Drawing on Kucher’s (2021) framework on digital game-based learning (DGBL), this paper introduces... more Drawing on Kucher’s (2021) framework on digital game-based learning (DGBL), this paper introduces the development of game-based scenarios in two culturally distinctive and salient heritage sites in Cyprus and Sweden, the Neolithic village of Choirokoitia and the Iron Age Ringfort of Sandby Borg. The aim was to implement Kucher’s (2021) five proposed principles and digital storytelling as a framework for the development of game-based Augmented Reality (AR) scenarios to promote exploration, understanding, collaboration, and learning on culturally important sites and guide users in becoming acquainted with cultural artifacts that reflect on cultural values, practices, and norms of that era. Using a bottom-up approach in the design and development process, the two case studies were designed to promote interactive and immersive learning experiences entrenched in problem-solving activities, constructive evaluative feedback, and enact opportunities for flexibility in exploration. To achiev...
This paper draws on design-based research to develop a real-world classroom Augmented Reality (AR... more This paper draws on design-based research to develop a real-world classroom Augmented Reality (AR) scenario which was accompanied by tasks used to mediate intercultural telecollaboration. It investigates the role of these tasks and AR scenario in enacting affordances to enrich students’ learning experiences, to establish a connection between classroom management techniques, their local context and future teaching practices and to promote insightful reflections on such practices. The trajectories upon which these tasks were designed were practice-oriented inviting students to explore three options in dealing with classroom misbehavior and reserved students. Using their mobile devices, students could view in AR a classroom setting, a student’s disruptive behavior and three possible approaches in dealing with such behavior. Upon exploring the three options in handling classroom misbehavior, students across the two participating academic institutions in Europe could post their comments ...
CALL and professionalisation: short papers from EUROCALL 2021, 2021
This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Aug... more This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Augmented Reality (AR) applications and game-based scenarios that will be implemented during intercultural exchanges among students in two different academic institutions in Sweden and Cyprus. Building on principles of design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; Klopfer & Squire, 2008), the aim is to expand the learning ecology by leveraging instructional tools and developing novel scenarios to broaden the trajectories of collaboration, intercultural understanding and communication, and cultural knowledge. The AR applications and scenarios are in the process of being developed as part of the Digital Methods Platform for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) project, where game-based activities will foster intercultural collaboration, exploration of cultural heritage sites, intercultural understanding, knowledge, and interaction. Adopting a bottom-up approach, instructors collaborate with a software...
International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 2016
This study investigated the culturally contingent tensions afforded by the implementation of Seco... more This study investigated the culturally contingent tensions afforded by the implementation of Second Life in transatlantic communications among 13 college-level students at a Southwestern academic institution in the United States and their instructor and an assistant professor and his graduate student at a Greek-speaking academic institution. The transatlantic transactions unfolded in IBM's virtual Green Data Center, where students and instructors engaged in critical discussions on their local community, IBM, the European Union, and the United States' sustainability practices. By analyzing students and instructors' virtual exchanges, chat medium, and reflective comments, three categories of culturally enacted tensions were identified. These contradictions pertained to (a) emerging intercultural communication, (b) assigned collaborative activities, and (c) the use of the Second Life Viewer as a communication tool. The study demonstrated that contradictions can be contingen...
Handbook of Research on Computer-Enhanced Language Acquisition and Learning
This study reports on a culturally-transforming group activity using asynchronously-mediated foru... more This study reports on a culturally-transforming group activity using asynchronously-mediated forums on the “discussion board” of Blackboard Academic Suite. Seventeen English as a second language (ESL) learners enrolled in a university-level writing course used the discussion board to engage in asynchronous collaborative forums where they presented and shared their paper topics and personal experiences, offered suggestions to their peers, and raised critical questions that were meant to help their peers think more critically about the assigned writing genres and their selected paper topic. The data suggest that participation in asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) forums can help students develop a deeper understanding of the writing assignments and encourage them to implement describing and narrating strategies to provide feedback to their peers. Students can also gradually produce feedback that is more complex, constructive, and challenging to their peers and begin i...
