Portraits of the activity systems of postsecondary international students in online learning: from tensions to transformations in activity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to portray the activity systems of postsecondary international students enrolled in online courses in order to identify opportunities for positive transformations in the activity of learning. Data collection and data analysis were guided by Activity Theory (AT) and relied on individual interviews. The five students who participated in the study were speakers of English as an Additional Language enrolled at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Findings were reported as individual portraits of the activity systems of the students. Cross analysis of the portraits revealed the following themes: Asynchronous, Text-Based Interaction; Synchronous Interaction; Time and Place Flexibility; Social and Cultural Interaction; Teaching Presence; and Independent Learning. The themes were analysed in relation to AT's five principles. A more in-depth focus on the principle of contradictions or tensions supported the identification of opportunities for positive transformations in the activity of learning which included: students' preference for asynchronous interaction; inclusion of face-to-face and online synchronous interaction in online courses; inclusion of a greater variety of media; students' preference for independent learning; support and facilitation of independent learning; enhanced teaching presence; inclusion of first-language online resources; enhanced language-related services and supports; cultural inclusivity; social interaction; and networks of international and domestic students for social and cultural interaction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".