Measuring the impact of technological scaffolding interventions on micro-level processes of self-regulated workplace learning

This paper reports on the findings of an exploratory study in which the effects of technological scaffolding interventions on micro-level processes of self-regulated learning in the workplace were investigated. Empirical research in the workplace has been much less represented than in formal education. Even less research is available that aimed to identify which technological scaffolding interventions, out of those available in a learning environment, had the highest influence on specific micro-level process of self-regulated learning. This paper reports on the findings of a case study conducted in the naturalistic settings of two organizations in Europe (N = 53) for the period of two months. Trace data about the events of engagement with the technological scaffolding interventions and micro-level processes of self-regulated learning were collected. Both a transition graph based analysis of the temporal dependencies of the collected events and multiple linear regression analyses showed that an intervention that promoted social awareness had consistently the highest effect on all the micro-level processes used in the study. This intervention was followed by the intervention that offered system-generated recommendations about learning paths, learning activities and knowledge assets to stimulate engagement into the micro-level processes within the forethought or preparatory phase of self-regulated learning. These findings suggest that both the social and organizational contexts should be taken into account when developing interventions aimed at supporting the forethought and engagement phases. Further discussion about research, methodological, and learning technology design implications is provided.     

Applying social learning analytics to message boards in online distance learning: A case study

Social learning analytics introduces tools and methods that help improving the learning process by providing useful information about the actors and their activity in the learning system. This study examines the relation between SNA parameters and student outcomes, between network parameters and global course performance, and it shows how visualizations of social learning analytics can help observing the visible and invisible interactions occurring in online distance education.The findings from our empirical study show that future research should further investigate whether there are conditions under which social network parameters are reliable predictors of academic performance, but also advises against relying exclusively in social network parameters for predictive purposes. The findings also show that data visualization is a useful tool for social learning analytics, and how it may provide additional information about actors and their behaviors for decision making in online distance learning.     

The impact of learning design on student behaviour,satisfaction and performance: A cross-institutional comparison across 151 modules

Pedagogically informed designs of learning are increasingly of interest to researchers in blended and online learning, as learning design is shown to have an impact on student behaviour and outcomes. Although learning design is widely studied, often these studies are individual courses or programmes and few empirical studies have connected learning designs of a substantial number of courses with learning behaviour. In this study we linked 151 modules and 111.256 students with students' behaviour (<400 million minutes of online behaviour), satisfaction and performance at the Open University UK using multiple regression models. Our findings strongly indicate the importance of learning design in predicting and understanding Virtual Learning Environment behaviour and performance of students in blended and online environments. In line with proponents of social learning theories, our primary predictor for academic retention was the time learners spent on communication activities, controlling for various institutional and disciplinary factors. Where possible, appropriate and well designed communication tasks that align with the learning objectives of the course may be a way forward to enhance academic retention.     

多媒体社会事件分析综述

由于网络技术的飞速发展,自媒体、微博、论坛等基于互联网的多种交流渠道日渐完善,人们能够方便地在线生成和共享丰富的社会多媒体内容.社会事件数据具有跨平台、多模态、大规模、噪声大等特点,基于多媒体社会事件的分析研究非常具有挑战性.因此,如何对社会媒体数据进行处理,研究社会事件分析方法、设计有效的社会事件分析模型成为社会事件...     

Examining the designs of computer-based assessment and its impact on student engagement,satisfaction, and pass rates

Many researchers who study the impact of computer-based assessment (CBA) focus on the affordances or complexities of CBA approaches in comparison to traditional assessment methods. This study examines how CBA approaches were configured within and between modules, and the impact of assessment design on students' engagement, satisfaction, and pass rates. The analysis was conducted using a combination of longitudinal visualisations, correlational analysis, and fixed-effect models on 74 undergraduate modules and their 72,377 students. Our findings indicate that educators designed very different assessment strategies, which significantly influenced student engagement as measured by time spent in the virtual learning environment (VLE). Weekly analyses indicated that assessment activities were balanced with other learning activities, which suggests that educators tended to aim for a consistent workload when designing assessment strategies. Since most of the assessments were computer-based, students spent more time on the VLE during assessment weeks. By controlling for heterogeneity within and between modules, learning design could explain up to 69% of the variability in students' time spent on the VLE. Furthermore, assessment activities were significantly related to pass rates, but no clear relation with satisfaction was found. Our findings highlight the importance of CBA and learning design to how students learn online.     

