Rich environments for active learning: a definition

Rich Environments for Active Learning, or REALs, are comprehensive instructional systems that evolve from and are consistent with constructivist philosophies and theories. To embody a constructivist view of learning, REALs: promote study and investigation within authentic contexts; encourage the growth of student responsibility, initiative, decision making, and intentional learning; cultivate collaboration among students and teachers; utilize dynamic, interdisciplinary, generative learning activities that promote higher-order thinking processes to help students develop rich and complex knowledge structures; and assess student progress in content and learning-to-learn within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and performances. REALs provide learning activities that engage students in a continuous collaborative process of building and reshaping understanding as a natural consequence of their experiences and interactions within learning environments that authentically reflect the world around them. In this way, REALs are a response to educational practices that promote the development of inert knowledge, such as conventional teacher-to-student knowledge-transfer activities. In this article, we describe and organize the shared elements of REALs, including the theoretical foundations and instructional strategies to provide a common ground for discussion. We compare existing assumptions underlying education with new assumptions that promote problem-solving and higher-level thinking. Next, we examine the theoretical foundation that supports these new assumptions. Finally, we describe how REALs promote these new assumptions within a constructivist framework, defining each REAL attribute and providing supporting examples of REAL strategies in action

THE "POWER" OF TEXT PRODUCTION ACTIVITY IN COLLABORATIVE MODELING : NINE RECOMMENDATIONS TO MAKE A COMPUTER SUPPORTED SITUATION WORK

Language is not a direct translation of a speaker’s or writer’s knowledge or intentions. Various complex processes and strategies are involved in serving the needs of the audience: planning the message, describing some features of a model and not others, organizing an argument, adapting to the knowledge of the reader, meeting linguistic constraints, etc. As a consequence, when communicating about a model, or about knowledge, there is a complex interaction between knowledge and language. In this contribution, we address the question of the role of language in modeling, in the specific case of collaboration over a distance, via electronic exchange of written textual information. What are the problems/dimensions a language user has to deal with when communicating a (mental) model? What is the relationship between the nature of the knowledge to be communicated and linguistic production? What is the relationship between representations and produced text? In what sense can interactive learning systems serve as mediators or as obstacles to these processes

Using the Internet to improve university education: Problem-oriented web-based learning and the MUNICS environment

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative knowledge construction, making thinking visible with dynamic visualisation, quick access to content resources via Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and flexible support by tele-tutoring. These principles are used in the Munich Net-based Learning In Computer Science (MUNICS) learning environment, which is designed to support students of computer science to apply their factual knowledge from the lectures to complex real-world problems. For example, students can model the knowledge management in an educational organisation with a graphical simulation tool. Some more general findings from a formative evaluation study with the MUNICS prototype are reported and discussed. E.g., the students' ignorance of the additional content resources is discussed in the light of the well-known finding of insufficient use of help systems in software applicationsBislang wurden neuere Ansätze zum web-basierten Lernen in nur geringem Maße zur Verbesserung des Universitätsstudiums genutzt. Es werden theoretisch begründete Prinzipien für die Gestaltung problemorientierter, web-basierter Lernumgebungen an der Universität formuliert. Zu diesen Prinzipien gehören die Nutzung von Multimedia-Technologien für die Realisierung authentischer Problemkontexte, die Unterstützung der gemeinsamen Wissenskonstruktion, die dynamische Visualisierung, der schnelle Zugang zu weiterführenden Wissensressourcen mit Hilfe von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien sowie die flexible Unterstützung durch Teletutoring. Diese Prinzipien wurden bei der Gestaltung der MUNICS Lernumgebung umgesetzt. MUNICS soll Studierende der Informatik bei der Wissensanwendung im Kontext komplexer praktischer Problemstellungen unterstützen. So können die Studierenden u.a. das Wissensmanagement in einer Bildungsorganisation mit Hilfe eines graphischen Simulationswerkzeugs modellieren. Es werden Ergebnisse einer formativen Evaluationsstudie berichtet und diskutiert. Beispielsweise wird die in der Studie festgestellte Ignoranz der Studierenden gegenüber den weiterführenden Wissensressourcen vor dem Hintergrund des häufig berichteten Befunds der unzureichenden Nutzung von Hilfesystemen beleuchte

Using the Internet to improve university education

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative knowledge construction, making thinking visible with dynamic visualisation, quick access to content resources via information and communication technologies, and flexible support by tele-tutoring. These principles are used in the MUNICS learning environment, which is designed to support students of computer science to apply their factual knowledge from the lectures to complex real-world problems. For example, students may model the knowledge management in an educational organisation with a graphical simulation tool. Some more general findings from a formative evaluation study with the MUNICS prototype are reported and discussed. For example, the students' ignorance of the additional content resources is discussed in the light of the well-known finding of insufficient use of help systems in software applications

