The effect of scaffolding students’ context-generating cognitive activity in technology-enhanced case-based learning

This study investigates the hypothesis that students’ learning and problem-solving performance in ill-structured domains can be improved, if elaborative question prompts are used to activate students’ context-generating cognitive processes, during case study. Two groups of students used a web-based learning environment to criss-cross and study case-based material in the software project management domain. The experimental group was additionally prompted to consistently answer a set of questions based on a model of context-generating processes, meant to engage students in deeper processing of information presented in cases. Students were also classified as having either “complex” or “simple” EB profile (based on their epistemological beliefs record), thereby establishing a 2 × 2 factorial design. Results indicated that scaffolding treatment had a significant main effect on students’ performance, with the experimental group performing better in both domain knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer post-test items. There is also tentative indication that EB profile and scaffolding treatment interact, with complex-EB learners benefiting most from the scaffolded condition. Overall, the study provides evidence that it is possible to improve individual learning in a technology environment for case-based learning, by implementing appropriate questioning strategies that trigger students to activate their context-generating cognitive processes, while studying the contextually rich material of cases.     

Computer mediated communication for social and academic purposes: Profiles of use and University students’ gratifications

The present study approaches the Internet as a social space, where university students make use of computer mediated communication (CMC) applications, i.e. e-mail, instant messaging and social network sites, in order to satisfy social and academic needs. We focus on university students, because they represent one of the most avid groups of CMC users and additionally, because they are expected to carry their perceptions of media with them into the work place and their social life. In order to investigate this issue, we conducted an empirical research using, as a target group, a sample of students from a specific Greek University. Grounded in the “uses and gratifications” perspective, we investigated the various profiles of CMC use by students along with (a) the students’ perceptions about social and academic usefulness of CMC applications, (b) the extent up to which these perceptions are correlated with students’ prior experience with the use of CMC applications, and (c) how both of these factors can predict the frequency of present use of CMC for social or academic purposes respectively. The results reveal that although these three CMC applications constitute “functional alternatives” (media that satisfy similar needs) they are different to the degree of their “functionality” for the gratification of social and academic needs. Furthermore, the degree of CMC use by students is not correlated with the years of CMC experience, but with the profile of use that students dynamically adopt according to their daily needs and preferences. The results provide evidence for the current CMC use by university students and can be useful for the implementation of further academic policies regarding CMC use in Higher Education settings.     

Uses of a private “virtual margin” on public threaded discussions: An exploratory lab-based study

Threaded discussion environments are commonly used to support educational dialogue; however their interfaces do not directly support the private work that students do to interpret and prepare responses to public postings. We examine the use of a private “virtual margin” added to an existing threaded discussion environment via a proxy server architecture. This margin area provided users with their own private writing space adjacent to the public space, allowing persistent annotations both on individual posts and indexes to posts. Unprompted uses of the system were examined in an exploratory lab-based study. Four graduate students completed an assignment designed to be authentic to typical course work, in which they reviewed a set of posts made by other students and developed at least one new post that would contribute to the group’s understanding of the course material. We discuss the unprompted uses made of the virtual margin during participants’ completion of this task, and discuss what these uses suggest about the potential for private marginalia to contribute to students’ learning via public threaded discussions.     

Constructing essentialism: Computers and Composition and the “‘risk’ of essence”

Feminist authors in Computers and Composition have generally favored social constructionist approaches to identity, yet a subtle reliance on essentialist assumptions about women (sometimes tied directly to the body) still exists. In order to explore this phenomenon, I rely on the theories of Diana Fuss and Elizabeth Grosz to unpack the essentialist/constructionist binary. Then, relying on Laura Brady's explication of “strategic” and “tactical” deployments of essentialism in composition studies, I discuss two previous articles in Computers and Composition that successfully negotiated issues of women's identity partly through essentialist assumptions. The ways in which the articles under discussion here essentialized teenage girls become stepping stones toward a reconstruction of girls’ identities. Thus, although essentialism can be problematic, feminists interested in writing and technology can still take what Diana Fuss calls a “‘risk’ of essence” to further feminist goals.     

