Cyberlearning has the ability to connect learners from diverse settings to educational resources regardless of the learners' proximities to traditional classroom environments. Prior research has shown that hybrid learning systems more effectively improve student learning than do either traditional or cyberlearning approaches used individually. The Online Watershed Learning System (OWLS) is an interactive cyberlearning system for use in hybrid education. It serves as the end user interface of the Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS), a watershed monitoring system for use in research and education. The LEWAS/OWLS has been integrated into 26 courses. Within the theoretical framework of situated learning, the OWLS uses data and imagery to situate users at the LEWAS site. The current research has the dual goals of developing the OWLS and evaluating its effectiveness within a hybrid learning environment as part of watershed monitoring education. Within goal 1, HTML5, CSS and JavaScript code (11,112 lines) were used to achieve platform independence, and student and faculty feedback suggests a hierarchy of cyberlearning interface features, where anywhere/anytime access is the most important class of features for these users followed by real-time data visualization, system background information and how-to-use information in descending order. For students at the community college freshmen, university senior and graduate levels, goal 2 investigated how much the OWLS increases student learning of environmental monitoring topics and motivates them to study these topics. For this goal, use of the LEWAS/OWLS increased learning and motivation for most students with the caveats that the these gains were not always statistically significant and that these gains may be caused by use of the LEWAS in general rather than by the OWLS component of it. Additional studies are needed to resolve these issues. Additionally, a pilot test of anonymous user tracking (11,231 page views) showed how it can be used to obtain general information about which groups of users are accessing a cyberlearning system, how they are accessing it, and how navigation through the system can be improved to better match user goals. The full results and their limitations are included along with areas for future work. / Ph. D.

All Computer Science majors are required to take introductory programming (CS1) as a fundamental course which has a high dropout rate. Researchers report that CS1 students lack motivation and need constant resource support. Motivated by these factors, we developed a cyberlearning environment embedded with learning engagement strategies such as Collaborative Learning, Social Interaction and Gamification. The purpose of research is to investigate the impact the cyberlearning environment had on student acquisition of programming concepts. I conducted a series of studies to empirically validate these learning engagement strategies in the context of student learning outcomes. The results of my dissertation have shown that Gamification and Social Interaction when combined or used individually had more positive impact on student learning when compared to that of other learning engagement strategies. / This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grants DUE-1225742 and DUE-1525112. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Advance Personalized Learning is one of the 14 grand challenges of engineering as identified by the National Academy of Engineering. One possible approach for this advancement is to deploy systems that allow an investigator to understand the differences in the learning process of individuals. In this context, cyberlearning systems that use networked computing and communication technology to reach a large number of learners offer the affordance to uniquely identify learners and track their learning process in real-time. Motivated by this idea, this doctoral research aims to investigate personalized learning and engagement within a cyberlearning system, called the Online Watershed Learning System (OWLS). This cyberlearning system utilizes learning resources generated by a real-time high-frequency environmental monitoring system, called the Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS). The goals include advancing the OWLS with a user tracking system and data availability and visualization features and investigating personalized learning and engagement within the OWLS. A user-tracking system is developed utilizing a Node.js-based Express framework and deployed in the LEWAS server, which identifies individual users across devices such as laptops, tablets, and desktops, and detects their interaction within the OWLS, and stores the interaction data in a PostgreSQL database. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript technologies are used for the client-side development. Informed by the situative theory of learning and engagement theory, an investigation was carried out with 52 students from a junior-level civil engineering class. They completed an OWLS-based in-class task focused on concepts related to the environmental monitoring. Pre and post-surveys and the user-tracking system were utilized to collect data on individual student's perceived and conceptual learning, perceived and behavioral engagement, and perception towards the learning value of the OWLS. Results provide several insights into individual student's learning and engagement with the OWLS. For example, students gained knowledge using the OWLS, and their learning varied with the design of the in-class task, which, however, did not impact their engagement. Further, students' learning (scores on in-class task) had a significant negative relationship with their behavioral engagement (frequency of resource utilization of the OWLS). Additionally, temporal navigational strategies of 52 students were identified on an individual