Editorial Overview.

The fourth paper provides a report about an experiment designed to compare various ways of using group discussion to help pre-service non-traditional special education elementary school teachers to study and explore metacognition as a learning tool. Sub-systems for promoting active learning need to be properly designed to create learning communities that integrate educational technology with quality pedagogy. In this issue, we feature a set of six papers that report on findings of research that focus on innovations such as student feedback, artificial intelligence (AI)-based conversation-based assessment (CBA), discussion groups, collaborative learning, and other aspects of effective and synergistic learning communities. [Extracted from the article]