Learner Attributes Research Articles

A rule‐based system for hybrid search and delivery of learning objects to learners

PurposePresently, searching the internet for learning material relevant to ones own interest continues to be a time‐consuming task. Systems that can suggest learning material (learning objects) to a learner would reduce time spent searching for material, and enable the learner to spend more time for actual learning. The purpose of this paper is to present a system of “hybrid search and delivery of learning objects to learners”.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a system of “hybrid search and delivery of learning objects to learners” that combines the use of WordNet for semantic query expansion and an approach to personalized learning object delivery by suggesting relevant learning objects based on attributes specified in the learner's profile. The learning objects are related to the learner's attributes using the IEEE LOM and IMS LIP standards. The system includes a web crawler to collect learning objects from existing learning object repositories, such as NEEDS or SMETE.FindingsThe presented HSDLO system has the ability to accurately search and deliver learning objects of interest to a learner as well as adjust the learner's profile over time by evaluating the learner's preferences implicitly through the learning object selections.Research limitations/implicationsSince real LOM's from SMETE are not much populated, the system is tested with a limited set of attributes. The system is evaluated using a test bench rather than real learners.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a combination of three search techniques in one system as well an architectural solution which can be used for other types of online search engines.

An Investigation into Turkish EFL Students‟

Learner attributions, perceived causes of success and failure, have received considerable attention. However, very little research has been carried out in the area of learning foreign languages. This empirical study investigated Turkish EFL students’ attributions in reading. The aims of the study were (1) to investigate university students’ attributions for success and failures in second language reading and (2) to examine the ways in which these vary according to gender, proficiency and teacher opinions. Student questionnaires identified 13 common attributions. Also, 17 EFL teachers were asked to what they attributed student success and failure in reading. Many statistically significant differences were found between attribution and gender, proficiency, and between student and teacher opinions. The study concludes with a set of pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of English reading.

The Physical and Technical Characteristics of English Language Teaching Courseware in Malaysia

The present paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the physical and technical characteristics of the English language teaching courseware in Malaysia. A randomly selected group of English language teachers in Malaysia (n=200) were surveyed to evaluate the courseware. SPSS (18.0) was applied to analyze the data. The results showed that the teachers consider the technical and physical characteristics of the courseware (its technological sophistication and user-friendliness among others) to be of a moderate level. The findings can be useful for educational software developers as well as English language teachers and researchers. More research is needed to find how teachers evaluate the courseware in reference to its pedagogical appropriateness and learner attributes.

An Analysis of Learner Attributes and Interactions in Synchronized e-Learning

An Analysis of Learner Attributes and Interactions in Synchronized e-Learning

The teacher, the learner and the method

Key content The modern teacher of obstetrics and gynaecology provides knowledge, acts as a role model, facilitates learning and plans assessments. Doctors training in obstetrics and gynaecology in the UK are adult learners who work in the National Health Service and undergo training in the core curriculum of the RCOG. There are various teaching methods that can be applied in different scenarios for the maximum benefit of learners. Learning objectives To be aware of the attributes of good teachers and learners. To understand different methods of teaching and how they can be applied in the specialty. Ethical issues What methods of teaching can be employed in the clinical learning environment which would be of maximum benefit to learners while protecting the safety of patients? What are the hallmarks of the model teacher and the model learner? Please cite this article as: Duthie SJ, Garden AS. The teacher, the learner and the method. The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist 2010;12:273–280.

Agricultural Extension Agents' Perceptions of Effective Teaching Strategies for Adult Learners in the Master Beef Producer Program

The purpose of the study reported here was to explore and describe how Extension agents selected teaching strategies for adult audiences. Andragogy is hypotheses concerning the attributes of adult learners (Knowles, Swanson, & Holton III, 2005). Extension agents responsible for teaching the Master Beef Producer (MBP) program were purposively selected for this study. Using qualitative research, results of the study show that county agricultural Extension agents felt hands-on instruction was the most effective teaching strategy for cattlemen. This article highlights the need for Extension to provide potential and current agents with formal education and professional development in andragogy.

Teacher Education and Teacher Identity in Transition

Within current Canadian learning environments, learners bring sophistication in areas such as communication/technology, a wide diversity of learning needs, and often an orientation towards social justice. This commentary refers to the ongoing responsiveness of teacher education programs to these evolving learner attributes, using as exemplars the areas of global citizenship education and technology integration. A backdrop for this discussion is the observation that the knowledge and skills that contribute to successful adult lives are also evolving.

