Coding learning and computational thinking are increasingly recognized as essential twenty-first-century skills. Coding learning still faces challenges in sustaining learner motivation, engagement, and meaningful learning experiences. This study aimed to develop Cocothink, a Design Thinking-based conceptual framework for gamified coding learning designed to transform learning into an adventure-oriented experience. The study employed a development study approach involving 118 respondents consisting of students, coding community members, teachers, and community organizers. The findings revealed that users required more interactive, exploratory, and practice-oriented learning experiences supported by challenges, rewards, and progress monitoring. These findings were translated into the Cocothink framework, which integrates motivation, exploration, challenge, reflection, reward, progress, and development. The study also produced an early-stage Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and obtained positive expert validation results. Cocothink contributes to the development of a user-centered conceptual framework for gamified coding learning based on computational thinking.
Free play is one of the few contexts in which children independently organise their social lives, providing a particularly relevant setting for examining how peer culture is produced and negotiated in everyday interaction. This study explored how preschool children shape peer culture through rules, social relationships, inclusion and exclusion, and shared meaning-making. A focused ethnography was conducted with 21 children aged 3 years 9 months to 7 years 2 months in an established mixed-age preschool group in Croatia. The observational period lasted one month and included 17 observation days. Data collected through observation, field notes, and four focus groups were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that children independently initiate and sustain play, jointly negotiate rules and roles, and create shared symbolic meanings. Group belonging is continually reaffirmed through participation, while temporary forms of exclusion were observed in different interactional contexts, including responses to disruption and restrictions on participation. Educator mediation occurred in some situations in which children did not resolve disagreements independently. The findings position children as competent social actors whose peer culture constitutes a meaningful form of social life and provide contextual insight into how these processes unfold within an established mixed-age preschool group.
Saudi Arabian college students may face challenges in developing critical thinking skills, which are considered essential for the future workforce under Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative. The present study used a quasi-experimental design to test the effectiveness of the Devil’s Advocate approach in improving critical thinking among Saudi undergraduates. Forty-three students enrolled in two equivalent course sections were assigned to an experimental group (n = 22) employing the Devil’s Advocate method or a control group (n = 21) engaging in traditional consensus-oriented discussion across a 15-week semester. Critical thinking was assessed at pretest and posttest using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test Form 2000 (CCTST; Insight Assessment, 2013), yielding scores on five reasoning domains (Analysis, Inference, Evaluation, Induction, and Deduction) and an Overall composite score. Independent-samples t-tests confirmed baseline equivalence (all p > .65). Within the experimental group, paired-samples t-tests revealed statistically significant and very large gains on every domain (Cohen's d = 1.64-2.15, all p < .001), whereas the control group showed only small, non-significant changes. ANCOVA controlling for pretest scores confirmed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on every outcome, with large effect sizes (partial η² = .324-.445). The intervention shifted the median experimental participant from the Moderate to the Strong CCTST proficiency tier, χ²(3, N = 43) = 15.69, p = .001, Cramér's V = .604. Non-parametric tests corroborated every parametric inference. These findings support cognitive conflict, social constructivist, and metacognitive accounts of how structured dissent advances reasoning, and demonstrate that the Devil’s Advocate approach is a low-cost, theoretically grounded intervention for addressing critical thinking deficits in Saudi higher education and supporting the human-capital aspirations of Vision 2030. Practically, these findings indicate that a low-cost, easily embedded classroom protocol can yield substantial critical-thinking gains, offering instructors, curriculum designers, and higher-education policymakers a scalable, resource-light strategy for strengthening students' reasoning without wholesale curricular reform.
Symbolic obstacles in calculus prevent students from moving away from intuition and towards formal thinking, but are rarely studied in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) interaction logs. We investigated symbolic obstacles and AI-supported representational transitions among 12 Indonesian undergraduate mathematics education students in a non-intrusive intrinsic case study. Semi-structured interviews, eight classroom observations, diagnostic tests, academic artifacts, and AI logs were analyzed through inductive-deductive thematic analysis, based on Tall’s Three Worlds of Mathematics. Four obstacles are highlighted: graph-to-symbol translation, integral and sigma notation, limit notation, and symbolic algebraic manipulation. Participant-level comparisons showed 27.4%–53.8% fewer coded symbolic errors in post-activity assessments than at baseline. AI scaffolding through dynamic visualization, adaptive feedback, step-by-step guidance, and solution validation was associated with representational cycling, metacognitive reflection, reported self-efficacy gains, and lower mathematics anxiety. The study integrates AI-log evidence with the Three Worlds framework to explain how scaffolding can support students in addressing symbolic obstacles.
Purpose: Educators are central to the successful integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in health sciences education, yet evidence from North African contexts remains scarce. This study examined the factors associated with nursing educators' behavioral intention to adopt AI in their teaching practices in Laayoune, Morocco. Methods: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 108 nursing educators (response rate: 90.8%) between June and July 2025. A French-language, self-administered questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology measured behavioral intention and ten individual, technological, and organizational dimensions (45 items; Cronbach's α = 0.835–0.983). Behavioral intention, the canonical acceptance outcome in both models, was analyzed as a continuous variable using independent-samples t-tests with effect sizes, Pearson correlations, and multiple linear regression with backward elimination, bootstrap confidence intervals, and a logistic sensitivity analysis. Results: Behavioral intention was high (per-item mean 4.29 ± 0.53 out of 5), and 94.4% of educators already used AI tools in teaching, despite high anxiety (4.50 ± 0.70), high perceived risk (3.98 ± 0.73), and very low perceived facilitating conditions (2.11 ± 1.27). In the final regression model, awareness (β = 0.556, p < 0.001) and self-efficacy (β = 0.248, p = 0.010) were the only independent predictors, together explaining 57.4% of the variance in intention (F(2, 105) = 70.62, p < 0.001). The bivariate associations of age, teaching experience, AI knowledge, and AI proficiency with intention were fully accounted for by these two factors. Conclusion: AI adoption among these nursing educators appears largely individual and self-directed, driven by awareness and confidence rather than institutional support, which was perceived as weak. Strengthening AI literacy and self-efficacy, alongside institutional investment in infrastructure, training, and guidelines, may support responsible AI integration. Findings from this single-institution study should be interpreted with appropriate caution.
