Learning Affordances Research Articles

Students’ voices about English language learning in school and beyond

Abstract The research was carried out in a public secondary school with 16 to 18-year-old students in a context usually considered as an EFL one. The main goals were to discover what students said about learning English in and beyond the school and what led them to use English autonomously outside the classroom. A qualitative methodology was used. First, a questionnaire was proposed to 122 students to find out the uses of English outside the school; then, I selected students who were considered good learners of English by their teachers and who had learnt English only in secondary school and autonomously outside school. Based on that criterion, I investigated nine learners using a Facebook survey, two focus groups and learning logs. The idea of good language learners (GLLs) of English described by the teachers focuses on the relationship the learner establishes with the L2 and the external perceptions of what they do with it. On the other hand, GLLs do not share common features that can be generalized; every learner establishes a unique relationship with the L2 and uses varied and changing strategies. What GLL do share is an agentive approach to learning the L2 and a positive appreciation of its cultural artefacts. Learners mainly accessed these artefacts through ICTs working as learning affordances.

Postlesson affordance‐based reflective discussion in ELT classes

AbstractThis article points out the need for postlesson affordance‐based reflective discussions as the traditional outcome‐based approach does not allow high levels of reflection to take place. After introducing the iceberg of reflection, it proposes a theoretical ground for discussions on the premise of learning affordances. Identifying the learning opportunities and factors of inhibition, teachers can holistically assess their teaching practices and orient the direction of future lessons. The article also suggests that postlesson affordance‐based discussions should channel more diverse stakeholders with teacher–student discussions, peer discussions, and self‐discussions based on the four lenses of critical reflection. Teachers can also invite different stakeholders in a joint discussion so that different voices can triangulate and complement each other. Acknowledging the importance of differential learning and teaching, the author recommends how teachers can hold discussions in different classroom contexts to foster language emergence and empower learners.

Preparing for the New Phygital Generation as Potential Academic Library Users in South African Higher Education

Context: Higher education and its academic support services, including academic library and information services (LIS), have continuously been challenged by new technological developments, as well as the quest for transformation toward more inclusive education. The rapid and disruptive technological changes imposed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) heralded a new entry-level student, coined the “phygital generation.” This new generation of library users is characterised by an ever-expanding digital imprint and a preference for using mobile technology to navigate all aspects of their daily lives, including how they approach their tertiary studies. Focus: The study interrogates the readiness of information specialists to understand the nature of the phygital generation within a higher education group in South Africa. The changes in information-seeking behaviour are explored with due cognisance of the existing digital exclusions experienced by many South African students. Methodology: Through the lens of the critical theory paradigm and guided by the conceptualisations of post-digital frameworks, critical digital approaches and metacognitive frameworks, qualitative data were collected during a focus group interview. The non-probability sample was purposively selected, consisting of information specialists of a school within a higher education institution. The transcribed data were coded and thematically analysed. Key findings: Key findings show a shift in the information-seeking behaviour of new entry-level students. There is a propensity towards using mobile technology. It is evident that LIS staff in this study are not yet mobilised to accommodate this new trend by adapting existing services to be more open to accommodating mobile technology seamlessly. The participants reported that academic writing skills are affected by short messaging styles used in social media. Understanding the nature of the new phygital student and capitalising on the affordances of mobile learning will support student success. Value: Mobile LIS urgently needs to be formalised and implemented strategically with the needs of the new generation in mind. The need for further institutional reform and innovation is evident. Further research is required on plagiarism trends, copyright infringement and privacy compliance that emerged from the findings of this study.

Policy-Based Reinforcement Learning for Training Autonomous Driving Agents in Urban Areas With Affordance Learning

Learning to drive in urban areas is an open challenge for autonomous vehicles (AVs), as complex decision making requirements are needed in multi-task co-ordinations environments. In this paper, we propose a hybrid framework with a new perception model involving affordance learning to simplify the surrounding urban scenes for training an AV agent, along with a planned trajectory and the associated driving measurements. Our proposed solution encompasses two main aspects. Firstly, a supervised learning network is used to map the input sensory data into affordance predictions. The predicted affordances provide a low-dimensional representation of surrounding scenes of the AV in the form of key perception indicators, e.g., true or false with respect to a traffic light signal. Secondly, a deep deterministic policy gradient model that maps the perception information into a series of actions is devised. We evaluate the proposed solution using the CARLA driving simulator in an urban town and evaluate the performance in a new, unseen town under different weather conditions. The quantitative and qualitative results indicate that our proposed solution can generalize well to cope with different traffic solutions and environmental conditions. Our proposed solution also outperforms other baseline methods in a comparative study in handling various AV driving tasks with different levels of difficulty. In addition, the model trained with simulated scenes yields promising prediction results when testing on recorded video streams on real-world highway and suburb environments with varying traffic and weather conditions.

