Wong Lung Hsiang

This paper proposes and examines a design of technological scaffolding for cooperative learning. An application for learning fractions with handheld devices was designed and tested in a primary three classroom. The outcomes were interpreted according to a two-dimensional framework consisting of the cooperative learning principles (maximum peer interaction, equal opportunity to participate, individual accountability and positive interdependence) and the observed interplay of social, technological and teacher scaffolding which emerged throughout the activity. The focus of our analysis is the technological scaffolding and the support it can give to cooperative learning activities based on the feedback received from two sources: primary school children using the software and a group of teachers trying out and reflecting on our design.

This paper reports a pilot study on mobile-assisted language learning that focused on both creative learner output and seamless learning. In learning Chinese idioms, students proactively used smartphones on a 1:1 basis to take photos in their daily lives, subsequently in-class or online sharing and discussions took place, enhancing the students’ understanding in the proper usage of the idioms. Our analysis of the student artefacts in both product- and process-oriented aspects reveals the students’ cognitive process and learning strategies during the course of content creation. The students’ ongoing, open-ended, personal-to-social meaning making process and learner-created authentic content have indeed shown some indicators of seamless language learning and induction-based peer learning that has the potential of transforming language learning into an authentic learning experience.

Computer-based modeling is not just a means for students to learn important scientific knowledge and skills, but also a technique to assess student understandings of science. A software tool called Model-It allows young students to create their own models so that their learning becomes more interactive and engaged. However, there is a mismatch between how students learn and how they are assessed if conventional paper-administered tests are used. This paper argues for alternative assessments to be better aligned with curriculum and instruction. Forty 4th grade students in a local Singapore school participated in a science inquiry activity that involved learning with modeling as an alternative assessment. The students individually created models of food webs to illustrate their understanding of energy flows and photosynthesis. A scoring rubric based on four criteria (“focus and structure”, "accuracy", "completeness" and "functionality") was used to evaluate the models, with the modeling scores being compared to student scores of the school’s paper-based assessments of science learning. In addition, 18 students were interviewed about their understanding of models and modeling. The data is currently being analyzed and the findings of this study and potential implications for educational assessments will be presented in this paper.

A seamless learning environment connects private and public learning settings where learning occurs across various contexts. The notion of seamless learning was connected to mobile learning, in which the use of personal mobile devices for learning was recommended to facilitate students’ cross-contextual learning. In seamless learning research, there are crucial technical and pedagogical considerations that may affect seamless mobile learning. The challenge is that most local primary school students did not possess personal devices for learning, thus, hindering the efficiency of scaling up to more schools. In addressing the problem, this paper reported a qualitative descriptive study on a practice-oriented project to implement seamless science learning in the formal curriculum. Three primary schools in Singapore participated in this two-year project. The participating teachers in the project designed and implemented selected seamless science lesson units at their classes. A significant contribution of the project is that it informs what it takes to switch from one-mobile-device-per-learner to the techno-pedagogical model of seamless science learning. The lesson enactment using the model increased students’ engagement levels and resulted in significant learning gains in the second year of implementation. Another important implication of the project was teacher professional development. Several participating teachers reflected on how their involvement in seamless lesson design and implementation impacted their teaching methods, including the willingness to use ICT for lessons and making connections with parents. However, the challenge to the widespread adoption of seamless science learning was reported. In fact, a seamless curriculum is more than redesigning lessons and incorporating technology into the lessons, it should be perceived as a culture, and learners must be enculturated to change their current learning habits of mind.

Over a year of time, we co-designed primary three science curriculum to integrate 1:1 mobile technology with teachers. The form teacher of the experimental class in a Singapore school enacted the curriculum as her regular teaching. This paper proposes a cyclic model of how to “mobilize” the curriculum in align with the national primary science syllabus. Preliminary results of the enactment are also presented.

This symposium proposes a genre of learning designs called Student-Generated Ideas (SGIs), based on designing learning contexts that promote students as critical producers, distributors, and consumers of knowledge. SGIs place students’ ideas at the center of learning designs, considering the learning process as well as the learning goals/outcomes. By soliciting and foregrounding students’ diversified ideas in the classroom and beyond, the learning environment communicates to students that their ideas matter to others and that they have a position of responsibility to their own and their peers’ learning processes. The notion of SGIs is embodied in a repertoire of studies at the Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education, Singapore, that offer varied yet overlapping interpretations of how student ideas can inform the design of learning contexts. In sharing the core design principles for SGIs approaches, this work contributes important components to the learning sciences discipline and changing educational practice.

The aim of this study is explore the writing performance effect of a collaborative writing approach mediated by a computer-assisted collaborative learning tool for elementary school students. To increase students "interest and performances in Chinese essay writing, we facilitated co-writing peer learning programs are executed on Tablet PCs with Group Scribbles software for students" practicing themes about Taiwan with VSPOW (Vocabularies → Sentences → Paragraphs → Outlines → essay Writing) writing model. Through the peer collaborations, the pooling of rich vocabularies and corpus, and face-to-face discussions, the students‟ motivation and quality of writing had been enhanced.

Peer assessment has been employed as an effective learning strategy to enhance cognitive practices such as problem-solving and reflection practices. A case study was conducted to explore the effects of online peer assessment as a learning strategy of computational thinking among pre-service teachers. The peer comments were analysed and coded by adopting a coding scheme of comments to investigate the significance of the peer-reviewing process in facilitating the learning of computational thinking. Each student was required to design a lesson by integrating the computational thinking facets into their lesson plan. Upon submitting the lesson plan to the instructor, they were engaged in a blind review process. The students worked in a group to review and provide constructive comments on their peers’ lesson plans. By adapting a peer-reviewing cognitive process model, this article provides evidence that the peer-reviewing process played a critical role in facilitating the learning of Computational Thinking. The findings indicate that the peer assessment strategy can develop preservice teachers’ problem-solving competencies. It was suggested that all students be informed about the purposes and learning benefits of the peer-review process to optimise the learning outcomes.

In this paper, we present the case of a future school in Singapore to illustrate the importance of designing learning spaces conducive to mobile CSCL practices from pedagogical design perspectives. Core design considerations are (a) to design activity or task types that lead to collaborative meaning-making discourse and experiences, (b) to promote intentional learning experiences across classroom and outdoor settings, and (c) to promote interdisciplinary thinking and discourse through the design of learning tasks that integrate concepts and skills in multiple subject areas. We also discuss the possibilities and challenges arising from the experiences of studying the design and enactment of mobile CSCL practices in a future school context. Challenges and tensions in our research trajectory include the enculturation process of collaboration, the appropriation of technological platforms, and the conflicts in assessment methods and designed learning experiences.

Argumentation in science education has emphasised on the engagement of students in making scientific claims where they communicate with others. The argumentation is a problem-solving process that nurtures students’ higher order thinking (HOT) by encouraging them to think critically and create solutions. Computational thinking (CT) is the competencies integral for successfully solving problems posed in a technology driven teaching and learning context. Teachers need to develop and scaffold the students’ CT competencies to equip them to be future-ready learners. Accordingly, this study will design instructional strategies for teachers to embed CT-integrated instruction within argumentation teaching in the context of Biological science. Subsequently, the development of students’ CT competencies and argumentation performance will be assessed. The five CT dimensions taken into account in this study are abstraction, decomposition, generalisation, algorithmic design and evaluation. As there is a growing trend of integrating CT across various disciplines, problem solving is no longer viewed as a final goal of learning in science. Instead, it is a competence that should be acquired by individuals to apply throughout the acquisition of scientific knowledge.