basis. Finally, variations in learning and engagement were analyzed in terms of factors such as gender and background knowledge. The study has implications for designing effective cyberlearning systems and learning activities that can utilize cyberlearning systems for leveraging technology-enhanced teaching and learning. / Ph. D. / Individuals differ in their approaches to learning. For the success of diverse group of learners, the National Academy of Engineering has identified “Advance Personalized Learning” as one of the 14 grand challenges. One possible approach for this advancement is to utilize online learning technologies, such as cyberlearning systems that provide the affordance to uniquely identify each learner and track his/her learning progress allowing an investigator to understand the differences in the learning process of individuals. Motivated by this idea, an interactive cyberlearning system, called the Online Watershed Learning System (OWLS) has been utilized in this study. It contains learning resources generated by a real-time high-frequency environmental monitoring system, called the Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS). The goals of the study include: 1) advancing the OWLS with a user tracking system and data availability and visualization features and 2) investigating personalized learning and engagement within the OWLS. For goal 1, cutting-edge technologies were utilized so that OWLS with its user-tracking system can be accessible by large number of users using modern web browsers on devices, such as laptops, tablets and cell phones. For goal 2, classroom implementation was carried out with 52 junior-level civil engineering students, who completed an OWLS-based environmental monitoring task within the class time. Results provide several insights into variation of individual student’s learning and engagement with the OWLS. For example, students gained knowledge using the OWLS, and their learning varied with the design of the in-class task, which, however, did not impact their engagement. Additionally, temporal navigational strategies of 52 students were identified on an individual basis. Variations in learning and engagement were also analyzed in terms of factors such as gender and background knowledge. The study has implications for designing effective cyberlearning systems and learning activities that can utilize cyberlearning system for leveraging technology-enhanced teaching and learning.

Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-30T18:34:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Raimundo Xavier.pdf: 904224 bytes, checksum: 36a8facef91ec9cb54ed145972229064 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora Lopes(silopes@ufba.br) on 2013-05-03T19:46:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Raimundo Xavier.pdf: 904224 bytes, checksum: 36a8facef91ec9cb54ed145972229064 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-03T19:46:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Raimundo Xavier.pdf: 904224 bytes, checksum: 36a8facef91ec9cb54ed145972229064 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Com o advento da cibernética, o surgimento das Novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TICs) e a emergência de uma era ciber (ou cyber), vivenciamos uma crise de percepção que diz respeito às mudanças no mundo físico e territorial. Trata-se de uma conversão da realidade real em uma outra realidade, virtual, e que propõe transformações na ordem do espaço, do corpo e da aprendizagem, a partir de novos sentidos da cultura e das relações sociais. Ao analisar essas transformações, a dissertação reflete sobre o ciberespaço, o cibercorpo e a ciberaprendizagem e conclui que estamos diante de um outro status do conhecimento. Para realizar a pesquisa recorri a autores que discutem a crise no/do espaço contemporâneo, as relações com o corpo e as novas formas de aprender. Utilizei como referencial empírico depoimentos de um grupo de pesquisadores em Educação e Comunicação da ANPED, a partir de uma lista de informação na/da web, além das minhas experiências como professor e de outras referências de outros tantos sujeitos presentes nesta itinerância. / Salvador

Introductory computer programming course is one of the fundamental courses in computer science. Students enrolled in computer science courses at the college or university have been reported to lack motivation, and engagement when learning introductory programming (CS1). Traditional classrooms with lecture-based delivery of content do not meet the needs of the students that are being exposed to programming courses for the first time. Students enrolled in first year programming courses are better served with a platform that can provide them with a self-paced learning environment, quicker feedback, easier access to information and different level of learning content/assessment that can keep them motivated and engaged. Introductory programming courses (hereafter referred to as CS1 and CS2 courses) also include students from non-STEM majors who struggle at learning basic programming concepts. Studies report that CS1 courses nationally have high dropout rates, ranging from anywhere between 30-40% on an average. Some of the reasons cited by researchers for high dropout rate are lack of resource support, motivation, lack of engagement, lack of motivation, lack of practice and feedback, and confidence. Although the interest to address these issues in computing is expanding, the dropout rate for CS1/CS2 courses remains high. The software engineering industry often believes that the academic community is missing the mark in the education of computer science students. Employers recognize that students entering the workforce directly from university training often do not have the complete set of software development skills that they will need to be productive, especially in large software development companies.

