Leila A. Mills

LEARNING AND TEACHING AS COMMUNICATIVE ACTIONS: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING

Transmedia – a single experience that spans across multiple forms of media – is still a new media in the educational landscape and therefore may pose a challenge to educators wanting to create opportunities for interactive media communications in their classrooms. In this chapter, we share an instance in which a university professor introduced transmedia to support graduate student learning to encourage inquiry, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, contemplation, and critical discourses. Further, we examine how two of the graduate students took their learning a step further by designing and creating a model transmedia lesson tailored for the 6th grade Social Studies classroom. This chapter provides a theoretical framework within which transmedia may be used: Learning and teaching as communicative actions theory – LTCA.

Learning with Social Media: Measurement Tools for Understanding Information Behavior in Technology Pervasive Environments of the 21st Century

This research reports findings from a study on information behavior for technology pervasive information environments in the 21st century. Social media users (n=147) completed an online Learning Preference survey battery that included the Social Media Learning (SML) scale, the Technology Affinity Survey (TAS), the Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ), and the Information and Communications Technology Learning (ICTL) survey. Findings revealed that 23% of the variance in information seeking behavior, as measured by the Information and Communications Technology Learning survey, can be explained by a linear regression model including the SML scale, creativity and school attitude scales (CAQ), and TAS. Participants with higher ICTL scores for Information Seeking had greater preference for learning with social media, more positive attitudes toward school, higher self-reported creative tendencies, and lower preferences for immersive/always-on attachments to, or affinity for, modern information and communication technologies. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.

Collaboration, multi-tasking and problem solving performance in shared virtual spaces

Collaborative problem-solving is often not a sequential process; instead, it can involve tasking switching or dual tasking (i.e., multitasking) activities in that the collaborators need to shift their attention between the targeted problems and the conversations they carry on with their collaborators. It is not known to what extent the multitasking activities increase or decrease collaborators’ problem-solving performance. This current paper examined collaborative problem solving in shared virtual spaces. The main question asked was: How do collaboration and performance differ between collaborative problem solvers in multitasking and single-tasking conditions over time? We hypothesized that (1) there is a relationship between multitasking, collaboration, and problem solving performance; and that (2) collaboration is positively related to the overall problem solving performance. A total of 104 university students (63 female and 41 male) participated in this experimental study. Participants were randomly assigned to four different experimental conditions: individual and multi-tasking, collaborative and multi-tasking, individual and single-tasking, and collaborative and single-tasking. Results showed that the participants who collaborated and had multi-tasking activities outperformed the others. Additionally, collaboration helped to improve overall problem solving performance over time. The study offers insights for collaborative learning from both theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Student-Driven Classroom Technologies: Transmedia Navigation and Tranformative Communications.

This research explores middle school students’ attitudes toward learning with technology and proposes a design-based approach to formulating instruction that includes innovative classroom technology use with computers and communications technologies placed in the hands of students. The intent of this study was to inform practice and theory on sustainable, student-driven use of information and communications technology (ICT) that goes beyond the implementation of school technologies for word processing, delivery of lessons, and data processing. The focus of the recommended approach is teaching and learning that provides classroom opportunities for discourse and student choice in the selection of traditional and technology-based media for transmedia navigation. The authors contend that transmedia navigation will create avenues for classroom innovation and encourage students to think, interact with instructional content, and engage in transformative communications.

How Do High School Students Prefer to Learn

Learning preference among a group of high school students was examined in order to determine how students feel about options for learning within the integrated communications technology-mediated spaces of our time. Learning preference is presented as student-chosen learning and a way to examine student attitudes, within the affective and cognitive domains of learning outcomes. Learning preferences, specifically student attitudes and feelings, are neglected yet important aspect of learning. One specific student learning preference examined in this study was choice of learning mode by degree of technology applied, ranging from learning in Internet spaces via online interactions to learning in the more traditional classroom setting. Students’ information behavior was also examined in relation to the information search theory, to gain insight on how students focus their activities in Internet virtual learning spaces. The Information Communications Technology Learning (ICTL) survey was used to examine differences in high school students’ information behavior for seeking and sharing information. A total of 88 students, from a predominantly African American high school in the southern United States, participated in the study. The major questions asked were: Can we identify trends in student-chosen learning preference for learning with technology by gender and is there a relationship between information behavior and students’ choice of STEM academic major? Findings revealed that high school girls and students with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) interest preferred learning in a traditional classroom setting.