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599
Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context
- Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks
, 2001
"... This paper presents a tool developed for the purpose of assessing teaching presence in online courses that make use of computer conferencing, and preliminary results from the use of this tool. The method of analysis is based on Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s [1] model of critical thinking and prac ..."
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Cited by 187 (4 self)
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This paper presents a tool developed for the purpose of assessing teaching presence in online courses that make use of computer conferencing, and preliminary results from the use of this tool. The method of analysis is based on Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s [1] model of critical thinking and practical inquiry in a computer conferencing context. The concept of teaching presence is constitutively defined as having three categories – design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction. Indicators that we search for in the computer conference transcripts identify each category. Pilot testing of the instrument reveals interesting differences in the extent and type of teaching presence found in different graduate level online courses.
Addressing the Challenges of Inquiry-Based Learning through Technology and Curriculum Design
- The Journal of the Learning Sciences
, 1999
"... Inquiry experiences can provide valuable opportunities for students to improve their understanding of both science content and scientific practices. However, the implementation of inquiry learning in classrooms presents a number of significant challenges. We have been exploring these challenges thro ..."
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Cited by 177 (7 self)
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Inquiry experiences can provide valuable opportunities for students to improve their understanding of both science content and scientific practices. However, the implementation of inquiry learning in classrooms presents a number of significant challenges. We have been exploring these challenges through a program of research on the use of scientific visualization technologies to support inquiry-based learning in the geosciences. In this paper, we describe five significant challenges to implementing inquiry-based learning and present strategies for addressing them through the design of technology and curriculum. We present a design history covering four generations of software and curriculum to show how these challenges arise in classrooms and how the design strategies respond to them. Students at all grade levels and in every domain of science should have the opportunity to use scientific inquiry and develop the ability to think and act in ways associated with inquiry...(National Scie...
Transcending the Individual Human Mind -- Creating Shared Understanding through Collaborative Design
- ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER HUMAN-INTERACTION
, 2000
"... Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead ..."
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Cited by 159 (57 self)
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Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although
A walk on the WILD side: How wireless handhelds may change CSCL
- International Journal of Cognition and Technology
, 2002
"... Designs for CSCL applications usually presume a desktop/laptop computer. Yet future classrooms are likely to be organized around Wireless Internet Learning Devices (WILD) that resemble graphing calculators or Palm handhelds, connected by short-range wireless networking. WILD learning will have physi ..."
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Cited by 128 (9 self)
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Designs for CSCL applications usually presume a desktop/laptop computer. Yet future classrooms are likely to be organized around Wireless Internet Learning Devices (WILD) that resemble graphing calculators or Palm handhelds, connected by short-range wireless networking. WILD learning will have physical affordances that are different from today's computer lab, and different from classrooms with 5 students per computer. These differing affordances may lead to learning activities that deviate significantly from today's images of K-12 CSCL activities. Drawing upon research across a range of recent handheld projects, we suggest application-level affordances around which WILDbased CSCL has begun to organize: (a) augmenting physical space, (b) leveraging topological space, (c) aggregating coherently across all students, (d) conducting the class, and (e) act becomes artifact. We speculate on how CSCL research may consequently evolve towards a focus on kinds of systemic coupling in an augmented activity space.
MOOSE Crossing: Construction, Community, and Learning in a Networked Virtual World for Kids
, 1997
"... In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A "constructi ..."
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Cited by 124 (12 self)
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In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A "constructionist" approach to use of the Internet makes particularly good use of its educational potential. The Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of "constructionist cultures." These issues are explored through a specific example: MOOSE Crossing, a text-based virtual world (or "MUD") designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children ages 8 to 13. On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures. Kids have made baby penguins that respond differently to five kinds of food, fortune tellers who predict the future, and the place at the end of the rainbow--- answer a riddle, and you get the pot of gold. This thesis discusses the design principles underlying a new programming language (MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for children to learn to program on MOOSE Crossing. It presents a detailed analysis, using an ethnographic methodology, of children's activities and learning experiences on MOOSE Crossing, with special focus on seven children who participated in a weekly after-school program from October 1995 through February 1997. In its analysis of children's activities, this thesis explores the relationship between construction and community. It describes how the MOOSE Crossing children motivated and supported one another's learning experiences: community provided support for learning through design and...
From Content to context: videogames as designed experience
- Educational Researcher
, 2006
"... Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game pla ..."
