Auto‐monitoring: Theoretical touchstone or circular catch‐all?

Until I read Ray McAleese's paper, I perhaps had a rather simplistic psychologist's view of concept mapping. It was, I felt, a technique - one of several - that helped learners to articulate their burgeoning understanding of some topic, providing a canvas on which to record, expand and manipulate their knowledge. The activities involved in concept mapping could be linked to well-known psychological principles of understanding, memorization and learning: effort, elaboration and depth of processing; generation and enactment effects; encoding specificity and encoding variability; the distinctions between explicit and implicit representations; metacognitive strategies and reflection, and so forth (Hammond 1993). These psychological underpinnings, while not in any sense providing an integrated 'theory' of concept mapping, give a view of when and why the use of concept mapping might be effective in some situations and not in others, and how different concept mapping tools differ in the claims they are making about their educational use (Trapp, Reader and Hammond 1992)

Rich environments for active learning: a definition

Rich Environments for Active Learning, or REALs, are comprehensive instructional systems that evolve from and are consistent with constructivist philosophies and theories. To embody a constructivist view of learning, REALs: promote study and investigation within authentic contexts; encourage the growth of student responsibility, initiative, decision making, and intentional learning; cultivate collaboration among students and teachers; utilize dynamic, interdisciplinary, generative learning activities that promote higher-order thinking processes to help students develop rich and complex knowledge structures; and assess student progress in content and learning-to-learn within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and performances. REALs provide learning activities that engage students in a continuous collaborative process of building and reshaping understanding as a natural consequence of their experiences and interactions within learning environments that authentically reflect the world around them. In this way, REALs are a response to educational practices that promote the development of inert knowledge, such as conventional teacher-to-student knowledge-transfer activities. In this article, we describe and organize the shared elements of REALs, including the theoretical foundations and instructional strategies to provide a common ground for discussion. We compare existing assumptions underlying education with new assumptions that promote problem-solving and higher-level thinking. Next, we examine the theoretical foundation that supports these new assumptions. Finally, we describe how REALs promote these new assumptions within a constructivist framework, defining each REAL attribute and providing supporting examples of REAL strategies in action

An electronic storage and access system for special education legislation

In the field of education, instructional leaders must know the regulations governing the assessment, curriculum, and instruction of all students. An area of special concern is the regulations governing programs for students with disabilities. Although the average population of students with disabilities may represent less than 10% of the total student body, the school administrator is responsible for maintaining access to the most current regulations, for accurately interpreting, and effectively implementing federal and state mandates to ensure that the due process rights of the students with disabilities are upheld. Yet the laws and regulations governing special education programs are continually changing. Having immediate and accurate access to the most current regulations are critical problems for administrators of special education programs.;One means of providing the regulations is the computer. With the use of hypertext-based software, computers are presently and successfully being used in business and medicine for training and reference storage. Therefore, SpeciaLink was developed to serve as a prototypical system for the delivery of the regulations governing special education programs.;To evaluate SpeciaLink, an experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness and efficiency of manipulating and extracting the stored regulations. A controlled experiment involving the use of hypertext programming was conducted in Virginia school districts. The research project used a random sample of secondary school administrators from 15 school districts. The sample frame participants were given a survey to identify their knowledge of the Virginia Regulations Governing Special Education Programs for Children with Disabilities, 1994. For a trial period of two months, the experimental group was given the software, SpeciaLink, that allowed them to electronically access the regulations. After the trial, the entire sample frame was re-surveyed.;Following the pilot program, statistical interpretation of the results revealed that a hypertext-based system is an effective and efficient tool for manipulating and extracting information from the regulations governing special education programs. Because the hypertext-based software promises to be so useful in special education, future research should examine the possibilities of expanding the use of electronically storing local mandates and court litigation that pertain to special education programming

The Study of Perception and Project of the Territory Using Brain Storming

Brainstorming (based on conceptual mapping tools) is a method for identifying ideas, oriented to workgroups. In brief, it is the conceptual analysis of the discussion inside the group. In this way it is possible to enhance creative energies and develop new ideas. We propose two applications in the field of urban planning. The first is the development of a conceptual model of a given territory. By analysing the discussion among people involved in the elaboration of a report concerning social, economical, territorial aspects of Bergamo and Lecco (two Italian metropolitan areas), we have tried to find a link among various indicators and elements identifying the peculiar features of the territorial systems that we study. The second is, instead, the research of the best solution for opening a factory in a given territory. In this case study the discussion group is made by the actors intervening in the decision process, the administrators, the contractors, the urban planners, etc. The result will be compared with one obtained with traditional analysis.

