January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

The instructor plays a significant role in ensuring that the learner completes his or her task. Feedback and comments
from the instructor are retrievable from the message box, and hyperlinks are created on the “my status” page.
Individual reminders in the form of web messages, emails, or messages via short messaging service will also be sent
to the learners should they fall behind in their tasks. Table 4 describes the features and the associated strategies
formulated to scaffold the learner’s motivational self-regulation.
Table 4. Features of the learning console
Feature Scaffolding strategies
Task negotiation Provides space where the learner can click on options to start a task, proposes topic, provides
description of the task, selects the resources to use and the format of final product, and
proposes schedule
Displays negotiated and approved task and those that are still pending
Provides means for learner to keep negotiating task in order to improve academic status
Displays assessment of completed task (marks, comments, recommendations)
Provides space for feedback from instructor
Point
Displays a learner’s current accumulated points gained from completed tasks
accumulation Provides the learner with a sense of achievement
status
Provides means for a learner to view feedback or comments from the instructor on the
completed task
Provides impetus to improve or to raise accumulated points
Task reminder Provides instructor with the means to probe and remind learners via message box or emails
Flowchart of the interaction
Figure 4. Flow chart of the learner interaction with the learning console
To understand how a learner may use the learning console, a flow chart of the process is presented in Figure 4.
Figures 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9further illustrate the features of the learning console (http://mylearningconsole.com).Since the
learning console was developed as part of a larger learning management system (LMS),it is assumed that other
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