To provide customized workplace learning opportunities, a digital badge system was designed by a university, governmental agency and national professional association to support teachers' implementation of professional development (PD). Teacher Learning Journeys (TLJ) is an approach that allows for teachers to customize their PD experience to their workplace and make decisions about what PD they need based on their expertise and interests. The digital badging provided and assessed experiences in online PD. Using a theoretical framework that focused on decision making and customization as part of personalization, researchers conducted a theory-driven thematic analysis on teachers' TLJ artifacts (goal statements, interviews and reflective activity logs). Data came from 36 teachers who completed 154 PD activities over a 3-month period. A case study was developed from an in-depth analysis of eight teachers' artifacts and interviews. Using TLJ as a PD tool, teachers made decisions when selecting learning goals they identified as personally relevant. Teachers customized the level of assessment and the specific content depth to personalize the PD training for workplace constraints. This project informs future research aiming to understand how personalized learning activities support teachers and other professional learners in a variety of workplaces.Digital badges, also known as microcredentials, are online representations of learning experiences and activities that tell a story about the learner's education and skills. Frequently represented by a graphic or icon, badges offer a socially constructed and valued encapsulation of experiences through a variety of stored metadata, such as the issuer, description and evaluation criteria for learning. Through this rich metadata, digital badges offer transparency and depth into the learning and achievements of the learners which can then be reviewed by others (Abramovich, Schunn & Higashi, 2013;Halavais, 2012). While relatively new, badges are slowly gaining adoption in traditional educational structures. Abramovich et al (2013) studied the role digital badges played on motivation in primary school students and found impact on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. They also found that effects of digital badges varied across learner ability and badge design. Hickey and Soylu (2012) explored digital badges with higher education students, and their findings suggest digital badges can act as a valuable tool. Because badges
This study investigated the effects of teacher discourse in a computer-mediated discussion. Three different styles of discourse were established: questions only; statements only; and conversational. Results supported the hypothesis that a conversational style of discourse produced higher levels of student participation with a more complex interaction pattern. In addition, there was a higher frequency of peer-peer interaction with more complex responses. This study suggests that a conversational style of discourse is both possible and desirable within a computer-mediated discussion. Further research is needed on the effects of a conversational style and newer interface designs on student participation and achievement.
This study was undertaken for two purposes: 1) to describe differences in anxiety in students voluntarily entering two different types of computer courses; and 2) to assess the changes in anxiety level attributed to each course. Undergraduate college students had registered for two introductory computer courses. One was a problem solving and programming course; the other was a tools software applications (non-programming) course. Students completed a pretest and posttest for computer anxiety. Results indicated that initial anxiety levels were not significantly different, and that the reduction in computer anxiety was significantly greater for students in the tools software applications course than for students in the problem solving and programming course. Although the “tool use” course proved more effective in reducing computer anxiety, results showed that large numbers of subjects in both conditions exhibited no reduction in anxiety as a result of the courses.
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