Kathy L. Schuh

Native and Non-Native Speakers in Online and Face-to-Face Discussions: Leveling the Playing Field

This study investigated the role of native language in the context of online versus face-to-face learning environments. Findings from a mixed-methods analysis revealed that native language was a factor in distinguishing among the learning opportunities in these two classes. Data for the online course were 10 archived asynchronous discussions on its threaded bulletin board. Data for the face-to-face course were verbatim transcripts of audio-taped recordings made during 10 of the 15 class sessions. Non-native speakers were more passive in the face-to-face classroom leaving the native speakers to assume leadership characteristics. In the online environments, non-native speakers and native speakers participated more equally in the discussion. Findings suggested that difficulties experienced by non-native speakers during impromptu face-to-face discussions may be alleviated given more opportunities and time for reflective articulation.

Facilitating adoption of an interactive e-textbook among university students in a large, introductory biology course

E-textbooks are more prevalent in college courses, but much recent research still shows that students prefer paper textbooks and have difficulty regulating their learning with digital course materials. Still, college instructors—especially in lower-division STEM courses—often adopt digital course materials with e-textbooks that include a variety of metacognitive supports that students may not use. The purpose of this study was to test whether an intervention that drew upon the principles of the Technology Acceptance Model could facilitate better adoption of an interactive e-textbook in a large, introductory biology course. Participants included 239 undergraduate students from laboratory sections that were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. The treatment group viewed a video detailing the most beneficial ways to interact with an e-textbook. A pre- and post-test were administered to the participants in both groups. The treatment group had higher overall satisfaction, on average, with the e-textbook than the control group but did not report using the interactive tools more often. The implications for instruction with digital course materials are discussed.

Middle Grades Students' Situation Definitions: Development of a Knowledge-Linking Inventory.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to develop the Student Knowledge Linking Instrument (SKLI), an inventory for middle grades students that seeks to understand student knowledge construction processes. This study included 461 fifth and sixth grade students and follows from a series of qualitative studies that were used as a foundation for development of the SKLI. The SKLI captures student knowledge linking through student responses to brief reading passages and is proposed to capture the students’ situation definition (Wertsch, 1985), specifically their initial links with the information. Eight student linking profiles emerged from these students’ data, with students on one end of the spectrum drawing on surface characteristics of the text in their linking, while others used more elaborative links that indicated a depth of processing. These profiles were hypothesized to be developmentally ordered, supported by an increase in elaborative links for some sixth grade students in this group.

What Do They Link

This chapter introduces the first two upper-elementary classrooms: the students in Mrs. Olson ’s classroom studying a number of topics in social studies and the students in Mr. Jackson ’s classroom who were studying the Roman Empire and engaging in a note-taking process. Structural descriptions of prior knowledge, including Piaget ’s schemes, information-processing schema and semantic networks, provide a foundation to compare how the Mind as Rhizome metaphor prompts for understanding elements of students’ knowledge that might vary given individual experiences and may even be labeled as misconceptions. The chapter concludes with an introduction to semiotics , which provides a description of how the linking process works as it does.

How Are School Content and What the Students Link Related

The students in Mr. Ritter ’s classroom are introduced with a discussion about current events facilitated by newspaper reading. The relationship between the elements of the students’ prior learning and the new learning are described as being by example, by shared characteristics, spanning time (now-and-then), and spanning location (here-and-there), noting analogous links. Here-and-there links are illustrated through an extended example of Mr. Ritter ’s introduction to their unit on expository writing about the culture of China.

Of What Value Are Student Links

The research on generative learning and depth of processing provides grounding for considering the value of the links that students make as potential for learning—the focus of this chapter. First, three levels of links indicating their value to potential learning are described. Then, results of a quantitative study that followed the cases described in this book point to relationships among characteristics of the learning environments, students’ perceptions of their strategies to link, and achievement. These findings are woven with existing research on particular learning strategies and the cases reported throughout this book. The chapter concludes with a nod to the importance of students learning to regulate their linking processes; to ignore those surface links that may be a hindrance to learning and use strategies to purposefully explore useful links.

How Is Linking (and Thus Learning) Like Unlimited Semiosis

In this final chapter the linking process of two students’ writings are dissected to indicate how the meaning they shared illustrates a process of unlimited semiosis, grounded in the notion of a semiotics sign system. The trajectory dimension of emotion/affect is used as an illustration of how an element of one’s trajectory may become the next cue, and thus guide the trajectory as it continues. Further discussion of trajectories and how they progress is then supported with a brief discussion of dynamic systems. The chapter concludes with a return to the rhizome metaphor and a summary of the grounded theory .

What Do Students Bring to School

In this chapter, I describe the context and overall trajectory for the studies, including my own trajectory as a teacher, learner, and scholar. Following an excerpt from Ms. Smith’s first-grade classroom, which provides an introductory example to what student knowledge links are, the guiding metaphor for the studies, Mind as Rhizome , is introduced. Characteristics of the rhizome include that it is dynamic, continually growing in dimension, has heterogeneous features in which there is potential for infinite connection among those features, is not necessarily hierarchically organized, but is a continuous interconnected system that cannot be ruptured, has no inside or outside, yet has multiple entrances. This metaphor it set in contrast to the Mind as Computer metaphor.

How Is the Linking Process Prompted

In this chapter the students in Mrs. Chambers ’ sixth-grade class and their study of the biomes are introduced to illustrate the links that students make with sensory cues. These sensory cues were those aural , visual , function , and tactile “things” in the environment that may be part of the object -sign relationship. After an introduction to the students in Mrs. Schneider ’s classroom, who studied the Middle Ages in a 7-week unit, conceptual links are described. Conceptual links in the data set included concrete and abstract concepts, structure, and processes. A structure cue is illustrated through an extended role play example in Mrs. Schneider ’s classroom as she and her students compare the hierarchies that existed in the Middle Ages and the game of chess that many of the students were playing.

What Kinds of School Content and School Contexts Link

In this chapter the final teacher, Mrs. Wilson , is introduced. Mrs. Wilson ’s students participated in studies for two years. These students participated in expository writing projects on the animals of the rainforest and sea mammals. This classroom provided the prompt to begin looking at links that students made with experiences that took place in school. These school-developed links allowed students to link across school years, across different content areas, and across activities that explored the content in different ways. The links that were prominent from the students, rather than those that the teachers made, were those that the students made with the activities in which they engaged in the class, rather than the teacher merely telling the students about the content.