thus, the main goal of this work is to investigate and better understand how PA contributes in student learning as well as can bring benefits to the teachers involved. In order to meet our goal, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR). In summary, the main findings are: (1) there are empirical evidences of the benefits of using PA in both industry and academy, and in several educational levels; (2) PA is most addressed to the correction of written activities on on-line courses; (3) About 60% of the articles showed PA improvement in student performance; (4) About 1/3 of the studies showed PA brings some benefits to teachers; (5) In some studies the use of the PA had difficulties, especially issues related to student motivation, which impairs the peer review process.     

What influences college students to continue using business simulation games? The Taiwan experience

Previous studies have pointed out that computer games could improve students’ motivation to learn, but these studies have mostly targeted teachers or students in elementary and secondary education and are without user adoption models. Because business and management institutions in higher education have been increasingly using educational simulation games in recent years, factors influencing the continuing use of business simulation games by higher-education students are worth probing into. This research adopted the technology acceptance model, expectation confirmation theory, and agency theory as its theoretical base. Moreover, learning motivation and classroom climate from the perspective of learning, as well as perceived attractiveness and perceived playfulness from the perspective of playfulness and attractiveness were also added to the final research model. A total of 185 valid student respondents in Taiwan’s higher education who have used business simulation games in their classes participated in the survey. The results show that perceived playfulness and learning performance positively influence students’ satisfaction, which further influence the intention to use computer simulation games. Furthermore, perceived ease of use and perceived attraction play a critical role in determining perceived playfulness. Perceived ease of use was also positively influenced by perceived attraction. The research results on the students’ perspective provide a strong support for the teachers to adopt or continue using computer simulation games in classrooms. However, the agency theory failed to be sustained as a useful tool in motivating students’ learning activities, which is worthy of further research.     

Supervised machine learning in multimodal learning analytics for estimating success in project‐based learning

Multimodal learning analytics provides researchers new tools and techniques to capture different types of data from complex learning activities in dynamic learning environments. This paper investigates the use of diverse sensors, including computer vision, user‐generated content, and data from the learning objects (physical computing components), to record high‐fidelity synchronised multimodal recordings of small groups of learners interacting. We processed and extracted different aspects of the students' interactions to answer the following question: Which features of student group work are good predictors of team success in open‐ended tasks with physical computing? To answer this question, we have explored different supervised machine learning approaches (traditional and deep learning techniques) to analyse the data coming from multiple sources. The results illustrate that state‐of‐the‐art computational techniques can be used to generate insights into the "black box" of learning in students' project‐based activities. The features identified from the analysis show that distance between learners' hands and faces is a strong predictor of students' artefact quality, which can indicate the value of student collaboration. Our research shows that new and promising approaches such as neural networks, and more traditional regression approaches can both be used to classify multimodal learning analytics data, and both have advantages and disadvantages depending on the research questions and contexts being investigated. The work presented here is a significant contribution towards developing techniques to automatically identify the key aspects of students success in project‐based learning environments, and to ultimately help teachers provide appropriate and timely support to students in these fundamental aspects.     

Supporting teachers in guiding collaborating students: Effects of learning analytics in CSCL

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of teacher supporting tools that present summaries, visualizations, and analyses of student participation and discussion on the way teachers guide collaborating groups of students in a digital learning environment. An experimental set-up was used in which authentic student data was converted to simulation vignettes that participants could interact with, enabling them to act as the teacher. The vignettes contained groups that had a problem concerning participation or discussion. When presented with the supporting tools, teachers and student teachers were better able to spot the problems regarding participation, intervened more often in problematic groups as time progressed, and displayed more specific explanations of their actions.     

