While online students should take charge of their own learning and form collaborative learning communities, constructivist instructors should scaffold online learning without dominating course discussions. This research continues the longitudinal investigation of web-based courses at the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria. The mixed methodological approach this investigation followed consisted predominantly of qualitative methods, augmented with quantitative approaches. I used two distinct online tools to explore student participation in an eight-week online Masters’-level course delivered via the WebCT™ platform. First, I reviewed the use of metaphors in the literature by a framework of requirements for successful online learning. The use of metaphor supports constructivism, facilitates course interaction, helps to avoid students’ initial inertia in online discussions, and contributes to the development of virtual learning communities. I researched how an explanatory metaphor as tool supported online participation and indicated that metaphors eased students’ communication of important and difficult issues. Secondly, I used the tool of a covert virtual student that also acted as an additional facilitator and course helper. I examined the ethical implications of the carefully concealed real identity of the mythical online helper, methical Jane. As she took part in all course activities and assignments, as well as providing her co-students with cognitive and technical support, the students accepted and integrated her presence in their virtual learning community. I consequently analysed students’ reactions to her identity after disclosure of her origin after the course. Although the exposure precipitated students’ shock, disbelief and dismay as she was a convincing virtual student, they did not object to the presence of a virtual student, but rather felt betrayed due to her hidden real identity. The benefits of this teaching intervention include experts supplying technical expertise, multiple faculty enriching the learning experience, and support and teaching assistants and tutors participating with smaller groups in large online classes. I further examined how frequency of course access, discussion postings, collaborative behaviour and integration into a virtual learning community relate to learning and course completion. Quantitative indices indicated highly significant differences between the stratifications of student performance. Absent and seldom-contributing students risked missing the benefits of the online learning community. Students were discontent with peers who rarely and insufficiently contributed to group assignments. Low participation varied from only reading, skimming, or deliberately harvesting others’ contributions, to high student contributions of little value. Conclusions on the formation of an online learning community indicate that the passport to membership of the community is quality participation, rather than prior peer acquaintance. I indicated that students’ learning benefited from contributing high quality inputs to online learning communities while students with poor participation did not benefit from the online learning community. Online facilitators contribute to students’ learning through the timeliness and quality of tailored scaffolding. Recommendations for future research include uncovering the reasons for students’ stressful experiences of online learning; the effect of online assessment on student course participation; the alignment of learning metaphors in multi-cultural learning environments; and the support of non-participating online students. / Thesis (PHD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / Entre as mudanÃas globais enfrentadas nas pouco mais de trÃs Ãltimas dÃcadas, destacam-se as maneiras como a informaÃÃo, no espaÃo digital e na Web, à acessada, inter-relacionada e ressignificada, no aspecto da construÃÃo de novos conhecimentos e saberes. Estas mudanÃas estÃo significativamente vinculadas à quebra de paradigmas e crises entre as Ãreas de conhecimento. Neste cenÃrio, a sociedade enfrenta uma inesperada corrida de rÃpidas transformaÃÃes, fusÃes e nascimento de novas Ãreas de conhecimento interdisciplinares, carreando o processo educacional para uma contÃnua e desafiante crise. Progressivamente, o uso pedagÃgico das TIC ocupa os espaÃos da outrora educaÃÃo conservadora presencial e instrucionista, outorgando cenÃrios favorecedores à integraÃÃo pedagÃgica entre: as mÃdias, o construtivismo, a autonomia, a criatividade e o aprender juntos. Nas prÃximas dÃcadas, decorrerÃo mudanÃas significativas nas propostas de avaliaÃÃo, notadamente voltadas para o desenvolvimento da aprendizagem colaborativa, em espaÃos assÃncronos, o que suscita profundas reflexÃes, concernentes Ãs transposiÃÃes teÃrico-metodolÃgicas e prÃticas, que incidirÃo sobre a ressignificaÃÃo e relaÃÃes entre o desenvolvimento da aprendizagem e sua avaliaÃÃo. A presente investigaÃÃo, de carÃter qualitativo e de pesquisa-aÃÃo, se insere no cenÃrio do desenvolvimento