Instructor formative assessment practices in virtual learning environments : a posthumanist sociomaterial perspective

The importance of undergraduate science learning for the workforce and scientific literacy is consistently emphasized by prominent organizations and influential publications such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1993, 2013), the National Research Council (NRC) (2010, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2013) and the Coalition for Reform of Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education (CRUSE) (2014). Moreover, important undergraduate and K-12 reform policy documents including the National Research Council (NRC) (2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (Achieve Inc., 2013) set lofty goals aimed at improving science education. At the same time, science curricula content and assessment are shifting to virtual formats (Smetana & Bell, 2012), and enabling learning and assessment to be depicted in more dynamic and interactive ways. Furthermore, assessment scholarship offers opportunities to make instructional decisions with the aim to aid student learning (e.g. Bell, 2007; Black & Wiliam, 1998, NRC, 2012; Shepard, 2000). Nonetheless, harnessing the full potential of virtual formats to reach these goals for science learning and assessment has proven challenging. Therefore, in this research study, I explored how the technology in one online undergraduate biological science course can impact how an instructor can aid student learning. ... The findings have implications for instruction and research and suggest that learning communities may want to consider that student centered learning theories and student-centered course design for online education could be incomplete. The primary implication includes ways to support formative assessment practices for science instructors in virtual environments by looping instructor formative assessment opportunities throughout a course. Finally, these findings can help others develop assessments that fully support student learning by including the instructor's assessment needs and abilities. The conclusions I present cannot be considered a solution to all courses. However, I encourage other researchers to consider alternative explanation(s) by thinking with theory.Includes bibliographical reference

CULTURAL HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY: A FRAMEWORK FOR WRITING CENTER ANALYSES

From the recognized beginning of the laboratory movement in composition instruction, teachers have sought to employ new and more practical methods useful in developing student writing. Such trends continue today as new generations of students enter the academy and new challenges emerge. From such conditions, we might see how components within a system of activity work together to meet objectives and develop outcomes within the shared dialectic of an activity system. Individuals and groups increase the potential for contradiction identification, thus, opportunities for solutions increase through mediational activities. With this idea in mind, this dissertation reviews writing center-related scholarship from 1887 through today to trace emerging contradictions in laboratory teachings epochal movements. The end goal, then, is to define how resolutions to those contradictions have given rise to our modern conceptualization of the writing center. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this dissertation interprets the development of writing centers from their earliest beginnings. Through the evaluation of textual artifacts, I present the development of current writing center praxes in stages: a Formative Period; an Interim or Clinical Period; a Modern period; a Theoretical Period, and an emerging Activist Period. As a result, I look to provide modern writing center practitioners with a thorough history of writing center practices: what shaped them, through what contradictions they arose, what precipitated those contradictions, what resolved them, and what lies ahead. As communities like writing centers re-create themselvesthrough pushing and pulling, conflict and resolution, tension and releasethey birth new conceptualizations of realities. In the end, this dissertation uses CHAT to present a narrative about the development of writing center work that continues to unfold in new and dynamic ways. As a result, what may be most useful through this historical analysis is the way in which writing center practitioners may use CHAT to chart a way forward using the very framework used as the basis of this projects analysis. Today, writing centers may offer new ways to address a pedagogical order designed to challenge racism, homophobia, and other injustices through ongoing reading groups, curricular revision, and other faculty development efforts. Through learning our history, I believe we may more adequately position ourselves to shape our futures

Extending Writing in the Disciplines (WID) to Train Mechanical Engineering GTAs to Evaluate Student Writing

Beyond first-year composition, the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities for students to develop technical writing skills. One underutilized path for students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write reports that are evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in formative assessment techniques to help students improve their technical writing skills. This dissertation details a comprehensive study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department. Situated within the field of Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines, the program was developed to meet the unique needs of the department’s GTAs and address perceived deficiencies in undergraduate student writing by teaching best practices in writing evaluation. Two methods were used to assess the efficacy of this program: 1) Qualitative methods such as interviews and an open-ended survey were used to gain the perspective of the GTAs and their students on a variety of issues; and 2) A summative assessment compared Senior Capstone Design final reports completed prior to the program’s implementation to reports completed three years later to gauge improvement in clarity and concision. This research is relevant to engineering programs seeking to improve the communication skills of their undergraduate students. The program used limited staff/faculty resources to extend the knowledge and skills of its GTAs and reach all its undergraduate students through existing required courses

Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’ presents a range of research projects which aim to explore how to make engagement in learning (and teaching) more passionate. This interactive and experimental resource discusses innovations which pave the way to open collaboration at scale. The book introduces methodological and technological breakthroughs via twelve chapters to learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces. The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and the EU TELMap project have brought together the luminaries from the European research area to showcase their vision of the future of learning with technology via their recent research project work. The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more

Experts on e-learning: insights gained from listening to the student voice!

