Hanni Muukkonen

Students' skills and practices of using ICT: results of a national assessment in Finland

Abstract The purpose of the study was to investigate Finnish elementary and high school students’ skills and practices of using the new information and communication technologies (ICT). Beliefs about the importance of ICT were also assessed. Five hundred and fifteen students responded to a self-report questionnaire. The students attended 25 schools that used ICT intensively and represented all provinces of Finland. From the analysis, there emerged three factors that represented these students’ relationships to ICT. Characteristic of the first factor was a belief that computer supported learning makes learning more meaningful and encourages one to make more efforts to study. Self-reported competence in using ICT was strongly loaded on the second factor, together with intensive reported use of ICT at home as well as networking with expert cultures and coaching of other people to improve their ICT skills. The third factor represented intensity of using ICT at school and appears to be determined more by the availability of equipment and the extent to which ICT is used in the school than by a student’s expertise in ICT.

Collaborative technology for facilitating progressive inquiry: future learning environment tools

The design of a web-based, networked learning environment, Future Learning Environment (FLE-Tools) embodies a model of progressive inquiry. In this paper, we introduce the progressive inquiry model and describe how different modules of FLE-Tools are designed to facilitate participation in this kind of inquiry. Results of a pilot experiment of using FLE-Tools in higher education are presented. The study was based on an analysis of 125 messages posted by thirteen university students to the FLE-Tools database. The results indicated that the course provided positive evidence for an integration of progressive inquiry and online discussion. The pedagogical and design challenges with which we are currently struggling are discussed.

Exploring Metaskills of Knowledge-Creating Inquiry in Higher Education.

The skills of knowledge-creating inquiry are explored as a challenge for higher education. The knowledge-creation approach to learning provides a theoretical tool for addressing them: In addition to the individual and social aspects in regulation of inquiry, the knowledge-creation approach focuses on aspects related to advancing shared objects of inquiry. The development of corresponding metaskills is suggested as an important long-term goal for higher education; these pertain, simultaneously to the individual, collective, and object-oriented aspects of monitoring inquiry. Taking part in collaborative inquiry toward advancing a shared knowledge object is foreseen as a means to facilitate the development of metaskills; the present study examines one undergraduate university course in psychology with that aim. The data consisted of a database discourse and students’ self-reflections after the course, examined by qualitative content analysis. Three analyses investigated discourse evolution, knowledge advancement, and the challenge of the inquiry practices. The student-groups differed markedly in their engagement in the inquiry efforts. The study gave insights concerning novel challenges evoked by knowledge-creating inquiry, relating in particular to commitment, epistemic involvement, dealing with confusion, and the iterative nature of knowledge advancement. We propose the following implication for educational practices: Although dealing with uncertainty and areas beyond one’s expertise, as well as engaging in self-directed collaborative inquiry, may seem overly demanding for students, such experiences are decisive for developing one’s skills in dealing with open-ended knowledge objects in a longer time frame.

Computer Support for Collaborative Designing

The purpose of the present study was to examine how collaborative designing could be facilitated by a new generation networked learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE-Tools) and to analyze whether and how students working in the environment were able to share their design process. The study was carried out by analyzing qualitatively knowledge posted to FLE-Tools’ database by three courses of first-year textile students (N = 34) who were engaged in a collaborative design project that focused on designing clothing for prematurely born babies. The study indicated that designing in the network environment facilitated engagement of expert-like designing in a sense of supporting specification of constraints related to designing clothing to premature neonates through in-depth problem structuring and search of new information. A design challenge of FLE-Tools is to provide more effective tools for collaborative work with visual sketches as well as developing tools and practices that would help to share knowledge emerging not only in the conceptual but also during the actual manufacturing phase of designing.

Patterns of Scaffolding in Computer-Mediated Collaborative Inquiry.