Translanguaging and product-oriented drama: an integrated pedagogical approach for language learning and literacy development

ABSTRACT This study investigated the translanguaging practices of 12 students and a teacher rehearsing a German play as part of an extra-curricular UK university theatre group comprising different European nationalities. Our aim was to understand how these practices support foreign language and literacy development in the context of a script-based, product-oriented approach to drama. The final three full rehearsals were audio-recorded and transcribed. Following functional analysis to identify translanguaging instances, discourse analysis was applied to selected extracts where learning was inferred or shown to occur. Rehearsals provided a rich learning environment in which participants were affectively engaged, with specific opportunities for contextualised language learning and literacy development. Translanguaging enhanced these learning opportunities, enabling students to engage with the German script as bilinguals drawing on both their linguistic and multimodal repertoires to build meaning. The integration of translanguaging and product-oriented drama offers a linguistically diverse and embodied pedagogical approach to language education and a wealth of learning affordances less readily accessed in monolingual environments.

Navigating Affordances for Learning in Clinical Workplaces: A Qualitative Study of General Practitioners’ Continued Professional Development

Medical specialists’ lifelong learning is essential for improving patients’ health. This study identifies affordances for learning general practitioners (GPs) engage in, and explores what influences engagement in those affordances. Eleven GPs were interviewed and the interview transcripts were analysed thematically. Stephen Billett’s theoretical framework of workplace participatory practices was used as an analytical lens to explore the topic. Challenging patient cases were identified as the main trigger for engagement in learning. Local, national and international colleagues from the same and other specialties, were found to be an important affordance for learning, as was written material such as websites, journals and recommendations. Other inputs for learning were conferences and courses. Workplace aspects that were essential for GPs to engage in learning related to: place and time to talk, relevance to work, opportunity for different roles, organisation of work and workload, and working climate. Importantly, the study identifies a need for a holistic approach to lifelong learning, including spontaneous and structured opportunities for interaction over time with colleagues, establishment of incentives and arenas for exchange linked to peer learning, and acknowledgement of the workplace as an important place for learning and sufficient time with patients. This study contributes with a deepened understanding of how GPs navigate existing affordances for learning both within and outside their workplaces.

Implementing continuous assessment in an academic English writing course: An exploratory study

Although continuous assessment is often used in different disciplines, its implementation in L2 writing is underexplored. Adopting the framework of learning-oriented assessment (Carless, 2015) and the concept of affordances (Gibson, 1986), this exploratory study examined a case study of how one teacher and her students perceived and shaped/utilized the motivational and learning affordances of regular low-stakes continuous assessment in a tertiary academic English writing course. Data were collected from classroom observation, teacher and student interviews, student writing, and pre- and post-course surveys. The findings revealed a complex picture of the differing degrees to which the teacher harmonized the AoL and AfL aspects of CA across the three dimensions of learning-oriented assessment based on the various ways she perceived and shaped its classroom affordances. The students’ perceptions and utilization of the learning affordances of CA largely converged with those that were perceived and shaped by the teacher. However, difference was found in how the motivational affordances of CA were perceived and shaped/utilized. A model of learning-oriented continuous assessment in L2 writing is proposed and pedagogical implications are discussed. • Teacher showed differing extents of perceiving and creating affordances for CA. • Teacher views of affordances for CA largely converged with student views. • Students perceived more affordances regarding CA task engagement than teacher.

Good for patients but not learners? Exploring faculty and learner virtual care integration.

The pandemic catapulted the adoption of virtual care far ahead of its anticipated maturation date, forcing faculty to role model and teach learners with barely enough time to master it themselves. With a scant body of prepandemic literature now accompanied by experience gained under extraordinary circumstances, we can benefit from understanding ad hoc strategies implemented by those on the front lines and from listening to learners about what is working and what is not. The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of learner integration into virtual care from both the faculty and learner perspectives. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology and sociomateriality as a sensitising concept, we recruited participants using purposeful and theoretical sampling from a Canadian University with limited prepandemic virtual care provision. We interviewed 16 faculty and 5 learners spanning a breadth of specialties and years of practice/education to probe their experience of teaching and learning virtual care. Data collection and analysis were conducted iteratively with themes identified through constant comparative analysis. Integrating learners into virtual care proved challenging initially because of a lack of familiarity with the process and later because of disrupted workflow, triggered by the structure and logistics of the virtual care clinic. Both faculty and learners identified learning deficiencies in the virtual care experience when compared with in-person clinics, but several unique and valuable learning affordances were noted. All faculty expressed a desire to keep virtual care as part of their future clinic practice, but paradoxically most felt that they were unlikely to include learners. Training learners in virtual care is an educational challenge that will not disappear with COVID-19, even if our participants wished it could. The perceived value for patients but not learners begs a reconsideration of the sociomaterial contribution to this pandemic paradox.

