LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS RESEARCH最新文献

The learning environment comprises the psychological, social, cultural and physical setting in which learning occurs and has an influence on student motivation and success. The purpose of the present study was to explore qualitatively, from the perspectives of both students and faculty, the key elements of the learning environment that supported and hindered student learning. We recruited a total of 22 students and 9 faculty to participate in either a focus group or an individual interview session about their perceptions of the learning environment at their university. We analyzed the data using a directed content analysis and organized the themes around the three key dimensions of personal development, relationships, and institutional culture. Within each of these dimensions, we identified subthemes that facilitated or impeded student learning and faculty work. We also identified and discussed similarities in subthemes identified by students and faculty.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, digital technologies for distance learning have been used in educational institutions worldwide, raising issues about social implications, technological development, and teaching and learning strategies. While disparities regarding access to technical equipment and the internet ('the digital divide') have been the subject of previous research, the physical learning environment of learners participating in online learning activities has hardly been investigated. In this study, the physical-spatial conditions of learning environments, including technical equipment for distance learning activities and their influence on adult learners in academic continuing education during initial COVID-19 restrictions, were examined. Data were collected with an online survey sent to all students enrolled in an Austrian continuing education university, together with a small number of semi-structured interviews. A total of 257 students participated in the survey during the 2020 summer semester. Our findings provide insights in two infrequently-studied areas in learning environment research: the physical learning environment for online learning and the learning environment in academic continuing education. The study illustrates that students in academic continuing education have spacious living conditions and almost all the equipment necessary for digitally-supported learning. According to gender and household structure, significant differences were found regarding technical equipment, ergonomic furniture and availability of a dedicated learning place. In their learning sessions during the restrictions, students reported low stress levels and positive well-being. The more that they perceived that their physical learning environment was meeting their needs, the higher were their motivation and well-being and the lower was their stress. Their learning experience was further improved by the extent to which they had a separate and fixed learning place that did not need to be coordinated or shared with others. The study contributes to the literature on creating conducive learning environments for digitally-supported online learning for adult learners.

School closures because of the COVID-19 emergency forced a rapid transition to distance learning worldwide. In this study, we investigated teachers' experiences with distance learning during the first Italian lockdown. A sample of 270 primary and secondary teachers answered a semi-structured questionnaire administered between April and May 2020. Didactic modalities, students' and teachers' difficulties with distance learning, and teachers' feelings during school closure were investigated through open-ended questions. Content analysis indicated that most teachers adopted both synchronous and asynchronous modalities, which resembled the traditional classroom learning environment. Moreover, technological weaknesses (lack of proper digital equipment and poor digital skills) and lack of interactions appeared to be the main threats to the quality of distance learning. The implementation of distance learning in primary schools emerged as more challenging than in secondary education. Furthermore, most teachers experienced negative feelings during online teaching. However, 13% of the sample reported a sense of resilience and opportunity. Particularly, older teachers reported more resilience compared with younger teachers, indicating the importance of experience in managing stressful teaching events. Overall, findings suggest that-in this novel educational environment-teachers' role has changed significantly, placing strong emphasis on the ability to encourage communication, discussion, and contact with students. Future work should focus on how information and communications technology could sustain meaningful interactions between students and teachers, especially in primary education.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s10984-022-09406-0.].

Active learning strategies engage students and promote student-centered learning environments. Implementing active learning in a HyFlex environment during the Fall of 2020 global pandemic was challenging. We describe the Interactive Synchronous HyFlex approach to teaching design thinking at the introductory college level and explore impacts on students' basic psychological needs, including autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Aligned with Self-Determination Theory, active learning has been shown to motivate students and increase performance and retention in science, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, among others (Freeman et al., 2014; Lo & Hew, 2019). In active environments, the predominant mode of instruction is not lecture based and it engages students through student-to-student interactions and student-to-instructor interactions. The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. This model of instruction is ideal for our design thinking course used as a context for this study because students are challenged to learn by doing. In active learning courses, students engage in video-recorded lectures or talks, text-based materials and online quizzes, or other preparation activities before and in preparation for class (Bishop & Verleger, 2013; Lo et al., 2017; O'Flaherty & Phillips, 2015). Scheduled class meeting time is used for engagement and interaction between students informed by a social constructivist learning theory. Students challenge each other to apply what they have learned with guidance and support from the instructor.

