This thesis documents the action research study done to investigate the perceived challenges and benefits of a project-based language learning (PBLL) approach in a high school Spanish classroom. The research involved four high school Spanish 3 classes taught by the same teacher. Two classes formed an experimental group and were taught one thematic unit using a PBLL approach, while the other two classes formed the control group and were taught by the same approach that had been used the rest of the year. Two of the objectives of the study were to see how the PBLL approach affected the achievement and writing performance of the experimental group and how the students liked it in comparison to the teaching approach that had been used in the other units during the school year. The third objective was to identify effective steps in setting up project-based language learning in a high school classroom and its possible obstacles. The results from this study found that a PBLL approach possibly affected achievement in grammar in vocabulary from the pre-test to the post-test, but that the writing performance was unaffected. In this thesis, steps to setting up a PBLL unit are documented as well as possible obstacles. The thesis concludes with suggestions for overcoming these obstacles and for further research and collaboration in setting up PBLL units.

Abstract The prupose of theis study is to prove into the teaching model of integrating information technology into Project-based Science Learning designed by the researcher. We will discuss how information technology assists teachers and students to ¡§teach¡¨ and ¡§learn¡¨ through developing curriculum module and teaching activities. Teacher analyze that how students decided team¡¦s research topic, and the problems they met and solution to them by learning journal, observation reports, teacher¡¦s journal, self-checking list and surveys. Then, to criticism the possibility of carrying out Project-based Learning through teachers¡¦ reflection, students¡¦ feeling, and parents¡¦ reaction.The final conclusions are as follows: 1.The Project-based Science Learning model of this research is suitable for 5th and 6th graders. 2.Promoting Project-based Science Learning can develop students¡¦ interests toward science research, open students¡¦ spirits of thinking automatically and solving problems through cooperation, and make students apply their experience in their lives. 3.Third, the practice of Project-based Science curriculum can make students easier to understand the preparations, process, and its final results, to reverse students¡¦ the vary first thoughts about ¡§doing research is difficult¡¨, to stimulate their abilities of creative thinking, and to apply students more concrete postmortem index and strategies while choosing topics. 4.In the curriculum, information technology is mainly applied into three parts, including collecting research topics and information, discussing research process, and sharing and showing research results. Applying class website message board can make up the disadvantage of arranging meeting time, and be the bridge for teachers and students to provide sources of information, transmit messages, discuss problems and solutions, exhibit the result of experiment, and write research papers and so on. It is the most useful information technology application for students. 5.Teachers, students, and parents all agree project-based science learning with highly support.

This study examines elementary school students&rsquo / project-based learning (PBL) experiences through Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). The purpose of the study is to explore whether the use of computer-mediated communication tools in a project-based collaborative learning process enhances 5th grade students&rsquo / attitudes toward computer and computer class within an online supported environment, analyze the level of learners&rsquo / satisfaction about the project-based collaborative learning through CMC, and examine students&rsquo / perceptions of their social presence and how effective social presence is as a predictor of overall students&rsquo / satisfaction. The sample of this study is included 36 5th grade students of two private schools in Ankara and Nisde, and convenience and purposeful sampling methods were used. At the beginning of the study, subjects were given the Computer Attitude Scale to measure their attitudes toward computers. At the end of the study, participants were given the CAS again to measure their attitudes toward computers, satisfaction scale and social presence scale. The results indicated that the students&rsquo / attitudes toward computer did not change from the beginning to the end of the study. However, evidence suggests a positive response by students to the use of CMC in the project-based collaborative learning environment. Majority of the students were satisfied with the learning experience they had in the project-based collaborative learning environment through CMC. Moreover, although results on perceived social presence were low, students tried to develop an online community throughout the project. This study also showed that social presence was a strong predictor of satisfaction in a PBCL environment.

Project-based Language Learning (PBLL) provides students with opportunities to use the target language purposefully and to interact with culturally authentic materials. Because PBLL holds critical benefits for its students, it is important that teachers learn best practices for implementation and how to overcome the challenges that PBLL brings. This study focuses on the experiences of 15 world language teachers as they participated in a PBLL professional development series developed by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Findings from this study are based on data gathered from surveys and interviews with a diverse group of educators for the purpose of gaining an understanding of what participants learned and the activities that impacted learning of PBLL. Results show that learning about gold standard elements of PBLL made the biggest impact on participants' pedagogical beliefs and motivated them to change their practice. Activities that positively impacted learning were those that were active, social, and related to practice. Participants were overwhelmed with the amount of content and needed help making connections between the content and their teaching contexts. Overall, participants' experiences in the professional development series led to a change in pedagogical beliefs and a desire to alter their implementation of PBLL.

The academic benefits and enhanced social responsibility that students derive from service-learning (SL), defined as experiential learning that ties community service to academic courses, have been well documented. However, for a college to fully institutionalize SL, a high proportion of faculty needs to include SL in their courses. Based in Kolb's experiential learning theory, the purpose of this study was to enhance planners' understanding of how college faculty's past experiences assigning SL influence their inclination to assign SL in future courses. In this basic qualitative interpretive study, data were collected from 13 individual interviews with faculty who assigned SL at a Southern metropolitan university. Findings were interpreted using Chickering's 7 vectors of student development from the conceptual framework and other relevant perspectives from the literature. One of the major themes from emergent coding of data was that faculty viewed some difficulties as challenges to be overcome rather than as deterrents to using SL. To reduce deterrents, institutions could compensate for extra time required for SL by providing stipends, released time, and support databases; recognizing SL in tenure and promotion; and helping faculty brainstorm how to incorporate SL into courses. To increase incentives to use SL, institutions could provide a full range of training and support for faculty. More courses with SL, besides increasing benefits of SL for all stakeholders, may mean that students form the habit of serving in the community and continue serving and contributing to positive social change, perhaps for a lifetime.

