Teacher cognition in classroom lessons is identified by an ongoing method using virtual reality (VR) videos. There areplace and time constraints in real time implementation of the ongoing method in synchronous situations. To avoid these,recorded
This study seeks to understand the changing academic identities of higher education teaching academics as they inhabit an increasingly digitized locus of teaching and learning. Using interviews and a selection of ethnographic approaches, (e.g. photographs as elicitation, workplace participant observation) this paper explores lecturers narratives of change and fluid academic selves presented in discussion on the performance space of the online arena. Participants were recruited from two HEIs (UK and Middle East based) that were at different points on a digitization continuum, with varying interpretations of the importance of this medium to pedagogic design. The aim is to surface shared and differing experiences between digital as integrated in a curriculum or as complement to traditional teaching materials, with a particular focus upon adaptations to academic identity. The paper takes three initial areas for early exploration; building rapport on line, synthesizing what students need to know and standardization vs individualization.
A recent survey of top-rated mobile(-assisted) language learning (MALL) apps revealed four front-runners on the digital marketplace: three proprietary language course apps: duolingo, Babbel, busuu, and one flashcard/spaced repetition system (SRS): Memrise (Lotherington, 2017). The survey was followed by empirical studies of the embedded epistemological and pedagogical approaches to language in these MALL apps. Case study findings indicated that all four apps taught language through drills, and relied heavily on dated pedagogies and structural conceptions of both language and learning. This paper overviews the potential of mobility in MALL pedagogy, and examines whether and how these four top-rated MALL apps capitalized on the affordances of mobility in their pedagogical approaches and content presentation, concluding that mobility was used primarily for marketing and distribution rather than for innovative instructional design.
Nowadays technology development is so fast. Among this development, mobile usage, especially number of smart mobile users is rapidly increasing. So more and more researchers study focus on learning users’ tendency of mobile phone and mobile app usage. As a result, every year many education-related, especially language learning mobile apps are born. This study is firstly aimed to learn a Chinese language foreigners’ mobile apps usage situation, second to analyze popular mobile app types in Chinese language learning, and third tried to suggest emerging language learning app model to double repeated model.
Western Governors University has the mission to improve quality and expand access to post-secondary educational opportunities by providing a means for individuals to learn independent of time and place thus the mobility of our coursework is essential. Technological advances facilitate this mission. While all degrees are based entirely on the demonstration of competency, candidates come to their programs with varying skills. For this reason, our Probability and Statistics course is individualized to adapt with the candidate’s learning style. Technology based learning resources are developed continuously to create non-traditional Probability and Statistical education resources.
In this reflection paper, we argue, contrary to many positive assessments of the use of new technologies, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in mLearning, it is worthwhile to look again at the process and agency that comes from human teachers and that live teaching acts should be prioritized in the creation of mLearning courses. The mLearning community should re-evaluate how teachers are part of the “most irreplaceable aspect of education: inspiration.” (Schrager and Wang, 2017). We will review existing trends in 21 century education that marginalize the role of the teacher and propose a new model that introduces the need for personable mobile learning to place teachers back into their primary role within communities of learners. If mLearning is going to be a dominant trend in 21 century education, it must resist technological determinism and a belief that learners on their own are to be primarily in control of their educational experiences. A model of personable learning restores teaching to its rightful place—as a both powerful source of connection among learners and at the center of any learning experience.
This paper outlines a proposal to use smartphones and counterfactual reasoning to overcome rote and passive learning. Some historians and history teachers have highlighted the usefulness of counterfactual reasoning for a deeper understanding of the past. In a classroom history simulation, it is proposed here that counterfactuals can be developed by a discussion between two groups of students via video call. Counterfactuals and smartphones can be linked by the concept of “possible worlds” conceived within the context of modal logic. Though smartphones are not the only possible technology, they make the experience technically simple and engaging. To conclude, a few critical points in implementing this activity are mentioned.