A Support Method with Changeable Training Strategies Based on Mutual Adaptation between a Ubiquitous Pet and a Learner

With the progress of ubiquitous technology, ubiquitous learning presents new opportunities to learners. Situations of a learner can be grasped through analyzing the learner's actions collected by sensors, RF-IDs, or cameras in order to provide support at proper time, proper place, and proper situation. Training for acquiring skills and enhancing physical abilities through exercise and experience in the real world is an important domain in u-learning. A training program may last for several days and has one or more training units (exercises) for a day. A learner's performance in a unit is considered as short term state. The performance in a series of units may change with patterns: progress, plateau, and decline. Long term state in a series of units is accumulatively computed based on short term states. In a learning/training program, it is necessary to apply different support strategies to adapt to different states of the learner. Adaptation in learning support is significant, because a learner loses his/her interests easily without adaptation. Systems with the adaptive support usually provide stimulators to a learner, and a learner can have a great motivation in learning at beginning. However, when the stimulators reach some levels, the learner may lose his/her motivation, because the long term state of the learner changes dynamically, which means a progress state may change to a plateau state or a decline state. In different long term learning states, different types of stimulators are needed. However, the stimulators and advice provided by the existing systems are monotonic without changeable support strategies. We propose a mutual adaptive support. The mutual adaptation means each of the system and the learner has their own states. On one hand, the system tries to change its state to adapt to the learner's state for providing adaptive support. On the other hand, the learner can change its performance following the advice given based on the state of the system. We create a ubiquitous pet (u-pet) as a metaphor of our system. A u-pet is always with the learner and encourage the leaner to start training at proper time and to do training smoothly. The u-pet can perform actions with the learner in training, change its own attributes based on the learner's attributes, and adjust its own learning rate by a learning function. The u-pet grasps the state of the learner and adopts different training support strategies to the learner's training based on the learner's short and long term states.

Attribution and learning English as a foreign language

Learner attributions, perceived causes of success and failure, have received little attention in EFL research. Attributions are categorized as either internal (for example effort) or external (for example luck) and may affect how students learn about and impose order on their world. We investigated the attributions of 505 university students in Hong Kong and the connections between attribution and proficiency, gender, and academic discipline. Student interviews identified 26 common attributions, which were listed in a questionnaire: students were asked to what they attributed EFL success or failure. Follow-up interviews investigated the origins of attributions. Also, 40 EFL teachers were asked to what they attributed student success and failure. Many statistically significant differences were found between attribution and EFL proficiency, gender, and academic discipline and between student and teacher opinions. We conclude that attribution affects proficiency, effort, and persistence. Finally, suggestions are made for learner training and teacher action in the EFL classroom.

Developing Global Awareness and Responsible World Citizenship With Global Learning

Global learning is a student-centered activity in which learners of different cultures use technology to improve their global perspectives while remaining in their home countries. This article examines the use of global learning with gifted students to develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for world citizenship. We describe a pedagogical approach that is based on a set of conditions for global learning, associated learner attributes, and processes developed in global learning leading to acquisition of world citizen characteristics. Six processes and nine attributes are identified as essential for global learning. Two examples are presented of how this approach can be used to integrate global learning into the curriculum—one at a university level and another in a middle-school setting.

An attribute-based ant colony system for adaptive learning object recommendation

Teachers usually have a personal understanding of what “good teaching” means, and as a result of their experience and educationally related domain knowledge, many of them create learning objects ( LO) and put them on the web for study use. In fact, most students cannot find the most suitable LO (e.g. learning materials, learning assets, or learning packages) from webs. Consequently, many researchers have focused on developing e-learning systems with personalized learning mechanisms to assist on-line web-based learning and to adaptively provide learning paths. However, although most personalized learning mechanism systems neglect to consider the relationship between learner attributes (e.g. learning style, domain knowledge) and LO’s attributes. Thus, it is not easy for a learner to find an adaptive learning object that reflects his own attributes in relationship to learning object attributes. Therefore, in this paper, based on an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm, we proposed an attributes-based ant colony system (AACS) to help learners find an adaptive learning object more effectively. Our paper makes three critical contributions: (1) It presents an attribute-based search mechanism to find adaptive learning objects effectively; (2) An attributes-ant algorithm was proposed; (3) An adaptive learning rule was developed to identify how learners with different attributes may locate learning objects which have a higher probability of being useful and suitable; (4) A web-based learning portal was created for learners to find the learning objects more effectively.

