Managing affect in learners' questions in undergraduate science

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Society for Research into Higher Education.This article aims to position students' classroom questioning within the literature surrounding affect and its impact on learning. The article consists of two main sections. First, the act of questioning is discussed in order to highlight how affect shapes the process of questioning, and a four-part genesis to question-asking that we call CARE is described: the construction, asking, reception and evaluation of a learner's question. This work is contextualised through studies in science education and through our work with university students in undergraduate chemistry, although conducted in the firm belief that it has more general application. The second section focuses on teaching strategies to encourage and manage learners' questions, based here upon the conviction that university students in this case learn through questioning, and that an inquiry-based environment promotes better learning than a simple ‘transmission’ setting. Seven teaching strategies developed from the authors' work are described, where university teachers ‘scaffold’ learning through supporting learners' questions, and working with these to structure and organise the content and the shape of their teaching. The article concludes with a summary of the main issues, highlighting the impact of the affective dimension of learning through questioning, and a discussion of the implications for future research

Contours of Inclusion: Inclusive Arts Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and Universal Design for Learning). Data for the cases studies was collected from three urban sites (i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston) and included participant observations, student and teacher interviews, curriculum documentation, digital documentation of student learning, and transcripts from discussion forum and teleconference discussions from a professional learning community.The initial case studies by Glass and Barnum use the curricular frameworks to analyze and understand what inclusive practices look like in two case studies of arts-in-education programs that included students with disabilities. The second set of precedent case studies by Kronenberg and Blair, and Jenkins and Agois Hurel uses the frameworks to explain their process of including students by providing flexible arts learning options to support student learning of content standards. Both sets of case studies illuminate curricular design decisions and instructional strategies that supported the active engagement and learning of students with disabilities in educational settings shared with their peers. The second set of cases also illustrate the reflective process of using frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to guide curricular design, responsive instructional differentiation, and the use of the arts as a rich, meaningful, and engaging option to support learning. Appended are curriculum design and evaluation tools. (Individual chapters contain references.

How do I enhance motivation to learn and higher order cognition among students of Science through the use of a virtual learning environment?

In this paper I explore the capacity of Moodle to enhance the teaching and learning of Leaving Certificate Biology within a small urban secondary school. I simultaneously investigate the potential of the technology to enhance higher-order cognition and motivation to learn among the students. Adopting an action research approach has led me to a much deeper understanding of the tacit knowledge that inspires my work. The chief stimulus to my research was the realisation that my explicit practice was in negation of my implicit values. I have come to know my practice and over time changed it. I can now see evidence of a greater congruence between my espoused core educational values and my explicit actions. Cycle one of the research focuses on setting up and introducing Moodle to a group of Biology students. The second cycle shows the feasibility of a community of enquiry through a discussion-forum. A process of social validation runs concurrently, in which interested individuals substantiate my claim that my core educational values are being translated into my practice. Throughout I learn to strike a balance between co-learner and guide. Consequently the students come to act as co-authors in moving away from authoritarian dissemination of facts. This facilitates a community of inquiry, revolving around the collaborative negotiation of meaning. There is clear evidence of increased higher-order cognition and motivation to learn among the participants within this virtual community

Exploring the virtual classroom: What students need to know (and teachers should consider)

Technological improvements in many countries have meant that institutions offering distance education programmes now have more options available to them to communicate and interact with their students, and increasingly, attention is being turned to the potential of Web2 technologies to facilitate synchronous interaction. This study explores the affordances and limitations of an online virtual classroom, Adobe Connect Pro, when used in the learning programmes of two groups of undergraduate and postgraduate education students. Results indicate that while both groups gained value from using the classroom, they also found it a completely new environment, and one to which many had trouble transferring the interaction and communication skills developed in other contexts. The reasons for this related to three specific areas of knowledge – technical, procedural and operational, that were identified as being critical to student performance in this environment. The study suggests that educators and course designers need to embed strategies into their online offerings to enable students to develop these, if they are to gain substantial benefit from the availability of virtual classrooms. Additionally, the study identified that when making design decisions about online learning environments, it is very much a matter of horses for courses when selecting tools for specific purposes. While the virtual classroom proved useful for developing social connection and a sense of community, it may not be so beneficial for supporting deeper learning

Towards a framework for investigating tangible environments for learning

External representations have been shown to play a key role in mediating cognition. Tangible environments offer the opportunity for novel representational formats and combinations, potentially increasing representational power for supporting learning. However, we currently know little about the specific learning benefits of tangible environments, and have no established framework within which to analyse the ways that external representations work in tangible environments to support learning. Taking external representation as the central focus, this paper proposes a framework for investigating the effect of tangible technologies on interaction and cognition. Key artefact-action-representation relationships are identified, and classified to form a structure for investigating the differential cognitive effects of these features. An example scenario from our current research is presented to illustrate how the framework can be used as a method for investigating the effectiveness of differential designs for supporting science learning

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

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Motor Planning with Core Vocabulary: A Behavior Analytic Account

