Looi, Chee-Kit

Learning-by-teaching is an open-ended and self-directed activity, which shares a number of characteristics with exploratory and constructivist learning. A natural goal for effective teaching is to gain a good understanding of domain knowledge before teaching it to others. Teaching also includes a process for structuring knowledge in a communicable form, and reflecting on interactions with students during and after the teaching task. Current computerbased learning-by-teaching environment (LTE) can provide middle school students with opportunities of assuming the role of teacher in an interactive environment that fosters active learning. However, they are not directly supported to reflect on their goals, content knowledge, and thoughts as they teach the agent in the LTE. They need further support to guide their reflective teaching practice for better learning. This paper proposes the incorporation of diagrammatic representations and reflection prompts into the LTE to encourage students to pursue their teaching activities with the opportunity to reflect and selfexplain their experiences. A pilot study on the benefits of introducing diagrammatic representation and reflection prompts and the further development of the LTE with reflection support is described.

Cognisant that the examination-driven culture in most Asian schools will hinder future educational innovation, a group of concerned Asian researchers started collaboration in 2014 to develop a theory to serve as a guide to design interest- driven learning activities. This endeavour then spawned the development of the Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) Theory. The theory postulates that when their learning is driven by interest, students can be engaged in knowledge creation. The continued practice of this creation process in their daily learning routines can lead students to excel in learning performance, develop 21st century competences and eventually form creation habits to be lifelong learners. This paper, therefore, adds on to the current articulation of IDC Theory by highlighting the implementation of an IDC experimental school in Taiwan and by presenting the story of how it embodies the spirit of IDC. The school curriculum prepares students to be lifelong readers and reflective writers with broad knowledge in the fields of Math, English Language, Science, and Interdisciplinary Social Studies. It emphasises not only students’ academic growth but also their physical wellness and character building. The endeavour intends to be a comprehensive example of practice-driven research, demonstrating how theory and practice can be bridged, and how a virtuous cycle of research improving practice and practice informing research can be developed. This paper also provides a glimpse of how IDC Theory can inspire the planning and integration of IDC-based education approaches in academic curricula beyond Taiwan. The paper ends with the call for a more concerted effort to create a sustainable alliance to share professional insights into IDC Theory through a non- governmental organisation.

We describe one cycle of design-based research (DBR) in which we explore mCSCL through an iterative process of (re)designing and testing the learning approach with students. The mCSCL application assigns each student a component of a Chinese character and requires them to spontaneously form groups that can assemble a Chinese character. We observe the enactment of the learning design in two modes (with and without the ICT), and found the students favor the card mode over the phone mode due to their emergent trial-anderror strategy. That triggered us to examine the scaffolding strategies by exploring domain oriented theories to inform us in deciding how we should accommodate their use of the strategy. This cycle of DBR has reshaped our learning design. This paper brings to the fore the value of the interplay of theories, implementations and reflections as advocated by DBR.

WiMVT (Web-based inquirer with Modeling and Visualization Technology) is designed as a learning system combining guided inquiry, modeling and visualization with the social interaction. In the paper, we first present the design rationale of the system, briefly describe the main functions, then discuss the features supporting model progression in science learning. Following it, we describe a pilot study of WiMVT implementation in the secondary science class. The data analysis demonstrates the pedagogical value of WiMVT on students' conceptual understanding, and indicates that appropriate peer feedback can promote students’ model elaboration in the modeling activities.

Research has shown that peer tutoring at the university level could improve students’ performance and, enhance their motivation and learning, increase self-determination and learner autonomy, and reinforce conceptual knowledge by providing opportunities for reapplication of concepts. This paper describes the development of a mobile peer tutoring application – Mobile Education Networked Tutoring On Request (MENTOR). We start with a review of the literature to identify the relevant affordances that this mobile app should possess. In addition, questionnaires were administered with students studying in higher education to understand the needs of peer tutoring with tutors and tutees. The findings of the survey data showed that a majority of the students are receptive to peer tutoring and found it to be a user-friendly and intuitive method of mobile peer tutoring. One feature of MENTOR is the tutor-tutee matching – tutees are individually paired with tutors by using predictive modeling based on student data. Tutor-tutee matching can be efficiently accomplished via MENTOR mobile application by granting tutees the choice of tutors based on mutual tutor-tutee availabilities, students' background and tutor ratings. The other main features of the mobile peer tutoring application, such as online peer tutoring are presented in this study. The study contributes to the application of learning sciences and learning technologies to provide a holistic design for supporting student peer tutoring at the university level.

A collaborating group is increasingly viewed as a cognitive unit, the workings of which need to be understood independent of its effects on individual learning. We are beginning to understand how groups operate as a cognitive unit that learns, solves problems, and/or constructs new knowledge, but still lack adequate conceptual frameworks and analytic strategies to deal with different dimensions of group cognition. This problem is particularly acute in small group interaction mediated by technologies. While various technological tools are used to support small group interaction, we do not understand clearly yet how group understanding emerges from this process. In this paper, we examined the development of group understanding when the group discourse is mediated by the construction of technological artifacts.

The interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is being developed as a group endeavor by Asian researchers to articulate a holistic learning design theory for future education in Asia. The theory hypothesizes that students, driven by interest, can be engaged in the creation of knowledge (generating ideas and artifacts). By repeating this creation process in their daily learning routines, they will excel in learning performance, develop twenty-first-century competencies, and form creation habits. We hope that with such practices in education, our future generations will ultimately become lifelong interest-driven creators. In IDC Theory, there are three anchored concepts, namely, interest, creation, and habit. Each anchored concept comprises three component concepts which form a concept loop. For example, the creation loop consists of three component concepts—imitating, combining, and staging. Imitating is concerned with taking in (or inputting) an abundant amount of existing knowledge from the outside world to form one’s background knowledge. Combining refers to delivering (or outputting) new ideas or artifacts prolifically by synthesizing existing information encountered in the world and thoughts arising from the students’ background knowledge. Staging relates to frequently demonstrating the generated ideas or artifacts to the relevant communities and receiving feedback from these communities to improve the novelty and value of the demonstrated outcomes while gaining social recognition and nurturing positive social emotions. This paper focuses on describing the three components of the creation loop. We provide three case studies to illustrate the creation loop at work, as well as how it intertwines with both the interest and habit loops in supporting students to develop their creation capabilities. In presenting this iteration of the creation concept, an anchored concept in IDC theory, we acknowledge the roles played of imitation, combination, and staging in different learning and education contexts—indeed, there are multiple theories that inform and intersect with it.