Open Learner Model (OLM) visualisations capture and display a learner’s learning state such as knowledge levels, learning progress, and misconceptions. Exposing learners to their own models offers learners a perspective about their learning state. Numerous benefits have been reported include providing more opportunities for learners to collaborate, enhancing learning outcomes, and prompting learners to be more self-regulated. We describe a new independent OLM tool, Doubtfire++ that we have designed to support Task-Oriented Portfolio teaching to raise student awareness of their progress and achievements, and to encourage self-regulated learning. The results of our evaluation show that Doubtfire++ helped the teaching staff in creating a supportive learning environment and students felt supported and rewarded for learning in a self-regulated manner. We have identified several OLM visualizations that were perceived to assist self-regulated learning. We also have gained insightful inputs and feedback that lead to expanding its application to a broader context.
This paper reports quantitative findings of a project investigating the in-progress formation of EFL students' critical intercultural awareness (CIA) in the Indonesian tertiary context. It examines a 10-week pedagogical intervention using culturally appropriate YouTube clips with intercultural tasks. A one-group pre-test/post-test design was employed involving a cohort of 50 undergraduate participants of mixed gender in five faculties and from varying ethnic groups. An intercultural awareness questionnaire was administered twice before and after the learning intervention. A paired-sample t-test was performed with SPSS 28 to examine the mean differences. The results revealed a significant improvement (Sig. 2-tailed value .001, p < .05) in participants' CIA scores. This suggests that video clip-assisted intercultural tasks promote the development of abilities to identify, interpret, and critically evaluate the intercultural values embedded in the clips. The study further showed that gender, fields of study and ethnicity did not significantly contribute to the CIA development.
An instructional intervention was introduced to enhance critical thinking skills, in the aspects of interdisciplinary and systems thinking, in an undergraduate Operations Management course at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The intervention included a newly developed visual-based mapping tool to induce deliberate divergent-convergent thinking (imagination and judgement). It was supported by a design-based problem as a formative assessment, with learning outcomes underlined by a set of assessment rubric. To evaluate its effect on the students’ critical thinking abilities, a quasi-experimental study was conducted with data collected from survey instruments, semi-structured interviews, and academic scores. The survey results indicate improvements in students’ abilities in consciously monitoring their cognitive activities, reflecting on their reasoning, and making self-assessment (self-regulation) as well as in assessing credibility, relevance, and logical strength of information (evaluative reasoning). Results from the interviews and academic scores complemented the survey findings. The largely positive results suggest the effectiveness of the intervention.
This article urges reconsideration of the traditional essay in undergraduate education. Despite renewed critiques of its efficacy as a pedagogical tool, the essay stubbornly retains primacy. As studies confirm the learning benefits of collaboration and highlight the potential of multimodal composition to challenge and expand forms of knowledge production, the collaborative digital multimodal essay offers an alternative to the traditional essay. This study focuses on 35 students in two advanced undergraduate literary studies courses who were assigned a collaborative digital multimodal composition project in the online publishing platform Scalar. Thematic analysis of student reflections following the project indicate that students perceive collaborative digital multimodal writing to offer opportunities for more creativity and autonomy and to challenge conceptions of academic writing forms, conventions and practices. Collaborating to develop complex and coherent arguments remained a significant challenge as did the technical demands of the digital writing platform.
Global competence is a complex concept as it is multifaceted, composite, multi-layered, multidimensional, and can be viewed from several perspectives. A previous study validated a set of rubrics designed to assess pre-service teachers' development of global competence. The research presented in this paper tested the internal consistency and reliability of the set of rubrics in order to create an instrument validated within the international context that was robust and consistent from a methodological point of view. The set of rubrics was self-administered online by 729 pre-service teachers studying in 12 teacher education programmes across 10 different countries around the world. The data analysis showed a high level of reliability and internal consistency of the rubrics, indicating their ability to assess pre-service teachers' global competence. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis suggested changes to two areas of the rubrics.
