Networked learning a relational approach: weak and strong ties

Abstract   In this paper, we explore the idea of weak ties in networked learning. We go back to the original conception of the strength of weak ties and relate this to Bakhtin and a dialogic understanding of networked learning. These theoretical ideas are applied to the examination of two networked settings in which educational leaders exchange ideas and have the potential to create knowledge. We examine these networks from the point of view of the overall pattern of interaction and from an interest in the kinds of dialogues engaged in by participants in the network. We identify an area for further research in a comparison of the dimensions of links that appear to be weaker in these networks, those concerning affective aspects of the relationship, with those concerned with the sharing of knowledge which appear to be relatively well developed. We suggest that presence and proximity become forms of telepresence and tele-proximity and rely more heavily on interactional means to achieve identity formation. Finally we note that knowledge is negotiated and the marks of its personal and situated origin are essential parts of the exchange through dialogue.     

“项目学习共同体”教学模式的探索与实践

针对高职软件技术专业程序设计类课程存在的学生入门难,实际编程能力无法满足企业需求的问题,提出“项目学习共同体”教学模式改革。以Java程序设计课程为例,进行该教学模式的探索及实践。平行班级的教学证明,“项目学习共同体”教学模式能有效提高学生学习兴趣和编程能力,缩短企业工作适应期,更好的满足企业人才需求。     

Computer supported collaborative learning and vocational training: adapting the technology to the learners’ needs

The aim of the ECODESIGN project was the development of a course in sustainable product design. The target group are employees in the areas of product design, marketing or similar areas. Some learners from this target group have a low computer literacy and are, therefore, reluctant to use advanced forms of electronic communication. Collaborative learning has to be designed according to the learners’ needs, taking into account that many participants of the ECODESIGN course have to get used to electronic communication. Despite this problem, a community of practice seems to result from the ECODESIGN course. Active tutoring was especially important to motivate learners and to constitute the community of practice.     

It's not so easy: researching the complexity of emergent participant roles and awareness in asynchronous networked learning discussions

Abstract In this paper, we explore some of the complexities of emergent role development and group awareness among participants in an asynchronous Networked Learning discussion in a higher education context. We used content analysis to provide participant profiles for learning and tutoring processes within a group of collaborating professionals. Using these we selected three distinct student participants with whom we then conducted critical event recall. Our findings suggest how distinct roles emerge, and how they effect the group dynamics. They show the importance of group process awareness, and how this may be used and developed by participants. Some implications for pedagogical and software design are discussed.     

Constructing a community of practice to improve coursework activity

Students can practice skills and construct knowledge by carrying out coursework. However, every student is assigned the same problem in general hands-on coursework activities, with no consideration for learners’ diversity. Hence, some students do not take the task seriously when producing their coursework. Furthermore, what one has learned – that is, the knowledge constructed by learners – cannot be shared efficiently during traditional coursework activity. This paper proposes the construction of a journal-publishing community, connecting through a publication called Coursework Journal, in a web-based coursework environment designed to improve the efficiency of knowledge sharing for a programming course by endowing learners with roles. This paper extends the organizational development concept of a community of practice to the web-based coursework environment, following the definition of a community of practice for situated learning described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, who suggested sociocultural theories of learning as alternatives for cognitive theories of learning. Results of data analysis and questionnaires indicate that the Coursework Journal can promote knowledge sharing effectively, improve the quality of students’ coursework, and advance learning performance accordingly.     

A community of practice view of intervention programmes: the case of women returning to IT

The study presents an intervention programme for women returning to the information technology (IT) industry following a career break. This is interpreted through the lens of the community of practice perspective. The longitudinal nature of the case study offered opportunities for in‐depth investigation of participants' experience and development during the process. Using this datum, a mid‐level analytical approach is adopted. It is found that learning about the path to return to IT emerged regardless of the degree of participation in the intervention programme, and this was supported by the diversity and integration embedded in this programme. The implications of the findings for our understanding of intervention programmes are discussed.     

Enhancing community of inquiry and reflective thinking skills of undergraduates through using learning analytics-based process feedback

This research aims to investigate into the effect of using learning analytics (LA)-based process feedback on students' perceptions of community of inquiry (teaching, social and cognitive presence) and their reflective thinking skills. By using a mixed-method research approach (QUAN + qual), this study was conducted as an experimental design with the pretest–posttest control group. A total of 104 university students who were randomly assigned to the experiment group (EG) and control group (CG) were recruited in this study. The procedure was conducted within the scope of the computing course based on the flipped classroom (FC) model. While the participants in the EG received LA-based process feedback which shows their LA results in a weekly manner, those in the CG did not get any LA-based process feedback. The data were collected through the Community of Inquiry Scale, the Reflective Thinking Scale and a semi-structured student opinion form. The findings indicated that sending feedback including the students' LA results had a statistically significant effect on the students' perceptions of community of inquiry and reflective thinking skills. Based on the findings of the study, several recommendations for teachers, instructional designers and researchers have been made.     