《计算机基础知识》教学谈讨

为了提高《计算机基础知识》的课堂教学质量,教师必须关注教学策略的设计和运用。要采取多种教学手段,为学生提供多样化的教学平台,激发他们的求知欲望,保持恒久的学习兴趣和动力;培养他们主动求知和渴望创造的学习品质,让他们获得成功的体验,提高学生的学习效能。     

The impact of general and specific performance and self-efficacy on learning with computer-based concept mapping

When students learn a new and challenging task, for which they have very limited corresponding personal or vicarious experiences to refer, it is important to understand how their self-efficacy beliefs evolve during the course of sequential lessons; how they differ in the way their general learning performance and self-efficacy influence their ratings of task-specific self-efficacy and performance; and, how such differences may result in different learning outcomes and motivations for learning. By examining a group of 66 students engaged in learning to construct good concept maps with computer software, this study revealed several important findings on these questions. Students generally tended to initially overestimate their ability to successfully carry out the required task. They also varied in the way their general self-efficacy and performance were associated with their task-specific self-efficacy and performance. And, these differences did appear to be associated with different learning outcomes and motivations for learning. These results indicate that investigating individual differences in students’ patterns of association between general and specific performance and their self-efficacy may lead to a better understanding of how students differ in their levels of motivation and outcomes when learning a new and challenging task.     

《计算机基础知识》教学谈讨

为了提高《计算机基础知识》的课堂教学质量，教师必须关注教学策略的设计和运用。要采取多种教学手段，为学生提供多样化的教学平台，激发他们的求知欲望，保持恒久的学习兴趣和动力；培养他们主动求知和渴望创造的学习品质，让他们获得成功的体验，提高学生的学习效能。     

Learning technologies: Affective and social issues in computer-supported collaborative learning

This paper is concerned with affective issues in learning technologies in a collaborative context. Traditionally in learning there has been a division between cognition and affect: where cognition is concerned with skills and processes such as thinking and problem-solving and affect with emotional areas such as motivation, attitudes, feelings. Affective issues have been viewed as somewhat problematic in studying learning, so although it is well known that learner attitude, motivation, and emotional state are very important, they have often been excluded from the frame of research, or studied separately from cognitive learning. This position is gradually changing and this paper considers what previous research has been conducted in these areas. It discusses the role of affective factors in three main areas of collaboration: in settings where learners are co-located, in on-line communities and to support and develop socio-emotional skills. It considers relevant developments in these areas, what the outcomes have been and suggests important directions for future research.     

The impact of on-demand metacognitive help on effortful behaviour: A longitudinal study using task-related visual analytics

This longitudinal study investigates the differences in learners' effortful behaviour over time due to receiving metacognitive help—in the form of on-demand task-related visual analytics. Specifically, learners' interactions (N = 67) with the tasks were tracked during four self-assessment activities, conducted at four discrete points in time, over a period of 8 weeks. The considered and coded time points were: (a) prior to providing the metacognitive help; (b) while the task-related visual analytics were available (treatment); (c) after the removal of the treatment; and (d) while the option to receive metacognitive help was available again. To measure learners' effortful behaviour across the self-assessment activities, this study utilized learners' response-times to correctly/wrongly complete the tasks and on-task effort expenditure. The panel data analysis shown that the usage of metacognitive help caused statistically significant changes in learners' effortful behaviour, mostly in the third and fourth phase. Statistically significant changes were detected also in the usage of metacognitive help. These results provide empirical evidence on the benefits of task-related visual analytics to support learners' on-task engagement, and suggest relevant cues on how metacognitive help could be designed and prompted by focusing on the “task”, instead of the “self”.     

