A study of the relationships among learning styles, participation types, and performance in programming language learning supported by online forums

This study is focused on the relationships among learning styles, participation types, and learning performance for programming language learning supported by an online forum. Kolb’s learning style inventory was used in this study to determine a learner’s learning type: ‘Diverger’, ‘Assimilator’, ‘Converger’, and ‘Accommodator’. Social Learning Theory was also used to define four participation types. These types in turn were used to describe the learning associated with the use of online forums: ‘Replier’, ‘Asker’, ‘Watcher’, and ‘No activity’.A total of 144 students participated in this experiment as part of a half semester ASP.NET programming language learning courses. The course contained an online forum for supporting the students’ social activities and participation. In this study, ‘learning score’ and ‘satisfaction’ were used to measure learning performance.The results of this study were the following: (1) different learning styles were associated with significantly different learning scores and that the ‘Accommodator’ style was associated with superior learning scores; (2) participation types were also associated with significantly different learning scores and that the ‘Replier’ type is associated with superior learning scores; (3) learning satisfaction is not significantly different among the different learning styles or different participation types, but the average is significantly higher than average values (3.5) of 7-point Likert scale; (4) there is no significant association between learning styles and participation types. Explanations and discussions of these results are offered.Based on the results of this study, we propose that programming language learning, supported with online forums and students’ active participation, increases learning performance as measured by student learning scores.     

Influence of group size on students' participation in online discussion forums

This study attempts to examine how students participate and interact in different discussion modules organized with different group size in an online environment. It adopts a case study methodology where full semester online course with two small-group and three class-wide discussion forums was examined. The researcher counted the number of messages and hits (i.e. the number of students' clicks on other messages) and analyzed that to classify the level of interactivity of every individual message into four categories, i.e. independent, quasi-interactive, interactive (elaborative) and interactive (negotiating). It found that the class guidelines and active encouragement by the instructor had contributed to the high number of total messages and hits representing students' overall participation in all discussion forums. However, large discussion forums in the course had their limitations in promoting higher level of interactivity among the students. On the other hand, two small-group discussion forums had a higher number (by 21%) of enhanced interactivity (elaborating and negotiating mode). The study then concludes that a high quality participation in a large online class could be effected through sub-grouping. It further alludes that other practices should be taken into consideration to promote interactivity in discussion.     

Procrastination,participation, and performance in online learning environments

The present study focuses on a specific learner characteristic in the management of time – procrastination-, and its role in an online learning environment. More specifically, it was expected that procrastination would influence the successfulness of online learning and that this could be explained by the level of participation of learners in discussion forums. A study was conducted to test this hypothesis among a sample of learners taking a 10-week course on environmental and land use issues. As predicted, a negative relationship was found between procrastination and performance, and this relationship was mediated by the level of the learners’ participation in discussion forums. In other words, it appears that if high procrastinators are less successful online learners than low procrastinators, it is partly due to their lack of participation in discussion forums during the learning process. Additionally, some behavioral differences between high and low procrastinators were found in the times they decided to (re)start working at a distance, felt motivated to work on their course, and felt like dropping out of the course. To conclude, some practical implications for tutoring online activities and for stimulating participation in online learning environments have been proposed.     

Investigating the relationships among instructional strategies and learning styles in online environments

This exploratory study tests the assertion that instructional strategies that match field-dependence status of students are most effective. The study conducted with 12 graduate students registered in a graduate level online course. An online version of the Psychological Differentiation Inventory was used to measure the field-dependence status of students. Students’ perceived learning outcomes, their effort and involvement, and level of interaction that they perceived in online course module were measured through an online questionnaire. Results suggested that matches between students’ learning styles and instructional strategies did not affect learner perception of their own learning outcomes, level of effort and involvement, and level of interactions in the course. Data also indicated that no single instructional strategy, among three instructional strategies tested, emerged as superior for high and low field-dependent online students.     

Robot learning language — Integrating programming and learning for cognitive systems

One central property of cognitive systems is the ability to learn and to improve continually. We present a robot control language that combines programming and learning in order to make learning executable in the normal robot program. The language constructs of our learning language RoLL rely on the concept of hierarchical hybrid automata to enable a declarative, explicit specification of learning problems. Using the example of an autonomous household robot, we point out some instances where learning–and especially continued learning–makes the robot control program more cognitive.     