Korean Teachers' Perception of Future Education after COVID-19 and Direction of Technology Education

This study was conducted to predict changes in education after COVID-19 through a survey of Korean teachers' perceptions of future education and to set the future direction of technology education based on this. To this end, in this study, by analyzing the educational situation after the COVID-19 crisis, five major categories were defined: “Educational Goals”, “Curriculum”, “Teachers’ Competencies”, “School Education System”, and “Education System for Pre-service Teachers”. A total of 465 people participated in the survey from 16 cities and provinces in the Republic of Korea from February to May 2021 and responded to 16 questions according to the topic and using the online survey tool. As a result of the survey, Korean teachers responded that "adaptation to new technology" and "pursuit of social values" need to be emphasized as educational goals after COVID-19, and "individualized distance education" and "project-based learning" need to be actively applied in curriculum operation. They thought that teachers would be required to have competencies such as “technology literacy” and “creating learning affordances”. In addition, in school education, "interdisciplinary integration" and "safety and health education" must be emphasized, and the teachers answered that it is important to learn social values. In the course of training pre-service teachers, it was considered necessary to expand convergence and complex courses and to actively apply blended learning, deeper learning, and crossover learning. Based on this, the direction of future technology education can be established. For the development of technology education, it is necessary to change competencies from problem-solving to concept design, metaverse-based technology education needs to be conducted, and technology ethics need to be treated importantly.

Blended, active, and persistent: An investigative study of blended learning affordances for active learning and student persistence in university-level introductory science courses

Higher education has seen the accelerated development of blended learning (BL), active learning (AL), and STEM education. This study explores a proposed framework showing that BL affordances enable or constrain AL and that the relationship between BL affordances and AL influences student persistence in introductory science courses and the sciences. A multiple-case study examined an introductory physics course and an introductory chemistry course. Interviewed were two student volunteers from high-, average-, and low-performing groups from each course. Course documentations underwent content analysis, and in-class and online observations were evaluated using the practical observation rubric to assess active learning (PORTAAL). The researcher developed a survey instrument, blended learning for active learning (BL4AL), capturing students’ perspectives concerning AL through traditional and nontraditional learning methods for their persistence in the sciences. Findings indicated students from all levels had varying views of BL affordances. However, in-class clicker questions and a third-party tutoring service were discovered to consistently enable AL. Students’ perceptions of BL for AL had a medium effect on whether they would continue in the sciences.

Using Mobile Devices for Vocabulary Learning Outside the Classroom: Improving the English as Foreign Language Learners' Knowledge of High-Frequency Words.

The present study investigated the impacts of mobile assisted vocabulary learning via digital flashcards (DFs). The data were collected from 44 adult English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in three intact classes in a private language teaching institute in Iran, randomly assigned to experimental (N = 27) and control (N = 17) learning conditions. The experimental group used a freely available DF application (i.e., NGSL builder) to learn items from a recently developed corpus-based word list for high-frequency vocabulary in English (NGSL). The treatment was implemented as out-of-the-classroom learning activities where the EFL learners used DFs to augment their vocabulary knowledge, and their learning gains were compared to the control group that received regular English language education. The participants’ vocabulary knowledge was tested in pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests, and the findings indicated that using DFs for outside the classroom vocabulary learning contributed significantly to short- and long-term improvements in the knowledge of high-frequency words. The study provided empirical evidence for the affordances of mobile assisted vocabulary learning for learning a considerable proportion of core vocabulary and has some implications for addressing the vocabulary learning needs of EFL learners.

Teaching presence in students’ WhatsApp groups: Affordances for language learning

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic and disruption of campus-based education, the use of mobile social networking applications to supplement formal education has attracted a great deal of attention. Teachers do have opportunities to join students’ online groups to share, clarify, and exchange housekeeping information and course-related content with them. Teachers can, in particular, provide English as a foreign language (EFL) students with more sources of linguistic input, interaction, and feedback. Research investigating this potential, however, is still scarce in such contexts. The current study explores the likely affordances of teaching presence in students’ WhatsApp groups for designing, facilitating, and guiding cognitive and social processes conducive to their language learning. A mixed-method design was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data and information from English-major undergraduates (N = 111) and faculty teachers (N = 8) who joined the same WhatsApp groups for one academic semester at a major university in Oman. Descriptive and thematic analyses of data from a survey with both closed-ended and open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews indicate that the shared WhatsApp groups functioned as small close-knit communities where students were able to constantly access teachers for their assistance, feedback, and clarification of content. Despite these merits, however, the participating faculty believed that the presence of teachers in WhatsApp groups might have consequences for students’ tolerance of ambiguity, scaffolding, and autonomous language learning. The paper concludes by discussing several pedagogical implications and directions for future research.

