:::ICCE 2012

Keynote Speakers

C5 : ICCE Conference on Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S)
	Yasmin B. KAFAI, University of Pennsylvania, USA
	Title of Speech: Connecting Play: Learning across People, Practices, and Spaces
Abstract: Play in virtual worlds provides new opportunities for social development, academic learning, and creative expression. In this talk, I propose a multi-modal examination of play to understand how youth navigated the digital public, made social connections, and learned by using their “networking residues”, the traces they leave in form of interactions, clicks, chat, messages, and designs. Following the digital footprints of youth in Whyville.net, we tracked movements and interactions of over 500 tweens for a period of six months, coupled with observations captured in video records, field notes, and interviews with some of the players in after-school clubs and science classes. The discussion will focus on the design and research of new learning analytics and opportunities in networked communities.
C7: ICCE Conference on Technology, Pedagogy and Education
	Fu-Yun YU, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
	Title of Speech: Learner-Centered Pedagogy + Adaptable and Scaffolded Learning Space Design—Online Student Question-Generation
Abstract: In response to contemporary educational approaches to teaching and learning and a drive toward learner-centered pedagogy that accentuates the concepts and importance of learners being engaged in personal knowledge construction and meaningful learning, student question-generation has gained increasing attention in the academic arena over recent decades. While the theoretical foundations of student question-generation are sound, and empirical evidence supporting its positive effects for student cognitive and affective development is solid, there are several impending issues that need to be addressed to allow its immediate adoption and long-term sustainability and scalability within existing educational systems. In this talk, first of all, how student question-generation fits within the learner-centered pedagogy umbrella, how the responsibility for learning is relayed, how the learning process and focus of learning is changed, and how the purpose and processes of evaluation is unfolded using the student question-generation approach is explained. Secondly, issues on the following will be covered: how student question-generation is facilitated, enhanced and transformed with the support of technology, how different online scaffolds are integrated to support student question-generation, and how technology enables adaptable and multiple learning spaces to be built. Finally, studies illustrating how pedagogy, theory, practice and research interplay to enlighten one another for creating a learner-centered learning space are presented.
C2: ICCE Conference on Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and Learning Sciences
	Seng Chee TAN, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
	Title of Speech: Perspectives of Knowledge Creation Theories and their Implications for Education
Abstract: The advent of the Knowledge Age has profound impact on various sectors in modern societies, including the education. The past decades saw an emergence of advocates for knowledge creation practices among school leaders and educators. This clarion call for changes in education is driven by the urgent needs to prepare students for new challenges in the 21st Century. From the learning sciences perspective, Paavola, Lipponen, and Hakkarainen (2004) extended the acquisition and participation metaphors of learning to include knowledge creation metaphor of learning. They considered three influential models of innovative knowledge creation: the Knowledge building pedagogy (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006), the organizational knowledge creation model (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), and the expansive learning approach (Yrjö Engeström, 1999). Paavola, Lipponen, and Hakkarainen suggest that from a knowledge creation perspective, learning involves a “collaborative effort directed toward developing some mediated artifacts, broadly defined as including knowledge, ideas, practices, and material or conceptual artifacts” (, pp. 569-570). This talk presents a deeper analysis of the various theories of knowledge creation to reveal their invariant characteristics and differences. Rather than seeking a single unified theory, a multi-dimensional, multi-level framework is proposed for knowledge creation in education. This framework could serve as a guide for considering knowledge creation approach for education through various phases in our life.
C4: ICCE Conference on Classroom, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Technologies Enhanced Learning (CUMTEL)
	Marcelo MILRAD, Linneaus University, Sweden
	Title of Speech: Innovation and Sustainability in Mobile Learning: Current Perspectives and Challenges
Abstract: The emergent research field of mobile learning has gained much attention in recent years. Since the late 90’s, a substantial number of research projects on mobile learning have been conducted in both formal and informal learning settings. The analysis of the research literature in this field indicate that much of the global research efforts have concentrated on the design and development of technological solutions to support learning about a particular subject matter. The outcomes of these research activities have contributed to a refined conceptualization of learning with mobile technologies in schools, museums and in field trips. However, fewer are the efforts reporting on the problems and limitations while introducing and adopting mobile technologies in schools or, on the different types of barriers or constraints the use of mobile devices faces in different educational settings. In this talk I will address and discuss those aspects related to innovation and sustainability in mobile learning. I will first introduce this research field in terms of perspectives and challenges in order to understand why it matters to study the sustainability of innovations in schools. Thereafter, I will turn the focus to a couple of our on-going research projects in order to provide a critical analysis on the barriers and constraints experienced by both researchers and teachers while integrating mobile devices and applications in elementary and secondary schools. Towards the end, I will discuss factors, stakeholders and lines of action identified when attempting to introduce and sustain innovative educational practices in Swedish schools.

