Methical Jane: Perspectives on an Undisclosed Virtual Student

We examined the ethical implications of a mythical online student with a carefully concealed real identity who took part in an online post-graduate course. The mythical online student took part in all student activities and provided co-students with cognitive and technical support as a covert second facilitator; consequently, students found scaffolding unobtrusive and integrated the unknown virtual student into the learning community. We explored the ethical implication of undisclosed identity and analyzed Students' reaction to the disclosure of the mythical student after the course. The study confirmed our success in creating a convincing virtual student, but this success precipitated some shock, disbelief, and dismay. Most students accepted the presence of a virtual student, but some felt betrayed because her real identity was hidden. Recommendations for implementing such a virtual tool ethically are advanced, along with suggestions for teaching situations that may benefit from its use.     

Classrooms matter: The design of virtual classrooms influences gender disparities in computer science classes

Three experiments examined whether the design of virtual learning environments influences undergraduates’ enrollment intentions and anticipated success in introductory computer science courses. Changing the design of a virtual classroom – from one that conveys current computer science stereotypes to one that does not – significantly increased women’s interest and anticipated success in computer science. Effects occurred even when the learning material, gender of the professor and gender ratio of the classmates were identical, isolating the physical environment as a key determinant of women’s choices and expectations. Men’s interest and anticipated success were not similarly affected by the environmental changes. Statistical analyses indicated that gender disparities in interest and anticipated success in the stereotypically designed classroom were mediated by women’s lower sense of belonging in that environment. Changing the design of virtual learning environments may be a vehicle that universities can use to signal belonging to a wider net of students, and thus increase students’ likelihood of enrolling and succeeding in those classes.     

Virtual teamwork in very large undergraduate classes

Collaborative work is an important part of tertiary education but it is very difficult to arrange and supervise for extremely large classes of students in their first year. The possibility that computer-mediated communication can be used to facilitate this type of learning is appealing from a pragmatic organisational point of view. This paper explains in detail what a ‘virtual team’ is in the educational context. It reports on an interpretive field study where students taking an introductory course were allowed to choose where and when they did the required collaborative work. The paper discusses the factors that should be taken into account when offering students the option of working as a virtual team. These include factors that influence the students’ choice. The project cannot be considered to have been successful but indicates reasons for the lack of success and suggests contexts in which it would be valuable to repeat the project. The importance of extensive preparation in terms of teaching the students necessary social and technological skills cannot be over emphasised.     

Learning and motivational impacts of a multimedia science game

The power of a web-based forensic science game to teach content and motivate STEM careers was tested among secondary students. More than 700 secondary school students were exposed to one of the three web-based forensic cases for approximately 60 min. Gain scores from pre-test to a delayed post-test indicated significant gains in content knowledge. In addition, the game’s usability ratings were a strong predictor of learning. A positive relationship between role-play experience and science career motivation was observed, which suggests a role for authentic virtual experiences in inspiring students to consider STEM careers.     

Virtual reality for collaborative e-learning

In the past, the term e-learning referred to any method of learning that used electronic delivery methods. With the advent of the Internet however, e-learning has evolved and the term is now most commonly used to refer to online courses. A multitude of systems are now available to manage and deliver learning content online. While these have proved popular, they are often single-user learning environments which provide little in the way of interaction or stimulation for the student. As the concept of lifelong learning now becomes a reality and thus more and more people are partaking in online courses, researchers are constantly exploring innovative techniques to motivate online students and enhance the e-learning experience. This article presents our research in this area and the resulting development of CLEV-R, a Collaborative Learning Environment with Virtual Reality. This web-based system uses Virtual Reality (VR) and multimedia and provides communication tools to support collaboration among students. In this article, we describe the features of CLEV-R, its adaptation for mobile devices and present the findings from an initial evaluation.     

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.     

