Collaborative Learning (Education)

El presente volumen recoge las comunicaciones presentadas en la Jornada sobre Aprendizaje
Cooperativo que tuvo lugar en el Auditorio-Palacio de Congresos de Girona el 5 de julio
de 2013. La JAC-13 fue organizada por la Xarxa d’Innovació Docent sobre Aprenentatge Cooperatiu
(XIDAC) de la Universitat de Girona, una red (o xarxa, en catalán) de profesores que  comparten experiencias sobre aprendizaje cooperativo (AC) en dicha universidad.

The paper focuses on the effects of collaborative translation tasks in native-non-native student pairs for improving language written production and translation skills. The study uses data from one academic year contacts between Polish MA students of English and translation at the State University of Applied Sciences in Konin and the University of Łódź and first-year writing students of non-humanities subjects at North Dakota State University within a Trans-Atlantic Pacific Project (TAPP). A general trend observed in education at present involves internet-based communication and collaborative knowledge acquisition. The paper  makes reference to the Interaction Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition and in the teaching of translation and discusses the use of interactional – mainly corrective - strategies in their writing on the basis of the Polish-US student direct email contacts, and changes which result in their language.

Economic educators interested in incorporating project-based learning can incorporate Econ Beats in their classrooms. Using student reported measures of learning we evaluate students' perception of the efficacy of Econ Beats, a project that requires students to remake popular music in to economic terms. The project is also a team-based learning exercise Our data includes 275 students at the college level and 90 students at the high school level. Students report that they are excited to work on Econ Beats at rates higher than other group projects. Students report that they enjoyed the project and learned economic concepts and definitions. Educators considering active learning or incorporating a transdisciplinary approach to teaching economics can implement Econ Beats.

En este trabajo se exploran los procesos de construcción compartida del conocimiento desarrollados por pequeños grupos de estudiantes en un entorno tecnológico de comunicación asíncrona. Se realizó un estudio cualitativo de casos múltiples en donde participaron tres grupos de estudiantes universitarios que cursaban una licenciatura en línea. El procedimiento de análisis consistió en identificar cadenas socio-cognitivas dentro de la interacción asíncrona de los estudiantes y en caracterizarlas de acuerdo con cuatro fases de construcción del conocimiento: i) esclarecimiento/organización de la tarea, ii) síntesis y acuerdos finales, iii) elaboración de significados/ propuestas, y iv) intercambio de información/ideas iniciales. Los resultados revelaron que los grupos de estudiantes prestan mayor interés a la organización de la tarea y al intercambio de información y, en detrimento, hay menos elaboración de significados propios sobre la tarea. Asimismo, se identificaron cuatro patrones de interacción grupal derivados del nivel de implicación y la profundidad del diálogo establecido por los estudiantes durante de la tarea. Concluimos que los grupos de estudiantes tienen dificultades para sostener, de manera simultánea, una alta implicación y un diálogo profundo sobre los contenidos de la tarea, y muchas veces carecen de habilidades para explicar y argumentar sus ideas. Finalmente, planteamos algunas propuestas para la intervención del profesorado y la mejora de los procesos colaborativos de los estudiantes.

Abstract:

This paper explores the processes of the shared construction of knowledge developed by small groups of ​students in technological environments with asynchronous communication. A qualitative multiple case study was carried out with the participation of three groups of university students in an online bachelor’s degree program. The analysis process consisted of identifying socio-cognitive chains within the asynchronous interaction of students and classifying them into four phases of knowledge construction: i) understanding/ organization of the task, ii) synthesis and final agreements, iii) creation of meaning/proposals, and iv) exchange of information/initial ideas. The results revealed that the groups of students were more interested in the organization of the task and exchange of information, and le​ss interested in the creation of meanings inherent to the task. Furthermore, we identified four group interaction patterns stemming from the participation and profundity of the dialogue established by the students during the task. We conclude that groups of students have difficulty simultaneously sustaining high levels of participation and deep dialogue about the contents of the task, and they often lack the abilities to explain and argue their ideas. Finally, we present some proposals for intervention by the professor and the improvement of collaborative processes by the students.​

With the emergence of the Web 2.0, collaborative annotation practices have become more mature in the field of learning. In this context, several recent studies have shown the powerful effects of the integration of annotation mechanism in learning process. However, most of these studies provide poor support for semantically structured resources,
more precisely for sharing and linking educational contents using linked data approach. Adopting Semantic Web technologies, this paper proposed a new linked data-based collaborative annotation system called L2OD, which allows students to enrich their annotations with relevant resources retrieved from Linked Open Data clouds. L2OD supports two modes of annotation, a private annotation mode for the user’s individual annotations, and a shared mode for all users’ annotations. The experimentation shows that the learners who have used L2OD have significantly increased their learning achievements referring to the difference between L2OD’s post-test and the control group’s post-test. It also shows significant positive correlations between learning achievements and quantity of private and shared annotations in the experimental group, respectively.

