To speak or not to speak, and what to speak, when doing task actions collaboratively

Transactive discussion during collaborative learning is crucial for building on each other's reasoning and developing problem solving strategies. In a tabletop collaborative learning activity, student actions on the interface can drive their thinking and be used to ground discussions, thus affecting their problem-solving performance and learning. However, it is not clear how the interplay of actions and discussions, for instance, how students performing actions or pausing actions while discussing, is related to their learning. In this paper, we seek to understand how the transactivity of actions and discussions is associated with learning. Specifically, we ask what is the relationship between discussion and actions, and how it is different between those who learn (gainers) and those who do not (non-gainers). We present a combined differential sequence mining and content analysis approach to examine this relationship, which we applied on the data from 32 teams collaborating on a problem designed to help them learn concepts of minimum spanning trees. We found that discussion and action occur concurrently more frequently among gainers than non-gainers. Further we find that gainers tend to do more reflective actions along with discussion, such as looking at their previous solutions, than non-gainers. Finally, gainers discussion consists more of goal clarification, reflection on past solutions and agreement on future actions than non-gainers, who do not share their ideas and cannot agree on next steps. Thus this approach helps us identify how the interplay of actions and discussion could lead to learning, and the findings offer guidelines to teachers and instructional designers regarding indicators of productive collaborative learning, and when and how, they should intervene to improve learning. Concretely, the results suggest that teachers should support elaborative, reflective and planning discussions along with reflective actions

Temporal pathways to learning: how learning emerges in an open-ended collaborative activity

The learning process depends on the nature of the learning environment, particularly in the case of open-ended learning environments, where the learning process is considered to be non-linear. In this paper, we report on the findings of employing a multimodal Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based methodology to investigate the temporal learning processes of two types of learners that have learning gains and a type that does not have learning gains in an open-ended collaborative learning activity. Considering log data, speech behavior, affective states and gaze patterns, we find that all learners start from a similar state of non-productivity, but once out of it they are unlikely to fall back into that state, especially in the case of the learners that have learning gains. Those who have learning gains shift between two problem solving strategies, each characterized by both exploratory and reflective actions, as well as demonstrate speech and gaze patterns associated with these strategies, that differ from those who don't have learning gains. Further, the teams that have learning gains also differ between themselves in the manner in which they employ the problem solving strategies over the interaction, as well as in the manner they express negative emotions while exhibiting a particular strategy. These outcomes contribute to understanding the multiple pathways of learning in an open-ended collaborative learning environment, and provide actionable insights for designing effective interventions

MEttLE: a modelling-based learning environment for undergraduate engineering estimation problem solving

Abstract Estimation is an important class of problems that engineering undergraduates must be able to solve. However teaching-learning of estimation is under emphasized in the current engineering curriculum. In this paper, we report on the first cycle of a design-based research project to design a technology-enhanced learning environment (TELE) to help students learn estimation. The TELE includes features such as a progressive higher-order modelling-based structuring of the estimation process, a problem system simulator and metacognitive scaffolds. We performed a lab study and found that learners were able to use the features in the TELE to solve the estimation problem and obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate. Further, learners learned some of the reasoning processes involved in performing estimation and recognized the role of evaluation and the need for practical considerations in estimation. We identified the roles of various features in the TELE for learning these estimation reasoning processes. These results have implications for the redesign of our TELE to improve student learning of estimation

An Assessment Framework for Complex Systems Understanding

Complex systems understanding is crucial for understanding the sciences of the twenty-first century. Helping students with the principles of complex systems is thus both a challenge and an opportunity. In order to investigate the effectiveness of complex systems learning activities, we would like to have an assessment instrument which we can ultimately use as pre and post-test to assess the learning gain. In this paper, we developed an assessment instrument as a questionnaire containing five scenarios related to key concepts of complex systems understanding. After validating the understandability of the questions, we collected answers from 37 participants including experts as well as non-experts. We finally propose a scoring scheme based on fuzzy logic. This approach results in a general procedure which is compact, automatic and human legible to quantify expertise in complex systems concepts

