Students’ Use of Knowledge Resources in Environmental Interaction on an Outdoor Learning Trail

This study examined how students leveraged different types of knowledge resources on an outdoor learning trail. We positioned the learning trail as an integral part of the curriculum with a pre- and post-trail phase to scaffold and to support students’ meaning-making process. The study was conducted with two classes of secondary two students. We coded two groups’ discourse to examine the use of knowledge resource types in the meaning-making process in an outdoor learning setting: contextual resource, new conceptual resource, prior knowledge resource, as well as the relationship among these knowledge resource types. Next, we also examined environmental interaction and integration in the students’ use of these knowledge resource types. Analysis showed that contextual resources are chiefly instrumental in fostering students’ capacity to harness new conceptual resource and to activate prior knowledge resource in interacting with and integrating the outdoor learning environment in the meaning-making process.

Viewbrics: Formative Assessment of Complex Skills with Video-Enhanced Rubrics (VER) in Dutch Secondary Education

To learn complex skills, like collaboration, learners need to acquire a concrete and consistent mental model of what it means to master this skill. If learners know their current mastery level and know their targeted mastery level, they can better determine their subsequent learning activities. Rubrics support learners in judging their skill performance as they provide textual descriptions of skills’ mastery levels with performance indicators for all constituent subskills. However, text-based rubrics have a limited capacity to support the formation of mental models with contextualized, time-related and observable behavioral aspects of a complex skill. This paper outlines the design of a study that intends to investigate the effect of rubrics with video modelling examples compared to text-based rubrics on skills acquisition and feedback provisioning. The hypothesis is that video-enhanced rubrics, compared to text based rubrics, will improve mental model formation of a complex skill and improve the feedback quality a learner receives (from e.g. teachers, peers) while practicing a skill, hence positively effecting final mastery of a skill.