Photo sharing is a captivating feature which popularizes Online Gregarious Networks (OSNs). Lamentably, it may leak users' privacy if they are sanctioned to post, comment, and tag a photo liberatingly. In this paper, we endeavor to address this issue and study the scenario when a utilizer shares a photo containing individuals other than him/her (termed co-photo for short). To obviate possible privacy leakage of a photo, we design a mechanism to enable each individual in a photo be cognizant of the posting activity and participate in the decision making on the photo posting. For this purport, we require an efficient facial apperception (FR) system that can apperceive everyone in the photo. However, more authoritatively mandating privacy setting may limit the number of the photos publicly available to train the FR system. To deal with this dilemma, our mechanism endeavors to utilize users' private photos to design a personalized FR system concretely trained to differentiate possible photo co-owners without leaking their privacy. We additionally develop a distributed consensus predicated method to reduce the computational intricacy and for fend the private training set. We show that our system is superior to other possible approaches in terms of apperception ratio and efficiency. Our mechanism is implemented as a proof of concept Android application on Facebook's platform.

The development of collaborative studies in learning has led to a renewed interest in the field of web-based education. This book describes the development of a highly interactive and collaborative virtual teaching environment by supporting the Moodle together with two types of collaborative learning tools to create a virtual learning environment to teach programming languages. The main aim of this book was to find out the effectiveness of an ACLT during the teaching of programming languages in a web-based environment. The NEU-VLE system has been developed for this purpose. The important results of this book are that students using the ACLT have shown the highest statistically significant success rates, and the results of the experimental book ave shown that an LMS can be made more efficient if it is enhanced by an ACLT. In addition, students? opinions were the highest when using an ACLT in teaching programming languages in a web-based environment. The results of this book add empirical data to the relevant field, and are expected to help educational technologist, online administrators, instructional and technical support staff, and software tool developers.

