Self-Regulated Learning for Chinese, Adult Language Learners: An Intervention Study in a Blended Learning Environment

Blended learning is a well-established learning design providing much needed accessibility to learning resources and improved pedagogy through technological means. The flipped classroom model is one approach that can help promote engagement through the prioritization of learner-led discussions and collaborative work in the classroom while extending access to language learning practice outside of class time (Bergman & Sams, 2012; Forsey et al., 2013; Johnson & Marsh, 2016). Implicit within the design, however, is the introduction of non-linear access to information which often requires learners to assume more responsibility for their learning process, deploying self-regulated learning strategies to achieve their objectives (Perez-Alvarez et al., 2018). My dissertation explores the increased need for self-regulated learning experienced by Chinese, adult English language learners for achieving success in a blended, flipped learning environment. As a design-based research study, my focus was on the overarching objective of the development of an intervention. This objective was addressed in three, iterative stages of research involving the analysis of the context, and the design, development, and subsequent evaluation of prototypes. This process led to the creation of some initial design principles that were used to guide the development of a digital app that was deployed to a small group of participants. During the implementation and evaluation of the app-based intervention, an additional research objective relating to achievement goal orientation was adopted to explore the types of goals that language learners with high persistence were likely to pursue. Multiple, qualitative data sources were used to address the research questions including document analysis, focus groups, interviews, and field observations. Findings that emerged from the study contributed to the refinement of design principles and provided insight for subsequent development of the intervention. Findings suggested that personalized instructor feedback fulfilled an important emotional function for learners in this context. Enabling a dialogical feedback process between participants and the instructor helped engage learners in more thoughtful self-assessment using external feedback including data visualizations. This process contributed to the development of trust in the source of the feedback, which was more likely to lead to a change in behaviour. Additional insights concerning achievement goals were derived from the interviews, suggesting benefits of multiple different achievement goal profiles could be found. These findings lend further support to the value of using qualitative methods for investigating learner goal-orientations. This study included a small group of learners who demonstrated high persistence. It was recommended that future research involve a larger sample of learners to explore variations in response to the intervention to improve the effectiveness of the design and implementation

Modes and Mechanisms of Game-like Interventions in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

While games can be an innovative and a highly promising approach to education, creating effective educational games is a challenge. It requires effectively integrating educational content with game attributes and aligning cognitive and affective outcomes, which can be in conflict with each other. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), on the other hand, have proven to be effective learning environments that are conducive to strong learning outcomes. Direct comparisons between tutoring systems and educational games have found digital tutors to be more effective at producing learning gains. However, tutoring systems have had difficulties in maintaining students€™ interest and engagement for long periods of time, which limits their ability to generate learning in the long-term. Given the complementary benefits of games and digital tutors, there has been considerable effort to combine these two fields. This dissertation undertakes and analyzes three different ways of integrating Intelligent Tutoring Systems and digital games. We created three game-like systems with cognition, metacognition and affect as their primary target and mode of intervention. Monkey\u27s Revenge is a game-like math tutor that offers cognitive tutoring in a game-like environment. The Learning Dashboard is a game-like metacognitive support tool for students using Mathspring, an ITS. Mosaic comprises a series of mini-math games that pop-up within Mathspring to enhance students\u27 affect. The methodology consisted of multiple randomized controlled studies ran to evaluate each of these three interventions, attempting to understand their effect on students€™ performance, affect and perception of the intervention and the system that embeds it. Further, we used causal modeling to further explore mechanisms of action, the inter-relationships between student€™s incoming characteristics and predispositions, their mechanisms of interaction with the tutor, and the ultimate learning outcomes and perceptions of the learning experience

Counter-narratives and Revisionism: A Transformative Journey to Closing the Achievement Gap for Indigenous Learners through Culturally Responsive School Leadership, Equity Transformation, and Nurturing Collective Teacher Efficacy