How Diseases Spread: Embodied Learning of Emergence with Cellulo Robots

Embodiment has been known to have several benefits for learning. However, implementing embodied learning in a classroom with technologies such as Kinect, augmented, virtual and mixed reality and tangible objects is a challenge because of the infrastructural and logistical constraints. In this work, we present one case of an effective implementation of an embodied learning activity in a classroom. We employed hand-held robots called Cellulo to design a mixed virtual-physical activity to help high school children learn the concepts of emergent behaviour. We found that the activity was effective for learning and was perceived as engaging and useful by the teachers and students. This work contributes to the design and practice of implementing embodied learning in a classroom

Many Are The Ways to Learn: Identifying multi-modal behavioral profiles of collaborative learning in constructivist activities

Understanding how learners engage with learning technologies, and its relation with their learning, is crucial to the design of effective learning interventions. Assessing the learners’ state however, is non-trivial. Research suggests that performance is not always a good indicator of learning, especially with open-ended constructivist activities. In this paper, we describe a combined multi-modal learning analytics and interaction analysis method which uses video, audio and log data to identify multi-modal collaborative learning behavioral profiles of 32 dyads as they work on an open-ended task around interactive tabletops with a robot mediator. These profiles, that we name Expressive Explorers, Calm Tinkerers, and Silent Wanderers, confirm previous findings that in a collaborative setting, the amount of speech interaction and the overlap of speech between a pair of learners are highly discriminating behaviors between learning and non-learning pairs, signifying that overlapping speech while turn-taking can indicate engagement that is conducive to learning. However, additionally considering learner affect and actions during the task helps us identify that there exist multiple behavioural profiles exhibited even among those who learn. Specifically, we discover that those who learn vary in their behaviors along the two dimensions of problem solving strategy (actions) and emotional expressivity (affect), suggesting that there is a relation between problem solving strategy and emotional behaviour; one strategy leads to more frustration compared to another. These findings have implications for the design of real-time learning interventions that support productive collaborative learning in open-ended tasks

Tracing Embodied Narratives of Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking (CrT) is generally characterized as an abstract thinking process, detached from the (bodily) actions one engages in during the process. Though recent cognitive theories assert that all thinking is action-based, the embodied and distributed cognitive processes underlying CrT have not been identified. We present preliminary findings from the first iteration of a designbased research project which involves probing possible connections between CrT and one's (bodily) action sequences. We performed sequential pattern mining and qualitative analysis on the study participants' actions logs to find differences in participants CrT processes. Our analysis showed that only a subset of participants contextualized their assumptions, inferences, and implications in the different information resources available in the environment. A majority of participants' actions performed within the interface were incoherent. These results have implications for automated analyses of the CrT process, and for the design of AI-based scaffolds to support CrT development

Designing Tangible as an Orchestration Tool for Collaborative Activities

Orchestrating collaborative learning activities is a challenge, even with the support of technology. Tangibles as orchestration tools represent an ambient and embodied approach to sharing information about the learning content and flow of the activity, thus facilitating both collaboration and its orchestration. Therefore, we propose tangibles as a solution to orchestrate productive collaborative learning. Concretely, this paper makes three contributions toward this end: First, we analyze the design space for tangibles as an orchestration tool to support collaborative learning and identify twelve essential dimensions. Second, we present five tangible tools for collaborative learning activities in face-to-face and online classrooms. Third, we present principles and challenges to designing tangibles for orchestrating collaborative learning based on our findings from the evaluation of ten educational experts who evaluated these tools using a usability scale and open questions. The key findings were: (1) they had good usability; (2) their main advantages are ease of use and support for collaborative learning; (3) their main disadvantages are limited functions and the difficulty to scale them to more users. We conclude by providing reflections and recommendations for the future design of tangibles for orchestration