Citizen Inquiry has been proposed as an informal science learning approach to enable widespread involvement in science and empower citizens with reasoning and problem-solving skills used by scientists. It combines aspects from citizen science and inquiry-based learning, producing science learning experiences within distributed communities of interest. A central challenge for Citizen Inquiry is to involve citizens in planning and implementing their own investigations, supported and guided by online systems and tools within an inquiry environment, while collaborating with science experts and non-experts. This thesis explores how to create an active and sustainable online community for citizens to engage in scientific investigations. To this end, it investigates the design of online communities, recruitment and retaining of members, factors that engage or disengage members from the community, and whether and how members learn throughout their participation. The intervention comprises two iterations of Citizen Inquiry communities: ‘Inquiring Rock Hunters’ and ‘Weather-it’. The communities were accommodated by the nQuire platform and the nQuire-it toolkit, respectively, software designed and structured to support collaborative personally-meaningful inquiry learning. The findings of this research are explained through an analysis that compared the two design studies with previous research on citizen participation projects and online communities. Results highlight the importance of frequent project communication, multiple ways of participation, software usability, and interaction and collaboration between the members, while indicating disengagement factors such as lack of time, interest and confidence. Different categories of learning are identified (activity, on-topic and community), emphasizing the understanding of inquiry activities as part of a complete scientific process and the balance between fun and learning. The thesis concludes with design considerations for the creation of future Citizen Inquiry and other citizen participation communities.

The use of mobile devices for learning has led to an increased number of textbooks and reading materials being published in digital format. Specific digital literacies are required to take advantage of these digital texts, and students need to acquire these literacies if they are to read and learn efficiently. Teachers need to assist their students in reading with digital devices. However, research on supporting reading comprehension with mobile devices is still limited. This thesis addresses a gap in the field by identifying cognitive and metacognitive foreign language (FL) reading strategies that students employ when using tablets, and how digital features may support FL reading comprehension. Students learning Spanish at two educational institutions in Denmark (n=12) participated in this longitudinal qualitative study. The digital texts employed in the study were designed to model reading strategies by embedding prompts in the texts using features of the iBook Author application on the iPad. These prompts, which appear alongside the text for students using the iBooks app, provide opportunities to learn and practice reading strategies. Data collection was via students’ logs (records of their use of reading strategies with the iPads over three weeks), semi-structured interviews and a researcher’s log. Coding was conducted through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that students used a variety of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies. Students engaged in higher-order thinking skills by following the scaffolds provided and benefitting from some of the iPads’ features. In conclusion, provided that the student is active in the reading process and is using appropriate strategies, he or she will be able to construct meaning from the digital text. FL reading is a skill that needs to be adapted for the use of mobile technology. This research suggests that, when employed effectively, the applications available on tablets can provide scaffolds for the reading process. This thesis contributes to knowledge by: 1) applying a language learning strategy (LLS) model to mobile technology; 2) applying metacognition in the context of reading electronic books with mobile devices; 3) addressing controversies in the field of digital reading; 4) proposing guidelines for designing digital textbooks, and 5) developing a research instrument for reading strategy research.

As new techno-literacy practices become embedded in society, they impact on ever younger age groups. The technological environment that children and young people now inhabit directly involves literacy, both in the broadest sense and in the more specific area of lettered representation. This has profound implications for how we conceive of the use of literacy in educational environments and how we plan for literacy curricula. My work focuses on children and young people's on-screen experience and particularly the productive aspect of writing-with-new-technology. I suggest that writers are involved in the production of new kinds of texts, and that these provide opportunities for different kinds of identity performance. Over the last six years I have looked at different ways of theorising changes in written communication and the relationship between these changes and curriculum design and practice. I have documented a change of emphasis in educational responses to digital literacy, a move from concerns about whether to use new technology to how to use it in literacy, and suggest that there is a need for more work that shows how digital writing can be embedded in classroom practice in ways that provide authentic contexts for learning and communication. Because digital writing involves new kinds of skills and new kinds of social practices it cannot simply be grafted on to existing instructional practices and curricular objectives, so through my classroom-based studies I have illustrated some of the possibilities and the issues that are raised by incorporating these practices. I argue that there is a need to re-evaluate the ways in which writing is taught and develop our understanding of what constitutes writing development in digital environments. This will involve more exploration of what experiences, resources and guidance are most helpful in the early stages of literacy in order to build an understanding of the appropriate balance between experimentation, skill instruction and critical engagement with new writing tools and processes.