The distributed programming language SR—Mechanisms,design and implementation

SR is a new language for programming software containing many processes that execute in parallel. The language allows an entire software system that controls a potentially large collection of processors to be programmed as an integrated set of software modules. The key language mechanisms are resources, operations and input statements. The language supports separate compilation, type abstraction, and dynamic communication links; it also contains novel treatments of arrays and procedures. This paper gives an overview of the language mechanisms, discusses some of the major design decisions and describes one implementation.     

Investigating students' learning approaches,perceptions of online discussions,and students' online and academic performance

The main purpose of this study was to understand the relationships between students' approaches to learning, their perceptions of online discussions, students' contributions in asynchronous discussions, and their academic performance. Two sets of questionnaires were used for understanding students' approaches of learning and perceptions of online discussions. The online postings from seven weeks of discussions were coded into three major categories: Initiation, Elaborated Response (ER), and Response with Resources (RWR). The results showed, first, some aspects of students' perceptions influenced the numbers of ERs and RWRs. Secondly, students' contributions to Initiation messages and RWR significantly related to deep motivation and deep strategies; however, the numbers of these two types of messages were negatively correlated to surface strategies. Finally, cluster analysis revealed three distinct groups who scored significantly different in almost all aspects of approaches to learning and perceptions of online discussions. Students in the cluster who adopted deep approaches and scored highest in the perception scales outperformed students in the other two clusters, both in terms of the number of ER messages and academic performance. Pedagogical implications for teaching with online discussions are discussed in this study.     

Eye movement as a mediator of the relationships among time pressure,feedback, and learning performance

The goal of this study is to examine the effects of time pressure and feedback on learning performance, as mediated by eye movement. Time pressure is one of main causes of human error in the workplace. Providing participants with feedback about their performance before task completion has been shown to reduce human error in diverse domains. Since both time pressure and feedback induce motivation, which is closely related to attention, we measured participants' eye movements to trace their attention and information acquisition coupled with a visual display. Time-to-deadline (long and short) and the presence of feedback were the independent factors used while measuring participants’ performance and eye movements as they learned new information about the subject of project management and answered multiple-choice questions via self-paced online learning systems. Using structural equation modeling, we found a mediating effect of eye movement on the relationships among time-to-deadline, feedback, and learning performance. Insufficient time-to-deadline accelerated the number of fixations on the screen, which resulted in longer task completion times and increased correct rates for participants learning about project management. The models in this study suggest the possibility of predicting performance from eye movement under time-to-deadline and feedback conditions. The structural equation model in the study can be applied to online and remote learning systems, in which time management is one of the main challenges for individual learners.     

The timing of online lecture slide availability and its effect on attendance, participation, and exam performance

The use of PowerPoint slides has become an almost ubiquitous practice in university classrooms, however little research has examined whether the timing of lecture slide availability to students (either before or after lecture) affects classroom behaviour or exam performance. Using a 2 (slide availability condition) × 2 (course type) between-subjects design, the present study examined lecture slide availability differences in attendance, participation, and exam performance in two courses – Research Methods and Cognitive Development – taught in both the Fall and Winter semesters. For each type of course, lecture slides were made available on the course website before lecture in one semester and after lecture in the other semester. Course material was held constant across semesters. Results showed that mean attendance was higher when slides were available before lecture, but only for the type of course that did not include attendance points as part of students’ final grades. For students who participated in class, participation was more frequent when slides were available before lecture. No significant difference in exam performance was found between lecture slide availability conditions, however. These findings suggest that making lecture slides available to students before lecture may lead to better overall attendance and participation, but exam performance is determined by more than just whether or not students have lecture slides available for their note-taking.     

The effects of group size and exposure time on microcomputer learning

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of manipulating group size and exposure time on achievement in a computer learning situation keeping in mind the practical constraints of limited computer resources that teachers presently face. Two hundred and fifiy-four subjects from Grades 5 and 6 were divided into groups of one, two, or four and exposed to either one half-hour, two half-hours, or three half-hours of a commercially prepared drill-and-practice microcomputer program. Analyses of covariance on three dependent measures of achievement revealed that both the covariate (a standardized score on vocabulary achievement) and exposure time were significant. Group size did not significantly affect the results. Efficiency and effectiveness concerns in microcomputer learning are addressed, as are directions for future research.     

