In the U.S., an undergraduate or an “undergrad” is a student who pursues a bachelor’s degree (usually 4 years, Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science) at a college or university or a 2-year associate’s degree program at a college, community college or vocational/technical school. A graduate or a “grad student” is a student, after […]
Author: Junxiu Yu
How Complex It Could Be When Constructing and Conducting a Survey
Survey is frequently used in both daily life and social/psychological research to collect information from a sample of individuals through their responses to questions. The primary purpose of survey is to obtain information describing characteristics of a large sample of individuals of interest relatively quickly (Ponto, 2015). It can range from asking consumers their feedback […]
How does Scientific Theory Evolve/Revolve?
Traditionally, scientific development is viewed as the cumulative triumph of an ever more truthful understanding of the reality. However, Kuhn (1970) argued in Structure of Scientific Revolutions that theory adaptation is in fact rare, and new theories replace old ones rather than building on them. A core concept in this argument is the life cycle […]
A Review of Reviews on Collaboration within Different Fields of Study
No matter how people call it, cooperation, collaboration, team work, or group work, etc., we have been witnessing growing research and practices related to group activities. Just for consistency, this post will use the word collaboration to represent the aforementioned terminologies at a broad level, where a group of students learn together inside or/and outside […]
Technology: A Panacea or Placebo for Education?
Xinyun posed a really good question last week: “Moreover, even though the trends mentioned above were all used extensively in teaching and learning, would they be able to convert into good learning outcomes?” I think we can start to answer it with a further examination of some concrete forms of technology such as tablets. It […]
How to Realize Individual Learning in Small Groups?
Disclaimer: I do not have an answer to it. Like the questions listed in my last post named “Individual Learning within Groups in an Online Course: Who Cares?”, we are still in the process of finding answers to achieve group learning without sacrificing individual learning opportunities. A large number of research teams and projects are […]
Individual Learning within Groups in an Online Course: Who Cares?
It is the continuous discussions within the GA groups around social media, personalized learning, and collaborative learning that leads to this blogpost. In particular, this post attempts at inquiring questions including: What is group learning? How do individuals learn in a group? What is the role of technology during this learning experience? Group learning: […]
Several thoughts on “Making the Black Box of Collaborative Learning Transparent: Combining Process-Oriented and Cognitive Load Approaches (Janssen et al., 2010)”
At current phase as a PhD candidate, I have two broad research interest. One is computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and the other is cognitive science. The two research fields are often considered as distinct and sometimes even contradictory by many researchers, due to their differences in theory-orientation, unit of analysis, and so on. But […]
The Binary Model of Formal/ Informal Learning: Is It Necessary?
In Xinyun’s previous blog post, she touched on formal and informal learning. In fact, we keep witnessing heated discussions around these topics. Understanding what is formal/ informal learning, in my opinion, serves as a good start and lends more insights to the debate. The Binary/ Tripartite Model According to Clark (2015), Malcolm Knowles (1950) […]