Learning management systems are widely used in educational organizations and universities to deliver self-paced online courses. Furthermore, educational theories have suggested that providing learners with learning material suitable for their learning styles may affect their learning performance. Learners with different individual traits, levels of knowledge, backgrounds, and characteristics are using these learning systems to enhance their learning understanding. This study is concerned with personalizing learning environments based on each learner’s individual needs by designing and developing intelligent adaptive e-learning management systems. These systems behave according to the data collected in a ‘learner model’ from the learner to provide accurate learning material that adapts to learners’ needs by changing the learning environment rapidly based on the learners’ learning requirements and their learning styles. A dynamic adaptive e-learning system (DAELS) is proposed. The idea is to build an algorithm that can quickly understand an individual learner’s learning styles. We propose the Similarity algorithm, which aims to adapt to the student’s learning styles by taking advantage of the experience of previous students that used the same system and studied the same course. This algorithm presents the content to each student according to predictions of his/her preferred learning styles. These predictions can change during a student’s progress and response to the presentation. The ID3 machine learning method was used and integrated into our Similarity algorithm. Such a method can search learners' databases efficiently and quickly by classifying learners based on their attributes. Methods and associated techniques that address these issues by use of Felder and Silverman Learning Styles Model (FSLSM) have been developed and can be built into Moodle, the learning management system, as an integral component. We then conducted experiments on students to evaluate the flexibility of the DAELS and its effect on students’ learning performance. An experiment was designed and implemented to validate the proposed approach’s reliability and performance on learners’ scores. The proposed DAELS was compared with a static adaptive e-learning system (SAELS) and a non-adaptive e-learning system (non-AELS). The results of the empirical experiment demonstrate the effectiveness of using DAELS on student performance. On average, the dynamic adaptive group had an average increase of 60% in the post-test from pre-test, whereas the average score of the static group increased 32%, and the control group had an average increase of 8%. The results reveal that the dynamic group had the highest average scores in the post-test, and the control group had the lowest average increase in scores. The findings indicate that the developed Similarity algorithm, implemented in our DAELS for personalising learning content presentation according to students’ learning styles, is appropriate in e-learning systems and can enhance learning quality.

This thesis explores the possibility of using a drama in education classroom model of practice, to construct a leadership model that may be used in commercial organisations and in schools. Using a case study approach of the Manx Myth, Mantle of the Expert approach to teaching, devised by the late Dorothy Heathcote the researcher attempts to demonstrate that not only was she an inspirational pedagogue, but that within her work lay seeds of a leadership model which the researcher has named the Alchemical Model of leadership. Data, consisting of two interviews alongside fourteen transcripts was subjected to thematic analysis. The study is concerned with exploring the chronological development of the leadership theory continuum to see where the classroom practice of Dorothy Heathcote may be placed among the recognised models of leadership. The researcher will make the analogy of Dorothy Heathcote as the teacher, leading learners in a constructivist classroom, to leaders leading a workforce in an organisation. Reference throughout is made to the importance of finding a new model of leadership that can contribute to the many changes facing the leading of organisations in the twenty first century.

Extensive previous research has shown that web-based technologies have the potential to improve and enhance the quality of learning both on campus and at a distance. However, most of these studies have focused on the application of web-based technologies to support either undergraduates or taught postgraduate programmes, particularly, the use of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) system to complement module-based courses. Evidence from previous research on the use of VLE to support research students in the context of specific modules showed mixed results. Analysis of the VLE literature suggests that the system arranges courses based on academic calendar. Thus, students will not be able to access the system after the semester end. With postgraduate research, the processes of research are often incomplete even when students have graduated and they often seek to further the work through publication in journals. Therefore, using VLE alone would not possibly support the need of research student, particularly the support that they need throughout the stages of the research life cycle. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate how a web portal could be designed to support the research students throughout the research life cycle. A conceptualised web portal design has been constructed through an extensive review of the web-based technologies, learning theories and research degrees literature. The conceptualised web portal design illustrates that the design is underpinned by adult learning theories and the theory of stages in socialisation development, which in turn inform the framework of this research study. This model was then validated and updated through four action research cycles. A web portal system was developed, using the prototyping method to demonstrate the application of the web portal design informed by the adult learning theories and theory of stages in socialisation development. The research findings suggest that action research and prototyping methodology is capable of designing a web portal that is able to support the needs of research students in the context of a life cycle approach. Furthermore, the study reveals that personalisation and customisation features have proved to be useful in providing relevant information to research students at each stage of the research students’ study. It was found that research students value dynamic content such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) features for providing condensed, updated content relevant to their interests.