Teacher training takes place in distance education to a large extent. Within these contexts, trainers should make use of all the information available to adapt and refine their instructional methods during the training process. Sentiment analysis (SA) can give immediate feedback of the emotions expressed and help in the training process, although it has been used infrequently in educational settings, slow to assess, and bound to interpretative issues, such as gender bias. This research aimed to design and evaluate a SA gender-sensitive method as a proxy to characterize the emotional climate of teacher trainees in an online course. An explanatory case study with mixed methods was implemented among students of the Interuniversity Master of Educational Technologies (N = 48). Participants' messages were analyzed and correlated with learning achievement and, along with a qualitative study of participants' satisfaction with the Master's degree, to validate the effectiveness of the method. Results show that sentiment expression cannot be used to exactly predict participants' achievement, but it can guide trainers to foresee how participants will broadly act in a learning task and, in consequence, use SA results for tuning and improving the quality of the guidance during the course. Gender differences found in our study support gendered patterns related to the emotional climate, with female participants posting more negative messages than their counterparts. Last but not least, the design of well-adjusted teaching-learning sequences with appropriate scaffolding can contribute to building a positive climate in the online learning environment.

The examples used in the teaching-learning process of mathematics have a crucial role in fostering conceptual understanding, and some variables can affect instructors' qualified example usage. This longterm study focused on mathematics teachers' exemplification process in face-to-face and online learning environments. In this regard, the change in examples used by mathematics teachers were evaluated in terms of content preparation and presentation during the shift from face-to-face lectures to online classes. A longitudinal design was used in the study and the teaching processes of 14 middle-school mathematics teachers were observed over two semesters. Observation notes, course documents, and semi-structured interview data were analyzed, and content analysis findings were presented through descriptive statistics in order to compare content preferences in two different learning environments. The use of worked examples decreased, while the use of conceptual examples increased with the shift from face-to-face lectures to online classes. Also the length of time devoted to examples in online classes decreased, and examples were more teacher-centered. The interview revealed that mathematics teachers need support in terms of example preparation and presentation aspects in online learning environments. The other technological-pedagogical competencies that teachers might need to choose qualified examples in different teaching-learning environments are discussed in the light of relevant literature.

Despite the increasing use of virtual modalities in schools since the COVID-19 pandemic, no systematic tools exist to evaluate the process of online learning. We developed and validated an Online Learning Process Questionnaire (OLPQ) for assessing online at-home learning among 219 Hong Kong primary-school students and 474 caregivers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of caregivers' data classified the 58-item OLPQ into 11 subscales: (1) learning aims, (2) environmental structuring, (3) learning environment, (4) time management, (5) engagement in learning activities, (6) persistence, (7) interaction between teachers and students, (8) interaction among students, (9) feedback from the interface, (10) application of learning, and (11) meaning of learning under three learning phases. Confirmatory factor analysis of students' data further categorized the 11-subscale framework into three learning phases: preparatory, performance, and transfer. The OLPQ demonstrated excellent reliability and discriminant validity across caregiver (Cronbach's alpha = 0.98) and student samples (alpha = 0.98). These findings indicate that the OLPQ is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing the online at-home learning process among both students and their caregivers.

In light of rising college student debt, many states now offer multiple options for students to earn college credit while still in high school. Concurrent enrollment programs, which allow qualified high school teachers to teach college credit-bearing classes in the high school, are one such option. Because concurrent enrollment classes teach college-level material at college-level rigor, they offer an ideal way to compare the secondary and tertiary learning environments across identical academic expectations. This study sought to compare the university mathematics environment with its concurrent enrollment counterpart. The WIHIC was found to be valid and reliable for the university population. The comparison of 242 students in university classrooms with 260 students in concurrent enrollment classrooms revealed a statistical difference, with the concurrent enrollment setting scoring higher in Involvement, Teacher Support, and Student Cohesion and the university setting scoring higher in Task Orientation. This implies that earning college credit in a secondary setting is a viable, and possibly even preferable, alternative to earning it in a university setting. We examine the discrepancy in scores-particularly the large discrepancy in Task Orientation-and discuss the benefit of the flipped classroom as one path to improving the university learning environment.