Transcending Lockdown: Fostering Student Imagination through Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning and Creativity in Engineering Design Courses

Engineering design and communication courses are typically dynamic, active learning spaces that bring together a complex array of knowledge and skills. Their ambiguous nature has allowed, often contentiously, subjects such as language and communication, the arts, the humanities and the social sciences to enter the discourse of engineering in a newly meaningful way. This paper considers this development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular how the creativity and imagination required to succeed in engineering design might be cultivated in emergency distance learning. I consider a plethora of sources for guidance, with a special interest in how language and communication facilitates collaborative learning, creativity, and intersubjectivity and how that mediation is further mediated by educational technology in distance learning. I focus on the challenges faced, and the resulting importance of training for both instructors and students. Finally, I argue that despite our difficult circumstances, we should aim to encourage our students to exercise their imaginations, both independently and collaboratively, through our selection, framing and facilitation of team design projects during the pandemic

Are you there? : Presence in collaborative distance work

doi linkki ei toimi 31.1.2022, ilmoitettu lehteen/USAlready before the pandemic, digitally mediated collaborative work and communication were perceived as challenging. We investigate the attitudes towards emerging technologies and for transforming practises in workplaces. The focus lies on understanding the readiness for appropriating emotional tracking on presence and support for collaboration. The research-based design framework allowed to combine the various perspectives of the transdisciplinary team. Methods included participatory design, design thinking, contextual inquiry and prototype testing for enhancing presence while working with shared objects in video conferencing to explore the appropriation of tools. The findings revealed four indications: 1) awareness of interlocutors’ presence during synchronous communication is crucial. 2) Emotion and behaviour tracking raises concerns about privacy and personal control over what is displayed to others, and technology could be simpler non-distracting the work at hand. 3) The prototype was found to enhance the feeling of presence without disturbing work at hand, and 4) appropriation requires a step-by-step approach.Peer reviewe

Group awareness and regulation in computer-supported collaborative learning

Group awareness is of critical relevance for collaborative learning and interaction and is thus often referred to in CSCL research. However, the concept is only vaguely defined as some kind of understanding or perception of characteristics of learning partners or the collaborating group. Most CSCL research activities concerned with group awareness aim at modifying learners' awareness using so-called group awareness tools. However, there are much less attempts to measure group awareness and to conceptualize its formation. Thus, building on existing group awareness research, this article derives a conceptualization with six defining aspects of group awareness: (1) group awareness is cognitive, (2) group awareness is conscious, (3) group awareness is current, (4) group awareness is individual, (5) group awareness is social, and (6) group awareness is perceived as valid. Additionally, while it is often assumed that group awareness builds on self-regulatory skills, its role in regulating behavior and cognition within a social context is seldom explored. Thus, this article aims at defining and analyzing the concept of group awareness, specifying its relation to regulatory processes, and sketching possible research paths whilst building on, complementing, and informing tool-driven research

The student as a learner, a knower and a facilitator: Share epistemic agency enacted as an innovative school-based mathematics pedagogy

This study is an inquiry into my students' participation and empowerment in all aspects of their mathematics learning that aims to explore the possibility of improving their relationship with and knowledge of mathematics. It considers the learning process in general, as well as the way it shapes the knowledge that it facilitates, and the different relationships that students have with this knowledge. This study is guided by the belief that improving my students’ mathematics knowledge requires the establishment of an innovative pedagogy based on knowledge creation. I elaborate the concept of shared epistemic agency to explain the phenomenon of students taking responsibility for the advancement of their own mathematics knowledge and that of the classroom community. The concept draws on Damşa’s notion of shared epistemic agency, Scardamalia & Bereiter’s discussion of knowledge building, and Nonaka’s analysis of knowledge creation. I carried out action research that applied these principles over one academic year, requiring the participants of my classroom to blend their authority with mine as they assumed the roles normally reserved for the teacher. Using six key characteristics of shared epistemic agency that I identify in the existing research, as well as the unit of analysis, I analysed the qualitative data that was collected. I show that the shared epistemic agency that is necessary for knowledge advancement in a secondary school mathematics classroom emerged as the students participated in my innovative pedagogical environment. Moreover, I demonstrate that this agency can be reconceptualised in terms of particular kinds of student behaviour and a particular kind of learning community. I argue that the student, in such an environment, is a competent, adaptive Participant who takes up flexible positions as a learner, a knower, and a facilitator. The classroom that developed as a democratically interactive learning community sustained the emergence of the Participant

O papel do feedback na construção de significados num ambiente de aprendizagem colaborativa apoiada pelo computador : uma experiência de ensino em geometria com recurso ao GeoGebra