Dream Bloggers Invent the University

This essay focuses on the blogs authored by students in interdisciplinary, writing-intensive seminars on the art and science of dreaming at Queens College and Princeton University. The writing for these courses requires students to “invent the university” in the sense that they must find ways to bridge the public and private, or the theoretical and the personal. I argue that blogs have the potential to help students develop strong and distinctive voices in the pursuit of intellectual inquiry—and that because of this, they can help teachers and scholars overcome the intellectual divides between the “expressivist” and “constructivist” pedagogies represented by Peter Elbow and David Bartholomae respectively. In the concluding section, I examine blog entries in which students recount instances in which they dreamed about our course readings (and other materials). These accounts are striking because they offer evidence that students were internalizing and synthesizing course material. To explain this internalization and synthesis, I turn to recent developments in cognitive theory that offer new ways of thinking about learning that I believe will help bridge the expressivist-constructivist divide and develop methods for teaching voice as a rhetorical element of writing, one that is essential to intellectual inquiry.     

Contending with Terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the Academic and Public Spheres

Scholars have begun naming and defining terms that describe the multifaceted kinds of composing practices occurring in their classrooms and scholarship. This paper analyzes the terms “multimedia” and “multimodal,” examining how each term has been defined and presenting examples of documents, surveys, web sites and others to show when and how each term is used in both academic and non-academic/industry contexts. This paper shows that rather than the use of these terms being driven by any difference in their definitions, their use is more contingent upon the context and the audience to whom a particular discussion is being directed. While “multimedia” is used more frequently in public/industry contexts, “multimodal” is preferred in the field of composition and rhetoric. This preference for terms can be best explained by understanding the differences in how texts are valued and evaluated in these contexts. “Multimodal” is a term valued by instructors because of its emphasis on design and process, whereas “multimedia” is valued in the public sphere because of its emphasis on the production of a deliverable text. Ultimately, instructors need to continue using both terms in their teaching and scholarship because although “multimodal” is a term that is more theoretically accurate to describe the cognitive and socially situated choices students are making in their compositions, “multimedia” works as a gateway term for instructors and scholars to interface with those outside of academia in familiar and important ways.     

WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project

In this essay, I explore one advancement in particular—the Semantic Web—and discuss ways in which it stands to change students’ interaction with information in digital spaces, and how new forms of interaction could impact the teaching of writing. I go back to the earliest days of the Web in order to remind readers how information retrieval has evolved in the digital age. I also provide a general discussion of the vision, current state, and possible futures of the Semantic Web, and I focus on how the Semantic Web might alter the research process and, more importantly, the research-writing relationship. I also offer suggestions for teaching composition in advance of and for the Semantic Web. Although the Semantic Web is still several years off, I contend that research and writing will merge into a single process, thus presenting new opportunities for the teaching of writing then and, perhaps more importantly, now. These opportunities include helping students to identify the challenges of information retrieval and overload, to see research as more about establishing links and connections between information sources and less about finding the “right” sources, and to write for the Semantic Web—and, in doing so, teach students that researching and writing are inseparable.     

‘Migrating to a new virtual world’: Exploring MMORPG switching through human migration theory

Online gaming has become a popular leisure-time activity. In this study, we enlisted and adapted the Push-Pull-Mooring model, which analyzes human migratory behavior based on the Demographic Migration Theory, to study the game switching of gamers. Data was obtained via an empirical survey of 654 online gamers and then was analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. The results indicate that the Push-Pull-Mooring model can be extended to explain the switching intentions of online gamers. The “mooring effect” appears to have a stronger influence on the player’s switching intention than the “pull effect”, while the “push effect” appears to have no influence at all. We discuss the implications of our findings and offer possible avenues of exploration for managers of online game providers in order to help them understand their customers better.     

The effect of an information ethics course on the information ethics values of students - A Chinese guanxi culture perspective

The development of information technology has a significant influence on social structure and norms, and also impacts upon human behavior. In order to achieve stability and social harmony, people need to respect various norms, and have their rights protected. Students’ information ethics values are of critical and radical importance in achieving this goal. Using qualitative approach, the present study utilizes Kohlberg’s CMD model to measure improvement in students’ “information ethics values” through “technology mediated learning (TML)” models, and to assess the extent to which it is influenced by gender and Chinese guanxi culture. We find that while e-learning improves female students’ “respect rules,” “privacy,” “accessibility” and “intellectual property” values more than male students, the percentages relating to “intellectual property” for females in the higher stages remain lower than for males. Moreover, these results are interpreted from a Chinese guanxi culture perspective. In light of these results, educators should take account of such improvements when designing effective teaching methods and incentives.     

Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production

This essay investigates how teachers and Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) can use commons-based peer-to-peer technologies to change their roles, to alter writing instruction and literacy genres, and to transform our processes of learning, writing, and collaborating. The essay introduces the term “datagogy” to theorize about the synergy that takes place when “crowds” of teachers employ technologies to construct and debate shared pedagogies. The essay juxtaposes the values and ideologies of two metaphorical communities, the Community of Power and the Community of Learning, explores how these communities use and design online learning communities, and concludes that datagogies are unique interfaces that emphasize the values of the Community of Learning as opposed to the values of the Community of Power. Finally, the essay argues that English studies will concede the central pedagogical stage of the 21st century unless we develop datagogies that engage the creative power of individuals working collaboratively in a climate that respects diversity and independent thinking.     

Cross-age peer tutors in asynchronous discussion groups: Exploring the impact of three types of tutor training on patterns in tutor support and on tutor characteristics

This study was conducted in an authentic university setting with fourth-year Educational Sciences’ students operating as online peer tutors to facilitate freshman tutees’ online collaboration and knowledge construction in a blended “Instructional Sciences” course. Taking into account prior research uncovering weaknesses in online peer tutor behaviour, the aim of the study was to explore the possibility to optimise the quality and the nature of online peer support. In this respect, the study examined the impact of three tutor training conditions (multidimensional support, model/coach, and control condition) on peer tutors’ actual tutor behaviour in asynchronous discussion groups and on tutors’ self-efficacy beliefs, perceived collective efficacy, and training evaluation. Quantitative content analysis was applied to study online peer tutor behaviour. More specifically, two coding schemes were used focusing respectively on the occurrence of different e-moderating activities and on the evolution from modeling to coaching behaviour. Tutors’ self-efficacy beliefs, perceived collective efficacy, and training evaluation were assessed by means of questionnaires.     

Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies

This paper reports qualitative findings from a study that investigated Australian university staff and students’ perceptions and use of current and emerging technologies both in their daily lives and in teaching and learning contexts. Forty-six first-year students and 31 teaching and support staff from three Australian universities took part in interviews and focus groups. This paper examines how students and staff reported on their use of new technologies in their daily lives, their stated reasons for using those technologies, and their beliefs about the benefits and limitations of using technologies as teaching and learning tools. The findings question assumptions that have been made about a “digital divide” between “digital native” students and their “digital immigrant” teachers in higher education today, suggesting we need to develop a more sophisticated understanding about the role technologies play in the lives of both students and staff. A better understanding of student and staff perspectives will allow for more informed decisions about the implementation of educational technologies in today’s higher education institutions.     

The effects of problem-based learning on the classroom community perceptions and achievement of web-based education students

Web-based education as an alternative to face-to-face teaching is now being extended as an application to higher education. Much effort is undertaken to provide multimedia rich, attractive content to learners. While the use of multimedia technologies has a noticeable effect on students’ learning, so does the selected teaching methodology. Underpinned by the Constructivist approach, problem-based learning is one of the methods that could be applied in web-based learning environments. The current study investigates the effects of problem-based learning on students’ classroom community perceptions and their achievement. It focuses on the tertiary level course “Introduction to Computers” offered by the Department of Business Administration of the Distance Education Program at a higher education institution in Turkey. The results indicated that students who worked on problem-based projects felt much more ‘connected’ to other class members when compared to the control group. They achieved higher scores in the post-tests although their online midterm and final examination scores did not indicate any difference between the groups.     

Designing efficiencies: The parallel narratives of distance education and composition studies

Distance education (DE) programs at many universities have been initiated to generate new efficiencies for the academic process, particularly cost efficiency and pedagogical efficiency. In writing studies, this move toward digitally mediated instruction has, in some classrooms, recreated practices that resonate with the pedagogy that resulted from Current-Traditional Rhetoric (CTR). Thus, a trace of distance education's and composition studies’ parallel narratives demonstrates that writing studies has already addressed some of the questions (and concerns) that online writing instruction raises. By specifically focusing on the tensions created by negotiating cost efficiencies and pedagogical efficiencies with communication efficiencies and medium efficiencies, we interrogate current administrative decisions as well their pedagogical outcomes. We conclude by proposing strategies for rearticulating future narratives about online writing instruction in potentially productive ways.     

