Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Investigating Prospective Teachers as Learning Design Authors

This chapter reports on findings from a recent project situated in the area of preservice teacher education. The project investigated prospective teachers authoring and using their own contextualised learning designs. The chapter describes how 17 secondary and primary preservice teachers adapted existing, well-researched learning strategies to inform the design of their own specific online learning tasks and how they implemented these tasks in the context of their teaching practicum. The prospective teachers used an online learning design authoring system as a tool and flexible `test-bed for their learning designs and implementation. An account of the ways in which the prospective teachers developed sophisticated understandings of their chosen learning strategy and developed fresh insights into online and face-toface teaching issues is present

The influence of peer group response: Building a teacher and student expertise in the writing classroom

New Zealand students in the middle and upper school achieve better results in reading than they do in writing. This claim is evident in national assessment data reporting on students’ literacy achievement. Research findings also state that teachers report a lack of confidence when teaching writing. Drawing on the National Writing Project developed in the USA, a team of researchers from the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and teachers from primary and secondary schools in the region collaborated to “talk” and “do” writing by building a community of practice. The effects of writing workshop experiences and the transformation this has on teachers’ professional identities, self-efficacy, and their students’ learning provided the research focus. This paper draws mostly on data collected during the first cycle of the two-year project. It discusses the influence of peer group response – a case study teacher’s workshop experiences that transformed her professional identity, building her confidence and deepening her understandings of self as writer and ultimately transforming this expertise into her writing classroom practice

Student Authored Digital Games as Authentic Learning: Using the \u3cem\u3eCan You Create a Game Challenge\u3c/em\u3e in Elementary Classrooms

This embedded single-case study examined an elementary classroom implementation of a digital game authoring challenge aligned with state mandated content standards. Teachers used the game challenge over four 50 minute class periods during a three month period of time. A total of twenty five (n=25) 4th grade students, nine (n=9) 5th grade students and three (n=3) STEM teachers participated in the study. The central research question for this study is: How do elementary teachers use a game challenge specifically aligned with Common Core/Next Generation Science (NGSS) state standards for instruction? Qualitative data, drawn from participating teacher interviews, classroom observations, student project reflections and document analysis of the student-authored digital games, were analyzed using Hatch’s (2002) typological analysis. Findings suggest that, while using a standards-based gaming task within instruction is effective in promoting dimensions of an authentic learning environment for students, more research is needed in the areas of 1) professional development for teachers in game design and computational thinking; 2) the use of a digital game task as an assessment for students with disabilities or who struggle in other content areas; 3) the use of a digital game task for assessment in other content areas; and 4) how the computational thinking skills and the dispositions of teachers affect the flow of knowledge in classrooms using a digital game task

Online collaborative learning in tertiary ICT education to enhance students' learning in Malaysia

This study investigated the nature of students’, and student group, interactions through the incorporation of an online collaborative learning (OCL) initiative, with its aim to enhance students’ learning in a Malaysian tertiary classroom. In order to contribute to knowledge and understanding about the nature and quality of OCL, the learning processes and outcomes were drawn predominantly from Harasim’s model, with inclusion of a socio-cultural framework aimed at enhancing learning outcomes for undergraduate science and ICT education students. Harasim’s model of OCL that was used in the intervention includes steps to setting up the stage and a system for Idea Generating (IG), modeling and guiding the OCL discussions for Idea Organizing (IO), and evaluating and reflecting the OCL discussions for Intellectual Convergence (IC). The interactions in OCL were analysed through four dimensions: participative, interactive, social, and cognitive in support of the students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. The OCL intervention in this study was conducted through an ICT education course in a Malaysian university that required OCL discussions for 13 weeks: the first four weeks were intra-group work discussions (Task 1), followed by four/five weeks of inter-group work discussions (Task 2), and the remaining four weeks were for the final intra-group work discussions (Task 3). The OCL intervention was aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction between students from Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics majors through the university’s Learning Management System (Moodle), which provided the shared space for the OCL discourse and tools for collaboration. A total of nine groups of four to six students (N=46) were involved in this study. In order to evaluate the OCL intervention using a holistic view, an interpretive approach that included the collection of quantitative and qualitative data was adopted to frame the collection and analysis of the data. Quantitative data were obtained from online questionnaires, together with online data based on the frequency of students’ posts in participative, interactive, social, and cognitive dimensions. Qualitative data were gathered via interviews with students (group and post-course interviews) and lecturers, and online transcripts that included online postings and students’ online journal entries. These data were collected and analysed in order to triangulate the findings and to help the researcher assess the extent to which the intervention was successful in enhancing students’ learning. The findings from the study revealed the nature of students’ interactions in OCL correspond with particular socio-cultural views that students’ interactions are characterised based on the participative, interactive, social and cognitive dimensions in support of the students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. From a socio-cultural perspective, the outcomes that arose from the study included: • The socio-cultural learning constructs have been useful as a framework for the analysis of the OCL intervention based on the participative, interactive, social and cognitive dimensions. • The affordances of the OCL group work helped the students’ in their group work. • The constraints of OCL influence the communication methods, and interaction styles used by students in achieving task goals through group work in the OCL intervention. The findings also show students’ interactions and student group interactions were an important part of the learning process. The implementation of OCL intervention into the course can lead to the facilitation of the student group learning process as well as supporting their cognitive, social and emotional development, and potential constraints from the technology (e.g. Internet connection) or the lack of social and verbal cues (e.g. facial expression) can lead to different working methods of communication for achieving task goals and different styles of interactions. Overall, the findings of the study indicate the value of OCL in a tertiary classroom to enhance learning

“How Am I a Maker Making a Makerspace?” : A Focus on Teachers in Practice Self-Authoring as Makers in Constrained K-8 Spaces

Although there has been an abundance of empirical inquiry into making in recent years, interestingly, and despite growing interest in the integration of making into N-12 education, little seems to be known empirically about the ways in which teachers are implementing making and creating makerspaces in their own classrooms. Very little direct attention has been paid to ‘pioneer’ N-12 teachers who are engaging students in making. This gap in the research obscures our understanding of how teachers think about making, how they practice as teachers and makers, and how their school context might influence their teaching and making practices. This multiple-case study asked: In what ways do three K-8 teachers appear to be conceptualizing and implementing making with students? In sum, the three teachers in this study encountered numerous tensions while navigating the contexts of their school, N-12 education, and the Maker Movement as they implemented making in their classrooms. They practiced with a strong sense of agency despite the fact that so many constraints were imposed upon them by more powerful authorities, such as standards-based school reform measures and formal school structures. This in-depth case study contributes new insights into ways in which teachers make decisions about implementing making as a part of their teaching practice and ways in which teachers make use of their agency within the current accountability climate

The potential of mobile phones to transform teacher professional development

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and 10 million students