支持深度学习的视觉数据库管理系统研究进展

计算机视觉因其强大的学习能力,在各种真实场景中得到了广泛应用.随着数据库的发展,利用数据库中成熟的数据管理技术来处理视觉分析应用,已成为一种日益增长的研究趋势.图像、视频和文本等多模态数据的相互融合处理,也促进了视觉分析应用的多样性和准确性.近年来,因深度学习的兴起,支持深度学习的视觉分析应用开始受到广泛关注.然而,传统的数据库管理技术在深度学习场景下面临着复杂视觉分析语义难以表达、应用执行效率低等问题.因此,支持深度学习的视觉数据库管理系统得到了广泛关注.综述了目前视觉数据库管理系统的研究进展:首先,总结了视觉数据库管理系统在不同层面上面临的挑战,包括编程接口、查询优化、执行调度和数据存储;其次,分别探讨了上述4个层面上的相关技术;最后,对视觉数据库管理系统未来的研究方向进行了展望.     

Students’ views on technology and writing: The power of personal history

As scholars, writers, and teachers, I believe that we should try harder to understand students’ perspectives on the use of computers in their academic work. This article begins to provide a sense of students’ perspectives on questions of technology, thus presenting a fuller picture of the context within which we teach. Drawing on a variety of methods, including a survey and the writings of a small group of students enrolled in a Writing and Technology course, this article expresses some of these stories generally hidden from an instructor's perspective and reveals that, despite what the media might tell us, students are not as prepared to utilize technology as we might assume. Furthermore, the student narratives suggest that English departments and writing programs can play an important role in assisting students who are unfamiliar with computer technologies, helping them to gain the computer literacy they need to succeed at the university.     

Some like it lots: The influence of interactivity and reliance on credibility

This study has four primary purposes: to investigate the level of interactivity with 15 sources of political information, determine the degree of reliance on each of the sources, assess perceptions of credibility, and compare the strength of interactivity to the strength of reliance on judgments of credibility. This study includes sources that have received little attention in the credibility literature such as social network sites, Twitter, and mobile device applications. Respondents interact with and rely on the sources moderately. Credibility ratings range from moderate to highly credible. Reliance predicts credibility of 14 of 15 sources as compared to interactivity that predicts credibility of just 9 of 15 sources. Interactivity with sources that are inherently collaborative (e.g. Twitter, social media, talk radio) more strongly predicts credibility than interactivity with sources that are more source-to-user based (e.g. CNN, political websites).     

Associations between technological scaffolding and micro-level processes of self-regulated learning: A workplace study

This paper reports the results of a study of the association of a set of technological scaffolding interventions – implemented in a learning software called Learn-B – with micro-level processes of self-regulated learning in the workplace. The study was conducted in the context of two European organizations, in which the study participants (N = 53) used the learning software Learn-B for two months in their regular activities. Data about perceived usefulness of the technological scaffolding interventions and traces about the events of the actual use of the technological interventions and micro-level processes of self-regulated learning were collected and analyzed. The analysis of the data showed that when directly asked about their own perspectives, the participants tended to rely on their organizational context in their planning phase. The results also indicate that the participants did consider the social context of their organization when planning their learning goals, but it was not found as the most influential factor. The analysis of the trace data revealed a moderate balance between reliance on both social and organizational contexts. The analysis of the theorized contingencies via trace data showed that the participants’ usefulness perceptions of the proposed interventions for their self-regulated processes, poorly matched with their actual learning actions.     

Learning by foraging: The impact of individual knowledge and social tags on web navigation processes

The World Wide Web provides a tremendously large quantity of information. When users search for information or products on the Web, they will presumably be inclined to choose their path of navigation on the basis of their prior knowledge. In those cases in which the prior knowledge of users is incorrect, however, this navigation process is assumed to lead to suboptimal search results. In an experimental study with 180 participants, we examined to what extent both the users’ prior knowledge and social tags - which capture the collective knowledge of a Web community in tag clouds - influenced the navigation of users and triggered incidental learning processes during the Web search. The results supported the assumption that the users’ prior knowledge is indeed crucial for navigation, as users followed those tags which corresponded to their internal associations. Moreover, we found that social tags also affected the navigation behavior of users, as a strong collective association of social tags led to a high selection rate for these tags. Finally, the results showed that social tags triggered incidental learning processes, as those internal associations which corresponded to tags with a strong collective association were strengthened during navigation. The implications of these findings for further research are discussed.     

The effect of nonhuman’s external regulation on young children’s self-regulation to regulate their own process of learning

The present study sought to examine the effect of nonhuman’s external regulation on children’s self-regulation to regulate their own process of learning and to what extent did children succeed in terms of application when they talk and think while act alone with nonhuman’s external regulator. The Aginian’s methodology (, , ,  and ) that used an isolated, computer-based learning system and acts as a standalone learning environment with special set of tasks was used by hundred healthy preschool children. The results showed that young children were able to regulate their own process of learning and engage with their full free-will without the need of their real teacher’s regulation. The conclusion provided evidence that the verbalization of thinking aloud should occur spontaneously by nature, the nonhuman’s external regulation has a positive effect on young children’s development when they act with their full free-will, and has a positive effect on their behavior either.     

基于社会计算和深度学习的社交网络特定内容监控

社交网络极大地方便了人们的生活,加速了信息的共享,但同时也被用于不良和敏感信息的传播,内容安全问题亟待解决。针对此类问题,提出了一套基于社会计算和深度学习的社交网络特定内容监控体系,首先基于成对监督信息实现以内容为导向的半监督社区发现,找到所关心的特定人群;然后对所挖掘的特定人群进行实时监控并获取其发布的内容,对图像和视频进行实时自动内容识别;同时针对实网数据误报多的问题提出面向多负类的误判修正方法,以达到收集实时信息,净化网络环境,在一定程度上预防犯罪的目的。     

Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation,enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes

The benefits of teamwork and collaboration have long been advocated by many educational theories, such as constructivist and social learning models. Among the various applications of collaborative learning, the iterative team-based learning (TBL) process proposed by Michaelsen, Fink, and Knight (2002) has been successfully used in the classroom without computer support. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation results of a classroom application of the TBL process, which was modified to include computer mediation. We call this process computer-supported team-based learning (CS-TBL). This work extends learning in small teams from the traditional classroom to the hybrid classroom where students meet both face-to-face and online by emphasizing the importance of online team interactions. The outcomes are assessed through an evaluation model that considers the impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes. The study results indicate that motivation influences the relationship between team interactions and perceived learning. Enjoyment is affected by motivation and perceptions of team members’ contributions, with the implication that students who perceive that the team interactions are adding value to their education will better enjoy learning and will experience higher-level learning outcomes.     

The impact of paper-based,computer-based and mobile-based self-assessment on students' science motivation and achievement

The present study focuses on the implementation of a self - assessment procedure in a Physics class, extended during a seven weeks period in a European secondary level school. The researchers used three modes of assessment based on paper and pencil, computer-web and mobile devices respectively. The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of each mode of assessment on students' motivation and achievement. Analysis of pre- and post-motivation tests revealed a more positive motivational orientation of students towards computers and mobile devices as assessment delivery mediums. Also, student evaluation implemented after the phase of the experimental procedure showed a significant increase in learning achievement for low-achieving students who participated in the mobile-based and computer-based assessment. The positive effects of computers and mobile devices on students' learning motivation suggest that they can be used as a promising alternative to paper and pencil assessment procedures.