This qualitative study explored the design and implementation of a humanoid social robot that mediated collaborative interactions among culturally and linguistically diverse kindergarten children in a US school. The robotic mediation was designed to help children have positive interactions with one another. The study was grounded in theories of…

While a number of studies have considered that metacognition is related to processes at an individual level, the role of metacognition during collaborative learning activities remains unclear. Metacognition has been studied mainly as a process of the individual, neglecting the relevance of group regulated behavior during cooperative activities and…

Effective energy education depends on continuing research designed to identify instructional strategies that will proof effective in particular learning contexts. The aim of this study was to help Taiwanese students learn about energy-saving related concepts through idea-centered, collaborative knowledge-building activities carried out in an…

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative has been at the forefront of introducing low-cost computers in developing countries. We argue that the problem is not as much as a focus on the provision of affordable technologies, but the lack of consideration of deeply contextualized implementation design and the lack of understanding of psychological…

Based on strong research literatures, we conjectured that social processing of feedback by cooperating in a small group setting--with social incentives to ask questions, give explanations and discuss disagreements--would increase learning. We compared group and individual feedback, using two technologies: (1) Technology-mediated, Peer-Assisted…

This article describes the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that employs a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users at participating…