Learning Dialogues orchestrated with BookRoll: Effects on Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Physics course

With COVID-19 pandemic forcing academic institutions to shift to emergency remote teaching (ERT), teachers worldwide are attempting several strategies to engage their learners. Even though existing research in online learning suggests that effectiveness of the online session is more dependent on pedagogical design rather than technology feature, teachers may still focus on the intricacies of the technology. In this paper, we present the evolution of an active learning pedagogy, supported by technology (eBook reader—BookRoll, Analytics Dashboard—LAViEW), for an undergraduate physics classroom across a semester that was affected by the lockdown due to pandemic. The technology-enhanced pedagogy evolved in three phases—technology used in “Content Focus” mode, technology used in “Problem Focus” mode and technology used in “Learning Dialogue Focus” mode. The entire activities were designed and implemented within the technology-enhanced and evidence-based education and learning (TEEL) ecosystem, which supported integration of learning technologies with analytics system. Comparison of the student’s learning logs indicated that there was a sustained engagement in the learning activities conducted during the blended (before lockdown) and online mode (during lockdown). We had conducted one-way ANOVA to compare the post-test scores for each teaching phase and found statistically significant differences in the latter phases. A preliminary qualitative analysis of the learner artifacts generated as memos in BookRoll during each phase revealed that students were posing conceptual clarifications during the latter phases. These were also having greater alignment with the session agenda and showed construction of new knowledge based on the seed knowledge provided during the instructor–learner interaction sessions. The study provides key insights into how reflection and practice by both learner and teacher improves the acceptance of technology-enabled pedagogy

Improving User Involvement Through Live Collaborative Creation

Creating an artifact - such as writing a book, developing software, or performing a piece of music - is often limited to those with domain-specific experience or training. As a consequence, effectively involving non-expert end users in such creative processes is challenging. This work explores how computational systems can facilitate collaboration, communication, and participation in the context of involving users in the process of creating artifacts while mitigating the challenges inherent to such processes. In particular, the interactive systems presented in this work support live collaborative creation, in which artifact users collaboratively participate in the artifact creation process with creators in real time. In the systems that I have created, I explored liveness, the extent to which the process of creating artifacts and the state of the artifacts are immediately and continuously perceptible, for applications such as programming, writing, music performance, and UI design. Liveness helps preserve natural expressivity, supports real-time communication, and facilitates participation in the creative process. Live collaboration is beneficial for users and creators alike: making the process of creation visible encourages users to engage in the process and better understand the final artifact. Additionally, creators can receive immediate feedback in a continuous, closed loop with users. Through these interactive systems, non-expert participants help create such artifacts as GUI prototypes, software, and musical performances. This dissertation explores three topics: (1) the challenges inherent to collaborative creation in live settings, and computational tools that address them; (2) methods for reducing the barriers of entry to live collaboration; and (3) approaches to preserving liveness in the creative process, affording creators more expressivity in making artifacts and affording users access to information traditionally only available in real-time processes. In this work, I showed that enabling collaborative, expressive, and live interactions in computational systems allow the broader population to take part in various creative practices.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145810/1/snaglee_1.pd

Effectiveness of Elicitation Techniques in Distributed Requirements Engineering

Software development teams are often geographically distributed from their customers and end users. This creates significant communication and coordination challenges that impact the effectiveness of requirements engineering. Travel costs, and the local availability of quality technical staff increase the demand for effective distributed software development teams. This research reports an empirical study of how groupware can be used to aid distributed requirements engineering for a software development project. Six groups of seven to nine members were formed and divided into separate remote groups of customers and engineers. The engineers conducted a requirements analysis and produced a software requirements specification (SRS) document through distributed interaction with the remote customers. We present results and conclusions from the research including: an analysis of factors that effected the quality of the Software Requirements Specification document written at the conclusion of the requirements process and the effectiveness of requirements elicitation techniques which were used in a distributed setting for requirements gathering

Supervision of cyber teachers: Examining U.S. based cyber school policy and practice

This study extends the body of knowledge in the field of K-12 teacher supervision through an investigation of contemporary literature on supervision in traditional and cyber schools; an inventory of current cyber school supervisory practices, procedures, policies, needs, and issues; and a review of related supervisory documents. The results of the outreach effort yielded an effective response rate of 9% resulting in an unintended, but important finding, in that a better mechanism is needed for identifying, categorizing and reaching cyber schools. The study supports contemporary beliefs related to the necessity and importance of a quality supervisory program and that multiple considerations and approaches are available. Participating schools report substantially lower teacher to supervisor ratios than the national average and that supervision practices have a positive impact on quality of instruction. Respondents indicate that the principal is primarily responsible for supervision however; many call upon other individuals such as peer mentors, instructional supervisors, and team leaders to assess and support the teacher. Most participating schools incorporate the use of classroom observations using archived data and report that email is most widely used and most useful supervisory tool. Student work/test scores, input from students, teacher self-reflection, and input from parents are reported to be the most widely used sources of data. Professional development needs and a lack of time for supervision are reported to be the biggest supervisory challenges facing cyber school administrators

Re-imagining Professional Development: A Study of Teacher Educators’ Integration of a Web Seminar Series as a Component of University-based Teacher Education

