There is an urgent need to develop human resources which can utilize the power of AI and data in order to enrich society through technological innovation and value creation. On the other hand, in school education, due to the framework of each subject and time limitation, it is difficult to implement a curriculum to work on application creation. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to develop and evaluate teaching materials for developing iOS applications for junior high and high school students in order to provide opportunities for interested students to learn independently during after-school hours. As a result, the students’ responses on programming showed no significant change for the experienced students, but “surprise” and “feeling that I can do it” were meaningful learning opportunities for the beginners. Looking at the responses of the students regarding AI, although they knew the term AI, their perceptions varied from “humanistic”, “familiar”, and “coexistence with AI”.
This paper is based on a study that developed and used a predictive evaluation method to evaluate educational software with embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionalities for children’s learning of English pronunciation. The approach built on Squires and Preece’s [1] heuristics which used a social constructivist view of learning but were developed before AI functionalities were commonplace in educational software. Three AI-powered English learning apps were selected for the predictive evaluation. The evaluation enabled a comparison between the AI-powered English-learning apps based on their potential for learning. The study is the first to predictively evaluate pedagogical values of AI functionalities for improving ESL pronunciation and may provide an approach to developing predictive evaluation more widely for educational software that embeds AI functionalities.
In recent years, Japan’s education system has started regarding trial-and-error favorably and is accordingly evaluating its strategy. Evaluation of trial-and-error has become crucial to learning analytics. Jigsaw Code is a programming exercise that gives students shuffled code blocks of a solution program, including fake ones, and asks them to rearrange the blocks in the correct order. It logs the solving actions of each student. This paper shows that the cycles in the state transition of the solution indicate the students’ trial-and-error process. Two hundred and thirty undergraduates solved 11 puzzles (problems) of Jigsaw Code. We analyzed the transition of the solution sequence at each solving action and found cycles in the state transition. For 97
Through a lexical analysis, this study examines the relationship between the terms used in various educational resources about robots. These resources were authored by novice or expert teachers in primary schools. Our hypothesis is that the computer science concepts discussed in an activity are different depending on the type of robot. The first results confirm dependence between the type of robot and the lexicon used in the resources. The corpus is explored according to three thematic sets of terms: Computer Science (CS), Pedagogy and Move with special attention for CS terms to compare the vocabulary used for sequential and event-driven programming robots.
In this contribution the resilience of students in the computer and information literacy (CIL) domain is focused. In this context, research towards individual student resilience is of relevance in order to examine characteristics from the student level that can be used as setscrews by educators and other educational stakeholders to minimize or overcome social issues in the CIL domain. Taking advantage of the representative cross-sections of students from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 (ICILS 2018), the question of the prevalence of resilient students (research question 1), differences between educational systems in international comparison (research question 2), and students’ related antecedents and process factors from the ICILS 2018 contextual model (research question 3) have been focused via using a logistic regression approach. The sample consisted of 46,561 students aged 14 from 14 countries. Cross country analyses revealed that student’s sex and their cultural capital are the strongest predictors for resilience in the CIL domain. However, including family’s process characteristics shows that students’ self-efficacy toward the use of information and communication technology (ICT), their use of ICT for information-related activities itself and the use of ICT for basic and advanced purposes have been identified as significantly related to student resilience.
Novices in introductory programming courses typically learn the fundamentals of programming using one of a wide of programming environments. These vary greatly in terms of the mechanisms they employ to assist programmers, including their approaches to compilation and error message presentation. It is yet to be established which, if any, of these mechanisms are more beneficial for learning. In this study, we utilize Java programming process data to investigate the interaction between novices and two different versions of the BlueJ pedagogical IDE, which differ substantially in terms of compilation mechanism and error message presentation. Specifically, we compare novices that used both BlueJ 3 and BlueJ 4 with those who exclusively used either and the effects of the order in which they transition between BlueJ versions. We find substantial differences between different cohorts in terms of error messages and compilation which provides evidence that programming environments play an important part in influencing the programming practices of novices. This work supports the hypothesis that the choice of programming environment significantly affects user behavior with respect to specific programming interactions and therefore it is reasonable to expect a difference in how these environments affect learning.
Digital competence of educators is one of the key factors affecting wide-scale digital transformation of education and is considered as one of the major aims in the European Digital Education Action Plan (2021–2027). To plan, conduct and report progress in digital competence development requires the ability to measure this competence. Hence, the importance of valid, reliable and usable digital competence assessment has been increasing among researchers, policy makers and teacher educators in recent years. While there exist a number of different instruments for assessing digital competence, there are not many comparative studies that would inform different stakeholders how to choose a suitable instrument to match specifically their context and goals. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding of needs and expectations of various stakeholders when they consider assessment of educators’ digital competence. This paper summarizes a study that explored the stakeholder perspectives in digital competence assessment and related trade-offs.