The proliferation of web based technologies has resulted in new forms of communities and organizations with enormous implications for design of learning and education. This thesis explores learning occurring within open source software (OSS) communities. OSS communities are a dominant form of organizing in software development with implications not only for innovative product development but also for the training of a large number of software developers. The central catalyst of learning within these communities is expert-novice interactions. These interactions between experts and novices or newcomers are critical for the growth and sustenance of a community and therefore it is imperative that experts are able to provide newcomers requisite advice and support as they traverse the community and develop software. Although prior literature has demonstrated the significance of expert-novice interactions, there are two central issues that have not been examined. First, there is no examination of the role of external events on community interaction, particularly as it relates to experts and novices. Second, the exact nature of expert help, particularly, the quantity of help and whether it helps or hinders newcomer participation has not been studied. This thesis studies these two aspects of expert-novice interaction within OSS communities. The data for this study comes from two OSS communities. The Java newcomer forum was studied as it provided a useful setting for examining external events given the recent changes in Java's ownership. Furthermore, the forum has a rating system which classifies newcomers and experienced members allowing the analysis of expert-novice interactions. The second set of data comes from the MySQL newcomer forum which has also undergone organizational changes and allows for comparison with data from the Java forum. Data were collected by parsing information from the HTML pages and stored in a relational database. To analyze the effect of external events, a natural experiment method was used whereby participation levels were studied around significant events that affected the community. To better understand the changes contextually, an extensive study of major news outlets was also undertaken. Findings from the external event study show significant changes in participation patterns, especially among newcomers in response to key external events. The study also revealed that the changes in participation of newcomers were observed even though other internal characteristics (help giving, expert participation) did not change indicating that external events have a strong bearing on community participation. The effect of expert advice was studied using a logistic regression model to determine how specific participation patterns in discussion threads led to the final response to newcomers. This was supported by social network analysis to visually interpret the participation patterns of experienced members in two different scenarios, one in which the question was answered and the other where it was not. Findings show that higher number of responses from experienced members did not correlate with a response. Therefore, although expert help is essential, non-moderated or unguided help can lead to conflict among experts and inefficient feedback to newcomers. / Master of Science

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernanda Katherine Asega.pdf: 9503721 bytes, checksum: a8c353050811fb8156b130ff0ff7b37f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-16 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This research, conducted in the area of Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Learning, more specifically the English language, and games as a research object. Technological innovations have enabled access to information by transforming the means and modes of communication. Currently, the integration of digital technologies in language learning and teaching practices is growing, given that young people are constantly connected to the web, interacting with several people and tools such as games. These tools work extending cognitive ability, abstract thinking and language functions. The purpose of this study is to analyse what potential the game World of Warcraft offers for teaching and learning the English language, in order to be used as teaching material aimed at teenagers and adults who need/want to learn the language. The decision to use such game was based on its popularity around the world. As one of the media most used by young and likely to be a known and common language between them, they can facilitate learning processes that lie in more familiar contexts for students. Given the above, this study examined the game World of Warcraft in its potential as a teaching and learning materials for English language for teenagers and adults. The theoretical background of this study is based upon the concepts of Cyberculture (LEVY, 1999; LEMOS, 2005), Connectivism (SIEMENS, 2004, 2007, 2008; DOWNES, 2012), Participatory