Making connections: reflection, feedback and support

Abstract

This issue has six papers that focus in some way on the supportive or facilitative role that technology and teachers can play in helping learners to make connections between: 1. Prior knowledge and understanding, and new conceptions and experiences. 2. Old and new practices or materials. 3. Learning and teaching activities and learning outcomes. Three key themes emerge from these six articles: feedback, reflection, support. The first article explores the use of electronic voting systems in lectures and note that, for some students, the feedback and reinforcement provided by electronic voting systems helps students to re-think their understanding and challenge the meaning they had construed and derived. Another article offers an alternative to Salmon's five-stage model of learning and teaching online that embraces both instructivist and constructivist approaches to learning. One of the article explores the attitudes of academics, support staff and managers to the potential benefits of using online repositories for teaching and learning. The last paper in the issue explore students' experience of face-to-face and online discussion and the implications this has for supporting students in making sense of and reflecting on their learning experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)