“Tryin to make a dolla outa fifteen cent”: Teaching composition with the Internet at an HBCU

Drawing upon nearly a decade of experience, I describe the challenges and advantages of teaching composition with the Internet at Howard University; I also explore the implications for other historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). First, I discuss the digital divide that has made it so difficult for many HBCU faculty members and students to access the Internet for composition courses. Next, I describe how students and I succeeded in harnessing the Internet not only to practice high-level writing skills but to “do cultural work”: to establish online “safe houses” for African American English, to collaborate with White North Americans and Black South Africans, and to publish Afrocentric material on the Web. In closing, I identify the pedagogical strategies that turned the Internet into a productive tool for the students in my writing courses.     

Eighth graders’ web searching strategies and outcomes: The role of task types,web experiences and epistemological beliefs

This study reported an investigation of eighth graders’ (14-year-olds) web searching strategies and outcomes, and then analyzed their correlations with students’ web experiences, epistemological beliefs, and the nature of searching tasks. Eighty-seven eighth graders were asked to fill out a questionnaire for probing epistemological beliefs (from positivist to constructivist-oriented views) and finished three different types of searching tasks. Their searching process was recorded by screen capture software and answers were reviewed by two expert teachers based on their accuracy, richness and soundness. Five quantitative indicators were used to assess students’ searching strategies: number of keywords, visited pages, maximum depth of exploration, refinement of keyword, and number of words used in the first keyword. The main findings derived from this study suggested that, students with richer web experiences could find more correct answers in “close-ended” search tasks. In addition, students with better metacognitive skills such as keyword refinement tended to achieve more successful searching outcomes in such tasks. However, in “open-ended” tasks, where questions were less certain and answers were more elaborated, students who had more advanced epistemological beliefs, concurring with a constructivist view, had better searching outcomes in terms of their soundness and richness. This study has concluded that epistemological beliefs play an influential role in open-ended Internet learning environments.     

“You’re not in Kansas anymore”: Interactions among semiotic modes in multimodal texts

Research and teaching continue to treat word and image separately and even see image succeeding word in a culture increasingly immersed in digital documents. However, concepts such as Kress’ “semiotics of synaesthesia” stress the relationship between word and image, a critical relationship in teaching students to develop genuinely multimodal texts.     

Public Writing in Gaming Spaces

Although recent composition scholarship has focused on public writing and civic participation, classroom practices do not (yet) seem to match the theory. This trend should not indicate, though, that public writing is not being done—rather that we may have to look beyond the classroom to see our students participating in it. “Public Writing in Gaming Spaces” argues that the writing computer gamers do in and for their online communities is not only directed to clearly definable audiences and with specific purposes, but also has the potential to institute real, measurable change within gaming communities and the larger gaming industry. What is more, unlike conventional academic spaces and workspaces, the playspace in which gamers write is comprised of textual exchange that is self-motivated; the writers themselves collaboratively construct them. “Gamer-authors” ultimately discover that they are agents who have the power, through writing, to shape the electronic worlds—games and other online spaces—they regularly inhabit, putting into sharp relief how writing does, in fact, matter. It can institute change.     

Students’ reflection on online self-correction and peer review to improve writing

Reflection is considered as a mental process of an individual’s internal problem-solving activity and rarely observed in face-to-face instruction. As a consequence, students have few opportunities to observe and learn from each other. This study aimed to arouse students’ reflection on both self-correction (one’s own problem-solving process in writing) and peer review (peers’ problem-solving process in writing) to improve their texts in an online system. A sample of 95 undergraduate students was recruited to write a reflective journal, which was analyzed by content analysis to compare their reflection on self-correction with peer review in writing. Results of this study revealed that reflecting on the differences between self-correction and peer review enabled students to monitor, evaluate, and adjust their writing processes in the pursuit of text improvement. In their reflective journals, students claimed that self-correction helped them detect grammatical errors (local revision) while peer review allowed them to view their own texts from others’ perspectives. Based on others’ perspectives, they could make further revisions on text development, organization, or style (global revision). Through reflection on self-correction and peer review, students were willing to provide further support to peers and learn from each other in the process of writing.