Internet platforms such as Blackboard Collaborate, Desire2Learn, and Moodle have revolutionized how educators communicate by creating collaborative opportunities once limited only to the face-to-face settings (King, 2001; LaJoie, Garcia, Berdugo, Márquex, Espíndola, & Nakamura, 2006). Using computer-mediated communication tools, teachers can now participate in quality, ongoing, collaborative, and situated learning. While an abundance of research exists pertaining to teacher professional development, little is known about the use of a web seminar as a venue for online professional development. Even less is known about teacher educators’ integration of a professional development web seminar as a component of the courses they teach. The purpose of this qualitative study, then, was to understand teacher educators’ use of an open access web seminar, Global Conversatiions in Literacy Research (GCLR), whose goal is to disseminate cutting-edge literacy research and improve literacy practices within their language and literacy teacher education courses. This qualitative study sought to answer the following: (a) Why do literacy teacher educators use online professional development web seminars within their courses? (b) How do literacy teacher educators use online professional development web seminars within their courses, especially those presented by Global Conversations in Literacy Research? and (c)What value do literacy teacher educators see in working with the web seminars in their classes, especially those presented by GCLR? This study was grounded in critical situated learning, which includes theories of critical literacy (Janks, 2000), situated learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), collaborative learning (Borko, 2004; Brown et al., 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991), and legitimate peripheral participation (Brown et al., 1989). Within an interview study design, the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Merriam, 2009) was used to analyze data collected from semi-structured interviews and documents, namely teacher educators’ course syllabi. INDEX WORDS: Online teacher professional development, web seminars, teacher collaboration, online learning communitie

The use of formative evaluation with online courses by teachers at the secondary level

This case study investigated the use of formative evaluation by three teachers who designed and delivered online courses at the secondary level. Formative evaluation involves collecting data that could be used to improve the effectiveness of the design and delivery of a course. Teachers were observed teaching the courses they designed for one quarter and then were given a workshop introducing them to formative evaluation techniques. They were observed for another quarter to determine if their delivery or design practices changed. Additional data were collected through interviews and through the analysis of course-related artifacts that included emails, journal entries by the teachers, and threaded web discussions. Data were entered into the ATLAS.ti qualitative analysis software to aid in the linking and reporting of the open and axial coding of the data. The following questions framed the study: (1) To what extent was the process of formative evaluation used by teachers who designed and delivered online courses at the secondary level in an online high school? (2) What changes in online teaching practice or course design resulted following the instruction and application of formative evaluation procedures by teachers who designed and delivered online courses at the secondary level in an online high school? (3) What standards, checklists, or other instructional design framework existed that influenced the use of formative evaluation by the participating teachers?;The results indicated that formative evaluation was used by all three teachers in varying degRees Only a few minor changes were evident in the design or delivery following the workshop. No framework at the school addressed the need for or value of formative evaluation. Due to curricular demands on the teachers, a lack of student compliance, and a lack of a formal or accountable framework, the feedback to improve the courses proved difficult for teachers to obtain. A framework, in the form of a checklist for conducting formative evaluation, was a product of this research

Wikis as Communities of Practice: A Case Study in Higher Education

This dissertation was an instrumental case study that explored the experiences of graduate students when using online software, more specifically, a wiki, in a graduate course. This study also concentrated on the formation of a community of practice within a course wiki. Symbolic interactionism, situated learning, and communities of practice theories guided this inquiry. Field notes, e-observations, students-created documents, a focus group interview and six individual interviews were coded, which led to categories and themes. Findings from the analysis of the data sources exposed the following five themes when exploring the experiences of graduate students with online learning: (1) wiki experiences, (2) meaningful discourse, (3) egalitarian, (4) community enagement, and (5) collaborative learning processes

Toward an Enhanced Mutual Awareness in Asymmetric CVE

International audience—Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) aim at providing several users with a consistent shared virtual world. In this work, we focus on the lack of mutual awareness that may appear in many situations and we evaluate different ways to present the distant user and his actions in the Virtual Environment (VE) in order to understand his perception and cognitive process. Indeed, an efficient collaboration involves not only the good perception of some objects but their meaning too. This second criterion introduces the concept of distant analysis that could be a great help in improving the understanding of distant activities. For this work, we focus on a common case consisting in estimating accurately the time at which a distant user analyzed the meaning of a remotely pointed object. Thus, we conduct some experiments to evaluate the concept and compare different techniques for implementing this new awareness feature in a CVE. Amongst others, results show that expertise of the users influences on how they estimate the distant activity and the type of applied strategies

The Presence of Groove in Online Songwriting Projects

Collaboration for groups with members who are disconnected by geography or time is convenient for many reasons, but remains a challenge due to time zone differences, network congestion, and the attenuation of nonverbal communication cues. Virtual collaborators engaging in creative work often deal with these challenges, even more so when tasked with expressing their emotions to distant partners. This study seeks to determine the social factors and tools that impact the quality of an online creative collaboration. Members of the Kompoz.com music composition community were surveyed to solicit projects that had the potential to be optimal collaborations. Judges listened to these songs and measured how much each song prompted them to move. This measure, called groove, was used as an indication of a successful collaboration. Judges assisted in selecting one case that was an exemplar of groove, and another that urged them to move much less, to stand as an exemplar of diminished groove. The comparative case method was used to compare and contrast the tools, social practices, and skills employed in each project, and offers guidelines for the design of and participation in online creative communities