No abstract

Think-pair-share (TPS) is a classroom active learning strategy in which students work on activities, first individually, then in pairs and finally as the whole class. TPS allows students to express their reasoning, reflect on their understanding and obtain prompt feedback on their learning. While TPS is recommended to foster classroom engagement and learning, there is a lack of research based evidence in computer science education on the benefits of TPS for learning. In this study, we investigate the learning effectiveness of TPS in a CS1 course. We performed a quasiexperimental study and found that students who learned via TPS performed significantly better on a post-test than students who learned the same concept via lecture. We also conducted a survey and focus group interviews to understand student perceptions of learning with TPS. The majority of students agreed that TPS activities helped improve their conceptual understanding. From an instructor's point of view, TPS was useful to address the challenges of a large class, such as students tuning out or getting distracted and was easy to implement even in a large class.

Understanding the way learners engage with learning technologies, and its relation with their learning, is crucial for motivating design of effective learning interventions. Assessing the learners’ state of engagement, however, is non-trivial. Research suggests that performance is not always a good indicator of learning, especially with open-ended constructivist activities. In this paper, we describe a combined multi-modal learning analytics and interaction analysis method that uses video, audio and log data to identify multi-modal collaborative learning behavioral profiles of 32 dyads as they work on an open-ended task around interactive tabletops with a robot mediator. These profiles, which we name Expressive Explorers, Calm Tinkerers, and Silent Wanderers, confirm previous collaborative learning findings. In particular, the amount of speech interaction and the overlap of speech between a pair of learners are behavior patterns that strongly distinguish between learning and non-learning pairs. Delving deeper, findings suggest that overlapping speech between learners can indicate engagement that is conducive to learning. When we more broadly consider learner affect and actions during the task, we are better able to characterize the range of behavioral profiles exhibited among those who learn. Specifically, we discover two behavioral dimensions along which those who learn vary, namely, problem solving strategy (actions) and emotional expressivity (affect). This finding suggests a relation between problem solving strategy and emotional behavior; one strategy leads to more frustration compared to another. These findings have implications for the design of real-time learning interventions that support productive collaborative learning in open-ended tasks.

In this article the title was incorrectly given as 'Many are the ways to learn identifying multi-modal behavioral profiles of collaborative learning in constructivist activities' but should have been 'Many are the ways to learn: Identifying multi-modal behavioral profiles of collaborative learning in constructivist activities'.Similarly, a few citations of our previous work have been incorrectly placed:-On page 12, in section Dataset and Preprocessing paragraph 5 ("This dataset, with multi-modal behaviors as well as…."), the citation '(Nasir, Bruno, et al., 2021a) should have been 'Nasir, J., Norman, U., Bruno, B., Chetouani, M., & Dillenbourg, P. (2021b)'. -On page 12, in section Dataset and Preprocessing paragraph 5 ("This dataset, with multi-modal behaviors as well as…."), the citations 'Nasir, Bruno, et al. (2020; 2021)' should have been 'Nasir, Bruno, et al. (2020a; 2021a)'. -On page 14, in subsection Analysis Approach paragraph 1 ("The goal of this work is to build and understand…"), the citations '(Nasir et al., 2021a, b; Nasir, Norman, Bruno, & Dillenbourg, 2020c)' should have been '(Nasir et al., 2021a; 2020a)'. -On page 15, in Fig. 4, the citation 'Nasir, Norman, Bruno, and Dillenbourg (2020c)' should have been 'Nasir, J., Bruno, B., & Dillenbourg, P. (2020a)'.