Clinical Learning Environment and Supervision. Development and Validation of the CLES Evaluation Scale

The purpose of the study is: (1) to describe how nursing students' experienced their clinical learning environment and the supervision given by staff nurses working in hospital settings; and (2) to develop and test an evaluation scale of Clinical Learning Environment and Supervision (CLES). The study has been carried out in different phases. The pilot study (n=163) explored the association between the characteristics of a ward and its evaluation as a learning environment by students. The second version of research instrument (which was developed by the results of this pilot study) were tested by an expert panel (n=9 nurse teachers) and test-retest group formed by student nurses (n=38). After this evaluative phase, the CLES was formed as the basic research instrument for this study and it was tested with the Finnish main sample (n=416). In this phase, a concurrent validity instrument (Dunn & Burnett 1995) was used to confirm the validation process of CLES. The international comparative study was made by comparing the Finnish main sample with a British sample (n=142). The international comparative study was necessary for two reasons. In the instrument developing process, there is a need to test the new instrument in some other nursing culture. Other reason for comparative international study is the reflecting the impact of open employment markets in the European Union (EU) on the need to evaluate and to integrate EU health care educational systems. The results showed that the individualised supervision system is the most used supervision model and the supervisory relationship with personal mentor is the most meaningful single element of supervision evaluated by nursing students. The ward atmosphere and the management style of ward manager are the most important environmental factors of the clinical ward. The study integrates two theoretical elements - learning environment and supervision - in developing a preliminary theoretical model. The comparative international study showed that, Finnish students were more satisfied and evaluated their clinical placements and supervision with higher scores than students in the United Kingdom (UK). The difference between groups was statistical highly significant (p= 0.000). In the UK, clinical placements were longer but students met their nurse teachers less frequently than students in Finland. Arrangements for supervision were similar. This research process has produced the evaluation scale (CLES), which can be used in research and quality assessments of clinical learning environment and supervision in Finland and in the UK. CLES consists of 27 items and it is sub-divided into five sub-dimensions. Cronbach's alpha coefficient varied from high 0.94 to marginal 0.73. CLES is a compact evaluation scale and user-friendliness makes it suitable for continuing evaluation.

Emotions in a Web-based Learning Environment

The aim of this thesis was to examine emotions in a web-based learning environment (WBLE). Theoretically, the thesis was grounded on the dimensional model of emotions. Four empirical studies were conducted. Study I focused on students’ anxiety and their self-efficacy in computer-using situations. Studies II and III examined the influence of experienced emotions on students’ collaborative visible and non-collaborative invisible activities and lurking in a WBLE. Study II also focused on the antecedents of the emotions students experience in a web-based learning environment. Study IV concentrated on clarifying the differences between emotions experienced in face-to-face and web-based collaborative learning. The results of these studies are reported in four original research articles published in scientific journals. The present studies demonstrate that emotions are important determinants of student behaviour in a web-based learning, and justify the conclusion that interactions on the web can and do have an emotional content. Based on the results of these empirical studies, it can be concluded that the emotions students experience during the web-based learning result mostly from the social interactions rather than from the technological context. The studies indicate that the technology itself is not the only antecedent of students’ emotional reactions in the collaborative web-based learning situations. However, the technology itself also exerted an influence on students’ behaviour. It was found that students’ computer anxiety was associated with their negative expectations of the consequences of using technology-based learning environments in their studies. Moreover, the results also indicated that student behaviours in a WBLE can be divided into three partially overlapping classes: i) collaborative visible ii) non-collaborative invisible activities, and iii) lurking. What is more, students’ emotions experienced during the web-based learning affected how actively they participated in such activities in the environment. Especially lurkers, i.e. students who seldom participated in discussions but frequently visited the online environment, experienced more negatively valenced emotions during the courses than did the other students. This result indicates that such negatively toned emotional experiences can make the lurking individuals less eager to participate in other WBLE courses in the future. Therefore, future research should also focus more precisely on the reasons that cause individuals to lurk in online learning groups, and the development of learning tasks that do not encourage or permit lurking or inactivity. Finally, the results from the study comparing emotional reactions in web-based and face-to-face collaborative learning indicated that the learning by means of web-based communication resulted in more affective reactivity when compared to learning in a face-to-face situation. The results imply that the students in the web-based learning group experienced more intense emotions than the students in the face-to-face learning group.The interpretations of this result are that the lack of means for expressing emotional reactions and perceiving others’ emotions increased the affectivity in the web-based learning groups. Such increased affective reactivity could, for example, debilitate individual’s learning performance, especially in complex learning tasks. Therefore, it is recommended that in the future more studies should be focused on the possibilities to express emotions in a text-based web environment to ensure better means for communicating emotions, and subsequently, possibly decrease the high level of affectivity. However, we do not yet know whether the use of means for communicating emotional expressions via the web (for example, “smileys” or “emoticons”) would be beneficial or disadvantageous in formal learning situations. Therefore, future studies should also focus on assessing how the use of such symbols as a means for expressing emotions in a text-based web environment would affect students’ and teachers’ behaviour and emotional state in web-based learning environments.