The present research represents a longitudinal investigation into Mobile Instant Messaging to develop second language skills. WhatsApp application was selected as the chat-based communication tool to carry out this study, which focuses on writing and speaking skills’ development. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to tackle students writing ability in terms of grammatical, lexical and mechanical accuracy as well as syntactic complexity together with lexical diversity. Similarly, this mobile chat-based application was also used for the creation of a speaking group where the language-related episodes were analyzed as well as students overall performance in terms of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. In order to observe the differences among the participants, a control and experimental group were set at the start of the study in each of the groups. Pre-post tests were given to the students and participation was tracked throughout the interaction. Screenshots in the application were also taken at different times in order to observe students’ use of the language. Positive results were found in terms of accuracy in the experimental group whereas syntactic complexity yielded no significant differences. Regarding the speaking ability, students in the experimental group outperformed those in the control in each of the aspects analyzed, becoming a constant source of language-related episodes. Overall, the application was found to be a rich environment for language acquisition and learning thanks to the social interaction taking place in the application.
Engagement and motivation are ones of the main factors that impact the student performance during a learning process. The reason why, introducing Gamification in learning aims to improve the learning process, by making use of the motivating effects of digital game elements and techniques. However, summarizing Gamification into a set of technical concepts (points, badges and leaderboards) is a very common misunderstanding of Gamification hence greatly reducing the purposed effect on the target (students). In this paper, after exploring the key elements that can lead to a good Gamification in "History" as a learning context, driven by target (students) motivation, we will try to propose a solution based on mobile technologies, mainly Augmented Reality (AR), and design a way of evaluation and verification.
Producing quality digital educational content is the goal of any teaching/learning system, including the teaching/leaning technologies contexts. This paper introduces how the Quantitative Evaluation Framework may be used to accurately evaluate the digital content produced throughout the development process of an inclusive and integrative MOOC in Educational Technologies, based on a Postgraduate Degree from Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (School of Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto). The model is sustained in the SCORM standards, adopting the ISO 9126 standard as a reference, and it proposes a quantitative representation in an orthogonal three-dimensional environment: pedagogical, ergonomics, and management. Each of these domains comprises a set of factors for which it is quite relevant to determine the degree of the system’s performance. The factor is a component that represents the performance degree of the digital content in the system, following a predetermined quality criterion. The measurement of the quality of the educational digital contents is assured by quantitative methods, similar to the evaluation techniques commonly used in the education system, which makes its application simpler.
Students with special needs in mathematics lessons can be specifically supported through virtual reality (VR) if they are offered virtual learning environments that offer real benefits through their implementation in VR. In addition to learning by doing, the visualization of mathematical facts in 3D for the training of imagination can offer added value in relation to the tasks themselves or that content can be experienced in class for which this is otherwise not simply possible. The evaluation of the developed learning environments with learners has shown that possible advantages of an immersive learning environment compared to classical teaching aids can be a positive effect on motivation, concentration and learning success.
Audiovisual and mobile technologies seem to be full of promises for teacher training and professional development. Within the INDIRE project "Making Innovation Visible" we have therefore designed an "online video showcase" drawing on the heritage of innovative educational practices and knowledge gathered by the Avanguardie Educative project (www.avanguardieeducative.indire.it). We prototyped this video showcase in order to build a flexible tool that can guide the progression towards 21st century learning environments. Working with teachers confirmed that instructional and educational video content through a tutorial format, used on mobile devices, could support them on a double direction: while they are trained and when they are working with their own classroom students. The use of video showcase through mobile devices supports the building up of teachers’ competence.
The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) apply, nowadays, as an opportunity for teachers to invest in their continuous training aiming to improve or update knowledge and skillsets on their respective scientific areas. Taking these claims into account, the authors of this paper planned, developed, attended and evaluated an xMOOC, reportedly named as a “MOOC on MOOCs and other educational technologies”, which is meant for the continuous training of teachers. This MOOC proved to be the main source of information and asynchronous interaction of the online training course organized at the end of the 1st semester of 2015. Considering this formative experience while promoting some changes, we present the planning, development of another MOOC for a 2nd edition of this online training course organized in the beginning of the 2st semester of 2018, characterizing its creation process not only on the technological level but on the pedagogical and content-related levels. The results were obtained through a categorization process of a set of stages that characterize the development process of a continuous teacher training focused MOOC. This study can contribute towards the deepened comprehension of the development of a MOOC and, most of all, contribute towards the fitting of this technology in the teacher training process as well as in the overall education system.