The Student Experience of e-Learning Laboratory (SEEL) project at the University of Greenwich was designed to explore and then implement a number of approaches to investigate learners’ experiences of using technology to support their learning. In this paper members of the SEEL team present initial findings from a University-wide survey of nearly a 1000 students. A selection of 90 ‘cameos’, drawn from the survey data, offer further insights into personal perceptions of e-learning and illustrate the diversity of students experiences. The cameos provide a more coherent picture of individual student experience based on the totality of each person’s responses to the questionnaire. Finally, extracts from follow-up case studies, based on interviews with a small number of students, allow us to ‘hear’ the student voice more clearly. Issues arising from an analysis of the data include student preferences for communication and social networking tools, views on the ‘smartness’ of their tutors’ uses of technology and perceptions of the value of e-learning. A primary finding and the focus of this paper, is that students effectively arrive at their own individualised selection, configuration and use of technologies and software that meets their perceived needs. This ‘personalisation’ does not imply that such configurations are the most efficient, nor does it automatically suggest that effective learning is occurring. SEEL reminds us that learners are individuals, who approach learning both with and without technology in their own distinctive ways. Hearing, understanding and responding to the student voice is fundamental in maximising learning effectiveness. Institutions should consider actively developing the capacity of academic staff to advise students on the usefulness of particular online tools and resources in support of learning and consider the potential benefits of building on what students already use in their everyday lives. Given the widespread perception that students tend to be ‘digital natives’ and academic staff ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky, 2001), this could represent a considerable cultural challenge

e-Learning, e-Practising and e-Tutoring: an Integrated Approach

In this paper is described a didactic methodology combining current e-learning methods and the support of Intelligent Agents technologies. The aim is to favor the synthesis among theoretical approach and based practical approach using the so-called Intelligent Agent, software that exploits the Artificial Intelligence and that operates as tutor, facilitating the consumers in the training operations. The paper illustrates how such new Intelligent Agent algorithm (IA) is used in the training of employees working in the transportation sector, thanks to the experience gained with the PARMENIDE project - Promoting Advanced Resources and Methodologies for New Teaching and Learning Solutions in Digital Education

Physics Experiments Planned by The Students Themselves - Higher Secondary Education

[EN] More than 15 years ago we started to implement in our physics curriculum for 17 years old pupils physics experiments planned by students themselves. Each student must learn, how to prepare and perform physics experiment. The leading idea of this endeavor is “student must do, what she/he wants, at least sometimes”. As a most problematic part of this task is, as has been proved, to teach students to formulate a problem - a question, which can be answered by an experiment and also to formulate a hypothesis, a prediction based on the previous knowledge or based on the information gathered from secondary sources. As important we also see the connection of planning experiments to the goals and aims of science education and sensibility of it from the view of pupils and their parents. Planning experiments by students themselves is a task involving a manifold cluster of means of knowledge gathering and utilization. As generally in creativity, the crucial role has memory. The student applies his/her knowledge. But, at the same time, he/she learns, what is the optimal, useful strategy and structure of working, optimal management for a teamwork. Within planning, a student flips through external sources of information, usually, electronic sources or textbooks, focus his/her attention to information interesting or potentially useful for the phenomenon examined by the experiment just planned. Student remembers, what equipment is available, looks for other equipment and material. Of course, the student also learns to write scientifically, to write in a manner, that nothing hampers understanding of the focus, process, and outcomes. Part of the article is devoted to the topic of development abilities of pre-service physics teacher‘s to scaffold the process of planning experiments of their future students.Authors are gratteful to the support from the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract APVV-14-0070.Demkanin, P.; Kováč, M. (2019). Physics Experiments Planned by The Students Themselves - Higher Secondary Education. En INNODOCT/18. International Conference on Innovation, Documentation and Education. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 23-33. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2018.2018.8767OCS233