The reality of virtual schools: A review of the literature

Virtual schooling was first employed in the mid-1990s and has become a common method of distance education used in K-12 jurisdictions. The most accepted definition of a virtual school is an entity approved by a state or governing body that offers courses through distance delivery – most commonly using the Internet. While virtual schools can be classified in different ways, the three common methods of delivery are by independent, asynchronous or synchronous means. Presently, the vast majority of virtual school students tended to be a select group of academically capable, motivated, independent learners. The benefits associated with virtual schooling are expanding educational access, providing high-quality learning opportunities, improving student outcomes and skills, allowing for educational choice, and achieving administrative efficiency. However, the research to support these conjectures is limited at best. The challenges associated with virtual schooling include the conclusion that the only students typically successful in online learning environments are those who have independent orientations towards learning, highly motivated by intrinsic sources, and have strong time management, literacy, and technology skills. These characteristics are typically associated with adult learners. This stems from the fact that research into and practice of distance education has typically been targeted to adult learners. The problem with this focus is that adults learn differently than younger learners. Researchers are calling for more research into the factors that account for K-12 student success in distance education and virtual school environments and more design research approaches than traditional comparisons of student achievement in traditional and virtual schools.     

Attracting student participation in asynchronous online discussions: A case study of peer facilitation

Previous research studies on how to promote student participation in asynchronous online discussions have largely focused on the role of the instructor or tutor as facilitators. Not many investigated student facilitation. This article reports a qualitative study examining the facilitation techniques used by student facilitators to attract their course mates to participate in asynchronous online discussions. Data were collected from the students’ reflection logs and students’ online postings. To explore the extent to which student participation in an online discussion forum is successful, we looked at the depth of discussion threads. We deemed a student facilitator to have successfully attracted other students to participant if the discussion threads had a depth of six or more levels of students’ postings. We then examined in detail and reported the facilitation techniques that were exhibited by the student facilitators. Results showed that seven facilitation techniques were employed; the most frequently used were Socratic questioning and sharing personal opinions or experiences. We end by exploring potential implications for practice and for future research.     

Inspiring equal contribution and opportunity in a 3d multi-user virtual environment: Bringing together men gamers and women non-gamers in Second Life

A 3D multi-user virtual environment holds promise to support and enhance student online learning communities due to its ability to promote global synchronous interaction and collaboration, rich multisensory experience and expression, and elaborate design capabilities. Second Life^®, a multi-user virtual environment intended for adult users 18 and older, is the most cited in educational literature, so it is important to explore how college-aged students are using it to form online learning communities. Previous research suggests that there is unbalanced participation between traditional college-aged men and women with regards to 3D multi-user video games, which closely resemble Second Life^®. In this research study, we investigated in what manner women and men college students projected their virtual identities and engaged in interaction in Second Life^®, and how this influenced their learning of course content. Analysis of multiple data sources revealed that conceptions of identity, beliefs of the nature of the virtual world, and technical skill were primary factors which affected group cohesion and learning within the community. Results from this study can provide insight into the class activities that can support all learners in accessing and contributing to the multi-user virtual environment learning community.     

Critical thinking in E-learning environments

One of the primary aims of higher education in today’s information technology enabled classroom is to make students more active in the learning process. The intended outcome of this increased IT-facilitated student engagement is to foster important skills such as critical thinking used in both academia and workplace environments. Critical thinking (CT) skills entails the ability(ies) of mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation to achieve a logical understanding. Critical thinking in the classroom as well as in the workplace is a central theme; however, with the dramatic increase of IT usage the mechanisms by which critical thinking is fostered and used has changed. This article presents the work and results of critical thinking in a virtual learning environment. We therefore present a web-based course and we assess in which parts of the course, and to what extent, critical thinking was perceived to occur. The course contained two categories of learning modules namely resources and interactive components. Critical thinking was measured subjectively using the ART scale. Results indicate the significance of “interactivity” in what students perceived to be critical-thinking-oriented versus online material as a resource. Results and opportunities that virtual environments present to foster critical thinking are discussed.     

