The role of identity construction in learning to become an engineer is explored through the examination of ethnographic interviews over the course of four years and video data from group-work in engineering senior design projects. Focusing upon engineering students' identity development within the figured world of engineering we trace the development of trajectories of identification. We focus upon what can be traced over time along trajectories of identification in becoming an engineer.

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This study investigates a new approach that connects scaffolded inquiry activities within a knowledge building curriculum in secondary school science. We present a blended model that accounts for the flow of ideas within such a curriculum. Using a co-design methodology, researchers collaborated with veteran secondary science teachers to create engaging curriculum that provided the context for two studies. Study 1 created a four-day biology lesson where 104 grade ten students developed a knowledge base of ideas about human physiology, then connected those ideas to inquiry activities. Students and teachers succeeded in collaborative knowledge construction, and individual students demonstrated impressive learning gains. Study 2 extended these principles to create an eight-week curriculum unit on biodiversity. This study replicated the co-design process, resulting in a successful curriculum, and further refined our technology environment. The outcomes of this work offer promising evidence for a blended model where knowledge building intersects with scaffolded inquiry.

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This paper suggests that online collaborative environments like Knowledge Forum provide an important arena for students to exercise their ability to formulate reflective ideas. A discourse analysis of three primary 4 classes' verbal and written activities during a two-week science unit showed that, during online activities there was a significant increase in the number of words students used to answer questions and a higher diversity in the types of questions and answers online as compared to those in the classroom discourse.

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Although there is no doubt that computers are highly capable to provide pupils with cognitive disabilities in learning we observe an immense lack of professional learning software for this target group. There are few products designed by special education teachers with a high level of instructional design but at a low technical level, unflexible and not adaptable. In contrast there are loads of colorful animated commercial products, mostly designed for primary school pupil and often with absence of any instructional quality. In our project we want to overcome these problems by developing a learning platform which meets the needs of both, the pupils with cognitive disabilities and their teachers. In this interactive presentation will present an overview of this platform and give some examples of good practice as well as latest results of an ongoing study about facilitating communication between pupils with cognitive disabilities using a CSCL setting.

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Many opportunities for attaining mastery exist within a typical workflow. By leveraging focus-shifts and providing the user with complete control over the learning process, both critical elements of any "as-you-go" learning method, the HotKeyCoach learning model demonstrates that the production paradox can be overcome by experienced computer users.

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In this paper we present an approach to experimental design that is heavily influenced by practices from design-based research, illustrating it with our ongoing work to investigate hypotheses about how framing influences the transfer-of-learning. When one is interested in designing experiments that do not just test hypotheses about causal effects but also develop hypotheses about new kinds of causal mechanisms, we claim that it is particularly valuable to use the design-based research practices of iteratively designing new learning ecologies in particular contexts and creating explanatory accounts that coordinate multiple measures. Also, experimentally-inspired practices of comparing theoretically contrasting interventions in parallel and systematically streamlining designs to distinguish between critical and less critical design elements have promise for being usefully adapted within design-based research studies themselves.

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Our purpose in this case study is to describe elementary student inquiry in science related to four elements: mechanistic reasoning, analogical reasoning, argumentation and scientific explanations. Findings show that prior to instruction the students were able to use different components of these four elements of student inquiry, at various levels of sophistication, suggesting that it may be more productive to help students to develop reliable access to those abilities

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The study seeks to advance the socio-scientific issues knowledge base by addressing the complexity of these issues using methodological and analytical tools that reveal information about individual, collaborative and situational outcomes. In this case study of a grade 7 classroom investigating the topic of genetic engineering, a memes analysis indicated that several memetic mechanisms potentially affected how and why ideas were taken up in the learning system. Mechanisms included processes such as 'do as the smart students do', friendship selection, and meme-coupling influences. Implications for education in terms of student decision-making about socio-scientific issues are discussed.

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Instructional models for pre-service teachers usually are split between content courses and pedagogical courses and the learners are expected to develop the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on their own during their practical experience in teaching. Metacognitive strategies are often used in the pedagogical courses, but not in the content courses. This study investigated how the use of metacognitive strategies, in a pre-service content course, contributes to the learning of content and pedagogy.

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We report on a large study of how U.S. middle-school students learned to reason scientifically in a science curriculum centered around models and argumentation. We discuss the design of our curriculum, the method of the study, and present selected results related to overall curriculum effects and to methods of promoting growth in students' reasoning.

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Adaptive expertise is often defined by the presence of both procedural and conceptual knowledge. While knowledge and skills can explain how people find a new path when confronted with a difficulty (a fault-driven adaptation), something else is needed to explain when and why people make a beneficial, but unnecessary change (a prospective adaptation). In an interview, participants gave examples of adaptations from their everyday lives. Their examples appeared to arise from aesthetic judgments, not from a conceptual understanding of the domain. These findings suggest that values and aesthetics ought to be a more explicit focus of research on adaptive expertise

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In this poster we present preliminary findings from a large scale initiative to implement Tablet PCs and related software in engineering courses at Virginia Tech. We present assessment data on the effectiveness of Tablets collected using end of semester course exit survey (N=525). The overall satisfaction with the implementation was positive as reflected in survey responses but students also raised several concerns with the Tablet interface and the software used.

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Students' actions within a CSCL-environment can be recorded and stored as interaction data. This data can be accessed and analyzed automatically. Teachers, students and researchers may benefit from these analyses. It gives teachers and students immediate feedback about performance indicators and it can help researchers to identify meaningful patterns in the interaction data. In the symposium we focus on these three groups of users – the teacher, the student and the researcher – and explore three issues: 1) how can we extract meaningful information from the interaction data, 2) how can this information be used in practice, and 3) how should this information be presented to the user?

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This paper reports on the collaborative experiences and theories of members of professional and community settings who work with others in their everyday practices. Data are drawn from interviews and field observations with professional musicians who collaborate regularly for performances, corporate engineers working in groups, and community members exchanging perspectives on sustainable practices for their village. Performing chamber music, designing a new technology-driven plane, or making decisions about sustainability in rural communities, all require sophisticated collaboration to generate ideas from multiple perspectives, problem solve, and innovate. The research we present explores the demands on the environment, the relational space, and the shifts that occur for participants in their collaborative settings. The findings from these studies emphasize the multidimensionality of collaboration and the importance of collaboration as a tool for learning and decision-making in given contexts.

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This research examined learner behaviors, conflicting factors, and facilitating factors while students engaged in collaborative work via asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). A total of 995 postings from 4 groups (19 students) in the spring semester (Study 1) and 6 groups (24 students) in the fall semester (Study 2) were analyzed. A coding scheme was generated based on constant comparison using NVivo 2. All the codes were reorganized via activity system and compared between high and low performing groups to see the difference in the patterns of learner behaviors. This study provides implications for online collaborative learning environment design and addresses challenges in using activity system to analyze learner behaviors.

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The primary research question we address in this paper is the extent to which participation within a well-established game-based learning environment for Civics instruction called LegSim (Legislative Simulation) supports the needed development of argumentation skills. Our analysis suggests that although environments like LegSim offer great potential for providing students with valuable opportunities to develop important skills, active support during participation is needed to ensure that students take these opportunities when they are presented.

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In this paper we explore tool support for categorical coding of verbal and chat data. We consider tool support for manual coding, automatic coding by learning algorithms, and derive at a socio-technical approach in which human coders and learning algorithms together address the coding task. Given that a literature study suggests researchers devise, adapt and refine a wide variety of coding schemes, a categorization support system should handle and accommodate user defined coding schemes. Based on these ideas a prototype of the ChatIC tool was developed and evaluated with three coding schemes. For two coding schemes a sufficient inter-rater agreement between a human coder and the learning algorithms was reached.

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Critical thinking becomes an essential competency for people in the new information age. The purpose of this research is to investigate to what extent writing online reflections using weblogs can promote students’ critical thinking. This research is conducted in a secondary school. After completing 3 weblogs, a focus group interview was conducted to collect their feedback on the design and implementation of the research. The results showed that the students liked the way of writing online reflections. They attempted to make the weblogs interesting, convincing and logical. Also, they liked to view others' reflections and to give comments. This paper presents the formative evaluation processes and results of the research.

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While the importance of viewing learning as knowledge creation is gradually recognized (Paavola, Lipponen, and Hakkarainen, 2002; 2004), an important question remains to be answered - what represents an effective instructional design to support collaborative creative learning? This paper argues for a need to move away from efficiency-oriented instructional design to innovation-oriented instructional design if learning as knowledge creation is to be pursued as an important instructional goal. The rationale in support of this argument is discussed from four different theoretical perspectives and an idea-centered, principle-based design approach as an example is proposed for discussion.

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Participants in Augmented Reality (AR) games are equipped with location-aware handheld computers, allowing players to physically move throughout a real world location while simultaneously triggering virtual information based on their physical location. Researchers are only beginning to understand how to leverage the pedagogical strengths of location-based AR games. This paper includes case studies for two separate research projects: Researchers from MIT will present "Zoo Scene Investigators: Challenges of Designing a Mystery Themed AR Game for Students Ages 10-14 in a U.S. Zoo". Researchers from Futurelab will present "Crafting mediascapes for a Zoo Setting using Create-A-Scape with Singaporean Primary School Students".

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We use the script concept to describe knowledge structures that help individuals understand and act in specific contexts as well as scaffolds structuring collaborative learning. External scripts can be presented in different ways, e.g. as written text. For internal scripts, it is not clear whether they have identical effects on collaborative argumentation processes in oral vs. written discussions. We empirically investigated the effects of two differently structured external scripts on the structural quality of written and oral arguments produced in dyads with either low or high structured internal scripts. External scripts were presented in a written mode at specific instances in a web-based inquiry learning environment. Results indicate that the high structured external script strongly improved the structural quality of the written arguments, but had hardly any effects on orally produced arguments, which were instead more strongly influenced by the learners' internal scripts.

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Reflecting on analyses of data from our respective design-based research studies of mathematical cognition and learning, we propose the utility of the instrumental genesis model (Verillon & Rabadel, 1995) for examining students' engagement with designed learning artifacts. The model has helped each of us to account for gaps between intended and enacted sequences in relation to these artifacts. In particular, instrumental genesis provides a mechanism for differentiating between the designer's arc of intentionality and the student's learning trajectory, two vectors that may be tacitly aligned for historically evolved learning materials but at variance for recently created materials. Characteristic of our case studies -- a networked-classroom design for functions and a mixed-media design for probability -- are breakdowns in which students' behavior deviated either from the designer's intention or from classic models of constructivist design. In both cases, the breakdowns were valuable in that they occasioned refinement of our theories and designs.

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This study examined students' beliefs and strategies in project-based learning among International Business students in China and the relationships among these measures and their contribution to academic performance. In-depth interviews with 25 second-year students focused on their project learning experience examining their epistemology and strategy use. Analysis of interview data identified different patterns for beliefs, collaboration, and strategy use. Significant correlations were found among beliefs and strategies as well as with learning outcomes.

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Previous research in cognitive science has shown that analogical comparison and self-explanation are two powerful learning activities that can improve conceptual learning in laboratory settings. The current work examines whether these results generalize to students learning physics in a classroom setting. Students were randomly assigned to one of three worked example learning conditions (reading, self-explanation, or analogical comparison) and then took a test assessing conceptual understanding and problem solving transfer. Students in the self-explanation and analogy conditions showed improved conceptual understanding compared to students in the more traditional worked example condition.

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People implicitly negotiate use of representations during learning, even in distributed online settings, but due to the temporally and spatially distributed nature of interaction, special analytic tools are required to uncover the development of representational practices in such settings. In this paper we show how logs of online activity can be analyzed to recognize patterns in use of representations and show how negotiated representational practices affect how learners collaborate and influence each other.

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In two Master classes (N = 40), wiki and forum were used to share resources, give and receive feedback, and collaborate on a glossary. Online surveys sent to students quantified the use of different wiki features. Mid-term, end-of-term, and 1-year follow-up survey data show which elements were used most at what point in time. Use of materials, especially of the collaboratively built glossary, was still active one year after the class had ended. In sum, the knowledge built online during class was evaluated positively by students and was used well beyond the class itself.

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To facilitate medical students' diagnostic knowledge a case-based worked example approach was realized in a complex computer-based learning environment. To enhance the effectiveness of the approach the measures erroneous examples and elaborated feedback were additionally implemented. 153 medical students were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions of a 2x2-factorial design (errors vs. no errors, elaborated feedback vs. knowledge of correct result (KOR)). In order to assess the sustainability of the learning environment a subgroup of subjects (n = 52) was compared with a comparable group of students who did not participate in the experiment (n = 145) with respect to their performance in a regular multiple choice test. Results show that the acquisition of diagnostic knowledge is mainly fostered by providing erroneous examples in combination with elaborated feedback. These effects were independent from differences in time-on-task and prior knowledge. Furthermore, the effects of the learning environment proved sustainable.

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The Contextual Activity Sampling System (CASS) research methodology and the CASS-Query mobile application have been developed for contextually tracking of participants’ object-oriented activities. The method relies on Ecological Momentary Assessment designed to trace real-time advancement of learning activities by frequent sampling during periods of intensive follow-up. The paper presents a subset of findings from the first year data-collection from five groups of students, regarding their knowledge practices while studying in a higher education context. The study reports affects, challenge, competence, and commitment, together with the information about interaction and context, collected using mobile phones in an intensive two-week follow-up period. Results revealed that different contexts were associated with variable combinations of challenge and competence. Further, studying in a library and a small group were related to the highest ratings of optimal experience and commitment.

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Schools appear to be facing a crisis of engaging secondary students in meaningful learning. Educational scholars are recognizing that the learning principles embodied in computer and video games make new learning experiences possible and reflect our best theories of cognition, yet are underutilized as an educational resource. This paper builds on previous work using games in classrooms to suggest an alternative model for game-based learning outside of schools. Drawing on case studies of youth participating in a year-long game-based learning program, it offers a theoretical model of bridging learners' identities in and out of school by using historical simulation computer games situated within a community of practice around game expertise. Participants developed both academic skills and productive identities as consumers and producers of information. We use these cases to propose a model of centers of expertise, learning programs that seek to foster and develop new media literacies that both pay off in schools and lead to new interests and identities outside of school as well.

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This case study examines the challenges faced and resources employed by a preservice science teacher throughout his teacher preparation program. Challenges included an absence of supported space in field experiences, intense emotions associated with learning, and establishing effective relationships with students. Supports included affordances offered by program sequence, program coherence, and a personal, professional blog.

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The purpose of the study was to develop the assessment tool to capture learners' epistemic agency (Scardamalia, 2002). By referring to studies on scripted cooperation, we developed the script completion task for pairs of elementary school students to engage in. Students' developed scripts for collaboratively solving a socio-scientific problem in two consecutive lesson units were analyzed by the four commitments of knowledge building discourse (Bereiter, 1994).

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We present an analysis of discourse in case-centred learning. The analysis answers questions about how an abstract representation of a case is constructed through discourse, and about what cognitive products result from that construction. The analysis relies on a generic learning model that supports the coding and quantification of learning discourse. This analysis is demonstrated through its application to a set of dialogues taken from 2 groups of medical students who, as part of their professional training, were asked to explain the medical ethics engendered by two patient cases. The analysis shows that the learners strengthen their existing conceptual knowledge, rather than acquire new conceptual knowledge, and specifically that they make valuable new connections between structurally similar episodes, and between concepts and specific facts of the case. We assess the value of an analysis of cognitive processes for characterising collaborative case-centred discussions, and its use in showing differences of processing of information in different learning environments.

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There are two common types of solution methods for solving simple integrals: using integration constants or using limits of integration. We use the resources framework to model student solution methods. Preliminary results indicate both problematic and meaningful intersections of physical meaning and mathematical formalism when solving linked integrals.

