Integration of simulation into pre-laboratory chemical course: Computer cluster versus WebCT

Pre-laboratory activities have been known to improve students’ preparation before their practical work as they assist students to make available more working memory capacity for actual learning during the laboratory. The aim of this investigation was to compare two different teaching approaches which supported a pre-laboratory session by using the same simulation program. The investigation was conducted in two countries (Greece and UK). The Greek students attended the course in a computer cluster, where the teacher and the students had a face-to-face communication, while the English students participated in the on-line WebCT course, where there was an on-line asynchronous discussion. A crucial point which emerged from this investigation was that the simulation program in the two different pre-laboratory training sessions gave the same learning outcome; however, the learning characteristics and the teacher’s effort were different. Thus, the teacher could adopt both the two teaching approaches depending on the university facilities, the staff’s time and the students’ familiarity with virtual learning environments. However, in each case of students followed a different way (collaboration or/and independent learning) to obtain the similar learning outcome. In all cases after their pre-laboratory training session they entered the laboratory performing the experiments without any further instructions. Additionally, the teacher’s role was slight difference in the two teaching approaches. In the computer cluster, the teacher had a more active role guiding students to obtain the expected learning outcome through face-to-face discussion and interaction, whereas in the case of the virtual learning environment (WebCT), the teacher had a more of a facilitator role focused on posing questions to the students and collecting the resources promoting the independent learning.     

Incorporating podcasting and blogging into a core task for ESOL teacher candidates

Due to innovation and globalization in education, educators of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) are encouraged to use such instructional technologies as podcasting and blogging, but studies on integrating these technologies into assignments are rare. This project revealed how ESOL teacher candidates implement instructional technology skills to help English learners and the teacher candidates’ attitudes and processes toward implementing podcasting and blogging as a core assignment. Using qualitative research, five themes emerged: (a) ESOL teacher candidates’ attitudes and self-assessments, (b) their implementation of podcasting and blogging, (c) their challenges and rewards, (d) the impact on their professional development, and (e) their own impact on new generations of students, particularly English learners. This discussion highlights ESOL teacher candidates’ experiences while learning podcasting and blogging. ESOL teacher candidates, recognizing their future students as a new generation, are highly proactive learners and want very much to be competent and confident in their own teaching.     

Effects of an online problem based learning course on content knowledge acquisition and critical thinking skills

This study investigated how the online problem based learning (PBL) approach employed in an online learning environment influenced undergraduate students’ critical thinking skills (CTS) and content knowledge acquisition. The pretest–posttest control group design was used in the study. The subjects included the students who were enrolled at the Department of Primary School Mathematics Teaching in Anadolu University Education Faculty. Subjects attended to Computer II course in 2008 spring. Experiment group attended the online PBL course whereas the control group attended the online instructor-led course. Each group consisted of 20 students. Data collection tools consisted of a multiple choice content knowledge acquisition scale and the Watson–Glaser critical thinking skills test. The results of two-way mixed design ANOVA indicated that learning in the online PBL group did not have a significant effect on the content knowledge acquisition scores. It was also revealed that learning in the online PBL group had a significant effect on increasing the critical thinking skills.     

Developing Web literacy in collaborative inquiry activities

Although many children are technically skilled in using the Web, their competences to use it in a critical and meaningful way are usually less well developed. In this article, we report on a multiple case study focusing on the possibilities and limitations of collaborative inquiry activities as an appropriate context to acquire Web literacy skills in primary education. Four 5th grade school teachers and their students worked with collaborative inquiry activities on the subject of ‘healthy food’. The project was aimed at both the development of Web literacy skills and content knowledge building. Data from a variety of sources were collected: videotaped and written lesson observations, interviews with teachers and students, teacher diaries, student questionnaires, and student assignments. The teachers appeared to be able to carry out the program to varying degrees. Contextual factors that influenced the realization of the project’s goals and results were the adequacy of the research questions formulated by students, students’ inquiry skills, and the teachers’ teaching styles. Students’ learning results show that it is possible to teach Web literacy skills in the context of collaborative inquiry activities. All classes show knowledge gain with regard to the subject healthy food and all classes but one show knowledge gain with regard to Web literacy skills. Although many students show adequate use of particular Web searching, reading and evaluating skills after the project, inconsistency, impulsiveness and impatience are also typical of their Web behaviour. In the context of collaborative inquiry activities teachers are challenged to deal with the paradox that they want their students to be active knowledge builders with help of the Web, whereas the Web seems to invite students to be more or less passive searchers.     

