Knowledgezoom for java: A concept-based exam study tool with a zoomable open student model

This paper presents our attempt to develop a personalized exam preparation tool for Java/OOP classes based on a fine-grained concept model of Java knowledge. Our goal was to explore two most popular student model-based approaches: open student modeling and problem sequencing. The result of our work is a Java exam preparation tool, Knowledge Zoom. The tool combines an open concept-level student model component, Knowledge Explorer and a concept-based sequencing component, Knowledge Maximizer into a single interface. This paper presents both components of Knowledge Zoom, reports results of its evaluation, and discusses lessons learned. © 2013 IEEE

Multifaceted open social learner modelling

Open social learner modelling (OSLM) approaches are promoted in order to assist learners in self-directed and self-determined learning in a social context. Still, most approaches only focus on visualising learners’ performance, or providing complex tools for social navigation. Our proposal, additionally, emphasises the importance of visualising both learners’ performance and their contribution to a learning community. We seek also to seamlessly integrate OSLM with learning contents, in order for the multifaceted OSLM’s prospect for ubiquity and context-awareness to enrich the adaptive potential of social e-learning systems. This paper thus presents the design of multifaceted OSLM by introducing novel, personalised social interaction features into Topolor, a social personalised adaptive e-learning environment. The umbrella target is to create and study aspects of open social learner models. An experimental study is conducted to analyse the impact of the newly introduced features. The results are finally concluded to suggest future research and further improvements

Learners Thrive When Using Multifaceted Open Social Learner Models

This article explores open social learner modeling (OSLM)-a social extension of open learner modeling (OLM). A specific implementation of this approach is presented by which learners' self-direction and self-determination in a social e-learning context could be potentially promoted. Unlike previous work, the proposed approach, multifaceted OSLM, lets the system seamlessly and adaptively embed visualization of both a learner's own model and other learning peers' models into different parts of the learning content, for multiple axes of context, at any time during the learning process. It also demonstrates the advantages of visualizing both learners' performance and their contribution to a learning community. An experimental study shows that, contrary to previous research, the richness and complexity of this new approach positively affected the learning experience in terms of perceived effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. This article is part of special issue on social media for learning

Navigating Chaos and Taking Risks: An Art Teacher’s Experience through A/R/Tography… and A Pandemic

Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) (Douglas & Jaquith, 2009; Douglas, Jaquith, & Thompson, 2018) is a fairly new pedagogy in art education that gives students choice and agency in the classroom. In the following dissertation, I position myself as an art teacher who utilized this pedagogy as an a/r/tographer (Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, & Gouzouasis, 2008), navigating the spaces in/between being an artist, a researcher, and a teacher. The research evolved to include my experiences teaching remotely during the global pandemic of 2020. Through this arts-based qualitative research, I used a multimodal method of inquiry that allows for meanings to change (MacDonald, Baguley, & Kerby, 2017) making “the research responsive to practice and to those involved in that practice” (Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2008, p. 77). In framing my methodology within a/r/tography, I looked to the rhizomatic connections/weavings/folds (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) between Bourriaurd’s relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2002; Budge & Clarke, 2012; Choi, 2013) and the Studio Thinking Framework (Hetland, Hogan, Jaquith, & Winner, 2018) to examine my experiences through living inquiry (Irwin, Kind, & Springgay, 2005). The significance of this study is to better understand the inter-connectedness of artmaking and teaching through living inquiry during a pandemic. In this arts-based, action research study, I utilized the creation of artwork and short visual journeys (svj) as a research tool through an auto-a/r/tography. As the navigator of the art room, I created and recreated the space and designed the curriculum based on TAB principles and the Studio Habits of Mind. I was interested in the changing landscape of my classroom studio, in this case the space transformed to a virtual studio, and how that might look if conceptually mapped from my observations and reflections of its use. Also, I wondered what might happen when a TAB teacher practiced what she preached through working as an artist alongside her students, modeling the Studio Habits of Mind through creating original works, not demonstrations

Personalizing Interactions with Information Systems

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles the user’s mental model with the underlying information system’s organization. Three tiers of personalization systems are presented, paying careful attention to interaction considerations. These tiers show how progressive levels of sophistication in interaction can be achieved. The chapter also surveys systems support technologies and niche application domains

Multimodal Literacy: Journey Through the Collaborative Transmediation of Wordless Picturebooks

With a shift towards 21st century literacy practices and a greater variety of literature, the mere definitions of literacy and text are shifting. The focus on traditional text that heavily relies on words and supporting pictures to convey meaning has changed to text of multiple modes. Teachers are now charged with fostering new skills in students in order to help them engage with these texts effectively and to allow them to make meaning of the multimodal texts that surround them (Siegel, 2006). In this qualitative case study, the primary investigator assumed a dual role as the classroom teacher and researcher in order to examine the meaning-making process and find trends in students’ learning, particularly in the context of a social constructivist learning environment. The study examined a group of ten first graders in an independent school setting as they explored and constructed meaning of the wordless picturebook, Trainstop, by Barbara Lehman. This genre offered an opportunity to examine meaning-making without the constraints of decoding and interpreting written text (Serafini, 2014). Students were asked to collaboratively read the book and transmediate their meanings by creating a digital book with the iPad application, Book Creator. This afforded them a means to create collaborative versions of this story on a multimodal platform. Data collection included video recordings of student exchanges through the processes of reading, rereading, and then creating their meaning in the form of their digital book. Video transcriptions, researcher’s notes and reflections, as well as the final digital books were examined for paths of meaning-making and collaborative exchanges. The findings show how each pair approached the text differently, assumed distinctive roles, and used a blend of modes in order to make meaning of the wordless picturebook. Students collaborated to navigate, interpret, interrogate, and design their stories (Serafini, 2012), but this process also highlighted how the collaborative environment provided a means to discover performative meaning in their stories. As they blended their transactions to create a collaborative poem, these modes of reading translated into modes of creating without losing this performative nature

Designing for the Dissonance: Community-engaged Field Experiences for Challenging Curricular Misconceptions of Place toward Localizing and Indigenizing Curricula within Elementary Teacher Education.

Harmful oversights remain in elementary social studies curricula which overlook or misrepresent minoritized communities. This dissertation explores designs for teacher education which address these oversights through community collaborations. This multi-manuscript dissertation is an empirical-conceptual inquiry design (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), as it is not purely empirical or conceptual research. This design allows for an independent discussion of each study, while interpreting phenomena across the three chapters. Acknowledging my positionality as a white female, in a predominantly white, female profession, I look to Indigenous and Black scholars, both locally and broadly, to inform my perspective and project design. Using a phenomenological lens and ethnographic approaches, I conducted two empirical studies within two different community-based field experiences through an elementary social studies methods course. Sociocultural considerations of space, socioecological considerations of place, and critical culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy (McCarty & Lee, 2014) provide the theoretical frame for this series of investigations. Guidance from Decolonizing Methodologies (Tuhiwai-Smith, 2021), methods from the fields of S-STEP, Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, and reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021), necessitated attention to self-reflexivity, improvement, and relationships. Researching from the positionality of a traditionally defined teacher educator, I hope to build upon collaborative research scholarship which expands who is considered a teacher educator. These studies investigate teaching practices through community and preservice teacher narratives, which critically explore places as a means of overcoming curricular misconceptions. Findings describe curricular possibilities and limitations, and the implications when these two phenomena clash, what I am conceptualizing as curricular dissonance. I provide evidence of this phenomena in the first two empirical chapters. In my third chapter, I conceptualize this phenomenon as a site for learning through field experiences which confront the tensions inherent in teacher education and curriculum studies, to engage scholars across both fields of research