Wen, Yun

Though peer assessment has been widely recognized as an effective teaching approach to develop learners’ critical thinking, pedagogical strategies and analysis of students’ peer assessment at the group level but not individual level are underexplored. Group assessment is emphasized in this study by focusing on assessing peer-group work. In the context of 40 student teachers participating in online group assessment activities, this study revealed critical thinking patterns and their correlation with group performances by content analysis and epistemic network analysis (ENA). The results showed that participants’ critical thinking in group assessment activities mainly stayed at the level of understand. The high-score groups’ critical thinking had more connections between understand and evaluate, while the low-score groups’ critical thinking had more connections between recognize and understand, and understand and analyse. In addition, the high- and low-score groups showed different characteristics of critical thinking at different stages and different tasks of group assessment activity. Diversified and developmental critical thinking patterns could be found in the high-score groups, while the low-score groups tended to maintain single and fixed critical thinking patterns. Finally, the discussion and suggestions of intervention for critical thinking development of high- and low-score groups are provided to help design and implement online collaborative learning activities and group assessment activities in the future.

This work analyzes the interactions of small groups of students doing collaborative learning activities in the primary classroom for learning Chinese as a second language. We take the perspective of identifying the characteristics of interactional moves as students interact and negotiate meaning in the computer-mediated collaborative learning (CSCL) environment called GroupScribbles (GS). Much work in group cognition and in interactional analysis of small groups looks at problem-solving in subjects like mathematics and science. In language learning, the task posed for collaborative activities does not focus on problemsolving, but it may be targeted towards enriching students’ vocabulary and proficiency in language expression, developing their thoughts and writing through cogitating with new words, vocabulary and sentence construction. We hope the work can illuminate how students can co-construct knowledge mediated by GS representations for Chinese language learning. In the paper, we look at collaborative situations in which the group members are not seated together in the classroom, and so they have to collaborate through the GS medium.

This case study investigates the appropriation of a representational tool by students in small groups in the context of collaborative writing and the teacher orchestration in a dual-interaction (both face-to-face and online) environment. The study aims to unravel and discover how different small groups evolve alternative approaches to appropriating online technology in classrooms, and during the process, what role the teacher can play to orchestrate multiactivities for productive interactions.

This study is situated in a real second language (L2) learning classroom setting equipped with a generic representational tool—Group Scribbles—that enables collaborative generation, collection, and aggregation of ideas in multimodal interactions. The notion of representational tools is emphasized to distinguish them from other computer-mediated communication tools for dialogical communication or threaded discussion. The study focuses on analyzing and modelling interactions in which technology-mediated learning takes place. Both statistical analysis and qualitative microanalysis of interaction are addressed to provide a more comprehensive analytical region to examine the interactions that occurred naturally. Underlying the rationale of mutual shaping of participants and technical devices, the study contextually examined and reinterpreted the dynamic interplay between small groups of students, teacher, and medium, and their holistic effect in L2 learning.

Two key findings are generated from the study. First, the functions of inscriptional devices in L2 classroom learning are identified: (1) referencing, (2) pinpointing, (3) accumulating, (4) prompting notice, (5) realizing parallels, and (6) promoting synergy. Second, teachers are suggested to play a dual role as both facilitator and collaborator to monitor and adjust all groups’ work processes and even join in small-group work by providing improvised scaffoldings. The case study does not aim at predicting that all the identified functions will be played out in all the representational tool-supported L2 learning contexts but rather suggests that teachers and researchers should create conditions for enabling the inscriptional device to facilitate more productive group understanding development. A series of principles for teacher orchestration in networked L2 learning are distilled. These principles are not antagonistic with some traditional instructional principles or strategies, such as making learning objectives explicit, holding the attention of the students, or controlling time strictly. Teachers are recommended to monitor small-group progresses by drawing upon group inscriptions throughout the lesson. In the context of L2 learning, teachers are suggested to detect and assist students to in-situ solve language-related problems that emerge in their language use, though they are suggested not to offer ready-made solutions for students in science or mathematics classes.

