Browsing by Subject "verkko-oppiminen"

The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the materials and teaching methods to support the phonetic teaching skills of language teachers. At present at least in Finland, language teachers do not have enough phonetic studies, which makes continuing education planning more important due to new curricula. Curricula emphasize among other things, oral language skills, which contains as an important part teaching of pronounciation. The theoretical part of the work is based on the scientific research of language learning and teaching. As part of the work, an online course was created. The course contents were based on the theoretical part. The contents discussed in the course are related to individuals sounds (International Phonetic Alphabet) and to speech prosody. The online course is structured in University of Helsinki’s online environment Moodle and its pedagogical solutions are build on modularity and collaboration which is emphasized with facilitation. There were 40 language teachers enrolled in the course, of which 31 were online. The elements to be studied in the course were eight different types of content and assignments that language teachers evaluated on the course using embedded electronic questionnaires after completing their teaching module. There were two teaching modules in the course and both utilized the same form. The questionnaires contained numerical and open-ended questions. The questionnaires first mapped the participant's educational background to enable group comparisons, and then the participant's experiences and opinions on the content of the teaching module. The methods were in this experiment qualitative to understand the individual learning experience. The most useful content and assignment types are videos and pictures with text as well as straightforward examples due to their illustrative and inspirational nature. From these participants experienced to receive the most wanted direct instructions, tips, and how to make their own phonetic lessons. Other content and assignments studied are more emphasized by the participant's own reflection and sharing of information with others. These are somewhat more controversial in terms of concreteness, but the results show that more experienced teachers will also benefit from this style of materials and methods. In the further planning of the course, it is important to consider the target group, both in terms of previous phonetic background and teaching experience. The results also highlight the wishes of language-specific phonetics courses, which means closer cooperation between language teachers and phoneticians.

Various implementation media can be used to create instructions to support independent skill learning. Despite this, little research has been done on the perception and significance of instructional materials for learning a craft skill. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand more deeply the connection between perceptions and learning a craft skill independently. In addition, the goal was to get deeper understanding on the inner processes of the mind that apply observations made from the instructions into practical activity and finally into skill. Of special interest in the study were the observations made by those learning craft skill independently of the instructions implemented using different media, as well as the cognitive processes in the process of learning craft skill. The primary research material consisted of recordings containing videos of the computer screen and thinking aloud, which the test subjects produced while learning Tunisian crocheting independently in an online learning environment. The secondary research material was reflections written by the test subjects afterwards. The test subjects produced recordings unsupervised. The recordings were analyzed with the Atlas.ti 22 following the principles of protocol analysis. The reflections were analyzed by thematizing the content relevant to the research. Based on the research results, the learning of a motor skill is based on the observations that are made in the learning process, but along with the observations, experimentation and practice promote the learning of the skill. The study also showed that the implementation of e-learning materials in multimedia serves different learners in learning a skill, even though video instructions require less cognitive effort. For this reason, it is recommended that the instructions intended for self-study of craft skills are implemented in the online learning environment using different media. The results also challenge to develop more flexible e-learning platforms.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the digital skills of finnish forest entrepreneurs and the use of digital services in their operations. The aim was to find out which digital services these entrepreneurs are using now and the possible obstacles to the use of new digital services. In addition, the study explored the learning needs of entrepreneurs and their attitudes towards e-learning. The research was a part of the Forest Business Innovation and Advancement (FOBIA) project, which aims to improve the competitiveness of small forest companies in remote areas of Finland, Sweden, Scotland and Ireland. The project partners in Finland are Luonnonvarakeskus, Työtehoseura ry (TTS), Riveria and Tietohippu Oy. The material used in the study was collected from forest entrepreneurs by email questionnaire in April 2018. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to the members of Koneyrittäjien liitto and Metsäalan asiantutkijat ry. The survey reached about 1250 entrepreneurs and received 73 approved responses. The response rate to the survey was about 6 %. Research method was descriptive analysis. The results suggest that the use of digital equipment and services by forest entrepreneurs are still relatively low. General devices and services, such as e-mail and smartphones, are used by almost all respondents, but the use of other digital services and devices is very low. However, there is a positive attitude towards digitalization and e-learning. Entrepreneurs are interested to use new services as part of their business and learn more. However, many of them still have barriers that slow down the introduction of new electronic services and functions. About one fifth of the entrepreneurs had a negative net profit so there is lot to improve.

According to some models of working memory, verbal and spatial material is processed in separate systems. However, there are task environments, such as multimedia, which typically contains both verbal and spatial material. An interesting question is how these two separate systems co-operate during the use of multimedia. In this experiment, recall of words and locations was studied. Twelve participants were presented with five different conditions, of which two were verbal, two were spatial and one was a combined task. The verbal tasks were serial recall of nine words. The words were either presented in the center of the screen or in different spatial locations. The spatial task was a computerized version of the Corsi Blocks Task, in which serial recall of nine spatial locations was required. The locations were marked with a string of the letter “X”, or with a word. In the combined task participants had to recall a series of nine words and their spatial locations in the correct order. The results showed that words were recalled equally well whether presented in the center of the screen, or in different spatial locations or whether recall of their spatial locations was required. On the contrary, recall of the spatial locations was impaired if verbal material had to be recalled simultaneously. These results imply that verbal and spatial materials are processed separately and the maintenance of spatial material is more sensitive to disruption than the maintenance of verbal material. The research method and the results can be applied when navigation in web-based environments is studied. In complex web-based environments, too heavy a load on the user’s working memory may cause spatial confusion, which leads to the problem of getting lost in the web-based environment.