Search results for "Computer"
showing 10 items of 30657 documents
Virtual Slovak : insight into learning Slovak in an e-learning environment
2015
This paper offers insight into learning Slovak in an e-learning environment. The need to reach distance-learners of Slovak led to the implementation of a web-based course on Slovak language and culture in 2008–2010. The pedagogical basis of the course, called Virtual Slovak, is the socioconstructivist approach to teaching and learning, in which the focus is on the development of learners’ communicative competence. This teaching experiment led to a study in which the focus was on learners’ beliefs and experiences regarding learning Slovak in an e-learning environment. The results showed that this particular learning environment had a positive impact on the development of learners’ agency. Th…
Searching for Global Employability : Can Students Capitalize on Enabling Learning Environments?
2019
Literature on global employability signifies “enabling” learning environments where students encounter ill-formed and open-ended problems and are required to adapt and be creative. Varying forms of “projects,” co-located and distributed, have populated computing curricula for decades and are generally deemed an answer to this call. We performed a qualitative study to describe how project course students are able to capitalize on the promise of enabling learning environments. This critical perspective was motivated by the circumstance of the present-day education systems being heavily regulated for the precipitated production of human capital. The students involved in our study described edu…
Designing and Implementing a CSCL-based Course on the Data Security of a Wireless Learning Environment
2012
This article reports on a design-based research (DBR) process for designing and implementing a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) course on the data security of wireless learning environments. The study focuses on examining how university students practice data security when learning on a wireless campus, how data security aspects appear in this study and how students perceive the role of data security in CSCL. The research subjects included six pilot students and eight students enrolled in the course. To promote the reliability of the findings, various kinds of data were used. The data was analysed following the grounded theory approach. The results suggest that data security…
‘The best guess for the future?’ Teachers’ adaptation to open and flexible learning environments in Finland
2021
Finnish education has recently experienced reforms with respect to guidelines forming the curriculum framework for basic education and school architecture. Since 2016, all new schools incorporate open and flexible design, at least to some extent. The more open school design challenges the conventional organisation of space and pre-defined structures and interaction practices. This study investigates how teachers both adapt and are affected by new demands for pedagogy, team teaching and teacher-student relationships. Interview data of 21 teachers of six modern schools are reviewed through thematic analysis. The new school layouts provided some incongruence with the teachers’ aims and their p…
Mediation in practice in an ESAP course : Versions of the Medical English student conference
2021
The Medical English course at the University of Oulu (Finland), which is compulsory for 200 first-year medical students, is designed to enhance professional English language communication focusing on work life relevance. The course design utilized the action-oriented approach promoted by CEFR CV (2018), to support the active use of language through various simulation activities. This paper describes specifically the final assignment of the Medical English course, which is integrated with the Clinical Psychology course. Having discussed topics in Finnish in groups, complementing the lectures in the Clinical Psychology course, students present in English what they have learnt in these discuss…
The Early Bird Gets The Word Games and Play: Creating a Context For Authentic Language Learning
2022
Early foreign language teaching has recently been made compulsory in Finland, making this an area open to development and innovation where policy - makers and teachers play a significant role in creating new kinds of learning environments, operating cultures, and pedagogy for foreign language learning. This article discusses the early foreign language learning landscape in the context of early foreign language learning theory, initial education pedagogy as well as functional foreign language learning. The cornerstone of this study is the Contextual Pedagogical approach to Learning, which creates a bridge between the theory and practice of early foreign language learning, creating an inspiri…
Development of pedagogical design in technology-rich environments for language teaching and learning
2015
This study explores the development of pedagogical design for language teaching and learning in increasingly technology-rich environments. More specifically, it focuses on the process of design, enactment and analysis of language and literacy pedagogies in technology-rich environments. Two substudies are reported in five articles, each of which approaches pedagogical design from a different perspective. The first substudy examined (a) what pedagogical choices language students make in regard to learning objectives, working modes, materials and assessment, and (b) what kind of experiences, attitudes and perceptions were behind these choices. The second substudy focused on developing a design…
Co-designing a pedagogical framework and principles for a hybrid STEM learning environment design
2022
AbstractThe importance of engaging and effective learning environments for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has been internationally recognised. However, no comprehensive pedagogical frameworks exist that support STEM learning environment design. In this study, a pedagogical framework and principles for STEM learning environment design were created based on participatory focus groups involving 10–18-year-old students, teachers, school directors, parents, university students and STEM professionals. Representatives of key stakeholder groups in Belarus, Finland, Germany, Greece and Spain (total n = 132) were invited to focus group discussions in which their wishes relate…
Ubiquitous Learning in Appropriate Learning Environments
2018
This article concentrates on blended learning study module that was carried out in class teachers’ adult education. It offered the students versatile, unique, individual and communal possibilities to fully study in authentic contextual environments, exploiting virtual tools. The goal of the planning of this module was to create a learning environment that would give a student an optimal learning experience in versatile, authentic, e-learning environments. In the study, the ubiquitous learning model was tried out in a 6 credits’ study module for class teachers’ adult education that was based on the principles of transformational pedagogy (OED). The module was carried out in flexible and vers…
Live-roleplay as a tool – using real world operation cultures as tools for learning
2014
Anyone, who has ever been at school, has some kind of an idea how does a good learning environment look like. It is an everyday environment for those who attend to school themselves, or it comes close through their children. For some, it is just a distant memory. In any case, most people have an opinion about it. Imagine: straight lines of desks, people sitting alone in a row, daily program split into four to five different lessons, etc. When we think of today´s students - as Tapscott (2009) highlights – they are more open, more active, more broad-minded and less prejudiced than early generations – nonetheless our schools still look similar to those hundred years ago. This article examines …