An innovative pedagogy for teaching and evaluating computer literacy

In Spring 1998, 353 students enrolled in a web-based, self-paced, competency-based introductory computer literacy course. This pedagogy radically differed from the traditional lock-step, “monkey-see, monkey-do” approach utilized by many colleges and universities. This paper reports on the outcomes of this innovative approach including student success rates, instructor differences, technical considerations, and student attitudes. With the exception of withdrawal rates, all indicators are positive regarding both student perceptions and student learning outcomes. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The POD model: Using communities of practice theory to conceptualise student teachers’ professional learning online

This paper focuses on the broad outcomes of a research project which aimed to analyse and model student teachers’ learning in the online components of an initial teacher education course. It begins with discussion of the methodological approach adopted for the case study, which combined conventional data gathering techniques with those which are facilitated using the ‘panoptical’ tools of the VLE. The author has synthesized case study evidence, learning theory (Community of practice theory) and the advice of a key theoretician, to produce an original model of student teachers’ learning online within a professional online district (POD). The most distinctive feature of the POD model is the learning-curriculum dichotomy which recognises the potential of a VLE as a venue in which student teachers, working together in a community of practice, construct their own curriculum (both formal and informal/’hidden’. The paper also examines the key technological and pedagogical issues which affect students’ online learning.     

Making on-line logistics training sustainable through e-learning

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of using an online logistics certification learning environment as a training tool to equip future logisticians with required logistics skills. This study incorporates an online logistics certification website that was constructed for college students to familiarize themselves with the certification. In addition, this study also performed comparison tests on students before and after their interaction with the web-based learning environment system to ascertain the system’s effectiveness. Our findings suggest that such a system might motivate students to familiarize themselves with logistics-related certification information and can enhance students’ professional capabilities. In addition, the web-based learning environment might possibly motivate students to join logistics related industries in the future.     

Online site visits using virtual collaborative spaces: A plan-reading activity on a digital building site

Site visits or field trips have been a tool utilized by construction educators to engage students in active learning, assist traditional lessons, and attain stronger and deeper student learning experiences. Nevertheless, site visits present major logistical and accessibility challenges for educational institutions and instructors, reducing the number of students that have access to the benefits of such a technique. The limitations for site visits have further broadened recently, as the reality of the COVID-19 public health concerns has forced educators to move to online course delivery quickly and the majority of site visits have been canceled. The research goal of this paper is to present construction students with opportunities to enable online location-independent site visits where contextualized learning is dangerous, unsafe, or impossible to achieve. In this project, a virtual online learning environment was created to offer the affordances that provide an in-depth learning experience through collaborative communication for a plan-reading activity in a virtual space that resembles a real-world site visit to a building facility. This virtual online learning environment helped students to experience the physical and social aspects of the site visit while getting a collaborative opportunity to practice their plan-reading skills. A comparative study with a business-as-usual condition (online delivery through Zoom®) was conducted and the students’ plan-reading performance and their feedback on the sense of presence, social presence, fatigue, and system usability was reported. The outcome of the study shows that such virtual collaborative site visits present unique opportunities to enable online delivery of spatiotemporal contexts of sites and offer an effective remote alternative when these learning opportunities are not available.     

Using adaptive e-news to improve undergraduate programming courses with hybrid format

With the growing popularity of computers and the Internet, most teachers are taking advantage of Internet functions to assist in both teaching and student learning. However, students only login to the assisted learning system once or twice a week on average to surf for relevant references, participate in discussions, or hand in assignments, even though information and interaction are greatly enhanced by these online services. Therefore, increasing the transfer rate of useful information and interaction during the course period would help students learn. To this end, we designed an e-news delivery system that sends personalized e-mails to every student’s mailbox to make information access and peer interaction more convenient and efficient. Through the daily habit of using e-mail, students can receive the latest information, new instructions or peer discussions early. To encourage usage of the system, a user friendly interface was designed. The e-news system takes advantage of webpage hyperlinks to allow students to click on interesting topics while reading e-news; doing so will cause another window to pop-up with detailed content retrieved from the web-based learning system. A mouse-click allows students to login to the web-based learning system and extract the details of the chosen topic. To enhance the efficiency of e-news, learners’ needs and interests were taken into consideration when forming the e-news content. Students’ learning status and reading preferences are assessed to determine which information or content to include in the e-news. Experiment results reveal that e-news and personalized information greatly promote the reading of new information and participation in online activities.     