University students’ regulation of learning and text processing – examples from medical and teacher education

The general aim of the thesis was to study university students’ learning from the perspective of regulation of learning and text processing. The data were collected from the two academic disciplines of medical and teacher education, which share the features of highly scheduled study, a multidisciplinary character, a complex relationship between theory and practice and a professional nature. Contemporary information society poses new challenges for learning, as it is not possible to learn all the information needed in a profession during a study programme. Therefore, it is increasingly important to learn how to think and learn independently, how to recognise gaps in and update one’s knowledge and how to deal with the huge amount of constantly changing information. In other words, it is critical to regulate one’s learning and to process text effectively. The thesis comprises five sub-studies that employed cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs and multiple methods, from surveys to eye tracking. Study I examined the connections between students’ study orientations and the ways they regulate their learning. In total, 410 second-, fourth- and sixth-year medical students from two Finnish medical schools participated in the study by completing a questionnaire measuring both general study orientations and regulation strategies. The students were generally deeply oriented towards their studies. However, they regulated their studying externally. Several interesting and theoretically reasonable connections between the variables were found. For instance, self-regulation was positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation and was negatively correlated with non-commitment. However, external regulation was likewise positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation but also with surface orientation and systematic orientation. It is argued that external regulation might function as an effective coping strategy in the cognitively loaded medical curriculum. Study II focused on medical students’ regulation of learning and their conceptions of the learning environment in an innovative medical course where traditional lectures were combined wth problem-based learning (PBL) group work. First-year medical and dental students (N = 153) completed a questionnaire assessing their regulation strategies of learning and views about the PBL group work. The results indicated that external regulation and self-regulation of the learning content were the most typical regulation strategies among the participants. In line with previous studies, self-regulation wasconnected with study success. Strictly organised PBL sessions were not considered as useful as lectures, although the students’ views of the teacher/tutor and the group were mainly positive. Therefore, developers of teaching methods are challenged to think of new solutions that facilitate reflection of one’s learning and that improve the development of self-regulation. In Study III, a person-centred approach to studying regulation strategies was employed, in contrast to the traditional variable-centred approach used in Study I and Study II. The aim of Study III was to identify different regulation strategy profiles among medical students (N = 162) across time and to examine to what extent these profiles predict study success in preclinical studies. Four regulation strategy profiles were identified, and connections with study success were found. Students with the lowest self-regulation and with an increasing lack of regulation performed worse than the other groups. As the person-centred approach enables us to individualise students with diverse regulation patterns, it could be used in supporting student learning and in facilitating the early diagnosis of learning difficulties. In Study IV, 91 student teachers participated in a pre-test/post-test design where they answered open-ended questions about a complex science concept both before and after reading either a traditional, expository science text or a refutational text that prompted the reader to change his/her beliefs according to scientific beliefs about the phenomenon. The student teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their regulation and processing strategies. The results showed that the students’ understanding improved after text reading intervention and that refutational text promoted understanding better than the traditional text. Additionally, regulation and processing strategies were found to be connected with understanding the science phenomenon. A weak trend showed that weaker learners would benefit more from the refutational text. It seems that learners with effective learning strategies are able to pick out the relevant content regardless of the text type, whereas weaker learners might benefit from refutational parts that contrast the most typical misconceptions with scientific views. The purpose of Study V was to use eye tracking to determine how third-year medical studets (n = 39) and internal medicine residents (n = 13) read and solve patient case texts. The results revealed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts; compared to the students, the residents were more accurate in their diagnoses and processed the texts significantly faster and with a lower number of fixations. Different reading patterns were also found. The observed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts could be used in medical education to model expert reasoning and to teach how a good medical text should be constructed. The main findings of the thesis indicate that even among very selected student populations, such as high-achieving medical students or student teachers, there seems to be a lot of variation in regulation strategies of learning and text processing. As these learning strategies are related to successful studying, students enter educational programmes with rather different chances of managing and achieving success. Further, the ways of engaging in learning seldom centre on a single strategy or approach; rather, students seem to combine several strategies to a certain degree. Sometimes, it can be a matter of perspective of which way of learning can be considered best; therefore, the reality of studying in higher education is often more complicated than the simplistic view of self-regulation as a good quality and external regulation as a harmful quality. The beginning of university studies may be stressful for many, as the gap between high school and university studies is huge and those strategies that were adequate during high school might not work as well in higher education. Therefore, it is important to map students’ learning strategies and to encourage them to engage in using high-quality learning strategies from the beginning. Instead of separate courses on learning skills, the integration of these skills into course contents should be considered. Furthermore, learning complex scientific phenomena could be facilitated by paying attention to high-quality learning materials and texts and other support from the learning environment also in the university. Eye tracking seems to have great potential in evaluating performance and growing diagnostic expertise in text processing, although more research using texts as stimulus is needed. Both medical and teacher education programmes and the professions themselves are challenging in terms of their multidisciplinary nature and increasing amounts of information and therefore require good lifelong learning skills during the study period and later in work life.

