Pedagogical Affordances Research Articles

Investigating the linguistic and pedagogical affordances of an L2 open reading environment via eComma: An exploratory study in a Chinese language course

This exploratory, small-scale, qualitative study investigates the linguistic and pedagogical benefits and challenges of using a digital annotation tool (called eComma) to facilitate second language (L2) reading in a second-semester, university-level Chinese language course. The goals of the study are to analyze the effects of social reading on learners' understanding of Chinese literary texts and investigate how an L2 teacher might effectively incorporate this activity in his/her classroom. The results indicate that students predominantly used the social reading experience to query fellow students about the meaning of vocabulary/Chinese characters in the digital, literary texts used in the study. eComma allowed students to co-construct meaning and scaffold their learning while engaged in close readings of the Chinese literary texts outside of the physical classroom. Drawbacks of social reading in this environment include students' frustrations with some technical aspects of the eComma tool and the instructor's concerns about meaningfully bridging students' social reading experiences outside of the class with in-class discussions/activities. Pedagogical suggestions regarding L2 open/social reading include adding timing constraints to promote more virtual interaction, better integrating students' virtual comments into classroom discussion/activities, and offering more structure for novice learners.

Creating Awareness around Rhizomatic Principles in mLearning

Educational technological innovation to enhance the learning experience of students requires a sound understanding of intended learning outcomes and an understanding of the pedagogical affordances of technology. Literature reveals that an understanding of the application of mLearning in facilitating the achievement of specific learning objectives is limited. This may lead to negative quality perceptions and subsequently have a negative impact on the adoption of potentially rich technological resources. The challenge for educators is to create learning environments based on sound didactical principles. The purpose of this study is to highlight rhizomatic principles in mLearning practice using an integrated research synthesis. This may contribute to creating an awareness of, and a belief in rhizomatic principles in mLearning practice and this in turn may improve their practice. This is based on the premise of the theory of planned behaviour.

Advancing Elementary and Middle School STEM Education

Navigating the current STEM agendas and debates is complex and challenging. Perspectives on the nature of STEM education and how it should be implemented without losing discipline integrity, approaches to incorporating the arts (STEAM), and how equity in access to STEM education can be increased are just a few of the many issues faced by researchers and educators. There are no straightforward answers. Opinions on how STEM education should be advanced vary across school contexts, curricula, and political arenas. This position paper addresses five core issues: (a) perspectives on STEM education; (b) approaches to STEM integration; (c) STEM discipline representation, (d) equity in access to STEM education, and (e) extending STEM to STEAM. A number of pedagogical affordances inherent in integrated STEM activities are examined, with the integration of modeling and engineering design presented as an example of how such learning affordances can be capitalized on.

Assessing the Affordances of SimReal+ and their Applicability to Support the Learning of Mathematics in Teacher Education

Aim/Purpose: Assess the affordances and constraints of SimReal+ in teacher education Background There is a huge interest in visualizations in mathematics education, but there is little empirical support for their use in educational settings Methodology: Single case study with 22 participants from one class in teacher education. Quantitative and qualitative methods to collect students’ responses to a survey questionnaire and open-ended questions Contribution: The paper contributes to the understanding of affordances and constraints of visualization tools in mathematics education Findings: The visualization tool SimReal+ has potential for learning mathematics in teacher education, but the user interface should be improved to make it more usable for different users. Teachers need to consider technological and pedagogical affordances of SimReal+ at the student, classroom, and mathematics subject level Recommendations for Practitioners: Address technological and pedagogical affordances of SimReal+ Recommendation for Researchers: Improve the design of SimReal+ to make it technologically and pedagogically more usable Impact on Society: Understand the affordances and constraints of visualization tools in education Future Research: Implement a next cycle of experimentation with SimReal+ in teacher education to ensure more validity and reliability

Tech Select Decision Aide: A Mobile Application to Facilitate Just-In-Time Decision Support for Instructional Designers

With the ubiquitous use of mobile technologies and the increasing demand for just-in-time training, there is a need to prepare and support instructional designers and educators to meet the pedagogical and technological development requirements of their target audience in the most effective and efficient way. This paper reviews the iterative design, development and testing of the Tech Select Decision Aide, a mobile recommender system designed to align instructional strategies with learning technologies based on the pedagogical affordances of the learning technology and the cognitive level of the learning objective. Focus group and survey results show that the Tech Select Decision Aide is a useful and usable mobile app that provides just-in-time performance support to assist instructional designers and faculty in the development and creation of pedagogically sound instructional and training materials using technology. Future areas of mobile development are discussed.