Participation in virtual academic communities of practice under the influence of technology acceptance and community factors. A learning analytics application

Participation in virtual communities of practice (vCoP) can be influenced at the same time by technology acceptance and by community factors. To overcome methodological issues connected with the analysis of these influences, learning analytics were applied. Based on a recent vCoP model, the collaborative dialogue comprising 4040 interventions in 1981 messages created by a vCoP located at a US American online university was automatically analyzed. The text-based asynchronous online discussions were scored using a cohesion-based participation and collaboration analysis. Additionally, a sample of N = 133 vCoP participants responded a technology acceptance survey. Thus, a combined research model including the vCoP model and an established technology acceptance model was verified. The results confirmed the vCoP model entirely, and the acceptance model only partially. As consequence for educational research, the CoP model was confirmed and extended to vCoP settings, while the acceptance model appears to need reconsideration. For academic practice, the study initiates the development of assessment tools fostering knowledge sharing through dialogue in vCoP. Also, it suggests how virtual classrooms can be extended to open spaces where value creation takes place through social learning. Learning analytics proved thus successful, provides information that impacts both theory and practice of technology-enhanced learning.     

Effects of community of inquiry,learning presence and mentor presence on K-12 online learning outcomes

This study extends the community of inquiry (CoI) framework and self-regulated learning (SRL) theory through an exploration of the structural relationships among existing CoI variables, learning presence (i.e., self-efficacy and online SRL strategy) and learning outcomes in the context of K-12 online learning. To help understand the influence of K-12 mentoring – which is unique to online learning in the U.S. – mentor presence is also included. Structural equation modelling of 696 online 8th through 12th graders' survey responses and final grades showed that adding learning presence to the CoI framework helped to explain how these learners translated their online-learning perceptions into cognitive and affective learning outcomes. We also found that mentor presence significantly and positively predicted online SRL strategy, one of the two components of learning presence. Lastly, we established a connection between the CoI model and various types of learning outcomes that are indicators of K-12 online learning success – though it should be noted that important differences existed between a model based on final grades and two other outcome models. It is hoped that the processes identified in this study will be useful and relevant to K-12 online-learning institutions and educators seeking to improve their offering via a wide range of approaches.     

A model to predict the survivability of cancer comorbidity through ensemble learning approach

Cancer is one of the most common death causes worldwide. Breast and genital cancers in women and prostate cancer in men constitute three of the most common cancers. Detection and prevention of these types of cancers are critical objectives. Recent findings indicate that some patients suffer from cancer comorbidity. The probability of survival among patients with comorbid condition is lower than those with only one type of cancer. The importance of concomitant chronic illnesses during cancer treatment through the SEER data is assessed through many machine‐learning approaches. In order to improve the accuracy of prediction of survival rates in patients with cancer and comorbidity of cancers, the gradient boosting ensemble method is adopted for feature selection and modelling. This proposed method increases the accuracy rate and reduces the error rate, and exhibits a significant predictive improvement of survival rates in comorbid cancer compared with the previous proposed models.     

The expression of social presence through the use of figurative language in a web-based learning environment

The present paper’s aim is to investigate how the participants of an online learning environment employed written language in a creative way through the spontaneous use of figurative language. The content analysis showed that figurative language was a means to express the social dimension either to refer to the self, feelings and emotions, or to conceptualize the components of the virtual learning setting. The research context was a 10-week course, delivered at a distance via a computer conferencing system, addressed to 57 student teachers. The analysis was carried out in the social and meta-cognitive reflection areas, those areas which are mainly related to the expression of the social dimension The study had three different purposes: to investigate the distribution of figurative language during the course length; to explore the relation between the participants’ educational background and their use of figurative language, and to examine the relation between figurative language and the structure of the communication threads. The results indicate that participants tended to use figurative language more when meaningful or critical events happened. The higher the emotional involvement was, the more metaphorical language was adopted. Further results suggest that the adoption of figurative language seems to be related more to individual attitude, than to other factors such as educational background. Finally, figurative language occurrences were not concentrated in specific kinds of postings or threads and did not encourage further use of figurative language.     

The effect of blended learning on the development of clause combining as an aspect of the acquisition of written discourse by Jordanian learners of English as a foreign language

This study investigates the effect of blended learning on the development of clause combining as an aspect of the acquisition of written discourse by Jordanians who are learning English as a foreign language. Sixty participants majoring in English language at the University of Jordan took part in this study. The participants were divided into treatment and control groups, and the experimental design of a pretest and posttest was employed to test the effectiveness of blended learning on the ability of these participants to combine clauses in English using parataxis or subordination through a writing task. The results reveal that the treatment group outperformed their control group counterpart on the posttest in terms of verb morphology, distinguishing between nucleus and subordinate clauses, use of parataxis, use of subordinate clauses for temporal reference and to structure information, among others. The results also show that the use of technological devices improved students' attitudes to learning clause combining and made the learning process easier and more enjoyable. We suggest that blended learning develops the techniques of clause combining by learners of English as a foreign language, which in turn enhances their discourse knowledge in the target language and positively affects their ability to package information.     