The implementation and evaluation of a mobile self- and peer-assessment system

Recently, more and more researchers have been exploring uses of mobile technology that support new instructional strategies. Based on research findings related to peer and self assessment, this study developed a Mobile Assessment Participation System (MAPS) using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) as the platform. In addition, the study proposes an implementation model of the MAPS that should facilitate the effectiveness of self- and peer-assessment in classrooms. The researcher argues that teachers and students can benefit from MAPS in various regards including more flexible assessment arrangement, more efficient use of time, and more opportunities for student reflection on learning and assessment. Thirty-seven students taking teacher-education courses with the researcher participated in this study, and these students employed the MAPS to conduct two-round assessment activities that would help these students assess both their own and one another’s final projects. Both the students’ valid responses in a survey herein and scores obtained from the assessment activities confirmed the benefits of the MAPS and its implementation model. Yet, the students voiced such concerns as the objectivity of peer-assessment and the difficulty of providing constructive feedback, and the correlation analysis indicated a lack of consistency between teacher-grading and student-grading.     

Understanding the ways in which design features of educational websites impact upon student learning outcomes in blended learning environments

This study investigated the effectiveness, in terms of the attainment of relevant learning outcomes, of the types of learning promoted by educational features commonly incorporated in course management systems. Twenty-one courses with significant use of the Internet, but with face-to-face teaching as the predominant instructional mode, were investigated. Five hundred and ninety-five students taking these 21 courses completed a questionnaire which gave feedback on the extent of use of and quality of implementation of internet features, as well as their perception of the attainment of outcomes relating to approaches to learning, communication skills and understanding of content. A confirmatory factor analysis of scales pertinent to information presentation and constructive dialogue features showed a very poor fit to the data, indicating that the two types of function did not act in concert. Structural equation modelling was used to test instructional models in presage–process–product format for ‘information’ and ‘dialogue’ features. The information one showed a marginal fit to the data, but the dialogue one a very good fit. This shows that using the Internet for presenting information in a blended environment does not seem to effectively help students achieve learning outcomes. Using features which promote constructive dialogue and interactive learning activities encourages a deep approach to learning, the development of communication skills and enhanced understanding of content.     

Learning leadership skills in a simulated business environment

In today’s unstable market economy, individuals have to be skilled to work efficiently in constantly changing and complex situations. Thus, graduate students have to be trained to cope with unpredictable situations before they enter the workforce. They need to exercise occupational skills, such as leadership skills, during higher education. Simulation gaming opens up possibilities for active learning of the leadership and other occupational skills needed in complex work environments. The aim of this study is to explore if participation in business simulation gaming sessions can make different leadership types visible and if the simulation gaming sessions provide students with experiences beneficial for the development of leadership skills. In the experiment, a group of multicultural graduate business students (N = 41) participated in gaming sessions with a computerised business simulation game. The participants played the game in virtual teams; some teams had a “satellite member” geographically distant from the rest of the team members. Data consist of the teams’ observations during the simulation game and students’ reflective essays written after the gaming sessions. The results indicate that in the business simulation gaming environment, certain leadership characteristics emerged spontaneously. Experiences about leadership varied between the teams and were dependent on the role individual students had in their team. However, it can be concluded that simulation gaming environment has the potential to be used in higher education to exercise the leadership skills relevant in real-world work contexts.     

The effects of problem-based learning on the classroom community perceptions and achievement of web-based education students

Web-based education as an alternative to face-to-face teaching is now being extended as an application to higher education. Much effort is undertaken to provide multimedia rich, attractive content to learners. While the use of multimedia technologies has a noticeable effect on students’ learning, so does the selected teaching methodology. Underpinned by the Constructivist approach, problem-based learning is one of the methods that could be applied in web-based learning environments. The current study investigates the effects of problem-based learning on students’ classroom community perceptions and their achievement. It focuses on the tertiary level course “Introduction to Computers” offered by the Department of Business Administration of the Distance Education Program at a higher education institution in Turkey. The results indicated that students who worked on problem-based projects felt much more ‘connected’ to other class members when compared to the control group. They achieved higher scores in the post-tests although their online midterm and final examination scores did not indicate any difference between the groups.     

Using ubiquitous games in an English listening and speaking course: Impact on learning outcomes and motivation

This paper reports the results of a study which aimed to investigate how ubiquitous games influence English learning achievement and motivation through a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment. An English curriculum was conducted on a school campus by using a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment called the Handheld English Language Learning Organization (HELLO). HELLO helps students to engage in learning activities based on the ARCS motivation theory, involving various educational strategies, including ubiquitous game-based learning, collaborative learning, and context-aware learning. Two groups of students participated in the learning activities prescribed in a curriculum by separately using ubiquitous game-based learning and non-gaming learning. The curriculum, entitled ‘My Campus’, included three learning activities, namely ‘Campus Environment’, ‘Campus Life’ and ‘Campus Story’. Participants included high school teachers and juniors. During the experiment, tests, a survey, and interviews were conducted for the students. The evaluation results of the learning outcomes and learning motivation demonstrated that incorporating ubiquitous games into the English learning process could achieve a better learning outcomes and motivation than using non-gaming method. They further revealed a positive relationship between learning outcomes and motivation.     

