Exploring the Effect of Teaching Methods on Students’ Learning of School Informatics

School informatics is a relatively new subject in comparison to mathematics and science. As a result, there is much less research on the area of informatics didactics. Likewise, there is lack of theoretical grounding of the field and associated teaching methods and learning processes. The lack of research in the field of school informatics makes it difficult to identify which methods are effective to teach the subject. In addition, despite the emphasis on a set of well-defined topics, the informatics curriculum makes few suggestions as to which didactical skills teachers need to acquire in order to teach these topics. In fact, school informatics education is still in its infancy. It lacks t…

An activity theory perspective on contradictions in flipped mathematics classrooms at the university level

Author´s accepted manuscript (postprint). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology on 24/03/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0020739X.2019.1591533.

Teaching and Learning School Informatics: A Concept-Based Pedagogical Approach

While informatics is a well-established discipline in higher education around the world, it is not the case in secondary education, with the exception of a few countries. Generally, what is taught is not informatics as a subject with its own methods, concepts, and principles, but some software tools with the goal that the use is sufficient for students to acquire skills. In addition, an analysis of the current situation reveals that the real competencies of teachers and students in informatics are far weaker than might be expected in secondary education. This work proposes a concept-based pedagogical approach to school informatics. The aim is to provide the students with a more thorough und…

Using Affordances and Constraints to Evaluate the Use of a Formative e-Assessment System in Mathematics Education

Investigating technical and pedagogical usability issues of collaborative learning with wikis

Published version of an article in the journal: Informatics in Education : an International Journal. Wikis have been recently promoted as tools that foster collaborative learning. However, there has been little research devoted to the criteria that are suitable to address issues pertinent to collaborative learning. This paper proposes a set of criteria to explore technical and pedagogical usability issues of collaborative learning with wikis. The criteria are then used to evaluate students’ collaborative writing activities. The units of study are wikis that groups of students developed collaboratively using MediaWiki. This paper also reports on technical and pedagogical implications for the…

Collaborative writing with web 2.0 technologies: education students' perceptions

Published version of an article from the journal: Journal of Information Technology Education. Also available from the publisher: http://jite.org/documents/Vol10/JITEv10IIPp073-103Brodahl948.pdf Executive Summary Web 2.0 technologies are becoming popular in teaching and learning environments. Among them several online collaborative writing tools, like wikis and blogs, have been integrated into educational settings. Research has been carried out on a wide range of subjects related to wikis, while other, comparable tools like Google Docs and EtherPad remain largely unexplored in the literature. This work presents a case study investigating education students' perceptions of collaborative writ…

Using the interactive learning environment aplusix for teaching and learning school algebra: A research experiment in a middle school

Published version of an article from the journal: Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. Also available from the publisher: http://www.tojet.net/ Open Access Most software tools that have been developed with the aim of helping students to learn school algebra have not yet achieved successful results in classroom. Almost all of them are menu-based systems that provide transformation rules in menus and buttons. Aplusix is a new interactive software tool for learning school algebra. In contrast to existing software tools in mathematics education, Aplusix has been developed to allow students to freely build and transform algebraic expressions as they can do on paper. In addition, Apl…

Investigating the Affordances and Constraints of SimReal for Mathematical Learning : A Case Study in Teacher Education

Visualizations tools are one of the most innovative technologies that emerged the last few years in educational settings. They provide new potentialities for mathematical learning by means of dynamic animations and representations, interactive simulations, and live streaming of lessons. Moreover, visualization tools have the potential to foster a visual, dynamic, distributed, and embodied mathematics rather than individual achievements and static representations. This paper uses the visualization tool SimReal in teacher education to explore the affordances of the tool for learning mathematics. It proposes a framework that captures the affordances of SimReal at a technological, pedagogical, …

Pedagogical criteria for successful use of wikis as collaborative writing tools in teacher education

Published version of an article from the journal: International Proceedings of Economics Development and Research. Also available from the publisher: http://www.ipedr.com/vol27/3-IC4E%202012-F00002.pdf Wiki is a Web 2.0 technology that potentially promotes collaborative writing, group discussion and interaction. However, little research has been done as to which criteria are suitable to address pedagogical issues that are pertinent to collaborative writing with wikis. This paper proposes a set of pedagogical criteria to explore wiki-based collaborative writing. The criteria are then used to evaluate students’ perceptions of collaborative writing using MediaWiki. The paper also reports on pe…

Wiki-mediated Collaborative Writing in Teacher Education - Assessing Three Years of Experiences and Influencing Factors

Wikis have been reported as tools that promote collaborative writing in educational settings. Examples of wikis in teacher education are group projects, glossary creation, teacher evaluation, and document review. However, in spite of studies that report on successful stories, the claim that wikis support collaborative writing has not yet been firmly confirmed. Most studies are limited to participants’ subjective perceptions, and do not take into account influencing factors, or the relationships between wikis and the learning environment. In this paper, students’ collaborative writing activities over a period of three years are investigated using a taxonomy of action categories and the w…