Tese de doutoramento, Educação (Didática da Matemática), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2018O objetivo que norteia esta investigação é perceber quando e como surge feedback durante a resolução de tarefas em que os alunos trabalham colaborativamente com recurso a um ambiente de geometria dinâmica (GeoGebra) e quais as implicações desse feedback na forma como os alunos constroem significados. Com o intuito de cumprir esse objetivo mais geral foram formulados os seguintes objetivos mais específicos: (i) Identificar como funcionam as diferentes fases do feedback emergente na resolução das tarefas; (ii) Descrever e compreender o papel do feedback visual emitido pelo computador na construção de significados quando os alunos utilizam o GeoGebra; (iii) Descrever e compreender o papel do feedback oral entre os alunos na construção de significados. O quadro conceptual tem como eixos organizadores a aprendizagem colaborativa desenvolvida num ambiente de geometria dinâmica e o feedback, em particular o feedback oral e o feedback do computador. Assumindo um posicionamento interpretativo, a investigação adota a metodologia qualitativa de estudo de caso. No estudo participaram dois alunos, inicialmente de 14 anos, seleccionados de forma a poder cumprir os objetivos referidos da investigação. A recolha de dados decorreu nas aulas de matemática de uma turma, durante dois anos letivos, correspondentes ao sétimo e oitavo ano de escolaridade, percorrendo os tópicos de Geometria com recurso ao GeoGebra. Essa recolha consistiu na observação direta de trinta e três sessões de aulas, na recolha documental dos ficheiros produzidos por um par de alunos, assim como dos registos áudio e vídeo do seu trabalho, que foram posteriormente transcritos. Como principais conclusões deste estudo saliento: (i) As fases de feedback emergentes (acção, emissão e receção de feedback visual e emissão e receção de feedback oral) levam ao surgimento de ciclos de feedback e esses ciclos ocorrem como laços evolutivos enquanto os alunos se envolvem na resolução das tarefas propostas com o GeoGebra. (ii) Foi possível compreender a importância do papel do feedback visual na evolução da forma como os alunos constroem significados, nomeadamente através das mudanças na intencionalidade e nos níveis de abstracção com que os alunos constroem ou arrastam figuras no GeoGebra. (iii) Foi possível compreender a importância do papel do feedback oral na forma como os alunos constroem significados, nomeadamente através do surgimento de momentos de: (a) partilha de significados ligada a momentos de avaliação de construções e de regulação retroativa; (b) negociação de significados quando os alunos se questionam numa regulação interativa (3) compreensão de significados em que os alunos se informam mutuamente sobre as estratégias a adotar, num formato de regulação proativa. Também foi possível aferir a existência de uma deslocação da construção de significados mais ligados à funcionalidade da ferramenta para significados com um carácter acentuadamente matemático.The goal of this research is to understand when and how feedback emerges during task resolution in which students work collaboratively using a dynamic geometry environment (GeoGebra) and what are the implications of this feedback on how students construct meanings. In order to fulfil this more general purpose, the following specific objectives were formulated: (i) To identify how the different emerging feedback phases function in task resolution; (ii) To describe and understand the role of visual feedback delivered by the computer in the way that students construct meanings when using GeoGebra; (iii) To describe and understand the role of oral feedback among students in the way they construct meanings. The conceptual framework has its organizing axes in collaborative learning developed in a dynamic geometry environment and feedback, in particular oral feedback and computer feedback. Assuming an interpretative position, the research follows a qualitative case study methodology. The study involved two students, initially aged 14, selected as to address the stated objectives of the research. Data collection took place during two academic years, in mathematics classes, corresponding to the seventh and eighth grades of schooling, covering the topics of Geometry with the use of GeoGebra. This collection consisted of direct observation of thirty-three class sessions, the collection of documents produced by the two students, as well as audio and video recordings of their work, which were later transcribed. The main conclusions of this study are: (i) The emergent feedback phases (action, emission and reception of visual feedback and the emission and reception of oral feedback) lead to feedback cycles, and these cycles emerge as evolving loops while students are involved in solving the tasks proposed with GeoGebra. (ii) It was possible to understand the importance of the role of visual feedback in the development of the way that students construct meanings, namely through the changes in intentionality and the levels of abstraction with which students construct or drag figures in GeoGebra. (iii) It was possible to understand the importance of the role of oral feedback in the way students construct meanings, namely through the emergence of moments of: (a) sharing of meanings linked to moments of construction evaluation and retroactive regulation; (b) negotiation of meanings when students question themselves in interactive regulation; (c) understanding of meanings in which students inform each other about strategies to adopt, in moments of proactive regulation. It was also possible to verify the existence of a displacement of the construction of meanings more related to the functionality of the tool towards the construction of meanings with a distinct mathematical nature