Networked participatory online learning design and challenges for academic integrity in higher education

A new multi-disciplinary degree program in education and information studies was developed to uniquely facilitate educators’ capacity to be responsive to the demands of a digitally connected world. Charles Sturt University’s Master of Education (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation) aims to develop agile leaders in new cultures of digital formal and informal learning. The co-construction of knowledge through interpersonal discourse creates a pedagogical tension between a focus on knowledge-based instruction and outcomes, and on praxis-based instruction. This digital context draws attention to academic integrity issues in online learning environments. Through the new subject Game-Based Learning, students engaged in theory, practice, trends in game designs and immersive aspects of game, utilizing the technology and pedagogical affordances of a range of online tools. The subject builds on the keystone subject and incorporates reflective participation and a culture of participatory learning through integration of social media, social scholarship and open sharing of ideas, resources and experiences online within the broader education community. Subject engagement and assessment design incorporated academic integrity strategies, and needed individual and group collaboration to be fully integrated into the learning experience of the students, thus modeling practices relevant to the student’s own processional practices. This paper also considers the contribution of global connectedness to the success of the pedagogic processes used for embedding academic integrity through social scholarship into the curriculum and learning experiences.

Is Facebook still a suitable technology‐enhanced learning environment? An updated critical review of the literature from 2012 to 2015

AbstractThis study provides an updated critical review of the literature on Facebook as a technology‐enhanced learning environment based on papers published between 2012 and 2015. It adopts a revised classification of the categories identified in a previous study, which emphasized three main Facebook affordances – mixing information and learning resources, hybridization of expertise and widening context of learning. The aim is to investigate to what extent studies using Facebook as a learning environment exploited these affordances. Literature has been also analysed according to three types of educational use of Facebook – formal use in formal learning settings (FUF), informal use in formal learning settings (IUF) and use in informal learning settings (UI) – to highlight if and how Facebook affordances have been exploited in these learning settings. Literature search identified 147 articles published in peer‐reviewed journals. The results show that most of the articles can be classified as dealing with FUF (N = 69; 46.9%) or as IUF (N = 68; 46.3%); only a minority concerns the UI (N = 10; 6.8%). Overall, the study found that Facebook pedagogical affordances are still partially implemented, although different types of educational use of Facebook exploit these affordances to different degrees. It also provides indications for future research.Lay descriptionWhat is currently known about the subject matter: Facebook still stands as the most popular social network site There is an abundant research literature on Facebook Studies on the educational value of Facebook have grown exponentially in the last years A review on Facebook as a technology‐enhanced learning environment was published in 2013 What this paper adds: This study is an update of the critical review published in 2013 It takes into account studies published between 2012 and 2015 It refines the methodology adopted in the 2013 review It introduces a classification of educational uses of Facebook according to the formal/informal continuum Implications of study findings for practitioners: Facebook is still mostly considered as an open alternative to traditional learning management systems Facebook pedagogical affordances are still partially implemented Teacher guidance and forms of assessment are claimed according to degrees of formality and informality Cultural issues in the use of Facebook in education should be further investigated

Global Trends and Research Aims for English Academic Oral Presentations

English has become the de facto language for communication in academia in many parts of the world, but English language learners often lack the language resources to make effective oral academic presentations. However, English for academic purposes (EAP) research is beginning to provide valuable insights into this emerging field. This literature review is a systematic overview of the research on EAP oral monologues and EAP monologues that employ learning technology (LT). Three investigative aims were addressed in the research: linguistic description of the final oral presentation, the learning processes including learner attitudes toward the process, and LT for oral monologues. Major findings included linguistic and discourse differences among learners, experts, and native speakers; the need for specific guidelines and focused training; the role of multimodal resources; and the pedagogical affordances of the LT. Identified challenges, future research directions, and instructional suggestions are provided for instructors and researchers.

Learning through engagement: MOOCs as an emergent form of provision

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a new form of educational provision occupying a space between formal online courses and informal learning. Adopting measures used with formal online courses to assess the outcomes of MOOCs is often not informative because the context is very different. The particular affordances of MOOCs shaping learning environments comprise scale (in terms of numbers of students) and diversity (in terms of the types of students). As learning designers, we focus on understanding the particular tools and pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform to support learner engagement. Drawing on research into learner engagement conducted in the broader field of online learning, we consider how learner engagement in a MOOC might be designed for by looking at three pedagogical aspects: teacher presence, social learning, and peer learning.

