This study explored the dynamics of students' knowledge co-construction in an asynchronous gamified environment in higher education, focusing on peer discussions in college business courses. Utilizing epistemic network analysis, sequence pattern mining, and automated coding, we analyzed the interactions of 1,319 business students. Our findings…

STEM education emphasizes improving student learning by linking abstract knowledge with real-world problems and engaging students in authentic projects to solve real-world problems. Accordingly, project-based learning has been widely promoted in STEM programs and has shown a promising impact on student learning. However, solving real-world…

This article uses a cultural-developmental framework to illuminate the interplay between collective and individual activity in the mathematical reasoning displayed in a university Masters level lesson on fractals. During whole class and small group discussions, eleven students, guided by an instructor, engage in inductive reasoning about the area…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the nature of small group discussion tasks and learners' talk during Physical Science lessons. The study was conducted during Physical Science lessons with three self-selected groups of Grade 11 learners from one school. A total of three lessons were followed. During the…

Group work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses is an effective means of improving student outcomes, and many different factors can influence the dynamics of student discussions and, ultimately, the success of collaboration. The substance and dynamics of group discussions are commonly examined using qualitative methods such…

This study is framed in the social perspective of Epistemology of Science, and it aims to examine the epistemic operations performed by high school students while engaged in a role-play about food safety that requires them to engage in both argumentation and decision-making practices. The epistemic operations are examined on two different levels:…

From a commognitive approach, this article focuses on the discourse generated by preservice primary teachers who are solving didactic-mathematical tasks. Our aims are to study the characteristics of the aforementioned discourse and, through these characteristics, identify whether a discourse close to the one of primary teachers is beginning to…

Learning by invention is an alternative approach to teaching statistics where students are tasked with attempting to solve a problem before being taught the canonical formula for solving it, often resulting in increased understanding of material compared with traditional instruction. The first study, conducted in a college statistics classroom…

We all know that they do it, but what do students laugh "about" when learning science together? Although research has shown that students do use humor when they learn science, the role of humor in science education has received little attention. In this study, undergraduate students' laughter during collaborative work in physics has been…

In this exploratory, descriptive study we examined how discussion goals were accomplished during face-to-face and online case-based discussions facilitated by the same co-instructors. An analysis of discussion transcripts suggests that despite different instructor and student participation patterns across contexts, the instructors' goals of…

In this paper, we examine the student group discussion processes in a scenario-based assessment of engineering professional skills called Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA). In the assessment, the students were evaluated through a discussion on a scenario related to an engineering problem with no clear-cut solution. We applied…

For decades, researchers have asserted that K-12 teachers should embed reading comprehension instruction within each academic discipline, including "technical subjects" such as engineering. Recently, this assertion has become a source of controversy among researchers and practitioners who believe that time spent on teaching reading…

This study investigated communication patterns and behavior in problem-solving groups in a graduate online course. An inductive qualitative analysis method was employed to analyze 732 messages that were retrieved from small group forums. The current study identified a temporal pattern of group development was in comparison with existing…

This study explored what instructors can do to improve student depth of thinking in online discussion boards (DBs). Participants were graduate students enrolled in online courses within a college of education in the southwest United States. Measurement consisted of discourse analysis of posts in DBs and student self-assessment of dispositions,…

In this study the effects of different learning environments on the promotion of decision-making competence for the socioscientific issue of genetically modified crops is investigated. The comparison focuses on direct vs. indirect instructions. Therefore on the one hand a sophisticated decision-making strategy was presented to the directly…