Enhancing human security through crisis management : opportunities and challenges for learning

Inhimilliseen turvallisuuteen kriisinhallinnan kautta – oppimisen mahdollisuuksia ja haasteita Kylmän sodan jälkeen aseelliset konfliktit ovat yleensä alkaneet niin sanotuissa hauraissa valtioissa ja köyhissä maissa, ne ovat olleet valtioiden sisäisiä ja niihin on osallistunut ei-valtiollisia aseellisia ryhmittymiä. Usein ne johtavat konfliktikierteeseen, jossa sota ja vakaammat olot vaihtelevat. Koska kuolleisuus konflikteissa voi jäädä alle kansainvälisen määritelmän (1000 kuollutta vuodessa), kutsun tällaisia konflikteja ”uusiksi konflikteiksi”. Kansainvälinen yhteisö on pyrkinyt kehittämään kriisinhallinnan ja rauhanrakentamisen malleja, jotta pysyvä rauhantila saataisiin aikaiseksi. Inhimillinen turvallisuus perustuu näkemykseen, jossa kunnioitetaan jokaisen yksilön ihmisoikeuksia ja jolla on vaikutusta myös kriisinhallinnan ja rauhanrakentamisen toteuttamiseen. Tutkimukseen kuuluu kaksi empiiristä osaa: Delfoi tulevaisuuspaneeliprosessin sekä kriisinhallintahenkilöstön haastattelut. Viisitoista eri alojen kriisinhallinta-asiantuntijaa osallistui paneeliin, joka toteutettiin vuonna 2008. Paneelin tulosten mukaan tulevat konfliktit usein ovat uusien konfliktien kaltaisia. Lisäksi kriisinhallintahenkilöstöltä edellytetään vuorovaikutus- ja kommunikaatiokykyä ja luonnollisesti myös varsinaisia ammatillisia valmiuksia. Tulevaisuuspaneeli korosti vuorovaikutus- ja kommunikaatiotaitoja erityisesti siviilikriisinhallintahenkilöstön kompetensseissa, mutta samat taidot painottuivat sotilaallisen kriisinhallinnan henkilöstön kompetensseissakin. Kriisinhallinnassa tarvitaan myös selvää työnjakoa eri toimijoiden kesken. Kosovossa työskennelleen henkilöstön haastatteluaineisto koostui yhteensä 27 teemahaastattelusta. Haastateltavista 9 oli ammattiupseeria, 10 reservistä rekrytoitua rauhanturvaajaa ja 8 siviilikriisinhallinnassa työskennellyttä henkilöä. Haastattelut toteutettiin helmi- ja kesäkuun välisenä aikana vuonna 2008. Haastattelutuloksissa korostui vuorovaikutus- ja kommunikaatiotaitojen merkitys, sillä monissa käytännön tilanteissa haastateltavat olivat ratkoneet ongelmia yhteistyössä muun kriisinhallintahenkilöstön tai paikallisten asukkaiden kanssa. Kriisinhallinnassa toteutui oppimisprosesseja, jotka usein olivat luonteeltaan myönteisiä ja informaalisia. Tällaisten onnistumisten vaikutus yksilön minäkuvaan oli myönteinen. Tällaisia prosesseja voidaan kuvata ”itseä koskeviksi oivalluksiksi”. Kriisinhallintatehtävissä oppimisella on erityinen merkitys, jos halutaan kehittää toimintoja inhimillisen turvallisuuden edistämiseksi. Siksi on tärkeää, että kriisinhallintakoulutusta ja kriisinhallintatyössä oppimista kehitetään ottamaan huomioon oppimisen eri tasot ja ulottuvuudet sekä niiden merkitys. Informaaliset oppimisen muodot olisi otettava paremmin huomioon kriisinhallintakoulutusta ja kriisinhallintatehtävissä oppimista kehitettäessä. Palautejärjestelmää olisi kehitettävä eri tavoin. Koko kriisinhallintaoperaation on saatava tarvittaessa myös kriittistä palautetta onnistumisista ja epäonnistumisista. Monet kriisinhallinnassa työskennelleet kaipaavat kunnollista palautetta työrupeamastaan. Liian rutiininomaiseksi koettu palaute ei edistä yksilön oppimista. Spontaanisti monet haastatellut pitivät tärkeänä, että kriisinhallinnassa työskennelleillä olisi mahdollisuus debriefing- tyyppiseen kotiinpaluukeskusteluun. Pelkkä tällainen mahdollisuus ilmeisesti voisi olla monelle myönteinen uutinen, vaikka tilaisuutta ei hyödynnettäisikään. Paluu kriisinhallintatehtävistä Suomeen on monelle haasteellisempaa kuin näissä tehtävissä työskentelyn aloittaminen ulkomailla. Tutkimuksen tulokset kannustavat tutkimaan kriisinhallintaa oppimisen näkökulmasta. On myös olennaista, että kriisinhallinnan palautejärjestelmiä kehitetään mahdollisimman hyvin edistämään sekä yksilöllistä että organisatorista oppimista kriisinhallinnassa. Kriisinhallintaoperaatio on oppimisympäristö. Kriisinhallintahenkilöstön kommunikaatio- ja vuorovaikutustaitojen kehittäminen on olennaista tavoiteltaessa kestävää rauhanprosessia, jossa konfliktialueen asukkaatkin ovat mukana.

