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

Innovating Pedagogy 2024

In this series of annual reports, we continue to explore new forms of teaching, learning, and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This twelfth report proposes another ten innovations which are already in currency but have the potential to exert a greater influence on education. To produce the report, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (UK) collaborated with researchers and practitioners from the LIVE Initiative at Vanderbilt University in the US. A wide range of pedagogical innovations were proposed by the authors and then, in a process of collective discussion of major themes and associated research, ten ideas were developed through multiple drafts and peer review, with reference to published studies and other sources from research and practice. This twelfth report covers: 1. Speculative worlds 2. Pedagogies of peace 3. Climate action pedagogy 4. Learning in conversation with generative AI  5. Talking AI ethics with young people 6. AI enhanced multimodal writing 7. Intelligent textbooks 8. Assessments through extended reality 9. Immersive language and culture 10. Exploring scientific models from the insid

Beyond Representativeness: Productive Intuitions About Probability

Although research has found many flaws in people's probabilistic reasoning, we have found that middle-school students have many productive ideas about probability. This study examines the probabilistic reasoning used by middle-school students as they used a technology-mediated inquiry environment that was concepmalized and developed to engage students in the task of analyzing the fairness of games of chance. This research demonstrates that students employ productive probabilistic reasoning when participating in this task, and also demonstrates that commonly reported heuristics such as representativeness do not adequately describe student reasoning

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