The classroom has become an important focus of educational research because most learning takes place there. The purpose of this study was to examine 8th grade students perception of science classroom environment from constructivist perspective and investigate the association between students perceptions, motivational beliefs and attitudes toward science. In addition in this study the affects of gender difference on students&amp / #8217 / constructivist learning environment, motivation and attitude toward science were investigated. The data in the present study were collected through Turkish version of Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES), Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) from 8th grade students who were in randomly selected from 15 elementary schools in &Ccedil / ankaya, Ankara. A total of 956 students (462 girls, 493 boys and one did not indicate gender) were participated in the study. The data obtained from participants were analyzed by using Canonical Correlation Analyses and Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVA). Results of canonical correlation analyses indicated that all constructivist learning environment variables and all the motivational beliefs variables were positively related with each other. In addition the result of this analysis also showed that all constructivist learning environment variables and attitude variables were positively related with each other. The findings of MANOVA showed that gender had a significant effect on students&amp / #8217 / constructivist learning environment (personal relevance and critical voice), their adaptive motivational beliefs (intrinsic goal orientation, task value, and control of learning beliefs), and their attitude toward science (adaptation to science attitudes, enjoyment of science lesson, leisure interest in science, and career interest in science). Results indicated that girls&amp / #8217 / perceptions of their learning environment, their adaptive motivational beliefs and their attitude toward science were higher than boys.

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Early intervention is important on different levels and must be justified as a social and economic long-term investment. There is no doubt about the importance of early detection when helping children/students in need of support. What kind of support that is deemed suitable and who provides the support can be viewed from different perspectives and with different approaches. Seen from a relational perspective the special education process is a long-term process and affects not only the individual but the whole school culture and systems may need changing. This study intends to describe the importance of the learning environment and what efforts are initiated early for students in need of support from the special education point of view. As part of this, a study of a student health project was made. A triangular method of investigation was used, with document studies, questionnaires and interviews. This has been done in consultation with promoters and linked to the background by previous research but also for active educators and special educators. Although the result showed that the relational perspective is relevant to the work of early intervention in the learning environment, the categorical perspective often is associated with the concept of early intervention, both in theory and practice

Studiens syfte är att förstå hur några skolprojekt har arbetat för att främja skolnärvaro för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Som metod användes kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta informanter i fem kommuner som på något sätt arbetar med skolprojekt med fokus på inkludering och skolfrånvaro. Informanterna som deltog i studien var tre specialpedagoger, en speciallärare, två rektorer, en kurator och en rådgivare från specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten. De fem skolprojekten som informanterna arbetade med, omfattade 137 skolor i Sverige. Ett projekt var inriktat mot det förebyggande arbetet att skapa en tillgänglig skola för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Fyra projekt utgick både från förebyggande insatser och att få tillbaka elever med hög skolfrånvaro till skolan. Resultatet visade på att det behövs mer kunskap om autism för att skapa en skola som är tillgänglig för elever inom autismspektrumtillstånd. Det behövs kartläggning av elevens behov, anpassad lärmiljö och social träning. Stort fokus behöver läggas på skapandet av relation och bemötande av elev och problematik. Projekten har upprättat handlingsplaner för att uppmärksamma skolfrånvaro i ett tidigt skede. På så vis kan orsak till frånvaro snabbare utredas och åtgärdas vilket besparar eleven mycket lidande. Det som genomsyrar arbetet är hur kunskap och samverkan mellan olika samverkanspartner kan främja skolnärvaro. / The study aims to understand how some school project has worked to promote school attendance for students with autism spectrum disorders. The applied method for this study is qualitative interviews and eight people have been interviewed from five different municipalities, all involved in school projects focusing on inclusion and absenteeism. Three of the informants that participated in the study were special pedagogues, one was a specialneeds teacher, two were principals, one was a counselor, and one was an adviser at Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten (The Authority of Special Needs Education). The five projects that the informants were involved in covered 137 schools in Sweden. One of the projects was focused on preventive measures to create a school accessible for students with autism related difficulties. Four projects aimed to both prevent students from being absent from school and for absentees to return to school. The results shows that schools need more knowledge about autism related difficulties in order to create a school that is accessible for these students. First, schools need better routines for assessing students’ needs, second the learning environment in the classroom must be adapted more efficiently for students with autism related difficulties and their needs, and last the students must be given the chance to work on their social skills. The focus must be on building relationships to the students. This in order to meet the students’ needs so that measures taken will be beneficial for the students.The schools in the study have written routines in order to detect absenteeism at an early stamge. These routines aim to identify the reason for absenteeism early on and quickly find measures to support the student and spare them a lot of suffering. Success factors in this work is how knowledge and collaboration between different interaction partners can promote school attendance.