The study explores the beneficial affordances of the representational tool that supplement face-to-face communication for both learning and teaching in L2 learning classrooms and, thus, provides insights to task/script design and enactment of collaborative L2 learning in networked classroom environments where face-to-face and online interactions are intertwined. Methodologically, this study is sympathetic to calls from computer-supported collaborative learning researchers who are concerned with classroom learning and multimedia/multimodal interactions. It provides a workable approach to exploring how small-group interactions interweaving social and cognitive dimensions take place in networked classroom environments.

This paper reports a comparative case study to explore the discrepancies in learning outcomes attained by two student groups in an identical CSCL activity in the language classroom and the differences in group behaviors that contributed to these discrepancies. From micro-analysis, group behaviors that are desired for language development are identified. The findings can inform future pedagogical and technological design to improve language learning in classrooms.

In this exploratory mixed-methods study, we introduce and test our AI-powered vocabulary learning system—ARCHe, which embeds four AI functions: (1) automatic feedback towards for pronunciation, (2) automatic feedback for towards handwriting, (3) automatic scoring for student-generated sentences and (4) automatic recommendations. Specifically, our study of 140 students taught by six teachers in three primary schools in Singapore explores the links between these AI functions and students' learning engagement and outcomes via the analysis of their pre- and post-tests, post-surveys, focus group discussions and artefacts created via ARCHe. Results show improved Chinese character and vocabulary test scores after using ARCHe. Students' perceptions of ARCHe automatic recommendations and feedback towards pronunciation positively influence their emotional engagement. Also, students who perceived ARCHe automatic recommendations and feedback on handwriting more favourably than others reported greater cognitive engagement. Meanwhile, students whose groups created more sentences in classroom-based collaborative learning than others were more likely to show learning gains. This study provides insights for learning designers and educators on AI's potential in language learning, with recommendations for future research directions.

Understanding technology from the perspective of the scaffolding can help us bridge the gap between abstract or general CSCL design principles and the design and enactment of concrete CSCL practices. This study addresses this issue by describing and discussing how we use GroupScribbles (GS) technology coupled with appropriate pedagogical graphic organizers to scaffold effective collaborative learning in the context of L2 students’ vocabulary learning in Singapore classrooms. It is found that the GS technology and pedagogical graphic organizers can jointly scaffold students’ collaborative vocabulary learning to achieve desired learning outcomes. When equipped with graphic organizers to help students plan and organize their problem solving, GS is transformed from a general tool for enabling seamless interactions to a scaffolded software tool integrated with pedagogical design for supporting specific learning, by problematizing important disciplinary content.

This paper presents how a collaboration script informed by the Funnel Model was appropriated by a class of students in a secondary science class lesson. Based on the script, a class of 33 tenth grade students enacted four stages of a technology-supported collaborative learning activity: individual construction, intra-group construction, inter-group rating, and intra-group refining. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of students' behaviors and perceptions were conducted to identify and explain how students appropriated the collaboration script.

We have been involved in a 3-year project to introduce rapid collaborative knowledge building practices in two primary 5 classrooms. Lessons in science, mathematics and the Chinese language have been co-designed by teachers and researchers to teach the curriculum by tapping on collaborative work in small groups as well as in the whole class. They incorporate various activities supported by the Group Scribbles (GS) software technology. GS provides representational spaces for individual, group or class work to support collaborative practices. In this paper, we share one process-oriented account of a small group interaction through face-to-face communication over the GS environment. We adapted Suthers, Dwyer, Medina & Vatrapu's uptake analysis framework (2007) to study group interaction and meaning-making mediated by GS as well as verbal talk. Our longer-term goal is to distil patterns that can lead to effective (or ineffective) collaborative knowledge construction, which can enable the teachers and us (researchers) to improve on the socio-technical design of lessons (including lesson and activity design, technology re-design, group creation, group composition, classroom space design, and other factors) to more fully exploit the potential of rapid collaborative knowledge building.