Pour rester concurrentiel et faire face à la complexité du développement des systèmes complexes, il est nécessaire d’avoir de bons ingénieurs système expérimentés sur le marché. De ce fait, Les ingénieurs système ainsi que les enseignants-chercheurs doivent mettre en place des stratégies et des méthodologies didactiques pour préparer les futurs ingénieurs systèmes. L’idée est d’assurer aux étudiants ingénieurs une préparation approfondie à l’ingénierie système (IS) et un savoir-faire quasi-professionnel fondés sur des expériences pratiques. Cette thèse répond à la nécessité de l’évaluation des étudiants, dans l’optique de vérifier leur maîtrise des processus du développement d’un système complexe tout le long de son cycle de vie. Nous nous intéressons particulièrement au problème de l’évaluation des connaissances acquises des apprenants lors de l’apprentissage actif de l’IS dans un environnement E-learning collaboratif en se fondant sur l’approche d’acquisition de connaissances. Pour cela, nous avons élaboré et mis en œuvre nos travaux de recherche dans le cadre d’une démarche d’E-apprentissage par projet, approche pédagogique qui facilite l’apprentissage en ligne de l’IS basé sur des projets. Dans ce contexte, nous avons décidé de piloter notre environnement Eapprentissage par des projets initiés à partir des processus normalisés en IS. Nous avons également guidé la formalisation de ces processus standardisés par l’intégration des modèles de compétences d’IS afin de soutenir le développement professionnel d’un système. Lors de la phase d’apprentissage, différents étudiants collaborent à distance. Ce partage d’information est fondé généralement sur des échanges formels ou informels. L’intérêt de l’acquisition de ces connaissances, issues des compte-rendus écrits, des retours d’expérience et des erreurs rectifiées, est d’aider à étudier et évaluer les expériences et les activités des étudiants pour favoriser l’apprentissage actif et collaboratif de l’IS. Notre proposition est une solution permettant l’évaluation des connaissances acquises fondée sur des outils sémantiques. La solution s’adresse aux étudiants et aux enseignants de la plateforme. D’une part, elle permet le suivi et l’évaluation des étudiants d’une manière intelligente et d’autre part, elle permet l’accompagnement de l’enseignant lors de la définition de son projet. Tout d’abord, nous présentons une méthode d’évaluation mixte qui combine le raisonnement à partir de cas et le processmining afin de fournir des représentations visuelles qui aident l’enseignant dans son processus d’évaluation ainsi que la définition de son scénario d’apprentissage. Nous exploitons des techniques d’analyse de réseaux sociaux pour étudier les interactions des apprenants. Ensuite, nous proposons un processus d’annotation sémantique des travaux des étudiants. Le processus a pour but de guider l’enseignant dans son processus d’évaluation. De plus, afin d’enrichir la mise en œuvre de l’évaluation des connaissances, nous introduisons le concept d’évaluation par les pairs afin de promouvoir la réflexivité et la confiance en soi de l’apprenant. Enfin, les différentes contributions sont illustrées au moyen d’une étude de cas. A la lumière de cette étude de cas, nous avons montré que les hypothèses de recherche sont valides. / To remain competitive and to deal with the complexities of developing complex systems, it is necessary to have skilled and experienced system engineers on the labor market. As a result, system engineers, teachers and researchers must put in place strategies and didactic methodologies to prepare future systems engineers. The idea is to ensure engineering students with depth preparation for system engineering (SE) and a quasiprofessional expertise based on practical experiences. This thesis meets the need for student evaluation, to verify their knowledge of the processes of developing a complex system throughout its lifecycle. We are particularly interested in the problem of evaluating the knowledge acquired by learners during the active learning of the SE in a collaborative Elearning environment based on the knowledge acquisition approach. For this, we have developed and implemented our research as part of an E-learning project approach. This is a pedagogical approach that facilitates online learning of SE based on projects. We decided to pilot our E-learning environment with projects initiated from standard SE processes. We also conducted a formalization of these standardized processes by integrating SE competencies models to support the professional development of a system. During the learning phase, different students collaborate remotely. This sharing of information is generally based on formal or informal exchanges. The interest of the acquisition of this knowledge, resulting from written reports, feedback and rectified errors, is to help study and evaluate the experiences and activities of students to promote active learning and collaboration of the SE. Our proposal is a solution for the evaluation of acquired knowledge based on semantic tools. The solution is addressed to students and teachers of the platform. On the one side, it allows the monitoring and evaluation of students in an intelligent way. On the other side, it allows to support the teacher during the definition of his project. First, we present a mixed assessment method that combines reasoning from cases and process-mining to provide visual representations that help the teacher in his assessment process as well as the definition of his learning scenario. We use social network analysis techniques to study learner interactions. Then, we propose a semantic annotation process of student works. The purpose of this process is to guide the teacher in his assessment process. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of peer review in order to promote the reflexivity and self-confidence of learner. Finally, the different contributions are illustrated by a case study. Based on this case study, we show that the research hypotheses are valid.