网络远程控制技术在机房管理中的应用

主要探讨如何将网络远程控制技术应用于高校机房的管理,简化机房管理人员的工作,并给出了利用网络远程控制技术开发机房管理软件的基本框架。研究表明将网络远程控制技术引入机房管理将大大简化机房管理人员的工作。     

Students' experience of component versus integrated virtual learning environments

Abstract The use of virtual learning environments (VLEs) has become increasingly common in most higher education (HE) institutions. Recent developments have proposed the interoperability of software systems and content, to create component VLEs in contrast with the integrated, monolithic ones that are currently prevalent. This paper examines the student experience of two VLEs, one integrated approach and the other component. In general, students preferred the component system, although this may have been influenced by other factors such as performance. Although the study is limited to one cohort of student it makes a number of suggestions relevant to anyone deploying a VLE. These are that the component approach is a viable one from a student perspective, the broader context in which the VLE operates is important in student perception and that poor system performance may have unpredictable consequences for the learning experience.     

Variability in reading ability gains as a function of computer-assisted instruction method of presentation

This study examines the effects on early reading skills of three different methods of presenting material with computer-assisted instruction (CAI): (1) learner-controlled picture menu, which allows the student to choose activities, (2) linear sequencer, which progresses the students through lessons at a pre-specified pace, and (3) mastery-based adaptive sequencer, which progresses students through lessons based on whether or not the student has mastered the given skill. Preschool- and kindergarten-aged children (n = 183) were randomly assigned to one of the three CAI groups and spent 40 min a week, for 13 weeks, using the software program in a computer lab. An additional control group of students attending typical preschool or kindergarten received no CAI. ANCOVA results examining post-test reading ability sum score, covarying pre-test score, indicated that the mastery-based sequencer group significantly outperformed the learner-control and control groups, but was not statistically different from the linear sequence group. Analysis by task, rather than overall reading score, revealed significantly better performance for the linear sequence group over controls and picture menu group on the Initial Sound Fluency task, while the mastery-based sequencer group outperformed all three other groups on Non Word Fluency. In sum, these results suggest that the use of a sequencer is a very important element in presenting computerized reading content for young children.     

基于C#和VB 语言的机房网络控制软件设计与开发

随着职业院校计算机类实训机房的增加,机房网络控制与管理的时效性与自主性成为影响教学质量的重要因 素。通过机房现状与师生的需求分析,笔者基于C#和VB语言设计与开发了C/S架构的机房网络控制软件,给任课教师提供 网络控制权,有效解决学校机房网络控制的问题。     

Effects of Collaborative Web Based Vocational Education and Training (VET) on Learning Outcomes

Considering the increase in need of skilled human capital, the vocational training and education through e-learning has widely been adopted all over the world. It serves as a major alternative for training and teaching professionals, technicians, skilled workers, amateurs and students who cannot manage regular college education due to time, cost and distance factors. Prior research focuses on learning enhancement from several perspectives like computer mediated methods, learning games, personalized learning environments and web based instructional design. The proposed work contributes to this debate by investigating the role of collaboration i.e. student–student and student–instructor interaction, support material, instructor's feedback and evaluating their effects on learning outcome and students' learning experience. The investigation is performed through a case study presenting four vocational courses offered in three consecutive sessions. The findings revealed that collaborative practices i.e. group work, team effort, in time instructor's feedback and consolidated support material enhances learning experience of student and contributes positively to the learning outcome.     

When educational agents meet surrogate competition: Impacts of competitive educational agents on students' motivation and performance

The design of educational agents increasingly attracts researchers' attention recently. One of major reasons is that educational agents could enhance student learning in various aspects. Although research in this area has mushroomed, such research mainly emphasizes on students in higher education. It is still unclear how educational agents influence young student learning. In addition, competition is a significant element, but fewer studies take competition into account while designing educational agents. Although some studies have indicated that educational agents in competitive environments has positive effects on students' perception and attribution, its impacts on students' motivation and performance are unclear. Thus, the study develops an integrative agent that combines educational and competitive elements for young students, and further examines its influences, in terms of motivation and learning performance. The results revealed that such competitive educational agents could enhance students' motivation and learning performance.