The effect of scaffolding students’ context-generating cognitive activity in technology-enhanced case-based learning

This study investigates the hypothesis that students’ learning and problem-solving performance in ill-structured domains can be improved, if elaborative question prompts are used to activate students’ context-generating cognitive processes, during case study. Two groups of students used a web-based learning environment to criss-cross and study case-based material in the software project management domain. The experimental group was additionally prompted to consistently answer a set of questions based on a model of context-generating processes, meant to engage students in deeper processing of information presented in cases. Students were also classified as having either “complex” or “simple” EB profile (based on their epistemological beliefs record), thereby establishing a 2 × 2 factorial design. Results indicated that scaffolding treatment had a significant main effect on students’ performance, with the experimental group performing better in both domain knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer post-test items. There is also tentative indication that EB profile and scaffolding treatment interact, with complex-EB learners benefiting most from the scaffolded condition. Overall, the study provides evidence that it is possible to improve individual learning in a technology environment for case-based learning, by implementing appropriate questioning strategies that trigger students to activate their context-generating cognitive processes, while studying the contextually rich material of cases.     

Predicting college students’ online information searching strategies based on epistemological,motivational, decision-related,and demographic variables

This study examines the extent to which epistemological, motivational, decision-related, and demographic variables predict college students' use of online information searching strategies (behavioural, procedural, and metacognitive strategies). The participants included preservice teachers (N = 538) from 13 universities in different parts of Turkey. Stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify the variables predicting each online information searching strategy. The results revealed that online information searching strategies were best predicted by epistemological beliefs and then decision-making styles, web search experience, and goal orientations. Students who had advanced epistemological beliefs in speed of learning tended to have better behavioural, procedural, and metacognitive strategies, while students having naive epistemological beliefs in ability to learn had lower level online searching strategies. Students having more web search experience had better online searching strategies. Additionally, as the level of students’ mastery-approach goals increases, the use of procedural and metacognitive domain strategies increase as well, while the increase in the level of mastery-avoidance goals were related to the use of less behavioural domain strategies. Finally, students having rational decision styles were more likely to use higher levels of online information searching strategies, while students with avoidant styles tended to use less behavioural and procedural domain strategies.     

Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies

This paper reports qualitative findings from a study that investigated Australian university staff and students’ perceptions and use of current and emerging technologies both in their daily lives and in teaching and learning contexts. Forty-six first-year students and 31 teaching and support staff from three Australian universities took part in interviews and focus groups. This paper examines how students and staff reported on their use of new technologies in their daily lives, their stated reasons for using those technologies, and their beliefs about the benefits and limitations of using technologies as teaching and learning tools. The findings question assumptions that have been made about a “digital divide” between “digital native” students and their “digital immigrant” teachers in higher education today, suggesting we need to develop a more sophisticated understanding about the role technologies play in the lives of both students and staff. A better understanding of student and staff perspectives will allow for more informed decisions about the implementation of educational technologies in today’s higher education institutions.     

The role of tasks and epistemological beliefs in online peer questioning

The current study examines the assertion that students are motivated and learn more by carrying out tasks consistent with their epistemological beliefs in web-based learning environments. In the study, 120 undergraduate students in an educational technology course participated as part of their coursework. Using a wiki, triads reciprocally asked and responded to questions as constructing either a group summary or a group argument. Students with less advanced epistemological beliefs more actively coordinated formats and procedures for group work and achieved higher comprehension of reading materials in the collaborative summary than in the collaborative argumentation. By contrast, these differences were not found for students with more advanced epistemological beliefs. However, the interaction effect between tasks and epistemological beliefs disappeared for the quality of argumentation on case problems. Independently of epistemological beliefs, collaborative argumentation promoted more constructive and interactive peer questioning activities and helped to construct higher quality arguments in case problems than collaborative summary. Therefore, the effects of matching tasks and epistemological beliefs varied depending on types of learning outcomes (comprehension vs. argumentation) in online peer questioning.     

