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Engineering Student Outcomes For Grades 9-12, Vincent Childress, Craig Rhodes

Reports of Center Studies

The following research study was conducted during the 2005 – 2006 academic year. Its purpose is to help the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education determine those engineering outcomes that should be studied in high school when the high school student intends to pursue engineering in college. The results of the study will also be used to determine those engineering student outcomes that all technology education high school students should learn in order to aid them in becoming more technologically literate.

A modified Delphi approach as used for the study. The participants were a panel of experts consisting of …

A Social-Cognitive Framework For Designing Pedagogical Agents As Learning Companions, Yanghee Kim, Amy L. Baylor

Yanghee Kim

Teaching and learning are highly social activities. Seminal psychologists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura have theorized that social interaction is a key mechanism in the process of learning and development. In particular, the benefits of peer interaction for learning and motivation in classrooms have been broadly demonstrated through empirical studies. Hence, it would be valuable if computer-based environments could support a mechanism for a peer-interaction. Though no claim of peer equivalence is made, pedagogical agents as learning companions (PALs) -- animated digital characters functioning to simulate human-peer-like interaction -- might provide an opportunity to simulate such social interaction in …

Content-Based English Learning Through Pedagogical Agents, Yanghee Kim, P. Punahm, Y. Ko

Yanghee Kim

This paper suggests how an advanced technology called pedagogical agents can be applied to English education to benefit learners across ages through computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and content-based language learning (CBLL). CALL, when designed appropriately, has positively influenced the development of a learner’s linguistic proficiency and communicative competence (Chun, 1994; Fotos & Browne, 2004). CBLL integrates language learning with subject-matter learning to make language learning more meaningful (Snow, 2001; Swain, 1998). However, the conventional CALL programs are often criticized for the lacking a social context, considered essential for successful language learning ( Warschauer, 2004). Also, CBLL seems rarely applied to …