Looi, Chee-Kit

We propose a Multi-tier Learning Support Scheme (MTLS) which enables effective and scalable peer support in a collaborative online learning environment to address its inherent problem of being unstructured and undirected. The structure consists of four tiers in descendent order, namely, e-Guru, e-Experts, e-Helpers and e-Learners. At the bottom tier, peer learners help each other with their problems. When issues and problems arise at a lower level that cannot be satisfactorily resolved at that level, the next level is invoked. This project looks into the "when" and "how" of "invoking the next level" as well as pedagogical frameworks for fostering peer learning.

Design research has been the major methodology when learning sciences researchers design and implement interventions to bring education change in schools. However, how to promote systematic and sustainable change in design research remains a big challenge. The study is part of a three-year project that brought a seamless learning innovation to transform primary three (P3) and four science learning. During the first year enactment, we had one teacher and one P3 experimental class. We followed the same teacher and class to Primary four. Another teacher and experimental class joined the project at P4. Audio/video recordings of teacher-researcher weekly meetings, research team weekly meeting minutes, selected audio/video recordings of science lessons and field notes, teacher reflection and interview audios, and student artefacts were collected over about three years of time. We identified teacher to be the major agency for sustainable education change. We apply a Structure/Agency framework and a teacher qualification model when describing and analyzing teacher learning and teacher change during the seamless learning project. Our results showed teacher knowledge, belief, and practice change was facilitated and constrained by the school environment and the change was not of the same pace and synchronized but affected by each other. The paper provides empirical data and analytical framework for teacher change in design research context.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education and learning analytics (LA) tools are increasingly being developed and implemented to enhance teaching and learning within Singapore’s education landscape. This paper provides an overview of key AI in education and LA projects and initiatives in Singapore, organized by the types of technology. The identified projects and initiatives involve a range of techniques and systems to achieve personalized learning, improve student engagement, optimize resources, and also predict student success among a list of educational outcomes. We briefly describe each identified project before further discussing the collective impact and limitations, as well as the implications for Singapore and her education environments. Overall, this paper seeks to provide an overview of the state and use of AI and LA in education-related projects within Singapore and highlights the need for further research and development in this area to fully realize the potential of these technologies for improvement of teaching and learning.

In this paper, we articulate a framework (called AppleTree) for assessing collaborative argumentation with the purpose of evaluating and empowering the development of argumentation skills, collaboration skills and content knowledge in school learning. The framework is motivated by the need to achieve “learning to argue” and “arguing to learn” and the necessity to embed on-going and automated formative assessments for collaborative learning as reflected in existing literature. It builds on existing systems for collaborative argumentation and automated assessment of collaborative learning to achieve assessment for learning and to realize it in authentic classroom environments. We illustrate the framework by instantiating it in the conceptual design of one such system for use in schools.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of research findings on CSCL at the micro- and macro-levels, but few compelling examples of how CSCL research has impacted actual classroom practices at the meso-level have emerged. This paper critically examines the impact of adopting a systemic approach to innovative education reforms at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels in Singapore. It presents the case for adopting design research as a methodology for CSCL integration that meets the needs of schools and discusses a specific CSCL innovation that holds the potential for sustaining transformation in classroom practices. Our driving question is: In what ways can the routine use of CSCL practices in the classroom be supported by exploring systemic factors in the school setting through design research? We will explore the synergistic conditions that led to meaningful impact (at the micro-level), mediated by systemic approaches to working with teachers in the schools (at the meso-level), guided by Singapore’s strategic planning for scalability (at the macro-level).

As more research efforts are devoted in examining students’ achievement with the use of ICT tools, limited studies focus on the exploration of the impact of the teacher intervention in the implementation of ICT tools, in the Collaborative Science Inquiry (CSI) study. In this investigation, we conducted a trial instruction of a biology topic with the use of an inquiry-based learning environment: CSI system, which aimed to explore the outcomes of teacher interventions in students’ collaborative inquiry, and to provide implications for teachers’ instruction with ICT tools. The basic features of the CSI system, together with the main procedures of the lesson design and implementations with the system were presented. This was followed by an interpretation of the research methods of the study. Based on observing the lessons of two teachers, there were findings on the differences of the approaches of teacher intervention to the collaborative work (e.g. the aspect of the task, the frequency). The movement of the teacher around the classroom (e.g. the frequency, the purposes) and teacher-student interactions (e.g.the content and frequency of the discourses) were compared and analyzed, as well as the students’ performance on the collaborative inquiry work. The results showed that teachers’ frequent assistances of students’ collaboration promoted greater involvement and improved the quality of their collaborative activities. The increased teacher movement and active teacher-students interactions, with the aim of appropriate review and feedback, enhance students’ conceptual understanding on the topic and improve their quality of work. Implications on the teachers’ instructions with ICT tools in science were proposed in the last section of the paper.

This paper presents experiences from a seamless mobile learning project in Singapore. Although the project included a variety of seamless mobile learning designs, this paper focuses on only one, and that is a mobile learning application SamEx in support of a specific learning scenario – an outdoor ZOO field trip. The paper describes SamEx design by focusing on virtual badges gathered by the students during their ZOO trip. The trip was structured by the teachers and scaffolded by SamEx system contextually triggered questions and prompts. The paper describes experiences from the ZOO trip done with SamEx, gives an elaborate example of a student’s learning experience during the trip, and concludes by examining different types of student profiles according to their badge usage and SamEx social engagement.

As earlier studies highlighted the importance of teachers’ preparedness to develop computational thinking (CT) for students in school education, this study aims to explore the teaching areas involved in the mathematics teachers’ preparedness to integrate CT in classrooms, as well as to investigate the considerations for effective training or professional development activities to prepare mathematics teachers in teaching CT. A total of 16 journal articles from 2015 to 2020 were reviewed in this study. The findings indicated that not all the teaching areas (i.e. classroom management, teaching methods, subject knowledge, technology, planned curriculum, assessing students, and choosing teaching materials) were involved in the teachers’ preparedness for each study. Several considerations for effective training or professional development had been proposed. The results can be utilized to inform initial teacher education plans and ongoing professional development opportunities to better prepare the teacher to teach CT in the mathematics classrooms.

The authors discuss the notion of Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Building (RCKB) in classroom settings. RCKB seeks to harness the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, envision new possibilities, and to reveal latent knowledge in a dynamic live setting. It is characterized by the notion of rapid cycles of knowledge building activities in a face-to-face setting. The authors propose nine principles for the design of collaborative learning activities in the classroom that foster RCKB, five of which are adapted from Scardamalia's knowledge building principles (Scardamalia, 2002). The context of their work is design research on introducing RCKB in a classroom with the use of a network technology called GroupScribbles. The technology enables collaborative generation, collection, and aggregation of ideas, and empowers teachers to design new collaborative and group learning activities in a classroom setting. The authors present two actual classroom lessons with collaboration activities which demonstrate some of the design principles at play.