O advento da Internet e da Web, na década de 1990, a par da introdução e desenvolvimento das novas TIC e, por consequência, a emergência da Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento, implicaram uma profunda alteração na forma de análise dos processos de ensino-aprendizagem, já não apenas segundo um prisma cognitivista, mas, agora, também social, isto é, segundo a(s) perspetiva(s) construtivista(s). Simultaneamente, torna-se imperativo que, para que possam transformar-se em futuros trabalhadores de sucesso, isto é, trabalhadores de conhecimento (Gates, 1999), os sujeitos aprendentes passem a ser efetivamente educados/preparados para a Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento e, tanto quanto possível, através da educação/formação ao longo da vida (Moore e Thompson, 1997; Chute, Thompson e Hancock, 1999). Todavia, de acordo com Jorge Reis Lima e Zélia Capitão, não se deve considerar esta mudança de paradigma como uma revolução mas, antes, uma evolução, ou, mais concretamente ainda, uma “conciliação de perspectivas cognitivas e sociais” (Reis Lima e Capitão, 2003:53). Assim, às instituições de ensino/formação cumprirá a tarefa de preparar os alunos para as novas competências da era digital, promovendo “a aprendizagem dos pilares do conhecimento que sustentarão a sua aprendizagem ao longo da vida” (Reis Lima e Capitão, Ibidem:54), isto é, “aprender a conhecer”, “aprender a fazer”, “aprender a viver em comum”, e “aprender a ser” (Equipa de Missão para a Sociedade da Informação, 1997:39; negritos e sublinhados no original). Para outros, a Internet, ao afirmar-se como uma tecnologia ubíqua, cada vez mais acessível, e de elevado potencial, “vem revolucionando a gestão da informação, o funcionamento do mercado de capitais, as cadeias e redes de valor, o comércio mundial, a relação entre governos e cidadãos, os modos de trabalhar e de comunicar, o entretenimento, o contacto intercultural, os estilos de vida, as noções de tempo e de distância. A grande interrogação actual reside em saber se a Internet poderá também provocar alterações fundamentais nos modos de aprender e de ensinar” (Carneiro, 2002:17-18; destaques no original). Trata-se, portanto, como argumenta Armando Rocha Trindade (2004:10), de reconhecer que “Os requisitos obrigatórios para a eficácia da aprendizagem a ser assim assegurada são: a prévia disponibilidade de materiais educativos ou de formação de alta qualidade pedagógica e didáctica, tanto quanto possível auto-suficientes em termos de conteúdos teóricos e aplicados, bem como a previsão de mecanismos capazes de assegurar, permanentemente, um mínimo de interactividade entre docentes e aprendentes, sempre que quaisquer dificuldades destes possam manifestarse”. Esta questão é também equacionada pelo Eng.º Arnaldo Santos, da PT Inovação, quando considera que, à semelhança da “maioria dos países, a formação a distância em ambientes Internet e Intranet, vulgo e-Learning, apresenta-se como uma alternativa pedagógica em franca expansão. Portugal está a despertar para esta nova realidade. São várias as instituições nacionais do sector público e privado que utilizam o e-Learning como ferramenta ou meio para formar as suas pessoas” (Santos, 2002:26). Fernando Ramos acrescenta também que os sistemas de educação/formação que contemplam componentes não presenciais, “isto é que potenciam a flexibilidade espacial, têm vindo a recorrer às mais variadas tecnologias de comunicação para permitir a interacção entre os intervenientes, nomeadamente entre os professores e os estudantes. Um pouco por todo o mundo, e também em Portugal, se têm implantado sistemas (habitualmente designados como sistemas de ensino a distância), recorrendo às mais diversas tecnologias de telecomunicações, de que os sistemas de educação através de televisão ou os sistemas de tutoria por rádio ou telefone são exemplos bem conhecidos” (Ramos, 2002b:138-139). Ora, o nosso estudo entronca precisamente na análise de um sistema ou plataforma tecnológica de gestão de aprendizagens (Learning Management System - LMS), o MOODLE, procurando-se, deste modo, dar resposta ao reconhecimento de que “urge investigar sobre a utilização real e pedagógica da plataforma” (Carvalho, 2007:27). Por outro lado, não descurando o rol de interrogações de outros investigadores em torno da utilização do MOODLE, nem enveredando pelas visões mais céticas que inclusive pressagiam a sua “morte” (Fernandes, 2008b:134), também nós nos questionamos se esta ferramenta nem sequer vai conseguir transpor “a fase de final de entusiasmo, e tornar-se uma ferramenta de minorias e de usos ocasionais?” (Fernandes, Op. cit.:133).

In this article, I describe and reflect on the development and demise of our effort to create an integrated training course for tutors and fellows to illustrate the complexities of administrative collaboration. While several factors constrained the success of our integrated course, I argue that the underlying problem was an inadequate conception of administrative collaboration, one that overlooked the integral relationship between programmatic structure and curricular practices and the corresponding need to coordinate curricular and administrative revision. I first situate the development of our integrated course within existing literature on writing centers and institutional relationships to demonstrate a lack of current models for guiding administrative collaboration, especially between similar but separate writing tutoring programs. I then describe the conditions contributing to the course’s proposal and development and highlight complications that emerged early in its implementation to demonstrate the impact of programmatic pressures on curricular structure. I conclude by briefly outlining a modified version of the course that attempts to better balance curricular revision with programmatic needs. This account underscores the complexities of administrative collaboration between similar but separate writing tutoring programs, and it encourages professionals in writing centers and related fields to approach curricular collaborations with writing support programs critically and carefully.

This introductory course presents a survey of theoretical, conceptual and practical approaches to the study of peace and justice. This includes examining theories of violence, peace, war and rights, as well as more focused discussions of social movements, transformative justice, education and engagement. In pursuing these areas, students will have the opportunity to focus on issues both historical and contemporary and through both ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ lens. The course seeks to critically address a range of topics—from non-violence to theories of inter-state war—providing students with a variety of perspectives and understandings of an inter-disciplinary field. Students will be challenged to interpret issues of social inequality, oppression and structural violence at numerous levels; from the interpersonal, to the local, and outward to international conflict. We will begin this learned endeavor by co-creating our own equitable and peaceable educative environment. This will involve a collaboration between instructor and student to foster an environment that is horizontal, non-coercive and utilizing a critical pedagogy, modeled by the professor and used by students. An array of readings will make up the course including scholarly articles, philosophical texts, political texts, primary source documents from perpetrators and survivors of violence, and film. Early in the semester, enrolled students will have the option of adding a community-based learning (CBL) component involving their work with marginalized and underserved individuals or groups (or organizations working with and for such individuals or groups), structured to meet community-defined needs.