Support of the collaborative inquiry learning process: influence of support on task and team regulation

Regulation of the learning process is an important condition for efficient and effective learning. In collaborative learning, students have to regulate their collaborative activities (team regulation) next to the regulation of their own learning process focused on the task at hand (task regulation). In this study, we investigate how support of collaborative inquiry learning can influence the use of regulative activities of students. Furthermore, we explore the possible relations between task regulation, team regulation and learning results. This study involves tenth-grade students who worked in pairs in a collaborative inquiry learning environment that was based on a computer simulation, Collisions, developed in the program SimQuest. Students of the same team worked on two different computers and communicated through chat. Chat logs of students from three different conditions are compared. Students in the first condition did not receive any support at all (Control condition). In the second condition, students received an instruction in effective communication, the RIDE rules (RIDE condition). In the third condition, students were, in addition to receiving the RIDE rules instruction, supported by the Collaborative Hypothesis Tool (CHT), which helped the students with formulating hypotheses together (CHT condition). The results show that students overall used more team regulation than task regulation. In the RIDE condition and the CHT condition, students regulated their team activities most often. Moreover, in the CHT condition the regulation of team activities was positively related to the learning results. We can conclude that different measures of support can enhance the use of team regulative activities, which in turn can lead to better learning results

Web Environments for Group-Based Project Work in Higher Education

We discuss problems confronting the use of group-based project work as an instructional strategy in higher education and describe two courses in which course-specific World Wide Web (Web) environments have evolved over a series of course sequences and are used both as tool environments for group-process support and as the product environment of the project work itself. In particular we describe the use of specific Web-embedded shared workspace, communication-management and evaluation tools and their contribution to the management and educational value of group-based project work. The integration of instructional principles and strategies with the Web-based tools is also of particular importance. The 1996-97 versions of the courses analysed in this article can be found at http://www.to.utwente.nl/ism/ism1-96/home.htm for the first-year course in educational media design, and at www.edu.cs.utwente.nl/~aitnlpbg/, for the first-year course in applications of information technology. Both courses, at the University of Twente, use group-based project work as a major organizational form, but integrate all aspects of the courses within cohesive Web environments

Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.Comment: In Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Application of Digital Information & Web Technologies (ICADIWT), India, February 2014 (6 pages, 3 figures

Fostering shared knowledge with active graphical representation in different collaboration scenarios

This study investigated how two types of graphical representation tools influence the way in which learners use shared and unshared knowledge resources in two different collaboration scenarios, and how learners represent and transfer shared knowledge under these different conditions. Moreover, the relation between the use of knowledge resources, representation, and the transfer of shared knowledge was analyzed. The type of graphical representation (content-specific vs. content-unspecific) and the collaboration scenario (video conferencing vs. face-to-face) were varied. 64 university students participated. Results show that the learning partners converged in their profiles of resource use. With the content-specific graphical representation, learners used more appropriate knowledge resources. Learners in the computer-mediated scenarios showed a greater bandwidth in their profiles of resource use. A relation between discourse and outcomes could be shown for the transfer but not for the knowledge representation aspectIn dieser Studie werden die Wirkungen von verschiedenen Arten graphischer Repräsentation auf die Nutzung geteilter und ungeteilter Wissensressourcen in zwei verschiedenen Kooperationsszenarien untersucht. Des Weiteren wird analysiert, wie Lernende geteiltes und ungeteiltes Wissen unter diesen verschiedenen Bedingungen repräsentieren und transferieren. Schließlich wird die Beziehung zwischen der Nutzung von Wissensressourcen auf der einen Seite sowie der Repräsentation und dem Transfer geteilten Wissens auf der anderen Seite geprüft. Mit der Art der graphischen Repräsentation (inhaltsspezifisch vs. inhaltsunspezifisch) und dem Kooperationsszenario (Videokonferenz vs. face-to-face) werden zwei Faktoren experimentell variiert. 64 Studierende nahmen an der Studie teil. Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Lernpartner in ihren Profilen der Ressourcennutzung konvergierten. Lernende, die durch die inhaltsspezifische graphische Repräsentation unterstützt wurden, verwendeten angemessenere Wissensressourcen. Lernende in den computervermittelten Szenarien weisen eine größere Bandbreite in ihren Profilen der Ressourcennutzung auf. Eine direkte Wirkung vom Diskurs der Lernenden auf die Entwicklung geteilten Wissens konnte für den Transfer, aber nicht für die Wissensrepräsentation gezeigt werde