Humour in writing centre consultations

In especially the context of a writing centre, learning takes place during, and as part of, the conversations between the writing centre consultant and the student. This interaction is an integral part of writing centre research and is the focus of this largely qualitative study, employing a politeness lens. While there is some research on the politeness strategies employed by writing center consultants, there is very little research on the use of humour and its accompanying laughter to enhance rapport and interaction. The use of humour in the context of a writing centre is particularly relevant especially in light of the power dynamics and ‘distance’ inherent in the student-consultant relationship. This study therefore analysed a corpus of 10 video-recorded and transcribed writing centre consultations through a politeness lens in an effort to fill this gap. Our findings indicate that humour used positively can have positive effects, bridge the gap and create rapport and solidarity in complex relationships. The analysis also demonstrates how humour and laughter as used in the context of a writing centre consultation enhances interaction, creates a more positive learning environment and lessens the stress and anxiety students generally associate with academic writing

The Cognitive-Affective-Social Theory of Learning in digital Environments (CASTLE)

For a long time, research on individuals learning in digital environments was primarily based on cognitive-oriented theories. This paper aims at providing evidence that social processes affect individual learning with digital materials. Based on these theories and empirical results, a social-processes-augmented theory is suggested: the Cognitive-Affective-Social Theory of Learning in digital Environments (CASTLE). This CASTLE postulates that social cues in digital materials activate social schemata in learners leading to enhanced (para-)social, motivational, emotional, and metacognitive processes. To substantiate this theory, socio-cognitive theories are used, which predict social influences on learning with digital materials. Besides, previous empirical findings are presented assuming that with a rising number of social cues in digital materials, the influence of social processes increases. Finally, consequences regarding the design of digital learning media are discussed

A cell is a cell is a cell:lay medical understanding and its role in online health tutoring

Es wurden Erklärverhalten und Einschätzung von Laienwissen durch Experten für die medizinische Emailberatung untersucht. Hierbei wurden die Tutoringforschung sowie psycholinguistische Ansätze berücksichtigt. Eingangs wurde das Wissen einer Laienstichprobe (Studie I, n = 100) per Fragebogen untersucht. Auf dieser Grundlage wurde Versuchsmaterial entwickelt, mit dessen Hilfe der Einfluss falscher Annahmen in Laienemails auf die Wissenseinschätzung durch medizinische Experten (Studie II, n = 72) sowie auf deren Antwortverhalten (Studie III, n = 83) experimentell untersucht werden konnte. Die Ergebnisse legen eine spezifische Verarbeitung der fehlerhaften Annahmen nahe; die Antworten zeigen eine Beschränkung der Anpassung auf eine lokale, eher indirekte Art der Fehlerkorrektur. Abschließend wird der Frage nachgegangen (Studie IV, n = 70), inwiefern linguistische Höflichkeit eine Erklärung für das Antwortverhalten der Experten darstellen kann, hierfür finden sich experimentelle Hinweise

Face Threat Mitigation in Feedback: An Examination of Student Apprehension, Self-Efficacy, and Perceived Emotional Support

This experimental study examined the effects of an instructor’s face threat mitigation tactics on student self-efficacy for learning and perceived emotional support from the instructor in a written feedback setting. Participants (N = 401) were randomly assigned to one of four feedback scenarios in which level of face threat mitigation and instructor age and status were manipulated. Student grade orientation and state feedback apprehension were measured prior to being exposed to the feedback scenario. Results indicate that high face threat mitigation is positively associated with student self-efficacy for learning and perceived emotional support from the instructor. Results also revealed that state feedback apprehension predicts self-efficacy for learning and perceived emotional support from the instructor. Grade orientation predicted self-efficacy for learning but did not significantly predict perceived emotional support from the instructor providing feedback. Finally, scenarios manipulated for instructor age and status did not significantly differ in self-efficacy for learning or perceived emotional support from the instructor. Implications regarding theory, the measurement of feedback apprehension, and student-instructor communication are discussed

Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing

Social cognition focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions. On the other hand, the term cognitive computing is generally used to refer to new hardware and/or software that mimics the functioning of the human brain and helps to improve human decision-making. In this sense, it is a type of computing with the goal of discovering more accurate models of how the human brain/mind senses, reasons, and responds to stimuli. Socio-Cognitive Computing should be understood as a set of theoretical interdisciplinary frameworks, methodologies, methods and hardware/software tools to model how the human brain mediates social interactions. In addition, Affective Computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects, a fundamental aspect of socio-cognitive neuroscience. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, electrical engineering, psychology, and cognitive science. Physiological Computing is a category of technology in which electrophysiological data recorded directly from human activity are used to interface with a computing device. This technology becomes even more relevant when computing can be integrated pervasively in everyday life environments. Thus, Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing systems should be able to adapt their behavior according to the Physiological Computing paradigm. This book integrates proposals from researchers who use signals from the brain and/or body to infer people's intentions and psychological state in smart computing systems. The design of this kind of systems combines knowledge and methods of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, as well as physiological data measurement and processing, with those of socio-cognitive and affective computing

Animated pedagogical agents effects on enhancing student motivation and learning in a science inquiry learning environment

This study focuses on the design and testing of a motivational animated pedagogical agent (APA) in an inquiry learning environment on kinematics. The aim of including the APA was to enhance students’ perceptions of task relevance and self-efficacy. Given the under-representation of girls in science classrooms, special attention was given to designing an APA that would appeal to the female students. A review of the literature suggested that the best design solution would be an agent who was female, young, attractive, and “cool”. An experiment compared three conditions: agent (image and voice), voice (no image), and control (no image and no voice). The research question was whether students’ motivation and knowledge changed over time as they worked in the inquiry learning environment, and whether condition and gender affected such changes. Participants were 61 third-year students (mean age 14.7 years) from a secondary school. Gender was distributed evenly within and across conditions. A significant main effect of time on self-efficacy was found, with self-efficacy beliefs increasing significantly for both boys and girls. In addition, there was a significant interaction between time, condition, and gender for self-efficacy. About halfway during training, girls’ self-efficacy beliefs significantly increased in both experimental conditions and decreased in the control condition. For boys the opposite pattern was found. Girls also gave higher appraisals for the agent. Students in all three conditions realized significant knowledge gains, which did not differ by gender. The discussion critically considers the need for, and design of motivational scaffolding in inquiry learning environment

Ethical codes in adult education as subjects of comparative analysis

In the process of professionalisation of adult educators, a significant role is played by qualification, educational and evaluation standards. However, they do not often deal with ethical questions which can arise from their relationship with participants of the educational process, from their membership in professional associations or from the relationship with an educational institution. This gap is filled by ethical codes, which are not legal standards but they are adult educators’ voluntary obligations. The importance of codes was a reason for the comparison of 26 ethical codes aiming to find their common features and non-standard regulations, to point out the prevailing structures and contents and disciplinary measures when the code is violated. The contribution of this study is to enrich the andragogical theory with a deeper understanding of the purpose of ethical codes, their structural elements and content. From the point of view of education policy, an analysis of codes can work as a specific monitoring of the market of educational services. It can serve for designing certification courses of adult educators as well as subjects in graduate studies in andragogy. The limitation of this study lies in the fact that the selection of codes was limited to codes written in four languages; however, one of them was English, which is a world language. As for the territorial scope, codes cover North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. (DIPF/Orig.