Learning information technology business in a changing industry landscape. Introducing Team Entrepreneurship in Renewing Bachelor Education in Renewing Bachelor Education in Information

Speed, uncertainty and complexity are increasing in the business world all the time. When knowledge and skills become quickly irrelevant, new challenges are set for information technology (IT) education. Meta-learning skills – learning how to learn rapidly - and innovation skills have become more essential than single technologies or other specific issues. The drastic changes in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector have caused a need to reconsider how IT Bachelor education in Universities of Applied Sciences should be organized and employed to cope with the change. The objective of the study was to evaluate how a new approach to IT Bachelor education, the ICT entrepreneurship study path (ICT-ESP) fits IT Bachelor education in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. This kind of educational arrangement has not been employed elsewhere in the context of IT Bachelor education. The study presents the results of a four-year period during which IT Bachelor education was renewed in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. The learning environment was organized into an ICT-ESP based on Nonaka’s knowledge theory and Kolb’s experiental learning. The IT students who studied in the ICT-ESP established a cooperative and learned ICT by running their cooperative at the University of Applied Sciences. The students (called team entrepreneurs) studied by reading theory in books and other sources of explicit information, doing projects for their customers, and reflecting in training sessions on what was learnt by doing and by studying the literature. Action research was used as the research strategy in this study. Empirical data was collected via theme-based interviews, direct observation, and participative observation. Grounded theory method was utilized in the data analysis and the theoretical sampling was used to guide the data collection. The context of the University of Applied Sciences provided a good basis for fostering team entrepreneurship. However, the results showed that the employment of the ICT-ESP did not fit into the IT Bachelor education well enough. The ICT-ESP was cognitively too tough for the team entrepreneurs because they had two different set of rules to follow in their studies. The conventional courses engaged lot of energy which should have been spent for professional development in the ICT-ESP. The amount of competencies needed in the ICT-ESP for professional development was greater than those needed for any other ways of studying. The team entrepreneurs needed to develop skills in ICT, leadership and self-leadership, team development and entrepreneurship skills. The entrepreneurship skills included skills on marketing and sales, brand development, productization, and business administration. Considering the three-year time the team entrepreneurs spent in the ICT-ESP, the challenges were remarkable. Changes to the organization of IT Bachelor education are also suggested in the study. At first, it should be admitted that the ICT-ESP produces IT Bachelors with a different set of competencies compared to the conventional way of educating IT Bachelors. Secondly, the number of courses on general topics in mathematics, physics, and languages for team entrepreneurs studying in the ICTESP should be reconsidered and the conventional course-based teaching of the topics should be reorganized to support the team coaching process of the team entrepreneurs with their practiceoriented projects. Third, the upcoming team entrepreneurs should be equipped with relevant information about the ICT-ESP and what it would require in practice to study as a team entrepreneur. Finally, the upcoming team entrepreneurs should be carefully selected before they start in the ICT-ESP to have a possibility to eliminate solo players and those who have a too romantic view of being a team entrepreneur. The results gained in the study provided answers to the original research questions and the objectives of the study were met. Even though the IT degree programme was terminated during the research process, the amount of qualitative data gathered made it possible to justify the interpretations done.