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This paper examines the use of interdisciplinary project co-design, as a mechanism for increasing the capacity of a school, and promoting the growth of teachers' professional practice in an urban high school setting. Changing teaching practices and the professional culture within a school can be extremely difficult. Simply providing resources about novel strategies can be ineffective. In fact, in some school cultures, suggestions for classroom practice change can be received with hostility, being viewed by some teachers as acts questioning their professional competence. This study describes how a strategically chosen task, interdisciplinary project co-design, was used by external consultants as a productive, non-threatening mechanism for instructional improvement, by simultaneously enhancing classroom practices and cultivating the growth of professional school community and organizational practices.

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Many Learning Sciences projects use technology to enhance the cognitive richness of teaching and learning, although few projects investigate the robustness of their approaches across a wide variety of teachers and classrooms. Our Scaling Up SimCalc project has completed experiments in which over a hundred mathematics teachers in 7th or 8th grade used either SimCalc or their existing materials. We found that students of teachers who used SimCalc learned more. In this paper, we look specifically at the issue of cognitive complexity through a case study of two teachers, contextualizing the case study within aggregate data. Aspects of the theme of cognitive complexity can be seen in (a) student performance on different types of test items (b) teachers' report of their own daily teaching goals and (c) discourse patterns in different classrooms. Although this analysis is preliminary, it reveals the potential of understanding Learning Science-based interventions more fully by combining large-scale and case study data.

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Collaborative learning, as both a pedagogical method and a cognitive mechanism plays a prominent role in the Learning Sciences. In this symposium we will use the term "cognitive convergence" to encompass various concepts that have been used to explain the important processes underlying successful collaboration, such as intersubjectivity, co-construction, knowledge convergence, common ground, joint problem space, and transactive reasoning. The goal of the symposium is to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of cognitive convergence and to relate cognitive convergence to individual learning outcomes. We include studies that emphasize detailed analyses of the mechanisms, provide ideas about how to conceptualize and measure convergence, and include qualitative and quantitative measures of shared and converging learning outcomes. A special emphasis will be on methodological questions about how to analyze the processes of achieving convergence and how to assess how convergence affects outcomes of collaborative learning.

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This collaborative inquiry project brings together Chinese Language teachers, curriculum specialists and researchers to co-construct Information and Communications Tools (ICT) mediated Chinese curriculum for primary school students in Singapore. The findings indicate that as the teachers were not used to voicing their concerns in free-flowing meetings, they experienced tension. However, all the participants agreed that collaborative inquiry is effective for teachers' professional development. There were also positive changes of teachers' views about the incorporation of ICT in Chinese learning.

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The purpose of our study is to: 1) propose a new model of conceptual change called collaborative scientific conceptual change model; 2) examine student collaborative scientific conceptual change process while using computer simulations to understand aquarium ecosystem through three perspectives (i.e., cognitive, social, and epistemic) included in the new conceptual change model. We propose that collaborative scientific conceptual change occurs when learners co-construct new knowledge and make a shift from their previous ways of thinking towards the scientific ways of thinking that scientists use to explain phenomena. We report preliminary results of a classroom study exploring how students used the simulations to develop collaborative discourse and applied epistemic practices to achieve conceptual change. The results imply that this new theoretical framework is effective to study conceptual change and the simulation environment may mediate the development of successful collaborative interactions (including collaborative discourse and epistemic practices) that lead to conceptual change.

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Constructing common ground and the associated convergent conceptual change is critical to collaborative learning. Convergent conceptual change is achieved as participants in a conversation update common ground through presentations, repairs, and acceptances of utterances. Many previous studies in human-computer interaction show that face-to-face communication is more effective than other forms of technology-mediated collaboration, such as video conferencing or telephoning, primarily because such forms of communication cannot fully replicate the context so vital to common understanding. To meet these concerns while enabling the use of handhelds, we devise and test empirically the value of shared visual context in creating common ground by examining communication efficiency.

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This workshop will be a working meeting in which our goal will be to establish requirements for a common conceptual and representational framework to support collaborative learning process analysis. To this end, we will focus on three main activities: namely, demonstrating our tools to one another in the context of analyses we have conducted, identifying commonalities among these tools and analyses, and generating requirements for a common conceptual model and abstract transcript.

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The purpose of this symposium is to move beyond speculations about how knowledge about complex systems might be important for students to understand to focus on empirical research into the learnability of these ideas. For example, do complex systems ideas represent learning challenges that are qualitatively different than learning other scientific knowledge? What are the differences in pre-conceptions students have about complex systems phenomena and more expert scientific ways of thinking in these areas? What are the profiles of successful and less successful ways of learning about complex systems conceptual perspectives? Can complex systems provide conceptual perspectives for cognitively 'seeing' physical and social sciences subjects in new and interconnected ways? It is hoped the papers in this session will provide insights into these questions and other theoretical and research issues in the learning sciences.

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This study of the flow of online discussions examined how previous messages affected the current message along five dimensions: (1) evaluations (agreement, disagreement, or unresponsive actions); (2) knowledge content (contribution, repetition, or null content); (3) social cues (positive, negative, or none); (4) personal information (number of visits); and (5) elicitation (eliciting response or not). Using dynamic multilevel analysis (DMA) and a structural equation model (SEM), this study analyzed 131 messages of 47 participants across seven topics in the mathematics forum of a university Bulletin Board System (BBS) Website. Results showed that a disagreement or contribution in the previous message yielded more disagreements and social cue displays in the current message. Unlike face-to-face discussions, online discussion messages that disagreed with a previous message elicited more responses. Together, these results suggest that teachers can use and manage online discussions to promote critical thinking, facilitate discussion of controversial topics, and reduce status effects.

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A concept map consists of nodes representing concepts and links representing the relationships between the concepts. To examine the influence of concept mapping on learning from texts, we varied the support strategies. Eighty students either learned by constructing concept maps on their own, by correcting an incorrect worked-out map, or by studying a correct worked-out map. A control group did not engage in any follow-up activity for learning from text. As expected, learners profited most from studying the correct worked-out map. Students who corrected an incorrect worked-out map did not have a better learning result than students who generated concept maps on their own or the control group. On the contrary, they produced many false conclusions in the comprehension test.

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In this presentation we overview our theory and design work around conceptual play spaces. Conceptual play is a state of engagement that involves (a) projection into the role of a character who, (b) engaged in a partly fantastical problem context, (c) must apply conceptual understandings to make sense of and, ultimately, transform the context. Additionally, a conceptual play space designed to support learning should (d) provide opportunities to examine one’s participation in terms of the impact it had on the immersive context. Four core presentations will be offered, each demonstrating how the notion of conceptual play has been taken up in particular curricular instantiations through the platform of Quest Atlantis. Quest Atlantis is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks.

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Animated diagrams representing dynamic systems hold great potential for improving the way people learn. However, so far the literature failed to find clear benefits of animated diagrams. Consequently it is worthwhile to investigate conditions under which enhancement of learning occurs. In the present study interactivity of the display and spatial ability of learners were examined. Three modes of presentation were compared: static diagrams, animation with interactivity, and animation with focus, also combined with interactivity. The interactive animation condition with focus acquired more knowledge than the other two conditions while the interactive animation condition scored worst. High-spatial ability subjects performed better on the knowledge acquisition measures than low-ability subjects. The interactive animation condition with focus is particularly beneficial for low-spatial ability subjects. These results indicate that combining the conditions of interactivity and focus does lead to improvement in learning from animations, particularly for low-spatial ability subjects.

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The goal of this workshop is to devise alternative formats for scientific conferences. Based on the assumption that scientific conferences hold great potential not only for monological and dialogical forms of learning but also for knowledge creation (cp. Paavola and Hakkarainen, 2005), we want to explore together with participants how innovative formats for scientific conferences could look like. Participants of this workshop will collaboratively discuss and create posters envisioning alternative conference formats

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Research designed to elicit middle-school mathematics teachers' perceptions of connections between in-school and out-of-school mathematical reasoning revealed an unexpected clash. The teacher participants gave evidence of valuing both student efficiency and student understanding, but the simultaneous salience of those values was positioned by the teachers as problematic. Rather than viewing efficiency and understanding as complementary aspects of mathematics learning and doing, teachers spoke of the two values as conflicting and in opposition to one another.

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This paper presents initial findings from on-going research on the development of assessments that measure how students are prepared for future learning in fast changing environments. Issues of assessment are extremely important for measuring the quality of learning and teaching. Typical assessments tend to tell us what students have learned in the past but not necessarily how prepared they are to learn in the future. With this problem in mind, we have begun research on how students are able to use resources (technology-based access to relevant information, social networks, simulations) in order to learn to solve problems. Our goal is to provide more valid measures of students' existing strengths as well as skills and knowledge that they need to learn. Our assessments are designed to be both formative and summative.

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This paper reviews the research literature on gender and gaming in light of the growing interest in digital games for learning. It outlines three different approaches that have been developed to address gender issues in digital games: 'games for girls' that build on gender differences by promoting different notions of femininity, 'games for change' that support gender play by challenging stereotypes, and 'games as designs' that position girls as creators of their own learning environments. The paper then discusses implications for design methods, choices of game genres and features, research in learning environments, and approaches to data analyses for learning science researchers interested in designing and using games for learning.

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Recently, interest has grown in understanding how sociocultural processes inform the design and use of learning technologies. In 2006, I managed the design and piloting of a multilingual literacy learning software for youth and adults in rural South Africa. Drawing from observations of and informal interviews with twenty-six learners who piloted the software, I propose that the software provided the learners with opportunities to reassess not only important self-understandings as learners of basic literacy skills, but also speakers of certain languages and in general, certain kinds of people. The findings, analyzed within the framework of semiotic ideology, support a broader proposition that literacy programs, and the technologies used in them, can serve as forcible mediators of people's understandings of what languages, signs and sociocultural identifications are.

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The role of authoritative sources of information in a constructivist learning environment has always been ambiguous, especially in science learning where there is a bountiful of knowledge readily available in various sources. Taking a social semiotics perspective in this study, we take the view that authoritative sources are inscriptions of cultural artifacts and science learning involves meaning making of these cultural artifacts. In studying the meaning making process of a group of students doing Problem-based Learning, our findings show that authoritative sources played an important role in deepening and expanding students' scientific knowledge. We also found that constructive use of authoritative sources involves interpretation of meaning in context. Therefore, we conclude that this structural coupling of authoritative sources and context for meaningful sense making has to be taken into consideration in the design of learning environment.

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Although large lectures are a reality of formal learning organizations, particularly in nation's research universities, limited research looks at how we can improve learning within them. Most learning sciences research focuses on small or medium classes or informal learning leaving a gap in our understanding of learning related issues in large lectures. In this paper we present a theoretical investigation of the use of pen-based computing in large lectures (>150 students). In particular, through this case study we examined how the combined use of Tablet PCs and the interactive software DyKnow creates a learning environment that is conducive to student participation and learning. We argue that these technologies enable participation by facilitating creation, sharing, recording, and reflecting of representations. Although the ideas presented in this paper are primarily theoretical, we do find supporting evidence through in-class (N=100 to 250) and online surveys (N = 525) of engineering freshmen at Virginia Tech.

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In this presentation, we share the experience of a partnership project between two teams representing Azerbaijani and American higher education institutions. The researchers (a) examine the challenges of collaborative work in the context of cultural differences related to applying learner-centered pedagogy, sustaining collaboration and managing learning process, and (b) introduce the strategies developed for addressing those challenges. This study seeks to advance educators' understanding of the critical aspects of cross-cultural collaboration in online learning environments.

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This poster reports on the results of a culturally relevant mathematics unit, the Community Mapping Project (CMP), where urban students learned statistics by producing and analyzing maps of their own community using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this poster we show how three aspects of culturally relevant pedagogy, familiarity of context and authentic purpose, and informal linguistic competencies succeeded in engaging youth at a crucial point of their statistics research project, choosing a research question

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We explored children's spontaneous use of the Onion Street Maths and English message boards out-of-school. These are open-access, study support forums that are widely accessed and well-regarded by teachers and students in the UK. 416 messages were collected on the Maths board and 893 messages were collected on the English board. Sustained engagement was rare. Around 90% of user identities contributed only once. Nearly two thirds of threads on both boards did not get any reply. Sequential observation and content analysis were used to identify themes emerging in the discussion. Results revealed that although children came to the boards mainly for seeking help and asking questions, discussions around different curriculum subjects (Maths and English) were structured differently. Because of children’s limited skills in asking questions, the boards had limited value for learning conversations. However, sharing emotional reactions to study and examination may still have made the resource a useful one.

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Included within a second language acquisition program, digital games possibly can increase knowledge retention and transfer rates. This mixed-methods study uses a computer-based interactive fiction (IF) game to teach German vocabulary, reading, and culture to university students. The results indicate that contextualized, immersive role-play may have assisted in second language learning, but students were apprehensive given the departure from traditional drill- and grammar-based instruction.

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Medical researchers exercise and delegate agency for making inferences or for making claims. In the biostatistical consultations discussed here, they encounter three key knowledge-producing agents in the "epistemic culture" (Knorr Cetina, 1999) of biostatistics: themselves, biostatistician and computer machinery. Who or what does what occurs amidst a "dance of agency" among the participants (Pickering, 1995). These interpretations provide support for recent reforms employing modeling approaches in science and mathematics instruction in K-16 settings.

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This research investigates the potential of using Augmented Reality Games on Handheld Computers (ARGH) in inquiry-based science learning. This paper presents the design and study of a game-based curriculum for scientific argumentation and conceptual change. The result suggests that the desired learning outcome have been partially achieved and most students were positive about the designed experience. We conclude with informed design decisions for the next design iteration.

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Models are the core of scientific theory. Some researchers have argued that modeling is fundamental to scientific inquiry (e.g. Clement, 2000). There has been increased literature on how to use inquiry and modeling for science learning. However, challenges still exist. For example, how do different modeling tools and learning activities shape student learning trajectories? How do they impact student science learning? What are the assessment measures that can serve as formative and/or summative purposes in the different learning environments? This symposium introduces how computer-based MVT (i.e., NetLogo, Biologica, and Astronomicon) were integrated into different learning environments, and highlights how alternative and formative assessment measures have been used for assessing student learning progression and outcomes. The symposium concludes with some general principles for designing MVT enhanced learning environments and understanding of models and modelling as assessment toolkits to gain an insight into student conceptual development.

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Journalists inform multitudes of people. However, they sometimes over-focus on the narrative, failing to integrate critical quantitative information effectively. The Numerically Driven Inferencing (NDI) paradigm's research (e.g., Ranney et al., 2001; Munnich, Ranney, & Appel, 2004) suggested that a curricular module highlighting evidential/scientific thinking might enhance reporters' quantitative and analytic skills. The resulting controlled experiment involved 55 first-year journalism graduate students, our "Numbers, News, and Evidence" module, 4.5 classroom hours, 20 homework hours, and several (e.g., Pre-, Mid- and Final-test) assessments. Post-module findings indicate success: Relative to control data, the experimental group improved on the main numeracy measures: 1) estimation accuracy and 2) math competence involving simple problem solving, data analyses, and exponential growth. Students and faculty both concluded that future students should also receive numeracy modules. The module apparently influenced students' attitudes about numerical information, too. The collective results may benefit journalists, their instructors, and media consumers.

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The purpose of this paper is to share the results of the first round of a design experiment, the purpose of which was to intentionally provoke in students particular ways of engaging with statistics. Specifically, in this study, we sought to design a curriculum which would support students' procedural, conceptual, and critical engagement with content, in order to develop dispositions towards engaging with statistics that involved: viewing representations as reflecting real phenomena; viewing operations and representations as tools that can be intentionally leveraged to develop and support particular arguments; and viewing justification and evidence as crucial components of convincing arguments. We present the design framework and rationale, findings and analysis from the first round of implementation. Implications for both design and learning are discussed.

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This study examines a secondary-level science curriculum centered on a multi-user, "serious game" called Escape from Centauri 7. The game engine depicts qualitative physics phenomena via dynamics tied to player actions. Players progressively engage the epistemological entailments of charged particles through new phenomena they encounter as the game unfolds. We engineered discretely bounded gaming episodes to arrange transitions between game play, small group, and whole class discussions. Together, these elements of game play and discussion constitute recurring, game-centered dialogic activity cycles. Through this design, we investigate how gaming fosters intuitive physics understandings, how activity structures and materials engage learners and enlist gaming experiences in discussion, and how both game play and discussion shape subsequent participation. Analyses of trajectories of participation in and across cycles underscore the plausibility of this approach while also illuminating emerging tensions that we discuss in terms of epistemic reflexivity.

