Talk with Me: Student Pronoun Use as an Indicator of Discourse Health

Identifying which online behaviours and interactions are associated with students’ perception of being supported will enable a deeper understanding of how those activities contribute to student learning experiences. Features of student language, especially verbally immediate behaviours, are one of the aspects of student interactions in need of greater exploration within discourse-based online learning environments. As a result, the verbally immediate behaviour of pronoun usage is explored within online courses where the primary learning mechanism is student discourse. Student posting behaviours and features of their language, specifically their use of different classes of pronouns, are explored from the perspective of how supported students felt in their courses as well as how their behaviours and pronoun usage changed over time. Findings suggest that students who were taking instructor-facilitated courses felt more supported which was associated with higher levels of interaction and increased consistency in student behaviours from week to week within the term. Those enrolled in peer-facilitated courses, who felt less supported, used pronouns differently than those who experienced greater levels of support, suggesting the potential for pronoun-based analytics

Talk with me: Student behaviours and pronoun use as indicators of discourse health across facilitation methods

Identifying which online behaviours and interactions are associated with students’ perception of being supported will enable a deeper understanding of how those activities contribute to student learning experiences. Features of student language, especially verbally immediate behaviours, are one of the aspects of student interactions in need of greater exploration within discourse-based online learning environments. As a result, the verbally immediate behaviour of pronoun usage is explored within online courses where the primary learning mechanism is student discourse. Student posting behaviours and features of their language, specifically their use of different classes of pronouns, are explored from the perspective of how supported students felt in their courses as well as how their behaviours and pronoun usage changed over time. Findings suggest that students who were taking instructor-facilitated courses felt more supported which was associated with higher levels of interaction and increased consistency in student behaviours from week to week within the term. Those enrolled in peer-facilitated courses, who felt less supported, used pronouns differently than those who experienced greater levels of support, suggesting the potential for pronoun-based analytics

The Interplay Between Students’ Usage of Pronouns and Community Levels in Online Courses

Presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, USA.This study examined the relationship between sense of community and pronoun usage in online courses that utilized computer mediated communication (CMC) to enable discussion. Using Rovai’s (2002) Classroom Community Scale (CCS), we compared pronoun use in three High CCS courses to that in three Low CCS courses. Results revealed students in High CCS courses used proportionally more pronouns, made proportionally more self-references, and used a higher proportion of collective pronouns. Instructors from High CCS courses encouraged students to share personal perspectives, which appears to have promoted a greater sense of connectivity amongst learners. This behaviour explains the differences in pronoun usage and suggests that pronoun-based analytics may be a useful indicator of students’ sense of community

Student actions and community in online courses: The roles played by course length and facilitation method

Fostering a strong sense of community among students within online courses is essential to supporting their learning experience. However, there is little consensus about how different facilitation methods influence students’ sense of community or behaviours. This lack of understanding means instructors do not have the information they need to select an appropriate facilitation method when teaching online. This challenge is further complicated by a poor sense of how community building is influenced by the length of an online course. To better understand the relationship between these factors, we explored students’ sense of community across four graduate-level online courses. Two of these courses employed an instructor-led form of facilitation and two employed a peer-led form of facilitation. For each facilitation method, one course lasted an entire term (12 weeks) and the other lasted half a term (6 weeks). This two-by-two between-subjects design enabled the study of both variables and possible interaction effects. The findings revealed students in instructor-facilitated courses experienced a stronger sense of community. Longer courses were also associated with a stronger sense of community, although the relationship was weaker than that of facilitation. No interaction effects were detected between facilitation method and course length. Follow-up analyses examined the relationship between facilitation style, course length, and a set of twelve student behaviors (e.g., note writing, note reading, and replying). The results revealed that both facilitation style and course length were associated with differences in the length of students’ notes, the grade level of their text, and the frequency of their replies. Collectively, these findings offer evidence that both facilitation style and course length are related to students’ sense of community and the behaviors they exhibit online

Evaluating English-language morphological awareness assessments

Many studies have shown that morphological knowledge has effects on reading comprehension separate from other aspects of language knowledge. This has implications for reading instruction and assessment: it suggests that children could have reading comprehension difficulties that are due to a lack of morphological knowledge, and thus, that explicit instruction of morphology might be helpful for them, indeed for all children. To find children who might especially benefit from specific instruction in morphology, we would need good tests of morphological knowledge. We evaluated a set of morphological awareness assessments to determine whether they conclusively tapped into morphological knowledge, and found that it was not possible to be certain that they were accurately targeting morphological knowledge

Educators' Validation on a Reflective Writing Framework (RWF) for Assessing Reflective Writing in Computer Science Education

The need for effective Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and automated assessment is increasing. One area of ITSs has become urgent is that of the automated assessment of reflective writing. The reflective writing has been promoted, in higher education, in order to encourage students to think critically about their learning. However, many frameworks have been developed for assessing student's reflective writing. Up to our knowledge, there is no empirical studies to validate reflective writing frameworks that used in Computer Science (CS) education. This paper presents the validation of reflective Writing Framework (RWF) by CS educators. The expert panelists validated the RWF. Subsequently, we proposed an ITS model for automating reflective writing analysis. The RWF was accepted that it received a level of consensus from the experts who reported obtaining from good to appropriate results using it

Validating the Reflective Writing Framework (RWF) for assessing reflective writing in computer science education through manual annotation

The accuracy of a framework for annotating reflective writing can be increased through the evaluation and revision of the annotation scheme to ensure the reliability and validity of the framework. To our knowledge, there is a lack of literature related to the accuracy of any reflective writing framework in Computer Science (CS) education. This paper describes a manual annotation scheme, applied during four pilot studies, to validate the authors’ novel Reflective Writing Framework (RWF) for CS education. The results show, through the pilot studies, that the accuracy of Inter-Rater Reliability (IRR) increases from 0.5 to 0.8, which was substantial and close to an almost perfect agreement. This paper contributes to CS education through the reliability and validity of the RWF that can be potentially used for generating an Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) using machine learning algorithms

Supporting immigrant language learning on smartphones: A field trial

The challenge of supporting immigrant language learning and social integration has increased recently, leading to initiatives and projects that aim to provide assistance, including using smartphones in the course of daily activities. However, much of the Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) literature focuses on classroom based learning, leaving a gap in understanding learning in informal settings. This paper discusses a UK field trial of the European funded MASELTOV project, which developed a suite of smartphone tools and services (the ‘MApp’) to help immigrants’ language learning and social inclusion in four European cities. MApp tools and services include language lessons designed to assist informal learning in everyday life, focusing on situational language needs and a social forum for peer support, cultural information, comments and practice. The paper reports on interview data and social forum use. Our findings suggest that the MApp helps immigrants with their confidence; with relevant, practical language learning and practice of different language skills, and supports social learning. Studying and practising language skills in locations and at times that learners choose, along with access to a social forum for socio-emotional support and feedback, is a powerful combination for informal mobile language learning