Productive use of learning resources in an online problem-based learning environment

This study examined students’ use of learning resources in a technologically-mediated online learning environment. Undergraduate student groups were engaged in an online problem-based learning (PBL) environment, rich with pre-selected video and knowledge resources. Quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that students accessed resources fairly frequently and benefited from them. Resources helped students construct a rich understanding of the problem and provided ideas for problem solutions. Detailed analyses of resource exploration along with contrasting case analyses between high-achieving and low-achieving student groups suggested that for learning to be effective in resource-rich environments, students first need to develop an understanding of the resources and learn how to access them efficiently. Second, students need to learn to process the contents of resources in meaningful ways so that they can integrate diverse resources to form a coherent understanding and apply them to solve problems. Finally, students need to develop knowledge and skills to use resources collaboratively, such as sharing and relating to each other’s resources. The results indicated that students, especially low-achieving students, need guidance to use resources effectively in resource-rich learning environments.     

Get out of MySpace!

To understand the student experience on social software, the research aims to explore the disruptive nature and opportunity of social networking for higher education. Taking four universities, the research: (1) identifies the distinction between the students’ current usage of social software; (2) reports on the students’ experience on opportunities and challenges of learning with social software; and (3) introduces principles as a guideline in using social software for learning. Quantitative research methods (web-based questionnaires) were incorporated to investigate the pattern of learners’ usage. Qualitative methods (student interviews) were adopted to clarify and further inform this relationship and their attitudes towards social software for learning. The results demonstrate a massive use of educational technology with distinct divide between the learning space and personal space. Student voices reveal that the central problem of such divide is due to the contrast perception and experience of ‘learning/studying and social life’. We argue that online learning and social personas may overlap but that learning needs to be designed so that it addresses the individual preferences to combine or separate the two domains. The paper concludes with a few principles of learning with social software grounded in students’ experience and Vygotsky’s paradigm.     

Virtual agents in retail web sites: Benefits of simulated social interaction for older users

This study investigates the benefits of simulated social interaction (social presence) through virtual agents for older users’ experience in retail Web sites, particularly with respect to age-related barriers to the adoption of online retailing. In Study 1, through four focus group interviews, we identified six social–psychological barriers to the adoption of online shopping among older users (mean age of 73 years). These included barriers relating to perceived risks, trust, social support, familiarity, experience, and search. In Study 2, a laboratory experiment with older users (mean age of 69 years) demonstrated that embedding a virtual agent that serves search and navigational/procedural support functions in the online store leads to increased perceived social support, trust, and patronage intention for the online store. Mediational analyses further revealed that the effect of virtual agents: (1) on trust is mediated by perceived social support; and (2) on patronage intentions is mediated in part by trust and perceived risks. The study provides important implications on the design of virtual agents for older users of e-commerce applications, and on building online trust and e-service patronage through virtual agents.     

Collaboration,connectedness, and community: An examination of the factors influencing student persistence in virtual communities

Institutions of higher education are being called upon to provide a more robust pathway to a college degree and improve upon the advanced workforce for the needs of the 21st century. While active collaborative learning environments have been encouraged in higher education to improve student engagement, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to connecting the two research areas of collaborative learning and student intention to persist. This research fills this gap by creating and conducting research to examine a model that measures the factors that significantly influence a student's persistence in a virtual collaborative learning environment. The model examines how collaborative learning, campus connectedness, sense of community, organizational commitment, and turnover intention influence student persistence. The model was tested using a sample of students who participated in a virtual learning community (VLC) and the results suggest that all but one of the factors were found to significantly influence student persistence, with the final factor dependent on the number of hours of system usage. We discuss the implications of the research and the model for team-based theory and organizational practice in education and teamwork.