Web-based Personalised System of Instruction: An effective approach for diverse cohorts with virtual learning environments?

The Personalised System of Instruction is a form of mastery learning which, though it has been proven to be educationally effective, has never seriously challenged the dominant lecture-tutorial teaching method in higher education and has largely fallen into disuse. An information and communications technology assisted version of the Personalised System of Instruction using a virtual learning environment is promoted here based on the authors’ longitudinal design research into this pedagogy. The particular elements of the virtual learning environment which are promoted are short video clips, online formative tests and an assessment management system. The authors present their experiences of developing and deploying this pedagogy for the teaching of introductory discrete mathematics to large classes of Computer Science students at two UK higher education institutions both with whole cohorts and ‘at risk’ groups of students. In particular, this method is promoted as particularly helpful to students who do not adopt a deep approach to learning as many students fail to do. Moreover ‘at risk’ students using this method (n = 71) demonstrated an average Glass effect size of 0.83 compared with other ‘at risk’ students who did not (n = 35). Based on these experiences, this pedagogy is promoted as an effective approach to teaching in higher education, especially the teaching of cognitive skills to diverse cohorts of students on foundation level modules.     

基于行动导向的高职《计算机应用基础》的教学改革

在高职《计算机应用基础》课程中实施行动导向教学,目的是为了更好地实现教、学、做一体化.这种教学是将理论知识的学习与实际应用项目结合起来,在学生实践能力的培养中,主要采取仿真案例教学法,从而使学生在实践活动中获取知识和技能,提高计算机实际应用综合能力.     

Learning in introductory e-commerce: A project-based teamwork approach

In this paper, we describe an e-commerce teamwork-based project designed and implemented at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) for undergraduate business and management students. The teaching objectives of this e-commerce project are to develop the students’ knowledge and skills, such as in the use of e-commerce site building tools, critical thinking, communication skills, teamwork, and entrepreneurship. We focus on the practical implications of the project-based teamwork approach in the teaching and learning of introductory e-commerce from a business context perspective. The results of an evaluation indicate that the project-based teamwork approach to teaching e-commerce performs to expectations. Our experience and student evaluations indicate that students like the practical components of the course and are interested in the use of the learning-by-doing approach. We believe that other business colleges with e-commerce curricula will benefit from this approach.     

Collaborative robotic instruction: A graph teaching experience

Graphing is a key skill in the study of Physics. Drawing and interpreting graphs play a key role in the understanding of science, while the lack of these has proved to be a handicap and a limiting factor in the learning of scientific concepts. It has been observed that despite the amount of previous graph-working experience, students of all ages experience a series of difficulties when trying to comprehend graphs or when trying to relate them with physical concepts such as position, velocity and acceleration. Several computational tools have risen to improve the students’ understanding of kinematical graphs; however, these approaches fail to develop graph construction skills. On the other hand, Robots have opened new opportunities in learning. Nevertheless, most of their educational applications focus on Robotics related subjects, such as robot programming, robot construction, and artificial intelligence. This paper describes a robotic activity based on face-to-face computer supported collaborative learning. By means of a set of handhelds and a robot wirelessly interconnected, the aim of the activity is to develop graph construction and graph interpretation skills while also reinforcing kinematics concepts. Results show that students using the robotic activity achieve a significant increase in their graph interpreting skills. Moreover, when compared with a similar computer-simulated activity, it proved to be almost twice as effective. Finally, the robotic application proved to be a highly motivating activity for the students, fostering collaboration among them.     

Ability-training-oriented automated assessment in introductory programming course

Learning to program is a difficult process for novice programmers. AutoLEP, an automated learning and assessment system, was developed by us, to aid novice programmers to obtain programming skills. AutoLEP is ability-training-oriented. It adopts a novel assessment mechanism, which combines static analysis with dynamic testing to analyze student programs. It not only helps students to sufficiently test the programs, but also evaluates whether the programs meet the specification or not. AutoLEP encourages students to find and work through bugs, by providing automatic syntactic and structural checking, and immediate detailed feedback. This can improve students’ learning experience in programming and reduce the workload of the teaching staff. AutoLEP has been used in the C programming course at Harbin Institute of Technology and many other universities since 2004. The feedback on AutoLEP and its incorporation into the introductory programming course has been positive, both by students and teaching staff.     

