"Teach AI How to Code": Using Large Language Models as Teachable Agents for Programming Education

This work investigates large language models (LLMs) as teachable agents for learning by teaching (LBT). LBT with teachable agents helps learners identify their knowledge gaps and discover new knowledge. However, teachable agents require expensive programming of subject-specific knowledge. While LLMs as teachable agents can reduce the cost, LLMs' over-competence as tutees discourages learners from teaching. We propose a prompting pipeline that restrains LLMs' competence and makes them initiate "why" and "how" questions for effective knowledge-building. We combined these techniques into TeachYou, an LBT environment for algorithm learning, and AlgoBo, an LLM-based tutee chatbot that can simulate misconceptions and unawareness prescribed in its knowledge state. Our technical evaluation confirmed that our prompting pipeline can effectively configure AlgoBo's problem-solving performance. Through a between-subject study with 40 algorithm novices, we also observed that AlgoBo's questions led to knowledge-dense conversations (effect size=0.73). Lastly, we discuss design implications, cost-efficiency, and personalization of LLM-based teachable agents

The student-produced electronic portfolio in craft education

The authors studied primary school students’ experiences of using an electronic portfolio in their craft education over four years. A stimulated recall interview was applied to collect user experiences and qualitative content analysis to analyse the collected data. The results indicate that the electronic portfolio was experienced as a multipurpose tool to support learning. It makes the learning process visible and in that way helps focus on and improves the quality of learning. © ISLS.Peer reviewe

EXAMINATION OF EXPERIENTIAL PHENOMENA INFLUENCING CULINARY EDUCATORS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

This study aimed to explore the theory of expert teaching by comparing culinary educators at the secondary and postsecondary levels based on their varying levels of experience. Experience for culinary educators included pre-service teacher training, in-service teacher training, professional industry experience, and teaching experience. The primary goal of this descriptive phenomenological study was to examine the impact professional experience has on culinary educators’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Distinctions in PCK include collective PCK, personal PCK, and enacted PCK. PCK theory has been an integral part of educational research for over three decades; it has been studied, refined, and implemented into educational programs worldwide. Tacit knowledge (TK) theory has existed in the literature longer than PCK. Still, the two theories have not been intimately linked to examine teaching a contextual subject, like culinary arts, as it is in this study. TK is contextual knowledge that can be made explicit by regulating one’s cognition (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Therefore, as a contextually taught art form, culinary education requires those that teach it to possess PCK and TK. This study is the first to connect the constructs of PCK and TK and apply them to an examination of culinary arts education. Participants who were current culinary educators at either secondary or postsecondary schools with various professional experiences participated in one-on-one interviews. Analysis of the interview results determined that educators of culinary education are generally lacking in PCK. Culinary educators with increased amounts of professional experience exhibit culinary-specific PCK more readily than those with lesser amounts of professional experience. Pre-service teaching programs for culinary teachers for secondary and postsecondary teachers focused on emphasizing the tenets of culinary-specific PCK should become standard practice for the profession. Secondary schools should better emphasize the importance of experience in the food and hospitality industry when hiring culinary arts educators. Postsecondary schools should better emphasize the importance of pre-service teacher training that is specific to culinary content and pedagogy when hiring culinary arts educators. Both secondary and postsecondary schools should emphasize in-service professional development that is discipline-specific and teaches the tenets of culinary-specific PCK. In addition, administrators should ensure programs are in place that create collaboration between experienced teachers and novice teachers. The outcome of this study could be used to determine the need for designing a professional development program for culinary educators based on improving levels of PCK and TK. Improved in-service teacher training facilitates the expert-to-student tacit knowledge exchange and enables institutions to promote a supportive learning culture that encourages high productivity and personal excellence

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

Learners’ Experiences of Written Complexities Development Through Discussion Board Activities in Chinese as a Foreign Language Class