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Adolescent literacy continues to be a pressing issues. Situated learning theorists argue that adolescents lack sufficient experience to understand academic texts. Video games are posited to be one avenue for supporting learning. This case study investigates one enactment of a video game-based curriculum and explores the nature of learning within game-based environments. Specifically, it describes how fictional elements situated the learning experience and induced academic practices, the nature of student-created inscriptions influenced emergent understandings, and the game-based curriculum, game design features pushed students' conceptual understandings, and learning through a technology-enhanced curriculum triggered students' identities as independent problem solvers.

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A learning-by-teaching environment can be used to create a context in which the student can play the role of tutor teaching the agent tutee. Without meaningful feedback from the agent, there is no reason to expect much student's engagement with the teaching interaction and growth in learning. This study tries to investigate the design of agent tutee's question prompts that can engage the student's role-playing as tutor and thereby stimulate reflective knowledge-building in a learning-by-teaching agent environment, Betty's Brain. A pilot study that compares question prompts with self-reflection prompts within the agent environment is undertaken. Question prompts are more specific and concrete questions related to the tutor's teaching and in which the student tutor needs to respond. Self-reflection prompts are more general prompts to stimulate self-reflection. The result gives us some preliminary evidence that the question prompts support on role-playing can be positive in enhancing student’s learning when pursing learning-by-teaching activities.

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This paper explores the pedagogical potential of Gamestar Mechanic, a computer game where players learn the principles of game design by making, sharing and reviewing games in the context of an online community of designers. The game has been designed to foster the appropriation of complex language and literacy skills by middle school children. By relying on think aloud interviews and a discourse analytic framework, this paper explores the language practices germane to the game designer Discourse enacted by players as they tackle a game design challenge.

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This workshop will focus on the relationship between programmers, pedagogical researchers and end-users in the educational field (especially teachers), in the process of developing new e-learning, e-collaboration and e-mediation tools. Specifically, it will deal with reviewing and partly re-enacting tool design workshops involving teachers and researchers as the central means to integrate pedagogical knowledge and experience into the final technological product, with examples from the Argunaut project. Activities include simulated design mini-workshops, pedagogical modelling (incl. learning design) and discussions.

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This paper focuses on the development of a design culture in a Computer Clubhouse, a type of community technology center known for its emphasis on design and creative production. Drawing from theories of situated learning and cultural historical activity, we used a mixed methods approach to document, describe, and analyze local portfolio-building practices and the role of mediation that best supports more complex types of design-based technological fluencies. The study also explores aspects of the Clubhouse setting that mediated community members' participation in design activities and then discusses how these findings can be used in other after-school settings interested in implementing design cultures with racially and ethnically marginalized youth.

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The symposium discusses the role of design principles and analyzes their uses in a research and development project, KP-Lab (Knowledge Practices Laboratory). The project aims at developing and making research on the "trialogic" knowledge practices and technology; the trialogical approach aims at understanding how people collaboratively, in long-term processes, develop novel epistemic things and transform their knowledge practices. We investigate the design principles from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The design principles are analyzed from the developmental perspective, and analyzed in relation to a course using collaborative conceptual mapping as an activity embedded to a pedagogical practice; in a design-based approach to implement knowledge creation principles in a secondary school, and in medical simulation training of interprofessional teams involved in critical care.

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Prior research indicates that one of the most difficult concepts for students to understand is that of the particle nature of matter. The How can I smell things from a distance? chemistry unit takes the approach of building students' ideas through the construction and revision of models. The purpose of this study is to describe the changes in students' understanding of the particle nature of matter as they were engaged in an eight-week model-based curriculum. One teacher and her two 6th-grade classes in a midwestern school district were the focus of the study. Data sources include pre- and posttests, students' artifacts, and video recordings of the curriculum enactment, including students' creation of models of various phenomena. Results from this study were used to help develop a learning progression for the particle nature of matter.

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We report on the programming learning experiences of urban youth ages 8-18 at a Computer Clubhouse located in South Central Los Angeles. Our analyses of the 536 Scratch projects, collected during a two-year period, documents the learning of key programming concepts in the absence of instructional interventions or experienced mentors. We discuss the motivations of urban youth who choose to program in Scratch and the implications for introducing programming at after school settings in underserved communities.

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This paper examines the Digital Youth Network as a model for developing youths' digital literacy through the fusion of in-school and out-of-school new media-based learning activities.

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The aim of this study was, by means of discourse analysis (Gee & Green, 1998), to explore what contexts were built and reflected in a student pair's collaborative task which took place in a university course. The special focus was to develop methodological tools for studying the complex nature of learning embedded in a specific context. The study revealed three different context types that were built through the students' discourse. The students' prior knowledge (socio-cultural context) as well as local context, for example earlier discussion with the teacher, served as main resources which the students drew on in their immediate context. In the immediate context, a co-text, such as a written text or an earlier discussion, made up the complete shared context for reasoning and enabled collaborating in the task. The study demonstrated how the discourse both reflected and constructed the context in which it was used.

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Distributed cognition is ubiquitous in design practice, yet most studies of design occur in isolation, resulting in a sequestered view. We examine in-situ student teams learning to design in a culturally-diverse bioengineering course, exploring students’ negotiation of roles and differing interactions in a distributed cognition system. Via triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data, we examine how students learn to design. Characteristics of authentic student design experiences have emerged and have implications for teaching design.

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The ability to connect new information to relevant, previously acquired knowledge can facilitate comprehension and memory. This study shows that the addition of person knowledge, or knowledge organized around familiar people, in the design of learning materials has the potential to improve learning while decreasing the amount of effort and attention exerted by the learner; this is measured through skin conductance levels as a physiological correlate of attention. Findings provide explanatory evidence for why people-focused methodologies, such as video cases or written case studies, contribute to longer-term benefits and improved learning.

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This study analyses how the exchange of text specific information in virtual cooperative writing can be improved. Based on findings concerning the automatic absorption of words in written communication (lexical alignment), we conducted a study with 64 students to determine whether there was a positive impact of the use of different terminology on the transfer of knowledge and the individual learning outcomes. As assumed, dyads that had cooperated with material containing different terminology asked more questions, gave more explanations and performed better in a following learning test than dyads whose learning materials contained the same terminology. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for selecting and creating further learning materials.

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The overall aim of this symposium is to focus on the relationship between research and design of technologies for early years learning. Presentations will centre around two studies, one concerned with understanding the role that digital technologies play in shaping interactions between parents and young children in the home and the other with understanding the role of digital manipulatives in early years learning of numeracy in school. It will be argued that whereas a common theme emerging from these studies is the importance of shared physical and social interaction within early years learning, digital technologies for this age group tend to be designed for individual use. Participants will be invited to offer explanations for this emphasis on individual learning and discussion will focus on alternative approaches to design that might take into account the intimacy of the interaction between young children and adults.

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Everyday we learn, both as individuals and as members of different communities. There are some learning tasks that are generally found to be more difficult than others. In the learning of academic subjects, how to help students to move from naïve, intuitive understanding to accepted disciplinary conceptions is a research area that is still challenging learning scientists. In the area of teacher learning, a major challenge is how to help pre- and in- service teachers to become reflective practitioners who autonomously engage in continuous cycles of pedagogical innovation and inquiry in order that their students achieve better and/or new learning outcomes. In both cases, a pre-requisite for those kinds of learning to take place is not cognitive or metacognitive, but an epistemological one. I will illustrate this from the discourse data we collected from students and teachers engaged in the Learning Community Projects that were started in our Centre since 2001. I will further illustrate from the research literature on promoting conceptual change and our work with school principals on e-leadership development that the kind of epistemological commitment required is best fostered through intentional learning. Drawing on case studies of pedagogical innovation and large scale survey data collected from two modules in SITES (Second Information Technology in Education Study), an international comparative study of pedagogy and ICT use, it is proposed that an approach which focuses on creating appropriate ecological conditions for intentional learning would be most effective in addressing the key challenges identified in school and teacher education.

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Studies suggest that when the goal is to help students develop their abilities, feedback should not be presented along with an overall grade. The effectiveness of feedback will depend on features of its quality. We describe guidelines for giving effective feedback including giving overall grades, levels and functions of feedback, and practices in effective feedback. The guidelines are based on a review of research of feedback on writing as well as general theories of feedback. We learned that in order for students to benefit from feedback, they have to (1) notice it, (2) accept it, and (3) understand what to do with it. After reviewing the research, we end with recommendations that support these notions.

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In the present study, participants working in dyads were asked to build a concept map collaboratively. While interacting, they were able to access visualizations (individual concept maps) of both their own and their partner's prior knowledge (own and peer maps). Eye movements of both learning partners were recorded during the course of collaboration. Our goal was twofold. First, we focused on transactivity at both the visual and action levels. Second, we investigated the effects of knowledge interdependence with the partner on transactivity in collaborative concept mapping. We found that the degree to which participants co-manipulate the same objects in the collaborative map (action transactivity) is higher when they discussed identical (rather than complementary) information. Results from eye-gaze data showed that participants who shared complementary information transitioned more frequently between their own map and their partner's map; eye-movement transitions between own and peer maps were also negatively correlated with learning outcomes.

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This research investigated the role of representational guidance during the construction of argumentative diagrams. We used a design that compared two tools that differed with respect to the representational guidance they offered: The Graphical Debate-tool offered more guidance than the Textual Debate-tool. The results show that groups that worked with the Graphical Debate-tool constructed representations of higher quality, wrote better essays, and performed better on a knowledge post-test.

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This study examines how social metacognition (including evaluations and questions) affected micro-creativity during group problem solving. Twenty groups of high school students were videotaped as they solved a mathematics problem. Analyses of the 2,951 conversation turns showed that the likelihood of a correct contribution (CC, a measure of micro-creativity) was higher after a group member expressed a wrong, new idea, correctly evaluated an idea, or justified an idea. In contrast, the likelihood of a CC was lower after a group member disagreed rudely or agreed. Meanwhile, group-level properties (racial diversity, gender diversity, and degree of status differences) did not significantly affect the likelihood of a CC. A CC was more likely after a justification in successful groups than in unsuccessful groups. CCs did not occur uniformly, as some time periods had many CCs while others had few CCs. Furthermore, agreements and correct evaluations had different effects across time periods within a group.

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Beginning elementary teachers face numerous challenges in engaging in effective science teaching, and the expectations for elementary science teaching are becoming even more demanding. Since teachers' beliefs mediate their practice, characterizing their beliefs about effective science teaching can yield insights about ways to support beginning elementary teachers as they learn to teach science. This longitudinal study follows six elementary teachers in their early years of teaching. Five conceptions of effective science teaching are identified. In addition, though the teachers' beliefs are largely consistent over time--indicating that these are, indeed, central beliefs within their beliefs systems--a move away from reform-oriented practices is identified for most of the teachers in their third year of teaching. Implications for teacher preparation and induction point to the importance of supporting teachers in understanding the rationales behind reforms such as inquiry-oriented science teaching and engaging students in scientific practices.

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This paper identifies ways in which conceptual, methodological and technical developments in e-research can contribute to solutions of key questions in learning science research and, in particular, design-based research (DBR). The paper focuses on DBR issues in three major areas: methodology, research process, and dissemination. By mapping DBR issues to the conceptual and technological features of e-research, and illustrating those features with concrete examples from a range of research domains, the paper demonstrates how e-research approaches and tools could enhance present DBR practices as well as open avenues for new research questions and new ways of doing research. It concludes by discussing potential challenges and outlining some critical elements for the uptake of e-research in learning science.

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The effectiveness of static versus dynamic learning material was tested using fish biodiversity as learning domain. Eighteen fish species were presented either as videos or selected freeze-frames to students. Thereafter, students exercised identifying these species in their natural habitats during snorkeling. Students' knowledge of biodiversity was measured from test videos before (posttest 1) and after (posttest 2) snorkeling as the number of recognized species. Results showed significant knowledge gains between posttest 1 and 2. For the presentation format (static vs. dynamic) there was no significant main effect. However, a significant interaction showed that the students` knowledge improved from posttest 1 to 2 to a larger extent in the dynamic group. The study was conducted within a university curriculum for which a mobile learning scenario using portable DVD-players was applied for the first time. Overall results indicate a high potential for using mobile devices in informal settings during field trips.

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At a natural history museum in Chicago, a series of animations puts a humourous spin on important concepts of evolution. These short films demonstrate the tensions between design goals that include both entertainment and education, and raise important questions about the use of animation for teaching complex processes such as evolution. This study reports the findings from clinical interviews with museum visitors and students on their understanding of evolution from watching these animations.

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How should children learn the kind of innovative thinking they will need for success in the new, interconnected, high-tech, work-anywhere, on-demand, world of global competition? The answer is that the problem is also part of the solution. The computer technologies that make global competitors a mouse-click away also make it possible for young people to experience—and thus learn to think about—problems and situations that will prepare them for life in the digital age. In this symposium, we explore how epistemic computer games show the way towards a new view of education--one that moves beyond traditional academic disciplines and classroom practices to a new model of learning. Epistemic games are about learning through meaningful activity in virtual worlds as preparation for meaningful activity in a post-industrial, technology-rich society.

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Previous research indicates that students' adaptation to task complexity in the planning stages of self-regulated learning are related to their epistemological beliefs (Stahl, Pieschl, & Bromme, 2006), but it is an open issue if students enact similar strategies in subsequent stages. Based on the COPES-model (Winne & Hadwin, 1998) the impact of epistemological beliefs on learning is tested here experimentally. In this study, students (21 humanities students, 14 biology students) had to solve five tasks of different complexity (Anderson et al., 2001) with a hypertext on "genetic fingerprinting". Results indicate that students adapted their concurrent thoughts and concurrent actions to task complexity in this enactment stage. An epistemological sensitisation was administered that elicited more "sophisticated" beliefs and caused more elaborate learning processes. For example, students with this sensitisation employed more metacognitive planning, especially for more complex tasks. Additionally, effects of prior domain knowledge were investigated.

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During schooling, individual ability differences are inevitable. Low-ability students, when always performing worse, may feel discouraged and frustrated during learning; high-ability and hence better-performance students may not find learning interesting as well when facing easy challenges all the time. This study proposes an equal opportunity tactic in order to moderate the differences in ability perception by manipulating the challenge of tasks for every student. A trial test was also conducted to preliminarily evaluate the influences on student behaviors.

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The success of design-based research projects depends on the quality of their collaborative teams. In this paper, I use a set of principles for fostering productive engagement to explain how the Middle-school Mathematics through Applications Project (MMAP) got its team of researchers, teachers, and curriculum developers off to a good start. First, MMAP fostered problematizing around MMAP goals by recruiting participants whose goals partially overlapped with MMAP's, and by demonstrating the importance of core goals like equity. Second, the project supported teacher authority by selecting staff already inclined to respect teachers, by showing teachers that their contributions were desired, and by setting expectations that teachers would have the ultimate authority for how curricula would be used. Finally, MMAP fostered accountability by recruiting participants with varied expertise, setting expectations that teachers would change their teaching practices, and encouraging everyone to begin engaging in focused discussions with each other

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The study described in this paper examined the effectiveness of a multimedia case-based learning environment to teach technology integration to Korean preservice teachers. The structure and philosophy behind the use of embedded video in an online, multimedia system and the data collected from 103 preservice teachers are presented and discussed. The overall finding shows that there was no significant difference from pre- to posttest among the lecture, the case-based, and the mixed environment groups. However, low prior knowledge students improved more when they learned about technology integration with the mixed method than with the case-based method alone. Discussion about this result and its educational implications conclude the paper.

