This article presents an investigation into the meaning of ‘learning’ It uses cybernetics as a framework to look at the fundamental questions of: What is learning and why do people learn? Why do they learn this (and not something else)? How does learning happen? The article first describes the origin of cybernetics and its central tenets of circularity, feedback and communication, which suggest...

researchers have suggested that interactional feedback which is between teacher and learner during their writing is associated with l2 learning because it prompts learners to notice l2 forms. this paper reports a classroom-based study that investigated the role of feedback in socio-cultural theory. in this study, 12 efl learners performed on three writing tasks and were provided with a three-st...

This paper considers the potential for scaffolding learning in openended learning environments using a robotic tutor and an open learner model. While we expect this approach to be more broadly applicable, we here illustrate with a map-reading activity in geography and/or environmental sciences. The paper presents issues raised in open-ended teacher interviews, which suggest real possibilities f...

Argumentative interactions in online asynchronous communication are seldom studied by using a qualitative approach as Grounded Theory Methods. The purpose of this paper is about a theory of argumentation based on analysis of teacher-student and learner-learner dialogues. By examining linguistic features of the threads related to the forum of two different academic courses, we consider the struc...

Positive teacher-child relationships are key factors for children’s social-emotional development and academic success in schools. Teachers’ ability to provide children with emotional support and understand children’s unique needs may improve challenging behaviors in the classroom. Play-based teacher intervention training models provide teachers opportunities to become therapeutic agents and lea...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of 2 concept map (cm) learning strategies on iranian efl learners’ reading comprehension ability and learner autonomy. to this end, 60 iranian efl learners at the preintermediate level of language proficiency were randomly assigned to 2 groups. both groups received an 8-week instruction: one through teacher-constructed and the other throug...

This paper describes a study of teacher scaffolding to support reflection and self-regulated learning (SRL) with an open learner model (OLM) in a geography based task on a touch screen. The study was carried out in 6 one-on-one sessions with students between the ages of 10 and 11. We present examples of teachers scaffolding students’ SRL behaviours using the OLM, demonstrating how an OLM can be...

This paper reports on a set of learning experiments which could be considered as first steps towards learning at different levels of a hierarchical approach to imitation learning. A learner robot knows a priori how to execute some behaviours but does not know when. By following a teacher robot through a series of experiences and through imitating the demonstrated behaviours, the learner robot l...

Our research concerns teaching assistant systems. It deals with the question of reuse and exploitation of learners profiles by the different actors of the learning situation; teacher, learner, families, institution or scientist. This paper first describes the difficulties linked to the reuse of heterogeneous existing learners profiles. Then, REPro, a learners profiles m...

Online delivery of courses has become a viable option because of the Internet. This paper describes how we deliver and manage part of a postgraduate degree in telecommunications. We aim to foster learner-centered education while providing sufficient teacher centered activities to counter some of the known concerns with entirely learner-centered education. We use the Internet as the communicatio...