Mobile learning application: Infusing critical thinking in the EFL classroom.

The emergence of mobile learning applications facilitates the pedagogical approach to developing students’ critical thinking. However, there is a scarcity of investigation on mobile learning applications’ impact on developing critical thinking as the learning outcome. Thus, this study reports the effect of a mobile learning application, ‘English with Noni’, designed to infuse critical thinking instruction in EFL classes on students’ critical thinking level by employing a sequential explanatory mixed-method approach. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to examine the critical thinking level of 65 students of a junior high school in Jakarta, Indonesia, by administering a post-test assessed using a SOLO rubric. Semi-structured interviews to explore students’ responses from using the ‘English with Noni’ application and class observation contributed to the qualitative findings. The quantitative result showed that the critical thinking level of the experimental group using this application improved significantly more than the controlled group did. The qualitative result suggested that the experimental group had positive responses to using it. They confirmed that it was interesting. They also admitted that it contributed to developing their critical thinking (i.e., predicting, providing reasons, expressing viewpoints, finding alternatives, and making conclusions), language skills (i.e., listening, reading, and writing), and sub-skill (vocabulary). The findings imply that critical thinking activities and learning affordances provided in the ‘English with Noni’ application is a potential tool to enhance students’ critical thinking infused in the EFL class, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic situation, by emphasizing self-regulated learning.

Three cases that demonstrate how students connect the domains of mathematics and computing

This study uses actor-oriented transfer perspective to investigate different ways in which students make connections across the domains of mathematics and computing. We interview first-year students at the University of Oslo as they work with a set of tutorials that we designed to integrate knowledge from both domains. The cases we present here demonstrate four different types of cross-domain connections: (a) mathematically reproducing the work of a computer program, (b) cyclically improving a program to produce better output, (c) coupling math to output to justify program improvements and (d) coupling math to code to justify program design. We provide rich examples of the ways in which students make these connections and discuss affordances for mathematical learning in this context.

Augmented sociomateriality: implications of artificial intelligence for the field of learning technology

There has been a conscious effort in the past decade to produce a more theoretical account of the use of technology for learning. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are being rapidly incorporated into learning technologies, significantly changing their affordances for teaching and learning. In this article I address the question of whether introduction of AI and associated features such as machine learning is a novel development from a theoretical perspective, and if so, how? I draw on the existing perspective of sociomateriality for learning and argue that the use of AI is indeed different because AI transforms sociomateriality by allowing materiality to take on characteristics previously associated primarily with a human agent, thereby shifting the nature of the sociomaterial assemblage. In this data and algorithm-driven AI-based sociomateriality, affordances for representation and agency change, thereby modifying representational and relational practices that are essential for cognition. The dualities of data/algorithm, representational/agentic augmentation, and relational/participatory practices act in tandem within this new sociomaterial assemblage. If left unchecked, this new assemblage is prone to perpetuate the biases programmed within the technology itself. Therefore, it is important to take ethical and moral implications of using AI-driven learning technologies into account before their use.

Evaluating performance on a bespoke maths game with children with Down syndrome

AbstractBackgroundDespite the interest and potential of multi touch devices, there are limited published studies researching their effectiveness and usability specifically with children with Down syndrome, one of the most common groups of children with an intellectual disability. This is particularly true for mathematical learning, an area in which many experience particular difficulty.ObjectivesThe study set out to evaluate a bespoke digital game in which children learned to select which was “more,” a foundational skill for understanding magnitude.MethodsA mixed methods approach was adopted with eight single case studies of children aged 9–14 years. Probes (untaught examples) were introduced to examine progress and the impact on performance in non‐digital contexts.ResultsFive pupils improved their performance on the digital games and this was sustained at the time of the delayed post‐test. Four pupils showed improved performance in non‐taught, non‐digital contexts for both taught and untaught ratios. Disaggregated data reveals the variability in performance, with peak performances occurring at different points of the intervention. The introduction of a two‐player version improved performance for five pupils through promoting sustained attention and strategic responses to winning. One child performed at chance level on the digital game throughout but made gains in non‐digital settings.ConclusionsBespoke learning tools have good potential to promote attention to numerosity. However, progress in digital contexts does not automatically transfer to non‐digital contexts. The study reveals the individual nature of the learning affordances of different pedagogic tools and the place of bespoke games within teachers' repertoires.