As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) increases, it is important for practitioners to continue to improve evidence-based practices (EBP) for the treatment of ASD symptoms (i.e., impairments in social communication and repetitive behaviors and restricted interests; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). It is estimated that 30-50% of individuals with autism do not acquire functional speech (Wodka, Mathy, & Kalb, 2013). These individuals would make appropriate candidates for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC; Mirenda, 2003). One form of AAC is the speech-generating device (SGD). Over the last ten years, tablet-based technologies including iPad minisⓇ have been emphasized in the SGD research (Lorah, Parnell, Whitby, & Hantula, 2014b). One of the limitations in the tablet-based technology literature is that there are few protocols using EBP for teaching verbal behavior using tablet-based technology as a SGD (Hedges & AFIRM Team, 2017). Practitioners working with SGD users require support in designing the screen layout, selecting the vocabulary, and determining effective teaching procedures for increasing verbal behavior. Therefore, the current study introduced the topic of motor planning with core vocabulary as considerations for use with tablet-based technology as SGDs to the behavior analytic literature. Because motor planning refers to the inner process of determining how to move, behavior analysts may be skeptical of using motor planning in practice. However, this study identified that motor planning is not an intervention but a strategy used in designing the screen layout or icon location. In addition, this study evaluated a basic protocol using motor planning with core vocabulary and a prompting package including within stimulus prompts and constant time delay with response prompts to teach manding using the iPad miniⓇ and Proloquo2GoTM as a SGD to three preschool aged children with ASD. This study also evaluated the effectiveness of the protocol on increasing vocal utterances throughout the session and decreasing problem behaviors during mand training. Results of the study indicated the protocol was effective in increasing a manding repertoire and that there were no effects on vocal utterances and problem behaviors

Communication and Non-Speaking Children with Physical Disabilities: Opportunities and Reflections from Design-Oriented Research

This thesis presents a series of design-oriented studies for investigating and describing communication involving children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPIs). The overarching goal is to inform how designers conceptualise communication that involves children with SSPIs beyond a widely cited view that communication centres around speech and happens at the level of the individual through the transmission of information. Instead, by positioning communication as co-constructed, situated and multimodal, the goal is to stimulate how one designs for digitally mediated communication by applying multiple, alternative frames that acknowledge these features. In order to achieve this goal, qualitative empirical fieldwork is undertaken that examines the everyday communication experiences of five children who have SSPIs. Drawing on theoretical influences from multimodal social semiotics and participatory design, study one and two investigate child centred accounts of communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers. The focus is on investigating communication, first in formal learning contexts involving existing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies, then in broader contexts beyond AAC use. Multi-layered perspectives are generated that consider: 1. a child’s view, by attending to children’s values and choices of modes; 2. an interactional view that attends to how communication is co-constructed in situ with other people and material objects, and; 3. a structural view, that examines the orderings of people, material objects and activities within an environment. These layered understandings produce research frames that are then utilised in study three. A design documentary is created and used to motivate design work for supporting face to face communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers with a team of designers who do not hold fixed orientations to designing assistive technologies. The findings of the three studies make three new contributions to the fields of HCI and AAC. First, the findings produce a theoretical perspective on communication, acknowledging multiple modes and displacing the taken for granted centrality of language. Second, the findings reveal design opportunities for new and existing technologies. Third, the studies contribute methodological insights for design work by considering ways of involving both children and designers when designing with and for children with SSPIs

Design and assessment of adaptative hypermdia games for English acquisition in preschool

La creciente popularidad de los juegos hipermedia llega mucho más allá de los límites del entretenimiento e interfieren en muchos ámbitos educativos. El crecimiento de las tecnologías de juegos ha creado nuevos entornos de enseñanza a través de propuestas que combinan el aprendizaje con la diversión y motivan las expectativas que hacen que el uso de juegos digitales sea una tendencia relevante en situaciones de aprendizaje versátil en todos los niveles educativos. Sobre la base de la aplicación de la Shaiex, financiado por el gobierno de Extremadura (España) y desarrollado por el grupo de investigación GexCALL, el objetivo del presente trabajo es doble. En primer lugar, se analizan los pasos y requisitos para el diseño de juegos adaptables para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera en el nivel preescolar. Explorar las premisas generales para la tarea de adaptación al personalizar el contenido a las necesidades de los niños y sus habilidades, la ejecución del diseño completo se describe en función de su aplicabilidad. En segundo lugar, una evaluación de la adaptación juegos diseñados es realizada, basada en el supuesto de que la selección de experiencias digitales apropiadas al desarrollo para satisfacer las expectativas de los usuarios y maximizar su potencial de aprendizaje deben someterse a una evaluación cuidadosa.The increasing popularity of hypermedia games is reaching far beyond the boundaries of entertainment and edging its way into many educational domains. The growth in game technologies has created new teaching environments through proposals combining learning with fun and motivating expectations which make the use of digital games a relevant trend in versatile learning situations at all educational levels. Based on the implementation of the Shaiex project, funded by the government of Extremadura (Spain) and develop by the research group GexCALL, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it analyses the steps and requirements for the design of adaptive games for the teaching of English as a foreign language at the preschool level. Exploring the general premises for task adaptation by personalizing content to children’s needs and abilities, the implementation of the whole design is described in light of its applicability. Second, an assessment of the adaptive games designed is conducted, based on the assumption that selecting developmentally appropriate digital experiences to meet users’ expectations and to maximize their learning potential should undergo careful evaluation.peerReviewednotPeerReviewe

Analysis of an English Coursebook and Its Oral Activities

In this dissertation I will try to find out if a particular coursebook –New English File: Intermediate, NEF– is an appropriate coursebook to foster students’ oral skills in general and in a particular educational context. For this purpose, I will analyse and evaluate the coursebook, and then I will analyse and evaluate those activities which develop oral skills –listening and speaking activities– according to a specific criterion which will be developed in the Method section. I will first review both input and output hypotheses in general terms, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a coursebook in the EFL classroom, and reflect upon the most important factors for the selection of an appropriate coursebook and activities which foster the students’ oral communicative competence. Stephen Krashen and Merrill Swain have a very important role in language acquisition and learning and that is the reason why I find it necessary to review their theories. Similarly, Littlewood’s research on and classification of communicative activities is worth considering and they will certainly make the analysis easier. This particular theoretical part will not only be useful for this dissertation analysis, it is also a good reflection for any teacher on the design and on the characteristics of oral communicative activities