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This research centers on a design to elevate learner engagement or immersion in mathematics classrooms in order to optimize students' mathematical growth. The design's theoretical logic is related to eight principles for future learning environments, and to an interpretation of engagement as recruitment of attentional, perceptual and complex reasoning resources

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Visualization and other forms of spatial cognition are considered fundamental to learning and problem solving in science. This assumption is especially prevalent in organic chemistry where imagistic reasoning is considered to be a primary cognitive activity. While previous research has shown that students are aware of several analytical heuristics and imagistic strategies for problem solving, there have been no studies exploring how experts in organic chemistry approach problem solving. Here, we identify problem solving strategies employed by ten chemistry experts to solve undergraduate organic chemistry assessment tasks. Our findings suggest that experts employ a range of imagistic and analytical strategies for reasoning about spatial information and prefer, on average, to use analytical strategies.

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The aim of this study was to examine and model changes in communication network structures during online discussions in a virtual course at the university level. Two small groups of Finnish students (N=46) from different universities attended a national virtual course concerning a specific topic in the history of science. The course assignment consisted of participating into seven different discussion topics using Optima, an asynchronous learning environment. The discussions were used to examine communication networks during the course. Social network analysis techniques were used to explore communication networks and changes in these networks at structural and dyadic levels in four discrete time points with the effects of degree, reciprocity, transitivity and 3-cycles modeled by using the conditional method of moments. The results of the study suggest that during a virtual course the participants tend to form subgroups and hierarchical structures as in the same way as any other social community.

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Our attempts at describing the processes involved in learning and knowledge building activities depend on our ways of conceptualizing the context in which such activities take place. Here we trace the development of the concept of "problem space" from its inception within the information-processing perspective as a characterization of individual problem-solving activity. We review reformulations and extensions made to the concept within the Learning Sciences, and explore them as attempts to better describe small-group interactions in complex knowledge-building contexts. Using a detailed analysis of sustained, online collaborative problem solving activity, we propose that a new aspect of the problem space needs to be carefully considered in order to fully account for these kinds of experiences: temporal and sequential orientation to inter-subjective meaning making.

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Eye tracking methods enable researchers to analyze collaborative/learning processes at a fine grain level but raise multiple methodological issues. In this workshop, participants will share their experience on analyzing gaze records, detecting specific patterns, and relating these patterns to the social interactions and cognitive processes.

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Three design principles are advanced for multi-user educational videogames. First, they should support situative embodiment in academic knowledge, where personally meaningful activities and coherent narratives foster collective engagement. Second, they should offer multiple levels and forms of meaningful assessment and the opportunity to succeed, fail, and try again. Third, they should provide useful feedback that is used to enhance participation, learning, and curricula. These principles were developed in three annual design-based refinements of a 15-hour ecological sciences gaming curriculum in nine upper elementary classes. Across years, the situative embodiment afforded by the curriculum was refined with informal assessment, and innovative virtual formative feedback was incorporated around a key curricular activity. Results across years revealed incremental improvements in participation, understanding of key concepts, and achievement of targeted standards. The ultimate gains in understanding and achievement were larger than those in comparison classrooms that used a conventional text-based curriculum covering the same concepts and standards.

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The First Timers Mentoring Workshop is designed to increase participation in ICLS and build community among newcomers. Participants will present posters in mentoring sessions, give each other feedback, and meet with mentors to synthesize the interactions and plan their ICLS 2008 activities. Participation is limited to those who submit first-authored posters or papers to ICLS and have not previously presented a first authored poster or paper at an ISLS meeting.

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This study investigated the role of knowledge building in fostering conceptual and epistemological changes in the context of 10th grade chemistry students engaging in collaborative inquiry on Knowledge Forum. Two classes of students in a Hong Kong school participated, one class was provided with the knowledge building environment (n=40) and the other had regular instruction (n=39). Students engaging in knowledge building posed questions, generated theories, constructed explanations, and revised their theories collectively; they also wrote reflection and portfolios supported with conceptual-change scaffolds and knowledge-building principles. Various measures were examined including epistemological beliefs, conceptual-change, and online inquiry and discourse. The results indicated that students in Knowledge Building class made more gains than the comparison students in both conceptual and epistemological measures. Regression analyses indicated that knowledge-building reflection and inquiry contributed to conceptual change over and above prior knowledge. Implications of knowledge building for developing epistemological shifts and conceptual change are discussed.

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This study hypothesizes that when social network graphs are used in instruction, students are presented with otherwise hidden information that can be used to make more strategic decisions about who to interact with in discursive activities. Whereas, the majority of rules for previous interactions are based on social or random factors, after studying social network graphs, students cite more cognitive or informational reasons.

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Friendship and peer acceptance contribute uniquely to positive social and emotional adjustment whereas low status within the peer group has been found to produce rejection, loneliness and harassment. We have studied how the exclusionary ties and friendship ties are distributed among first grade pupils in the classroom. The basic question was whether girls' and boys' networks are different from each other in regards to the density and centrality of the ties. Further, the size of the class and the effect of the level of multicultural heterogeneity to the tie distribution were studied. All analyses were made at class level. Surprisingly, no remarkable differences were found. The size of the class was found as an important factor influencing on the amount of exclusionary ties. The multicultural heterogeneity did not either have big influence on the composition of different types of social ties. The sample is large (738 children, 50 school classes) and therefore, the results can be generalized to similar cultural environments.

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Human learning takes place in increasingly complex, continuously changing activity settings which makes traditional well controlled experiments difficult and render their ecological validity questionable. On the other hand, various modes of action research typically lack in methodological and theoretical rigor. Design experiments are an increasingly popular attempt to resolve this dilemma. However, I will show that the notion of design experiments reproduces crucial limitations of traditional research design and fails to address the foundational issue of agency of the research subjects. This limitation was, albeit embryonically, overcome by Vygotsky’s idea of double stimulation.

Based on Vygotsky's original work on formative experiments and Davydov's path-breaking experiments in the teaching of theoretical concepts, as well as on the development of this legacy in the Change Laboratory interventions we have conducted in workplaces since 1995, I will suggest six principles for the emerging methodology of formative interventions: (1) contradiction and breaking away as starting point of intervention, (2) building up agency by means of double stimulation, (3) concept formation by means of ascending from the abstract to the concrete, (4) making textures of spatially distributed interweaving cognitive trails, (5) anchoring up, down and sideways in the generation of activity-level visions and action-level decisions, and (6) longitudinal processes with breaks and bridges between intensity and withdrawal.

I will discuss these six principles using data and findings from two intervention studies my research groups have recently carried out in Finland with the help of the Change Laboratory toolkit. This first study concerns the formation of a new mode of working in the central surgery unit of the Oulu University Hospital. The second study concerns the formation of a new model of service provision in the home care for the elderly in the health centre of the City of Helsinki.

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This poster looks at dialogic learning in academic practice with the specific aim of the collaborative processing of texts. In identifying some shortcomings of these dialogic practices it introduces the notion of trialogic learning, and presents the results from a comparative study on the affordances of different asynchronous discussion tools to support a more content-oriented and trialogic form of conversation.

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Vocational students were invited to construct a project plan with the support of a graphical shared workspace. We describe the emergence of the use and effect of this technical artefact by building on Rabardel’s (1995) concept of instrumental genesis. From this perspective, a tool or instrument is seen as a mixed functional unit composed of an artefact and a utilisation scheme. We view tool appropriation as a constructive utilisation of the artefact. In case of collaborative tool use this utilisation has to be coordinated. We examine tool appropriation in a collaborative setting as development over three stages. In order to construct their project plan the students had to arrive at a shared representational format. We hypothesized that they would make certain choices during a stage of personal utilisation, and would then coordinate these choices to arrive at a shared convention of use. Our analysis illustrates a transition from mastery to collective utilisation of the tool.

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Instructional approaches that rely on the theoretical concept of learning as a process of enculturation usually regard the teacher as the expert and the students as the newcomers. We suggest an alternative metaphor, where students are viewed as longstanding members of an overlapping yet different culture than that represented by the instructional setting. This metaphor allows for sensitivity to learning difficulties that arise when students' contextualization of the milieu is dominated by the other cultural viewpoint. We suggest the concept of fertile zones of cultural encounter as a pedagogical approach to bridging the gap between cultures by designing interventions appreciated by members of both cultures, while also encouraging students to engage in the practices of the professional culture. We demonstrate the usefulness of such conceptualization in two school subjects: computer science and history.

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In this poster I use findings from an ethnographic analysis of young people's video gaming practices to approach an educational design problem. Three categories of practices are identified as a starting point for design principles informing a new virtual environment that simulates school practices. The intended purpose of the environment is to provide young people and their families with a resource for navigating the complexities of American schools.

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In this workshop we present practical solutions, implementation insights, and methodological challenges alongside theoretical frameworks and research data (and problem scenarios) from two longitudinal studies of game based learning programs. One project centering on game-based learning using history simulation game, Civ3, has spanned four years. The newer project employs the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, to foster critical digital, computational, and scientific literacy practices.

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This work contributes to the major promise of computational technology for learning in making discovery and acquisition of knowledge accessible in new ways and to a wider range of people. The particular focus here is on learning about ideas in Balance Control through observing one's own body motions and programming physical robots to perform balancing acts, such as balancing an inverted pendulum. The study involved two groups of learners, ages 13 to 15, over twelve months. The physical robots have a dual-mode ability that allowed learners to record and observe motions while controlling the robots manually by hand as well as under program control. A custom-made Logo programming environment together with new 2D graphical elements was created. The results not only show examples of Balance Control concepts that emerged, but highlight the learning process that was made accessible only through the computational technology.

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Although eye movements have proved to be a valuable source of information for the study of cognitive processes, they are hardly regarded within CSCL. A crucial reason for this is the lack of suitable observational schemes. To bridge this gap, a coding scheme for global text processing in CSCL on the base of established well-defined eye movement measures is proposed. The scheme was evaluated in a study on explicit references in CSCL with learning protocols.

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Learning with self-explaining examples is an effective method in well-structured domains. We analyzed this method in teaching the complex skill of argumentation. In an experiment we compared three conditions (n = 47 students of educational sciences) that differed with respect to whether and how the processing of the examples was supported by different help functions. The analysis of the video-based examples was either supported by additional examples displaying the equivalent argumentative structure or by Conceptmaps visualizing the argumentative structure. The control group received no help. We found that examples of argumentation could be successfully employed in order to teach skills of argumentation. Covariance Analysis revealed no main effect of help design on learning outcome. However there was a significant effect of learners' help seeking activities. Learners who used the help facilities more often showed significant higher learning outcomes. Principal based help facilities (concept maps) thereby were most accepted by the learners.

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Multimodal representations are representations containing a combination of text and schemas and/or pictures. According to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning such representations can be powerful learning tools. The study described here approaches this theory from the domain of history in co-construction tasks. In an experimental study, the dialogues of pupils who co-constructed either textual representations or multimodal representations integrated in a timeline were compared. The participants were 12 to 14-year-old pupils in pre vocational secondary education who worked in dyads on a series of four history tasks. Dialogue protocols of the taped student conversations for one of these tasks were analysed. The results show that integrated multimodal representations do – to some extent – lead to more discussion about domain content as well as about procedural issues than working with textual representations.

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This study investigates students' conceptions of the facial angle as a way to attain understanding elements of the theory of human evolution. The chosen laboratory work involved determining the species of a human cranium, and students had to design and write down their own experimental procedure. Three versions of the laboratory work were carried out leading to different student productions. Three aspects will be presented in the present paper, which are related to the three conceptual difficulties that appeared in our a priori analysis: the importance of students’ everyday knowledge of angles and of anatomy of human crania, the problem of knowing how many points make up an angle, and finally, the way in which students determined a reference system to construct an angle.

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The aim of this exploratory study was to examine how the six matched triads of pre-service teachers share and construct metacognition in mathematical problem solving in WorkMates learning environment having or having not a stimulated recall group interview. More specifically, we examined socially shared metacognition and we performed the qualitative content analysis of the discussion forum data from metacognition point of view. The results showed metacognition becoming shared and metacognition becoming visible but not shared in discussions.

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In an empirical study, eye-gaze patterns of pairs of students were recorded and analyzed in a remote situation where they had to build a concept map collaboratively. They were provided (or not), with a knowledge awareness tool that provided learner A with learner B's level of knowledge measured through a pre-test. Previous results showed that the awareness tool positively affected learning gain by enhancing the production of elaborative talk and knowledge negotiation. In the present paper, we describe the actual use of a knowledge awareness tool during the course of interaction by analyzing the gaze paths recorded during the experiment and how they relate to learning performance and verbal interactions. The results showed that learners refer to the knowledge awareness tool episodically during the course of collaboration, mainly to assess the epistemic value of the information provided by the peer, especially when the peer seems uncertain about his understanding. The potential of the synchronized eye-tracking method for research in computer supported collaborative learning is discussed.

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The potential of design to support learning has been documented for a wide range of ages. In this research we explore the added value of engaging learners in a design process, with a target audience that received little attention in the learning-by-design literature, namely, graduate students in education. Our exploration of student learning is conducted as a design-based research study, with students who participated in national and international, multi-institutional design-courses. Findings indicate that by integrating approaches from the Learning Sciences and the Instructional Systems Design worlds, the instructional model developed in this study supported students to design pedagogically sound educational technologies. An "anchoring stage", in which students shift from philosophical to practical design was found as a crucial stage in student learning. Interpreting the findings in terms of the novice-expert literature, we found that as we refined our instructional model, students were better supported in making expert-like design decisions.

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This symposium addresses methodological issues in studying children's knowledge and learning processes. The class of methods discussed here looks at processes of learning in fine-grained detail, through which a theoretical framework evolves rather than is merely applied. This class of methodological orientations to studying learning processes diverges from more common ones in several important ways: 1) Attention to diverse features of the learning interaction; 2) conducting a moment-by-moment analysis, zooming in on the fine details of the studied processes; 3) rather than proving or applying a theory, the objective is to make theoretical innovations, or to develop a "humble theory." The challenge of using such techniques is that, by their nature, they do not follow a strongly delineated procedure, especially not the usual sort of coding. This symposium attempts to begin addressing the methodological issues by reflecting on several cases of data analysis.

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Over the last two decades, the learning sciences have contributed immensely to curricula-based learning in formal environments. Recently, there is an increased emphasis on learning that occurs outside formal institutions, especially through the use of technology. Design experiments and design-based research have resulted in several innovations and in an overall conception of designing and researching new learning environments. Not surprisingly, technology has been a critical component of research and teaching. Yet, this focus has primarily been on developed nations in the West. Recently the participation from other areas of the world, especially Africa, Asia, the Middle East, has been on the increase while the community of researchers and scholars is internationalizing. One area of innovation that has not been part of the community but which we wish to bring to focus through our symposium is the use of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) in emerging economies

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The first aim of this study was to contribute to a growing body of research in teacher-student classroom discourse, by describing, in detail, the discourse "moves" of a teacher during science conversations. Our second aim was to develop an enriched analytic framework that can account for the context, the content and the purpose of the discourse moves identified, arguing for a shift of attention in research toward the process of deciding which discourse move to use, rather than solely their description. We analyzed a total of 930 minutes of whole-class conversations facilitated by an experienced science teacher over two years of elementary science lessons. The findings revealed a repertoire of discourse moves that the teacher chose from during instruction based on the context and the epistemological properties of the student discourse content, supporting our contention for the need of a framework that can describe the nature of those choices.

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This study explores students understanding of key concepts in nanoscience with the intention of identifying a potential threshold concept in the field through the analysis of student concept maps and explanatory interviews. The analysis of students' maps indicates conceptual development and learning difficulties in learning size–dependent property change at the Nano-scale. In addition, it identifies potential threshold concepts in the study and understanding of nanoscale science from the students' perspective. It also indicates the importance of previous learning in science to integrate isolated concepts

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Does learning with multimedia promote students' ability to identify variables and infer relations among various elements within given textual and visual information, thus deepening system thinking? This study examined 150 undergraduate students' ability to identify systems' components (i.e., variables), overt and covert relations, as well as construct new relations among these variables, based either on a multiple-representation (MR) display that resembled rich textbook materials (n=82) or a single-representation (SR) text-only display (n=68). Findings showed that the experimental MR group elicited relations better than the controls (SR), regarding relations' accuracy, descriptive level, and novelty, and regarding number of information sources and diversity of variables used. Discussion focused on different visual representation types and on implications of this ecologically valid study for enhancing students' system thinking.

