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Learning scenarios building on disagreement in a learning group or a whole classroom are well established in modern pedagogy. In the specific tradition of collaborative learning, such approaches have been traced back to theories of socio-cognitive conflict and have been associated with argumentative learning interactions. An important premise for these types of learning scenarios is the identification of disagreement. In the spirit of learning analytics, this calls for analytic tools and mechanisms to detect and measure disagreement in learning groups. Our mathematical analysis of several methods shows that methods of different origin are largely equivalent, only differing in the normalization factors and ensuing scaling properties. We have selected a measure that scales best and applied it to a target scenario in which learners judged types and levels of "toxicity" of social media content using an interactive tagging tool. Due restrictions imposed by the pandemic, we had to replace the originally envisaged classroom scenario by online experiments. We report on two consecutive experiments involving 42 students in the first and 89 subjects in the second instance. The results corroborate the adequacy of the measure in combination with the interactive, game-based approach to collecting judgements. We also saw that a revision of categories after the first study reduced the ambiguity. In addition to applying the disagreement measure to the learner judgements, we also assessed several personality traits, such as authoritarianism and social closeness. Regarding the dependency of the learner judgements on personality traits, we could only observe a weak influence of authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the theories of metacognition and inquiry-based learning, we developed a process-oriented scaffolding agent (POSA) to support inquiry-based learning processes in complex domains centered around emerging learning objects. The objectives are to provide process guidance on time and on demand, and to help the students to reflect on and possibly re-plan their learning processes by monitoring and analyzing students' actions and by using knowledge captured in a task model, a strategy model, a learner model and a scaffolding model. We demonstrate the technical feasibility to implement such a domain-generic and lightweight pedagogical agent and to integrate it into a flexible, open-ended inquiry-based learning environment. Furthermore, we report a pilot study to investigate the learners' acceptance of the POSA based on the Technology Acceptance Model. The results reveal that most of the participants found the POSA generally useful in a flexible, open-ended inquiry learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, we have seen integration as a theme and purpose of educational media usage of its own right. The genuine value of integration is primarily characterized by improving the richness and directness of educational interactions. This article takes its starting point by looking at classroom activities. A good integration of interactive media in the classroom including groupware functions can already facilitate smooth "learning flows". Specific design principles can be extracted from the experience gathered in several recent projects, e.g. the "digital mimicry" principle refers to the extrapolation of expertise with conventional tools to similar computerized tools. The general issue of interoperability and connectivity includes aspects of software and hardware interfaces and even goes beyond technology in that it requires mental interfaces that allow users (teachers and learners) to realize and make use of the possible connections. These interfaces are conceived at design and provide implicit learning process support in the learning environment. In analogy to "business process modeling", there is also an explicit approach to integrating learning processes: The use of specific representations is to describe and potentially operationalize the orchestration of learning scenarios. In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), the integration of media and group scales, e.g. between individual, classroom and community, relies essentially on mechanisms for handling emerging learning objects in terms of production, exchange, re-use and transformation. In the spirit of constructivist pedagogical approaches, we have to cope with "emerging learning objects" created by learners and learning groups in partly unanticipated ways. This assumption gives rise to specific new challenges for the indexing and retrieval of such learning objects (or products). Automatic indexing derived from the task-tool context and similarity based search allow for an asynchronous exchange of learning objects within larger anonymous learning communities. In this sense, objects of common interest may trigger social processes in learning communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]