Improving E-Learning by Integrating a Metacognitive Agent

The major disadvantage of the current Learning Management Systems is the lack of learner assistance in their learning processes and, therefore, they can not replace the presence of the teacher who ensures the progress of learning. In fact, we proposed to integrate, for each learner, a metacognitive agent that supported the metacognitive assistance and extracts the defectsin the learning process and strategies. The goal is to invite the learner to correct himself and improve his learning method. Metacognitive questionnaires were distributed to a group of 100 students before, during and after a computer course. The goal is to evaluatethe metacognitive attributes and to determine their influence on the success of learning. Decision trees were used as data analysis tools to extract a set of rules and to discover the influence of these metacognitive attributes on the result obtained by the learners. The results indicate that there are relationships between the different metacognitive attributes and the learners’ success. We note there is the influence of metacognitive incitement on learner outcomes, which reflects the degree of understanding of a learning pedagogical unit by the learner

In-Situ Educational Research from Concept to Classroom Implementation: A Multiple Paper Dissertation

An educational researcher sought to collaborate with a classroom instructor to introduce problem-based learning as a new teaching intervention. First, a classroom instructor was approached to consider how a problem-based learning instructional approach might fit with their existing curriculum plan. The researcher and the classroom teacher used a discussion framework to decide together how to best design a professional learning course meant to prepare the teacher to use the new techniques in their classroom. The teacher took the professional learning course and subsequently designed his own problem-based learning course. That course was then delivered to undergraduate students in a college senior thermo-fluids lab course. Quantitative and qualitative data describe how students recognized the connection between the lab course and their perceptions of a future career as engineers. Preliminary findings suggest the researcher and teacher professional learning codesign process contributed positively to the classroom teachers developing and delivering their own PBL course that was perceived by students to contribute positively to their content knowledge, motivation and perception of their future career as engineers

The Affordances of Social Annotation in the Online Writing Classroom: A Community of Inquiry Analysis

Social annotation (SA) is a genre of web-based applications that allow users to annotate texts and to see and respond to annotations others have written. To explore the potential of SA for teaching writing online, findings from twelve empirical studies of SA in education were analyzed through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Results indicate that SA can contribute to cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence in online writing instruction. SA supports collaborative understanding and unpacking of texts. Students can identify and discuss main ideas, claims, rhetorical moves, evidence, etc. They can ask and answer questions. The demands of articulating their views and comparing them to those of others cause students to become aware of their thought processes, a metacognitive development. Pedagogical strategies such as highlighting important concepts and seeding expert annotations can focus attention and scaffold learning. SA can promote the development of community as students collaborate and encourage one another. Teachers can plan and monitor SA activities aligned with learning outcomes. The findings provide insights to guide incorporation of SA in online writing instruction

The effects of cross-age mentoring in an online collaborative environment

This mixed method research was designed to examine the effects of cross-age mentoring in an inter-institutional online learning community. The research questions focused on the impact of mentoring on high school students’ confidence in their information seeking skills, perceptions of their information seeking standards, and the application of these standards to an information seeking task. Also of interest was the dialogic interaction between the students at the two sites, the impact of the facilitator on the process, and the university students’ perceptions about their experience. The participants included 26 students (mentees) enrolled in an American history class at a rural high school and 18 pre-service teachers (mentors) enrolled in an introductory educational technology course. Mentoring groups comprised of four-five high school students and three-four pre-service teachers interacted via a synchronous online courseware system. Both classes met at the same time of the day, twice weekly, allowing for synchronous interactions. The project was implemented over a five week period during which pre- and post-tests of information seeking confidence and standards were administered and students were engaged in their information seeking tasks. During the course of the project the online interactions were archived and saved for later analysis. Results revealed that there was no change in the high school students’ confidence in their information seeking abilities. The assessment of their evaluative standards revealed that they became more aware of the importance of evaluating the accuracy of information they located. In addition, a positive correlation was found between their understandings of the importance of evaluating information to determine its relevance to the task at hand and the disposition toward a more expert approach to seeking information. Performance on the information seeking task was positively influenced by conceptual scaffolding provided by both the facilitator and the pre-service teachers. Feedback that encouraged the high school students to consider conceptual issues was discovered to be most effective. The findings from this research contribute to the literature on cross-age mentoring between higher education and K-12 students as well as providing insights about strategies that influence students’ abilities to locate, evaluate, and synthesize information

Potentials of Chatbot Technologies for Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Chatbots are used in different areas such as customer service, healthcare and education. The potential for improving outcomes and processes in education is high but differs for different types of chatbots. As universities want to provide excellent teaching, it is important to find the chatbot technologies with the greatest possible benefit. This paper presents a systematic review of chatbot technologies in five application areas. For each application area, the ten most cited publications are analysed and a possible categorisation scheme for chatbot technologies is derived. Furthermore, it is investigated which chatbot technology types are used and their suitability for higher education is analysed. The results show that chatbots can be categorised using five categories derived from the 50 publications. A total of 14 different types of chatbot technologies are found in the five areas. Nine of them are suitable for use in higher education

Instructional scaffolding in online social collaborative learning environment for nurturing engineering students' knowledge construction level