The process of learning the designed actions of toys

Many everyday objects require “hidden” affordances to use as designed (e.g., twist open a water bottle). Previous work found a reliable developmental progression in children’s learning of designed actions with adult objects such as containers and zippers—from non-designed exploratory actions, to the basics of the designed action, to successful implementation. Many objects designed for children (e.g., toys) also entail designed actions (e.g., interlocking bricks) but might not require a protracted period of discovery and implementation. We encouraged 12- to 60-month-old children (n = 91) and a comparative sample of 20 adults to play with six Duplo bricks to test whether the developmental progression identified for children’s learning of adult objects with hidden affordances holds for a popular toy expressly designed for children. We also examined whether children’s moment-to-moment behaviors with Duplo bricks inform on general processes involved in discovery and implementation of hidden affordances. With age, children progressed from non-designed exploratory actions, to attempts to interlock, to success, suggesting that the three-step developmental progression revealed with everyday adult objects broadly applies to learning hidden affordances regardless of object type. Detailing the process of learning (the type and timing of children’s non-designed actions and attempts to interlock) revealed that the degree of lag between steps of the progression depends on the transparency of the required actions, the availability of perceptual feedback, and the difficulty of the perceptual–motor requirements. Findings provide insights into factors that help or hinder learning of hidden affordances.

Investigating EFL Learners’ Perceptions of Critical Thinking Learning Affordances: Voices From Chinese University English Majors

Affordances are action possibilities provided by the environment. This study investigated university EFL learners’ perceptions of the critical thinking learning affordances in their course learning environment. The participants were a cohort of 156 fourth-year English majors from a Chinese university where the English department was under a curriculum reform to promote students’ language learning and critical thinking development. The instrument of this study was the Learning Environment Affordance Survey_Critical Thinking (LEAS_CT) with a set of multiple-choice questions. The data analysis methods used in the study included descriptive statistical analysis, factor analysis, and MANOVA tests. The results showed that the English majors had strongly positive perceptions of the critical thinking learning affordances, which included four types: Rich Resources, Interactive Negotiation, Quality Task, and Community Culture. The results also revealed that high-achieving students had significantly better perceptions of the critical thinking learning affordances than lower-achieving students. Responses to the multiple-choice questions indicated that the English majors considered content-rich materials, teacher-facilitation, and small-group/peer learning benefited them most in terms of critical thinking development. Factors that influenced their perceptions of learning affordances and implications concerning integrating critical thinking into the tertiary EFL curriculum were discussed.

Navigation-Oriented Scene Understanding for Robotic Autonomy: Learning to Segment Driveability in Egocentric Images

This work tackles scene understanding for outdoor robotic navigation, solely relying on images captured by an on-board camera. Conventional visual scene understanding interprets the environment based on specific descriptive categories. However, such a representation is not directly interpretable for decision-making and constrains robot operation to a specific domain. Thus, we propose to segment egocentric images directly in terms of how a robot can navigate in them, and tailor the learning problem to an autonomous navigation task. Building around an image segmentation network, we present a generic affordance consisting of 3 driveability levels which can broadly apply to both urban and off-road scenes. By encoding these levels with soft ordinal labels, we incorporate inter-class distances during learning which improves segmentation compared to standard “hard” one-hot labelling. In addition, we propose a navigation-oriented pixel-wise loss weighting method which assigns higher importance to safety-critical areas. We evaluate our approach on large-scale public image segmentation datasets ranging from sunny city streets to snowy forest trails. In a cross-dataset generalization experiment, we show that our affordance learning scheme can be applied across a diverse mix of datasets and improves driveability estimation in unseen environments compared to general-purpose, single-dataset segmentation.

Language learning affordances of Instagram and TikTok

ABSTRACT This study examines creative uses of emerging image-based social media for informal language learning. Adopting the ecological concept of affordances, it investigates new technological features on Instagram and TikTok and how they are utilised as resources for language learning. Using public data of Instagram photo/video and TikTok video posts, the study is based on 200 posts from each application collected over two months. A qualitative content analysis was conducted based on four key dimensions of technological innovation: multimodality, mobility, instantaneous participation, and interactivity. The findings show how language learners’ use of the new technological features employed on the two platforms are related to these dimensions, and how they use agency and creativity to perceive affordances for language learning in features not originally designed for this purpose. The study contributes to understanding of the ways in which online informal language learning is adapting to technological innovation in new image-based social media.