A pilot study of cooperative programming learning behavior and its relationship with students' learning performance

In this study we proposed a web-based programming assisted system for cooperation (WPASC) and we also designed one learning activity for facilitating students' cooperative programming learning. The aim of this study was to investigate cooperative programming learning behavior of students and its relationship with learning performance. Students' opinions and perceptions toward learning activity and the WPASC were also investigated. The results of this study revealed that most of students perceived that learning activity and the WPASC were useful for cooperative programming learning. Students' learning behavior during cooperative programming learning activity was classified into six different categories and we found that learning behavior has relationship with learning performance. Students from completely independent, self-improving using assistance, confident after enlightenment and imitating categories performed well due to their effective and motivated learning behavior. However, students from performing poorly without assistance and plagiarizing categories performed the worse; the former could not get assistance at all and the later had no learning motivation. The results also showed that students' learning behavior may have increasing, decreasing and no transition during problems solving. Therefore, performing poorly without assistance and plagiarizing learning behavior and decreasing transition or no transition in learning behavior should be identified right after completing a programming problem. Then the instructor should intervene into learning behavior in order to change it into more effective for learning. Besides, more incentives need to be given for increasing students' learning motivation and posting solutions and feedback by students at the early stage of a problem solving period.     

The Lynx distributed programming language: Motivation, design and experience

A programming language can provide much better support for interprocess communication than a library package can. Most message-passing languages limit this support to communication between the pieces of a single program, but this need not be the case. Lynx facilitates convenient, typesafe message passing not only within applications, but also between applications and among distributed collections of servers. Specifically, it addresses issues of compiler statelessness, late binding, and protection that allow run-time interaction between processes that were developed independently and that do not trust each other. Implementation experience with Lynx has yielded important insights into the relationship between distributed operating systems and language run-time support packages and into the inherent costs of high-level message-passing semantics.     

The impact of goal focus, task type and group size on synchronous net-based collaborative learning discourses

Net-based collaborative learning discourses often suffer from deficiencies such as lack of coherence and coordination. It is suggested that the provision of two functionalities, referencing and typing, which learners may optionally use to ground their contributions during a chat-based discourse, can improve collaborative learning. In particular, we examined if goal focus, type of task and group size affect learning outcomes and the use of these functionalities. A chat-based system, called a learning protocol, implements these functionalities and serves as a net-based collaborative learning environment. Results suggest that a learning protocol is more beneficial for knowledge-acquisition tasks than for problem-solving tasks, and that the use of supporting functionalities increases when goal focus is on the group rather than on the individual. Also, there is a tendency that learning outcomes improve as group size increases. We propose that learning protocols provide potentially valuable design features that can promote net-based collaborative learning.     

Effects of an online team project-based learning environment with group awareness and peer evaluation on socially shared regulation of learning and self-regulated learning

Recently, some studies proposed methods to promote socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) level within a team because high SSRL levels enable an effective collaboration. Meanwhile, several studies also proposed methods in online collaboration to enhance individual self-regulated learning (SRL). Notably, most existing studies focused on proposing methods and tools either for enhancing SSRL level within a team or for enhancing individual SRL. A computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment with proper supports is promising for simultaneously enhancing the SSRL level within a team and individual SRL because SSRL and SRL have an inseparable relation and mutually influence during collaborative process. Based on the existing principles and theories, this work adopts the supports of group awareness and peer evaluation in CSCL with project-based learning. Group awareness (GA) can reveal collaborative behaviour of group members and regulate their participation while peer assessment (PE), which can appraise member’s contribution, can encourage individual responsibility and refine regulatory strategies. This study finds that the proposed group awareness and peer assessment (GAPE) (i.e. the experimental class) moderately reduces the free-rider effect and enhanced SSRL level and individual SRL, compared with NO-GAPE (i.e. the control group). Furthermore, this study also confirms that the perceived SSRL level can effectively predict individual SRL.     