de atividades pedagÃgicas colaborativas, expressas por narrativas, postadas em FÃruns de discussÃo, durante o transcurso de uma disciplina de InformÃtica na EducaÃÃo, ofertada presencialmente pelo Departamento de Fundamentos da EducaÃÃo da FACED/UFC, em que majoritariamente participaram estudantes de graduaÃÃo. A proposta didÃtica da disciplina se baseia nos pressupostos da teoria da aprendizagem significativa ausubeliana, no mapeamento cognitivo, na visÃo de Okada, e no estar junto virtual, segundo Valente e Almeida. Foram escolhidos dois de seus FÃruns temÃticos disciplinares, que abordavam as temÃticas de estudo: o uso pedagÃgico de mapas conceituais e pressupostos da avaliaÃÃo formativa da aprendizagem, numa visÃo construtivista (AUSUBEL, FERNANDES, MASETTO, PERRONOUD, ZABALA). Parte do referencial teÃrico da Tese permeia a avaliaÃÃo na forma clÃssica e contribuiÃÃes nÃo clÃssicas, que apontam para a necessidade de se repensar a avaliaÃÃo, numa Ãtica do construtivismo e da aprendizagem assÃncrona. Os conjuntos de narrativas, postados pelos estudantes, sÃo constituÃdos por dados multidimensionais fortemente entrelaÃados, que foram mapeados e analisados, sob a forma de categorias, à luz do referencial teÃrico e objetivos adotados na Tese, sob o foco da anÃlise textual discursiva (MORAES, GALIAZZI) e da anÃlise qualitativa de dados multidimensionais, fazendo-se o uso do software CHIC (ALMOULOUD, PRADO, VALENTE). Em seguida, partindo-se de uma Ãrvore de similaridade, gerada pelo CHIC, foram estabelecidas inter-relaÃÃes hierÃrquicas e relacionais, entre as categorias, organizadas em trÃs eixos temÃticos, e as narrativas dos cursistas, de modo a analisar, numa Ãtica do referencial teÃrico da Tese, como se desenvolve a aprendizagem e como a avaliaÃÃo, qualitativa e formativa, pode estar associada ao desenvolvimento da aprendizagem. Da anÃlise multidimensional das narrativas dos cursistas, numa Ãtica transdisciplinar, emergiram indÃcios preliminares de inter-relaÃÃes hierÃrquicas e relacionais, entre os trÃs campos de conhecimentos desenvolvimento da aprendizagem, avaliaÃÃo e saberes pedagÃgicos e tecnolÃgicos, e as aÃÃes pedagÃgicas vivenciadas nos FÃruns TelEduc, que questionam se repensar os pressupostos da avaliaÃÃo da aprendizagem e a convergÃncia dos futuros caminhos das prÃticas pedagÃgicas e avaliativas. / Among the global challenges, FACED during the last three decades, it is important to point out the different ways how the information, in the digital space and on the Web, is accessed, interrelated, in order to give a new meaning, according the aspect of building new knowledges. These changes are meaningful linked to paradigms break and crises between the areas of knowledge. In this scenario, the human society faces an unexpected rush of rapid transformations, mergers and birth of new areas of interdisciplinary knowledge, leading the educational process for continuous and challenging crisis. Progressively, the pedagogical use of ICT occupies the space of the once classroom and instructional conservative education, favoring granting scenarios to the pedagogical integration of: media, constructivism, autonomy, creativity and learning together. In the coming decades, it will take significant changes in the proposal evaluation, notably focused on the development of collaborative learning in asynchronous spaces, which raises profound reflections, concerning the theoretical and methodological and practice transpositions, which will focus on redefining and relationships between learning development and its assessment. This research, that is qualitative and action research, is included in the scenario of the development of collaborative educational activities, expressed by narratives, posted in the TelEduc discussion Forums, during the development of activities on a course of informatics in Education, offered by the Department of Education Foundations of FACED/UFC, where mostly attended graduate students. The didactic proposal of the course is based on the assumptions of the theory of Ausubel‟s meaningful learning, cognitive mapping, in Okada's vision, and on the learning together in the virtual space, according to Valente and Almeida. Two of his disciplinary thematic forums were chosen which addressed the topics of study: the educational use of concept maps and assumptions of formative assessment of learning, according the constructivist view (AUSUBEL; FERNANDES; MASETTO; PERRENOUD; ZABALA). Part of the Thesis theoretical framework permeates the assessment in a classical view and non-classical contributions, what point out to the need to rethink the assessment in a perspective of constructivism and asynchronous learning. The sets of narratives, posted by students, are made up of multidimensional data strongly intertwined, which were mapped and analyzed in the form of categories. This is done based on the theoretical framework and objectives adopted in this Thesis, from the perspective of the discursive textual analysis (MORAES; GALIAZZI) and the multi-dimensional analysis for qualitative data, making