New Interest, Old Rhetoric, Limited Results, and the Need for a New Direction for Computer-Mediated Learning

The pace of technological advancement, combined with improvements technology has brought to other sectors, is leading policymakers and educators alike to take another look at computers in the classroom, and even at computers instead ofclassrooms. In particular, advances in computational power, memory storage, and artificial intelligence are breathing new life into the promise that instruction can be tailored to the needs of each individual student, much like a one-on-one tutor. The term most often used by advocates for this approach is “Personalized Instruction.” Despite the advances in both hardware and software, recent studies show little evidence for the effectiveness of this model of integrating technology into the learning process

Active and supportive computer-mediated resources for student-to-student conversations

Communication is a central aspect of human learning. Using the Probability Inquiry Environment (PIE) as an example, we examine how external representations (both textual and iconic) mediate face-to-face conversations among students, and support productive mathematical discourse. We provide quantitative data that suggests that seventh grade students who used PIE learned some of the basic principles of probability. Two cases studies are that illustrate how communication supported by computer-mediated representations contributed to this success. The first case study demonstrates how the computer can actively prompt student conversations that lead to learning. The second case study examines how an animated graphical representation supported these productive conversations

Social Affordances of Mixed Reality Learning Environments: A case from the Science through Technology Enhanced Play project (STEP)

We describe the design of the Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) project. In STEP, we explore the potential for dramatic play—a form of activity that is particularly familiar to early elementary students—to promote meaningful inquiry about scientific concepts. We report on the first round of design experiments conducted with 120 first and second grade students who investigated how and why different states of matter have different properties. Pre-post analyses indicate that the majority of students learned the content and demonstrate how the affordances of the socio-technical system promoted the transition from individual observation to collective inquiry, how play as the root activity provided agency within that inquiry, and how the teacher and the social norms of the classroom reinforced these productive social processes

DOI 10.1007/s11412-006-9000-2 From dialogue to monologue and back: Middle spaces in computer-mediated learning

Abstract The authors develop a framework for the design of tools to mediate collaboration intended to lead to learning. We identify two categories of media that are common in computer-supported collaborative learning and software in general: communication media and information media. These two types of media are then mapped onto two types of social activities in which learning is grounded: dialogue and monologue. Drawing on literature in learning theory, we suggest the need for interfaces that help students to transition from dialogue to monologue and back again. We examine in detail two cases of students participating in a computer-mediated science learning activity that involved technologies designed to support this transition, and suggest ways that the “middle space ” can be supported with software and activities that transcend some of the traditional tradeoffs associated with information and communication interfaces

Little Science confronts the data deluge: Habitat ecology, embedded sensor networks, and digital libraries.

Abstract e-Science promises to increase the pace of science via fast, distributed access to computational resources, analytical tools, and digital libraries. "Big science" fields such as physics and astronomy that collaborate around expensive instrumentation have constructed shared digital libraries to manage their data and documents, while "little science" research areas that gather data through handcrafted fieldwork continue to manage their data locally. As habitat ecology researchers begin to deploy embedded sensor networks, they are confronting an array of challenges in capturing, organizing, and managing large amounts of data. The scientists and their partners in computer science and engineering make use of common datasets but interpret the data differently. Studies of this field in transition offer insights into the role of digital libraries in e-Science, how data practices evolve as science becomes more instrumented, and how scientists, computer scientists, and engineers collaborate around data. Among the lessons learned are that data on the same variables are gathered by multiple means, that data exist in many states and in many places, and that publication practices often drive data collection prac

Building digital libraries for scientific data: An exploratory study of data practices in habitat ecology

Abstract. As data become scientific capital, digital libraries of data become more valuable. To build good tools and services, it is necessary to understand scientists ’ data practices. We report on an exploratory study of habitat ecologists and other participants in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. These scientists are more willing to share data already published than data that they plan to publish, and are more willing to share data from instruments than hand-collected data. Policy issues include responsibility to provide clean and reliable data, concerns for liability and misappropriation of data, ways to handle sensitive data about human subjects arising from technical studies, control of data, and rights of authorship. We address the implications of these findings for tools and architecture in support of digital data libraries.