Vicarious learning through capturing task‐directed discussions

The vicarious learner group has been developing a multimedia database system to promote and enhance the role of dialogue in learning. A specific interest, and the origin of the projects' collective name, is in the question of whether and how dialogue can be helpfully ‘reused’. What benefits can students gain from dialogue as observers, not just as participants? We describe our initial attempts to generate and capture educationally effective discourse exchanges amongst and between students and tutors. Problems encountered with available CMC discourse formats led to our development of a set of Task Directed Discussions (TDDs). A medium‐sized corpus of discourse exchanges was collected using the TDDs. A selection of nearly two hundred of these TDD exchanges formed the multimedia discourse database to the implemented prototype system, Dissemination. Initial results from a controlled experiment and evaluation of Dissemination are outline

Children’s Macro-Level Navigation Patterns in Hypermedia and their Relation with Task Structure and Learning Outcomes

This study investigated macro-level navigation patterns in children’s hypermedia learning, and how they related to task structure and learning outcomes. For this purpose, 5th and 6th grade learners performed a hypermedia assignment in which a high (n=57) versus a low (n=54) level of structure was provided. By means of qualitative analyses of their navigation activities, 6 macro-level navigation patterns were distinguished: linear reading, selective reading, video viewing, massed writing, late onset writing, and unpredictable reading. Results showed that the linear reading pattern was more frequent in the high structure environment, and that both the high structure environment and the linear reading pattern were associated with the highest quality of the children’s written assignments. Navigation patterns and task structure did not clearly predict children’s declarative knowledge gains or knowledge transfer. These findings show that there are multiple ways to navigate through a hypermedia environment, but that these are not all equally successful for learning. Moreover, the provided task structure in the environment may affect the occurrence of successful navigation patterns

After the education disciplines: teaching theory on-line.

Like all social theorising, the academic study of education is 'reflexive'- complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper discusses an on-line version of an undergraduate teacher-education course, 'Social Issues in New Zealand Education,' that is designed to teach its students how to do such 'situated' educational theorising. Consistent with this theme, the paper is written as a stream-of-consciousness narrative. In an attempt to fix in print the 'counterpoint' of pedagicical theorising in general, as well as more specifically in an on-line setting, it is episodic in structure - more like the lateral leaps of hypertext than the disciplined hierarchies of headings characteristic of the linearity of conventional academic argument. It falls into three parts. The first introduces the online virtual classroom environment in which the teaching takes place. Part two locates the course within more general epistemological issues confronting designers of education (foundations) courses in pre-service teaching degrees in the twenty-first century. In Part three, the syllabus of the course is outlined. The paper concludes with examples of students doing 'situated' educational theorising as they engage with course readings and assignments. Through this multi-layered account, I raise for discussion some broad questions about pedagogy in educational foundations courses in today's environment

Evaluating the development of wearable devices, personal data assistants and the use of other mobile devices in further and higher education institutions

This report presents technical evaluation and case studies of the use of wearable and mobile computing mobile devices in further and higher education. The first section provides technical evaluation of the current state of the art in wearable and mobile technologies and reviews several innovative wearable products that have been developed in recent years. The second section examines three scenarios for further and higher education where wearable and mobile devices are currently being used. The three scenarios include: (i) the delivery of lectures over mobile devices, (ii) the augmentation of the physical campus with a virtual and mobile component, and (iii) the use of PDAs and mobile devices in field studies. The first scenario explores the use of web lectures including an evaluation of IBM's Web Lecture Services and 3Com's learning assistant. The second scenario explores models for a campus without walls evaluating the Handsprings to Learning projects at East Carolina University and ActiveCampus at the University of California San Diego . The third scenario explores the use of wearable and mobile devices for field trips examining San Francisco Exploratorium's tool for capturing museum visits and the Cybertracker field computer. The third section of the report explores the uses and purposes for wearable and mobile devices in tertiary education, identifying key trends and issues to be considered when piloting the use of these devices in educational contexts

Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: some food for thought

Cognitive load is a theoretical notion with an increasingly central role in the educational research literature. The basic idea of cognitive load theory is that cognitive capacity in working memory is limited, so that if a learning task requires too much capacity, learning will be hampered. The recommended remedy is to design instructional systems that optimize the use of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Cognitive load theory has advanced educational research considerably and has been used to explain a large set of experimental findings. This article sets out to explore the open questions and the boundaries of cognitive load theory by identifying a number of problematic conceptual, methodological and application-related issues. It concludes by presenting a research agenda for future studies of cognitive load

Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems

The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments