Tesi sul tema "Cooperative and collaborative learning"

Research has shown that language anxiety often hampers performance in spoken communication. However, research has also shown that students experiencing anxiety are helped significantly when teachers adopt cooperative and/or collaborative teaching strategies, two different approaches to group work. This study examines whether or not English teachers in Sweden, working in the context of upper-secondary school, actually perceive these strategies to be as helpful as research shows. It was hypothesized that English teachers employ the two approaches. To explore this topic and hypothesis, three semi-structured interviews were conducted. The results proved the initial hypothesis to be correct since all three teachers who participated use collaborative and cooperative teaching strategies and find them helpful, confirming research findings in other educational contexts; however, collaborative teaching strategies are less common than cooperative strategies. The results are discussed, and it is suggested that it is best if the teachers make the group formations since it facilitates the group work which in turn optimizes the teaching strategies employed and yields improved results for students with language anxiety. The results also showed that it is suggested that teachers not only assess the learners as a whole group, but also the learners individually.

This study examines the effect of first-year college student participation in cooperative learning activities on the development of need for cognition, using pre-test and post-test data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNSLAE). I used Pascarella's (1985) General Causal Model for Assessing the Effects of Differential Environments on Student Learning and Cognitive Development as the theoretical foundation for my study. I examined whether cooperative learning (students teaching each other, faculty encouraging students to work together outside of class, participation in study groups, and students working together outside of class) influenced the development of need for cognition among first-year college students while controlling for student background characteristics, institutional characteristics, academic experiences, and other college student experiences. The results of my study indicate that participation in cooperative learning activities positively influenced the development of need for cognition among first-year college students. This study adds to the literature because it is the first to demonstrate the relationship between cooperative learning and need for cognition. The results are relevant to higher education policy because the study provides evidence that cooperative learning helps students develop a propensity to engage in the thinking process, which will likely impact them throughout their lives. Cooperative learning is considered a good practice in liberal education, so the result of this study provides evidence that liberal education supports positive outcomes related to cognitive processing, which is critical to higher education.

Traditional education system on campus has been using as a legacy over decades to support educational learning. The major change over time has been made by the use of technology supporting students in the academic community. As the majority of students in higher education today belong to the digital-age-student generation, they frequently use online technology to interact with instructors, other learners, and to access online materials. In this study, the result is primarily presented from campus students’ perceptions, to gain a deeper understanding of how social media is being used to support educational and collaborative/cooperative learning. Although, almost all the respondents are frequent social media users, only a quarter of them use such media regularly for academic purposes. Through use of social media in academia, students have encountered with benefits─ as convenience, possibility of interaction anywhere/anytime, time-saving, low price and many others─ in addition to facing to limitations─ such as less effective or spontaneous contact, connection problems, lack of platform compatibility, less creative and innovative thinking, and other issues─ which have been discussed in this study.

This thesis adopted a qualitative research and the characterization of knowledge that is used is exploratory research method with the use of interview as a tool for empirical data collection. Twenty interviews have been conducted with Uppsala University higher education students within random subject disciplines. Among many different social media, the most frequent ones used by majority of students are e-mail, a common asynchronous media to interact with instructors and other learners; and Instant Messaging (IM), a synchronous communication way to interact with co-workers, classmates, or group-mates. Furthermore, learners use social media to coordinate their collaborative/cooperative work, share documents and ask questions. Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and other popular social media are also sometimes used for educational purposes.

The findings indicate that social media seems particularly beneficial for supporting educational learning; though there are some negative aspect and limitations. Learners look at using the technology and social media as a complement to support their studies and collaboration/cooperation. However, not many of them consider using such media as a substitute for face-to-face interactions and the traditional campus education. By drawing on this thesis and the previous studies, proposition on how use of social media supports educational learning in the future has been emerged.

Abstract In the 1980s, academic assessments called for "the ability of individuals and groups to talk, listen judge, and act on issues of common interest" (Morse, 1989, p. 30). More recently, corporate research findings, Are They Ready to Work? Employers' Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce (The Conference Board, Inc., Partnership for 21st Century Skills, The Corporate Voices for Working Families, & Society for Human Resource Management, 2006), report the workplace is seeking college graduates with skill in collaboration (e.g. build diverse relationships, negotiate, manage conflict). While the interest in collaborative learning has expanded in higher education and business, "sparse application" is reported in the college classroom. In academia, collaborative learning has been dependent on cooperative learning research focused on quantitative student achievement outcomes while faculty perceptions of a nonfoundational social constructivist view of collaborative learning is reported as "hardly begun." Along with an increased ambiguity in the terms collaborative and cooperative learning, a comprehensive understanding of collaborative learning and its potential uniqueness, if any, has been skewed. The purpose of this study was to describe and explain collaborative learning from the perspective of selected classroom practitioners representing multiple academic disciplines at a learning-centered institution. The exploratory questions guiding this qualitative case study were: (a) what elements constituted community college collaborative learning practitioners classroom experience and (b) what variables influenced the elements. The theoretical framework undergirding this dissertation is social constructivism nested in constructivism. A purposeful sampling of four instructional criteria indicative of a nonfoundational socio-constructivist concept of collaborative learning guided the participant selection process. The limited candidate list consisted of 31 faculty (20 females, 11 males) at the field site, a learning-centered community college with an FTE near 30,000 for the 2009 - 2010 school year. From 22 initial responses, seven faculty participants (6 female, 1 male) were selected and participated in two semi-structured in-depth interviews. The data collection included interviews, institutional and practitioner documents, the researcher's reflective journal, and field notes. The male participant was removed from the study because he did not submit all requested documents. Therefore, though unintended, six case studies of female instructors were analyzed over an eight month period and reduced to four when saturation was reached, no new information was elicited. All four participants fulfilled all four specified instructional criteria. The central finding able to help the college classroom is the strong identified practice of the defined collaborative learning concept with the articulated understanding limited and term interchange and confusion profound. Thus, the value of this study is the lack of definitional clarity in the terms collaborative and cooperative learning within academia which may offer one possible explanation for the reported sparse application in the college classroom. Supporting this major finding the single most defining attribute of this sophisticated or challenging concept of collaborative learning is the instructional criteria of distributed authority. Manifesting itself in students teaching students the faculty participants high level of consistent classroom application in concert with intellectual negotiation, consensus building, and student ownership of learning constitutes the collaborative learning skills sought by the work force. This study contributed to all three research attributes reported as minimal in the literature, qualitative research from a faculty perspective on the specified concept of collaborative learning. A comprehensive participant selection process was not conducted. In view of the central finding and the existing gaps in the literature, a priority recommendation for future research would be a more intentional expansion of candidate recruitment to potentially increase identification of classroom instructors practicing the particularized concept of collaborative learning. Other research recommendations would include a more focused study of the defined concept of collaborative learning in relationship to: (a) the learning-centered institution, (b) disciplines with a high density of foundational knowledge, (c) student and faculty resistance, (d) lines of authority, and (e) personality, gender, teaching styles, and learning styles.

Despite being expected by administrators to use cooperative learning regularly and effectively in their instructional practices, less than one third of high school teachers in the targeted U.S. public school district implemented the practices above a proficient level, according to district data. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the motivation, strategies, and practices of a representative group of teachers at the high school who were rated highly effective on their 2016-2017 annual summative evaluation in cooperative learning. The research questions concerned the motivation of these teachers to include cooperative learning practices in their classrooms. Two additional research questions focused on the teachers' planning, implementation, and assessment of students and the challenges they encounter while employing cooperative learning practices. The participants included 10 teachers rated highly effective who were selected through homogeneous, purposeful sampling. Qualitative data were collected through semistructured interviews and document reviews of lesson plans and resources. Coding and thematic analysis were used to examine and report that data. Participants revealed concerns regarding the time involved in planning and implementing cooperative learning along with the difficulties of group composition and student assessment during the process. Based on the study results, a professional development series was designed to provide additional training and to establish a district wide definition of cooperative learning. This project study may facilitate positive social change by encouraging and supporting teachers as they better prepare students to overcome the challenges of collaboration and teamwork.

Students with learning difficulties are said by many writers to be prohibited from having a valued learner identity and denied a voice in which to influence their educational circumstances. They are, it is argued, kept submerged in a ‘culture of silence’, where they are homogenised as a deficit category of learners and, therefore, perceived in a one-dimensional way. Such disabling barriers stem from practitioner assumptions and wider sociological influences, which are also part of this same culture. The by-products of this thinking have prevented practitioners from developing more interactive and enabling relationships with their students. Starting with a commitment to listen to student views, and explore accessible, flexible and innovative ways in which to advocate these, the research reported in this thesis sought ways to address this agenda. Set in a further education college, five student co-researchers, four practitioner co-researchers and a facilitator co-researcher embarked on a year long project to learn how the same students could be supported in contributing to their own learning. Being a transparent account, the inquiry was also interested in exploring the difficulties of this endeavour and whether student empowerment would alter the relational dynamics and, therefore, practitioner roles. As the facilitator was instrumental in introducing these ideas, she also examined her own influential role. Data were generated from observations and co-researcher experiences of engaging with roles, body collages, student interviews, photo voice, journals, portfolios and reflective meetings. These exploratory processes and methods were predicated upon the ideological frameworks of the social model of disability and multiple intelligences theory. The study revealed that renegotiated co-researcher roles and body collages were effective processes for enabling reciprocal engagement, causing students to empower themselves and leading practitioners to rethink in ways that had not been anticipated. These processes were also felt to be educationally effective in relation to curriculum aims. Whilst journals and lengthy meetings proved to be impractical and of little use, the reflective journal did prove to be an essential tool for the facilitator, allowing her to draw upon further evidence. The findings indicate that student voice can be raised through collaboration and forging relationships of trust and co-ownership. The thesis concludes by arguing that silences were broken, not least since these collaborative actions are still being used in the particular context in ways that are conducive to everyday practices. Although time and commitment are needed, these are valuable strategies that other marginalised educational communities may benefit from adopting.

During the past few years, pair-programming is a programming technique that has received an increasing amount of attention in the teaching of computer programming skills. Pair programming can briefly be described as a programming situation in which two persons sit at one computer and execute the task together. Although much research has been done on the advantages and disadvantages of pair programming, the assessment of computer skills acquired in pairs still remains a problem. The perception exists that pair assessment is not a reliable indicator of students' computer programming abilities. The purpose of the study was to determine whether (1) the results of programming skills assessed in pairs correlate with those of programming skills assessed individually, and (2) to investigate students' perceptions of pair and individual assessment. To reach these objectives, a literature study was performed to investigate pair programming as programming technique and the assessment of programming skills acquired in pairs. The empirical study has revealed that a positive relation exists between programming skills assessed in pairs and programming skills assessed individually. Furthermore, it was found that in general students' perceptions concerning pair assessment have changed positively. Based on the results arising from the empirical study, guidelines were suggested for the facilitation and assessment of pair programming skills.
Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

The objective of this research was to characterize the chat collaborative interaction of two partners in six kinds of cognitive tasks. The central hypothesis was that the task nature determines a particular kind of collaborative interaction. The six tasks tested were: to solve a logical problem, to compose a story, to read a data table, to rank opinions, to bring a scientific explanation of a domestic situation, to interpret the signification of a literature text. The 11 dyads of the sample were formed by university students. Results show significant differences between the tasks concerning the sociocognitive interaction, specially the logical-intelligent tasks related the open-interpretative tasks. Finally, there is a great difference between tasks in the personal evaluation of the difficulty and interest of each one.
El objetivo fue caracterizar la interacción colaborativa de díadas, a través del chat, en seis tareas cognitivas: resolver un problema lógico, elaborar una historia, leer una tabla de datos, ordenar jerárquicamente opiniones, brindar una explicación científica de un hecho fáctico e interpretar un texto literario. La hipótesis central era que el tipo de tarea implica distintos tipos de intercambio colaborativo. Se examinaron 11 díadas de estudiantes universitarios. Los resultados muestran diferencias muy significativas entre las seis tareas en lo que hace al patrón sociocognitivo, sobre todo entre las tareas lógico-inteligentes y las tareas abiertas o interpretativas. Finalmente, hay diferencias muy notorias en la evaluación metacognitiva que hacen los participantes del grado de dificultad e interés de cada tarea.

Research on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) demonstrates that proposing that students work in groups does not improve their learning or increase their motivation. It is essential to design appropriate learning tasks and suitable pedagogical and technological support. The aim of this research is to identify pedagogical directions to design and support collaborative knowledge building tasks in on-line education. We conducted a case study at the Open University of Catalonia where we carried out two experiments: the first focusing on how teachers design and support collaborative on-line learning tasks and, the second, based on the control exerted over the tasks. As a result of the investigation we characterize the type of tasks that promote collaborative knowledge building, the teachers’ role and functions supporting these types of tasks, and we identify different stages in task regulation. Based on these results, we propose pedagogical directions to design and support collaborative on-line tasks divided into 4 stages: 1) Task design and individual preparation, 2) Task organization and group negotiation, 3) Task performance and collaborative knowledge building, and 4) Critical evaluation.
La investigación en aprendizaje colaborativo mediado por ordenador demuestra que proponer a los estudiantes trabajar en grupo no implica aprender mejor o mayor motivación. Es esencial diseñar tareas de aprendizaje apropiadas y un apoyo pedagógico y tecnológico adecuado. El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar indicadores pedagógicos en el diseño y apoyo de tareas de construcción del conocimiento colaborativo en educación a distancia. Realizamos un estudio de caso en la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya en el que llevamos a cabo dos experimentos: el primero centrado en cómo los profesores diseñan y apoyan tareas colaborativas en línea y, el segundo, basado en el control ejercido sobre las tareas. Como resultado de la investigación, caracterizamos el tipo de tareas que promueven el aprendizaje colaborativo, el papel y funciones del profesor en el apoyo de este tipo de tareas, e identificamos diferentes etapas en la regulación de las tareas. Basándonos en estos resultados, proponemos indicadores pedagógicos para el diseño y apoyo de tareas colaborativas en línea divididos en 4 etapas: 1) diseño de la tarea y preparación individual, 2) organización de la tarea y negociación grupal, 3) realización de la tarea y construcción colaborativa del conocimiento, y 4) evaluación crítica.

The Australian business environment has been changing at an ever-increasing pace since the mid-1980s. Technological, economic and social changes have altered the working environment. There have been constant technological advances with information technology influencing most categories of work. Organisations in public and private sectors have ongoing expectations of increased productivity, increased quality of processes and swifter responsiveness to clients. Team roles have changed. Team members are multi-skilled and work is designed to emphasise the whole task. The Karpin Industry Task Force described a vision for an Australian business environment that would, by 2014, be one with a flexible, skilled and motivated workforce, world class managers, a customer comes first mentality, and an internationally competitive perspective. These characteristics are congruent with those of learning organisations. The aim of this study is to evaluate the suitability of groupware as the supporting infrastructure for a learning organisation. To do this, the study assesses the use of technology to support personal and team learning in a learning organisation, studies the impact of groupware on learning within workgroups, determines the extent to which communication and learning styles influence its effectiveness, and identifies ways in which groupware can be used to capture the information used to support knowledge management in an organisation. Two case studies are used to undertake this assessment. Three distinct yet related frameworks underpin this study. The first is that of Groupware and the related research frameworks of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The second is the Learning Organisation and its supporting disciplines. The final framework is that of learning and the action-oriented learning processes. Each is examined and the interrelatedness of the frameworks is explored. The journey to produce this written material has been one of twists and turns, blind alleys and blinding revelations, observation and reflection. My choice of techniques has been eclectic, reflecting the breadth of theoretical material covered.

The purpose of this study was to measure the quantity, quality, and types of collaboration amongst K-12 music teachers in the state of Iowa. Survey responses (N = 97) were analyzed and grouped according to teacher characteristics. This sample of music educators reported the least collaboration on post-instruction, evaluative activity, such as reviewing assessments, data collection and analysis, and peer-observation. Respondents rated other parts of the collaborative process, such as group dialogue, decision-making, and action-taking, more highly. Teachers with a higher level of education reported more collaboration than less educated counterparts, while band teachers reported lower levels of collaboration quality compared to their choral and general music peers. Respondents also indicated that collaboration tends to increase with job continuity, but declines somewhat after teachers reach 25 years in the same school. Middle school teachers indicated the highest levels of collaboration, while K-12 teachers reported the lowest. Further, those teaching in larger schools recorded higher levels of collaboration than their smaller school colleagues. These results suggest that this group of K-12 music teachers in Iowa engage in moderate levels of collaborative activity overall and moderate to low levels of evaluative activity. Demographic results also reveal strengths and weaknesses of various subgroups’ collaborative habits. Researchers have found that high quality teacher collaboration improves teaching and learning outcomes. These results have implications for administrators providing professional development, preservice teacher educators, professional organizations, and current practitioners in the field who desire to implement more and higher quality collaboration for the purpose of instructional improvement.

Constructing common ground and the associated convergent conceptual change is critical to cooperative work and learning. Convergent conceptual change is achieved as participants in a conversation update common ground through presentations, repairs, and acceptances of utterances. People employ available techniques that utilize the least collaborative effort for current purposes. Although sharing physical co-presence of interlocutors' facial expressions doesn't make grounding more efficient even in more open-ended and less task-focused dialogues, visual co-presence of the addressee's workspace is essential to work-related tasks, such as information transmission and collaborative problem-solving. However, handheld-mediated collaborative activity makes sharing the workspace challenging, especially when we consider that handhelds possess small screens and permit activities of a distributed nature. In a handheld-mediated classroom, a teacher must be able to check students' work for various reasons (e.g., grading, checking whether they are following directions correctly or paying attention) and at various phases of the activity. Gazing into the small screen of a handheld over someone's shoulder is a tricky task at best. The teacher may misread the information on the screen and thus provide incorrect feedback. Another challenge involves the difficulty inherent in latecomers joining the collaborative activity when each student is involved with his or her individual and small screen. This exclusion from joining on-going activity can reduce the chance of student's vicarious and serendipitous learning. Although such events may occur naturally in the learning environment, they become important concerns when one attempts to focus collaborative activities with handheld devices. I therefore created a new handheld network service called "Look," which is designed to facilitate the acquisition of common ground and allow a latecomer to do meaningful monitoring of ongoing conversation about the workspace. I tested empirically the value of this shared physical/virtual context in the task of creating common ground by examining task performance and conversation quality.
Ph. D.

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FAPEAM - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas
The production of new approaches using the technological resources in the teaching-learning process has grown in the educational environment. Therefore, the use of educational applications focused on robotics, is facilitating learning in education. However, engineering students, specifically in the discipline of programming languages are difficult to learn the standardized method to communicate instructions to a computer station. This dissertation addresses the frames of dedicated resources and methods of cooperative-competitive learning in order to facilitate the process of learning programming languages. It also seeks to define a software architecture to manipulate a robot in the real learning environment. The purpose is to promote a tool to assist in interpreting programming language instructions by a robot. The architecture definition process and set of methods to manipulate the robot was held to assist the difficulties encountered in students the discipline of programming languages. From these findings, it was possible to develop a system model, specific to the C programming language The prototype built in this paper is different from commercial products, because it took into account the adaptation of cooperative and competitive learning method. We attempted to offer an option that facilitates the editing of source code and its interpretation as to its use in the teaching-learning process. The evaluation process of the prototype was carried out by the methods of Usability Engineering. Based on results of experiments show that the environment has contributed to the process of teaching-learning programming languages. Therefore, the usability of the measurement criteria established by the ISO 9241 standard, claim that the proposal is another tool I support technological resources that can be used in education.
A produção de novas abordagens utilizando os recursos tecnológicos no processo de ensino-aprendizagem vem crescendo no ambiente educativo. Por conseguinte, o uso de aplicações educativas voltada para a robótica, vem facilitando a aprendizagem na educação. No entanto, alunos de engenharia, especificamente na disciplina de linguagens de programação encontram dificuldades em aprender o método padronizado que comunicar instruções para um computador. Esta dissertação aborda o uso de frameworks dedicados e métodos de aprendizagem cooperativa-competitiva com a finalidade de facilitar o processo de ensino de linguagens de programação. Além disso, visa definir uma arquitetura de software para manipular um robô no ambiente real de aprendizagem. O propósito é promover uma ferramenta que auxilie na interpretação das instruções de linguagem de programação por meio de um robô. O processo de definição da arquitetura e do conjunto de métodos para manipular o robô, foi realizado para auxiliar as dificuldades encontradas nos estudantes da disciplina de linguagens de programação. A partir dessas verificações, foi possível elaborar um modelo de sistema, específico para linguagem de programação C. O protótipo construído neste trabalho se diferencia de produtos comerciais, pois se levou em consideração a adaptação do método de aprendizagem cooperativa e competitiva. Buscou-se oferecer uma opção que facilitasse a edição do código-fonte e de sua interpretação quanto ao seu uso no processo de ensino-aprendizagem. O processo de avaliação do protótipo foi realizado por meio dos métodos da Engenharia da Usabilidade. Os resultados obtidos nos experimentos demonstram que o ambiente contribuiu para o processo de ensino-aprendizagem de linguagens de programação. Portanto, os critérios de medição da usabilidade estabelecidos pela norma ISO 9241, afirmam que a ferramenta proposta é mais um apoio de recursos tecnológicos que pode ser utilizada na educação.

Thesis (MTech (Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016.
Economic recession and job scarcity has led to a decline in the demand for design services. Graduates in all fields are faced with the risk of unemployment beyond graduation, with youth unemployment rates in South Africa and globally at alarming levels. The evolving social and economic challenges of our times place increasing pressure on the responsibility of higher education institutions to design learning experiences that adequately prepare graduates for the world of work, whether in employment or in entrepreneurial self-employment. However, there is a significant gap between universities’ supply and industry’s demand for graduates with the desired attributes, which research shows include not only subject-specific knowledge and skills, but particularly ‘soft skills’ that make an employee effective at work. The paradox of students graduating without professional experience can be overcome through approaches such as work-integrated learning, which embed the lessons of professional practice into design education curricula. This research project examines a case study of work-integrated learning at a South African university of technology in order to develop an industry-responsive model of professional practice in Industrial Design education. The case examined is the “R5K project”, a year-long group project in BTech Industrial Design in which students are challenged – simulating the world of work - to design, develop, manufacture, market and sell a product, and earn at least ZAR 5 000. This research set out to assess the extent to which the project effectively prepared students for work.

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This work is a case study research, whose main objective was to identify if there is teaching and learning of concepts of electrochemical corrosion in the Civil Engineering course of collaborative way through educational robotics. The proposal presented here was developed with students of the Civil Engineering course of the Faculty of Iporá-GO, who were responsible for discussing, planning and making a robot using chemistry knowlegde, electronic, mechanical and software for application in the Civil Engineering, as the identification of electrochemical corrosion in reinforced concrete structures. After analysis the speaks of students and teacher and gestural expressions of the group, we identify that there was teaching and learning, of forms collaborative and cooperative. We discuss concepts of collaboration and cooperation based on Genetic Epistemology and other authors that approach structuralist constructivism. In the course of the work we suggest terms such as doubts, suggestions, collaborative pyramid, collaborative pine, syntactic categories, semantic categories and others that allowed us to identify how teaching and learning occurred during and after the process preparation and confection of the robot.
Este trabalho é uma pesquisa de estudo de caso cujo objetivo principal foi identificar se há ensino e aprendizagem de conceitos de corrosão eletroquímica no curso de Engenharia Civil de forma colaborativa através da robótica educacional. A proposta aqui apresentada foi desenvolvida com alunos do curso de Engenharia Civil da Faculdade de Iporá-GO, que foram responsáveis por discutir, planejar e construir um robô utilizando os conhecimentos de química, eletrônica, mecânica e software para aplicação na Engenharia Civil, como a identificação de corrosão eletroquímica em estruturas de concreto armado. Após análise das falas de alunos e professor e expressões gestuais do grupo, identificamos que houve ensino e aprendizagem de formas colaborativa e cooperativa. Discutimos conceitos de colaboração e cooperação baseados na Epistemologia Genética e outros autores que abordam o construtivismo estruturalista. No decorrer do trabalho, sugerimos termos como dúvidas, sugestões, pirâmide colaborativa, pinheiro colaborativo, categorias sintáticas, categorias semânticas e outros que nos permitiram identificar como o ensino e a aprendizagemocorreram durante e após os processos de planejamento e confecção do robô.

MAIA, Dennys Leite. Aprendizagem docente sobre estruturas multiplicativas a partir de uma formação colaborativa apoiada em tecnologias digitais. 2016. 195f. – Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação Brasileira, Fortaleza (CE), 2016.
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Digital technologies can help to reveal and mediate reflections about teaching practice and contribute to the continued training of teachers who have conceptual and didactic needs about Mathematics. Thus, the central question of this research is: What contribution does a digital technology supported collaborative training have on learning and teacher practice about multiplicative structures conceptual field? It was defined as general objective: To analyze the contributions of collaborative teacher training supported digital technologies about multiplicative structures. The specific objectives were thus outlined: To chart teachers knowledges about the teaching and learning of multiplicative structures; To identify the ways that teachers interact and use digital technologies for discussion and analysis of Mathematics teaching; and To characterize the construction and reconstruction of mathematical concepts by teachers from the digital technology supported collaborative training experience. The main theoretical references were about elements of collaborative learning and conceptual field of multiplicative structures. The adopted method research was the Collaborative Research, comprising the stages of co-situation, cooperation and coproduction. It was conducted with three teachers-coordinators of the Observatory of Education Project (OBEDUC) in Ceara, identified as PCA, PCN and PCS. The digital technologies supported collaborative training happened in august and november 2015. Virtual preliminary interviews data and OBEDUC Project instruments comprised the Collaborative Research co-situation stage. The co-production stage took place mainly through virtual interactions, through shareholdings and teachers productions in Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp. The developed knowledge and a collaborative production among the participants represent the co-production stage. The teachers had limited repertoire of multiplicative situations, just having problems Simple Proportion, Multiple Proportion and Measures Product with rectangular configuration. All of them demonstrated difficulties with didactic Mathematics and multiplicative structures aspects. With the training first activities, it was identified that the teachers had basic knowledges about the multiplicative conceptual field, with a polarization between PCA and PCN, with PCS between both, regarding knowledge and classification of situations. The concepts construction and reconstruction occurred from interactions developed with digital tools. The discussion, proposition, classification and analysis of situations collaboratively, followed by application with students, registration through videos and images for later posting, sharing and collaborative discussion, significantly boosted reflection of practice with Mathematics. The results show that digital media – images and videos - were relevant for the exposition of participants conceptions about the multiplicative field and student resolution strategies. Noteworthy is the partnership between School and University for the production of new knowledge and training model that favored the conceptual expansion by the participants. The experience mobilized abilities and skills about teaching and learning multiplicative structures. The perception that an accurate treatment of student resolution strategies is indispensable is one of the main gains of training.
As tecnologias digitais podem ajudar a desvelar e mediar reflexões sobre a prática docente e contribuir para a formação continuada de professores com carências conceituais e didáticas acerca da Matemática. Assim, a questão central desta pesquisa é: Que contribuição uma formação colaborativa apoiada em tecnologias digitais exerce sobre a aprendizagem e a prática docente acerca do campo conceitual das estruturas multiplicativas? Definiu-se, como objetivo geral: Analisar as contribuições de formação colaborativa, apoiada em tecnologias digitais, sobre a construção conceitual e pedagógica acerca de estruturas multiplicativas. Os objetivos específicos foram assim delineados: Mapear os conhecimentos docentes sobre estruturas multiplicativas; Identificar as formas que as professoras interagem e utilizam as tecnologias digitais para discussão e análises sobre o ensino de Matemática; e Caracterizar a construção e reconstrução dos conceitos matemáticos pelas professoras a partir da experiência de formação colaborativa com apoio de tecnologias digitais. Os principais referenciais teóricos versaram sobre elementos da aprendizagem colaborativa e campo conceitual das estruturas multiplicativas. O método de investigação adotado foi a Pesquisa Colaborativa, contemplando as etapas de cossituação, cooperação e coprodução. Realizou-se a pesquisa com três professoras-coordenadoras do Projeto Observatório da Educação (OBEDUC) no Ceará, identificadas como PCA, PCN e PCS. A formação colaborativa, com apoio em tecnologias digitais, aconteceu entre agosto e novembro de 2015. Dados de entrevistas virtuais preliminares e instrumentos do Projeto OBEDUC compuseram a etapa de cossituação da Pesquisa Colaborativa. O estágio de coprodução ocorreu, prioritariamente, por meio das interações virtuais, com as participações e produções das professoras no Facebook, Skype e WhatsApp. Os conhecimentos desenvolvidos e uma produção colaborativa entre os participantes representam a etapa de coprodução. As professoras possuíam restrito repertório de situações multiplicativas, apresentando apenas problemas de Proporção Simples, Proporção Múltipla e Produto de Medidas com configuração retangular. Todas demonstraram dificuldades com aspectos didáticos da Matemática e sobre estruturas multiplicativas. Com as primeiras atividades da formação, identificou-se que as docentes possuíam conhecimentos básicos acerca do campo conceitual multiplicativo, com uma polarização entre PCA e PCN, com PCS entre ambas quanto ao conhecimento e classificação de situações. A construção e reconstrução dos conceitos ocorreu a partir das interações desenvolvidas com as ferramentas digitais. A discussão, proposição, classificação e análise das situações de forma colaborativa, seguida de aplicação com alunos, registro por meio de vídeos e imagens, para posterior postagem, compartilhamento e discussão colaborativa, fomentou significativamente a reflexão da prática com Matemática. Os resultados mostram que as mídias digitais – imagens e vídeos – foram relevantes para a exposição das concepções dos participantes sobre o campo multiplicativo e estratégias de resolução discente. Destaca-se a parceria entre Escola e Universidade para a produção de novos conhecimentos e modelo de formação, que favoreceu a ampliação conceitual pelos participantes. A experiência mobilizou habilidades e competências acerca do ensino e da aprendizagem de estruturas multiplicativas. A percepção de que é indispensável um tratamento apurado das estratégias de resolução discente evidencia-se como um dos principais ganhos da formação.

Este trabalho está inserido no projeto de pesquisa "Um Modelo Computacional de Aprendizagem a Distância Baseada na Concepção Sócio-Interacionista de Vygotsky", que propõe um ambiente educacional o qual privilegia a colaboração como forma de interação. Neste projeto, as pesquisas subsidiam a formação de ações para a modelagem de um agente pedagógico animado, utilizado para interagir com os alunos no Ambiente de Ensino/Aprendizagem em desenvolvimento. A modelagem das decisões para estratégia de atuação do agente foi obtida nos arquivos de "log" gerados ao final de algumas discussões na ferramenta de "chat", a partir de fatores relevantes da interação entre grupos de estudantes. O trabalho utiliza-se da experiência realizada com alunos de uma turma da disciplina Algoritmos e Programação, oferecida aos alunos de graduação da UFRGS (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), onde foram obtidos alguns fatores considerados importantes na adaptação de um ambiente para os alunos em interação. Tais fatores são apresentados neste projeto, assim como a técnica de identificação.
The following work is inserted in the research entitled: “A Computational Model of Distance Learning based on the Socio-Interactionist Approach”, which proposes an educational environment that privileges collaboration as a form of interaction. The research in this project aims to subsidize the shaping of actions for the modeling of an Animated Pedagogical Agent used for interacting with students in a Teaching/Learning Environment under development. The modeling of decisions for the strategy on an agent’s performance was obtained from “log” files at the end of discussions concerning the “chat” tool out of relevant factors of interaction among student groups. The experience was carried out with students in Algorithms and Programming offered in the course of Graduation at UFRGS (Universidade Federal Do Rio Grande do Sul) where some considerably important factors were attained in the adaptation of an environment for students in interaction. Such factors are shown in this project as well as the identification technique.

INUZUKA, Marcelo Akira. Uso educativo do wiki: um estudo de caso na Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de Brasília, 2008. 122f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação na Formação de EAD) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação na Formação de EAD, Brasília-DF, 2008.
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This work aims to examine the living experienced by students of a class of pedagogy, teaching in the use of a collaborative tool based on wiki. The research was conducted at the Faculty of Education at the University of Brasilia (UNB) in four weeks from a discipline called “Mediated Practices of Informatics in Education” given by the advisor of this dissertation. It is a case study using a method of participatory research-action. To collect the views of participants, were used: questionnaire, individual and group interviews, and a seminar with participation of groups formed by themes. As theoretical reference, the four criteria were used for analysis of Dillenbourg (situation, interaction, mechanism and effect) of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) theory and the model of collaborative construction of knowledge of Stahl to design the Knowledge Building Environment (KBE ) used. Before applying this case study, several others were tested; therefore, the project took into account the experience of other researchers of the subject. Through analysis of the results, students perceived many technical difficulties in operation and cultural difficulties, especially related to collaborative work, but the students considered the pedagogical tool as useful and feasible, considering the advantage of sharing information between peers as the greatest advantage of wiki tool.
O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a vivência experimentada por alunos de uma turma de pedagogia, no uso pedagógico de uma ferramenta colaborativa baseada em wiki. A pesquisa foi realizada na Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de Brasília (UnB) em quatro semanas cedidas de uma disciplina denominada “Práticas Mediáticas de Informática na Educação” cedidas pelo orientador desta dissertação. Trata-se de um estudo de caso que utiliza uma metodologia de pesquisa-ação participativa. Para colher as opiniões dos participantes, foram aplicados: questionário; entrevistas individuais e em grupo; e um seminário com participação de grupos formados por temas. Como referencial teórico, foram utilizado os quatro critérios de análise de Dillenbourg (situação, interação, mecanismo e efeito) da Aprendizagem Colaborativa Suportada por Computador (CSCL) e o modelo de construção colaborativa de conhecimento de Stahl para projetar o Ambiente de Construção de Conhecimento (KBE) utilizado. Antes de aplicar este estudo de caso, vários outros foram analisados, assim, o projeto levou em conta a experiência de outras pesquisadores do tema. Através da análise dos resultados, foram percebidos pelos alunos várias dificuldades técnicas de operação e dificuldades culturais, especialmente relacionados a colaboração em equipe; porém os alunos consideraram a ferramenta como pedagogicamente útil e viável, considerando a vantagem de compartilhamento de informações entre pares como a maior vantagem da ferramenta wiki.

Entrepreneurship has been entered on a supranational political agenda, in the EU and the OECD, and been emphatically described as a fundamental skill and a concern for schools and education. The agenda is reflected to a varying extent at the national and regional political levels. My aim is to describe, analyze and gain knowledge of what entrepreneurship in the Swedish upper secondary schools imply in practice, against the background of a local context. In particular, the conditions for learning.

My approach is ethnographically inspired and this multiple case study is limited to two upper secondary school programmes. Data has been collected through observations, video recordings, informal conversations with pupils and teachers and formal conversations with headmasters. The material is analyzed in terms of three socioculturally inspiring foci.

By means of a cultural-institutional focus, the stability and changeability of the programmes were elucidated. The previous institutional frameworks have been partially questioned by the teachers in the field, which has resulted in the following: In one of the upper secondary schools a new locally adapted programme has been composed, and courses and subjects have been integrated in a new way in the other school’s existing programme. The changes in the upper secondary programmes are to a great extent an example of a meeting between top-down and bottom-up initiatives. The changes of the institutional frameworks are connected to a discursive shift of the responsibility for pupils’ learning and education from teachers to pupils and also to teacher’s ambition to adapt interest- and experience-related teaching.

In a situated focus, both programmes were identified as communities of practice with a joint enterprise, mutual engagement and a shared repertoire. These three dimensions were useful for examining specific aspects of the teaching. There has above all been an altered balance between reification and participation in the teaching as well as boundary crossing both outside the community of practice and within the community.

Different conditions for learning were identified through an interpersonal focus. Both collaborative learning and cooperative learning were useful, but not sufficient concepts for describing the various forms of team learning. The conditions of cooperation and the pupils’ communication patterns revealed yet another form of team learning, which I call comparative learning. If the risk of everyday concepts getting the upper hand and trivialization can be avoided in team learning, there is in all these learning processes a potential for the pupils being able to develop strategies for handling complex tasks, taking initiatives and responsibility, cooperating and learning from one another in various different ways. In this way entrepreneurship has had an impact on the practice of the classrooms.

Entreprenörskap har förts upp på en överstatlig politisk agenda, inom EU och OECD, där den skrivits fram som en grundläggande färdighet och en angelägenhet för skola och utbildning. Agendan återspeglas i varierande grad på nationell och regional politisk nivå. Mitt syfte har varit att studera och försöka förstå vad entreprenörskap i den svenska gymnasieskolan kan innebära i praktiken. Utifrån syftet och ett sociokulturellt perspektiv formulerades frågeställningarna enligt följande: Hur framförhandlas, organiseras och realiseras undervisningen inom två studerade gymnasieprogram? Vilka sociala gemenskaper bidrar elever och lärare till och deltar i? Vilka former av lärande visar sig? Den etnografiskt inspirerade studien genomfördes i två gymnasieprogram som genom utvecklingsprojekt deltagit i det länsövergripande och EU-medfinansierade projektet PRIO 1, Prioritet företagsamhet i Västerbotten (2000 – 2005). Empiriska data insamlades genom observationer, videoregistreringar, informella samtal med elever och lärare och formella samtal med skolledare. Dessutom insamlades skriftliga dokument. Materialet har analyserats utifrån tre fokus. Genom ett kulturellt-insitutionellt fokus har programmens stabilitet och föränderlighet synliggjorts. I det ena fallet har ett nytt lokalutformat program satts samman, i det andra fallet har kurser och ämnen integrerats inom det befintliga programmet. Förändringarna ses som ett möte mellan top-down-initiativ och bottom-upp- initiativ. Resultatet visar även en diskursiv förskjutning av ansvar från lärare till elev och lärares strävan att tillrättalägg intresse- och erfarenhetsrelaterad undervisning. Ur ett situerat fokus har båda programmen identifierats som praxisgemenskaper med en gemensam uppgift, ett ömsesidigt engagemang och en gemensam repertoar. Utmärkande drag i undervisningen, men koppling till entreprenörskapstanken, har handlat om förändrade avvägningar mellan reifikation och deltagande i undervisningen samt om gränsöverskridande, dels utanför praxisgemenskapen och dels inom gemenskapen. Genom ett interpersonellt fokus har olika villkor för lärande identifierats. Såväl kollaborativt och kooperativt lärande har varit användbara begrepp för att beskriva formerna för samarbetslärande, men inte tillräckliga. Samarbetets villkor och elevers kommunikationsmönster har avslöjat ytterligare en form av samarbetslärande, vilken jag benämnt komparativt lärande. Denna avhandling har således visat på både gemensamma och särskiljande drag när entreprenörskapsinitiativ omsatts i skolans praktik, på två gymnasieprogram.

This dissertation presents a case study of collaborative research through design with Floracaching, a gamified mobile application for citizen science biodiversity data collection. One contribution of this study is the articulation of collaborative research through design (CRtD), an approach that blends cooperative design approaches with the research through design methodology (RtD). Collaborative research through design is thus defined as an iterative process of cooperative design, where the collaborative vision of an ideal state is embedded in a design. Applying collaborative research through design with Floracaching illustrates how a number of cooperative techniques—especially contextual inquiry, prototyping, and focus groups—may be applied in a research through design setting. Four suggestions for collaborative research through design (recruit from a range of relevant backgrounds; take flexibility as a goal; enable independence and agency; and, choose techniques that support agreement or consensus) are offered to help others who wish to experiment with this new approach. Applying collaborative research through design to Floracaching yielded a new prototype of the application, accompanied by design annotations in the form of framing constructs for designing to support mobile, place-based citizen science activities. The prototype and framing constructs, which may inform other designers of similar citizen science technologies, are a second contribution of this research.

Ziel dieses Beitrages ist es, aufzuzeigen und an einem Beispielszenario exemplarisch darzustellen, wie mit Hilfe von an Hochschulen verfügbaren Standardtechnologien flexible kooperative und kollaborative Lehr- und Lernumgebungen je nach Bedarf und Möglichkeiten generiert und in Anwendungsszenarien mit vielen verschiedenen Lehr- und Lernprinzipien, Lehrmethoden, Lehrtechniken sowie Lehrressourcen eingesetzt werden können. Gleichzeitig soll mit den Möglichkeiten solcher Netzwerke auf die neuen Anforderungen der Arbeitswelt, den veränderten gesellschaftlichen und technischen Rahmen- bzw. Lehr- und Studierbedingungen reagiert und Mehrwerte generiert werden können. Zur Verdeutlichung des Ansatzes soll ein Anwendungsszenario aus der Ausbildung von Landschaftsarchitekten (Semesterprojekt „Landschaftsplanerische Studie“ sowie „Objekt- und Ausführungsplanung“) vorgestellt werden. Dieses Szenario kann auf andere Planungs- und Anwendungsdisziplinen der Ingenieurdisziplinen und vor allem dem Bau- und Anlagewesen übertragen werden. [... aus Punkt 1]

In den letzten Jahren haben Lernvideos im Bereich des informellen und formellen Lernens an Bedeutung gewonnen. Inwieweit Lernende bei der Nutzung von Videos unterstützt werden und Lehrende didaktische Szenarien umsetzen können, hängt jedoch von der eingesetzten Videolernumgebung ab. Es ist Anliegen der vorliegende Arbeit, Prinzipien des User Interface Designs sowie Komponenten und Mechanismen videobasierter Lehr-Lern-Szenarien in Bezug auf Videolernumgebungen zu identifizieren, zu beschreiben und technisch zu realisieren. Das Ziel besteht darin, Gestaltungsprinzipien in Form von Interaction Design Patterns zu erarbeiten und computergestützte videobasierte Lehr-Lern-Szenarien mit Hilfe von CSCL-Scripts durch eine geeignete Spezifikation und Formalisierung zu realisieren. Für die Erarbeitung der Interaction Design Patterns wurden 121 Videolernumgebungen hinsichtlich 50 Kategorien in einer Inhaltsanalyse empirisch untersucht und dokumentiert. Unter Berücksichtigung ähnlicher Patterns aus thematisch verwandten Pattern Languages und den Erfahrungen aus der Implementierung und dem Einsatz von Videolernumgebungen entstanden 45 Interaction Design Patterns für verbreitete Lösungen für wiederkehrende Probleme bei der Gestaltung und Entwicklung von Videolernumgebungen. Diese Patterns wurden auf Pattern Konferenzen diskutiert und im Anschluss evaluiert sowie bei der Konzeption, Entwicklung und Bewertung mehrerer Videolernumgebungen angewendet. Zudem wurde das Software Framework VI-TWO vorgestellt, mit dem sich fast alle Patterns auf einfache Weise in Web-Anwendungen realisieren lassen. Zur Spezifikation videobasierter CSCL-Scripts wurden existierende videobasierte und nicht videobasierte Scripts analysiert. Im Ergebnis unterschieden sich videobasierte CSCL-Scripts von allgemeinen CSCL-Scripts vor allem hinsichtlich der mit dem Video verknüpften oder darin verankerten Aufgaben und Aktivitäten. Videos werden dabei nicht als monolithische Einheiten, sondern als zeitkontinuierliche Medien betrachtet, in denen weitere Informationen zeitgenau verankert und Lernaktivitäten stattfinden können. Außerdem ließen sich drei Typen videobasierter CSCL-Scripts identifizieren: (1) Scripts zur Analyse und Diskussion von Videoinhalten, (2) Peer Annotation Scripts einschließlich dem Peer Assessment und (3) Jigsaw-Scripts, die das problembasierte Lernen mit Hilfe von Videos ermöglichen. Unabhängig davon variiert die Komplexität der Scripts auf drei Stufen: (1) sofern voneinander abgegrenzte zeitliche Phasen von Lernaktivitäten bestehen, (2) wenn darüber hinaus die Teilnehmer innerhalb von Gruppen Aufgaben bearbeiten (intra-group) und (3) falls außerdem Aufgaben auch gruppenübergreifend bearbeitet werden (inter-group). Auf Grundlage der Spezifikation konnte ein Datenmodell und ein Modell für die nutzerseitige Modellierung von Scripts verschiedener Komplexitätsstufen sowie Typen entwickelt und in dem CSCL-System VI-LAB realisiert werden. Diese Arbeit leistet in zweifacher Hinsicht einen Beitrag zur Forschung im Bereich E-Learning. Zum einen beschreiben die Interaction Design Patterns wiederkehrende User Interface Lösungen und stellen somit ein Hilfsmittel für Designer, Software Entwickler und Lehrende bei der Gestaltung und Implementierung von Videolernumgebungen dar. Zum anderen wurden durch die Spezifikation und softwareseitige Umsetzung videobasierter CSCL-Scripts Voraussetzungen geschaffen, die den praktischen Einsatz und die weitere Untersuchung des kollaborativen Lernens mit Videos ermöglichen.

This research investigates computer-based collaborative design environments, in particular issues of real-time collaborative 3D CAD. The thesis first presents a broad perspective of collaborative design environments with a preliminary case study of team design activities in a conventional and a computer mediated setting. This study identifies the impact and the feasibility of computer support for collaborative design and suggests four kinds of essential technologies for a successful collaborative design environment: information-sharing systems, synchronous and asynchronous co- working tools, project management systems, and communication systems. A new conceptual framework for a real-time collaborative 3D design tool, Shared Stage, is proposed based upon the preliminary study. The Shared Stage is defined as a shared 3D design workspace aiming to smoothly incorporate shared 3D workspaces into existing individual 3D workspaces. The addition of a Shared Stage allows collaborating designers to interact in real-time and to have a dynamic and interactive exchange of intermediate 3D design data. The acceptability of collaborative features is maximised by maintaining consistency of the user interface between 3D CAD systems. The framework is subsequently implemented as a software prototype using a new software development environment, customised by integrating related real-time and 3D graphic software development tools. Two main components of the Shared Stage module in the prototype, the Synchronised Stage View (SSV) and the Data Structure Diagram (DSD), provide essential collaborative features for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. These features include synchronised shared 3D representation, dynamic data exchange and awareness support in 3D workspaces. The software prototype is subsequently evaluated to examine the usefulness and usability. A range of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to evaluate the impact of the Shared Stage. The results, including the analysis of collaborative interactions and user perception, illustrate that the Shared Stage is a feasible and valuable addition for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. This research identifies the issues to be addressed for collaborative design environments and also provides a new framework and development strategy of a novel real-time collaborative 3D CAD system. The framework is successfully demonstrated through prototype implementation and an analytical usability evaluation.

This project work is about mobile learning system that will enable people to learn and collaborate anywhere and at anytime. It is the continuation of the work carried out in autumn 2009, by Noble and Izaz.In this project work, a Mobile Collaborative Learning System (MCLS) prototype was designed and implemented. The project work has been carried out according to the design science research methodology. An evaluation of the usability of the prototype was conducted. Mobile Services Acceptance Model (MSAM) was used to analyze factors that are influential for user adoption of the prototype.The results from the evaluation indicated that the majority of the test users perceived the prototype to be useful and they intend to use the prototype if they have access to it. These results confirm how useful and beneficial the prototype would be to students.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
This study looked at the implementation of a collaborative learning model at two schools in Sydney designed to realise the principles recommended by reform documents such as the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and policy documents including Numeracy, A Priority for All (DETYA, 2000). A total of 158 year seven and year eight students ranging in age from 12 to 15 years old from two schools participated in the study. In all, seven classroom teachers participated in the study each completing two topics using the collaborative learning model. Four research questions were the focus of the current study. Three research questions were drawn from eight principles identified in the literature regarding what constitutes effective mathematics learning. These questions related to the nature of collaboration evident in each classroom, the level of motivation and self-regulation displayed by students in the different types of classrooms and the relationship between learning mathematics within the collaborative learning model and real-world mathematics. A final research question examined the degree to which the concerns of teachers relating to preparing students for examinations are met within the collaborative learning model. Several different data collection strategies were adopted to develop a picture of the different forms of activity evident in each classroom and the changes that took place in each classroom during and after the implementation of the collaborative learning model. These included classroom observations, interviews with student and teacher participants, questionnaires and obtaining test results. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to reduce the data collected. Factor scores and test results were compared using t-tests, ANOVAs and Mann Whitney nonparametric tests. Data collected from interviews and classroom observations were analysed using a grounded approach beginning with the open coding of phenomena. Leont’ev’s theoretical approach to activity systems (1972; 1978) was then used to describe the changing nature of classroom activity with the introduction of the collaborative learning model. Within the collaborative classrooms there were a greater number of mathematical voices participating in classroom discussions, a breaking down of traditional roles held by teachers and students, and dominant patterns of collaboration evident in each classroom reflecting pre-existing cultural ways of doing. Furthermore, there was some quantitative evidence suggesting that student levels of critical thinking, self-regulation and help seeking increased and students were also observed regulating their own learning as well as the learning of others. Classroom practice was also embedded in the cultural practice of preparing topic tests, enabling students to use mathematics within the context of a work group producing a shared outcome. Finally, there was quantitative evidence that students in some of the collaborative classes did not perform as well as students in traditional classrooms on topic tests. Comments from students and teachers, however, suggested that for some students the collaborative learning model enabled them to learn more effectively, although other students were frustrated by the greater freedom and lack of direction. Future research could investigate the effectiveness of strategies to overcome this frustration and the relationship between different types of collaboration and developing mathematical understanding.

Audience Response Systems (ARSs) provide a promising opportunity to address issues occurring in traditional higher education, e.g., the lack of interaction, by allowing students to participate anonymously in lectures using their mobile devices. This can promote the students' attention, increase the interaction between the lecturer and the students and foster active thinking during class. In order to choose an appropriate ARS, numerous surveys list and classify these systems according to different criteria, e.g., supported features and platforms. [From the introduction]

This thesis presents a case study of the implementation of cooperative learning in a networked learning community of two secondary schools and eight primary schools in the north of England. How this came about in a context of national educational prescription, in which cooperative learning has played little part, has driven this research. Before examining this further, however, it is important to clarify what is meant by cooperative learning. Based on this, the rationale for the research will be presented, together with the research questions. The chapter will conclude with an overview of the structure of the thesis.

Education in Afghanistan is burgeoning and new educational systems are being introduced to promote students’ learning achievement, not least in teacher training colleges (TTC). As a matter of fact, TTCs play a vital role in improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Therefore, the Ministry of Education has a big responsibility in increasing teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and equipping them with various learner-centred techniques. Cooperative learning (CL), which is the field of the present study, focuses on students’ social interactions in the classrooms and their learning in a cooperative manner. The Ministry of Education is dedicated to develop teachers’ knowledge, skills and attitudes as regards active learning methods in schools. CL is one way to increase students’ involvement in their own learning. This study aimed at exploring teacher educators’ and teacher-students’ perceptions about CL as wells as to investigate some CL practices in English teaching at TTCs. Two types of structured data collections tools were used in this study; questionnaires for teachers and students as well as a classroom observation form. In general, this study ended up with many interesting findings. Nearly everyone in the current study emphasized upon the importance of CL in promoting students’ English learning achievement and believed that it also improves students’ social relationships. It was also found that CL diminishes students’ language anxiety and makes them feel more comfortable when interacting with one another in group works. A certain number of CL methods were also practiced in English classrooms. In fact, the study revealed that the teachers and students in TTCs are adopting the change from conventional teaching and learning approaches to modern ones like CL, which is a positive initiative for a big change towards a productive educational system in Afghanistan. However, teacher educators still need to learn a lot about CL in order to apply it effectively in their classrooms. Their improper application of CL activities in their classes is the indicative features of their insufficient CL knowledge as well as their unfamiliarity with many other CL methods except a few.

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (page 59).
This thesis analyzes Herbo Hunt, an educational game that aims to teach variables to students. By assigning unknown point values to creatures that must be caught in groups, we subtly encourage students to solve mental equations to achieve their goals. In addition to the formal study, the creation of the game itself utilized intelligent and flexible design techniques. Two main focuses were modularity of design and opportunity for procedural generation of content. Two versions of the game were used to explore the difference in learning between them; we created both a single-player experience and a cooperative version. We expected that players of the cooperative game would learn more quickly through discussion and coordination. Students played both versions, and then answered short questions regarding their experience. Contrary to our expectations students did not appear to show a difference in learning between the two versions; understanding seemed to take place at the same point regardless of game type.
by Bradley R. Gaffney.
M. Eng.

Interpersonal growth is one part of the definition of outdoor education. Collaboration and common purpose are key phrases in cooperation learning. Both those two teaching methods are including students’ social development. To find out the effects of teachers’ and students’ attitude toward cooperative learning in outdoor education, this study explores the benefits and limitations of group work in outdoor education theoretically. Also, this study explores the attitudes of teachers and students regarding group work in outdoor learning. Questionnaires were used to find the students’ opinion of group work in outdoor education, during the analysis of data, thematic analysis was conducted with interview data to find out teachers’ attitudes. The participates of this study mainly had a very positive attitude towards group work in outdoor education, although some limitations were identified, such as students sometimes lost focus, were absent or were less involved.

This study’s aim is to investigate what strategies within cooperative learning teachers’ use in the English classroom. An additional aim is to investigate how teachers’ believe cooperative learning contributes to interaction between students. The study focuses on the perspective of the teachers. Cooperative learning is a pedagogical method with roots from the sociocultural perspective. Furthermore, it is described by Kagan and Stenlev (2006) as a method where students work in groups and cooperate in order to achieve the mutual goal. According to Kagan and Stenlev (2006), the students’ communicative interaction between each other is one of the critical elements of cooperative learning. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with four legitimized teachers. I chose to conduct a qualitative research in order to guarantee valid answers due to the time given. After the interviews, the recorded answers were analyzed and compared to one and other in order to reach answers to my research question. After having finished the result analyze, the recordings of the interviews were deleted. The result of the study shows that teachers tend to use following strategies within cooperative learning: think-pair-share, team-pair-solo, quiz-quiz-trade, jigsaw, poem for two voices and placement consensus. Furthermore, it shows that teachers’ attitude and willingness to use cooperative learning can depend on when they got their degree. However, additional factors may have an impact, such as the lack of further education in connection to the introduction of the new steering document in 2011.

The purpose of this paper has been to chart and problematize the socio-cultural based method, cooperative learning, as a didactic tool in physical education through a case study. This study was based upon the challenge of inclusive education, and through cooperative learning the aim was to investigate whether the method is useful or not in physical education. The case study was based upon an annotated bibliography, which indicated that cooperative learning points to predominantly positive outcomes among younger students, such as increased inner motivation to learn. Meanwhile, previous research also underlined the importance of knowing how to use cooperative learning as a method in order to be a beneficial way of learning as well as creating a sphere of inclusive education. Consequently, this made us eager to discover how cooperative learning as a didactic tool work among older students. The case study was conducted in an upper secondary school in order to broaden the knowledge of cooperative learning. The result of this case study showed that the students’ experience of cooperative learning was positive, as the structure of learning teams increased cooperation and interaction between the students. However, the students also experienced some difficulties in working through specific roles, which is a core element in cooperative learning. In conclusion, the study gave insight in how structured group work can impact the learning process in Physical Education.

Master of Philosophy
Wireless technology is experiencing spectacular developments, due to the emergence of interactive and digital multimedia applications as well as rapid advances in the highly integrated systems. For the next-generation mobile communication systems, one can expect wireless connectivity between any devices at any time and anywhere with a range of multimedia contents. A key requirement in such systems is the availability of high-speed and robust communication links. Unfortunately, communications over wireless channels inherently suffer from a number of fundamental physical limitations, such as multipath fading, scarce radio spectrum, and limited battery power supply for mobile devices. Cooperative diversity (CD) technology is a promising solution for future wireless communication systems to achieve broader coverage and to mitigate wireless channels’ impairments without the need to use high power at the transmitter. In general, cooperative relaying systems have a source node multicasting a message to a number of cooperative relays, which in turn resend a processed version message to an intended destination node. The destination node combines the signal received from the relays, and takes into account the source’s original signal to decode the message. The CD communication systems exploit two fundamental features of the wireless medium: its broadcast nature and its ability to achieve diversity through independent channels. A variety of relaying protocols have been considered and utilized in cooperative wireless networks. Amplify and forward (AAF) and decode and forward (DAF) are two popular protocols, frequently used in the cooperative systems. In the AAF mode, the relay amplifies the received signal prior to retransmission. In the DAF mode, the relay fully decodes the received signal, re-encodes and forwards it to the destination. Due to the retransmission without decoding, AAF has the shortcoming that noise accumulated in the received signal is amplified at the transmission. DAF suffers from decoding errors that can lead to severe error propagation. To further enhance the quality of service (QoS) of CD communication systems, hybrid Automatic Repeat-reQuest (HARQ) protocols have been proposed. Thus, if the destination requires an ARQ retransmission, it could come from one of relays rather than the source node. This thesis proposes an improved HARQ scheme with an adaptive relaying protocol (ARP). Focusing on the HARQ as a central theme, we start by introducing the concept of ARP. Then we use it as the basis for designing three types of HARQ schemes, denoted by HARQ I-ARP, HARQ II-ARP and HARQ III-ARP. We describe the relaying protocols, (both AAF and DAF), and their operations, including channel access between the source and relay, the feedback scheme, and the combining methods at the receivers. To investigate the benefits of the proposed HARQ scheme, we analyze its frame error rate (FER) and throughput performance over a quasi-static fading channel. We can compare these with the reference methods, HARQ with AAF (HARQ-AAF) and HARQ with perfect distributed turbo codes (DTC), for which correct decoding is always assumed at the relay (HARQ-perfect DTC). It is shown that the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme can always performs better than the HARQ-AAF scheme. As the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the channel between the source and relay increases, the performance of the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme approaches that of the HARQ-perfect DTC scheme.

Energy conservation is considered to be one of the key design challenges within resource constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that leads the researchers to investigate energy efficient protocols with some application specific challenges. Dynamic clustering scheme within the deployed sensor nodes is generally considered as one of the energy conservation techniques. However, unbalanced distribution of cluster heads, highly variable number of sensor nodes in the clusters and high number of sensor nodes involved in event reporting tend to drain out the network energy quickly, resulting in unplanned decrease in network lifetime. Performing power aware signal processing, defining communication methods that can provide progressive accuracy and, optimising processing and communication for signal transmission are the challenging tasks. In this thesis, energy efficient solutions are proposed for collaborative sensing and cooperative communication within resource constrained WSNs. A dynamic and cooperative clustering as well as neighbourhood formation scheme is proposed that is expected to evenly distribute the energy demand from the cluster heads and optimise the number of sensor nodes involved in event reporting. The distributive and dynamic behaviour of the proposed framework provides an energy efficient self-organising solution for WSNs that results in an improved network lifetime. The proposed framework is independent of the nature of the sensing type to support applications that require either time-driven sensing, event-driven sensing or hybrid of both sensing types. A cooperative resource selection and transmission scheme is also proposed to improve the performance of collaborative WSNs in terms of maintaining link reliability. As a part of the proposed cooperative nature of transmission, the transmitreceive antennae selection scheme and lattice reduction algorithm have also been considered. It is assumed that the channel state information is estimated at the receiver and there is a feedback link between the wireless sensing nodes and the fusion centre receiver. For the ease of system design engineer to achieve a predefined capacity or quality of service, a set of analytical frameworks that provide tighter error performance lower bound for zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean square error (MMSE) and maximum likelihood (ML) detection schemes are also presented. The dynamic behaviour has been adopted within the framework with a proposed index derived from the received measure of the channel quality, which has been attained through the feedback channel from the fusion centre. The dynamic property of the proposed framework makes it robust against time-varying behaviour of the propagation environment. Finally, a unified framework of collaborative sensing and communication schemes for cooperative WSNs is proposed to provide energy efficient solutions within resource constrained environments. The proposed unified framework is fully decentralised which reduces the amount of information required to be broadcasted. Such distributive capability accelerates the decision-making process and enhances the energy conservation. Furthermore, it is validated by simulation results that the proposed unified framework provides a trade-off between network lifetime and transmission reliability while maintaining required quality of service.

This thesis focuses on the least-squares formulation of the non-collaborative and collabo- rative position location problems. For the non-collaborative problem, characterization encompassing the number of minima and the causes thereof is provided. Based on these efforts, we propose an improvement to the existing modified parallel projection method (MPPM), the reflected parallel projection method (RPPM). We show that the global minimum to the non-collaborative objective function can nearly always be found using the non-optimal reflected parallel projection method (RPPM). For the collaborative position location problem, we provide a characterization that shows a heavy tail of root-mean-square (RMS) error due to a small percentage of simulated node/anchor layouts when solved by the iterative parallel projection method (IPPM). We provide an identification technique that successfully identifies most layouts that show large RMS error followed by a proposed solution to improve the accuracy in those problematic layouts. Finally, we report the findings of a measurement campaign that validates our Gaussian model for line-of-sight (LOS) noise and shows that, for these particular measurements, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) noise is difficult to accurately model and can be very large. This research was supported by a Bradley Fellowship from Virginia Techâ s Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, made possible by an endowment from the Harry Lynde Bradley Foundation.
Master of Science

Being able to accomplish tasks with multiple learners through learning has long been a goal of the multiagent systems and machine learning communities. One of the main approaches people have taken is reinforcement learning, but due to certain conditions and restrictions, applying reinforcement learning in a multiagent setting has not achieved the same level of success when compared to its single agent counterparts.

This thesis aims to make coordination better for agents in cooperative games by improving on reinforcement learning algorithms in several ways. I begin by examining certain pathologies that can lead to the failure of reinforcement learning in cooperative games, and in particular the pathology of relative overgeneralization. In relative overgeneralization, agents do not learn to optimally collaborate because during the learning process each agent instead converges to behaviors which are robust in conjunction with the other agent's exploratory (and thus random), rather than optimal, choices. One solution to this is so-called lenient learning, where agents are forgiving of the poor choices of their teammates early in the learning cycle. In the first part of the thesis, I develop a lenient learning method to deal with relative overgeneralization in independent learner settings with small stochastic games and discrete actions.

I then examine certain issues in a more complex multiagent domain involving parameterized action Markov decision processes, motivated by the RoboCup 2D simulation league. I propose two methods, one batch method and one actor-critic method, based on state of the art reinforcement learning algorithms, and show experimentally that the proposed algorithms can train the agents in a significantly more sample-efficient way than more common methods.

I then broaden the parameterized-action scenario to consider both repeated and stochastic games with continuous actions. I show how relative overgeneralization prevents the multiagent actor-critic model from learning optimal behaviors and demonstrate how to use Soft Q-Learning to solve this problem in repeated games.

Finally, I extend imitation learning to the multiagent setting to solve related issues in stochastic games, and prove that given the demonstration from an expert, multiagent Imitation Learning is exactly the multiagent actor-critic model in Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning framework. I further show that when demonstration samples meet certain conditions the relative overgeneralization problem can be avoided during the learning process.

People collaborate around tables at home, school and work. Digital tabletop technology presents an opportunity to bring computer support to these traditional face-to-face collaborative settings. This thesis principally addresses the challenge of designing digital tabletop applications for small group learning in the classroom and makes contributions in two distinct, but closely related areas: (i) interaction techniques for digital tabletops; and (ii) the design and evaluation of a digital tabletop-based system for supporting collaborative learning. A review of previous literature combined with a preliminary observational study on collaboration around traditional tables indentifies a number of requirements for tabletop interaction. These include the need for fluid interaction techniques that allow control of interface object attributes when these objects are moved between tabletop territories. Attribute gates are proposed as a solution to this problem through utilizing a novel, crossing-based, interaction technique. A recognition of the territorial focus in existing interaction techniques, and their limiting assumption that users work at relatively fixed locations around the table, led to the identification of another challenge, supporting the mobility of users around the shared workspace of the table. TANGISOFT is presented as a hybrid tangible-soft keyboard designed specifically for applications that require mobile users with moderate text entry requirements. The investigation of the potential of tabletop technology to support collaborative learning was carried out through the design, development, and evaluation of Digital Mysteries. From an interaction design perspective, the design aimed to utilize the unique affordances of tabletops in terms of combining the benefits of traditional tables and digital technology. From a learning perspective, the design aimed to support higher-level thinking skills, feedback, reflection, and metacognition by focusing on activities that promote these skills and supporting effective collaboration. The evaluation of Digital Mysteries demonstrated that the design was successful in encouraging the targeted learning activities. The design process and validation of Digital Mysteries embody a significant contribution to the development of our understanding of digital tabletop technology at the application level, and collaborative learning applications in particular. This understanding is summarized in the form of general guidelines for designing collaborative learning applications for digital tabletop technology.

Turn-taking is a fundamental process that governs social interaction. When humans interact, they naturally take initiative and relinquish control to each other using verbal and nonverbal behavior in a coordinated manner. In contrast, existing approaches for controlling a robot's social behavior do not explicitly model turn-taking, resulting in interaction breakdowns that confuse or frustrate the human and detract from the dyad's cooperative goals. They also lack generality, relying on scripted behavior control that must be designed for each new domain. This thesis seeks to enable robots to cooperate fluently with humans by automatically controlling the timing of multimodal turn-taking. Based on our empirical studies of interaction phenomena, we develop a computational turn-taking model that accounts for multimodal information flow and resource usage in interaction. This model is implemented within a novel behavior generation architecture called CADENCE, the Control Architecture for the Dynamics of Embodied Natural Coordination and Engagement, that controls a robot's speech, gesture, gaze, and manipulation. CADENCE controls turn-taking using a timed Petri net (TPN) representation that integrates resource exchange, interruptible modality execution, and modeling of the human user. We demonstrate progressive developments of CADENCE through multiple domains of autonomous interaction encompassing situated dialogue and collaborative manipulation. We also iteratively evaluate improvements in the system using quantitative metrics of task success, fluency, and balance of control.

The thesis examined the proposal that subjects who were training to be generalist primary school teachers and had a minimal background in music, gained more effective initial keyboard and allied general musicianship skills through a programme based on cooperative learning rather than one based on individual, tutor directed, learning. The history of cooperative learning was investigated with a particular emphasis on recent work and research. There appeared to be an almost total lack of information on cooperative learning as applied to both adult learners and music education. The author devised a field trial programme that addressed both of these areas. The effectiveness of group tuition methods was tested using the field trial programme through a comparative study of subjects who were involved in a cooperative learning model of tuition, with an equal number of subjects who were tutored on an individual basis. Both groups were taught in a keyboard laboratory. All subjects were presented with an identical programme over the same period of time. At the conclusion of the field trial programme, subjects were tested on their ability to play the electronic keyboard and also in the area of general musicianship skills. Conclusions based on data derived from the tests indicated that the subjects in the cooperative learning groups scored more highly in all areas of the programme. It appeared that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that the cooperative mode of learning keyboard and associated musical skills was a superior one to the more traditional tutor directed programme as evidenced in the field trial programme. A questionnaire was also sent to all the New Zealand Colleges of Education to determine the nature of courses conducted in their keyboard laboratories. Results indicated that courses were virtually all tutor directed and that cooperative learning occured only on an informal basis.

This thesis investigates the design objectives for a collaborative workspace based on Sun Microsystems' Java programming language and JavaBeans component architecture. The feasibility of a collaborative component workspace based on these objectives is demonstrated by Sieve, a Javabased framework for collaborative applications. Sieve allows multiple users to collaboratively add, edit, and connect components on a shared two-dimensional workspace. Sieve introduces a technique that leverages standard JavaBeans mechanisms to support use of \collaboration-unaware" software components. With this technique, components need only conform to basic JavaBeans conventions in order to be shared across collaborating sessions { they need not be programmed specifically for collaboration. Sieve also allows component developers to provide custom mechanisms for sharing components. Sieve is extensible in other ways, allowing developers to introduce new mechanisms for creating, displaying, editing, and connecting components. Three collaborative applications built on this framework are presented: a visualization environment, a circuit simulation, and a set of tools for composing arbitrary software components. The visualization environment allows construction of dataflow networks from an extensible set of modules. Modules may read data from a variety of sources, filter and transform the data in various ways, and generate visualizations. The circuit simulation allows users to collaboratively construct and analyze simple direct-current circuits. Finally, the \BeanBox Emulation" application reproduces the basic component-linking functionality of Sun's BeanBox builder tool. With this application, users may collaboratively edit and link objects that conform to standard JavaBeans conventions.
Master of Science