In this article we sought to understand how social studies teachers' metacognitive awareness of their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) changed after their participation in a program that consisted of: (a) professional development for the use of an online learning environment; and (b) using an online learning environment in their classrooms. Inservice teachers who went through the TPACK-based program experienced considerable movement within the TPACK diagrammatic knowledge domains and expressed positive and encouraging comments regarding their knowledge domains portrayed within the TPACK framework. Quantitative and qualitative results are shared along with implications of designing professional development, online learning environments using TPACK, and advancing the TPACK framework itself.
Adventure learning (AL) is a hybrid distance education approach that provides students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences within collaborative learning environments. This article defines this online distance education approach, outlines an AL framework, and showcases an AL archetype. In AL environments, classroom teachers are not positioned in the role of teacher/facilitator/designer in the online learning spaces. AL online spaces are collaborative spaces where students, teachers, subject experts, and AL team members interact with one another; these are community spaces where traditional hierarchical classroom roles are blurred. Students' roles transform due to the flexibility and design of the AL learning environments as they move from student to reflective practitioner, providing for new ways of learning and teaching.
Conflicts occur when learners interact with pedagogical agents and virtual characters. Such conflicts—arising from technological limitations, psychosocial perceptions, and pedagogical inadequacies—hinder communication and interaction between virtual characters and learners, and impede successful engagement with learning tasks and experiences. To enhance communication and interaction between virtual characters and learners, we propose a three-tier framework of 15 research-based guidelines. This framework enables theorists, researchers, and designers to view virtual characters with a holistic lens, informing the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of virtual characters in electronic learning contexts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.