Design of Personalization of Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses have been in the center of attention in the recent years. However, the main problem of all online learning environments is their lack of personalization according to the learners’ knowledge, learning styles and other learning preferences. This research explores the parameters and features used for personalization in the literature and based on them, evaluates to see how well the current MOOC platforms have been personalized. Then, proposes a design framework for personalization of MOOC platforms that fulfills most of the personalization parameters in the literature including the learning style as well as personalization features. The result of an assessment made for the proposed design framework shows that the framework well supports personalization of MOOCs.

Designing new learning experiences? : exploring corporate E-learners’ self-regulated learning

The context of this study is corporate e-learning, with an explicit focus on how digital learning design can facilitate self-regulated learning (SRL). The field of e-learning is growing rapidly. An increasing number of corporations use digital technology and elearning for training their work force and customers. E-learning may offer economic benefits, as well as opportunities for interaction and communication that traditional teaching cannot provide. However, the evolving variety of digital learning contexts makes new demands on learners, requiring them to develop strategies to adapt and cope with novel learning tools. This study derives from the need to learn more about learning experiences in digital contexts in order to be able to design these properly for learning. The research question targets how the design of an e-learning course influences participants’ self-regulated learning actions and intentions. SRL involves learners’ ability to exercise agency in their learning. Micro-level SRL processes were targeted by exploring behaviour, cognition, and affect/motivation in relation to the design of the digital context. Two iterations of an e-learning course were tested on two groups of participants (N=17). However, the exploration of SRL extends beyond the educational design research perspective of comparing the effects of the changes to the course designs. The study was conducted in a laboratory with each participant individually. Multiple types of data were collected. However, the results presented in this thesis are based on screen observations (including eye tracking) and video-stimulated recall interviews. These data were integrated in order to achieve a broad perspective on SRL. The most essential change evident in the second course iteration was the addition of feedback during practice and the final test. Without feedback on actions there was an observable difference between those who were instruction-directed and those who were self-directed in manipulating the context and, thus, persisted whenever faced with problems. In the second course iteration, including the feedback, this kind of difference was not found. Feedback provided the tipping point for participants to regulate their learning by identifying their knowledge gaps and to explore the learning context in a targeted manner. Furthermore, the course content was consistently seen from a pragmatic perspective, which influenced the participants’ choice of actions, showing that real life relevance is an important need of corporate learners. This also relates to assessment and the consideration of its purpose in relation to participants’ work situation. The rigidity of the multiple choice questions, focusing on the memorisation of details, influenced the participants to adapt to an approach for surface learning. It also caused frustration in cases where the participants’ epistemic beliefs were incompatible with this kind of assessment style. Triggers of positive and negative emotions could be categorized into four levels: personal factors, instructional design of content, interface design of context, and technical solution. In summary, the key design choices for creating a positive learning experience involve feedback, flexibility, functionality, fun, and freedom. The design of the context impacts regulation of behaviour, cognition, as well as affect and motivation. The learners’ awareness of these areas of regulation in relation to learning in a specific context is their ability for design-based epistemic metareflection. I describe this metareflection as knowing how to manipulate the context behaviourally for maximum learning, being metacognitively aware of one’s learning process, and being aware of how emotions can be regulated to maintain volitional control of the learning situation. Attention needs to be paid to how the design of a digital learning context supports learners’ metareflective development as digital learners. Every digital context has its own affordances and constraints, which influence the possibilities for micro-level SRL processes. Empowering learners in developing their ability for design-based epistemic metareflection is, therefore, essential for building their digital literacy in relation to these affordances and constraints. It was evident that the implementation of e-learning in the workplace is not unproblematic and needs new ways of thinking about learning and how we create learning spaces. Digital contexts bring a new culture of learning that demands attitude change in how we value knowledge, measure it, define who owns it, and who creates it. Based on the results, I argue that digital solutions for corporate learning ought to be built as an integrated system that facilitates socio-cultural connectivism within the corporation. The focus needs to shift from designing static e-learning material to managing networks of social meaning negotiation as part of a holistic corporate learning ecology.

Socially shared metacognitive regulation during collaborative learning processes in student dyads and small groups