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This study examines how students' experimentation with a dynamic visualization contributes to their understanding of science. We designed a week-long, technology-enhanced inquiry module on car collisions. The module uses new technologies that log student interactions with the visualization. Physics students (N=148) in six diverse high schools studied the module and responded to pretests, posttests, and embedded assessments. We scored students' experimentation using three methods: total number of trials, how widely students changed variables between trials (variability), and how well students connected content knowledge to experimentation strategies (validity). Students made large, significant overall pretest to posttest gains. Regression models showed that validity was the strongest predictor of learning when controlling for prior knowledge and other experimentation measures. Successful learners employed a goal-directed experimentation approach that connected their experimentation strategy to content knowledge.

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Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS) is a comprehensive technology-enhanced science curriculum for grades 6 through 8 (ages 12 – 14), designed based on foundations in the learning sciences. Most of its units were developed during the 1990's at Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan. Over the past five years, researchers at these universities (and others) have been working to pull the units together into a curriculum that can be disseminated nationally (in the U.S.). During the last two years, we have been working closely with the publishing company, It's About Time, to bring the curriculum to publication. We present the research foundations of PBIS along with the pragmatics of incorporating individual units into an integrated curriculum appropriate that addresses the diverse requirements of 50 states while also addressing the diverse needs of learners.

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This interactive poster session features seven research groups exploring how interactive, dynamic visualizations impact student learning. Six empirical studies report on promising designs for visualizations. These studies use logs of student interactions and embedded assessments to document the quality and trajectory of learning and to capture the cognitive and social processes mediated by the visualization. The review synthesizes previous and current empirical work. It offers design guidelines, principles, patterns, and examples to inform those designing interactive, dynamic visualization and aligned learning support. These posters show why dynamic visualizations are both difficult to design and valuable for science instruction.

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The Virtual Math Teams (VMT) environment has recently integrated a wiki component into its text chat and shared whiteboard system. The wiki component serves a number of purposes, such as summarizing synchronous small-group interactions and sharing the results among groups in an asynchronous knowledge-building community. The VMT project is part of an effort to investigate group cognition, the accomplishment of problem-solving and knowledge-building tasks by small groups, particularly in online, distributed contexts. This paper is an experience report on the use of the VMT system with middle-school, high-school and junior college math students, with masters-level information science students and with research teams. It synthesizes findings from the analysis in many published case studies of VMT system usage and describes recent extensions to the system, integrating a social-networking portal, a knowledge-building wiki, a group-cognition chat room and a shared whiteboard with history, awareness and referencing tools.

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Research on learning and argumentation traditionally focuses on the (socio-)cognitive dimensions and benefits of argumentative dialogue. The papers which are part of this symposium, however, present recent research on intra-personal, non-cognitive variables and how they affect or are affected by electronic collective argumentation. The data are obtained from both e-discussants as well as e-moderators and pertain to factors such as motivation, self-perception, role definitions and expectations. The three contributions provide information on these factors before, during and after e-discussions and help delving in the dynamics of (moderated) e-argumentation.

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This keynote addresses the interplay of self-regulation and other-regulation in the context of computer-supported collaborative learning. Knowledge construction in small groups can be seen as guided by internal collaboration scripts, that is: knowledge on collaboration represented in the individual participants' minds. External collaboration scripts can be seen as scaffolding strategies for guiding groups through complex patterns of interaction. Such external scripts often specify activities and roles and assign them to individuals in a group. An overview on a series of studies that explore the interplay of internal and external scripts in computer- supported collaborative learning will be presented. The methods used include think-aloud protocols during asynchronous collaboration as well as discourse analysis. In one study, for example, we investigated cognitive processes during collaborative argumentation in an asynchronous discussion scenario. In another study, we explored how differently structured internal scripts interact with differently structured computer-supported scripts with respect to both discourse and learning. In a series of intervention studies, the effects of different types of external scripts on discourse processes (e.g., argumentation) and learning outcomes (e.g., acquisition of subject-matter knowledge) were investigated and compared. Based on main concepts and findings, a framework has been developed that can guide the design of effective external collaboration scripts.

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This international comparison investigates students' knowledge structure coherence in physics across five countries. In particular, this study investigates two possible hypotheses explaining the conflicting results obtained by Ioannides and Vosniadou (2002) and diSessa, Gillespie, and Esterly (2004) about students' understandings of force in Greece and the United States. Ioannides and Vosniadou's study in Greece demonstrated broad consistency in students' understandings of force. diSessa and colleague's quasi-replication in the U.S. demonstrated conflicting results supporting more elemental perspectives. One hypothesis focuses on differences in analytic methods. The other hypothesis focuses on semantic, cultural, or educational differences between the students in the two studies. The findings of this study suggest that differences in analytic methods do result in coding differences but that these relatively small differences would not account for the significant differences between the studies. This study, however, demonstrates significant differences for force meanings and knowledge structure coherence across the countries that might explain a larger percentage of the differences in findings between the studies.

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In biology education, it is crucial to be able to classify objects based on complex visual information (e.g., shapes and locomotion patterns of fish). Usually, this ability is trained with books displaying static features and only explaining dynamic features. However, for many classification tasks the dynamic features are very important. Therefore, the overall aim of the two studies described in this paper was to develop an innovative instructional technique for teaching classification skills to students using dynamic visualizations. In order to develop this technique, the first study was conducted to analyze classification processes of experts and novices in detail. This was done by investigating process-oriented differences between experts and novices using eye movements and verbal data obtained during classifying the locomotion pattern of different types of fish. In a second study the process data of experts are replayed to novices in order to support novices in adapting experts' classification strategies.

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How to introduce computer-assisted design (CAD) as a representational tool of the trade in the classroom? This paper deals with the tension between the authenticity of design-based learning situations that is often strived at and the inherent complexity of the design process and CAD as a representational tool of the trade. We describe a three-dimensional framework for comparing innovative project-like scenarios in technology curricula to more traditional instructional sequences for science learning. We subsequently developed a dissociated geometry-oriented and an integrated technology-oriented CAD training and studied their influence on the way pupils engaged in a design task. Although the results show evidence of the complementary roles of different types of representations, no effect of type of CAD training is found. In the discussion, we propose potential explanations for these findings, by relating back to our framework, and make a suggestion for future research.

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A weakness inherent in science education has been (and remains) its emphasis principally on the teaching of scientific knowledge, i.e. knowledge of the object (or the observed). Little attention has been directed to the teaching of people knowledge about scientists, i.e. knowledge of the subject (or the observer) who creates knowledge. This study explores the nature of this people knowledge and its possible effects on science learning. There are two types of people knowledge identified through this study: breadth-oriented people knowledge (BPK) and depth-oriented people knowledge (DPK). BPK profiles scientists' scientific achievements across life whereas DPK describes scientists' intellectual struggle in relation to their theory building. The findings indicate that the two types of people knowledge are fundamentally different in nature and it is only DPK that is beneficial to science learning (e.g., deepening students' understanding of scientific theories and making science learning environments more humanly interesting).

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This study investigated the cognitive load theory prediction that the inconsistent findings concerning the effectiveness of instructional animations are exacerbated by their transitory nature. Three groups were compared who received different but equivalent forms of instruction in learning a topic in economics. One group received an animation presentation with integrated text and diagrams, a second group received a static diagram presentation with integrated text and diagrams, and the third group received a static diagram presentation with non-integrated text and diagrams in a classical split-attention design. Results indicated that the animated design was superior to the static integrated design only on test questions that closely resembled the presented information. No other significant group differences were identified. Furthermore a battery of self-rating measures of cognitive load and motivational items indicated that test performance was predicted by motivation and concentration levels, rather than by mental effort or task difficulty.

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The concern of most societies for educational equity, generally, and improving the educational status of children from poor families, specifically, is motivated by social justice and fairness. But, one of the recurring concerns is the high cost of effectively redressing such inequities. For example, Dutch researchers find no positive impact on educational outcomes of additional expenditures on schools with high immigrant populations. This presentation will describe a formal analysis of the returns-to-investment question by examining the costs and benefits to society of specific investments in the U.S. designed to reduce the educational disadvantages of those populations that are least well-off. More specifically, this presentation will report on the public investment returns to increasing high school graduation rates in the U.S. using a range of interventions that have been validated by strong evaluations of educational results.

Both economic analyses of costs and benefits are addressed. Public benefits include increased tax revenues and reduced public expenditures on health, criminal justice, and public assistance. What is particularly unique about this study is that it provides concrete cost estimation for specific interventions that have been shown to improve high school graduation for the poor. Further, the statistical analysis of benefits is based upon unique data sets that address each of the relations between education on the one hand and the generation of income, tax revenues and savings of public health costs, criminal justice costs, and public assistance costs. Each type of benefit is estimated separately and combined to provide an overall benefit-cost analysis of investments to improve the educational status of the poor. Our studies show that the benefits to the taxpayer that are generated by these investments exceed substantially the costs. That is, beyond the moral argument for improving the education of the least-advantaged populations, there is a strong economic argument.

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Knowledge creation entails collaborative learning processes, involving groups of students that act collaboratively in order to create new knowledge. In this study, we discuss shared epistemic agency as one of the main concepts capturing the process and evolution of collaboratively creating knowledge. A multiple-method approach was employed when analyzing the data collected from a research module in higher education. Central in these analyses was the manner in which shared epistemic agency was instantiated during collaborative students' work on their shared knowledge objects, the research reports. A number of activities characterizing shared epistemic agency during collaborative work on shared knowledge objects are identified and described. These results feed back into new insights on how shared epistemic agency is enacted in this specific context, and into a fine-tuning of our description of the concept itself.

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This case study aims to illustrate the sequential process of joint and individual knowledge elaboration in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Six Dutch secondary school students (three males, three females) participated in the three-week experiment. They were paired based on self-selection. Each dyad was asked to work on moderately-structured problems concerning Newtonian mechanics. With the help of elaboration values, students' online interactions were categorized and sequentially plotted. Three dyads showed three different patterns of individual knowledge elaboration.

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The presentation will focus on theoretical and empirical issues relating to the links between education and social outcomes. Education has effects that are far reaching, beyond measures such as labour market earnings or GDP growth. The importance of a well functioning economy however, has ensured that these two latter economic outcomes have received due attention and that a decent evidence base has been built up. But a range of other educational outcomes, which are arguably equally important, are not as well supported by a rigorous knowledge base, nor are they necessarily well understood. Researching the links between education and social outcomes is plagued by a number of serious shortcomings. Firstly, the nature and purpose of education is ill-defined. Secondly, the impact of education on economy and society is complex. Thirdly, many of the relevant variables are difficult to assess using precise quantitative measures. All of these combine to make it more difficult to build up an adequate knowledge base which is needed to inform the debate on what education should achieve and how. Despite the complexity involved and the limitations associated with available measurements and other observations, educational research has an important role to play in building up a well balanced knowledge base.

Starting with the premise that education constitutes an ill-defined problem, the first part of the presentation discusses the importance of theory for understanding better the relationships between education and social outcomes, for gathering and synthesizing what we know and what we want to know; and for drawing out their implications for research, policy and practice. The main part of the presentation discusses three overarching alternative mechanisms that link education and social outcomes, namely the ARC (absolute, relative and cumulative) set of models. These are anchored in the political science literature but references are made to similar counterparts in the economics literature. Some evidence is presented to provide an overview of what is known empirically about these alternative explanations. But it should be noted that we in fact have little empirical knowledge, which is robust, on the nature and range of such effects, nor on the conditions needed to secure positive effects or avoid negative ones. Finally, there is a concluding discussion on some of the empirical limitations and challenges to building up a robust evidence base in this area.

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Little is known how young players learn to participate in various activities in virtual worlds. We use a new integrative approach called connective ethnography that focuses on how gaming expertise spreads across a network of youth at an after school club that simultaneously participates in a virtual world Whyville.net. To trace youth participation in online and offline social contexts, we draw on multiple sources of information: observations, interviews, video recordings, online tracking and chat data, and hundreds of hours of play in Whyville ourselves. One particular game practice – the throwing of projectiles and its social uses and nuances – became the focal point of our analyses. The discussions address methodological challenges underlying the synthesis of diverse types of data that allowed us to follow youth across multiple spaces and times as well as initial insights into how this practice was used to negotiate relationships in multiple spaces through play.

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Knowledge convergence is at the heart of even very different approaches to collaborative learning. Recent empirical work revealed that knowledge convergence falls behind the expectations because only modest amount of shared knowledge could be found. We investigate knowledge awareness as a method to foster the emergence of knowledge convergence in an experimental study. Knowledge awareness provides collaborators with convergence-related external representations. This was found to support learners in tapping their convergence potential.

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In this symposium we present findings from qualitative studies of both university and industrial research laboratories, and their partnerships, to illuminate how learning takes place in these settings. Research laboratories are unique in providing a window on learning of content as well as learning to participate. Both kinds of learning are central to the functioning of the laboratory as an organization and to the growth of individual researchers within the laboratory. We highlight common themes across the different settings and showcase some of the differences that lead to different outcomes. We discuss institutional level as well as micro-interactional level issues related to learning. The three studies that make up this session examine biomedical engineering, interactive media research, and applied computer science.

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We examined emergent leadership in small online collaborative learning groups of pre-service math and science teachers. Groups worked on line to design interdisciplinary instructional units. We employed a distributed leadership framework (Spillane, 2007) and adapted a coding system previously developed by Li, et al. (2007) to determine that group leadership was highly distributed among participants and to illustrate that leadership emerged through different forms of participation described in this paper. Findings help validate the theoretical concept of distributed small-group cognition and lead to interesting research questions regarding the design and scaffolding of small-group learning online.

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The study reported in this article aims at empirically testing a theoretical model of collaborative knowledge building with wikis which was recently introduced by Cress and Kimmerle (2007; in press). This model assumes that individual learning and collaborative knowledge building are based on the interplay between people's knowledge and the information available in the wiki. This interplay takes place in the form of externalization and internalization respectively. Individual learning is considered as happening through internal processes of assimilation and accommodation. Collaborative knowledge building happens through activities of external assimilation and accommodation. This study demonstrates these four processes in an experimental setting. As postulated by Cress and Kimmerle, the results show that a medium level of incongruity between people's knowledge and a wiki's information supports individual learning. A medium level of incongruity also leads to more external accommodation processes, despite the fact that high and medium levels of incongruity result in the same amount of text complements.

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This paper presents the results of a six-week unit on seismology conducted in a fifth-grade classroom. The unique feature of the unit involved the use of classroom technology designed to support students' participation in an authentic seismological practice: the interpretation of seismograms to determine the epicenter and magnitude of earthquakes. The goals of the empirical study were (1) to gain insight into the impact of the intervention with respect to student mastery of seismological practice skills, development of conceptual understanding of earthquake distributions, and changes in self-conception as investigative agents, and (2) to investigate student participation in an emerging community of practice over an extended time course.

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Researchers in the learning sciences have long recognized the potential of online spaces to support learning activities; however, the pervasiveness of social media construction typically associated with "Web 2.0" represents a new context for the research of learning and instruction. Wikis, for example, have popularized a social approach to constructing knowledge that was very difficult to achieve with previous technologies. Social networking applications like Facebook that interconnect people according to social or semantic relationships have become integral features of student life. Multi-user synchronous environments like Second Life provide rich, immersive experiences as well as new forms of online community. Such applications are blooming in every corner of society, influencing the ways in which people learn and exchange with one another. These four papers present distinct research applications of such technologies, illustrating how they influence not only our methods, but affect the very nature of our questions and theoretical perspectives.