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of Instructional Scaffolding (IS) on an online Social Collaborative Learning (SCL) environment upon engineering students' knowledge construction (KC) level. In addition., this study also investigate on how the IS cognitively steers engineering students towards KC and helps them reach a higher level of KC. This study then proposed a KC model in an online SCL environment integrated with IS that could nurture engineering students' knowledge construction level. A questionnaire, achievement test, posting scripts from Facebook discussions, and structured interviews were used for data collection. The methodology comprised two designs: a quasi-experimental for the quantitative approach, and a case study for the qualitative approach. The quasi-experimental involved the pre and post-test to be taken by 74 participants from one polytechnic in northern Malaysia to identify the improvement in their knowledge construction level. Meantime, the case study involved a process in providing the detail and depth of exploration in a real situation by obtaining the perceptions and perspectives of 10 engineering students. Content analysis and thematic analysis were used to identify the relationships between codes, themes, and between different levels of themes. A t-test indicated a significant increase in the mean score of the post-test in both of the learning environments, that is, the conventional collaborative learning (CCL) and the SCL environment supported by instructional scaffolding. Nevertheless, the engineering students in the SCL environment showed a significantly higher mean score if compared with those in the CCL environment (pre-test score; 3.05 vs post test score; 13.98). Simultaneously, comparing the combination of results in the percentage of knowledge construction level reveals that engineering students in the control group and in the experimental group demonstrated an increase for each level of knowledge construction whether they were in the CCL or in the SCL environment They illustrated different percentages for scores of argumentative knowledge construction (such as CCL=84.21 , SCL=86.11) and metacognitive knowledge construction (CCL=I3.16, SCL=64.00) between control and experimental group. Through content analysis, eight answer themes that affect engineering students' knowledge construction were identified. Nine answer themes also were identified regarding on how SCL characteristics supported by IS enabled engineering students to reach a higher level of knowledge construction. Based on all these findings, the researcher then produced a holistic knowledge construction model. It comprised the 8 essential elements of impact factors, such as students' cognitive pre-engagement, motivation, engagement and enhancement, explanation and guide, encouragement and praise, determination., comfort and engagement, as well as ease ofthe learning process in the instructional scaffolding strategy model. As a result, it is concluded that IS plays a vital role in the knowledge construction processes in order to help engineering students' construct their knowledge and reach a higher level ofthinking

Instructional scaffolding in online social collaborative learning environment for nurturing engineering students' knowledge construction level

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of Instructional Scaffolding (IS) on an online Social Collaborative Learning (SCL) environment upon engineering students' knowledge construction (KC) level. In addition., this study also investigate on how the IS cognitively steers engineering students towards KC and helps them reach a higher level of KC. This study then proposed a KC model in an online SCL environment integrated with IS that could nurture engineering students' knowledge construction level. A questionnaire, achievement test, posting scripts from Facebook discussions, and structured interviews were used for data collection. The methodology comprised two designs: a quasi-experimental for the quantitative approach, and a case study for the qualitative approach. The quasi-experimental involved the pre and post-test to be taken by 74 participants from one polytechnic in northern Malaysia to identify the improvement in their knowledge construction level. Meantime, the case study involved a process in providing the detail and depth of exploration in a real situation by obtaining the perceptions and perspectives of 10 engineering students. Content analysis and thematic analysis were used to identify the relationships between codes, themes, and between different levels of themes. A t-test indicated a significant increase in the mean score of the post-test in both of the learning environments, that is, the conventional collaborative learning (CCL) and the SCL environment supported by instructional scaffolding. Nevertheless, the engineering students in the SCL environment showed a significantly higher mean score if compared with those in the CCL environment (pre-test score; 3.05 vs post test score; 13.98). Simultaneously, comparing the combination of results in the percentage of knowledge construction level reveals that engineering students in the control group and in the experimental group demonstrated an increase for each level of knowledge construction whether they were in the CCL or in the SCL environment They illustrated different percentages for scores of argumentative knowledge construction (such as CCL=84.21 , SCL=86.11) and metacognitive knowledge construction (CCL=I3.16, SCL=64.00) between control and experimental group. Through content analysis, eight answer themes that affect engineering students' knowledge construction were identified. Nine answer themes also were identified regarding on how SCL characteristics supported by IS enabled engineering students to reach a higher level of knowledge construction. Based on all these findings, the researcher then produced a holistic knowledge construction model. It comprised the 8 essential elements of impact factors, such as students' cognitive pre-engagement, motivation, engagement and enhancement, explanation and guide, encouragement and praise, determination., comfort and engagement, as well as ease ofthe learning process in the instructional scaffolding strategy model. As a result, it is concluded that IS plays a vital role in the knowledge construction processes in order to help engineering students' construct their knowledge and reach a higher level ofthinking

Knowledge mentoring as a framework for designing computer-based agents for supporting musical composition learning

An approach to the design of teaching agents in problem-seeking domains - that is based on a systematic relationship between theoretical framework, analysis of empirical data, computational model and computational implementation - has been developed. The theoretical framework, called the Knowledge Mentoring framework (KMf), was developed to investigate how studies of dialogue and interaction can be exploited in a practical way by designers of computer-based teaching agents. A particular focus was the following musical education problem: when interacting with a computer-based music system, many students do not spontaneously reflect on their activity, they often need to be encouraged to do this. The KMf provides a taxonomy and definitions of the pedagogical goals involved in a 'mentoring' style of teaching. Mentoring is an approach to teaching that aims to support learners' creative, metacognitive and critical thinking, these being essential to musical composition and other open-ended, problem-seeking domains. This theoretical framework was used to guide the analysis and modelling of data produced by an empirical study of human teacher-learner interactions. Information on the temporal ordering of teacher-learner interactions was revealed (modelled as. state transition networks and a mentoring script). Findings from the analysis also included a pause taxonomy (that provided evidence of a link between pause length and learner ability) and the occurrence of reciprocal modelling (where participants in learning interactions built up models of the other participants' expectations). The theoretical framework and the analysis findings were then used to develop a computational model for teaching agents in problem-seeking domains. Aspects of our theory, analysis findings and computational model were incorporated into a computational implementation: a pre-prototype teaching agent called MetaMuse. A Cooperative Evaluation of MetaMuse with teacher-composers showed that it had the potential to promote creative reflection in learners