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Cited by 88 (6 self)
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Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game play as a designed experience. Players ’ understandings are developed through cycles of performance within the gameworlds, which instantiate particular theories of the world (ideological worlds). Players develop new identities both through game play and through the gaming communities in which these identities are enacted. Thus research that examines game-based learning needs to account for both kinds of interactions within the gameworld and in broader social contexts. Examples from curriculum developed for Civilization III and Supercharged! show how games can communicate powerful ideas and open new identity trajectories for learners.
Fostering collaborative knowledge construction with visualization tools’. Learning and Instruction 12
, 2002
"... with visualization tools ..."
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Scaffolding complex learning: The mechanisms of structuring and problematizing student work
- The Journal of the Learning Sciences
, 2004
"... There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex con-tent and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented ..."
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Cited by 75 (0 self)
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There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex con-tent and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented in a broad range of software tools. I ar-gue that two complementary mechanisms can explain how a diversity of scaffolding approaches in software act to support learners. Software tools can help structure the learning task, guiding learners through key components and supporting their plan-ning and performance. In addition, tools can shape students ’ performance and under-standing of the task in terms of key disciplinary content and strategies and thus problematize this important content. Although making the task more difficult in the short term, by forcing learners to engage with this complexity, such scaffolded tools make this work more productive opportunities for learning. I present arguments for these mechanisms in terms of the obstacles learners face, and I present several brief examples to illustrate their use in design guidelines. Finally, I examine how the mechanisms of structuring and problematizing are sometimes complementary and sometimes in tension in design, discuss design tradeoffs in developing scaffolded in-vestigation tools for learners, and consider the reliance of scaffolding on a classroom system of supports. There is much interest in education reform in using technology to support learners. One aspect of the argument for technology has been that software can be used to help learners succeed in more complex tasks than they could otherwise master (Davis &
The roles of representations and tools in the chemistry laboratory and their implications for chemistry learning
- The Journal of the Learning Sciences
, 2000
"... In this historical and observational study, we describe how scientists use representa-tions and tools in the chemistry laboratory, and we derive implications from these findings for the design of educational environments. In our observations we found that chemists use representations and tools to me ..."
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Cited by 73 (5 self)
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In this historical and observational study, we describe how scientists use representa-tions and tools in the chemistry laboratory, and we derive implications from these findings for the design of educational environments. In our observations we found that chemists use representations and tools to mediate between the physical sub-stances that they study and the aperceptual chemical entities and processes that under-lie and account for the material qualities of these physical substances. There are 2 im-portant, interrelated aspects of this mediational process: the material and the social. The 1st emphasizes the surface features of both physical phenomena and symbolic representations, features that can be perceived and manipulated. The 2nd underscores
Analysing student interaction processes in order to improve collaboration
- The DEGREE approach. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education
, 2000
"... Abstract: Computer mediated collaborative learning allows the recording of a large amount of data about the interaction processes and the task performance of a group of students. This empirical data is a very rich source to mine for a variety of purposes. Some purposes are of practical nature like, ..."
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Cited by 72 (0 self)
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Abstract: Computer mediated collaborative learning allows the recording of a large amount of data about the interaction processes and the task performance of a group of students. This empirical data is a very rich source to mine for a variety of purposes. Some purposes are of practical nature like, for instance, the improvement of peer awareness on the on-going work. Other purposes are of a more long-term and fundamental scope such as to understand socio-cognitive correlations between collaboration and learning. Manual approaches to fully monitor and exploit these data are out of the question. A mixture of computational methods to organise and extract information from all this rough material together with partial and focused in-depth manual analysis seems a more feasible and scalable framework. In this paper we present an approach to characterise group and individual behaviour in computer-supported collaborative work in terms of a set of attributes. In this way a process-oriented qualitative description of a mediated group activity is given from three perspectives: (i) a group performance in reference to other groups, (ii) each member in reference to other members of the group, and (iii) the group by itself. In our approach collaboration is conversation-based. Then we propose a method to automatically compute these attributes for processes where joint activity and interactions are carried out by means of semi-structured messages. The final set of attributes has been fixed through an extensive period of iterative design and experimentation. Our design approach allows us to extract relevant information at different levels of abstraction. Visualization and global behavior analysis tools are discussed. Shallow analyses as presented in this paper are needed and useful to tackle with a large amount of information, in order to enhance computer-mediated support.