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The effects of individual versus group learning (in triads) on efficiency of retention and transfer test performance in the domain of biology (heredity) among 70 high-school students were investigated. Applying cognitive load theory, the limitations of the working memory capacity at the individual level were considered an important reason to assign complex learning tasks to groups rather than to individuals. It was hypothesized that groups will have more processing capacity available for relating the information elements to each other and by doing so for constructing higher quality cognitive schemata than individuals if the high cognitive load imposed by complex learning tasks could be shared among group members. In contrast, it was expected that individuals who learn from carrying out the same complex tasks would need all available processing capacity for remembering the interrelated information elements, and, consequently, would not be able to allocate resources to working with them. This interaction hypothesis was confirmed by the data on efficiency of retention and transfer test performance; there was a favorable relationship between mental effort and retention test performance for the individual learners as opposed to a favorable relationship between transfer test performance and mental effort for the students who learned in groups.

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The recognized importance of collaboration has driven the development of learning environments and technologies. Instructional efforts have concentrated on supporting students' development of collaborative agency – knowing how to collaborate in small groups. Much less emphasis has been placed on students' collective agency that would involve participation in large groups prominent in today's social networking sites and online cultures. Here we use our observations in an urban community technology center where groups of 30-40 youth self-organized their dance performances called Krumping and/or Clowning to inspire rethinking from collaborative to collective agency in learning. Our analysis is based on four years of ethnographic field work that helped us articulate different aspects of activity structures that promote collective agency, distributed leadership, and the role of performance. We use these findings to reflect on our conceptions of learning and the design of learning technologies and environments.

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The construction and evaluation of scientific models, together with the iterative modification of these models in response to evidence, constitute paradigmatic scientific practices. If inquiry instruction is to engage students in authentic scientific reasoning, these practices need to become routine in the science curriculum. This paper reports on some of the difficulties middle-school students experience in a learning environment focused on model-and evidence-based reasoning and suggests a promising scaffold to address these difficulties.

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Abstract: This paper explores how the RepTools toolkit was appropriated in two different classroom cultures. The RepTools toolkit consists of hypermedia about a complex system, physical models, and NetLogo simulations, designed to help students understand complex systems in the context of aquarium ecosystem. This paper reports on the nature of the different enactments of two teachers using the same tools. Although both classrooms showed similar learning gains, Interactions Analyses (IA) found differences between the enactments in two main areas; (1) providing opportunities for inquiry and language used to communicate and (2) teacher interpretation of the computer model. These findings suggest that how tools are appropriated is greatly influenced by teacher beliefs and classroom culture and that there may be multiple paths to productive use of such tools.

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The aim of this symposium is to initiate the discussion on learning with simulations in the medical sector. Indeed, this domain represents a very complex and dynamic environment dealing with a great variety of knowledge (declarative, pragmatic, procedural, gestural, etc.) that can be learned under diverse pedagogical forms. The four presentations describe various forms of computer-based technology, which aim to enhance the teaching and learning capabilities of doctors mostly in the form of 3D visualisation, full-scale simulation and haptic technology. They focus on research conducted in the area of anaesthesia and surgery. These studies emphasize on the necessity to adapt the learning environment to the objective of the training (validity of the learning situations). If the presentations are specific to the medical domain, their methodological and theoretical approaches can be generalized and used in other learning situations.

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The current study aimed to examine the effect of anonymity and privacy on students' voting behaviour before and after classroom debate. A positioning system with three different settings was prototyped (Private, Anonymous or Public). It was predicted that students voting publicly would be less inclined to express changes in their views, and that they would tend to conform to the class' overall position more than students voting either anonymously or privately. Three groups of students (N=55) taking A Level General Studies took part in debates and voted in one of the three conditions. Results supported both hypotheses and suggest that anonymity and privacy play a crucial role in encouraging students to express individual and authentic positions. The implications of these results for technology mediated voting systems are discussed.

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This poster session showcases ten examples of expertise development in everyday domains of personal relevance and consequence to learners. The collection of cases highlighted in the posters stem from ethnographic research studies investigating learning from socio-cultural-historical perspectives. In each poster, authors describe their ethnographic project, explicate a case of expertise development, and detail the specific learning processes, practices, and pathways associated with that expertise development. Implications for understanding personally relevant and consequential learning for the design of effective learning environments in K-12 STEM classrooms and beyond will be discussed. Discussion will also include plans for the design and implementation of a data repository, which will house a broad set of learning cases, such as those detailed in this poster session, with the goals of supporting collaborative theoretical synthesizing related to diverse learning-related phenomena and helping researchers and educators understand the details of learning as it socially occurs in meaningful ways.

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In CSCL environments model representations can stimulate learners to explicate their reasoning and elicit and support knowledge construction. But literature on their effectiveness is not clear with data indicating that representations not adapted to task demands have counterproductive effects. By matching the representational guidance of a model representation to the demands of the task, learners can be supported during their collaborative inquiry process because they receive the information they need when they need it.

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This qualitative study considers middle grades' mathematics teachers' abilities to make sense of drawn representations of fraction and decimal operations. Our interest was in understanding how teachers interpret these drawings and whether they can flexibly move within and between the various drawings. Our findings focus issues of relevant mathematics that emerged as well as teachers' abilities to move between and within the various drawings of interest. The conclusions tie our findings to the need for more professional development to support teachers in using drawn representations.

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This paper presents a classroom observation protocol and analysis method that efficiently capture key student and teacher discursive moves. We developed this protocol for use in a study comparing classrooms using Eduinnova, handheld computer-supported collaborative learning software, with classrooms using a popular, non-collaborative software application aimed at the same topic. Analysis of data from the observations clearly shows differences between student discourse in these classrooms but also reveal some challenges in the CSCL classroom.

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Three studies tested the hypothesis that the mere belief in having a social interaction with someone improves learning, more attention and higher arousal. Participants studied a passage on fever mechanisms. They entered a virtual reality (VR) environment and met an embodied agent. The participant either read aloud or silently, scripted questions on the fever passage. In the avatar-aloud and avatar-silent conditions, participants were told that the virtual representation was controlled by a person. The agent condition was told that the virtual representation was a computer program. All interactions within VR were held constant, but the avatar conditions exhibited better learning, more attention, and higher arousal. Further results suggest that this was not due to social belief per se, but rather in the belief of taking a socially relevant action.

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The symposium is aimed at highlighting the role that the awareness about the mental processes which are activated and the control over such processes play in comprehending and memorizing notions presented through texts and pictures. The attempt is to support the notion that promoting metacognition could improve the effectiveness of multimedia tools. In fact, metacognition should bring students to develop adequate strategies to learn from text-picture combinations. The contributions included in the symposium present a set of different ways of interpreting the links between metacognition and multimedia learning and show a series of experimental approaches that can be followed to investigate such links.

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Students struggle to read science texts. This is especially problematic for designers of inquiry-based learning environments that make ambitious demands on readers. We report on our efforts to provide targeted strategic supports for struggling adolescent readers in science classrooms. Environmental science and biology high school students learned to use tools designed to foster three specific metacognitive skills: recognizing text structure, reflecting on content, and representing the gist of a text in a summary. During one school year, students had regular opportunities to use these strategies in class. Participants completed one tool use assessment at the end of the school year in which they used the tools during reading of a science text. Students then answered science comprehension questions about the text. Tool proficiency was correlated with both reading and science achievement. Tool proficiency also predicted science achievement when controlling for on-entry reading ability. The implications for science instruction are discussed.

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Given the critical importance of collaboration in lifelong learning, this paper highlights the need for interventions that help learners develop awareness of the social dimensions of group problem solving and adopt patterns of discourse leading to more successful collaborative learning outcomes. In pursuit of this, I present scaffolds that were piloted on students learning the practice of collaborative human-centered design, and argue for the larger significance of design as a framework for developing collaborative capacities.

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We examine expertise as an assemblage of factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and the ability to transfer. Experiment 1 provides empirical support in biomechanics, a content-dominated domain; Experiment 2 extends the construct to bioengineering design, a process-dominated domain. Factual knowledge is a lesser predictor than conceptual knowledge, which is a lesser predictor than transfer in determining level of expertise. This study instantiates a view of expertise that held broad appeal but lacked empirical evidence.

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This workshop will focus on the use of multiple external representations for science learning. Specifically, our focus will be on the integration of text resources and simulations with hands-on science activities. Most research on multiple representations has focused on representations in computer systems (e.g., text + animations). A unique aspect of this workshop is that it will also address the issue of integrating physical representations in the form of hands-on activities with other modes of learning science; and focus on two key issues:
(i) integration of representations into instructional activities and
(ii) scaffolding students to make connections between representations.

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Scaffolding learners, i.e. helping learners to attain tasks they could not accomplish without support, entails the notion of fading, i.e. reducing the scaffolding for learners to become more and more self-regulated. Fading implies to tailor support for collaboration, such as collaboration scripts, to the particular needs of the specific collaborators. In computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) settings, support can be designed in a very restrictive and inflexible fashion; at the same time computerized settings open new possibilities for the realization of adaptive support as they enable automation of analysis and feedback mechanisms. In this symposium we present new technical approaches and latest empirical research on possibilities and limitations of adaptive support for learners in CSCL settings.

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This paper turns our attention to the arts and New Literacy Studies as an understudied area in the learning sciences. Our study documents, describes, and analyzes urban youths’ Media Arts Practices within a Computer Clubhouse, drawing on the New Literacy Studies movement and work on authentic practices. Results indicated that youth engaged in at least eight literate practices aligned with professional communities in the arts, media, and new technologies. We organize these practices into the technical, creative, and critical practices of Media Arts production and offer a new conceptual framework for this emergent field. Media Arts are particularly relevant to the learning sciences because of the shared focus on new technologies and computation. The new field of Media Arts is not well understood in the research literature but has the potential to teach us about learning and literacy in the age of multimedia.

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This session will explore different approaches to the use of computer game design in formal/informal learning environments. Game design is becoming a popular strategy for enhancing young people’s interest and skills with computer technology, and for purposes ranging from deepening their understanding of scientific principles to fostering critical media literacy. The participants will present research findings that highlight similarities and differences in tools, pedagogies, purposes, and outcomes of game design activities. Game design is often presumed to be appealing to learners who ordinarily might not be motivated to learn through traditional instruction, and we will give particular attention to the significance of race, class, and gender in student engagement and learning through design.

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Animated models explicating how a problem is solved and why a particular method is chosen are expected to be effective learning tools for novices. Cognitive load theory was used to investigate how learners could be stimulated to engage in genuine learning activities. Perceived control was identified as an important contributor to motivation. It was hypothesized that a high level of perceived control would yield higher transfer performance than a low level of perceived control. Moreover, we hypothesized that learners who first studied an animated model and then solved the same problem would perform better on transfer than learners who studied the same animated model twice or who first solved the problem and then studied the animated models. In a 2 x 3 factorial experiment (N = 90) with the factors level of perceived control (low vs. high) and instruction method (study-practice, practice-study, study-study) only the first hypothesis was confirmed.

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We present NIELS (NetLogo Investigations in Electromagnetism, Sengupta & Wilensky, 2005, 2006), a multi-agent based learning environment that represents phenomena such as Electric Current, Resistance, etc in the form of "emergent" (Wilensky & Resnick, 1999) computational models. Based on a pilot implementation in a 7th grade classroom, we argue that NIELS models enable learners to "think in levels" (Wilensky & Resnick, 1999) which in turn enables them to bootstrap their existing object-based knowledge structures to engender a deep, expert-like understanding.

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This research paper examines coconstruction of knowledge in three different school contexts. Systematic interaction analyses were conducted in over twenty elementary and secondary classrooms. An array of descriptive statistics was produced, including a number of significant differences. The verbal face-to-face context, in which no collaborative technologies were used, revealed to be the one where less coconstruction was observed. Coconstruction was often limited to the expression of opinions. Explanation was present but justification almost absent.

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Research into the benefits of collaborative work on learning have shifted from questions regarding whether it promotes learning, to research into the conditions that promote learning and the identification of processes that make collaborative group settings particularly effective. In this symposium we will present findings from recent research into a number of socio-cognitive processes that have been found to foster conceptual gains following group learning. The papers that will be presented as part of this symposium will focus on three different phenomena: argumentation, production feedback and the incubation effect of collaboration. In addition, these studies also show that the effects of collaborative learning may not be apparent immediately following interaction, but need some time to materialize. This finding emphasizes the need for multiple and delayed assessment, as well as alternative assessment tools, such as prospective (instead of retrospective) measures of learning.

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Open collaborative authoring systems such as Wikipedia are growing in use and impact. This research examines how to create a collaborative authoring community for educational resources. We describe and evaluate a novel tool for community authoring of worked examples, in the task of making instruction for a specific math skill. Participants were professional teachers (math and non-math) and amateurs. We find that while there are differences by teaching status, all three groups made contributions of worth.

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Wim Veen used the term "Homo Zappiens" to typify a new student generation. He suggested that this generation possesses certain living and learning behaviours that are fundamentally different from those of previous generations. Regardless of whether this is true, teachers have the obligation to insure that their teaching fits or is adapted to possible changes in the students’ characteristics and to advance students' learning so that learning can be achieved as effectively and as efficiently as possible. In the 1980s my research group studied how to adapt physics education to the needs of females and developed teaching materials that were judged more attractive by them than existing materials. We observed classes and administered questionnaires on students' motivation and preferences for teaching. More recently we investigated how teachers can build good relationships with students who come from ethnic minorities. Many hours of video tapes of classes in many subjects and many hours of teacher interviews were analyzed. In the studies we concluded that catering to the needs of specific students required teaching strategies that every good teacher possesses, but which, unfortunately, many teachers do not always appropriately use. Good teaching for specific purposes did not appear to be very different from generic good teaching.

Nowadays, with students who some see as being born with computers in their hands, the question has become: Does the homo zappiens need more than just good teaching? When one observes classrooms, it is clear that students have changed over the years while in many countries the way courses are taught has not changed with the same speed nor in an adequate way. Teacher talk still is the dominant format in many secondary classrooms. Classroom activities almost never invite students to use their capacity for multitasking. Fortunately, however, we are beginning to see more and more classrooms where teaching has been adapted to the many technological tools and new student skills and characteristics that are currently available / present. The questions are, thus: Do teachers who use information and communication technologies have dramatically different ways of teaching or pedagogical relations with their students? Does their way of teaching require a new and different teaching competence?

Reviewing the literature on effective teaching and teacher education and studying exemplary teaching and teacher education programs yields some ingredients for answers to these questions. This keynote will present benchmarks for pedagogical use of information and communication technologies in modern teaching. A comparison of these benchmarks with information about generic teaching competence will shed light on the answer of whether a hunt for new teachers is necessary.

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Many studies have examined how learners make sense of the traditionally difficult ideas of levels and emergence in complex systems by interacting with visuospatial multi agent based models. In this poster, we review these findings through the lens of human basic perceptual/representational systems. We argue that many of learners’ observed strategies and explanations surrounding the ideas of levels and emergence are supported by visualizations that leverage perceptual systems related to objects, motion, and geometry

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This interactive session presents early research findings resulting from a game simulation currently called Gamestar Mechanic through which 70 middle and high school-age players learn to design video games. Gamestar Mechanic is an RPG (Role-Playing Game) style online game through which players "take on" the behaviors characteristic of professional game designers (e.g., designing games, accounting for variability change within a game's system, critiquing games). Reflecting on and practicing design can lead, we believe, to skills that are crucial for success in the modern, high-tech, global world. Game design is but a start in learning to think of complex interactions among variables, people, and technology, but it is also a domain that can help others reflect on complex interactions among systems. Early findings are showing that the pedagogical design of Gamestar Mechanic has the potential to help participants develop understanding of technical concepts particular to game design, systems-thinking skills, and other behaviors associated with the domain.

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In this paper, we describe an intervention for children with social and communication deficits, such as autism, based on the use of a virtual peer that can engage in tightly collaborative narrative. We present a study in which children with autism engage in collaborative narrative with both a virtual and a human peer, and the use of contingent discourse is compared. Our findings suggest that contingent discourse increased over the course of interaction with a virtual peer, but not a human peer. Furthermore, topic management, such as introducing new topics or maintaining the current topic, was more likely to occur with the virtual peer than with the human peer. We discuss general implications of our work for understanding the role of peer interactions in learning.