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.     

Deconstructing and reconstructing: Transforming primary science learning via a mobilized curriculum

The history of science education reform has been fundamentally centered around science curriculum development and implementation. The advent of mobile technologies has necessitated a re-examination of how students could better learn science through these 21st century tools. Conventional teaching materials may not prepare students to learn the inquiry way and to become self-directed and social learners who could learn “everywhere and all the time (seamlessly)” using mobile technologies. This paper is based on our first year of work in our mobile learning research project in transforming primary three science lessons into a “mobilized” curriculum for a classroom context in which students routinely use mobile technologies. Using an exemplar fungi topic, we discuss our approach as well as experiences in deconstructing and reconstructing an existing curriculum through a co-design approach with teachers in a Singapore local school. In doing so, we make a contribution to the methodology for developing mobilized science curricula for in-class learning that also extends to out-of-class learning.     

Improving literacy and metacognition with electronic portfolios: Teaching and learning with ePEARL

Can an electronic portfolio that is both a multimedia container for student work and a tool to support key learning processes have a positive impact on the literacy practices and self-regulated learning skills of students? This article presents the findings of a yearlong study conducted in three Canadian provinces during the 2007–2008 school year initially involving 32 teachers and 388 students. Due to varying levels of implementation our final data set included 14 teachers and 296 students. Using a non-equivalent pre-test/post-test design, we found that grade 4–6 students who were in classrooms where the teacher provided regular and appropriate use of the electronic portfolio tool ePEARL (i.e., medium–high implementation condition, n = 7 classrooms and 121 students), compared to control students (n = 7 classrooms and 175 students) who did not use ePEARL, showed significant improvements (p < .05) in their writing skills on a standardized literacy measure (i.e., the constructed response subtest of the Canadian Achievement Test-4th ed.) and certain metacognitive skills measured via student self-report. The results of this study indicate that teaching with ePEARL has positive impacts on students’ literacy and self-regulated learning skills when the tool is used regularly and integrated into classroom instruction.     

Design, implementation and validation of a Europe-wide pedagogical framework for e-Learning

Within the context of a Europe-wide project UNITE, a number of European partners set out to design, implement and validate a pedagogical framework (PF) for e- and m-Learning in secondary schools. The process of formulating and testing the PF was an evolutionary one that reflected the experiences and skills of the various European partners and secondary schools involved in the project. The framework involved pedagogies which underpin the teaching of subject matter in a number of European secondary schools as well as the ways in which learning is delivered and assessed. The PF represents an essential part of the e-Learning system conceptualization and development and offers sound concepts for the development of learning scenarios in order to enhance the learning experience of students in secondary schools. A five-component framework which, by means of its constituents, drives and guides the creation of e-Learning scenarios was designed and tested. It is composed of the pedagogical framework context, pedagogical approaches, assessment techniques, teacher education and national specifics and current pedagogical practices implemented in national curricula. A series of learning scenarios were created to test the PF in classrooms. A detailed exemplar of a scenario in practice is offered. An evaluation of the scenarios based on [Reeves, T. C., 1994. Evaluating what really matters in computer-based education. In M. Wild, D. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Computer education: new perspectives (pp. 219–246). Perth, Australia: MASTEC] pedagogical dimensions revealed that UNITE is based on constructivist and cognitive foundations. With increased experience of the system the teachers’ implementation of the pedagogical framework developed into increased mastery in the school context. Teachers from the second validation phase became more confident in their application of the framework principles and evaluated more positively the outcomes. This helped them to become more aware of the opportunities offered by the framework in their secondary school teaching. In order to bring this about the supports for change were put into place at the levels of pedagogical design, administrative support and the provision of the required resources and appropriate continuing professional development. The project has sought to create this support structure to ensure maximal benefits of the system for teaching and learning. Such a pedagogical support PF has offered scope for both collaborative and autonomous learning which have brought about value-added teaching and learning effects in the Europe-wide network of schools.     

A blended learning Approach to teaching foreign policy: Student experiences of learning through face-to-face and online discussion and their relationship to academic performance

This article presents research on students’ experiences of learning through a blend of face-to-face and online discussion. The participants in our study were students enrolled in a foreign policy course at a major Australian university. Students’ conceptions of learning through discussion, and their approaches to both face-to-face and online discussion, were elicited through open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Students’ responses to both open-ended questionnaires and interviews were analysed using a phenomenographic framework. Qualitative variations in students’ conceptions and approaches were categorised and were found to form a hierarchy. Subsequent quantitative analysis found associations between students’ conceptions of learning through discussion, their approaches to both face-to-face and online discussion and their academic performance (as indicated by the final mark for the course). Implications for teaching and further research are discussed.