A problematic, yet common, assumption among educational researchers is that when teachers provide authentic, problem-based experiences, students will automatically be engaged. Evidence indicates that this is often not the case. In this article, we discuss (a) problems with ignoring motivation in the design of learning environments, (b) problem-based learning and scaffolding as one way to help, ...

Peer assessment has gained growing popularity in education and teaching. Being a learning tool, evaluating their peers can equip learners with skills to develop judgments about what forms high-quality work. There have been however research gaps in the literature showing a lack of adequate work on the investigation of peer assessment in a group-oriented classroom context. The present study inten...

AbstractIn the present study, attempt has been made to examine the effectiveness of peer and teacher scaffolding in reading comprehension of intermediate EFL students in symmetrical and asymmetrical groups. To do so, sixty intermediate students were purposively selected out of 150 intermediate students in Hamadan Islamic Azad University and Kish Language Institute in Hamadan. They were divided ...

Scaffolding and shadowing techniques have been shown to improve language learners’ reading comprehension. However, little attention has been paid to the comparative effectiveness of these techniques. This study investigated the effect of three selected scaffolding techniques (peer scaffolding, distributed scaffolding, and reciprocal scaffolding) versus three types of shadowing (complete shadowi...

This paper presents a web-based adaptive communication tool, called ACT. ACT supports and guides the learners’ communication/collaboration by implementing the structured dialogue either through sentence openers or communication acts. The scaffolding sentence templates are adapted according to the cognitive skills addressed by the learning activity, the model of collaboration followed and the ed...

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a powerful instructional approach. By working through assessable complex problem-solving tasks learners can be encouraged to actively engage in investigation and inquiry and to use high level cognitive thought processes to solve real-life problems in professional contexts. A critical element of a successful PBL design is the inclusion of instructional support, su...

We describe a computational framework designed to provide adaptive support to learning from examples by coaching the meta-cognitive skill known as self-explanation generating explanations to oneself to clarify an example solution. The framework includes an interface to scaffold self-explanation, a probabilistic student model and a coaching component. The probabilistic student model allows the c...

This paper presents a web-based synchronous adaptive communication tool, referred to as ACT, which supports and guides learners’ communication/collaboration by adopting the structured form of the dialogue and utilizing as “communication-scaffolding” tools both sentence openers and communication acts. The ACT tool adapts the provided set of the “communication-scaffolding” tools according to the ...

The aim of this study is to test the effects of dynamically scaffolding social regulation of middle school students working in a computer-based learning environment. Dyads in the scaffolding condition (N1⁄4 56) are supported with computer-generated scaffolds and students in the control condition (N1⁄4 54) do not receive scaffolds. The scaffolds are dynamically adjusted to dyads’ progress with a...