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Free, publicly-accessible full text available October 3, 2024
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Recent years have seen the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in every facet of society. The ubiquity of AI has led to an increasing demand to integrate AI learning experiences into K-12 education. Early learning experiences incorporating AI concepts and practices are critical for students to better understand, evaluate, and utilize AI technologies. AI planning is an important class of AI technologies in which an AI-driven agent utilizes the structure of a problem to construct plans of actions to perform a task. Although a growing number of efforts have explored promoting AI education for K-12 learners, limited work has investigated effective and engaging approaches for delivering AI learning experiences to elementary students. In this paper, we propose a visual interface to enable upper elementary students (grades 3-5, ages 8-11) to formulate AI planning tasks within a game-based learning environment. We present our approach to designing the visual interface as well as how the AI planning tasks are embedded within narrative-centered gameplay structured around a Use-Modify-Create scaffolding progression. Further, we present results from a qualitative study of upper elementary students using the visual interface. We discuss how the Use-Modify-Create approach supported student learning as well as discuss the misconceptions and usability issues students encountered while using the visual interface to formulate AI planning tasks.more » « less
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Purpose The authors explored shifts in social interactions, content engagement and history learning as students who were studying one pandemic simultaneously experienced another. This paper aims to understand how the Net.Create network visualization tool would support students as they tried to understand the many complex interactions in a historical text in a remote learning environment and how sustained knowledge building using Net.Create would shape student attitudes toward remote learning, collaboration and engagement. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores changes in engagement and learning in a survey-level history course on the black death after a shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors used activity theory to focus the adaptation of Net.Create, a web-based collaborative social-network-analysis tool and to understand how it supported group-based remote learning. The authors describe how the redesigned activities sustained engagement with historical content and report coded student network entries, reading responses and surveys to illustrate changes in engagement and learning. Findings The results suggest that students benefit from personal connections to historical content and their peers. Net.Create supported both through collaborative knowledge-building activities and reflection on how their quarantine experiences compared to the historical content they read. It is possible to avoid student frustrations with traditional “group work” even in a remote environment by supporting collaborative learning using Net.Create and a mix of individual and group contributions. Originality/value This is the first use of a collaborative network visualization tool to support large classroom interaction and engagement with history content at the undergraduate level.more » « less
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Recent years have seen growing recognition of the importance of enabling K-12 students to learn computer science. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence, a field of computer science, has with the potential to profoundly reshape society. This has generated increasing demand for fostering an AI-literate populace. However, there is little work exploring how to introduce K-12 students to AI and how to support K-12 teachers in integrating AI into their classrooms. In this work, we explore how to introduce AI learning experiences into upper elementary classrooms (student ages 8 to 11). With a focus on integrating AI and life science, we present initial work on a collaborative game-based learning environment that features rich problem-based learning scenarios that enable students to gain experience with AI applied toward solving real-world life-science problems.more » « less
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Abstract This exploratory paper highlights how problem‐based learning (PBL) provided the pedagogical framework used to design and interpret learning analytics from C
rystal Island: EcoJourneys , a collaborative game‐based learning environment centred on supporting science inquiry. In Crystal Island: EcoJourneys , students work in teams of four, investigate the problem individually and then utilize a brainstorming board, an in‐game PBL whiteboard that structured the collaborative inquiry process. The paper addresses a central question: how can PBL support the interpretation of the observed patterns in individual actions and collaborative interactions in the collaborative game‐based learning environment? Drawing on a mixed method approach, we first analyzed students' pre‐ and post‐test results to determine if there were learning gains. We then used principal component analysis (PCA) to describe the patterns in game interaction data and clustered students based on the PCA. Based on the pre‐ and post‐test results and PCA clusters, we used interaction analysis to understand how collaborative interactions unfolded across selected groups. Results showed that students learned the targeted content after engaging with the game‐based learning environment. Clusters based on the PCA revealed four main ways of engaging in the game‐based learning environment: students engaged in low to moderate self‐directed actions with (1) high and (2) moderate collaborative sense‐making actions, (3) low self‐directed with low collaborative sense‐making actions and (4) high self‐directed actions with low collaborative sense‐making actions. Qualitative interaction analysis revealed that a key difference among four groups in each cluster was the nature of verbal student discourse: students in the low to moderate self‐directed and high collaborative sense‐making cluster actively initiated discussions and integrated information they learned to the problem, whereas students in the other clusters required more support. These findings have implications for designing adaptive support that responds to students' interactions with in‐game activities.Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic
Learning analytic methods have been effective for understanding student learning interactions for the purposes of assessment, profiling student behaviour and the effectiveness of interventions.
However, the interpretation of analytics from these diverse data sets are not always grounded in theory and challenges of interpreting student data are further compounded in collaborative inquiry settings, where students work in groups to solve a problem.
What this paper adds
Problem‐based learning as a pedagogical framework allowed for the design to focus on individual and collaborative actions in a game‐based learning environment and, in turn, informed the interpretation of game‐based analytics as it relates to student's self‐directed learning in their individual investigations and collaborative inquiry discussions.
The combination of principal component analysis and qualitative interaction analysis was critical in understanding the nuances of student collaborative inquiry.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Self‐directed actions in individual investigations are critical steps to collaborative inquiry. However, students may need to be encouraged to engage in these actions.
Clustering student data can inform which scaffolds can be delivered to support both self‐directed learning and collaborative inquiry interactions.
All students can engage in knowledge‐integration discourse, but some students may need more direct support from teachers to achieve this.
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null (Ed.)Purpose This paper aims to lay out the goals and challenges in using information for ambitious learning practices. Design/methodology/approach Through a review of the literature, the authors integrate across learning, information sciences and instructional design to identify challenges and possibilities for information searching and sense-making in ambitious learning practices (ALPs). Findings Learners face a number of challenges in using information in ALPs such as a problem-based learning. These include searching and sourcing, selecting information and sense-making. Although ALPs can be effective, providing appropriate scaffolding, supports and resources is essential. Originality/value To make complex ALPs available to a wide range of learners requires considering the information literacy demands and how these can be supported. This requires deep understanding and integration across different research literature areas to move toward solutions.more » « less
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Narrative and collaboration are two core features of rich interactive learning. Narrative-centered learning environments offer significant potential for supporting student learning. By contextualizing learning within interactive narratives, these environments leverage students’ innate facilities for developing understandings through stories. Computer-supported collaborative learning environments offer students rich, collaborative learning experiences in which small groups of students engage in constructing artifacts, addressing disciplinary challenges, and solving problems. Narrative and collaboration have distinct affordances for learning, but combining them poses significant challenges. In this paper, we present initial work on solving this problem by introducing collaborative narrative-centered learning environments. These environments will enable small groups of students to collaboratively solve problems in rich multi-participant storyworlds. We propose a novel framework for designing and developing these environments, which we are using to create a collaborative narrative-centered learning environment for middle school ecosystems education. In the learning environment, students work on problem-solving scenarios centered on how to support optimal fish health in aquatic environments. Results from pilot testing the learning environment with 45 students suggest it supports the creation of engaging and effective collaborative narrative-centered learning experiences.more » « less