Invited Speakers

C1: ICCE Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education/Intelligent Tutoring System (AIED/ITS) and Adaptive Learning
	Kazuhisa MIWA, Nagoya University, Japan
	Title of Speech: Learning by Creating Cognitive Models
Abstract: Computational cognitive modeling is one representative research method in cognitive science. In this talk, we propose an innovative instructional method for using cognitive modeling as a learning tool.In this context, we should distinguish learning “by” and “of” creating cognitive models (LbyCCM and LofCCM). LofCCM is intended to learn how to build computational cognitive models in which modeling methods and computational programming are focused on. For LofCCM, we developed a web-based production system called DoCoPro that can be used anywhere and anytime in an environment connected to the Internet, and propose an instructional design, “learning through intermediate problems.” We report some case studies for demonstrating the usefulness of this framework. For LbyCCM, we expect participants to learn the model-based thinking by creating cognitive models. In this case, the model-based thinking involves three components: theory based data interpretation, hypothetico-deductive thinking, and understanding based on mental models. In our class practices, participants were guided to interpret observed human performance data based on a psychological theory by comparing the data and the results of computer simulations performed by the model that they created by themselves (theory based data interpretation). They tried to investigate causal relations between cognitive mechanisms as a black box and the observed behavioral data by manipulating the model’s parameters (hypothetico-deductive thinking). They also learned to explain reasons of their own and others’ behavior, i. e., learned to understand cognitive processes behind the behavior, by constructing a mental model underlying the behavior (understanding based on mental models).
C3: ICCE Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Open Contents, and Standards
	Jon MASON, Charles Darwin University, Australia
	Title of Speech: Opening Content for Deeper Inquiry
Abstract: Advancements in learning technologies are being driven from an increasing diversity of domains of practice and research. The “open” agenda – open architecture, open source, open standards, open access, open learning, open networks, open data, and open educational resources – is very much at the forefront of these advances for a growing international community of practice. While this agenda is valued highly in the education sector, openness is not the only driver of change or innovation with ICT. Social media continues to shape the nature of much engagement online and the late 20th century mantra that “content is king” is giving way to a fresh focus on so-called “21st century skills” and competencies where digital literacy is as important as critical thinking and problem solving. Meanwhile, discourses on sense-making and developments in knowledge management and knowledge-sharing infrastructures continue to inform the theory and practice of e-learning. This presentation acknowledges these trends and a broad range of narratives that track the evolution of e-learning as a means of contextualising a frontier ready for further technological innovation: the stimulation and support of questioning online. In particular, research into why-questioning is highlighted. Why? Because the semantics involved typically involve ambiguity, dialog or further inquiry. More specifically, investigation into why-questioning reveals that the object it seeks is explanatory content – and content that can be characterized as such presents a number of challenges for learning technology design.
C6: ICCE Conference on Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL)
	Jozef COLPAERT, University of Antwerp, Belguim
	Title of Speech: The No Significant Difference Syndrome and the Ecological Paradigm Shift
Abstract: “No technology carries on itself any inherent, measurable and generalizable learning effect. The only added value of a particular technology lies in its potential contribution to the added value of the entire learning environment as ecology.” To what extent can this presenter’s thirty years of cognitive and emotional friction in education, as teacher, system developer, educational designer and researcher, be formulated as arguments in such a way that they would exceed the level of idiosyncratic and haphazard observations, and that they could be used as a premises in some kind of scientific reasoning? Inspired by the research methods in the Social Sciences, the educational research community has indeed imposed itself a stronger emphasis on evidence through adequate research design, focusing on methods for data gathering and analysis, and on properties such as representativeness, validity, reliability, and significance. Publishers will increasingly expect data to be linked to publications and researchers themselves become more and more in favor of an Open Data approach. The claim that a statement is true, or at least an accepted finding, should thus be substantiated by evidence. On the other hand, the extent to which this statement really contributes to the research community from an epistemological point of view is another matter. The word ‘really’ pertains to persuasive language use and should be avoided in scholarly language use. So should non-substantiated statements on aspects which we ‘feel’ are amenable to improvement: the amount of replication research, the generalizability of findings to other learning contexts, and the strength of the rationale behind research topic and methodology. In recent years, the educational research community has also shifted more attention to the practitioners in the field: Practitioner-Led Research, Action Research, Reflective Practice, Exploratory Practice, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), Teaching as a Design Science, Design-Based Research (DBR), just to name of few movements. These movements specify different roles for the practitioner, the researcher, the research question, the planned intervention, and for theory. This presenter’s primary concern here is the mere application of theory onto practice. Empirical evidence may contribute to theory, but the question is what should happen with this theory before it is being applied to practice. The intervention itself mostly belongs to the traditional research methods. A third important phenomenon we will discuss is the recognition of the importance of the learning ecology, which puts the learning and teaching process in a broader context. However, there are not enough operational methodological frameworks for designing learning environments and for defining the role of technology in a systematic way. These three concerns – epistemological, methodological and ecological – will serve in this presentation as beacons in our attempt to show the need for educational engineering as activity and that it can be considered as a research method. Engineering in our view, as a caveat, is less related to technology than to a specific strategy, way of thinking and contributing to our community.