Collaborative Learning and Co-Author Students in Online Higher Education

The technologies themselves cannot be analyzed as instruments per se, nor can they be exhausted in their relation with science. There is a social and even an individual dimension that affects our own way of relating to society. It is in open education that we have been developing our educational practices. This chapter presents a collaborative learning activity, the curricular unit Materiais e Recursos para eLearning, part of an on-line Master in Pedagogy of eLearning, Universidade Aberta, Portugal. In the present work, the authors dedicate their attention to co-learning and co-research, as processes that help to exemplify some situations, the a-REAeduca. The data collection was supported essentially by the content analysis technique.

Socially Shared Metacognition Among Undergraduate Students During an Online Geology Course

The ability to collaborate successfully with others is a highly valued skill in the modern workplace and has been reflected in the increase of collaborative learning methods within education. Research has highlighted the crucial role of self-regulation in successful collaboration, and more recently begun to focus on understanding how groups jointly regulate their interactions. The current chapter outlines a mixed-methods study that compared the impact of individual- and group-centered prompts on the frequency of social metacognitive activities during online group review activities with college students (N=48) from the USA. Tentative study findings suggested that group-centered problematizing prompts were moderately successful in shifting groups towards more social forms of regulation such as co-regulation; however, they were not enough to move groups towards shared metacognitive regulation. Further results revealed how the quality of group engagement was influenced by participants' perceived value towards activities, function and focus of metacognitive episodes, and group dynamics.

Cooperative Learning and Student Mentors in a Hybrid Teacher Preparation Program

In this chapter, professors employed cooperative learning techniques that included assigned student mentors to assist students in their learning, assignments, and final project. The students enrolled in this weekend hybrid program are usually considered to be alternative university students. About 25% of the students in the program would be considered to be standard university students in age and living circumstances. The results indicated that the leadership roles of the student mentors made the process complex and rewarding. In spite of the issues associated with diverse students, the majority of whom work, with a significant percentage who are married and have families of their own, and the issues of distance and difficulty of getting to class, most students felt positively about their experiences and achieved well in the process.

Collaborative Scientific Writing Between Writing Art and Project Management

This chapter investigates collaborative scientific writing. The study presents a baseline and concepts embedded by research for an ad hoc group of authors. Transactive memory, which is a quality of a group achieving the desired synergy, is approached in literature through metaphors. The investigation focuses on a proposal to evaluate the transactive memory's quale. A specialization between group and team expresses the ability of online technology to enhance the authors' communication. The research examines synergy among the authors for different phases of experienced collaboration to achieve successful publishing. Three hypotheses were researched for the evaluation of transactive memory's quale. The findings suggest that the total amount of knowledge experienced by the group of authors, as resulting from the collaborative scientific writing, corresponds to the aggregated domains of deterministic and probabilistic spaces.

Learning to Teach Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The presence of special needs students in regular classrooms makes it difficult for teachers to manage the situation, especially since in Romania the initial teacher-training curriculum doesn't include a class addressing the issue. This chapter talks about the teaching, learning, and evaluation experiences offered by an instructional unit on the subject of ADHD for over 700 primary and secondary school teachers from all areas of expertise. The purpose of this unit was to increase the teachers' knowledge and understanding of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in an educational frame. This chapter presents content elements, learning, and assessment activities that the participants proposed and implemented during the work sessions: both face to face and online. The authors mention that this training experience was part of a larger project called “e-Mentor: Developing ITC Skills and Educational Mentor-ship of Disabled Persons, for Teachers” implemented by “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu.

A Guide to Professional Learning for Secondary Mathematics Teachers

After implementing a professional learning program for mathematics teachers in grades five to twelve with success, this author is providing details as to how it was done and how others can do the same. Included is a literature review of relevant topics such as andragogy, brain research, self-efficacy, growth mindset, distributed leadership, and creating a professional learning community. Quantitative and qualitative research results from the author's initial professional learning program is used to explain the reason for the suggestions made. The curriculum is divided into five sessions of approximately two hours each.

Introduction to Online Learning and the Adult Learner

Web technologies are changing old patterns of learning. Online learning is simultaneously a tool and a challenge in improving our learning process because working online is a fundamental competence for today's society. Rethinking needs and course design for online learning to be applied to all subjects at all levels (digital natives and digital immigrants as well) is, maybe, the biggest challenge in education. It is necessary to give teachers adequate training to teach using technologies in a way that supports specific pedagogical mode. Online learning for adult learners has both advantages and disadvantages. Research into online learning is an emerging field and all of this information has practical implication for design and tutoring online activities in the case of adult learners.

Arguments Against Online Learning

This chapter details some arguments against online learning both from the literature dealing with such problems and from the personal experience of the author. There are eight arguments rendered in detail, as well as some other arguments briefly mentioned. Even if the order of the arguments is random, they all point in the same direction: that online learning should be accepted with much caution. In spite of these arguments (and although most of them should really create some doubts for the defenders of online learning), in the end we must admit that such a choice (teaching or being a student in an online environment) is a purely personal one.

The Promise of Protocols in the Virtual Classroom

Learner engagement in online learning environments tends to be erratic and dependent upon the learners themselves, not necessarily fostered by the macrostructures that house the virtual classroom. Protocols—which the authors term microstructures—can bring engagement strategies traditionally seen in face-to-face classrooms to the virtual world of online adult learning. This chapter explores how the use of microstructures supports learner-centered engagement, illustrated through a case study of a successful virtual professional learning network. This chapter also introduces the concept of accountability for participation, its role in creating engaged learners, and how microstructures can foster the psychological safety required for high levels of engagement and performance in the virtual classroom.

Adult Learning

This chapter attempts to provide solutions on how to convert theoretical work into practical work in an online classroom. An analysis of various researchers provides quantitative statistics on how to put theoretical work into practice. The use of digital tools such as social media and the internet have been critically analyzed to provide a bridge between theoretical and practical work in an online classroom. The use of digital tools in linking theory to practice clearly shows the relevance of the topic.