There is wide agreement on the importance of scaffolding for student learning. Yet, models of individual and face‐to‐face scaffolding are not necessarily applicable to educational settings in which a group of learners is pursuing a process of inquiry mediated by technology. The scaffolding needed for such a process may be examined from three perspectives: the organization of activities, the affordances of tools, and process‐level guidance. The purpose of the present study was to assess three tutors’ contributions to university students’ computer‐mediated discourse organized as a question‐driven inquiry process. In all, 17 students participated in the discourse as part of their studies in a cognitive psychology course. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to investigate critical patterns and possible effects of the tutors’ process‐level scaffolding. During the process, the more experienced tutors acted as meta‐level commentators, whereas the less experienced tutor participated in the inquiry as a co‐inquirer who also produced inquiry questions. More elaborate scaffolding to foster students’ metacognitive awareness of the inquiry strategies was generally lacking in all three tutors’ data. Implications for pedagogical improvement in collaborative, computer‐supported educational settings are discussed.

Collaborative Designing in a Networked Learning Environment

The purpose of the present exploratory study was to analyse how university students’ collaborative design process may be supported by a networked learning environment. Designing is generally considered to be a form of complex, problem solving (Goel and Pirolli, 1992; Goel, 1995). Designing is an iterative process by nature; i.e., design solutions emerge gradually as a process of structuring and restructuring, composing and decomposing the problem, defining and redefining constraints of designing, and generating and testing design solutions (Akin, 1986; Goel, 1995). Design constraints form the design context by defining, for example, the intended users and their special needs for the artefact, and the function of the artefact. Further, designing may be conceptualised as a process of searching through two problem spaces, i.e., composition space (visual designing) and construction space (technical designing) (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, 1997; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and Hakkarainen, in press a). The visual and technical elements involved in designing must be considered and related to each other, within the constraints of the project in order to create a functional and aesthetic solution. Cognitive research on expertise indicates that novices tend to generate problem solutions without engaging in extensive problem structuring whereas experts focus on structuring and restructuring the problem space before proposing solutions (Glaser and Chi, 1988).

Knowledge Creating Inquiry In a Distributed Project-Management Course

The investigation examined how to simulate practices of distributed, partially virtual teamwork in higher education. A course was designed to engage ten teams in producing solutions to complex problems, similar to that in knowledge work. The teams researched and prepared final reports and project presentations (shared objects) based on assignments from two customers. The course design provided templates and communication structures, but the teams needed to self-organize in order to carry out their own goals. Two analyses examined how the arranged project promoted practices of distributed, hybrid knowledge work and how the students coped with the knowledge creation challenge. Based on the team interviews half-way through the course, the students were confused and even distressed with the open-ended assignment. At the end of the course, their self-reflections revealed a change to more positive appraisals of the assignment. It was concluded that there were two types of practices involved, project work and inquiry, which might be best supported with different types of scaffolding, the first pragmatic or structural and the latter epistemic. This course presents an example of how workplace practices can be modeled for education, but also points to needs for scaffolding challenging team processes.

Using Trialogical Design Principles to Assess Pedagogical Practices in Two Higher Education Courses

Design-based research has become a popular methodology in educational research because it provides results that can explicitly be applied to inform pedagogical practice, unlike surveys or experimental studies conducted in controlled laboratory settings (Brown, 1992; Edelson, 2002). One basic aspect of design-based research emphasised by many researchers is that it combines empirical research and theorydriven design of educational settings, aiming to understand how to assess and improve pedagogical practices in authentic contexts, and simultaneously develop the theories further (Bell et al., 2004; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003).

A Product Development Course as a Pedagogical Setting for Multidisciplinary Professional Learning

New product development (NPD) is a relatively recent discipline that concerns the management of new product introductions (Lantos, Brady & McCaskey, 2009). Over recent years, it has motivated pedagogical innovation in the training of new product development professionals (Ettlie, 2002; Lovejoy & Srinivasan, 2002; Pun, Yam & Sun, 2003; Shekar, 2007; Silvester, Durgee, McDermott & Veryzer, 2002). However, according to Lantos, Brady and McCaskey (2009), only nine percent of the 407 institutions with undergraduate business training programs in USA included in their study offered NPD courses.

Introducing Collaborative Practices to Undergraduate Studies

The changes in software industry and software development methods call for appropriate teaching methods in academia. In addition to theoretical knowledge and coding practice, familiarity with common practices in the industry is expected from the graduates. Teamwork, collaboration and communication skills are essential demands for software engineers. These skills take years to develop, and therefore, this study presents how collaborative practices were introduced right in the beginning of information technology studies. The results of project based courses were encouraging in terms of student achievements and course completion rates. Additionally, feedback from students through an extensive survey was largely positive.