Learners who are novice problem solvers often encounter difficulty when solving complex problems. One explanation for this difficulty is that the cognitive requirements of problem-solving are sufficiently high that learners easily become overwhelmed and frustrated, leading to a state known as cognitive overload in which learning is obstructed. Cognitive Load Theory is concerned with the design of instructional approaches intended to manage the cognitive load required for thinking and problem-solving tasks. Scaffolds are any kind of support that facilitates the accomplishment of a difficult task that a learner would not be able to accomplish on their own. They are potential mechanisms to support students in negotiating the potentially high cognitive load required by complex problem-solving. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of technology-based scaffolds within a problem-based learning environment known as Alien Rescue. The study investigated the impact of scaffolds on cognitive load, problem-solving behaviors, science knowledge, and student perceptions of the learning environment. Participants for this study included sixth grade students from a suburban middle school in the southwestern United States. Student classes were assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (a) a problem constraint condition in which students were guided through a problem-solving process similar to that of an expert, (b) a prompt condition in which students were provided with guiding messages during problem-solving, and (c) a control condition with no scaffolding. All conditions participated in the use of Alien Rescue for three weeks. Measures including a self-report measure of mental effort, calculated instructional efficiency scores, problem solution scores, student activity logs, and science knowledge test performance were used to evaluate students' cognitive load, problem-solving performance, problem-solving strategies, and learning gains. An open-ended questionnaire and student interviews were used to gather data on students' perceptions of the program. Results of the study indicate statistically significant differences between treatment conditions with respect to problem-solving efficiency, student problem-solving behaviors, and scientific knowledge gain. Additionally, qualitative findings highlight problematic aspects of the highly structured condition as implemented within the classroom context while also identifying components of the learning environment that were perceived as helpful and useful to participants. Teacher interviews also provided insight into classroom implementation of the program and opportunities to further enhance scaffolds to support student learning. Implications of the study from research, instructional design, and technology perspectives are discussed along with a treatment of study limitations and opportunities for further research in this area. / text

With the improvement of computer technology and the prevalence of the Internet, learning activities taking place in cyberspace by means of computer-mediated communication have become more common and accessible than even a decade ago. Being interested in how politeness phenomena as universal principles in human interaction played a role in the process of online collaborative learning in a graduate-level course, I conducted a naturalistic inquiry to explore students’ interaction through the lens of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987). I analyzed the exchanges of 18 students divided into four teams with a consideration for such contextual factors as concerns about netiquette, time, modes of online communication, discourse functions, and sense of community. Influenced by the tradition of interpretivist/constructivist research paradigm, I adopted diverse data collection methods and discourse analytical techniques. Data are reported as a case study of a purposefully selected focal team of five students with supporting evidence interweaving multiple data sources (online discussion, self-reflective blog entries, self-report portfolios, peer/self assessments, field notes, videotapes of voice chat sessions, audiotapes of interviews, and online survey responses). Given the context of students being required to work collaboratively as a team throughout the semester, the findings of this study suggested that the focal team used a variety of politeness strategies to establish cohesion among members and to moderate the force imposed by presupposing too much underlying solidarity. Five contextual factors also emerged as influencing the focal team’s use of politeness strategies: norms/convention, online communication medium, topics and content of discussion, social distance, and personal differences. Instructional technology is subject to innovation and is meant to facilitate learning. Incorporating new technology (e.g., Second Life) into instructional settings can create new opportunities for learning on which learners’ use of politeness strategies depends. Thus, this study about politeness in an online collaborative learning context not only contributes to enriching views of politeness theory, but also in being able to help prepare learners to collaborate effectively in new immersive learning environments with comfort in the ways of fostering awareness of face-saving concerns to avoid or redress face threat situations that may damage team collaboration and lead to a negative learning experience. / text

The increased growth of online instruction has been well documented by various studies. As the result of the proliferation of online instruction, students from outside of the United States are now able to obtain an American education without having to leave their home country. While online course designs have been well researched and documented to identify best methods and practices to enable optimum learning achievement, providing online instruction to non-US educated students generates the question of how a culturally diverse student body adapts and/or adjusts to an American-style instruction. The purpose of this study is to conduct an exploratory qualitative research to investigate how students from an Asian learning culture adapt to an American online learning environment and to determine whether the various instructional design theories and practices that are widely accepted as best practices in the United States and incorporated into the instruction designs for this Marketing Management hybrid course are also as well-received by students from a different learning culture. From the five categories emerged from the research data: (1) students’ background, (2) perceived benefits, (3) essential skills, (4) supports expected and/or received, and (5) sense of community, the researcher proposed a framework that encompasses the students’ process of adapting to online learning. Within the process of adapting to online learning, conditions such as students’ backgrounds and expectations influenced the various learning strategies that students adopted in order to realize the benefits from the online learning experience. Information gathered from this study may provide those involved in online education - decision makers in academic, business, and professional organizations considering an overseas online instruction strategy - an added awareness of how different learning cultures may influence the quality of an online learning experience. Additionally, for a specific target audience, this research study may further validate the learner-centered approach for instruction designs. For students who may be contemplating online learning as an option, this study may provide a deeper understanding of what is entailed in an online learning environment - the contributing actors and factors that affect the quality of an online learning experience. / text

