PhD projects

Structural reflection and planning skills are not part of the curriculum of primary education. In secondary school, however, there is a great appeal on these skills to improve responsibility and self-guidance in learning. The gap between demands on students' learning skills in primary and secondary education may be closed by giving attention to these skills in the final stage of primary education.

Feelings of self-efficacy have been found to be a strong predictor of academic achievement, course selection and career decisions across domains and age levels. Research has shown that students may perform poorly either because they lack the skills or because they have the skills but lack the perceived personal efficacy to make optimal use of them. Feedback could be an important way to influence the state of self-efficacy. There is a strong relationship between the goal orientation of a learner and his or her interpretation of the purpose of feedback.

The problematic relationship between regular education and the development of cognitively excellent pupils on cognitive, motivational, social and emotional variables has been recognised for a long time. Research shows the early years of education to be crucial for their school career. Therefore, the learning processes of the cognitively excellent children in particular should be optimally supported by level-appropriate play and learning material.

Research shows that using the Read-Recite-Review (3R) study strategy - in which self-testing plays a key role - improves learning from text. From an educational perspective, however, this effect is relatively small. Here, three instructional interventions are investigated that might augment the effectiveness of this strategy on learning from text. In three experiments, it is investigated if taking notes during reading, answering non-specific short-answer questions during reciting, and selective reviewing enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the 3R strategy.

It is frequently stated that creativity –or the ability to create effective novelty (Cropley, 1999)– is an important quality for both the individual and the society at large (e.g., Runco, 2004; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999) and that educating for creativity should be conceived a key mission in contemporary educational practice (Sawyer, 2006). Unfortunately, until now both education and psychology have largely failed to deduce a universal set of guidelines for creativity enhancement (see Nickerson, 1999, p. 407; Sweller, 2004, p. 19).

This PhD project explores the application of game design patterns in technology enhanced learning environments. The idea behind this project is the use of game design patterns that can be matched with learning processes/functions. Game design patterns are descriptions of game elements. By combining these with pedagogical mechanisms it is expected to enhance learning experiences for both students and teachers.

Reflection amplifiers are intervention techniques that aim at prompting reflective practice in learning, in order to enhance the quality of the learning experience. The main issue (theoretical and practical) in this research is therefore how, when and to whom reflection amplifiers can be offered and to whom not?

Learning Networks are designed to support the lifelong learner. In such settings, learning needs to be guided for self-organisational processes to emerge.
Using a cognitive load approach it is argued that without guidance, learners have to allocate cognitive capacity to structuring the cooperative process of knowledge sharing, thus diminishing the capacity available for knowledge sharing and learning.

The objective of this research is to identify contextual dimensions for learner support in unstructured environments, in which no predefined curriculum and explicit educational guidance is available, and users might be at very different stages on their learning course. Within this scope the particular interest of this thesis is phrased by the following question. How to realize appropriate support strategies and use interaction footprints as a source of information that is suitable for stimulating engagement in social interaction and reflection of self-directed learners on the Web2.0?