the use of software CHIC (ALMEIDA; ALMOULOUD; VALENTE). Then, starting from a similarity tree, generated by CHIC, hierarchical and relational interrelationships have been established between the categories, organized into three themes, and the narratives of the course participants. This is done in order to analyze, in a perspective of the theoretical framework of the Thesis, how learning can be developed and how the assessment, qualitative and formative, may be associated with the learning development. From the multidimensional analysis of the narratives of the course participants, and according a transdisciplinary perspective, it was emerged preliminary evidence of hierarchical and relational interrelationships, between the knowledge fields learning development, assessment and technological pedagogical content knowledge, and the collaborative pedagogical actions, experienced in the TelEduc Forums, that induce to rethink the assumptions of the assessment of learning and the future possibles ways of the pedagogical and assessment practices.

The purpose of this study was to better understand student learning in asynchronous computer-conference discourse (ASD) for non-native speakers of English in India through the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework. The study looked at ASD from an online course taught in the fall of 2015 to 25 students in a seminary in South India. All but one of the students were non-native speakers of English. The class consisted of 22 men and 3 women. Eight students spoke languages from the Dravidian family of languages (Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu and Kannada). Eight students were from the Northeastern states of Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, where most languages are from the Sino-Tibetan family. Three students were native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages (Odiya and Assamese). Five students were from Myanmar representing several Sino-Tibetan languages. The COI is a framework used to understand learning in ASD, often used in online learning. To study the ASD of this group, critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used with the COI to capture the unique socio-cultural and linguistic conditions of this group. The study revealed that non-native speakers of English often reach the Exploration phase of learning but rarely show evidence of reaching the Resolution phase. This phenomenon was also observed in native English speakers as reported in the literature. Also, the structure of ASD showed that students took an examination approach to discussion shaped in part by their epistemology. This examination approach shaped how knowledge was constructed. CDA also showed that the discourse acquired an instructor-centered structure in which Resolution and Repair were initiated and finalized by the instructor. The study advances the COI framework by undergirding it with a theory of asynchronous discourse using critical discourse analysis and capturing cognitive, social and teaching presence phenomena for non-native speakers that were not observed through the traditional COI framework. These phenomena were driven by cultural, epistemological, and linguistic forces and require a rethinking of the COI for contexts outside of North America. The study also demonstrates that learning for non-native speakers in ASD is challenged by these very same forces. Therefore, design for online learning should account for these phenomena.

This applied dissertation was designed to analyze the effects of social networking for educational purposes on the academic achievement of regular and special education students in the secondary school setting. The effect of social networking on student learning has not been determined. There is a limited amount of research on how and to what extent teachers use social networking within the parameters of instruction. There is even less research distinguishing the effects of social networking on the academic achievement on regular and special education students. The student participants engaged in discussion forums as their primary social networking experience. Of the 155 participants, 94 were enrolled in a class that required participation in asynchronous discussion forum, and 61 were enrolled in a class with more traditional instruction devoid of social networking. The treatment consisted of 12 discussion prompts created by the teacher in the Blackboard course management system. The analysis of student test data showed no significant difference in mean scores attributable to social networking when educational status was ignored. When educational status was not ignored, however, the significant difference of mean scores between all regular education and all special education students was found to be highly unlikely to have been due to chance. This study also found that there was an interaction between educational status and social networking. The infusion of educational social networking helped narrow the achievement gap between regular and special education students.