The goal of this study was to investigate the culturally-afforded contradictions that 10 advanced... more The goal of this study was to investigate the culturally-afforded contradictions that 10 advanced English a Second Language (ESL) learners encountered when they posted their paper topics and exchanged feedback strategies online and contextualized some of these strategies to draft their papers. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and more precisely the notion of contradictions, the students’ paper topic postings and feedback exchanges were examined within the opposing historically- and politically-built values, salient cultural convictions, and life experiences in which they occurred (Leont’ev, 1981b; Engestrom, 1987, 2001, 2008). An examination of students’ online postings, proffered feedback strategies, and rough drafts indicated that this activity was construed on three major contradictions: (1) instructor expectations for defining topics that student-authors perceived as salient, such as the Taiwanese military that contradicted student-reviewers’ beliefs and efforts to reinforce their relationships with their peers; (2) the requirements for devising thought-provoking strategies to assist student-authors in drafting their papers that then contradicted student-reviewers’ efforts to maintain friendly relationships with student-authors; and (3) reviewers’ construction of challenging feedback strategies online to help authors with the drafting process that contradicted their efforts as authors to draft cogent arguments by strategically avoiding materializing some of their peers’ suggestions, especially counterarguments.
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2017
This article explores the underlying processes involved as two experienced Portuguese as a foreig... more This article explores the underlying processes involved as two experienced Portuguese as a foreign language instructors, who are novices to 3D technologies, became immersed in the epistemology of teaching in a 3D context. The two instructors undertook a challenging initiative to develop and deliver two sections of oral Portuguese in a 3D environment. Through the contingent support of a European community of practitioners, the two instructors explored how the game-based elements and other semiotic resources of SL could be used to enact affordances for the development of goal-oriented tasks, collaborative activities, and interactions in order to guide students in building their oral proficiency in Portuguese. The skill and knowledge development were examined with the trajectories of Compton's framework and epistemological theory where teaching in virtual contexts is contingent upon the construction of technological, pedagogical, and evaluation skills.
Drawing on Kucher’s (2021) framework on digital game-based learning (DGBL), this paper introduces... more Drawing on Kucher’s (2021) framework on digital game-based learning (DGBL), this paper introduces the development of game-based scenarios in two culturally distinctive and salient heritage sites in Cyprus and Sweden, the Neolithic village of Choirokoitia and the Iron Age Ringfort of Sandby Borg. The aim was to implement Kucher’s (2021) five proposed principles and digital storytelling as a framework for the development of game-based Augmented Reality (AR) scenarios to promote exploration, understanding, collaboration, and learning on culturally important sites and guide users in becoming acquainted with cultural artifacts that reflect on cultural values, practices, and norms of that era. Using a bottom-up approach in the design and development process, the two case studies were designed to promote interactive and immersive learning experiences entrenched in problem-solving activities, constructive evaluative feedback, and enact opportunities for flexibility in exploration. To achiev...
This paper draws on design-based research to develop a real-world classroom Augmented Reality (AR... more This paper draws on design-based research to develop a real-world classroom Augmented Reality (AR) scenario which was accompanied by tasks used to mediate intercultural telecollaboration. It investigates the role of these tasks and AR scenario in enacting affordances to enrich students’ learning experiences, to establish a connection between classroom management techniques, their local context and future teaching practices and to promote insightful reflections on such practices. The trajectories upon which these tasks were designed were practice-oriented inviting students to explore three options in dealing with classroom misbehavior and reserved students. Using their mobile devices, students could view in AR a classroom setting, a student’s disruptive behavior and three possible approaches in dealing with such behavior. Upon exploring the three options in handling classroom misbehavior, students across the two participating academic institutions in Europe could post their comments ...