Professional learning in the areas of Indigenous education, reconciliation, and antiracism is as much a personal journey as a professional one for educators today. At New Beginnings Middle School (NBMS, a pseudonym), Indigenous learners experience a significant academic achievement gap. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores how to cultivate teaching practices that create a more inclusive school environment and improve academic achievement for all Indigenous students. It proposes to guide educators through bias mitigation with integrated professional learning to develop culturally responsive pedagogy. Given the compelling correlation between inclusiveness and academic success, NBMS educators must work collectively to build confidence in Indigenous learners, reduce racial barriers, mitigate ignorance, and develop programming that reflects student culture. Implementation of the proposed solution is interpreted through a critical social justice lens, and it relies on transformative leadership and culturally responsive and adaptive practices. A proposed blended change implementation plan encourages teachers to listen and awaken, uncover and mobilize, reimagine and accelerate, and move and institutionalize. Measuring and monitoring the plan includes a 10-month timeline, a teacher’s cultural proficiency receptivity scale, various student agency measurement surveys, and a classroom data dashboard tool. The NBMS administration will set conditions for educators to centre Indigenous students by implementing processes to build student voice and agency as cocreators of their learning. This OIP builds collective teacher efficacy for an envisioned state of continual reflexive pedagogy in teachers specific to Indigenous students, with an end goal to close the achievement gap for these learners at NBMS

Video-based collaborative learning:evidence for a pedagogical model

The educational potential of video is a long-lasting, multi-faceted topic, and the affordances of technological advancement have recently revitalized this discussion. However, teachers are still far from competently integrating or becoming accustomed to video-based pedagogy, especially in combination with collaborative pedagogy. To provide teachers and teacher educators with sound principles for implementing video-supported collaborative learning (VSCL), this symposium fosters a teacher experiment, a cross-over analysis on a pedagogical model for effective VSCL, and student feedback in relation with VSCL. The experiment shows students’ growing lexical richness and cohesion by working peer feedback on student’s video recorded teaching practice. The cross-over analysis shows the evidence for the VSCL-pedagogical model based on data from many other experiments in the European ViSuAL-project. The same holds for the student-feedback analysis. In this symposium we interact about practical experiences in relation with the effective principles of the developed pedagogical model and the experiences of the students

SPEC Kit 356 Diversity and Inclusion

Today, diversity is defined beyond racial and ethnic groups and includes gender, sexual orientation, ability, language, religious belief, national origin, age, and ideas. The increase of published literature about cultural competencies, microaggressions, and assessment of diversity issues, as well as the inclusion of social justice movements in libraries, suggests diversity-related activities have increased and evolved over the last seven years. Over this time span, several libraries have obtained funding to support strategies to increase the number of minority librarians on their staff and support their advancement within the organization. There also appears to be an increase in the number of diversity or multicultural groups at the local, state, and national levels. However, these changes have not been consistently documented. Therefore, it is important to re-examine this topic to evaluate the impact of evolving endeavors, to see if more ARL libraries are involved, to see how diversity plans have changed over the years, and to document the current practices of research libraries. The main purpose of this survey was to identify diversity trends and changes in managing diversity issues in ARL libraries through exploring the components of diversity plans and initiatives since 2010, acknowledge library efforts since the 1990s, provide evidence of best practices and future trends, and identify current strategies that increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries and the types of programs that foster a diverse workplace and climate. The survey was conducted between May 1 and June 5, 2017. Sixty-eight of the 124 ARL member institutions responded to the survey for a 55% response rate. Interestingly, only 22 of the respondents to the 2010 SPEC survey participated in this survey, but this provides an opportunity to explore the diversity and inclusion efforts of a new set of institutions in addition to seeing what changes those 22 institutions have made since 2010. The SPEC Survey on Diversity and Inclusion was designed by Toni Anaya, Instruction Coordinator, and Charlene Maxey-Harris, Research and Instructional Services Chair, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These results are based on responses from 68 of the 124 ARL member libraries (55%) by the deadline of June 12, 2017. The survey’s introductory text and questions are reproduced below, followed by the response data and selected comments from the respondents. The purpose of this survey is to explore the components of diversity plans created since 2010, identify current recruitment and retention strategies that aim to increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries, identify staff development programs that foster an inclusive workplace and climate, identify how diversity programs have changed, and gather information on how libraries assess these efforts

