Margus Pedaste

How to Determine the Quality of Students' Reflections?.

This article discusses some of the ambiguities related to the concept of reflection in education, and presents an alternative approach for determining the focus and quality of students’ reflection. Accordingly, the focus of reflection can vary from a concrete technical aspect of an experience to the broader societal context of that experience, and the quality of reflection can be described through successive stages of argumentation: describing, justifying, evaluating and discussion. The developed coding schema for determining the focus and quality of reflection was pilot tested on reflection fragments written by a small sample of tertiary dance students.

Developing an effective support system for inquiry learning in a Web-based environment

Sixty-five teams of basic and secondary school students solved problem-solving tasks during a virtual hike in a Web-based inquiry-learning simulation ‘Hiking Across Estonia’. This environment provided learners with all necessary background information for problem-solving and tools for carrying out experiments. There were 25 tasks in certain order about ecological and environmental issues. The teams were clustered according to the data about participants, the results of the pre- and post-test, and their achievement in problem-solving tasks of the virtual hike. Only two out of five clusters were regarded as effective in solving problems and analysing tables, graphs, figures, and photos. The others had difficulties in forming contextual or task and process awareness. A support system for increasing the effectiveness of inquiry learning and enhancing their development of analytical skills was developed on the basis of the strategies that the members of five clusters had used in solving the problems, their achievement in solving the tasks during the virtual hike and in the pre- and post-test, and the personal data about the teams. The support system contained different notes before solving the problems and changed sequence of the tasks on the virtual hike for some clusters. The usage of this system was evaluated in a second study with 60 teams. The comparison of two studies demonstrated significant effectiveness of the support system to both general problem-solving ability and analytical skills. The characteristics of each cluster and the influence of the support system are discussed in this paper.

Definitions and Conceptual Dimensions of Responsible Research and Innovation: A Literature Review

The aim of this study is to provide a discussion on the definitions and conceptual dimensions of Responsible Research and Innovation based on findings from the literature. In the study, the outcomes of a literature review of 235 RRI-related articles were presented. The articles were selected from the EBSCO and Google Scholar databases regarding the definitions and dimensions of RRI. The results of the study indicated that while administrative definitions were widely quoted in the reviewed literature, they were not substantially further elaborated. Academic definitions were mostly derived from the institutional definitions; however, more empirical studies should be conducted in order to give a broader empirical basis to the development of the concept. In the current study, four distinct conceptual dimensions of RRI that appeared in the reviewed literature were brought out: inclusion, anticipation, responsiveness and reflexivity. Two emerging conceptual dimensions were also added: sustainability and care.

Learning Activity Spaces: Towards Flexibility in Learning Design?

Designing a computer-supported learning scenario involving a constructivist approach of learning lays on a paradox. On the one hand, learning flows must be precisely described – including role distribution, required resources, tools, and scaffolds – to be realized in computer-supported environments. On the other hand, a fine-grained formalization of learning flows diverges from the constructivist notion of learning that learners are responsible for their knowledge (co-)construction. This paper draws upon the fundaments of a new concept so called “Learning Activity Space” (LAS) aiming at realizing some necessary flexibility when designing learning scenarios. LAS is the basis of a graphical scenario modeling language intelligible for non-computer scientists but still rich enough in detail to describe a large set of computer-supported learning scenarios.

Design Principles for Support in Developing Students' Transformative Inquiry Skills in Web-Based Learning Environments

The aim of this explorative study was to find the factors limiting sixth-grade learners’ outcomes in acquiring skills related to the transformative inquiry learning processes as well as to analyse the interrelations between inquiry skills in order to develop an optimal support system for designing Web-based inquiry learning environments. A Web-based learning environment ‘Young Scientist’ was developed and applied to the domain of integrated science. The skill of identifying the correct research questions appeared to be a prerequisite for formulating research questions. When students understand how to identify the research questions correctly, there is no need for supporting formulation of research questions or hypotheses. We have found that at the stages of analysing data and inferring, students have to be provided with the tools to activate their prior knowledge, assignments help to organize their work into manageable sections, and reflective support or adaptive feedback to relate the results achieved with the process of inquiry. Our findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of inquiry learning can be strongly influenced by regulative support; however, a particular level of initial inquiry knowledge in theoretical context is also needed in order to develop inquiry skills in a situational context.

