Dynamic assessment (DA) is an effective tool for diagnosing learner abilities that are still being internalised. Although mediation and learner reciprocity are inseparable features of DA, the latter has rarely been analysed or theorised about compared to mediation. To address this research gap, this paper examines learner reciprocity in a text chat-mediated environment. The study involved eight English as a Second Language (ESL) students and four ESL teachers, who participated in task-based interactions. During these interactions, teachers used a DA-based regulatory scale to assist learners in completing the tasks. Data were collected from text chat-mediated interactions and oral conversations during the text chat interactions. Data were analysed employing an approach inspired by conversation analysis (CA), and five reciprocity moves were identified: incorporating the mediator’s feedback, providing a correct response following the mediator’s feedback, imitating the mediator, seeking mediator’s approval, and accepting and acknowledging the mediation. The findings indicated how the types of reciprocity moves could be used to diagnose the learner’s current level of development, which can help teachers to decide how much more instructional effort might be needed.

De senaste åren har intresset för designers etiska ansvar ökat. Trots detta saknas kunskap om hur etisk praxis kan kultiveras i verkliga miljöer. För att utforska detta bildade vi ett team med designers på en digital designstudio. Under 10 månader samarbetade teamet och samskapade aktiviteter och material avsedda att öka medvetenheten om etik hos designers på designstudion. Vår forskning understryker vikten av att presentera etik på ett tilltalande sätt för att engagera designers och illustrerar hur vi laborerade med detta i vårt projekt. Dessutom diskuterar vi co-design som en samarbetsyta för att engagera designutövare i utforskningen och utvecklingen av etisk praktik.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in designers’ ethical responsibility. However, knowledge concerning how ethical practice could be cultivated in real-life settings is still lacking. In order to explore this issue, we formed a team with practitioners at a digital design studio. During 10 months, the team co-designed activities and materials intended to sensitize design practitioners at the studio to ethics. Our research underscores the importance of presenting ethics in an appealing manner in order to engage designers, and illustrates how we explored this in our project. Moreover, we discuss co-design as a collaborative space for engaging design practitioners in the exploration and development of ethics that go beyond “tick-box exercises”.

This study intended to develop a framework for designing a Learning Management System for supporting thesis projects. A model named ‘Explanatory Design Theory’ was followed as a methodology to identify the component of the proposed framework. The following four steps were followed: 1.) Identification of kernel theories, 2) Analysis of kernel theories and identification of meta-requirements, 3) Formulation of design components based on meta-requirements, 4)Formulation of testable hypotheses. Developing the designing explanatory design theory was a four-step process; each step was crucial and decisive. The first step involved identifying kernel theories related to thesis supervision. These were Zone of Proximal Development, Scaffolding, and Self-regulation. Secondly, meta-requirements were determined based on kernel theories, and it was discovered that enhancing the student-supervisor interaction and supporting students’ self-regulation processes were key meta-requirements, based on which the components of FLMSTP were identified at the third step and labelled as Initiation, Planning, Implementation, and Completion. The final step was the setting of hypotheses formulated to refine kernel theories and evaluate the accuracy of meta-requirements and the usefulness of the components. 

The discussion on the dynamic assessment (DA) - a combination of assessment and instruction - and regulatory scales from implicit to explicit corrective feedback (CF) is relatively new in the CALL context. Applying the notions of Sociocultural Theory, Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Mediation, the present study examines how a DA-based regulatory scale from implicit to explicit CF could be designed to promote language learning in the text chat environment. This was done in collaboration with teachers. Four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers and eight ESL students participated in the study. Using the methodology of design-based research (DBR), the study was conducted mainly in three stages: exploratory stage, first intervention, and second intervention. This study drew on various data. Naturally occurring interaction data such as teachers’ oral conversation transcripts and text chat transcripts were analysed using conversation analysis, while the teachers’ interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Thus, employing DBR, the present study introduces a three-step regulatory scale that could promote learning in the text chat environment. The findings suggest that the three-step regulatory scale could be used by teachers to identify the learner’s potential and assist them in partial or complete self-regulation. The study will introduce a DA-based regulatory scale to promote language learning in the text chat environment and contribute to the knowledge of DA, ZPD and mediation in the CALL context.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in ethically responsible design of technology in society at large as well as among design practitioners. While design ethics is a well-established research area, few studies have enquired into how design practitioners understand ethics. Through semi-structured interviews we have explored practitioners’ approaches to ethics in design. Our findings show noticing, reflecting and reacting as three ways that ethical matters are approached. This ties into dynamic and participatory views on ethics, rather than viewing ethics as a set of formal frameworks and deductive reasoning practices. Practitioners need approaches that tie in to existing work practices. Our results provide practice-led suggestions and points of departure of when and how it might be suitable to infuse design ethics into design practice.

The purpose of the current study was to explore the conditions of empowerment among women entrepreneurs in the beauty salon sector in Sri Lanka by shedding light on the specific challenges faced by women when initiating and developing an enterprise. Focus group discussions were used to create a colloborative platform for businesswomen to meet and exchange experiences on being entrepreneurial women. Twelve women entrepreneurs who own beauty salons in the outskirts of the capital city of Sri Lanka participated in the workshop. Sen's capability approach and Kabeer's empowerment framework was used to interpret the findings. The women in the study face many challenges such as difficulties in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, double burden and tiresome multi-tasking. Research suggests that women's choice to become an entrepreneur enables them to achieve their practical and strategic gender needs. Nevertheless, too much focus on fulfilling practical gender needs limits the ability of women to fulfil their strategic gender needs. However, entrepreneurial agency has changed their status through improving the wellbeing of women, increasing the actual economic contribution, strengthening the economic security, through the ability to exercise the purchasing power to invest on children, sense of self-worth, value within their families and family welfare. The study will increase our understanding of women and their family ties and the challenges women face in multiple roles they play in a developing context like Sri Lanka.

Corrective feedback (CF) has been proven to be effective in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). With the increased usage of technology in the field of education, learning a second or foreign language in a computer mediated environment is widely discussed in current literature, thus paving the way for research on computer mediated corrective feedback (CMCF). As such, CMCF, especially through tools such as text chat, has gained increasing attention from researchers. Nevertheless, the scholarly focus has often been confined to certain aspects such as peer CF or CF given by native speakers (NS) in telecollaboration projects. As teachers could provide step by step scaffolding to make learners notice their errors and correct them, teachers’ CF in text chat environment could be more useful. However, text chat has rarely been discussed as a mediating tool to provide teachers’ CF. Addressing this potential gap in research, the present study aims to explore the perspectives of university teachers and students on the potential of using text chat for teachers’ CF, while discussing the challenges they would encounter in the process. Applying the sociocultural theoretical framework, the study discusses text chat as a mediating tool and the role teachers could play in assisting learners in the zone of proximal development. The data were collected from five Sri Lankan university teachers and two groups of university students (five in each group) through individual and group interviews, respectively. An Affinity Diagram was employed to analyse the data thematically. The study suggests that teachers’ CF through text chat could play a significant role in a context where learners have high second language anxiety which could be a result of their social, cultural and historical context. Students favour CF through text chat, mostly because it may reduce their anxiety of speaking the language. The study further reveals that teachers are still using conventional means of technology though learners prefer using the technology of their generation. Teachers, however, stated that their CF in the traditional pedagogy where most of the time, CF is given in front of the whole class does not seem to work successfully. Therefore, recognising the potential of the text chat as a mediator of CF in a particular challenging sociocultural context, they seem to be examining alternatives to their traditional pedagogy. The results also indicate that text chat, being a popular means of communication among teachers and learners, and as learners could go through the history of the text chat and learn about their language errors, provision of teachers’ CF through text chat could be possible and useful. The present study contributes to the theoretical and practical discussions on the use of computer mediated pedagogical tools in English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. The findings of this study will be useful for teachers who are seeking interactive pedagogical tools to be used in the language classroom. Further, our results will also support future researchers to design studies to examine the interventions between teachers and students in text chat, as well as to evaluate the efficacy of teachers’ CF through text-chat to improve the language skills of adult second language learners.

Ethically responsible design of technology has been under prolific discussion in recent years. Since design practitioners play a big part in shaping technology, their understanding of ethics is important. Much research has been conducted on ethics in design, but research findings are rarely used in industry. Our study addresses this gap by creating a space for conversation for design practitioners to explore the meaning of design ethics and related challenges. Our findings confirm the complexity of integrating ethics into the everyday practice of design, and suggest co-creating possible solutions as a way to start cultivating ethos in practice. Practitioners envisioned ideas for a toolbox concept, thoughts on how to integrate ethics into existing practices, and a visual moral compass. Our findings translate into a set of questions aiming to make ethical issues in practice visible, and to stimulate discussions around what designers considered to be ethical challenges. 

One of the main issues in undergraduate thesis supervision is a lack of understanding about the pedagogical assumptions underpinning the supervision process. In this paper, the concepts of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding are applied in developing a theoretical framework to understand the nature of the interactions that are expected between student, supervisor, research context and peers. Both designed-in and contingent scaffolding are applied in order to frame a personalized learning environment with a flexible structure that supports the interactions, based on individual zones of proximal development. A case study was conducted including students’ and supervisors’ views in several undergraduate degree programs within a Sri Lankan national university, and the findings were compared with the theoretical framework. The empirical data suggest that both students and supervisors tend to encounter problems if the thesis supervision process has not adequately designed to support the characteristics of constructivist learning.

This paper discusses a qualitative study which examines the complexity and potential of using Synchronous Computer Mediated Corrective Feedback (SCMCF) for adult learners in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms in Sri Lanka. Chat conversation was assumed as the medium through which the teacher provides corrective feedback to the students. Five ESL teachers were interviewed for the study. The data gathered were analysed qualitatively using an affinity diagram which is discussed under an inductive thematic analysis. Findings of the study suggest that there is potential for provision of SCMCF through chat conversations, for teachers believe that SCMCF will improve language skills of the students; moreover, this approach needs only a limited use of technology. However, it was revealed that there could be some complexities, mainly due to teachers’ existing workloads, some ethical aspects, and the low level of technology that is available in certain universities.