Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-220). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Critical thinking is widely acknowledged as crucial for 21st century learners to be able to tackle the complex tasks arising every day in a rapidly changing world. Earlier critical thinking research has mostly focused on the related micro-skills, which have been criticized as inadequate. Recent studies have placed more emphasis on nurturing the dispositions towards critical thinking. Another trend in critical thinking research is the realization that good performance on generic critical thinking skills tests does not guarantee critical thinking performance in the real world. In line with the recent trends in critical thinking development, educators have shown growing interest in fostering critical thinking skills and dispositions in students through collaborative inquiry in authentic problem-solving contexts. However, empirical research that examines students’ critical thinking behavior while they engage in extended collaborative inquiry is rare. Further, it is not clear whether differences in students’ critical thinking abilities contribute to differences in their engagement and learning outcomes in collaborative inquiry. This study aims to investigate the relationship between students’ critical thinking and the quality of their collaborative inquiry. The study involved a class of secondary two students studying a humanities module through collaborative inquiry involving the use of an online platform. Given the debates over the value of different methods of measuring critical thinking, this study first seeks to explore the relationship between three different critical thinking tests: two standardized surveys on generic skills and dispositions, and a constructed-response test on context-specific skills. Second, this study examines whether students with higher critical thinking scores are better able to apply critical thinking to real-life situations. This is done through analyzing students’ critical thinking behaviors exhibited in the context of authentic problem solving. Third, this study explores the relationship between students’ critical thinking behavior and their knowledge building engagement in the learning process. Finally, this study uses the standardized tests to determine whether there is any significant change in the students’ critical thinking ability after a sustained engagement in collaborative inquiry to tackle an authentic problem. The analysis revealed a number of interesting findings. First, the three critical thinking tests are related but measure different aspects of critical thinking. Second, compared with traditional standardized surveys, the context-specific critical thinking test is a better indicator of the likelihood of the students to autonomously apply critical thinking in authentic problem-solving contexts. Third, critical thinking behaviors exhibited by students contributed to their engagement in knowledge building. Fourth, there was a statistically significant increase in students’ critical thinking dispositions after the extended collaborative inquiry of an authentic problem. The study has both theoretical and methodological implications. The study has both theoretical and educational implications. It deepens our understanding of the relationship between critical thinking and computer-supported collaborative inquiry. This study has provided strong evidence that traditional measures of critical thinking cannot predict the quality of students’ critical thinking engagement in authentic problem-solving contexts. Further, it also provides empirical support the theoretical claim that engaging students in knowledge building activities will enhance their critical thinking skills and dispositions. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study aims to investigate the automated question detection and classification methods to support teachers in monitoring the progression of discussion in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) discourse of Hong Kong students. Questioning is an important component of CSCL. Through the analysis of question types in CSCL discourse, teachers may probably get a general idea of how an inquiry is constructed. This study is an attempt to take up this time-consuming task of question classification with the techniques developed from machine learning. In general, the performance of machine learning algorithms will improve by increasing the amount of empirical data for training. The amount of training data is a determining factor for the performance of machine learning algorithms. The machine learning based question classification algorithms may not able to detect those question types with a small amount of training data. In order not to miss out those questions, an extra step to detect the occurrence of all question types might be needed. One Chinese and one English datasets are collected from an online discussion platform. These datasets are selected for comparing the performance of question detection and classification in the two languages, and a sentence is defined as the unit of analysis. Question detection is a process to distinguish questions from other types of discourse act. A hybrid method is proposed to combine the rule-based question mark method and machine-learning-based syntax method for question detection. This method achieves 94.8% f1-score and 98.9% accuracy in English question detection and 94.8% f1-score and 93.9% accuracy in Chinese question detection. While question detection focuses mainly on the identification of questions, question classification concentrates on the categorization of questions. The literature showed that the tree kernel method is almost a standardized method for question classification. The classification of English verification and reason questions using tree kernel method can both attained f1-score above 80%. Though the precision of Chinese question classification using the same settings remains at a similar level, the recall drops