CALL and professionalisation: short papers from EUROCALL 2021, 2021
This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Aug... more This paper delves into the underlying phases involved in designing, developing, and deploying Augmented Reality (AR) applications and game-based scenarios that will be implemented during intercultural exchanges among students in two different academic institutions in Sweden and Cyprus. Building on principles of design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; Klopfer & Squire, 2008), the aim is to expand the learning ecology by leveraging instructional tools and developing novel scenarios to broaden the trajectories of collaboration, intercultural understanding and communication, and cultural knowledge. The AR applications and scenarios are in the process of being developed as part of the Digital Methods Platform for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) project, where game-based activities will foster intercultural collaboration, exploration of cultural heritage sites, intercultural understanding, knowledge, and interaction. Adopting a bottom-up approach, instructors collaborate with a software...
International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 2016
This study investigated the culturally contingent tensions afforded by the implementation of Seco... more This study investigated the culturally contingent tensions afforded by the implementation of Second Life in transatlantic communications among 13 college-level students at a Southwestern academic institution in the United States and their instructor and an assistant professor and his graduate student at a Greek-speaking academic institution. The transatlantic transactions unfolded in IBM's virtual Green Data Center, where students and instructors engaged in critical discussions on their local community, IBM, the European Union, and the United States' sustainability practices. By analyzing students and instructors' virtual exchanges, chat medium, and reflective comments, three categories of culturally enacted tensions were identified. These contradictions pertained to (a) emerging intercultural communication, (b) assigned collaborative activities, and (c) the use of the Second Life Viewer as a communication tool. The study demonstrated that contradictions can be contingen...
Handbook of Research on Computer-Enhanced Language Acquisition and Learning
This study reports on a culturally-transforming group activity using asynchronously-mediated foru... more This study reports on a culturally-transforming group activity using asynchronously-mediated forums on the “discussion board” of Blackboard Academic Suite. Seventeen English as a second language (ESL) learners enrolled in a university-level writing course used the discussion board to engage in asynchronous collaborative forums where they presented and shared their paper topics and personal experiences, offered suggestions to their peers, and raised critical questions that were meant to help their peers think more critically about the assigned writing genres and their selected paper topic. The data suggest that participation in asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) forums can help students develop a deeper understanding of the writing assignments and encourage them to implement describing and narrating strategies to provide feedback to their peers. Students can also gradually produce feedback that is more complex, constructive, and challenging to their peers and begin i...
The goal of this study was to investigate the culturally-afforded contradictions that 10 advanced... more The goal of this study was to investigate the culturally-afforded contradictions that 10 advanced English a Second Language (ESL) learners encountered when they posted their paper topics and exchanged feedback strategies online and contextualized some of these strategies to draft their papers. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and more precisely the notion of contradictions, the students’ paper topic postings and feedback exchanges were examined within the opposing historically- and politically-built values, salient cultural convictions, and life experiences in which they occurred (Leont’ev, 1981b; Engestrom, 1987, 2001, 2008). An examination of students’ online postings, proffered feedback strategies, and rough drafts indicated that this activity was construed on three major contradictions: (1) instructor expectations for defining topics that student-authors perceived as salient, such as the Taiwanese military that contradicted student-reviewers’ beliefs and efforts to reinforce their relationships with their peers; (2) the requirements for devising thought-provoking strategies to assist student-authors in drafting their papers that then contradicted student-reviewers’ efforts to maintain friendly relationships with student-authors; and (3) reviewers’ construction of challenging feedback strategies online to help authors with the drafting process that contradicted their efforts as authors to draft cogent arguments by strategically avoiding materializing some of their peers’ suggestions, especially counterarguments.
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2017
This article explores the underlying processes involved as two experienced Portuguese as a foreig... more This article explores the underlying processes involved as two experienced Portuguese as a foreign language instructors, who are novices to 3D technologies, became immersed in the epistemology of teaching in a 3D context. The two instructors undertook a challenging initiative to develop and deliver two sections of oral Portuguese in a 3D environment. Through the contingent support of a European community of practitioners, the two instructors explored how the game-based elements and other semiotic resources of SL could be used to enact affordances for the development of goal-oriented tasks, collaborative activities, and interactions in order to guide students in building their oral proficiency in Portuguese. The skill and knowledge development were examined with the trajectories of Compton's framework and epistemological theory where teaching in virtual contexts is contingent upon the construction of technological, pedagogical, and evaluation skills.
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Papers by Stella Hadjistassou