Using graphical and pictorial representations to teach introductory astronomy students about the detection of extrasolar planets via gravitational microlensing

The detection and study of extrasolar planets is an exciting and thriving field in modern astrophysics and an increasingly popular topic in introductory astronomy courses. One detection method relies on searching for stars whose light has been gravitationally microlensed by an extrasolar planet. In order to facilitate instructors' abilities to bring this interesting mix of general relativity and extrasolar planet detection into the introductory astronomy classroom, we have developed a new Lecture-Tutorial called “Detecting Exoplanets with Gravitational Microlensing.” In this paper, we describe how this new Lecture-Tutorial's representations of astrophysical phenomena, which we selected and created based on theoretically motivated considerations of their pedagogical affordances, are used to help introductory astronomy students develop more expert-like reasoning abilities.

Beginning Learners' Development of Interactional Competence: Alignment Activity

AbstractThis study examined the development of interactional competence (Hall, 1993; He & Young, 1998) by beginning learners of Spanish as indexed by their use of alignment moves. Discourse analysis techniques and quantitative data analysis were used to explore how 52 learners expressed alignment and changes in participation patterns in two sets of instructional peer‐to‐peer conversations. The results of the analyses show that, although subject to great individual variability and not always following native‐like standards, English native speakers in the early stages of learning Spanish are able to express varying degrees of alignment in conversations with a peer of a similar proficiency level. As they strive to create a sphere of mutual understanding, they test different options from their linguistic repertoire and learn not only from their own attempts but also from those of their interlocutor. These results suggest that repeated engagement in interactional practice does provide the linguistic, social, and pedagogical affordances learners need to develop the interactional skills that will serve them well not only to build confidence and competence in the classroom learning context, but also hopefully in the world outside the classroom.

Toward Education 3.0: Pedagogical Affordances and Implications of Social Software and the Semantic Web

This chapter explores the implications of the new educational paradigm from a technical standpoint and proposes a constructivist‐aware approach to best leverage its significance.

Perceptions of Using Smart Mobile Devices in Higher Education Teaching: A Case Study from Palestine

Smart mobile devices (SMDs), especially smartphones and tablets, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous among educators and students in Palestine. While their use is on the rise, many academics are not effectively incorporating this technology into their teaching, which may be attributable to their negative perceptions of these devices. This study therefore examined academics’ perceptions of the value of integrating SMDs into their teaching activities. A questionnaire survey collected data from 56 academic staff of the Palestine Technical University - Kadoorie, eliciting perceptions of the physical attributes of SMDs, participants’ self-efficacy, the pedagogical affordance of mobile devices and challenges to their use in teaching. The findings show that participants were still at the stage of actively experimenting with smartphones and iPads, trialing their use at different levels and for different purposes. In general, although participants were unaware of the full potential of their functionalities, they viewed positively the various pedagogical affordances of integrating these devices into their teaching activities. The most important affordances were linking formal and informal learning spaces by providing anywhere-anytime learning opportunities, and developing interest in the subject matter, thus making learning experience more enjoyable, meaningful, and accessible. The results also identify various challenges including lack of experience and knowledge, finding the time to design and implement such integration, and selecting appropriate apps for the content being taught. Participants also expressed concerns with the limited connectivity and unreliability of Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks in Palestine.

Flow and the pedagogical affordances of computer games: a case study

Drawing on the theories of symbolic interactionism, social constructivism, and flow, this research examines the integration of the electronic game of the World Food Programme of the UN “Food Force” in a unit on active citizenship and poverty eradication. The research was conducted in two ninth-grade classes of an urban high school in Cyprus. Data were collected from interviews with students and teachers (before and after the implementation), observations in the classroom, the reflective diary of the researcher, and two questionnaires for the students (before and after the implementation). Data analysis showed, among others, that the integration of the game reinforced the active participation of students in the course by evoking their interest and the creation of a “flow” state while using the game. Moreover, the game emerged as a tool for constructing an engaging learning experience through the interactions it supported and encouraged. The results highlight the importance of the use of computer games in education, especially in times that the pedagogical practices need urgent renewal in order to engage students in classroom settings.

