Interactive Virtual Math (IVM) is a visualization tool to support secondary school students’ learning of graphs by dynamic events. In the prototype version students construct a graph and try to improve it themselves and with the feedback of the tool. In a small-scale experiment, which involved four classes at secondary and tertiary education and their mathematics teachers we investigated how the students used the tool in the classroom. In this study we focus on the students learning experience and the results are expected to provide knowledge and directions for further development of the tool. The corpus data consists of self-reported questionnaires and lessons observations. One main finding is that students, at different school levels, find the tool useful to construct or improve graphical representations and it can help to get a better understanding of the subject. The tool features that helped students most were the self-construction of the graphs and to get feedback about their own graph at the end. Other findings are that the students can work independently with the tool and we know more about the tool features that are attractive or need to be improved.
MULTIFILE
The international classroom is presumably a far more effective learning environment for the acquisition of intercultural competence when students receive adequate training to make the most of their intercultural encounters. This paper provides a summary of the intercultural training taught to first-year students of an international programme in The Hague University of Applied Sciences. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how the students respond to this intercultural training as well as what signs of intercultural awareness they show after completing the course. The findings were obtained via qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, observations and student homework assignments. Overall, students evaluate the training positively. Furthermore, students show some awareness of the necessary ingredients for effective intercultural communication in the international classroom as well as of the challenging nature of this communication due to cultural diversity. Finally, this paper provides recommendations from the facilitators on stimulating intercultural learning in the international classroom.
This thesis explores the opportunities for developing and assessing learners’ EFL oral skills in pre-vocational classrooms in the Netherlands. The thesis contains four studies. First, we evaluate the oral interaction practice offered in EFL coursebooks. In the second study, we explore ways to assess individual ability in oral interaction in a reliable and valid manner. Studies three and four report on two experimental studies. Study three investigates the effects of instructional programs on learners’ interactional ability, and study four investigates the effects of these programmes on the affective measures willingness to communicate, enjoyment and self-confidence. Additionally, this study explores the relationship between these affective variables and task achievement in oral interaction tasks. The thesis furthermore contains a summary and discussion of the main outcomes, suggestions for future research and for educational practice.
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