This chapter makes an argument for the development of a quantum computing curriculum. Building from a general look at innovation adoption, it presents survey data from 307 schools on the implementation of a new Digital Technologies subject in Australia. It was found that states and territories were taking 6–11 years to report student learning in the subject to parents. On a national basis, the analysis finds implementation is taking nearly 10 years from when the subject was framed, until full delivery. Despite this trajectory, the curriculum was radically revised after only 7 years. This rate of revision makes it difficult for schools to keep up with curriculum policy. With binary digit (bit) storage sizes predicted to fall to atomic levels in the next three decades, it is argued that quantum computing will become increasingly important. A future curriculum for this new computing paradigm therefore needs to be developed as a matter of urgency, so schools can anticipate innovation instead of lagging behind it. The chapter proposes a quantum curriculum for schools be developed as part of an international effort with the scope of recent Informatics frameworks.
This study proposes the need to introduce ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) education on digital technologies in school education, particularly primary and secondary education. Currently, various advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and data science, are being used in our daily lives. New ethical, legal, and social issues arise with the use of such new technologies, and the concept of ELSI, which examines these issues, is gaining popularity. To properly utilize advanced technologies, it is necessary to involve the general public in ELSI, and education regarding ELSI is necessary to obtain basic knowledge and understanding for this purpose. This paper defines ELSI education as “Learning with ELSI” and emphasizes the necessity of introducing ELSI education in primary and secondary education. To implement ELSI education, teachers must have sufficient knowledge of ethics, law, and society, and be up-to-date regarding the changes in the information society. ELSI education should not be introduced as an entirely new education but as a new concept assimilated in existing education. This paper introduces a practical example of using a chatbot as a subject and presents a practical form of ELSI education. In this age of advancing technologies, it is important to incorporate ELSI education in the curriculum at the elementary and secondary levels based on the developmental stage of learners.
For several years, we have been developing educational content for informatics for lower primary education (years ranging from one to four and age ranging from six to ten). The resulting intervention is built of three complementary strands, with robotics as the most recently completed one. Here, pupils work with Blue-Bot programmable robots, equipped with blue wireless external control panels. Each team pairs the robot with the panel and controls it using small plastic command tiles. We also use the introduction of new content as a set of research instruments and aim to deepen our understanding of how pupils construct and extend their comprehension of basic computing concepts and related operations. We focus on determining which of these concepts are considered as more challenging to pupils. The current project is established on our previous research on different levels of control in programming and related program representations. Here, we focused on exploring whether, even when programming a physical robot using an external control panel, the transition from direct control to programming is a challenging cognitive transformation for young learners.
Capstone projects are a common feature of software engineering bachelor’s degrees. We report on the experience and lessons learned from a decade of capstone projects at a small regional Israeli college. We first created a capstone process adapted to the department’s model-based software design philosophy, cultural aspects of the student body, and the sparse industrial environment surrounding the college. After several years, we improved the process through the introduction of mandatory fill-in report templates. Analyses of ten years of project statistics and outcomes led us to an understanding of what capstone features led to better outcomes and how the report templates affected grading outcomes. Our templates are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Just like the rest of the EU, Estonia has prepared a national strategy for the next 15 years and this strategy focuses on a smarter, digitally transformed and sustainable economy and society. Digital competence of citizens is an important prerequisite for wide-scale digital transformation in industry and society at large. This paper describes and analyzes the coordinated activities at the national level to create a coherent system of services for assessing, developing and making use of digital competence among learners and teachers on different levels of education.
Teaching and learning from one another is one of the most effective ways for learners to acquire proactive learning attitudes. In this study, we propose a new learning support system that encourages mutual teaching and learning by introducing a mechanism that guarantees sustainability. Learners submit articles called “learning-articles” that summarize their own learning and knowledge. The proposed system not only accumulates and publishes these articles but also has a mechanism to encourage the submission of necessary topics. The proposed system has been in operation since the academic year 2020, and it has collected learning-articles across our university’s nine academic disciplines from more than 300 learners. To investigate the effects of sharing learning-articles on education from the learners’ perspectives, a questionnaire was distributed among 25 students.