Scaffolding wiki‐supported collaborative learning for small‐group projects and whole‐class collaborative knowledge building

While educators value wikis' potential, wikis may fail to support collaborative constructive learning without careful scaffolding. This article proposes literature‐based instructional methods, revised based on two expert instructors' input, presents the collected empirical evidence on the effects of these methods and proposes directions for future refinements. The instructional methods were implemented by an expert instructor teaching a 12‐week 68‐student undergraduate design class in Canada. Data were collected from observations, interviews and content analysis of wikis. The findings revealed that in small‐group project (SGP), the wiki instructional methods enhanced collaborative learning with most instructional methods derived from cooperative learning, but in whole‐class collaborative knowledge building (CKB), the wiki instructional mehtods failed to turn the class into a self‐sustained learning community after the scaffolding faded. We conclude that the genre of wikis should be different for SGP and CKB. While the students easily adopted the ‘reproduced’ genre of wikis for SGP with familiar tasks, they felt overwhelmed or resistant to the unfamiliar ‘emergent’ genre of wikis for CKB in massive collaborative constructive learning. Therefore, we propose that future refinements for wiki‐supported CKB should focus on providing students scaffolding for intersubjectivity (understanding collaborative constructive learning) and transfer of responsibility (developing autonomy).     

The effect of computer-assisted cooperative learning methods and group size on the EFL learners’ achievement in communication skills

This study explored the effect of cooperative learning small group size and two different instructional modes (positive interdependence vs. individual accountability) on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduate learners’ communication skills (speaking and writing) achievement in computer-based environments. The study also examined the effects of disclosing/blinding the participants’ identities while interacting around computers on their post-test. The findings of the study revealed that the computer-based environment enabled the participants to blind their identities and reduce their anxiety from face-to-face debate, and so was very helpful in developing their communication skills. The use of the individual accountability mode was quite useful compared with the positive interdependence mode as it enabled all group members to perform their roles significantly. The 5-student group also significantly outperformed other groups of 2-7 members on the post-test communication skills. In conclusion, the findings of this study bring us a step closer to understanding the technique of cooperative language learning and group size.     

A BDI agent programming language with failure handling,declarative goals,and planning

Agents are an important technology that have the potential to take over contemporary methods for analysing, designing, and implementing complex software. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agent paradigm has proven to be one of the major approaches to intelligent agent systems, both in academia and in industry. Typical BDI agent-oriented programming languages rely on user-provided “plan libraries” to achieve goals, and online context sensitive subgoal selection and expansion. These allow for the development of systems that are extremely flexible and responsive to the environment, and as a result, well suited for complex applications with (soft) real-time reasoning and control requirements. Nonetheless, complex decision making that goes beyond, but is compatible with, run-time context-dependent plan selection is one of the most natural and important next steps within this technology. In this paper we develop a typical BDI-style agent-oriented programming language that enhances usual BDI programming style with three distinguished features: declarative goals, look-ahead planning, and failure handling. First, an account that mixes both procedural and declarative aspects of goals is necessary in order to reason about important properties of goals and to decouple plans from what these plans are meant to achieve. Second, lookahead deliberation about the effects of one choice of expansion over another is clearly desirable or even mandatory in many circumstances so as to guarantee goal achievability and to avoid undesired situations. Finally, a failure handling mechanism, suitably integrated with both declarative goals and planning, is required in order to model an adequate level of commitment to goals, as well as to be consistent with most real BDI implemented systems.     

The relationships among supply chain partnerships,customer orientation,and operational performance: the effect of flexibility

The research goal of this study was to investigate how supply chain partnerships and customer orientation affect the operational performance of food service companies by moderating flexibility. In total, 725 invitation messages were mailed to members of Ihergo, Groupon, 17P, of which, 166 were returned (a return rate of 22.9 %). Structured equation modeling with PLS analysis allows empirical assessment of the measurement model used in this study. Companies will redefine their business models by connecting suppliers’ and customers’ view, and by integrating customers’ opinions and queries for the planning and development of new products. Linkage efficiency suppliers will reduce inventory and decrease perishable for food service companies based on the driving force to buy in the virtual environment. Product innovation and reduction of the time to market by supplier integration and customer integration are important to food service companies, and flexibility plays an important role in food service companies.