Online discussion compensates for suboptimal timing of supportive information presentation in a digitally supported learning environment

This study used a sequential set-up to investigate the consecutive effects of timing of supportive information presentation (information before vs. information during the learning task clusters) in interactive digital learning materials (IDLMs) and type of collaboration (personal discussion vs. online discussion) in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) on student knowledge construction. Students (N = 87) were first randomly assigned to the two information presentation conditions to work individually on a case-based assignment in IDLM. Students who received information during learning task clusters tended to show better results on knowledge construction than those who received information only before each cluster. The students within the two separate information presentation conditions were then randomly assigned to pairs to discuss the outcomes of their assignments under either the personal discussion or online discussion condition in CSCL. When supportive information had been presented before each learning task cluster, online discussion led to better results than personal discussion. When supportive information had been presented during the learning task clusters, however, the online and personal discussion conditions had no differential effect on knowledge construction. Online discussion in CSCL appeared to compensate for suboptimal timing of presentation of supportive information before the learning task clusters in IDLM

Collaborative Authoring of Open Courseware with SlideWiki: A Case Study in Open Education

Producing or finding and reusing high-quality educational content online can be a laborious and costly process. With the open-source and open-access SlideWiki platform, the effort of producing and reusing highly-structured remixable educational content can be crowdsourced and therefore widely shared. SlideWiki employs crowdsourcing methods in order to support the open education community in authoring, sharing, reusing and remixing open courseware. This paper presents a case study of this platform carried out in the context of open education and informal learning and reports on the feedback received thus far from members of the open education community

Evaluation of social personalized adaptive E-Learning environments : end-user point of view

The use of adaptations, along with the social affordances of collaboration and networking, carries a great potential for improving e-learning experiences. However, the review of the previous work indicates current e-learning systems have only marginally explored the integration of social features and adaptation techniques. The overall aim of this research, therefore, is to address this gap by evaluating a system developed to foster social personalized adaptive e-learning experiences. We have developed our first prototype system, Topolor, based on the concepts of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia and Social E-Learning. We have also conducted an experimental case study for the evaluation of the prototype system from different perspectives. The results show a considerably high satisfaction of the end users. This paper reports the evaluation results from end user point of view, and generalizes our method to a component-based evaluation framework

Towards a competency model for adaptive assessment to support lifelong learning

Adaptive assessment provides efficient and personalised routes to establishing the proficiencies of learners. We can envisage a future in which learners are able to maintain and expose their competency profile to multiple services, throughout their life, which will use the competency information in the model to personalise assessment. Current competency standards tend to over simplify the representation of competency and the knowledge domain. This paper presents a competency model for evaluating learned capability by considering achieved competencies to support adaptive assessment for lifelong learning. This model provides a multidimensional view of competencies and provides for interoperability between systems as the learner progresses through life. The proposed competency model is being developed and implemented in the JISC-funded Placement Learning and Assessment Toolkit (mPLAT) project at the University of Southampton. This project which takes a Service-Oriented approach will contribute to the JISC community by adding mobile assessment tools to the E-framework

Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning: Untangling the Evidence

Technology-enhanced personalised learning is not yet common in Germany, which is why we have tasked scientists with summarising the current status of international research on the matter. This study demonstrates the great potential of technology in implementing effective personalised learning. Nevertheless, it has not been assessed yet whether the practical implementation actually works: Even in countries such as the U.S., which lead the way in using techology in classroom settings, hardly any evaluation studies have been done to prove the effectiveness of technology-enhanced personalised learning. In the light of the above, the authors make recommendations for actions to be taken in Germany to make best use of the potential of technology in providing individual support and guidance to students

Learning outcomes and their assessment: putting Open University pedagogical practice under the microscope

The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university devoted to distance learning. It is also the UK's largest university with over 200,000 students overall. Around 150,000 students are studying undergraduate level courses. Over the last decade major policy changes have impacted on UK higher education. Following the recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Dearing Report, 1997) and the establishment of the Quality Assurance Agency, all UK universities have been required to define learning outcomes for their programmes and link learning outcomes to teaching and assessment. This major pedagogic shift led the OU to establish the Learning Outcomes and their Assessment (LOTA) project to re-examine the ways its courses are planned, designed, delivered and assessed, and to initiate necessary institution-wide changes. Explicitly linking outcomes, assessment and teaching, actively using assessment for learning, and supporting academic staff development are key elements in enhancing student learning

Using the markstrat business simulation to develop strategic management behaviours

It is well understood that experiential learning provides an incentive and impetus for accelerated learning, especially in humanities and business-focussed studies. ICT-based synthetic and virtual environments can provide a rich and varied context within which to achieve this. Specifically, this paper attempts to provide empirical, survey-based analysis of the application of a business simulation game, MarkStrat, on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in this vein. The paper subsequently posits the pedagogic benefit of using such business simulation games for the development of strategic management behaviours across student sample populations and derives subsequent results to highlight associated learning behaviours