The benefits and barriers of using virtual worlds to engage healthcare professionals on distance learning programmes

Using the delivery of a large postgraduate distance learning module in bioethics to health professionals as an illustrative example, the type of learning activity that could be enhanced through delivery in an immersive virtual world (IVW) was explored. Several activities were repurposed from the “traditional” virtual learning environment into the IVW, providing insight into the pedagogical affordances of each environment. Voluntary classes, which were held each week over the 12-week module, were designed to provide deeper understanding of ethical theory and how it informs professional healthcare practice. Virtual classes included problem-based learning, flipped lectures, and role play. Following the introduction of the virtual classes, the module failure rate was less than 5%, compared with ∼11% in the previous two cohorts. However, the introduction of any new technology presents challenges to both staff and students; therefore, the barriers to using virtual worlds are also explored.

The Use of Social Networks Sites (SNSs) among University Students: How Far do They Learn

The study investigated the pedagogical affordances of SNS and its relationship on student engagement. A sample of 300 students responded to this quantitative research using a self constructed questionnaire. The hypothesized model has been tested to determine the relationships between pedagogical affordances and student engagement. This model underpins the theory of constructivist of interactions that promote learning; connectivity and collaboration through Web 2.0 technology. Using Multiple Regression Analysis, the model is able to explain the significant relationships of connectivity, assessment and feedback and collaboration in predicting student engagement when learning via SNS. The implications of the study are discussed based on theory, practical importance and methodology of research.

A case study of using LinkedIn for professional development

LinkedIn, one of the world's largest professional networks, has the potential to become a professional development tool for adults. This mixed-methods research provides an insight on how adults use LinkedIn group and explores adults' perception on using LinkedIn group for their professional development. Findings show that adults use LinkedIn for sharing resources professionally. The results show that while adults are basically satisfied with the technological and pedagogical affordances LinkedIn offer for professional development, there are mixed-responses with regards to its social affordances. Using LinkedIn as a professional development tool also has its limitations such as privacy and professional authentication. This paper examines the content of an instructional design and e-learning professionals' group in LinkedIn, analyses findings of the study and offers suggestions for future research.

“Blessed in my own way:” Pedagogical affordances for dialogical voice construction in multilingual student writing

While the theoretical orientation of voice as an amalgamated dialogical effect has received consensus in second language writing circles, classroom practice and research have not kept pace with these developments. This article reports the trajectory of a Japanese student in negotiating the classroom affordances provided by a dialogical pedagogy to construct her desired voice. Analysis of the ways this pedagogy facilitated awareness in the student and progressive understanding in the teacher suggests implications for a pedagogy of voice. The study unveils the components that are amalgamated, process of dialogicality, and the challenges in achieving a co-constructed voice.

An interactive digital platform for preservice secondary English teachers’ reading: First iteration findings

<p>Preservice teachers of secondary English need sustained and confident experiences of the pedagogical affordances of information and communication technologies (ICTs), to overcome the constraints perceived by their secondary teaching colleagues. They also need to rapidly develop an extensive knowledge of adolescent fiction titles for progressing the reading engagement and success of their future students. Building on the students’ acceptance of ICTs, this study examines the impact of using an interactive digital platform within preservice secondary English courses, for adolescent reading requirements. This paper reports results of the first iteration of the innovation. Data were collected via a questionnaire and results show that using an interactive digital platform with social networking characteristics for writing and reading book summaries, augmented knowledge of titles, increased motivation for reading, developed a repository of titles for use in the first year of teaching, and demonstrated how a digital platform might be successfully used in schools. Recommendations for the second iteration of the innovation are also reported.</p>

Implementing a Mobile Social Media Framework for Designing Creative Pedagogies

The rise of mobile social media provides unique opportunities for new and creative pedagogies. Pedagogical change requires a catalyst, and we argue that mobile social media can be utilized as such a catalyst. However, the mobile learning literature is dominated by case studies that retrofit traditional pedagogical strategies and pre-existing course activities onto mobile devices and social media. From our experiences of designing and implementing a series of mobile social media projects, the authors have developed a mobile social media framework for creative pedagogies. We illustrate the implementation of our mobile social media framework within the development of a new media minor (an elective set of four courses) that explicitly integrates the unique technical and pedagogical affordances of mobile social media, with a focus upon student-generated content and student-determined learning (heutagogy). We argue that our mobile social media framework is potentially transferable to a range of educational contexts, providing a simple design framework for new pedagogies.