greatly. This result indicates that the syntax-based tree kernel method may not be appropriate for classifying questions in Chinese languages. In order to improve on the Chinese question classification result, Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is introduced. CBR is a method to retrieve example case(s) which shares the maximum percentage of similarity with the test case from a database. In this study, the similarity is measured by the lexemes that composed a question. Although the implementation of the CBR method can improve the recall, it also causes the great drop of precision. Considering the high precision of tree kernel method and wide coverage of CBR method, a hybrid method is proposed to combine the two methods. The experiment result shows that f1-score of the hybrid method for multi-class classification surpasses the tree kernel and CBR methods. This indicates that the implementation of hybrid method can generally improve the result of Chinese question classification. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Philosophy

This research investigates what impact (if any) do personal epistemology (PE) have on individual’s engagement and ideas progression when engaged in a CSCL discourse designed to stimulate knowledge building (KB) (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). Through literature review, this thesis sets out with an assumption that a learner’s engagement in a collaborative learning discourse is influenced by three kinds of beliefs: nature of knowledge, how learning takes place, and quality criteria for good knowledge. Reflective judgment (RJ), i.e. network of beliefs on knowledge and knowing underpinning personal judgments on ill-structured issues (Kitchener & King, 2002), is the key PE construct underpinning this study. Further, it is believed that the extent to which an individual pursues explanatory coherence (EC) (Thagard, 1989) when engaged in a CSCL discourse reflects his/her beliefs about the quality criteria for good knowledge. The empirical part of this study was undertaken in a grade 8 class involving 32 students over a 12-weeks period. Students worked in groups on an integrated-humanities module to develop proposals for new tourist attractions in Hong Kong. Students were encouraged to use Knowledge Forum® (KF) for online collaborative discussions throughout different inquiry stages of the module. A questionnaire instrument was designed and administered to assess students’ RJ. Using this instrument, fifteen students were identified as pre-reflective and seventeen as quasi-reflective. Independent-samples t-tests on students’ participatory statistics in KF show that quasi-reflective students’ usage of two metacognitive-oriented KF features, scaffolds and note revision, were significantly more frequent than pre-reflective students (p<=.05). Four qualitative indicators for RJ were developed to assess epistemic properties of all written notes students contributed on KF: purpose of the note, type of query raised, structure of claims, and basis for justification. The first two reflect disposition and the other two reflect argumentative rigor of a note. No statistically significant difference in the mean of epistemic properties contributed by students at different RJ levels was found. In average, students are disposed towards contributing argumentative notes and raise explanatory questions in the online collaborative discourse. Furthermore, student’s contributions are mainly justified on idiosyncratic basis. The study further investigates whether individual’s EC seeking notes in threads reflects his/her beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge, and how EC seeking affects ideas progression. Qualitative analysis of threads show students sought EC on ideas and the inquiry process through raising concerns about contextual issues, challenging causal views, task-space evaluation, and methodological evaluation. In many threads analyzed quasi-reflective students were the initiator of EC seeking. They are also active contributors of argumentative build-ons that contribute towards changes in view among peers. Independent-samples t-tests suggest that quasi-reflective students have contributed significantly more notes that sought EC about contextual issues than pre-reflective students (p=.016). To conclude, epistemic properties of notes contributed and individual’s EC seeking acts provide preliminary evidence to support the notion that RJ and individual’s beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge influence engagement and ideas progression in CSCL. Further studies on using developmental PE theories to study learner’s beliefs and engagement in KB discourse are recommended. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Under the trend of ICT implementation in education, students’ learning becomes highly reliant on ICT. A student will thus suffer in his / her learning process if he / she lacks the chance of using ICT at home. This is what a divide in student’s learning is. As the occurrence of this divide is due to digital ICT devices and its effect is focussed on students’ academic performance, such divide is termed as digital divide in education (DDE). To bridge this divide, most governments around the world have spent a lot purchasing hardware for schools and even assisting students from low income families to have computers at home. The divide, however, still persists. Nowadays, almost all students have the chance to use ICT. If a student is skilful in using ICT, he / she can learn more effectively by searching useful materials on the Internet. Otherwise, the student may lose his / her learning path. Thus there is a divide in learning between the skilled and unskilled students using ICT. In addition to the learning-related usages, recent studies showed that most students mainly use ICT to play games or for social communication. The divide in learning still exists and shifts to the difference between the students who use ICT for their learning and those who mainly use ICT for other purposes. Moreover, even some of the students using ICT for their studies, such as doing assignments, may use it inappropriately for copying and reassembling materials from the Internet as their assignments for submission. Such surely impedes their learning. The divide in learning then extends to whether students use ICT appropriately. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of DDE on students learning in terms of four facets: the chance of using ICT (access disparity), the skilfulness in using ICT (skill disparity), the ways in using ICT (usage disparity), and the appropriateness of using ICT (ethical disparity). The objective is three-fold. The first one is to examine whether the four facets of DDE affect students’ academic performance, the second one is to investigate whether the four facets are interrelated, and the third one is to explore the factors contributing to the four facets empirically. After reviewing various literatures, the potential factors are categorised into three groups: students’ personal factors, environmental factors, and ethics-related factors. A survey has been conducted to achieve the objective. A pilot test was carried out first to check the reliability and validity of the designed questionnaire. 825 valid responses were obtained from a set of random samples taken from Secondary 2 students in Hong Kong. Statistical methods are employed for investigating the relationship between the four facets and also the factors of each facet. The analysis results indicate that the latter three facets are the main constituents of DDE, significantly affecting students’ academic performance. The facets are also interrelated in a sequence. There is a significant effect of skill disparity on the other two disparities, and there is also a significant effect of usage disparity on ethical disparity. A number of key factors were also found for the facets, including students’ gender, SES, ICT experience, and also their parents’ parenting styles and ICT abilities. Their peers’ behaviour also plays an important role in affecting their appropriateness of using ICT. A number of policy implications are then proposed according to the results, in terms of financing approach of government (e.g. direct subsidy scheme), revision of curriculum, and enhancement of parenting skills. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Computer Science and Information Systems / Master / Master of Philosophy

The application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is changing the organization and delivery methods of higher education. The pedagogical and socio-economic forces which have driven higher learning institutions to adopt and incorporate ICTs in teaching and learning include greater information access and better communication and learning. ICTs are being used to support pedagogic practices that provide learning environments that are more learner, knowledge and assessment-centered. Universities are thus responding to the many changes and adjusting to new demands and advancements through the incorporation of ICTs into the various aspects of their operations. In light of the above, a study to investigate the use of ICTs for teaching and learning by academic staff and postgraduate students in the Social Science Schools of the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences (HDSS) of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg, was carried out. The study's conceptual framework was drawn from Vygotsky's constructivist theory of learning which suggests that learning is achieved by the active construction of knowledge supported by various perspectives within meaningful contexts. Such meaningful contexts include the use of ICTs as tools that facilitate constructivist teaching and learning. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. The former was served by the use of a survey. Two questionnaires (one for academic staff and the other for students), administered by the researcher, were used as the main data collection tools. The questionnaires contained both closed and open-ended questions. In addition to the questionnaires, a focus group interview for postgraduate students was used to collect qualitative data. To increase the reliability and validity of the data collection tools, the researcher pre-tested the questionnaires before final distribution to the study population. Sampling followed a simple random stratified method for the survey and purposive sampling for the focus group interview. The target population for the study was academic staff and postgraduate students selected from the Faculty of HDSS. A total of 173 postgraduate students responded which yielded a response rate of 92% and all 53 academic staff responded which yielded a response rate of 100% for the academic staff. Data from the survey questionnaires was analyzed using SPSS® version 15.0 for Windows. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the open ended questions obtained from the focus group interview. The findings indicated that a majority of academic staff and postgraduate students used ICTs for teaching and learning. Furthermore, the study identified various ICT hardware and software which were available at UKZN for teaching and learning and whether staff and students used these ICTs to support their teaching and learning. The study’s findings showed that a number of problems were experienced when using the ICTs for teaching and learning. The top three problems experienced were insufficient numbers of computers; slow network connections and poor support from the technical staff. Apart from the problems encountered when using ICTs for teaching and learning there were benefits to using the ICTs such as: ICTs facilitated communication and simplified interaction between academics and students: accessibility to learning materials was improved for students while academics considered that ICTs improved student’s skills. Lectures that could be delivered online were a positive benefit for academics. Furthermore, ICTs had enabled students to use computers more effectively to support their learning. Recommendations and suggestions to improve the use of ICTs for teaching and learning in general were made by the academic staff and the postgraduate students with regard to the findings and the literature reviewed. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