Exploring diversity: teacher education policy and bilingualism

Although issues of inclusion, diversity and achievement have become a powerful agenda for change in teacher education policy in England, bilingual pupils are still conceptualised in policy terms as a problem. This absence of linguistic integration in English teacher education is in tension with the increasing number of school pupils speaking a diversity of languages at home, and contrasts with policy towards bilingual pupils in other parts of the United Kingdom, in Europe and in the United States. The standards for qualified teacher status only require trainee competence to be demonstrated in understanding pupil language backgrounds and in providing support for those learning ‘English as an Additional Language’ (EAL). The authors’ research investigated the way teacher education policy in England ignores the positive attributes of bilingual learners and the resultant lack of debate about the preparedness of trainee teachers to work effectively with bilingual pupils. This article presents key findings from their work with secondary schools in the south of England. They interviewed trainees, teachers and Local Education Authority (LEA) officers, administered a questionnaire to trainees and analysed policy documents. The findings indicate teacher education in England pays bilingualism lip service at best, persisting with a policy discourse emphasising the problem of EAL. The research raises important questions concerning teacher education policy in relation to bilingualism, and highlights the significance of school contexts in relation to effective teacher preparation. The article concludes by arguing for policies to improve teacher confidence and competence in England’s increasingly linguistically diverse classrooms.

Understanding learning behaviour of Malaysian adult learners: a cross-cultural sensitive framework

The link between learning and the knowledge-economy is so crucial that the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development has reconceptualised the term knowledge-economy to call it “learning economy”. Ultimately, one of the main challenges of learning and development in the 21st century is to evaluate the significant learning attributes of the adult learners. Literature on Students’ Approaches to Learning (SAL), were used to conceptualise the study. However, researchers have reported the weakness of the SAL for cross-cultural studies. This study acknowledges the importance of cultural issues in the study of learning approaches. The adapted version of SPQ, i.e. R-SPQ-2FM (Revised-Study Process Questionnaire-2 Factors Malaysia) which considers both etic (universal) and emic (culturally specific) characteristics was administered on 532 Malay and 326 Chinese Malaysian adult learners. Results show that there are significant cross-cultural insights between Malay and Chinese adult learners, particularly in the Understanding and Memorising Approach, Career/Achieve Motives constructs, the effects of “work experience” and “time spent on study” have on approaches to learning. Findings above would strengthen “evidence-informed” policy making for Malaysian authorities or regional policy makers in the Asia Pacific.

Planning effective HCI to enhance access to educational applications

Information and communications technologies (ICT) are widely believed to offer new options for Web-mediated courseware design. Multimedia and online courseware development accentuates a belief that highly graphical (or visual) delivery media will meet the individualised instructional requirements of diverse student cohorts. While most electronic courseware may allow the user to proceed at their own pace, two assumptions are commonly made by courseware designers. Firstly, to facilitate learning, all users are assumed capable of assimilating the graphical content with their current experiential knowledge. There is little or no consideration of different cognitive styles. Understanding learner attributes is essential to increasing accessibility to computerised information. Secondly, learning is assumed rather than demonstrated. To deal with this issue, data analysis techniques can be used to differentiate between what an individual knows from what they do not. This paper presents two research projects that demonstrate the importance of awareness for the human-dimension of human-computer interaction (HCI) in designing effective online experiential learning for special education.

Cognitive Style and Self-Efficacy: Predicting Student Success in Online Distance Education

This study was designed to identify those learner attributes that may be used to predict student success (in terms of grade point average) in a Web-based distance education setting. Students enrolled in six Web-based, general education distance education courses at a community college were asked to complete the Group Embedded Figures Test for field dependence/independence and the Online Technologies Self-Efficacy Scale to determine their entry-level confidence with necessary computer skills for online learning. Although the students who were more field independent tended to have higher online technologies self-efficacy, they did not receive higher grades than those students who were field dependent and had lower online technologies self-efficacy. Cognitive style scores and online technologies self-efficacy scores were poor predictors of student success in online distance education courses.

Student Perceptions as Distance Learners in Internet-Based Courses

With the increasing prevalence of Internet-based courses in higher education, it is important to examine students' experiences to provide an optimal learning environment. This research found that students reporting positive attitudes about their online course experience exhibited attributes of constructivist learners, including self-direction. Students with negative attitudes seemed less able to understand the course content and to trust self-assessment of their learning, and reported the need for more guidance. In addition, students' expectations were a determining influence in their online course experience and strategies. This study also explored strategies that students use to be successful and discusses ways by which instructors can recognize and meet the needs of a wide range of learners.