Whether in traditional or e learning, it is important to consider: what to learn, how to learn, and how well students have learned. Since there are various types of students with different learning preferences, learning styles, and learning abilities, it is not easy to provide the best learning approach for a specific student. Designing learning contents for different students is very time consuming and tedious for teachers. No matter how the learning process is carried out, both teachers and students must be satisfied with students’ learning performance. Therefore, it is important to provide helpful teaching and learning guidance for teachers and students. In order to achieve this, we proposed a fined-grained outcome-based learning path model, which allows teachers to explicitly formulate learning activities as the learning units of a learning path. This allows teachers to formulate the assessment criteria related to the subject-specific knowledge and skills as well as generic skills, so that the pedagogy could be defined and properly incorporated. Apart from defining the pedagogical approaches, we also need to provide tailored learning contents of the courses, so that different types of students can better learn the knowledge according to their own learning abilities, knowledge backgrounds, etc. On the other hand, those learning contents should be well-structured, so that students can understand them. To achieve this, we have proposed a learning path generation method based on Association Link Network to automatically identify the relationships among different Web resources. This method makes use of the Web resources that can be freely obtained from the Web to form well-structured learning resources with proper sequences for delivery. Although the learning path defines what to learn and how to learn, we still needed to monitor student learning progress in order to determine proper learning contents and learning activities in an e-Learning system. To address the problem, we proposed the use of student progress indicators based on Fuzzy Cognitive Map to analyze both performance and non-performance attributes and their causal relationships. The aim is to help teachers improve their teaching approaches and help students reflect their strengths and weaknesses in learning. . This research focuses on the intelligent tutoring e-Learning system, which provides an intelligent approach to design and delivery learning activities in a learning path. Many experiments and comparative studies on both teachers and students have been carried out in order to evaluate the research of this PhD thesis. The results show that our research can effectively help teachers generate high quality learning paths, help students improve their learning performance, and offer both teachers and students a better understanding on student learning progress.

The exploration of metacognition in the context of Peer Assisted Writing (PAW) is an under-researched area. This study aims to address this issue in one primary school. A PAW programme that included four pairs of pupils from a composite Primary 6/7 class was timetabled over five weeks. There were three sessions of approximately 45 minutes each week during which each pair of pupils jointly planned and wrote a story. The stories followed the school writing programme. Qualitative and quantitative analysis, collected using action research and case study design, is used to investigate how a PAW programme supports pupils’ metacognitive and writing development. The complex issues of metacognition are examined. On-line and off-line assessment methods tell us about metacognitive outcomes of PAW. The results show that the different assessment methods (Video Recording of the PAW sessions, Think Aloud when Prompted and Pupil View Templates) reveal a range of metacognitive outcomes that together help to complete a fuller picture of pupils’ thinking and learning abilities and social emotional well-being. The results evidenced that PAW fosters metacognition. Qualitative results suggested that writing is a complex, metacognitive process and it was necessary to extend the range of sub-components of information management. The results confirmed the views that development of knowledge of metacognition and regulation of metacognition are mutually dependent on each other and also that development of regulation of metacognition can take place in early primary school. Additionally, there was confirmation for research that proposed writing as ‘applied metacognition’. Quantitative analysis indicated that pupils engaged in PAW made substantial progress and that PAW particularly benefited pupils with weaker writing skills.

Serious games can be defined simply as games with an educational intent. These games are regularly positioned within a curriculum as simple teaching agents and often lack meaningful participation from learners in their development. In 1992, Roger Hart proposed a model for the roles children play in participatory projects with adults. ‘Hart’s Ladder’ presents eight levels of children’s participation moving from tokenistic manipulation of children at the base of this ladder to ‘citizenship’ at the top where children can initiate and share activities with adults. This research contributes to knowledge on methods of integrating serious games into formal educational settings by investigating how children, as participants, can work with their educators, as facilitators, to create serious games for use by their peers. Exploratory field studies have worked with secondary school children (11-16 years) to evaluate the hypothesis that higher levels of participation of children in making serious games will produce more effective educational artefacts. Educational artefacts are context specific to each study but encompass the product and accreditation of the process by participants, facilitators and all stakeholders involved. Experimental work has investigated methods of facilitating a participatory serious games design project led by children with adults in a supportive role at level eight of Hart’s Ladder. Results are compared with a design project led by adults who inform and assign specific roles to children (level four) and finally a revised design project led by adults who share decisions with children (level six). The participatory design approach is also applied to a serious games design project with adult offenders (considered students of an educational probation programme) to evaluate its scalability to a wider demographic of learner. The research concludes that simply increasing the participation of students in making serious games does not consistently produce more effective educational artefacts. Rather, the positioning of learners and adults as ‘design partners’ at level six of Hart’s Ladder produces a more engaging and productive design process together with a more functional and client-sensitive serious game product.

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