Despite the growth in the size and acceptance of distance education, there have been persistent criticisms of this form of education because it often fails to provide for interaction among students and between students and instructors. Without this, it is suggested, distance education can only be an inferior imitation of the best face-to-face education because learners are unable to clarify and challenge assumptions and to construct meaning through dialogue. Some critics believe distance education's inability to reproduce a critical dialogue among students and between students and instructor can be addressed through the use of two-way communication technologies such as text-based, asynchronous (i.e., not in real time) computer conferencing. Appropriately-designed computer conferencing, it is argued, will facilitate interaction among students and between the instructor and students thus making distance education more appropriate for the higher-level cognitive goals of college and university education. At the same time, using this' technology will retain the flexibility of time and place-independence that is characteristic of distance education. The literature on educational computer conferencing is replete with references to its potential to create a new paradigm of education characterized by interactive group knowledge-building and critical thinking, but there are few empirical studies that have substantiated this view. Little is known about how and why learners participate and what factors may affect their participation. Similarly there has been little empirical study of the quality of computer conferencing interaction. This case study of a university-level course delivered by computer conferencing was designed to address these issues. It was guided by two purposes: 1) to determine whether the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of participation in this online course were consistent with key aspects of the new paradigm of networked learning as articulated in the literature, that is, if students were actively participating, building on each others contributions and thinking critically about the discussion topics; and 2) to determine what factors affected student participation and critical thinking. The results of this study suggest that some of the claims about the potential of this technology to transform conventional and distance education may be overstated. The emergence of a dynamic and interactive educational process that facilitates critical thinking was shown to be contingent on a variety of factors. The results suggest, however, that with the appropriate course design, instructor interventions, content, and students, computer conferencing can be used for these purposes and should be given serious consideration by distance educators as a way of facilitating interaction and critical thinking in distance education.

Technology availability is quite often mistaken for technology adoption and use. In the White Paper on E-Education, launched by the South African National Department of Education, the government has indicated its intention to ensure that every school has access to a wide choice of diverse, high quality communication services which will benefit all learners and local communities. It is important that the National Department of Education recognizes that, regardless of the amount of technology and its sophistication, technology will not be used unless educators have the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to infuse it into the curriculum. The study focused on educator preparedness to integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT) into the curriculum. The findings of the study suggest that educators have positive attitudes towards ICT integration in education. One strong predictor of educators' attitudes towards ICT integration was computer attributes followed closely by cultural perceptions and, to a limited extent, by computer competence. Educator attitudes were also predicted by constructs extracted from the different Information Systems (IS) model/theories for technology adoption. The strongest construct to predict educators' attitudes toward ICT integration was extrinsic motivation followed by perceived usefulness, complexity, perceived behavioural control and relative advantage. The results point to the importance of educators' vision of technology itself, their experiences with it, their perceived computer competence, and the cultural conditions that surround its introduction into schools in shaping their attitudes towards technology and its subsequent diffusion into their educational practice. A combination of the different constructs from the IS models/theories was able to account for as much as 83% of the variance in educator attitudes toward technology and thus technology adoption. This is a significant result since most previous research has only been able to account for between 17% and 69% (Venkatesh et a!., 2003) of the variance in user intentions to use technology. These constructs (the strong predictors) were grouped to form a new model which is proposed for predicting educator technology adoption. Further, Perceptual Control Theory was used as a framework for understanding educator adoption of technology. This framework considers educators' use of technology by examining the goals of educators and how the use of technology might help or hinder their goals. Educator lack of computer competence is a major challenge for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, and an immediate plan of action is required that will address this through educator professional development. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.