Improving instructional effectiveness with computer‐mediated communication

This study explores the use of asynchronous Computer‐Mediated Communication (CMC) in the delivery of instructional content, and points up the interaction among learners, as well as between learners and instructors. The instructional content in the project described was available to learners online as Microsoft Word documents, with email being used for communicating within the student group. Many students, as well as some of the instructors, felt uncomfortable with the flexibility and openness that a CMC environment allowed. However, once familiar with this process of instruction and interaction, learners were able to work consistently at their own pace, and understand that instructors are interested in every individual learner's opinion and in the collective views of the group. It was evident that a CMC‐based instructional delivery system, when carefully planned, has the potential to facilitate that outcome, and to improve instructional effectiveness

A learning design toolkit to create pedagogically effective learning activities

Despite the plethora of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and resources available, practitioners are still not making effective use of e-learning to enrich the student experience. This article describes a learning design toolkit which guides practitioners through the process of creating pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources. This work is part of a digital libraries project in which teaching staff at two universities in the UK and two in the USA are collaborating to share e-learning resources in the subject domains of Physical, Environmental and Human Geography. Finding, or creating, suitable e-learning resources and embedding them in well designed learning activities can be both challenging and time consuming. Sharing and adapting effective designs and solutions is both a stimulant and a time saver. This article describes the background to the specification of a learning activities design toolkit to support teachers as they create or adapt e-learning activities. This uses a model of pedagogical approaches as a basis for developing effective learning design plans and illustrates its use. The authors share their definition of a learning activity and taxonomies for the constituent elements. Real examples are discussed to illustrate their approach

The impact of tablet devices on high school students' cognitive load and learning

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Managing personal learning environments: the voice of the students

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the kind of educational work to be done with higher education students (undergraduate) in order to encourage them to create and use personal learning environments (PLEs) as a strategy for learning (Attwell, 2007). Based on our current classroom work with students of the 2nd year of a degree in Education and mainly using the functionalities of the Ning system (Copyright © 2010 Ning, Inc.), as well as other tools available on the Internet, we tried to implement a strategy based not only on the presentation of content by the teacher, but also on the recognition of the importance of student’s leadership in the organisation and management of their own learning. Therefore, in addition to face-to-face lectures, we tried to extend the discussion outside the classroom walls using the different services offered by Ning, proposing to integrate the work done by students in their individual evaluation (50% of the final classification). At the end of the semester we observed evidence of a general difficulty felt by the students, particularly in terms of self-regulation and personal organisation. So we decided to try to understand the problem observed in depth. For the purpose of understanding the nature and the extent of these difficulties, we used a methodology focused on analysis of a questionnaire applied to the students about their perception of the difficulties in managing the learning process and about the strategies used for dealing with those difficulties. Although the students acknowledge that the development of the individual online portfolio in a PLE requires that, for the most part, largely they themselves have to get organised and manage of their own learning (Barrett, 2000; Attwell, 2007), one can see that they do not feel prepared for this, experiencing difficulties in personal organisation, time management and regular participation in the proposed activities. In strategic terms, they value the appraisals and/or suggestions given by the teachers, but do not adopt an attitude of reflection or interaction and sharing with others, as catered for by the platform and its functionalities

A Talk on the Wild Side: The Direct and Indirect Impact of Speech Recognition on Learning Gains

Research in the learning sciences and mathematics education has suggested that ‘thinking aloud’ (verbalization) can be important for learning. In a technology-mediated learning environment, speech might also help to promote learning by enabling the system to infer the students’ cognitive and affective state so that they can be provided a sequence of tasks and formative feedback, both of which are adapted to their needs. For these and associated reasons, we developed the iTalk2Learn platform that includes speech production and speech recognition for children learning about fractions. We investigated the impact of iTalk2Learn’s speech functionality in classrooms in the UK and Germany, with our results indicating that a speech-enabled learning environment has the potential to enhance student learning gains and engagement, both directly and indirectly

Students’ Perceptions of Their Teachers’ Performance in Teaching Engineering Drawing in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions

There have been concerns about the performance of Nigerian school teachers’ in delivering occupational related courses. However, there are currently limited empirical data on this phenomenon – in particular with respect to the teaching of engineering drawing – to justify further actions from educational managers and policy makers. The aim of this study was to assess teachers’ performance in teaching engineering drawing using students’ perception as indicator of teachers’ performance. The study utilized a cross-sectional research design method with the target population of technical education students drawn from four (4) Federal Colleges of education (Technical) in Northern Nigeria. Stratified proportionate sampling technique was used to arrive at the study sample of 253 technical education students. A specifically designed instrument, the Students’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Performance Scales (SPTPS) was used to gather data on the three performance dimensions namely contextual, task and adaptability performance. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis methods were conducted to validate the performance constructs. The instrument has a high reliability of 0.90 based on the Cronbach Alpha method. The result of the analysis using estimation method indicates that students perceive their teachers’ performance to be at a slightly above average level (M= 3.51 ± 0.05 at the 95% confidence level). The teachers’ task performance, in particular, is found to be the least developed among the three dimension of performance while their adaptability performance is the highest while still being less than excellent. The data support the conclusion that there are aspects of teachers’ performance in teaching engineering drawing that is less than excellent and in need of further enhancements

Beyond the Bubble: Technology and the Future of Student Assessment

Provides an overview of information technology's potential to enable better assessments of student achievement. Outlines promising models for testing complex skills, cognition, and learning and for utilizing such assessments to improve instruction