Evaluation of student engagement assessment in Colorado State University's Warner College of Natural Resources

2013 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The purpose of this mixed methods study was to conduct a participatory program evaluation of student engagement assessment in Colorado State University's (CSU) Warner College of Natural Resources (WCNR). The college requested the evaluation after completing two pilot studies of undergraduate engagement which led them to consider establishing the Milestones Assessment Program of Student Engagement (MAPSE). WCNR leadership sought to determine (a) the mission, goals, and objectives of assessing WCNR student engagement; (b) how the goals and objectives aligned with CSU's and WCNR's strategic plans; (c) the variables, measures, and outcomes of student engagement assessment in natural resources at CSU; (d) how electronic and classroom survey administrations of WCNR undergraduate student engagement compared; and (e) the operational elements required to support MAPSE. The evaluation was to address these five areas, determine whether an electronic or classroom survey format was best suited for administration in the college, and recommend what survey interval ought to be observed. In conducting the evaluation, administrations of electronic and classroom surveys generated assessment data that were analyzed as an extension of the study. It was found that WCNR was well-positioned to go forward with establishing MAPSE. The college had mission, goals, and objectives for assessment of student engagement which aligned with CSU and WCNR strategic plans. The evaluation identified practices, indices, and themes of WCNR student engagement for use in MAPSE surveys, and survey findings provided college leadership baseline data to develop outcomes for undergraduate engagement. Both electronic and classroom survey administrations produced acceptable samples for assessment of WCNR student engagement, with the electronic survey having a more representative sample of students by department and the classroom survey having a more representative sample of students by sex. The electronic survey incurred fewer direct costs of time and human resources. It was recommended that either survey be administered under MAPSE and survey intervals not interfere with other campus-wide survey administrations at CSU. Analyses of the survey data revealed that WCNR students found the college's practices of engagement important and satisfying. As student satisfaction with course opportunities, faculty advising, and development as natural resource professionals increased, their intent to persist and sense of success in the college and their majors increased. Student satisfaction on development as natural resource professionals was the only variable to consistently influence student persistence and sense of success in the college and their majors. Study findings indicated that besides educationally purposeful activities associated with student engagement, professionally purposeful activities influence natural resource student persistence and success

The Data Shake

This open access book represents one of the key milestones of PoliVisu, an H2020 research and innovation project funded by the European Commission under the call “Policy-development in the age of big data: data-driven policy-making, policy-modelling and policy-implementation”. It investigates the operative and organizational implications related to the use of the growing amount of available data on policy making processes, highlighting the experimental dimension of policy making that, thanks to data, proves to be more and more exploitable towards more effective and sustainable decisions. The first section of the book introduces the key questions highlighted by the PoliVisu project, which still represent operational and strategic challenges in the exploitation of data potentials in urban policy making. The second section explores how data and data visualisations can assume different roles in the different stages of a policy cycle and profoundly transform policy making

Values and value in design

Relatively little is known about how concepts of human values and value interact during the construction design process. Whilst researchers of value management have expounded in this context upon the complexity of the design process, problem-solving and sense-making, little is said about the alignment and reconciliation of multiple-stakeholder values and value judgements. An abductive reasoning and a grounded theory approach was adopted that iterated between literature and empirical observation to obtain new insights. The initial phase created a values and value framework and Value in Design (VALiD) approach through seven unstructured interviews, a design workshop, four Schwartz Values Surveys (with 545 participants) and 55 semi-structured interviews. The values and value parts were then separately implemented, developed and validated through action research on five live education capital projects, involving over 250 participants. Subsequently, a middle-range theory of values and value is proposed through theoretical triangulation. This draws on seven related theories to provide greater explanatory pluralism, uncover hidden phenomena and enable convergence. The research findings are significant in focusing soft value management on underlying stakeholder values and subjective value judgements. A more nuanced and intertwined relationship between stakeholder values, attitudes, behaviours and qualities during the design process is offered that promotes compromise and sense-making