The preferences toward constructivist Internet-based learning environments among university students in Taiwan

Numerous educators have proposed the development of constructivist Internet-based learning environments for students. When creating the constructivist Internet-based learning environments, it is important for researchers to be aware of students’ preferences toward these environments. Through gathering data from 659 university students in Taiwan, this study developed a questionnaire to assess students’ preferences toward constructivist Internet-based learning environments. The questionnaire, with adequate validity and reliability, included 34 items on the following seven scales: relevance, multiple sources (and interpretations), challenge, student negotiation, cognitive apprenticeship, reflective thinking and epistemological awareness. The questionnaire responses revealed that male students tended to prefer the Internet-based learning environments where they could solve challenging problems, acquire cognitive apprenticeship and guidance from experts, and promote epistemological development than did female students. The findings also suggested that, if educators intend to develop Internet-based learning environments for more academically advanced students, such as graduate students, care should be taken to create more opportunities for them to negotiate ideas, obtain proper guidance, reflect their own thoughts, and explore epistemological issues. Finally, students with more Internet experiences tended to demand more on many features of the constructivist Internet-based learning environments than those with less Internet experiences.     

The effect of an information ethics course on the information ethics values of students - A Chinese guanxi culture perspective

The development of information technology has a significant influence on social structure and norms, and also impacts upon human behavior. In order to achieve stability and social harmony, people need to respect various norms, and have their rights protected. Students’ information ethics values are of critical and radical importance in achieving this goal. Using qualitative approach, the present study utilizes Kohlberg’s CMD model to measure improvement in students’ “information ethics values” through “technology mediated learning (TML)” models, and to assess the extent to which it is influenced by gender and Chinese guanxi culture. We find that while e-learning improves female students’ “respect rules,” “privacy,” “accessibility” and “intellectual property” values more than male students, the percentages relating to “intellectual property” for females in the higher stages remain lower than for males. Moreover, these results are interpreted from a Chinese guanxi culture perspective. In light of these results, educators should take account of such improvements when designing effective teaching methods and incentives.     

Client-side selection of replicated web services: An empirical assessment

Replicating web services over physically distributed servers can offer client applications a number of QoS benefits, including higher availability and reduced response time. However, selecting the “best” service replica to invoke at the client-side is not a trivial task, as this requires taking into account factors such as local and external network conditions, and the servers’ current workload. This paper presents an empirical assessment of five representative client-side service selection policies for accessing replicated web services. The assessment measured the response time obtained with each of the five policies, at two different client configurations, when accessing a world-wide replicated service with four replicas located in three continents. The assessment’s results were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In essence, the results show that, in addition to the QoS levels provided by the external network and the remote servers, characteristics of the local client environment can have a significant impact on the performance of some of the policies investigated. In this regard, the paper presents a set of guidelines to help application developers in identifying a server selection policy that best suits a particular service replication scenario.     

Exploration of problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety among Turkish pre-service teachers

The current study investigated the relationship between problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety among pre-service teachers. Participants were 1235 students attending teacher training programs at a Turkish state university. The “Problematic Internet Use Scale” and “Social Interaction Anxiety Scale” were used to collect the data. Independent-samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were conducted to examine the differences; and correlation and regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between variables. Findings revealed that male students’ use of the Internet was more problematic compared to female students’. As the time spent on the Internet increased, so did the problematic Internet use levels. In addition, the problematic Internet use levels of students varied with regard to departments. A significant relationship was found between the level of problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety, and social interaction anxiety was found to be among the predictors of problematic Internet use. Implications and suggestions for further research are provided.     

A sound and complete model-generation procedure for consistent and confidentiality-preserving databases

This article introduces and investigates a new model-theoretic mechanism to enforce confidentiality (or privacy) requirements in a database instance; at the same time it ensures maximum availability of correct database answers. The aim is to materialize and publish a secure view that satisfies the properties of “inference-proofness” and “distortion minimality”. A comprehensive class of first-order constraints (representing a user’s a priori knowledge and a confidentiality policy) can be handled by the presented algorithm in a sound and complete way: tuple-generating dependencies, denial constraints and existential constraints. The due proof of refutation soundness makes use of Herbrand’s theorem and semantic trees.     