结合社会网络分析和多维特征聚类的学习小组划分方法

通过引入社会网络分析方法,建立了综合学习能力、学习状态和协作能力多维指标的学习者特征模型,应用模糊相似和模糊等价演算,以多层次的模糊动态聚类方法识别候选学习领袖,通过融合多类型学习者实现学习小组的迭代划分。实验分析表明,该方法可提高虚拟学习社区中学习小组划分结果的准确度,具有良好的自适应性。     

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.     

A formative assessment-based mobile learning approach to improving the learning attitudes and achievements of students

The advancement of mobile and wireless communication technologies has encouraged an increasing number of studies concerning mobile learning, in which students are able to learn via mobile devices without being limited by space and time; in particular, the students can be situated in a real-world scenario associated with the learning content. Although such an approach seems interesting to the students, researchers have emphasized the need for well-designed learning support in order to improve the students’ learning achievements. Therefore, it has become an important issue to develop methodologies or tools to assist the students to learn in a mobile learning environment. Based on this perspective, this study proposes a formative assessment-based approach for improving the learning achievements of students in a mobile learning environment. A mobile learning environment has been developed based on this approach, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted in southern Taiwan to evaluate its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only promotes the students’ learning interest and attitude, but also improves their learning achievement.     

A learning approach to the bandwidth multicolouring problem

In this article, a generalisation of the vertex colouring problem known as bandwidth multicolouring problem (BMCP), in which a set of colours is assigned to each vertex such that the difference between the colours, assigned to each vertex and its neighbours, is by no means less than a predefined threshold, is considered. It is shown that the proposed method can be applied to solve the bandwidth colouring problem (BCP) as well. BMCP is known to be NP-hard in graph theory, and so a large number of approximation solutions, as well as exact algorithms, have been proposed to solve it. In this article, two learning automata-based approximation algorithms are proposed for estimating a near-optimal solution to the BMCP. We show, for the first proposed algorithm, that by choosing a proper learning rate, the algorithm finds the optimal solution with a probability close enough to unity. Moreover, we compute the worst-case time complexity of the first algorithm for finding a 1/(1–?) optimal solution to the given problem. The main advantage of this method is that a trade-off between the running time of algorithm and the colour set size (colouring optimality) can be made, by a proper choice of the learning rate also. Finally, it is shown that the running time of the proposed algorithm is independent of the graph size, and so it is a scalable algorithm for large graphs. The second proposed algorithm is compared with some well-known colouring algorithms and the results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in terms of the colour set size and running time of algorithm.     

A multi-parametric machine learning approach using authentication trees for the healthcare industry

The Internet of Health Things (IoHT) has grown in importance for developing medical applications with the support of wireless communication systems. IoHT is integrated with many sensors to capture the patients' records and transmits them to hospital centres for analysis and reporting. Controlling and managing health records has been addressed in several ways, however, it is noted that two key research problems for vital communication systems are reliability and reducing data loss. To enhance the sustainability of health applications and effectively use the network infrastructure when transferring sensitive data, this research provides a machine learning approach. Moreover, data collected from the IoHTs are protected and can be securely received for physical process in hospitals using authentication trees. Firstly, the undirected graphs are explored based on the multi-parametric machine learning approach to minimize the computation overheads and traffic congestion. Secondly, it evaluates the nodes' level behaviour over the heterogeneous traffic load with efficient identification of redundant links. Finally, in-depth analysis and simulation results have shown that the proposed protocol is more effective than existing approaches for data accuracy and security analysis.     

Designing learning objects that afford learners the experience of important variations in Chinese characters

Effective teaching should focus the attention of learners to its essential aspects. It follows that instructional software can be designed in such a way that allows learners to experience the important variations in the critical aspects of the content to be learned. This paper reports on the experience of designing such special kinds of instructional learning objects for the learning of Chinese characters. The design of these learning objects takes into consideration not only what Chinese characters are all about but also how learners commonly make errors while they learn to write the characters. Out of the analysis of these learners' errors, variations in the structural features of Chinese characters were pulled out and embodied in the design of the learning objects. Learners tinkering with the learning objects can thus implicitly develop a sense of the structural features or regularity of Chinese characters, which most importantly should prepare the learners to learn more new characters in the future. The main proposal of this paper is the notion of this variation‐affording instructional software that allows learners to attend to the essential aspects of what is to be learned. Furthermore, the idea of the learning object also differs from other instructional software in its small, self‐contained and reusable nature, such that teachers can flexibly embed the learning objects into their own teaching materials.