THE IMPLICATION ON TEACHING EFL (ENGLISH FOREIGN LANGUAGE) READING FUN TO VARIOUS LEVELS OF INDONESIAN STUDENTS

For some students, EFL (English Foreign Language) reading is one of the most uninteresting subjects because it can make them bored easily. Kweldju (1996) found that students were not interested in reading although they thought some texts books were useful for their study. Meanwhile, English is a compulsory subject that must be studied by Indonesian students. If they get bad to comprehend EFL reading, it means that their English is still bad so that they cannot get the information from the reading text. The goal of the teaching EFL reading in Indonesia is to comprehend the reading texts on which Indonesian students must be able to read science-related texts written in English. This paper analyzes some strategies such as metacognitive and extensive reading to make students enjoyable when learning English reading

Distributed Learning System Design: A New Approach and an Agenda for Future Research

This article presents a theoretical framework designed to guide distributed learning design, with the goal of enhancing the effectiveness of distributed learning systems. The authors begin with a review of the extant research on distributed learning design, and themes embedded in this literature are extracted and discussed to identify critical gaps that should be addressed by future work in this area. A conceptual framework that integrates instructional objectives, targeted competencies, instructional design considerations, and technological features is then developed to address the most pressing gaps in current research and practice. The rationale and logic underlying this framework is explicated. The framework is designed to help guide trainers and instructional designers through critical stages of the distributed learning system design process. In addition, it is intended to help researchers identify critical issues that should serve as the focus of future research efforts. Recommendations and future research directions are presented and discussed

The Metacognitive Process Of Teachers College Students In Solving Mathematical Problems

The metacognition process is the self-awareness and self-regulation of thinking during solving problems activity. It is based on a strong understanding to the problem being addressed. This is important in order to make the activity run smoothly. This research is a qualitative research which is aimed to investigate the metacognition process of teachers college students for solving formal and contextual mathematical problems. The data collection was conducted through problem solving activities such as written tasks, thinking aloud, and interviews. The data obtained were triangulated by assigning parallel newly problems to be solved at different times. The results of this research are (1) the metacognition process in solving the contextual mathematical problems is apparently more dynamic and the frequency of metacognitive activity implementation is higher than in solving formal mathematical problems, (2) this difference is higher in the subject from high skilled group, and as for the subject from low skilled group, there is only a slight difference. Keywords: metacognition process, mathematical problem solvin

Learning requirements engineering within an engineering ethos

An interest in educating software developers within an engineering ethos may not align well with the characteristics of the discipline, nor address the underlying concerns of software practitioners. Education for software development needs to focus on creativity, adaptability and the ability to transfer knowledge. A change in the way learning is undertaken in a core Software Engineering unit within a university's engineering program demonstrates one attempt to provide students with a solid foundation in subject matter while at the same time exposing them to these real-world characteristics. It provides students with a process to deal with problems within a metacognitive-rich framework that makes complexity apparent and lets students deal with it adaptively. The results indicate that, while the approach is appropriate, student-learning characteristics need to be investigated further, so that the two aspects of learning may be aligned more closely

The role of pedagogical tools in active learning: a case for sense-making

Evidence from the research literature indicates that both audience response systems (ARS) and guided inquiry worksheets (GIW) can lead to greater student engagement, learning, and equity in the STEM classroom. We compare the use of these two tools in large enrollment STEM courses delivered in different contexts, one in biology and one in engineering. The instructors studied utilized each of the active learning tools differently. In the biology course, ARS questions were used mainly to check in with students and assess if they were correctly interpreting and understanding worksheet questions. The engineering course presented ARS questions that afforded students the opportunity to apply learned concepts to new scenarios towards improving students conceptual understanding. In the biology course, the GIWs were primarily used in stand-alone activities, and most of the information necessary for students to answer the questions was contained within the worksheet in a context that aligned with a disciplinary model. In the engineering course, the instructor intended for students to reference their lecture notes and rely on their conceptual knowledge of fundamental principles from the previous ARS class session in order to successfully answer the GIW questions. However, while their specific implementation structures and practices differed, both instructors used these tools to build towards the same basic disciplinary thinking and sense-making processes of conceptual reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and metacognitive thinking.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

Learning from Physics Education Research: Lessons for Economics Education

We believe that economists have much to learn from educational research practices and related pedagogical innovations in other disciplines, in particular physics education. In this paper we identify three key features of physics education research that distinguish it from economics education research - (1) the intentional grounding of physics education research in learning science principles, (2) a shared conceptual research framework focused on how students learn physics concepts, and (3) a cumulative process of knowledge-building in the discipline - and describe their influence on new teaching pedagogies, instructional activities, and curricular design in physics education. In addition, we highlight four specific examples of successful pedagogical innovations drawn from physics education - context-rich problems, concept tests, just-in-time teaching, and interactive lecture demonstrations - and illustrate how these practices can be adapted for economic education.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Journal of Economic Education, also available from Social Science Research Network <http://ssrn.com/abstract=1151430