A distributed system for learning programming on-line

Several Web-based on-line judges or on-line programming trainers have been developed in order to allow students to train their programming skills. However, their pedagogical functionalities in the learning of programming have not been clearly defined. EduJudge is a project which aims to integrate the “UVA On-line Judge”, an existing on-line programming trainer with an important number of problems and users, into an effective educational environment consisting of the e-learning platform Moodle and the competitive learning tool QUESTOURnament. The result is the EduJudge system which allows teachers to apply different pedagogical approaches using a proven e-learning platform, makes problems easy to search through an effective search engine, and provides an automated evaluation of the solutions submitted to these problems. The final objective is to provide new learning strategies to motivate students and present programming as an easy and attractive challenge. EduJudge has been tried and tested in three algorithms and programming courses in three different Engineering degrees. The students’ motivation and satisfaction levels were analysed alongside the effects of the EduJudge system on students’ academic outcomes. Results indicate that both students and teachers found that among other multiple benefits the EduJudge system facilitates the learning process. Furthermore, the experiment also showed an improvement in students’ academic outcomes. It must be noted that the students’ level of satisfaction did not depend on their computer skills or their gender.     

Embedding game-based problem-solving phase into problem-posing system for mathematics learning

A problem-posing system is developed with four phases including posing problem, planning, solving problem, and looking back, in which the “solving problem” phase is implemented by game-scenarios. The system supports elementary students in the process of problem-posing, allowing them to fully engage in mathematical activities. In total, 92 fifth graders from four different classes were recruited. The experimental group used the problem-posing system, whereas the control group followed the traditional paper-based approach. The study investigates the effects of the problem-posing system on students’ problem-posing ability, problem-solving ability, and flow experiences. The results revealed more flow experiences, and higher problem-solving and problem-posing abilities in the experimental group.     

Technology uses and student achievement: A longitudinal study

Based on data collected from a middle school, this study investigates how the quantity and quality of technology use affect student learning outcomes. Specifically, this study examines how technologies are used by students, what technology uses are popular among students, and what technology uses are effective for increasing student academic achievement. Results suggest that the quantity of technology use alone is not critical to student learning. “How much” matters when “how” is identified. Moreover, when the quality of technology use is not ensured, more time on computers may cause more harm than benefit. With students’ change in GPA as an indicator, technology uses that had positive impact on students were those related to specific subject areas and focused on student construction. In addition, analysis of the frequency of technology uses found that, in general, technology uses that had positive impact were not popular; on the contrary, some of these technology uses were the least frequently used. Implications for practice and future research are discussed in this paper.     

Using blogging to enhance the initiation of students into academic research

For the net-generation students learning in a Web 2.0 world, research is often equated with Googling and approached with a mindset accustomed to cut-and-paste practices. Recognizing educators’ concern over such students’ learning dispositions on the one hand, and the educational affordances of blogging on the other, this study examines the use of blogging to initiate students into academic research at the tertiary level. It focuses on the experiences of three students from a third-year music class working on their research paper with blog-based supervision provided by the teacher. The course, in a hybrid fashion, combined face-to-face lectures and tutorials with blog sharing and discussion. The students’ individually-owned blogs were specifically used as their research diaries in which they logged in their work in progress, they then received input from both the teacher and fellow students. Based on the researcher’s self-evaluation of the teaching-supervising process, an analysis of the students’ blog discourse, and students’ survey feedback, this article offers useful insights and suggestions for educators interested in either using or researching on blogging as a means to develop students’ research skills and understanding.     

Applying question answering technology to locating malevolent online content

We have empirically compared two classes of technologies capable of locating potentially malevolent online content: 1) popular keyword searching, currently widely used by law enforcement and general public, and 2) emerging question answering (QA). The Google search engine exemplified the first approach. To exemplify the second, we further advanced the pattern based probabilistic QA approach and implemented a proof-of-concept prototype that was capable of finding web pages that provide the answers to the given questions, including non-factual ones (e.g. “How to build a pipe bomb?”). The answers to those question typically indicate the presence of malevolent content. Our findings suggest that QA technology can be a good addition to the traditional keyword searching for the task of locating malevolent online content and, possibly, for a more general task of interactive online information exploration.     