The factors influencing the outcome of solving story problems in a web-based learning environment

The aim of the present study was to investigate those factors influencing performance in solving story problems in a web-based environment. A situational simulation, “Hiking across Estonia,” was explored by two samples of voluntary groups of students, comprising 65 and 50 groups, respectively. They solved 25 ecological and environmental story problems and filled in a pre-test and post-test that evaluated problem-solving skills. The groups were clustered according to their characteristics and performance into five clusters: “slow learners,”“quick learners,”“successful learners,”“smart learners,” and “ineffective learners.” The clusters were provided with different types of supportive notes and the sequence of problems was rearranged according to the students initial results in the first four problem-solving tasks. These treatments demonstrated statistically significant improvements in the outcome in solving story problems in small groups. The main factors determining the effectiveness of problem solving were: (i) time spent on learning; (ii) initial skills in problem-solving; (iii) the presence of support in enhancing situation awareness; (iv) graduated problem tasks sequenced on the basis of complexity and difficulty; (v) ratio of genders in a learning group. However, the importance of these factors depended on the cluster and, therefore, it can be concluded that the design of problem-solving instruction has to be adapted according to the clusters characteristics.

Investigating Ecosystems as a Blended Learning Experience

The SCY ECO mission, an IBI prize–winning module, fosters inquiry learning, collaboration, and design for ecology following a blended learning approach. Learning by inquiry, collaboration, and design are the central didactic principles of the software developed by the Science Created by You (SCY) project. In SCY technology-enhanced learning environments, or SCY missions, students learn by creating products that they can share and discuss with their peers. In order to do this, they make use of textual or multimedia learning materials and perform physical and virtual experiments.

Interactions between Inquiry Processes in a Web-Based Learning Environment

In this study, we analyzed the application of a web-based learning environment named “Young Researcherâ€x9d (http://bio.edu.ee/teadlane) in developing learners transformative and regulative inquiry skills. We designed a theoretical framework of interactions between inquiry processes and tested it empirically. Data were collected during an all-Estonian competition in which 268 pairs of students from grades 6 to 12 (aged 10-18) participated. During the competition, five problem-solving tasks were solved in the “Young Researcherâ€x9d learning environment. The analysis of the results demonstrated that the learning environment was suitable for developing transformative inquiry skills and regulative planning skills. It also revealed that the students were actively monitoring and evaluating their learning. Significant interactions were found between planning and transformative inquiry skills, while correlations between other regulative skills and between these regulative skills and transformative skills did not appear.

Transforming Students' Inquiry Skills with Computer-Based Simulations

The application of Web-based learning environment ldquoYoung Scientistrdquo (http://bio.edu.ee/noor) in developing the 6th grade studentspsila inquiry skills (aged 10-12) was studied. The main objectives have been to evaluate the development of studentspsila inquiry skills and how the development of these skills depends on their pre-skills. 302 students all over Estonia solved three problems in the following topics: ldquoThe Production of Plantsrdquo, ldquoThe Fertilization of Plantsrdquo, and ldquoThe Biological Control of Plant-hazardous Insectsrdquo. According to the results of the pre- and post-test their skills of formulating problems, research questions, and hypotheses, planning and conducting investigations, analyzing data, and skills of making inferences developed statistically significantly. Spearman correlation demonstrated that the highest development occurred among the students with initial low level of inquiry skills. The only exception was found in the case of formulating research questions since more advanced pre-skills led to higher development.

The formation of learners' semiosphere by authentic inquiry with an integrated learning object Young Scientist

An integrated learning object, a web-based inquiry environment Young Scientist for basic school level is introduced by applying the semiosphere conception for explaining learning processes. The study focused on the development of students (n=30) awareness of the affordances of learning objects (LO) during the 3 inquiry tasks, and their ability of dynamically reconstructing meanings in the inquiry subtasks through exploiting these LO affordances in Young Scientist. The problem-solving data recorded by the inquiry system and the awareness questionnaire served as the data-collection methods. n nIt was demonstrated that learners obtain complete awareness of the LO affordances in an integrated learning environment only after several problem-solving tasks. It was assumed that the perceived task-related properties and functions of LOs depend on students interrelations with LOs in specific learning contexts. Learners overall awareness of certain LO affordances, available in the inquiry system Young Scientist, developed with three kinds of patterns, describing the hierarchical development of the semiosphere model for learners. The better understanding of the LO affordances, characteristic to the formation of the functioning semiosphere, was significantly related to the advanced knowledge construction during these inquiry subtasks that presumed translation of information from one semiotic system to another. The implications of the research are discussed in the frames of the development of new contextual gateways for learning with virtual objects. It is assumed that effective LO-based learning has to be organized through pedagogically constrained gateways by manifesting certain LO affordances in the context in order to build up the dynamic semiosphere model for learners.