Traditionally metacognition has been theorised, methodologically studied and empirically tested from the standpoint mainly of individuals and their learning contexts. In this dissertation the emergence of metacognition is analysed more broadly. The aim of the dissertation was to explore socially shared metacognitive regulation (SSMR) as part of collaborative learning processes taking place in student dyads and small learning groups. The specific aims were to extend the concept of individual metacognition to SSMR, to develop methods to capture and analyse SSMR and to validate the usefulness of the concept of SSMR in two different learning contexts; in face-to-face student dyads solving mathematical word problems and also in small groups taking part in inquiry-based science learning in an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. This dissertation is comprised of four studies. In Study I, the main aim was to explore if and how metacognition emerges during problem solving in student dyads and then to develop a method for analysing the social level of awareness, monitoring, and regulatory processes emerging during the problem solving. Two dyads comprised of 10-year-old students who were high-achieving especially in mathematical word problem solving and reading comprehension were involved in the study. An in-depth case analysis was conducted. Data consisted of over 16 (30–45 minutes) videotaped and transcribed face-to-face sessions. The dyads solved altogether 151 mathematical word problems of different difficulty levels in a game-format learning environment. The interaction flowchart was used in the analysis to uncover socially shared metacognition. Interviews (also stimulated recall interviews) were conducted in order to obtain further information about socially shared metacognition. The findings showed the emergence of metacognition in a collaborative learning context in a way that cannot solely be explained by individual conception. The concept of socially-shared metacognition (SSMR) was proposed. The results highlighted the emergence of socially shared metacognition specifically in problems where dyads encountered challenges. Small verbal and nonverbal signals between students also triggered the emergence of socially shared metacognition. Additionally, one dyad implemented a system whereby they shared metacognitive regulation based on their strengths in learning. Overall, the findings suggested that in order to discover patterns of socially shared metacognition, it is important to investigate metacognition over time. However, it was concluded that more research on socially shared metacognition, from larger data sets, is needed. These findings formed the basis of the second study. In Study II, the specific aim was to investigate whether socially shared metacognition can be reliably identified from a large dataset of collaborative face-to-face mathematical word problem solving sessions by student dyads. We specifically examined different difficulty levels of tasks as well as the function and focus of socially shared metacognition. Furthermore, the presence of observable metacognitive experiences at the beginning of socially shared metacognition was explored. Four dyads participated in the study. Each dyad was comprised of high-achieving 10-year-old students, ranked in the top 11% of their fourth grade peers (n=393). Dyads were from the same data set as in Study I. The dyads worked face-to-face in a computer-supported, game-format learning environment. Problem-solving processes for 251 tasks at three difficulty levels taking place during 56 (30–45 minutes) lessons were video-taped and analysed. Baseline data for this study were 14 675 turns of transcribed verbal and nonverbal behaviours observed in four study dyads. The micro-level analysis illustrated how participants moved between different channels of communication (individual and interpersonal). The unit of analysis was a set of turns, referred to as an ‘episode’. The results indicated that socially shared metacognition and its function and focus, as well as the appearance of metacognitive experiences can be defined in a reliable way from a larger data set by independent coders. A comparison of the different difficulty levels of the problems suggested that in order to trigger socially shared metacognition in small groups, the problems should be more difficult, as opposed to moderately difficult or easy. Although socially shared metacognition was found in collaborative face-to-face problem solving among high-achieving student dyads, more research is needed in different contexts. This consideration created the basis of the research on socially shared metacognition in Studies III and IV. In Study III, the aim was to expand the research on SSMR from face-to-face mathematical problem solving in student dyads to inquiry-based science learning among small groups in an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. The specific aims were to investigate SSMR’s evolvement and functions in a CSCL environment and to explore how SSMR emerges at different phases of the inquiry process. Finally, individual student participation in SSMR during the process was studied. An in-depth explanatory case study of one small group of four girls aged 12 years was carried out. The girls attended a class that has an entrance examination and conducts a language-enriched curriculum. The small group solved complex science problems in an asynchronous CSCL environment, participating in research-like processes of inquiry during 22 lessons (á 45–minute). Students’ network discussion were recorded in written notes (N=640) which were used as study data. A set of notes, referred to here as a ‘thread’, was used as the unit of analysis. The inter-coder agreement was regarded as substantial. The results indicated that SSMR emerges in a small group’s asynchronous CSCL inquiry process in the science domain. Hence, the results of Study III were in line with the previous Study I and Study II and revealed that metacognition cannot be reduced to the individual level alone. The findings also confirm that SSMR should be examined as a process, since SSMR can evolve during different phases and that different SSMR threads overlapped and intertwined. Although the classification of SSMR’s functions was applicable in the context of CSCL in a small group, the dominant function was different in the asynchronous CSCL inquiry in the small group in a science activity than in mathematical word problem solving among student dyads (Study II). Further, the use of different analytical methods provided complementary findings about students’ participation in SSMR. The findings suggest that it is not enough to code just a single written note or simply to examine who has the largest number of notes in the SSMR thread but also to examine the connections between the notes. As the findings of the present study are based on an in-depth analysis of a single small group, further cases were examined in Study IV, as well as looking at the SSMR’s focus, which was also studied in a face-to-face context. In Study IV, the general aim was to investigate the emergence of SSMR with a larger data set from an asynchronous CSCL inquiry process in small student groups carrying out science activities. The specific aims were to study the emergence of SSMR in the different phases of the process, students’ participation in SSMR, and the relation of SSMR’s focus to the quality of outcomes, which was not explored in previous studies. The participants were 12-year-old students from the same class as in Study III. Five small groups consisting of four students and one of five students (N=25) were involved in the study. The small groups solved ill-defined science problems in an asynchronous CSCL environment, participating in research-like processes of inquiry over a total period of 22 hours. Written notes (N=4088) detailed the network discussions of the small groups and these constituted the study data. With these notes, SSMR threads were explored. As in Study III, the thread was used as the unit of analysis. In total, 332 notes were classified as forming 41 SSMR threads. Inter-coder agreement was assessed by three coders in the different phases of the analysis and found to be reliable. Multiple methods of analysis were used. Results showed that SSMR emerged in all the asynchronous CSCL inquiry processes in the small groups. However, the findings did not reveal any significantly changing trend in the emergence of SSMR during the process. As a main trend, the number of notes included in SSMR threads differed significantly in different phases of the process and small groups differed from each other. Although student participation was seen as highly dispersed between the students, there were differences between students and small groups. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the amount of SSMR during the process or participation structure did not explain the differences in the quality of outcomes for the groups. Rather, when SSMRs were focused on understanding and procedural matters, it was associated with achieving high quality learning outcomes. In turn, when SSMRs were focused on incidental and procedural matters, it was associated with low level learning outcomes. Hence, the findings imply that the focus of any emerging SSMR is crucial to the quality of the learning outcomes. Moreover, the findings encourage the use of multiple research methods for studying SSMR. In total, the four studies convincingly indicate that a phenomenon of socially shared metacognitive regulation also exists. This means that it was possible to define the concept of SSMR theoretically, to investigate it methodologically and to validate it empirically in two different learning contexts across dyads and small groups. In-depth micro-level case analysis in Studies I and III showed the possibility to capture and analyse in detail SSMR during the collaborative process, while in Studies II and IV, the analysis validated the emergence of SSMR in larger data sets. Hence, validation was tested both between two environments and within the same environments with further cases. As a part of this dissertation, SSMR’s detailed functions and foci were revealed. Moreover, the findings showed the important role of observable metacognitive experiences as the starting point of SSMRs. It was apparent that problems dealt with by the groups should be rather difficult if SSMR is to be made clearly visible. Further, individual students’ participation was found to differ between students and groups. The multiple research methods employed revealed supplementary findings regarding SSMR. Finally, when SSMR was focused on understanding and procedural matters, this was seen to lead to higher quality learning outcomes. Socially shared metacognition regulation should therefore be taken into consideration in students’ collaborative learning at school similarly to how an individual’s metacognition is taken into account in individual learning.