Towards a Blended Learning Model for Teaching and Learning Computer Programming: A Case Study

Blended learning is becoming an attractive model in higher education as new innovative information technologies are becoming increasingly available. However, just blending face-to-face learning with information technologies cannot provide effective teaching and efficient solutions for learning. To be successful, blended learning must rely on solid learning theory and pedagogical strategies. In addition, there is a need for a design-based research approach to explore blending learning through successive cycles of experimentations, where the shortcomings of each cycle are identified, redesigned, and reevaluated. This paper reports on a study conducted on a blended learn- ing model in Java pro…

Didactics of ICT in Secondary Education: Conceptual Issues and Practical Perspectives

Article published in the journal: Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology. Also available from the publisher: http://iisit.org/Vol6/IISITv6p153-178Hadjerrouit605.pdf While there is a huge research literature on the field of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) as a tool in teaching and learning, there is much less research on the area of ICT as a subject or similar designations such as school informatics. As a result, there is a lack of theoretical grounding of the didactics of ICT and associated teaching and learning processes. One of the main reasons for the lack of theoretical underpinnings of the didactics of ICT is that there have been in the past and there per…

Developing web-based learning resources in school education: a user-centered approach

Published version of an article from the journal:Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. Also available from the publisher:http://www.ijello.org/Volume6/IJELLOv6p115-135Hadjerrouit688.pdf Web-based learning resources (WBLRs) are potentially powerful tools for enhancing teachingand learning processes in school education. They can provide teachers and learners with a widerange of new and exciting experiences that are not possible in a traditional classroom. However,WBLRs are still the domain of technical and software experts rather than teachers and learners.As a result, much of the development of WBLRs is carried out without a true understanding ofissues pertinent to lea…

Assessing the Level of Collaborative Writing in a Wiki-Based Environment: A Case Study in Teacher Education

Wikis have received the last few years a growing interest as tools for supporting collaborative writing in teacher education. This paper reports on results from a case study that aimed at assessing the level of collaborative writing among teacher students. Taking advantages of wiki affordances, the proposed theoretical framework uses a taxonomy of category actions that can be carried out on wiki. These provide a powerful instrument to analyze students’ individual contributions to the wiki and level of collaborative writing among students as well. Implications for teacher preparation and professional development are drawn from the results and future research actions are envisaged to enhance …

A Theoretical Framework to Foster Digital Literacy: The Case of Digital Learning Resources

The New National Curriculum in Norway from 2006 recommends that teachers and students acquire a high degree of digital literacy in school education. One way to foster digital literacy is to train teachers to design and critically evaluate digital learning resources (DLRs). However, little research has been done as to which design principles and evaluation criteria are suitable for DLRs. This work proposes a theoretical framework, along with a case study, for designing and evaluating DLRs. The article draws on research in learning theory, pedagogical usability criteria, and context of use. The paper reports on the implications of the framework for the design and evaluation of DLRs.

Wiki as a collaborative writing tool in teacher education: Evaluation and suggestions for effective use

The students did not collaborate much by revising each other's contributions to the wikis.The students did not use the discussion page to address critical reflections on collaboration.Factors influencing wiki-based collaborative writing in teacher education are discussed.Suggestions for effective use of wikis as collaborative writing tools are presented. Wiki technology provides new opportunities to foster collaborative writing in teacher education. To empirically evaluate the level of collaborative writing in a wiki-based environment, this article used three methods and their combination. The first method was the history function that records all students' actions, enabling to trace all ch…

Collaborative Writing with Wikis: Pedagogical and Technological Implications for Successful Implementation in Teacher Education

Wikis have been promoted as tools that foster collaborative learning and writing. They enable multiple users to edit a document collaboratively and support online written communication between participants. While most wiki research is based on students’ subjective perceptions of the wiki learning environment, a number of studies have drawn on the data log that is automatically generated by wikis. The data log enables the analysis of students’ activities performed on the wiki in terms of work distribution, level of contribution, types of activities, timing of contribution, and work intervals. This information is more reliable to analyze collaborative writing activities than subjective percep…

A Conceptual Framework for Using and Evaluating Web-Based Learning Resources in School Education

Published version of an article from the journal:Journal of Information Technology Education. Also available from the publisher: http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol9/JITEv9p053-079Hadjerrouit743.pdf Web-based learning resources (WBLRs) have provided teachers with a wide range of new teachingexperiences that are not possible in traditional classroom. However, little research has beendone as to which approach to WBLRs is suitable to address issues that are pertinent to learning.This paper proposes a conceptual framework to explore the design and evaluation of WBLRs inschool education. The paper also examines the way in which the framework is used to evaluatestudents? and teachers? perceptions o…

A collaborative writing approach to wikis: Design, implementation, and evaluation

Published version of an article from the journal:Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology. Also available from the publisher: http://iisit.org/Vol8/IISITv8p431-449Hadjerrouit224.pdf Wikis provide teachers with potentially significant opportunities for creating socially engaged tasks that require active student participation and collaboration. Wikis allow students to work together to develop content on the web, giving them a sense of how writing can be carried out collaboratively. Collaborative writing offer opportunities not only to practice literature review, academic reading and writing, but also to stimulate reflection, knowledge sharing, and critical thinking. However, des…

Analysing tensions faced by pre-service mathematics teachers engaging in digital fabrication.