Culture, addressing the skills and abilities necessary for education in the twenty-first century (JENKINS et al., 2006), Learning in Games (GEE, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013; PRENSKY, 2001, 2005) and Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Learning (RAMOS, 1999 / 2009, 2009). The study was submitted to the possibilities for teaching and learning the English language from the perspective of cyberlearning and related to the use of language. When analysed from the perspective of cyberlearning it was emphasized the importance of problem-solving situations, interactions and transmedia skills and activities identified in the game as English teaching and language learning opportunities. When analyzed the possibility for teaching and learning of English language related to the use of language, the features and the contents were examined which can be exploited in the development of teaching materials through this game. For this, data were categorized as resources, content and texts. The game analysis made it possible to demonstrate its potential for use in the English language (cyber)learning, in which the development of performance and simulation skills are essential in the current scenario. This paper concludes that this game's potential use in teaching and English language learning is attributed to situations of problem solving, in which students can develop all presented subcategories, especially transmedia so that students can follow the flow of stories, when confronted with the information available in different media formats, making it possible to fulfill the process of teaching and learning / Esta pesquisa está inserida no quadro de avaliação e preparação de material didático para a aprendizagem de língua estrangeira, mais especificamente a de língua inglesa, tendo games como objeto de pesquisa. Inovações tecnológicas possibilitaram o acesso à informação transformando os meios e modos de comunicação. Atualmente, a integração das tecnologias digitais nas práticas do ensino e da aprendizagem de línguas é crescente, tendo em vista que os jovens estão constantemente conectados à rede, interagindo com diversas pessoas e ferramentas como os games. Essas ferramentas atuam estendendo a destreza cognitiva, o pensamento abstrato e as funções de linguagem. O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar que potencialidades o game World of Warcraft oferece para o ensino e a aprendizagem de língua inglesa, com vistas a ser utilizado como material didático voltado para adolescentes e adultos que desejam/necessitam aprender a língua. Esse game foi escolhido para este trabalho por ser um dos mais populares no mundo. Por ser uma das mídias mais consumidas pelos jovens e provavelmente por ser uma linguagem conhecida e comum entre eles, estes podem possibilitar processos de aprendizagem que se situam em contextos mais familiares para os alunos. Diante do exposto, o presente trabalho examinou o game World of Warcraft quanto a sua potencialidade como material didático para o ensino e a aprendizagem de língua inglesa de adolescentes e adultos. O trabalho fundamenta-se nos preceitos da Cibercultura (LEVY, 1999; LEMOS, 2005), da Teoria Conectivista (SIEMENS, 2004, 2007, 2008; DOWNES, 2012), da Cultura de Participação abordando as competências e habilidades necessárias para o ensino e a aprendizagem no século XXI (JENKINS et al., 2006), da aprendizagem em Games (GEE, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013; PRENSKY, 2001, 2005) e da avaliação e design de materiais didáticos (RAMOS, 1999/2009, 2009). O trabalho foi apresentado quanto às possibilidades para o ensino e a aprendizagem de língua inglesa na perspectiva da ciberaprendizagem e relacionada ao uso da língua. Quando analisada sob a perspectiva da ciberaprendizagem, foi ressaltada a importância das situações de resolução de problemas, de interações e competências transmídia e de atuação identificadas no game como possibilidades de ensino e aprendizagem da língua inglesa. Quando analisada a possibilidade para o ensino e a aprendizagem de língua inglesa relacionada ao uso da língua, foram examinadas as características e os conteúdos que podem ser explorados na elaboração de materiais didáticos por meio desse game. Para tanto, os dados foram categorizados em recursos, conteúdos e textos. A análise do game possibilitou demonstrar suas potencialidades para ser utilizado na (ciber)aprendizagem de língua inglesa, no qual o desenvolvimento das competências de atuação e simulação são essenciais no atual cenário. O presente trabalho conclui que essa potencialidade de uso do game no ensino e a aprendizagem de língua inglesa é atribuída às situações de resolução de problemas, as quais os alunos podem desenvolver todas as subcategorias apresentadas, principalmente a transmídia para que possam seguir o fluxo de histórias, quando confrontado com as informações disponibilizadas em diferentes formatos de mídia, tornando-se possível cumprir o processo de ensino e aprendizagem