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There is a great generational divide on the matter of videogames. For those older than 35 or so, games are, at best, an unfortunate waste of time and, at worst, Trojan horses introducing our youth to violent, misogynistic themes. For those younger, they are a (if not the) leading form of entertainment, a resource for creativity and innovation, and a new campfire around which to socialize. While public figures such as Hillary Clinton urge concerned parents to effectively boycott such media that "offend their values and sensibilities", their popularity with children and young adults only continues to increase, with more than eight out of every ten kids in America having a videogame console in the home, and over half having two or more. The National Endowment for the Arts (Bradshaw and Nichols, 2004) bemoans the huge cultural transformation of our society's massive shift toward electronic media" (videogames given as the quintessential example) that purportedly "make fewer demands on their audiences, … require no more than passive participation, … [and] foster shorter attention spans" than do print media; yet, the gamers we research engage in rich intellectual practices that rival those found in contemporary classrooms, build social capital through participation in online communities, and report on the transformative role that videogames play in their social and intellectual lives.

American schools largely remain locked within a Ford type factory model of industry and efficiency; games, on the other hand, are forward leaning, recruiting intellectual practices, dispositions, and forms of social organization that are aligned with many of today’s "new capitalist" workplaces. Games are incubators of a new pop cosmopolitanism – a Discourse (Gee, 1999) or "way of being in the world" marked by a willingness and ability to navigate an increasingly globalised and therefore diverse, networked, socio-technical world. If our world is indeed increasingly "flat" (Friedman, 2005), then gaming communities – particularly the massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) discussed in this presentation – are, in some respects, our proverbial canaries in the coalmine.

While mainstream media commonly revert to a rhetoric of "addiction" to explain the time and intellectual labor players invest into MMOs, they all too often ignore the most obvious and important function such virtual worlds play in the everyday lives of those who inhabit them: a social one. MMOs provide spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace/school and home, thereby functioning as third places much like the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old. More crucially, however, in so doing, they foster social relationships with a more diverse array of people than we might encounter otherwise.

MMOs have the potential to function as sandboxes for the reconstruction (perhaps, reinvigoration) of a new form of twenty-first century citizenship – a cosmopolitan disposition marked by the willingness to engage in an increasingly globalised and therefore diverse socio-technical world and the development of intellectual practices crucial to successful navigation within it. Research on such contexts, then, has the potential to help us formulate new educational means and ends, ones that lean forward, toward what the world is becoming, rather than backward, toward what the world was like when we were growing up.

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Principle-based pedagogical and technological designs were used to support knowledge building in a grade 5-6 class. Pedagogical designs focused on collective responsibility for knowledge advancement. Technological designs focused on provision of a public space for generating and continually improving ideas with (a) social-network-analysis tools to analyze and support community processes, and (b) vocabulary-analyzer and semantic-analysis tools to analyze and support conceptual growth. The tools were used by teachers, students, and researchers. Multi-level content analyses revealed patterns of reflective and adaptive use of the technology to support sustained knowledge building.

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This paper connects the conclusions of recent research on video games and learning to prior research on problem schemata and problem-solving. This study examines the problem-solving practices of expert and novice young players of Civilization III in a game-based learning program, and concludes that the problem schemata framework has power and utility in analyzing problem-solving in game-based environments.

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Decades of research have proven that many misconceptions of scientific notions are difficult to uproot even after intensive instructional interventions. In this paper we examine the role of argumentation and of explanation development in dyadic dialogues and their relation to consequential individual conceptual change. Two quantitative dialogue coding schemes were developed with different granularity: The first assessed the interlocutors' dialog moves during the discussion that pertained to argumentation and explanation development. The second scheme characterized the dialogue as a whole on a number of social and socio-cognitive dimensions. The results emphasized the critical role of engagement in dialectical argumentation for conceptual change, whereas explanation development and validation was not related to learning gains. This finding may explain why instructional interventions are too often insufficient to uproot robust misconceptions. The methodological implications for the study of conceptual change, as well as the practical implications for designing for productive argumentation are discussed.

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Collaboration is an important problem-solving skill; however, novice collaboration generally benefits from some kind of support. One possibility for supporting productive conversations between collaborators is to encourage pairs of students to provide explanations for their problem-solving steps. To test this possibility, we contrasted individuals who were instructed to self-explain problem-solving steps with dyads who were instructed to jointly explain problem-solving steps in the context of an intelligent tutoring system (ITS). The results suggest that collaboratively developed explanations prompted students to remediate their errors in dialog, as opposed to relying on the ITS for assistance, which is provided in the form of on-demand hints. The paper concludes with a discussion about implications for combining proven learning interventions.

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The two major theoretical orientations in contemporary learning-sciences research create a tension in the approaches of the ICLS/CSCL research community. For instance, should all cognitive phenomena and processes be analyzed as an interplay of components in a model of the individual human mind or should cognition be studied as irreducibly spread across collectivities, interactions, practices and artifacts situated in specific cultural-historical settings? Can the apparent incommensurability of the approaches be productive in stimulating critical reflection on conceptualizations and methods? Is it possible to bring the two perspectives into a productive relationship that supports collaboration on research and complementarity of results?

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Collaborative problem-solving tasks often require learners to co-construct new knowledge by drawing inferences from distributed information. We investigated the impact of information distribution and instructional support on university students' collaboration in such tasks. Two experiments using specifically designed tasks show a robust negative effect of distributed information on inferences. Detailed analyses of collaborators' discussions in Study 1 highlight the importance of specific inference patterns. Study 2 aimed to support these patterns of collaborative reasoning in a training phase, and tested the effects of support in a test phase. Two support measures were realized: written information on task difficulties and collaboration strategies, and an inference tutoring tool providing feedback and prompts based on an online assessment of students' collaboration. Results show that reflected experience with the training task improved subsequent unsupported collaboration. The best performance was achieved when the tutoring tool had been available during the training task.

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This study explored the metaphorical images that prospective teachers in Turkey (N=2847) formulated to describe the concept of learner. Participants completed the prompt "A student is like . . . because . . ." to indicate their conceptualizations of learner. Data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Altogether 156 valid metaphorical images were identified and 11 main conceptual themes were developed. Also, significant associations were detected between participants' gender, class level, and program type and the 11 conceptual themes. Metaphors provide a potent cognitive device in gaining insight into prospective teachers' thinking and reasoning.

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Question asking is central to the interactions that take place in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) settings. We investigate questioning and responding practices as interactional processes and explore their roles in online collaborative problem solving. We present our analysis of a 12-minute excerpt of three students doing math problem solving collaboratively in an online chat environment as an effort to discover some underlying social practices involved in questioning and responding. The analysis suggests how questions and responses are produced and understood. It also explicates the variety of roles questions can play in the organization of participation and learning in such a collaborative math problem-solving setting.

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This study reports empirical evidence on a common principle of effective professional development dealing with teachers' involvement in their own learning. The data used were collected during a five-day mathematics institute involving 51 teachers in grades three through eight. Questions of how participants' goals influence their satisfaction, perceptions, and learning were examined. Surprisingly, the alignment of the participants' goals with the institute’s goals did not effect satisfaction, perceptions, or learning.

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Cognizant that a critical 21st century skill is the capacity to do rapid collaborative knowledge building (RCKB) in a dynamic setting, we are interested to introduce practices for RCKB into classrooms. Through RCKB, students also have opportunities to learn content and articulate their understanding in a deeper way than traditional classroom lessons. We describe a research project in which together with teachers, we initiate lesson activities that enact RCKB for science lessons. Towards that goal, we envisaged 10 principles for RCKB in the design of lessons, and worked with teachers to co-design lesson plans which enact these principles. In our initial pilot, we document some effects of these lesson activities in terms of traditional and non-traditional assessments of learning gains. We started with 6 weeks on initiation activities ("Paper Scribbles" sessions) in the classroom using sticky paper notes, which was followed by another 10 weeks of activities in a school computer laboratory with the use of the Group Scribbles (GS) software technology. We share our lessons learned in this study, discuss implications for socio-technical instructional design of successful rapid knowledge building activities in the classroom, and suggest avenues for further research.

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Recent studies have examined how argumentation around science is positioned and used in everyday interactions. Our research extends these investigations into a virtual world called Whyville.net and its annual outbreak of Whypox, a virtual epidemic. We observed and recorded players' conversations and contestations about Whypox in an after school gaming club. We found that club members' argumentation involved the use of warrants, rebuttals, and data as found in other studies of everyday argumentation. Players also developed different theories, some unwarranted, about the causes and spread of Whypox, and used the epidemic to position themselves as insiders. In our discussion, we address ways in which virtual epidemics connect to on-going research on everyday argumentation and provide starting points for students' learning about infectious diseases.

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Reflection is a concept that resonates with most educational researchers and practitioners, but whose definition still remains vague. The literature is replete with discussions pointing that, regardless of age, productive reflection is a challenging task for many learners. Participants in this workshop will be asked to share their ideas about mechanisms that can potentially motivate and sustain reflective thinking, with an emphasis on software-based ones and their interaction with other 'actors' in the learning context

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Education research has devoted significant effort to understanding the intuitive knowledge students bring to bear in reasoning about formal science. In addition to documenting the specific content of students' conceptions in particular domains, some researchers attempt to make more general claims, both within and across domains, about the nature of intuitive knowledge. These attempts involve an implicit assumption that the character and function of all intuitive knowledge is the same - that there is a single kind of thing called ""intuitive science knowledge"" that can be singularly characterized. The purpose of this work is to call that assumption into question, and we present examples to highlight our concerns. We propose a theoretical framework that provides a way to more carefully frame our research on intuitive science knowledge and demonstrate how it can be used to bring additional clarity to current discussions in the literature.

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Our research focused on the analysis of face-to-face (FTF) social interaction of groups working on maths problems using the GCC framework in traditional classroom setting. The GCC framework requires students to analyze maths problems with ""solutions"" that contained conceptual or oversight errors, critique these solutions with mathematical arguments, and finally fix the ""solutions"" collaboratively. In this study, the GCC framework is extended to the VMT chat medium which consists of a shared whiteboard, chat message box and tools for students to construct mathematical representations. The analyses of these sessions were based on the Collaboration Interaction Model (CIM), a model designed to study the knowledge construction process of complex chat transcripts. This paper will discuss how participants mediate shared understanding of mathematical representations and form mathematical arguments to construct new knowledge in the chat medium, using the CIM as the key instrument of analysis.

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We report on a design experiment in which history lessons are structured in terms of the design and refinement of visual forms that can afford powerful reasoning about the nature of history as an ongoing, contested socio-cultural construction.

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Human activities are constrained by interconnected and overlapping factors of: biological abilities, time, space, and social narratives. I focus on how the interplay between two of these factors, space and narratives, can be mediated with cultural tools of locative technologies such as Augmented Reality games and GPS units. In order to understand how place-based pedagogies affect learning and how locative technologies, like Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Augmented Reality Games on Handhelds (ARGHs), help connect learners to cultures of place I examine experiences with place-based video games in a deep woods camping environment. Drawing together research in sociocultural learning, design, embodiment, environmental education, experiential education, human geography, and video games, this paper demonstrates how ARGHs can restructure a learning activity to (1) better connect learners to place, (2) increase and mediate their physical activity and social interactions, and (3) help enculturate them into a community of practice.

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This paper describes an innovative approach to analyze the progression of dialogue in asynchronous online forums. Although schemes analyzing the content of individual messages exist, they fail to capture the subtle relationships between messages that constitute progressive discourse for knowledge building. We present a group-level discourse analysis based on cultural-historical activity theory that characterizes the unfolding collaborative learning and knowledge construction processes in context. The application of the mixed-method approach is illustrated in the context of two online graduate courses. The analysis highlights connected sequences of discursive actions that multiple students make to advance shared understanding. The mechanics of the approach offered in this paper can be used as an analytic and transformative tool for enhancing online learning, research, and instruction.

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Science as it is portrayed in the typical K-12 classroom bears little resemblance to science as practiced by scientists, relying heavily on presentational pedagogies. To counter this, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Research Council, and the National Science Teachers Association have all called for a stronger emphasis on having students perform scientific inquiry in the classroom. Yet this has proven challenging to do. How can schools replicate authentic science experiences in the classroom? This paper reports on the benefits of using Multi-user Virtual Environments to create authentic science experiences for middle-school students that allow them to engage in the processes of scientists. Our research indicates that low self-efficacy students and those with poor initial knowledge do as well as those with average self-efficacy and better than those learning with more traditional inquiry pedagogies. High self-efficacy students, however, do better with the traditional inquiry methods.

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In this poster we share results from a study focusing on parent roles in learning, part of a larger research project describing conditions that support the continued engagement of middle school students in projects that use new media technologies. We identify ways in which parents can support their children's pursuit of digital media skills, and analyze roles that vary as a function of the child's gender and experience level with activities that build technological fluency.

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This workshop offers participants a hands-on experience with a new framework for the design of technology-enhanced research materials. We will describe how to adopt this environment as a research platform, and discuss the vision of a community of developers. The following open source systems will be offered: (1) a java-based student learning environment; (2) a portal and user registration system; (3) an authoring system that enables researchers to create new materials or edit existing ones.

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This three-year longitudinal study reports on a community of principals that supports scaling of technology-enhanced science. Twenty-one principals participated; seven participated in the community and fourteen \ provided a comparison group. Data include community of principal meetings, interviews and curriculum implementation records. Results describe(a) shifts in principals' understanding of leadership for technology-enhanced science and(b) changes in numbers of teachers integrating technology-enhanced science over time. Research-based heuristics for developing community for scaling innovation are provided.

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The primary objective of this session is to highlight ways in which identity can be construed and studied within science education, and to advance a discussion about how science education can embrace its civic responsibility toward students to help them appropriate science as a meaningful tool in their lives beyond school. The four papers reflect a range of perspectives on the construct of identity and approaches to its study and development. Each presentation will focus on the authors' conceptualization of identity and identity development and their approaches to characterizing expressions of identity or identity change through student talk and/or participation in particular contexts of science learning. Presenters will discuss their own goals for identity development within science education, and the implications from their work for approaches to supporting positive identity development through science learning.

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This poster investigates how self-explanation and self-assessment prompts can help students learn from dynamic visualizations of chemical reactions. We compared students' self-assessments immediately after the visualizations to self-assessments after visualizations plus explanation prompts. Immediately after interacting with the visualization students overestimated their understanding compared to their self-assessments after giving an explanation. Analysis suggests that generating explanations can help students identify weaknesses in their understanding of dynamic visualizations and develop more coherent views.

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This study investigates success and failure factors related to workplace simulation learning in Dutch pre-vocational secondary education. Research in other practical settings indicates that self-directed learning, self-regulated learning and deliberate practice are key competencies that positively affect learning outcomes. A focus group study with 20 teachers and 35 students was conducted. Similarities and discrepancies between theory and practice are put forward. For instance, not offering choices interferes with a self-directed learning approach.

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This workshop will bring together learning science and game researchers interested in serious games and provide forum for discussions. Our goal is to identify common themes and issues across international research groups. Four different research groups will present and peer review their research projects: problem statement, research questions, theories used, methods, methodological reflection, and cases

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We designed a five-week family program where seven parent-child dyads ages 9 to 12 played Quest Atlantis, a multi-user 3D educational computer-game used in middle schools internationally as part of the school curriculum, in an informal setting. Our goal was to understand the challenges, opportunities, and collaborative work that result when both parent and child are immersed within a shared collaborative problem solving play space.

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Journal writing is a promising follow-up to course-work. A learning journal is a written explication of one’s own learning processes and outcomes after a lecture or seminar session. To fully exploit the potential of journal writing, instructional support is required. Experimental studies showed that prompts are effective in optimizing journal writing. To investigate the long-term effects of prompts, we conducted a longitudinal study. Students (N = 50) wrote journal entries about weekly seminar sessions over a whole term. The experimental group received cognitive and metacognitive prompts for their writing. The control group received a non-specific instruction without prompts. The prompts proved to be effective in the short term. However, in the long term, they had negative effects on (1) learning strategies elicited in the journals, (2) learning success and (3) students' writing motivation. In order to avoid such pitfalls of over-prompting, a gradual fading of the prompts might offer a solution.