Outdoor learning activities are very time consuming for teachers to prepare and difficult to manage, especially when the activity takes place in a non familiar environment for instance zoos. M-learning could help teachers to conduct outdoor education by involving learners in the creation and orchestration of artefacts (game). For that it is necessary to know how to arrange, orchestrate and monitor such diversified forms of learning in a systematic and technical manner. In pursuit of these goals to reduce teachers workload and share part of the orchestration load to students a case study was conducted where 9 students and 3 teachers participated. Together with the teachers and the Zoological Gardens pedagogues, the activities were planned, where the learner could acquire the knowledge through playing and creating the tracks, consisted of location points with assignments. The created activities were also tested in practice to determine their suitability for use in real life learning conditions. For creating activities and learning at the Zoo, SmartZoos app was used. It is a game based learning app where users move from one location to another with the guidance of their phone and in specific location points tasks open that learners need to fill. Students were divided to groups and every group was followed by an observer who took notes about occurring problems and time spent using the phone. Students and teachers evaluated their experience by answering questionnaires, additional interviews were conducted with the teachers to get a deeper understanding of their perspective to sharing orchestration load with students and how they managed the groups at the zoo. The results of this case study show that students were successfully engaged in the planning and creating learning artifacts stage, reducing teachers workload and planning time for this outdoor learning activity. The main issues that teachers brought out were group managing, communication with students for example following students movement, having access to students work or results and assessment.
This paper offers a first look at the opportunities and challenges for educators offered by the Amazon Echo smart speaker. As with all new technologies, educators have been quick to wonder how and if it could be adopted for use in educational contexts. Although at present most Amazon Echo and compatible devices need to be connected to mains electricity and are therefore relatively immobile, the Echo is designed to be switched on and left on permanently meaning that it conforms with the ubiquity often given as a defining factor of mobile learning. A review of articles as well as personal experiments will explore the possibilities Echo offers, especially with regard to language learning, and attempt to clarify whether it does offer teachers and students an additional value in the classroom. The issue of privacy is also discussed.
Data analysis in Virtual Learning Environment deepens the understanding of cognition processes in real student’s brain. The challenge is the evaluation of the quality of e-learning courses before the large-scale implementation. With this aim, we formulate the concept for a computer model for Virtual Student’s evolution. We combine knowledge elements explored from learners behavior data and cognitive theories. We assume that some of the brains energy flow expenses in learning and memorization are due to energy extraction for applying existing skills, analysis of accumulated knowledge, and adaptation of newly available information. We argue that the proposed Virtual Student model can perform cognitive energy flow modeling by extracting energy from the environmental learning objects and losing the power in a tedious learning process. The research shows that Cognitive Energy Flow model can be computerized to produce synthetic data to improve e-learning courses and predict real student’s behavior.
The continuous measurement of learning behavior or learning outcome by appropriate sensors is fundamental for the implementation of technology-based adaptive learning courses. An adaptive system needs such learning data to adapt the instruction to the needs of students. Depending on the learning objective, the sensors use information generated within tasks as basis for instructional adaptation, such as closed clear answers to learning tasks or more ambiguous open answers. In the second case, the use of self-evaluation concepts is one possibility. However, the automation and corresponding generation of learning data for adaptive systems is difficult because the answers are not clearly correct or incorrect. In a preliminary study we constructed a corresponding self-evaluation scaffold in the context of a Blended-Learning course in health psychology with 60 adult students. The goal of the study was to analyze if self-evaluation delivers valid data for sensors of an intended adaptive learning system, and what influences the accuracy of the self-evaluation. Therefore, we conducted an external evaluation of the students' answers. The correlation of the self-evaluation with the external evaluation was moderate (r=.50; p < .001), and there was a large overlap of 65.9% between self-and external evaluation. The difference between self-evaluation and external evaluation can partly be explained by the task and subtask used, the difficulty of the task and the quality of the answers. In this respect, these results provide us with initial insights into what must be taken into account when designing corresponding sensors with an open response format. The analyses have also encouraged the development of a technology-based adaptive course on the basis of corresponding sensors.