This article analyses tensions pre-service teachers faced during the last workshop of participation in a series of professional development workshops on digital fabrication for creating manipulatives for mathematics education. Using the concept of community of practice and the notion of tension as a theoretical framework and a qualitative research design including video recording with 5 pre-service teachers, we identified three tension categories: technological, pedagogical, and workshop design. The results indicate that tensions are often caused by conflictual decisions between the workshop designers’ and students’ objectives as well as difficulties in digital fabrication and its applicati…

A co-writing development approach to wikis: Pedagogical issues and implications

Published version of a paper from the journal: World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. Also available from the publisher: http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v77/v77-107.pdf Wikis are promoted as collaborative writing tools that allow students to transform a text into a collective document by information sharing and group reflection. However, despite the promising collaborative capabilities of wikis, their pedagogical value regarding collaborative writing is still questionable. Wiki alone cannot make collaborative writing happen, and students do not automatically become more active, participate, and collaborate with others when they use wikis. To foster collaborative writing a…

Using the visualization tool SimReal to orchestrate mathematical teaching for engineering students

Visualization tools provide a potentially powerful support for the learning of abstract mathematical topics in engineering courses. SimReal is a visualization tool for teaching mathematics for a wide range of engineering topics. It provides video lessons, interactive simulations and animations to enhance comprehension and engagement in abstract mathematics subjects. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of SimReal to orchestrate mathematical teaching for engineering students. It uses the framework of instrumental orchestration to configure and exploit various artefacts with the intention of performing a didactical purpose.

Exploring the Affordances of SimReal for Learning Mathematics in Teacher Education: A Socio-Cultural Perspective

SimReal is an innovative technology that emerged the last few years in mathematics education. It provides new potentialities for mathematical learning by means of dynamic and interactive visualizations of mathematical concepts. This paper uses SimReal in the context of teacher education to explore the affordances and constraints of the tool for the learning of mathematics. It presents a framework that combines Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, the role of mediation, and the notion of affordance at a technological, pedagogical, and socio-cultural level. The aim of the article is to explore the extent to which SimReal as a mediating artifact affords students’ mathematical learning in teacher …

Exploring the affordances of Numbas for mathematical learning: a case study

International audience; The computer-based assessment system Numbas offers new learning possibilities in mathematics education by means of formative feedback. The paper proposes a theoretical framework that captures the affordances emerging from students' interactions with Numbas at the technological, mathematical, and assessment level. The aim of the paper is to explore the affordances that arise from these levels using the theoretical framework as a lens. Based on the results, preliminary conclusions and recommendations for future work are proposed.

Web-Based Learning Objects in School Education

The added value of Web-based learning objects (WBLOs) lies in supporting learners to acquire the right knowledge and skills in order to function as active and collaborative learners. To realize this, WBLOs must be both technically and pedagogically usable. Technical usability in itself is not sufficient. To support the learning process, the usability concept must be extended to include pedagogical considerations. The importance of pedagogical usability in education has been recognized, but not sufficiently researched. In addition, little research has been done to evaluate the pedagogical value of WBLOs. The main goal of this paper is to show how to foster pedagogically usable WBLOs in schoo…

Evaluating the Usefulness of the Visualization Tool SimReal+ for Learning Mathematics: A Case Study at the Undergraduate Level

Research on visualization tools is a topic of current concern. SimReal+ is a new visualization tool that is used to teach a wide range of mathematical topics spanning from school to higher education. However, SimReal+ has not been fully evaluated with respect to its potentialities and constraints in educational settings. While technical issues are self-evident requirements, pedagogical and mathematical aspects are much less frequently explored. The aim of this chapter is to assess the usefulness of SimReal+ in an undergraduate mathematics course for engineering students. It uses a set of criteria that cover technical, pedagogical, and mathematical issues.

Using Wikis to Evaluate Students’ Contributions to Collaborative Writing in Teacher Education

Wikis as collaboration tools may serve various purposes in teacher education such as group project, glossary creation, teacher evaluation, and document review. However, despite their potentialities for collaboration, it is still difficult to determine the extent to which students contribute to collaborative writing. Research studies are mostly perception-based and limited to participants’ subjective views. Recently, a growing number of research studies have used the data log of the wiki that enables the retrieval of students’ contributions to collaborative writing. The data log is inherently more reliable than participants’ subjective perceptions to explore collaborative writing activities …