Learners can perceive algorithmic problem solving to be ambiguous, especially in computer science lessons. Tolerance to this individually perceived ambiguity is an internal factor that can influence the absorption and processing of knowledge both positively and negatively. Thus, it was examined whether there is a connection between tolerance for ambiguity and the performance of students such a task for algorithmic problem solving in computer science lessons. The results show that there is a significant correlation between tolerance for ambiguity and the number of points achieved in the test for algorithmic problem solving.
The COVID-19 pandemic (from mid-March 2020) took most educational systems by surprise, forcing million educators and students to radically change how they teach and learn. Online teaching was forced for about 1.5 years and, during this period, digital technology played a major role in enabling teachers to teach students at a distance using various digital platforms and tools. The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities that come with online-digital education, in the post-COVID era. Opportunities to explore include the integration of digital education in the educational system, adoption of appropriate (mobile) pedagogies, more flexible and mobile forms of teaching and learning, reconsideration of National policies, redesign of curricula, improvement of institutional infrastructure, creation of educational resources, and enhancement of students’ and teachers’ digital technology (and online pedagogy) skills. With regard to learning from the crisis and moving forward in the post-pandemic normal, some recommendations are finally addressed.
In the wake of the COVID-19 health crisis, governments around the world made educational continuity during school and university closure a priority. Many countries adopted online education as an alternative to face-to-face courses. This situation has led to an awareness of the importance of analyzing learning traces and data left by students to measure, evaluate and improve the learning process. This paper presents an interoperable online learning analytics dashboard that allows teachers to easily track the progress of their learners as well as to predict and remedy dropouts. For learners, the dashboard offers the possibility to visualize their learning process, analyze it and develop better self-regulation skills. The results of the study conducted on a blended learning course, showed that the dashboard led learners to spend more time on their online training, to perform the proposed activities much better and to respect the deadlines better, and finally to improve their academic success.
Data structures and algorithms are fundamental subjects in the curricula of information science faculties and departments. Recently, they were also included in the curriculum as basic subjects of data science and artificial intelligence. In 2017, we developed a smartphone application, termed Data Structure Viewer(DSV), to promote the understanding of data structures and algorithms. This application has been used in our lectures. In this article, we describe the evaluation of the DSVs used in lectures from 2017 to 2021 through the use of questionnaires. The students’ evaluation and confirmation of the lecture content in class, revealed that the DSV contributed to the improvement of students’ comprehension. We also discuss important points to be considered when using the DSV in lectures.
Modern technology is ubiquitous across all facets of life. The continuously evolving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education landscape has provided an excellent opportunity to integrate the knowledge of digital technology to solve STEM-based project problems. However, there is no consistency in how STEM programs are taught across Australian primary schools. Whilst primary school teachers have integrated technology into their classroom, the teaching of the Technology discipline has been very patchy. Moreover, using technology such as computers is not the same as learning about computer hardware or about writing software to make it function. To achieve effective integration of technology in teaching and learning, we need to educate and encourage students to become creators of digital solutions rather than consumers, which in turn requires primary school teachers to have the confidence and capacity to teach students this specialized discipline. To address this gap, this study focuses on primary school teachers’ intentions, beliefs, and perspectives on teaching Technology, as well as teaching STEM subjects overall. Understanding these beliefs and perspectives will help in building teachers’ capacity and ultimately improving learning processes for primary school children. The paper reports on one phase of the project – a pilot study investigating the attitudes of primary school teachers towards meaningful integration of digital technologies in primary school programs conducted through the lens of the conceptual framework for the Dimensions of Attitudes towards Science (DAS). The preliminary findings demonstrate an urgency in addressing primary school teachers needs in getting access to knowledge and resources to build their capacity in the Technology discipline.
Education policy implementation is a complex, evolving process that involves many stakeholders often with seemingly conflicting and opposing visions. This paper presents an account of work in progress in which the authors are conducting an analysis of the enactment of a strategy for digital learning in schools in Ireland. The aim of the study is both to analyse and theorise the extent to which the policy has achieved its aims but also to identify a means of tackling the perennial challenge of policy development and enactment at the school and classroom level. This paper presents the findings of the first phase of analysis.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown policies forced higher education teachers to adopt remote teaching. This disruptive situation challenged teachers to continue delivering classes and carrying out assessment online. In order to investigate higher education teachers’ perceptions about the online assessment, a survey was conducted in Portugal. The study focuses on digital tools and methodologies used in online assessment, first-time digital tools used, and the tools and methodologies that teachers intend to maintain in face-to-face assessment, as well as confidence in students’ results. Data was collected online from May to July 2021. Participants (n = 868) were from all fields of science and technology. Most of them (80