This qualitative case study examines learners’ experiences in the development of written complexities during Discussion Board (DB) assignments in an Advanced university level Chinese class. Discussion Board was chosen as the avenue for written complexity development because it provides learners a supplementary space with additional time and opportunities for low anxiety writing. The data collection for this study came from two sources, DB posts and interviews. This study seeks to fill gap in the literature in two ways: one, this study proposes a measurement of written complexities that consists of propositional complexity, lexical sophistication and accuracy. Second, this study highlights student experiences and explores the learning process from their perspectives. Using Vygotsky’s (1978) Sociocultural theory as theoretical framework, the findings of this study generated new knowledge about what tools and strategies Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners used to develop written complexities during the DB discussion activities. Additionally, this study examined how CFL learners utilized DB activities and interactions on DB to develop written complexities. Finally, this study demonstrates how DB can serve as a supplementary learning space, where if designed appropriately, can lead to opportunities for students to develop their written complexities

Deep Learning and Cognitive Presence in Collaborative Web-Based Learning Environments: Student and Instructor Perspectives

Supervisor: Dr. Terry AndersonThis study examines the ability of online distance education courses using CMC and constructivist assessment tools to support cognitive presence and deep learning. Four online focus groups were conducted, three among graduate students and one among instructors who have respectively taken and delivered online courses in the Master of Distance Education program at Athabasca University. Transcripts of the focus groups were analyzed with the objective of developing a grounded conceptual model. The learning experiences, as described by the participants themselves, have shown that deep learning and cognitive presence are facilitated when learners have the opportunity to engage in learning activities with a high degree of relevance to their life worlds. Cognitive presence and deeper learning are also encouraged through the application of learning to the work or personal lives of the learners

Towards consequence and collaboration in composition studies: theorizing collaboration after the social turn

This dissertation argues that theories of collaboration in rhetoric and composition studies have for too long relied on social constructionist epistemology to explain what collaboration is and how it works, resulting in a widespread, if not tacit reluctance on the part of instructors to encourage collaboration in the teaching of writing that goes beyond various forms of group work and peer-review. In an attempt to recover and renew the values of collaboration, I suggest that it can be re-conceptualized ethically as a discursive relationship collaborators foster with one another to invent discourse that transgresses and transforms the limits of what individuals are able to articulate alone. Moreover I use the rhetorical canon of invention to explain why social constructionist epistemology is incapable of theorizing collaboration other than as a "style" of doing work. I draw upon the tradition of classical American pragmatism, along with the more contemporary work of language philosopher Donald Davidson and other externalist theorists to theorize the techné of collaboration, which I argue manifests in the habits of dialogue collaborators foster to engage its inventive work. Finally, I explain how such a re-conceptualization of collaboration informs the pedagogical possibilities of post-process composition theory, which has waned in recent years for its lack of pedagogical articulation

Language AND Content? How do Curriculum Teachers of Year 12 English Language Learners Combine Two Disciplines?

The provision of language instruction in secondary schools for students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) is moving from the domain of the English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classroom where it traditionally lay. Increasingly, curriculum teachers are urged to take responsibility for language learning within their subject areas. How are curriculum teachers responding? Has this affected their professional relationships with ESOL teachers? What is the nature of the professional engagement between language and content specialists? This qualitative investigation uses an exploratory case study approach to examine the beliefs and teaching approaches identified by secondary school curriculum teachers as beneficial to learning for EAL students in their classes. Data were gathered using a questionnaire, interviews, and classroom observations for seven participant teachers, then analysed thematically using a conceptual framework derived from content-based language teaching principles. The findings were that these teachers’ approaches to teaching language appear to be shaped by their disciplinary beliefs and pedagogical content knowledge. Their openness to applying a systematic language focus to their teaching seemed to relate to whether their curriculum area was characterised as ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. They struggled to differentiate between language and literacy learning and largely assumed language to mean vocabulary. This indicates that many language challenges facing EAL learners may be invisible to their teachers. Curriculum teachers’ unfamiliarity with research-based language teaching has implications for teacher education and professional development. This study suggests the urgency for compulsory pre-service teaching courses to illustrate how disciplinary meaning is shaped by specific language forms. It also indicates that curriculum teachers with specialist qualifications in teaching EAL learners may provide a powerful link between ESOL and subject expertise

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

Every chapter in the widely distributed first edition has been updated, and four new chapters on current issues such as connectivism and social software innovations have been added. Essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex, diverse, and rapidly evolving field of distance education blend scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning; and mindful attention to the economics of the business of education