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Recent research on Augmented Reality (AR) gaming suggests that place-based AR games embedded in larger curricular units provide contexts and scaffolding for developing students' scientific argumentation skills. This project explores the potential of one specific place-based AR gaming unit, Sick at South Shore Beach, to develop students' argumentation skills and increase their understanding of the role that social interactions play in the development of scientific arguments.

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This study explores advantages of situated multimedia learning environments with age-specific modifications for older adults. With the strong increase of the ageing population in Western societies the number of active older adults willing to learn is growing. Furthermore, due to the increase of ICT older adults will be more and more confronted with multimedia applications that are not tailored to this specific user group and might therefore not be as efficient as they could be. A design that combines adjustments towards the physical decline and adapts cognitive load theory to minimise cognitive overload embedded in an authentic context provides a fruitful basis for learning environments addressing older adults. However, situated learning approaches vary widely in the support given to the learner and the aim is to establish a framework that enables instructional designers to administer the appropriate amount of support for the special abilities and needs of older adults.

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The learning sciences community has gleaned a good deal from research on traditional apprenticeships, and efforts to implement cognitive apprenticeships in schools. A hybrid model of ""sociocognitive apprenticeship"" is proposed, combining aspects of traditional and cognitive apprenticeships to aid culturally disadvantaged students to develop successful participation in and identification with professional communities of practice. The sociocognitive apprenticeship model is illustrated through results of a descriptive study of a community science and engineering program for teenage youth.

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Modern pedagogies offer considerable promise for supporting improved student learning. Formative assessment can improve teaching and learning by using evidence of student understanding to adapt instruction. However, the current social and technical infrastructure of schooling often makes the teacher workload associated with such practices difficult to scale and sustain. We describe SPACE, an online tool for teachers and students to plan, do, formatively and summatively assess project-based Inquiry.

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StarLogo: The Next Generation (TNG), a new programming tool, was designed to rapidly engage students in game and simulation development in secondary school science and programming classes. TNG was introduced and used alongside established materials in three levels of high school physics. This pilot was designed to a) test the hypothesis that a game/simulation programming unit could harness the algorithmic thinking which is part of programming to provide alternate routes to understanding physics concepts, and b) explore the potential of motivating programming through game design/development in the context of traditional physics learning.

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This study investigates student and teacher regulation of learning during a 7-day technology-enhanced inquiry unit on the topic of global warming, and changes in students' strategies for learning science after interacting with the curriculum. Results reveal that students engage in some productive learning strategies promoted in the design of the project, such as learning with visualizations and collaborating with others. Students reported the visualizations to be the most helpful to their learning. The teacher provided the most guidance to students in the form of high-level questions that prompted students to make connections and to monitor their comprehension during days when the students interacted with the visualizations. After completion of the project, students reported engaging in more active and productive strategies for learning and monitoring their understanding of new science material. Implications and plans for further research are discussed.

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Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for sensemaking or as an assignment to fill out a worksheet. The student's understanding of the nature of the activity affects what she notices, what knowledge she accesses, and how she thinks to act. Previous analyses have found evidence of framing primarily in linguistic markers associated with speech acts. In this paper, we show that there is useful evidence of framing in easily observed features of students' behavior. More broadly, we describe a dynamic among behavior, framing, and the conceptual substance of student reasoning in the context of collaborative active-learning activities in an introductory university physics course.

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Empirical evidence reveals positive effects of collaborative learning on students' cognitive and social development. In daily secondary education, however, collaborative learning and CSCL in particular is scarce. This study examines the potential of asynchronous discussion groups in secondary education for two subjects (biology and history). More specifically, the study focuses secondary school students' elaborations and on the quality of knowledge construction. Therefore, content analysis was applied. The results indicate that students are generally discussing on-task and are engaged in sharing information and asking questions. Unfortunately, students appear to strand in this phase of sharing and comparing information and rarely reach higher levels of knowledge construction. Further, the results reveal involvement in metacognitive interaction, focused on planning and instructing other students.

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This study compares the participation patterns of students across two classrooms, which were involved in a design-based experiment called PATHS. While both classes followed the same curriculum, which encouraged disciplinary engagement in the subjects of history and science, the pedagogical stances of the teachers led to some noticeable differences in the "participatory roles" that students took up during the course of instruction. However, despite differences in terms of the way students participated in discussions, this study finds that the stratification of students within each classroom in terms of the total amount of participation per student was the same across both rooms. The data point to pervasive patterns of student/student and student/teacher interaction, which confer status (and thus the right to speak) on particular kids.

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Students analyzed the similarities (agreements) and differences (disagreements) between a set of two sources regarding why the authors thought Chicago had become a big city. The data we discuss provide descriptive information on three aspects of student responses: (1) the response strategies they used, (2) how they would characterize agreement and disagreement across two sources, and (3) the rhetorical form of their written responses. Student responses for Agree were more consistent than those to Disagree and, as expected, were related to the specific sources they compared.

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In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to virtual learning. Individual characteristics are known to play a crucial role in learning processes but only limited research has been conducted in the context of virtual settings. Therefore, we used an integrated multi-method approach in order to examine the impact of types of academic motivation (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) on virtual learning. This study of 100 online summer course participants indicates that the willingness to contribute to discourse depends on the type of motivation. Intrinsically motivated learners became central and prominent contributors to cognitive discourse. In contrast, extrinsically motivated learners contributed less and were positioned on the outer fringe of the social network.

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Abstract: Argumentation is a key component of scientific practice. It involves a dialectical balance of opposition and agreement, requiring negotiation and affording conceptual change through the co-construction of understandings. In classroom science inquiry with complex visual data representations, argumentation is an essential discourse structure through which students make sense of data and domain concepts. This study analyzed the argumentation practices of middle school students conducting an earth science inquiry project using data visualization tools. Analysis of spoken and gestural interactions during small-group work of one group of students in each of three classrooms revealed three common modes in which students employed visual data in argumentation: (1) using data-referenced talk and gesture to challenge authoritative positioning; (2) using gesture to participate in argumentation with incomplete conceptual vocabulary; and (3) using argumentation about data as a means of co-constructing the goals of academic tasks.

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This study explores student teachers' discursive voices regarding the meaning of digital case material for their professional learning in teacher education. The analysis of the students' reflective essays shows that future teachers hold a repertoire of positions via which they inscribe their relationship with technology. These positions are important to acknowledge since they strongly mediate the potential enabling role of digital case material for teachers' professional growth.

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This symposium explores central themes related to the design of specific wiki features to support collective cognition, and presents analyses of wiki use in authentic educational settings. Through the presentation of four different projects, the symposium will take up issues related to the significance of iterative design approaches for aligning social networking technologies with specific contexts, and how these 'tweaks' are in turn generating new activities and emergent forms of collaborative knowledge building. In particular the studies in this symposium all explore different means of representing and tracking group cognition in wikis - tags, chat rooms, social bookmarking, whiteboards, blogs, timelines, and transcripts - based on the shared understanding that fostering awareness of activity at group level can be productive for learning. Methods and findings from these studies have relevance for designing and learning with social networking technologies.

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Many learning environments contain multiple representations. Using them can lead to a deeper level of cognitive processing when learners make mental transformations between representations. However, research has revealed two problems. First, it has been shown that learners often do not make spontaneous use of such multiple options. Second, the translation process is often difficult. The papers presented in this symposium aim at supporting learners' use of multiple representations as well as their translation process. The first study provided learners with different types of representations and asked them to translate those into other representations. The second study examined the effectiveness of contextual scaffolds in computer simulations.The third study aimed at supporting hypermedia learning with multiple representations by means of metacognitive modelling and prompting of representational awareness. The fourth study investigated if sequencing dynamic representations combined with explicit instruction to relate and translate between representations has a positive effect on learning outcomes.

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For students to become prepared for the workplace, the skill of students to assess themselves is of larger long-term significance than the specific professional competences they acquire. This paper discusses the role of providing support to the students in the form of information on the relevance of the assessment criteria on their self-assessment skills. It is hypothesized that students are more accurate in assessing themselves when providing them with information on the relevance of the assessment criteria. Furthermore, the influence of the accuracy on next task performance will be explored. Results will be available by the time of the conference.

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This paper is concerned with the gradual development and validation of an instructional model for teaching instructional planning to prospective teachers in secondary level business schools. The model is based on the assumptions that a) instructional planning can be considered as a design task, and b) learning to cope with these tasks is effectively supported by task-tailored coaching interventions. Since the goal of the investigation is to engineer and study coaching as an innovative form of assisting learning within the prevailing educational context, model development and validation activities were funded on a design-based research approach. These activities include 1.) a review of currently available scientific literature in design research and education, and 2.) a series of four formative research studies. The aims of the paper are to outline the general idea of the task-oriented coaching model and to reflect the activities that were carried out for model development and validation.

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This paper reports a large scale survey of elementary and junior high school teachers on their use of ICT and the differences their background may have made. A survey questionnaire was developed based the six standard areas suggested by International Society of Technology Education (ISTE). A total of 324 schools and 3,729 teachers in Taiwan were surveyed. The results showed that teachers performed better on ICT integration if they were male, received higher education, gained ICT related training, or had ICT administrative duties. No age differences were found on the teacher's proficiency of ICT integration. It suggested that teachers need both technology and teaching experiences to do well on ICT integration.

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The purpose of this study is to explore the complex nature of Singapore teachers' beliefs about knowledge and learning and how these beliefs influence pedagogical practices in their classes. This paper presents findings from a large-scale survey study with 1806 teachers in Singapore. Data revealed that while teachers' beliefs about pedagogies, knowledge and learning were largely consistent, they also believed and practiced both teacher-centered and learner-centered pedagogies and assessment methods.

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Whole-class discussions in which students and teacher reason together and co-construct knowledge are, next to small group work, important in communities of learners. In this study we address the question of what strategies history teachers use to provoke and support collaborative historical reasoning in whole-class discussions. Analyses included transcripts of four whole-class discussions and stimulated recall interviews with the teachers and revealed differences in the extent to which they succeeded in provoking collaborative historical reasoning.

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Computer games are engaging activities for a growing number of children. Technology, especially computers and the internet, have rapidly become more widely available in educational settings as well as at home. Mathematics, not always an engaging subject for elementary and middle schools students, can be made more engaging by designing challenging tasks that are meaningful for children in which they actively participate. Also, using computers in math education contributes to students' motivation and engagement. This paper reports on a study focused on the contribution of playing so-called 'Th!nklets' on doing and learning mathematics. 'Th!nklets' are interactive computer activities that involve mathematical thinking and problem solving. Some findings from the analysis of the online use of the Th!nklet 'Share Money' by 600 Dutch children age 10-12 are presented.

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This study applies agent-based modeling methodology to investigate individual and social factors underlying inequitable participation patterns observed in a real classroom in which an experimental collaborative activity was implemented. We created agent-based simulations of simplified collaborative activities and qualitatively compared results from running the model with the classroom data. We found that collaboration pedagogy emphasizing group performance may forsake individual learning, due to preference for short-term group efficacy over individual long-term learning. The study may inform professional development and pedagogical policy.

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In the science education research literature, it often appears to be assumed that students "possess" more or less stable "images of science" that directly correspond to their experiences with scientific practice in science curricula. From cultural-historical and socio-cultural perspectives, this assumption is problematic because scientific practices are collective human activities and are therefore neither identical with students' experiences nor with accounts of these experiences that students make available to researchers. Drawing on data collected before, during, and after pre-university biology students' internships in a scientific laboratory we show how students' "images of science" are co-produced along a trajectory of translations that was determined by the use of particular actions and tools, and a particular division of labor in scientific practice.

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Learning to become an interdisciplinary scientist will be needed in order to participate in the scientific research of the future. It is therefore of great importance to learn about the challenges graduate students, with various disciplinary backgrounds, face when carrying out interdisciplinary scientific research. We used the weekly group meetings of an interdisciplinary research group, in the field of systems biology, as a platform to probe the challenges to learning interdisciplinary science. Group meetings were observed and interviews were carried out with the group members. A visible, if sometimes subtle, difference between the challenges facing biologists and those facing physicists was identified. Physicists encountered difficulties in grasping the biological knowledge organization; while biologists found the models suggested by physicists over simplistic. The views of the group members on the nature of the disciplines of physics and biology complement our understanding of the possible causes of some of the identified challenges.

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Using mixed research methods, this study investigated the effect of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment in improving the fifth graders’ writing performance and outcomes. Thirty-four students participated in a real-world writing project, taking on alternative roles of journalists and editors in creating a school newspaper. While both groups were engaged in the task of collaborative writing, the CSCL group was supported by a web-based software Knowledge Forum whereas the control group created their articles via paper and pencil. During the research, observation notes were taken and students were interviewed. The results showed that students who worked with Knowledge Forum had significant gains in their writing performance compared with the control group. In addition, the students in Knowledge Forum were more motivated to write than the other group. The study demonstrates that CSCL augments collaborative learning and makes individuals’ thinking visible via its technological affordances.

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This study investigates whether replays of records of eye movements made during the task performance process, can be a useful cue for self-assessment, and it aims to uncover which aspects of their performance participants at different levels of expertise consider when they are asked to engage in self-assessment while thinking aloud.The present study suggests that at least for somewhat advanced individuals, performance process cues could stimulate self-assessment, but that this does not apply to novices.

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The emergence of key innovations in technology has enabled legitimate online human interaction in new ways. Systems that support user-generated content and social commentary (blogs, wikis, media sharing sites, etc) are connecting learners with new ideas, supporting reflective activity, and bringing learners together. Content syndication (RSS, Atom, etc) has loosened content from the grasp of unnecessary or unwanted styling, navigation, and website shells. Collaborative user categorization of online content, or folksonomic tagging, is making it easier than ever for learners to locate relevant, meaningful learning resources that can be shared, discussed, argued over, and remixed.

The uptake of these technologies for education has been immense. With younger, digital natives entering the ranks of teachers and faculty their use is practically inevitable. Understanding this landscape and its implications for learning is crucial for educators and researchers alike. Ignoring their impact on the learner's context and the learning landscape will only serve to make educators and researchers increasingly irrelevant. Conversely, educators and researchers who are aware of this environment can greatly influence the learner experience. When these "small pieces loosely joined" (Weinberger, 2002) are combined with tested learning theory, they can exponentially increase meaningful learning opportunities. This session will provide an overview of these emerging technologies, and current research regarding their use in educational settings

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Games play an increasingly important role in many aspects of our lives. Not only are games used for entertainment, but serious games rapidly find their use in such diverse fields as education, training, decision support, communication, marketing, and art. Also the economic relevance of (serious) games is rapidly increasing.

In the Netherlands in general and Utrecht in particular there is a strong focus on games, both for entertainment and serious applications. The GATE project is a 19 million Euro research programme focusing on game technology and innovative applications of games. Also there is an incubator program for new (serious) game companies and an expertise centre is created to guide and support organizations that are interested in the use of serious games.

In this keynote we take a look at the different initiatives. Although somewhat speculative we will look at the various possible applications of games in particular in the education and training domain. Also we will investigate current research developments in game technology and how they will affect the game of the future. In particular we will look at developments in the construction of virtual worlds, virtual characters, interaction techniques, and adaptability of games to individual players.

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Learning research has argued the importance of providing authentic contexts for learning. However, traditional learning environments are often disconnected from external communities of practice. For example, students might design and carry out scientific experiments that are valuable pedagogically, but do not contribute to science itself. In this study, we used the Game Ontology Project (GOP), a wiki-enabled hierarchy of elements of gameplay used by games studies researchers, in a game design class. Students found it useful for learning. However, encouraging sustained participation was challenging because students tended to view the GOP as a static source, rather than a participatory and editable resource. Expert analysis of the students contributions to the ontology found them to be useful and significant. We conclude with thoughts on the importance of these kinds of authentic environments in traditional learning.

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