Adapting to Learner Attributes: experiments using an adaptive tutoring system

A composite learner model for adaptive tutoring systems has been developed, which combines a model of learner attributes with a simple overlay model of the learner's domain knowledge state. The model of learner characteristics enables several different forms of psychological and background data about the student to be taken into account, and provides a profile of the learner in terms of pedagogically useful attributes. An Adaptive Tutor Using Learner Attributes (ATULA) has been constructed, which uses the composite learner model. The system is able to select for the learner the optimal form of the learning material for the group of topics about to be presented. Experiments carried out with the adaptive tutoring system over 3 successive academic years with two disparate groups of students are described. User records collected during the experiments provide insight into the operation of the model, both at initialisation and during the student's interaction with the system. Previous users’ records also enable comparisons to be made with the result of previous experiments using a non‐adaptive system.

THE ROLE OF STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF STUDY STRATEGY AND PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES IN STRATEGY USE

ABSTRACT Drawing upon study strategy, metacognition, and attribution research literatures, the present study explored task, person, and strategy variables as determinants of strategy use. College students read and were tested over an expository passage and then were asked to report the strategies they used and their perceptions of themselves and of the strategies. The college students in the present study reported using a large number of strategies, more than eight per student on average. Reported use of skimming, anticipating the test, and selective rereading strategies predicted students’ performance on a short‐answer test. Reported use of each of these strategies was significantly predicted by one or more of the following factors: general knowledge of the strategy, specific strategy attributes, perceived learner attributes, match between strategy and learner attributes, and strategy efficacy.

Learning processes, learner attributes and simulations

This article reports work on two aspects of learning with simulations. The first is the development of an account of the learning processes implicated in learning with computer simulations and of the potential problems learners may encounter in exploratory learning. The second is the creation of an inventory of attributes of learners which are of relevance to learning with computer simulations. Learning with simulations is viewed as essentially exploration-based. Some of our account of learning processes can therefore be derived from the literature on exploratory learning, discovery learning, problem-solving and induction. In addition, we provide a synthesis of the research which is directly concerned with learning from computer simulations — analyzing the known problems of simulation-based learning and offering an empirically-derived classification of relevant learning processes (planning, model exploration, prediction, generalisation etc.). A knowledgeable toolset for creating knowledgeable simulation-based learning environments (ISLEs) needs to have means for the explicit representation of knowledge about learners. Such knowledge is necessary for both the creation and the operation of an ISLE. We therefore provide an inventory of characteristics of learners which are of relevance in simulation-based learning. The inventory draws on accounts of learner characteristics found in the literature on Aptitude-Treatment Interaction, on learning styles and cognitive styles and on phenomenographic treatments of adult learning. Our analyses of learner characteristics relevant to the representation of the learner in an ISLE focuses on the status of mental models, the interaction with instructional goals and specific learning processes, and the centrality of learner activity.

Locus of Control among Computer-Using School Children: A Report of a Pilot Study

Forty-six high SES school-aged children (aged nine to fifteen) participated in a prototypical after-school and summer computer camp provided by an independent non-profit research laboratory. Following an initial sixteen-hour exposure to Logo and Bank Street Writer, children twelve years of age or less were found to minimally shift towards an internal locus of control (paired 1-tailed t-test significant at .03), as measured pre and posttest with the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control (LOC) Scale for Children. The LOC scale was chosen as an operationalization of Papert's concept of “empowering children” via microcomputer interaction. Because prior research on LOC has associated an internal LOC with positive learner attributes (such as the ability to delay gratification, persist on task, greater tendencies toward beneficial social interaction, less dogmatism, academic competence, social maturity, and possibly a correlate of independent, striving, and self-motivated behavior), it was felt that such an investigation could assist researchers in more clearly distinguishing between the reaction of different groups towards technology as a tool. Treatment consisted of a semi-structured sixteen-hour microcomputer experience in a class/lab environment. Software used in the study was restricted to Logo and Bank Street Writer. Classification of the LOC instrument by topic and response suggests that even highly internal-scoring children do not regard “planning” as an important process leading to successful outcomes in life. The relationship of this finding to a recent study conducted by Bank Street College utilizing Logo is discussed.