Šio darbo tikslas – sukurti naują žinių vertinimo įrankį, skirtą matematinių žinių vertinimui ir jį integruoti į vieną iš populiariausių nuotolinių mokymo aplinkų. Darbe aptariami žinių vertinimo lygiai ir pateikiama keletos virtualių mokymo ir savarankiškų testavimo sistemų teikiami klausimų tipai žinių vertinimui, kiekvienam įvertinant galimą maksimalų žinių įvertinimo lygį. Siekiant sukurti kuo aukštesnio lygio matematinių žinių vertinimo įrankį, aptarta, kokiomis savybėmis jis turi pasižymėti, kokiomis technologijomis jį geriausia realizuoti ir kokiu būdu integruoti į pasirinktą virtualią mokymo sistemą. Darbe taip pat aprašomos problemos, su kuriomis susidurta kuriant naują klausimų tipą „Moodle“ virtualiai mokymo aplinkai, pateikiamas sukurto klausimų tipo veikimo testavimas ir jo naudojimo žinių vertinimui ir panašios paskirties klausimų tipo lyginamasis tyrimas. / The aim of this work is to create a new knowledge testing tool, which would be meant to estimate mathematical knowledge and to be integrated into “Moodle” learning environment. This work describes knowledge levels and shows how high different question types can represent students’ knowledge in virtual learning and independent testing systems. To create a new knowledge testing tool, there are described what functionality it should have, which technology is the most suitable for it and how it should be integrated in virtual learning systems. There is a list of problems which were solved to create the new knowledge testing tool. Also this work represents the results of this tool integration and usage testing. This and analogical tool in “Moodle” comparison research results are represented too.

Det föreligger ett ökat behov av placeringar inom sjuksköterskeutbildningens verksamhetsförlagda utbildning. Syftet med den här interventionsstudien är att kartlägga sjuksköterskestudenters tillfredsställelse med lärandemiljön och handledningen i två olika handledningsmodeller. Interventionsgruppen (IG) handleds i par av en handledare i en studentsal, s.k. peer learning och kontrollgruppen (KG) enligt traditionell handledningsmodell. För datainsamlingen har en validerad enkät, CLES + T (Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher evaluation scale) använts. Data (N = 247) har samlats in från sjuksköterskestudenter i termin 3 och 4 på Ersta Sköndal högskola under tre terminer (VT 2011-Vt 2012). Resultatet visar att båda grupperna generellt är tillfredsställda med lärandemiljön och handledningen. IG upplever en större tillfredsställelse med lärandemiljön än KG. KG upplever generellt en större tillfredsställelse i relationen med handledaren och har fått individuell handledning i större utsträckning än IG. / There is an increasing need for placements in the clinical education of the nursing education. The purpose of this intervention study is to identify nursing students’ satisfaction with the learning environment and the supervision in two different supervision models. The intervention group (IG) is supervised in pairs by a tutor in a student ward, so called peer learning, and the control group (KG) is supervised according to a traditional supervision model. A validated questionnaire, CLES + T (Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher evaluation scale) was used for data collection. Data (N = 247) were collected from nursing students in term 3 and 4 attending Ersta Sköndal högskola during three terms (spring 2011-spring 2012). The results show that both groups are generally satisfied with the learning environment and the supervision. IG is experiencing a greater satisfaction with the learning environment than KG. KG generally experience greater satisfaction in the relationship with the supervisor and received individual supervision to a greater extent than IG.

Nuotolinių aplinkų duomenų bazėse kaupiamas didelis kiekis informacijos apie studentus ir jų veiksmus nuotolinėje aplinkoje. Kad būtų paprasčiau analizuoti šiuos duomenis į pagalbą pasitelkiama duomenų gavyba. Darbo tikslas - sudaryti sistemą, skirtą duomenų, gautų iš virtualios nuotolinio mokymo aplinkos Moodle, pirminiam apdorojimui ir duomenų gavybai. Gautus duomenis ištirti pritaikant programinės įrangos paketo StatSoft STATISTICA 7 duomenų gavybos algoritmus besimokančiųjų mokymosi intensyvumo duomenų analizei. Įvertinus gautus rezultatus parengtos rekomendacijos tolimesnei duomenų analizei. Duomenų analizei pritaikyta klasterinė k-vidurkių analizė. / The databases of virtual learning environments store large quantity of information about students and theirs activity. The data mining is usable to easer analysis of these information. The object of work is to make a system for preprocessing and data mining of data, obtained from virtual learning environment Moodle. The historical learning data can be analysed after preprocessing to study learners learning intensity with data mining algorithms by StatSoft STATISTICA 7 software. k-means cluster analysis was applied as example of data mining of learning data. Recommendations to further application of data mining of learning activities are given, too.