Conference Papers

Blended synchronous learning (BSL) is commonly used to deliver lectures. There are challenges in engaging online students when they are doing hands-on activities. In this study, two groups of students took a course lasting 13 weeks. This course heavily involved hands-on activities. 3-4 students attended the course from home using video conferencing in each session. Some strategies were applied to engage them during the sessions. The purpose of the study was to explore how to effectively engage online students in hands-on activities and their perceptions of the strategies used. Results showed that having a teaching assistant, peer feedback, back-channel communication, clear audio, and two device setups helped engage online students in hands-on activities. Implications for teachers and researchers are suggested.

This paper presents a blended learning environment designed based on conceptual change and constructivist principles. The constructivist perspective emphasizes the critical role of conceptual change in the active construction of knowledge by students. Conceptual change is a significant alteration of cognitive structure due to inconsistency with previous experience, usually caused by cognitive conflict. During the learning process, new concepts can challenge and modify established ones, contributing to the transformation and reconstruction of students' understanding. However, current science curriculum design has several issues. These include ignoring students' existing conceptual and cognitive levels, a lack of individualized instruction, and a lack of focus and coherence in curriculum design. To tackle these issues, the study proposes a blended learning environment based on constructivism, which aims to provoke cognitive conflict among students throughout the learning process. Reorganizing instructional tasks and offering technical assistance to teachers and students integrates online and offline learning to facilitate students' constructing a more profound comprehension of scientific knowledge. This design aims to offer a personalized approach to teaching and learning, promoting students' deeper understanding and reconstruction of scientific concepts. It provides valuable insights and guidance for enhancing the design of science curricula.

Student-Generated Ideas (SGI) is a socio-constructivist pedagogical approach that positions the development of student-generated ideas at the core of the learning trajectory alongside desired learning outcomes. This paper investigates the use of whole-class discussion as a pedagogical strategy to foster the evolution of SGIs in a blended primary science lesson in the Singapore context. Through a case study, we examine the design and implementation of a technology-enhanced SGI lesson, focusing on how students' ideas were generated and evolved, and the discursive practices employed by both the teacher and the students. Through qualitative data analysis, our findings uncover the richness of the SGIs, the teacher’s adept orchestration of the discussion, the diverse cognitive processes exhibited by the students and the scaffolds employed by the teacher. The discussion extracts key design and enactment implications, which encompass, but are not limited to, the integral role of technology in supporting idea evolution beyond the lesson and the important role of the teacher in the effective use of whole-class discussion in SGI lessons.

Empirical evidence on students' perceived difficulty of interdisciplinary learning and associated experience is limited. This study aimed to address the gap in an interdisciplinary digital literacy course. The class activities were designed based on the characteristics of interdisciplinary learning tasks, such as the problem originating from the real world, and surveys were collected over eight weeks. Our findings indicate that surprise, curiosity, confusion, anxiety, joy, and frustration are positively associated with motivating goal-oriented affect, suggesting that students were actively engaged and motivated when they experienced various positive and negative emotions. Motivating goal-directed affect positively predicts students' collaborative interdisciplinary problem-solving, while confusion and boredom play negative roles, highlighting the need to enhance students' motivation and address negative emotions to facilitate interdisciplinary learning.

While the potential benefits of AI in education have been widely acknowledged, there is a lack of research investigating how to leverage AI to promote language learning, especially among young learners. In this study, an AIpowered seamless vocabulary learning system – ARCHe – was designed and developed. The purpose of this paper is to report on the learning effectiveness of using ARCHe and explore the pedagogical affordances of AI to power seamless learning for young learners. The system has been implemented and evaluated in three government primary schools in Singapore, involving a total of 140 students and 6 teachers. The findings of the study indicate that the use of ARCHe significantly improves students’ performance in Chinese character and vocabulary learning, regardless of their school contexts and prior language proficiency. Moreover, the results suggest that AI-enabled multimodal feedback may contribute to enhancing students’ engagement in classroom-based collaborative learning activities. Given the absence of correlation among students' emotional engagement, Chinese language proficiency, and the quality and quantity of students' home-based work, future studies on AI-enhanced seamless learning, particularly those focusing on young learners, should delve into background variables that could impact students’ learning engagement.