Inordertobetterunderstandteachers’perspectivesonthedesignanddevelopmentofdigitalgamebased learning environments, this study examined the characteristics of digital learning games designedbyteachers.Inaddition,thisstudyexploredhowgamedesignandpeercritiqueactivities influencedtheirperceptionsofdigitalgame-basedlearningenvironmentsandlearningthrou...

This investigation postulatesVygotsky’s (1978) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his related “scaffolding” metaphor as well as Norton’s (2006) principles of sociocultural identity as its theoretical foundation.Thisresearchintends to scrutinizethe socioculturally-oriented mediationalmechanisms utilized in student-student and student-teacher collaborationsin an Iranian EFL writing...

This study explores how web-based scaffolding tools provide instructional support while implementing a socio-scientific inquiry (SSI) unit in a science classroom. This case study focused on how students used web-based scaffolding tools during SSI activities, and how students perceived the SSI unit and the scaffolding tools embedded in the SSI activities. A web-based SSI unit was developed and u...

We present a learning system, Socially Guided Exploration, in which a social robot learns new tasks through a combination of self-exploration and social interaction. The system’s motivational drives, along with social scaffolding from a human partner, bias behavior to create learning opportunities for a hierarchical Reinforcement Learning mechanism. The robot is able to learn on its own, but ca...

By Nada Dabbagh Scaffolding is originally a Vygotskyan (Lev Vygotsky, 1896-1934) concept based on the idea of providing supportive assistance to the learner within the parameters of a learner’s zone of proximal development (Zo-ped or ZPD) (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). ZPD is a measure of a learner’s current ability and knowledge what he/she is able to perform with no assistance and the learner’...