A Study On The Design Of The Task-based Learning Environment

The course called Learning Sciences and Learning Technologies has been launched by Institute of Education, Nanjing University from 2004.This course uses research-based teaching model, which contains research-based learning in addition to the normal instruction. The research-based learning is based on research subjects and the students are required to research these subjects through both solo and collaborative ways. In order to support this kind of research-based learning model, this course uses XXBlog System to help students do research and communicate with each other. However, this system is not design for this course and is only a blog system. Therefore, it cannot support the research-based learning properly and two problems emerge, which are model-support problem and assess-feedback problem. Hence, the purpose of this study is to design the blueprint of the learning environment for the research-based learning model.In order to accomplish the design of learning environment, this study focuses on three aspects. Firstly, this study wants to extract the design ideas from the task system of World of Warcraft in order to deal with the model-support problem. Therefore, this study uses content analysis method to research the key elements in the task system of World of Warcraft and try to find the design ideas which can be used by the design of learning environment. Secondly, this study applies documentary research to research the Computer-based Interaction Analysis in order to find the recipe for the assess-feedback problem. Finally, this study takes the XXBlog System as the case to do case analysis. Combining the design ideas from World of Warcraft, the model of Computer-based Interaction Analysis and the XXBlog System, this study tries to construct the structure of the learning environment, following the Hannafin learning environment design framework.This study proposes the design proposal of the learning environment for research-based learning model, which called task-based learning environment. In addition, this study draws the following conclusions. First of all, this study finds that the task system of World of Warcraft has three core elements, which are the rich task content, the proper difficulty level design and the open task mechanism. According to these elements and design philosophy, this study believes that the learning environment needs a task system to support the research-based learning, which contains the learning scaffold based the proximal developmental zone theory and learning tasks. Second, this study finds that the Computer-based Interaction Analysis will be helpful to handle the assess-feedback problem. Meanwhile, it can help researchers and designers to examine the effectiveness of the task-system-design ideas. Hence, this study proposes that the interaction analysis function is required in the learning environment design, and this function requires an assess-feedback system to be set in the learning environment based on the CAViCoLA model. Finally, based on the XXBlog System, this study proposes the design proposal of the task-based learning environment, which contains Blog System, Task System and Assess-Feedback System three components.Although this study proposes the design proposal of the task-based learning environment, which can handle the two problems from the teaching practice, whether the design can be effective or not still needs to be tested and studied. Furthermore, to realize the design of task-based learning environment requires high cost and this will shake the pragmatic basis of this design.