Development and Effect Analysis of the Asteri Consultative Auditing Process - Safety and Security Management in Educational Institutions

The Finnish legislation requires for a safe and secure learning environment. However, the comprehensive, risk based safety and security management (SSM) and the management commitment in the implementation and development of the SSM are not mentioned in the legislation. Multiple institutions, operators and researchers have studied and developed safety and security in educational institutions over the past decade. Typically the approach has been fragmented and without bringing up the importance of the comprehensive SSM. The development needs of the safety and security operations in universities have been studied. However, in universities of applied sciences (UASs) and in elementary schools (ESs), the performance level, strengths and weaknesses of the comprehensive SSM have not been studied. The objective of this study was to develop the comprehensive, risk based SSM of educational institutions by developing the new Asteri consultative auditing process and study its effects on auditees. Furthermore, the performance level in the comprehensive SSM in UASs and ESs were studied using Asteri and the TUTOR model developed by the Keski-Uusimaa Department for Rescue Services. In addition, strengths, development needs and differences were identified. In total, 76 educational institutions were audited between the years 2011 and 2014. The study is based on logical empiricism, and an observational applied research design was used. Auditing, observation and an electronic survey were used for data collection. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the collected information. In addition, thematic analysis was used to analyze the development areas of the organizations mentioned by the respondents in the survey. As one of the main contributions, this research presents the new Asteri consultative auditing process. Organizations with low performance levels on the audited subject benefit the most from the Asteri consultative auditing process. Asteri may be usable in many different types of audits, not only in SSM audits. As a new result, this study provides new knowledge on attitudes related to auditing. According to the research findings, auditing may generate negative attitudes and the auditor should take them into account when planning and preparing for audits. Negative attitudes can be compensated by producing added value, objectivity and positivity for the audit and, thus, improve the positive effects of auditing on knowledge and skills. Moreover, as the results of this study shows, auditing safety and security issues do not increase feelings of insecurity, but rather increase feelings of safety and security when using the new Asteri consultative auditing process with the TUTOR model. The results showed that the SSM in the audited UASs was statistically significantly more advanced than that in the audited ESs. However, there is still room for improvement in the ESs and the UASs as the approach to the SSM was fragmented. It can be assumed that the majority of Finnish UASs and ESs do not likely meet the basic level of the comprehensive, risk based the SSM.

