Educational Affordances of a Ubiquitous Learning Environment in a Natural Science Course

Abstract

Educational affordances are worthy of being explored because the affordances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide the pedagogical effects for promoting cognitive acceleration, increasing the self-management of students, facilitating data collection, and presentation in science learning. This study aims to explore educational affordances on a course with a learning environment. To address this research goal, this study employed a ubiquitous learning environment termed the Environment of Ubiquitous Learning with Educational Resources (EULER) and conducted a natural science course for eight weeks. The participants included elementary school teachers and students. Detailed studies of how the students use EULER and how this course affects their learning have enabled us to identify specific educational affordances and their potential application in supporting learning. This study describes thirteen educational affordances that were revealed through the responses given by students in an open-question survey and interviews as well as through transcripts from researcher observations and student discussions. These educational affordances of ubiquitous learning environment employed in the natural science course have implications for current and future developments in pedagogy.