Web conferencing for synchronous online tutorials: Perspectives of tutors using a new medium

This paper reports on a pilot investigation into web conferencing in a distance learning module. It focuses on the perceptions and experiences of the tutors, all of whom were new to the web conferencing environment, but were experienced in online teaching. A number of web conferencing tutorials were studied through the collection of various datasets, mostly qualitative. The data were analysed by a team of researchers, informed by key literature in this area.The main findings from the pilot indicated that tutors experienced challenges in creating social presence and in managing cognitive load when dealing with multiple tasks online. There were also technical obstacles to improvisation in response to students’ emerging needs. The findings of the pilot informed the training and support provided when web tutorials were subsequently rolled out to all tutorial groups (approximately 140) in the module. Overall, experiences from the web tutorials indicate that tutors and students reacted positively to the opportunities web conferencing provides for interactive learning and teaching.     

Searching the Web for conflicting topics: Page and user factors

Web users tend to search only the pages displayed at the top of the search engine results page (the ‘top link’ heuristic). Although it might be reasonable to use this heuristic to navigate simple and unambiguous facts, it might be risky when searching for conflicting socio-scientific topics, such as potential measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the present study, we explored the extent to which students consider other Web page characteristics, such as topic relevance and trustworthiness, when searching and bookmarking pages concerning a conflicting topic. We also examined the extent to which prior background knowledge moderates students’ behavior. The results revealed that while the study participants actually used a ‘top link’ heuristic to navigate the results, they engaged in more systematic processes to bookmark pages for further study. Furthermore, the students’ background knowledge was related to the assessment of Web page trustworthiness. We discuss these results from the perspective of a dual-processing model.     

Socioeconomic differences in elementary students’ ICT beliefs and out-of-school experiences

The purpose of the study was to explore possible links between student socioeconomic status (SES), beliefs about information and communication technologies (ICTs), and out-of-school learning resources. Grades 5 and 6 students (N = 345) who were enrolled in one private and six public elementary schools in Greece, located in areas with different demographic characteristics, responded to a questionnaire addressing their ICT self-efficacy and value beliefs, out-of-school ICT access and activities, perceived parental support and regulation of home ICT activities, and access to sources of technological support beyond the family. Findings showed that students from all SES family backgrounds tended to have positive views about the value of ICTs, but students from low-SES families expressed lower confidence in their ICT skills. Parents from all SES backgrounds appeared to view equally favorably their children’s engagement with ICTs, and perceived parental support correlated highly with students’ ICT value beliefs. However, students from low-SES families appeared to have fewer opportunities to develop ICT competencies, which may explain why they expressed less positive self-efficacy beliefs. Findings stress the need for school ICT integration efforts to take into account student differences in prior experiences and to be coordinated with students’ home computer use.     

WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project

In this essay, I explore one advancement in particular—the Semantic Web—and discuss ways in which it stands to change students’ interaction with information in digital spaces, and how new forms of interaction could impact the teaching of writing. I go back to the earliest days of the Web in order to remind readers how information retrieval has evolved in the digital age. I also provide a general discussion of the vision, current state, and possible futures of the Semantic Web, and I focus on how the Semantic Web might alter the research process and, more importantly, the research-writing relationship. I also offer suggestions for teaching composition in advance of and for the Semantic Web. Although the Semantic Web is still several years off, I contend that research and writing will merge into a single process, thus presenting new opportunities for the teaching of writing then and, perhaps more importantly, now. These opportunities include helping students to identify the challenges of information retrieval and overload, to see research as more about establishing links and connections between information sources and less about finding the “right” sources, and to write for the Semantic Web—and, in doing so, teach students that researching and writing are inseparable.     

A framework for corroborating answers from multiple web sources

Search engines are increasingly efficient at identifying the best sources for any given keyword query, and are often able to identify the answer within the sources. Unfortunately, many web sources are not trustworthy, because of erroneous, misleading, biased, or outdated information. In many cases, users are not satisfied with the results from any single source. In this paper, we propose a framework to aggregate query results from different sources in order to save users the hassle of individually checking query-related web sites to corroborate answers. To return the best answers to the users, we assign a score to each individual answer by taking into account the number, relevance and originality of the sources reporting the answer, as well as the prominence of the answer within the sources, and aggregate the scores of similar answers. We conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative experiments of our corroboration techniques on queries extracted from the TREC Question Answering track and from a log of real web search engine queries. Our results show that taking into account the quality of web pages and answers extracted from the pages in a corroborative way results in the identification of a correct answer for a majority of queries.