Virtuaalisen oppimisympäristön funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisointi

Tämän tutkimuksen kohteena on Turun yliopistossa kehitetyn www-pohjaisen ViLLE-oppimisjärjestelmän funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisointityö. Tutkimusta varten olen kerännyt kattavasti aineistoa aihetta käsittelevästä yleisestä kirjallisuudesta ja artikkeleista sekä toteutuksen kannalta spesifistä tietoa tarjoavista Internet-lähteistä. Tutkimuksessa olen tehnyt myös pienehkön määrän testausalan asiantuntijahaastatteluja. Tutkimuksen empiirisessä osuudessa olen valinnut testaukseen käytettävän testaustyökalun sekä toteuttanut valitulla testaustyökalulla ViLLE-oppimisjärjestelmän testauksen automatisointityön soveltamalla käytäntöön tutkimuksen teoriaosuudessa esitettyä tietoa hyvistä käytänteistä funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisoinnissa. Tutkimuksen toteutuksessa olen käyttänyt kvalitatiivista tutkimusmenetelmää. Tutkimuksen empiirisen osuuden pohjalta kerätyn havaintoaineiston perusteella olen selvittänyt vastaukset seuraaviin tutkimuksessa esitettyihin tutkimuskysymyksiin: • Miten käytetty testaustyökalu on valittu ja mitkä olivat valintaan vaikuttaneet tärkeimmät kriteerit? • Miten käytetty testaustyökalu soveltuu ViLLE-oppimisjärjestelmän funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisointiin? • Millä eri tavoin käytäntöön viety hyvien testiautomaation laatimistapojen mukainen toteutus vaikuttaa nyt laadittuun testiautomaatioon? • Esiintyikö toteutetussa testiautomaatiossa tutkimuksen teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä kuvattuja funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisoinnille tyypillisiä ongelmia ja miten ongelmat saatiin ratkaistua? Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat melko selvästi, että ViLLE-oppimisympäristön funktionaalisen käyttöliittymätestauksen automatisointityön toteutukseen valittu Vaadin TestBench -testaustyökalu, joka on valittu tutkimuksen alkuvaiheessa suoritetun evaluoinnin perusteella, soveltuu käyttötarkoitukseensa hyvin. Lisäksi pystyin luotettavasti havainnoimaan, että testiautomaation ylläpidon tarve sekä testien laatimiseen kuluva aika vähenevät merkittävästi, kun testit laaditaan heti alusta lähtien rakenteeltaan modulaariseksi sekä tietyin teknisin keinoin mahdollisimman vähän käyttöliittymän rakennetta huomioonottavaksi. Ongelmia testiautomaation laatimisessa voivat aiheuttaa käytetty työkalu itsessään, testattavan järjestelmän toteutus sekä testien suoritusympäristö. Huolimatta kirjallisuuskatsauksen perusteella tehdystä varautumisesta tyypillisiin testiautomaation laatimisessa esiintyviin ongelmiin, myös joitakin sellaisia ongelmia esiintyi, joihin en ollut osannut varautua. Mahdollisiin ongelmiin etukäteen varautuminen kuitenkin selvästi auttoi suurimpaan osaan testiautomaation laatimisessa esiintyneistä ongelmista.

Virtuellt lärande på distans : en intervjustudie med finländska gymnasiestuderande.

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the learning experiences of upper secondary school students in a virtual learning environment. The focus of the study is younger students aged 16–18. Virtual learning environments are defined as collaborative, interactive and communicative digital environments. The main research question was to distinguish the meaning of learning given by the participants. Did the participants perceive learning potential in the virtual learning environment, and if so, what signifies learning potential? Sub-questions were: What enhances learning? What might inhibit learning in a distance course? How do the participants relate to their role as distant learners? Four upper secondary schools in Finland took part in the study. Thirteen upper secondary students were interviewed after a distance course in social studies. During the analysis, four main categories were identified: responsibility, freedom, time and communication. A constructivist approach to learning was adopted while analysing the interviews, and the categories were understood through cognitive, affective and social dimensions of learning. The implications of the study are that a student-centred pedagogy and a social constructivist course design have the potential to motivate students to interact to learn, while the software, such as Second Life, Google+ and Wikibooks, offers them the possibility to do so. The study introduces an empirically supported concept, virtual learning. Virtual learning assumes an active learner who manages different learning spaces while communicating with people and metacognitively assessing the learning process. At the same time, students get used to the virtual and everchanging nature of information and knowledge.