Computers & Education最新文献

The integration of technology into learning is a crucial capability for students to address future challenges. However, East Asian teachers exhibit a relatively lower level of support for students’ technology use compared with the OECD average. The present study tries to uncover the foundational factors influencing teacher-supported student use of technology in five East Asian countries (economies) by analyzing Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 data.

The multilevel structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze the sample data, which combined the teacher-level and school-level factors. Additionally, teacher-level variables are aggregated to the school level to examine contextual effect. Results indicate that teachers' professional collaboration in lessons, team innovativeness, and self-efficacy in student engagement positively and significantly correlated with teacher-supported student use of technology. Notably, an opposing association is observed between teachers’ perceptions of disciplinary climate and technology use in Shanghai and Singapore. However, in comparison to teacher-level variables, school-level and contextual variables, particularly fundamental school features such as material resources, budgets, and number of enrolled students, marginally explain associations. Importantly, these associations demonstrate variations across the five east Asian countries (economies), attributable to the fact that these economies have developed their educational technology policies grounded in technology determinism, emphasizing the necessity of equipping schools with the latest devices. Consequently, this study posits that there is a requisite shift in policy evolution from technology determinism to technology instrumentalism. This entails a pragmatic focus transition from merely distributing devices to the integration of technology within instructional practices.

The use of social media in the classroom has the potential to improve learning outcomes for both lecturers and university students. This paper presents a framework for how social media can be used as a tool in the learning process according to educational objectives. The framework is intended to demonstrate to researchers and lecturers how to activate social media platforms effectively as a learning tool; how several platforms can be employed across subjects; and how to unify social media resources with the physical and virtual learning environment. To support these areas and provide an innovative and sustainable way to transform teaching and learning, a social media (Web 2.0) taxonomy was developed. The purpose of the social media taxonomy is to assist lecturers in planning all the steps of learning, teaching, and assessing a course or topic, whilst considering the learning goals reflected in national and local curriculum standards. The Web 2.0 taxonomy focuses on three dimensions named as Consciousness, Cognition, and Creativity [3C]. Each dimension consists of its categories in the metacognitive domain: Consciousness, viewing, Cognition, posting, interacting, and analysing, and Creativity, evaluating, and curating. The categories are used to hierarchize instructional objectives, ranging from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking skills. Each level of the taxonomy is built on the previous learning level by moving from the concrete to the abstract and from the simple to the complex. Thus, when students have completed all these levels, they can be considered to have mastered certain learning objectives, equipping them with innovative 21st-century skills.

Rapid development of artificial intelligence applications and widespread digital transformation are driving the need for employees to learn digital skills. The body of research on digital skills that working professionals need to thrive in an uncertain and ever-evolving workforce is fast accumulating. Although there have been literature reviews on the nature and types of such digital skills, an integrative overview of how digital skills are acquired remains lacking. This systematic literature review seeks to close the gap by focusing on digital skilling. A total of 39 journal articles published between January 2010 and June 2022 were identified using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework. Based on thematic coding of the articles, eleven digital skilling approaches were identified and conceptually organized into four categories. Findings regarding the contextual factors affecting digital skilling and impacts of digital skilling indicate an emerging framework of digital skilling. Emerging interests and opportunities for future research related to virtual worlds, learning analytics, and blockchain are discussed.

New technologies and subjects are increasingly being added to the agenda of children's education for increasingly younger groups. Such advances are also tied to questions of learning and the educational designs that make this possible. This study follows the evolution of context- and age-appropriate designs during a programming robot project for 1-2-year-olds, a novel technology for children and teachers. The study examines learning design phases featuring instructional, guided play, and free play activities and uses mixed-methods techniques to examine several aspects of children's educational interaction. Results show how all three educational designs offer different potentials for children's learning. Teacher scaffolding supports extended programming actions but limits children's exploratory actions, and guiding play increases time on task. Simultaneously, children's free play increases the frequency of simple programming actions and leads to unexpected learning potentials beyond the guided activities. It is discussed how diverse learning experiences can join in programs balancing instructional needs of novel technologies and subjects with early childhood's exploratory and playful modes of learning.

In our technology-driven society, digital reading literacy has emerged as a valuable skill as people increasingly read on digital devices rather than from print sources. Using an internationally representative sample (N = 211,899) across 31 economies, this study employed the opportunity-propensity framework to comprehensively investigate the role and relative contribution of opportunity, propensity, and antecedent factors in adolescent students' digital reading literacy. Hierarchical linear modeling and dominance analysis were performed. The results showed that although all three groups of factors contributed to adolescents' digital reading performance, the relative contribution of these factors differed. Propensity factors made the greatest contribution to digital reading performance, most notably metacognitive reading strategies and reading self-concept. While opportunity and antecedent factors such as schools’ support in ICT resources and socioeconomic background also played a role, their contributions were relatively limited. These findings have significant implications for advancing current theories of digital reading and for guiding digital reading instruction in secondary education.

Game-based learning (GBL) has garnered significant attention as a means to enhance student science learning. However, researchers often broadly categorize GBL without specific attention to teachers' practices or the different game-based pedagogies (GBPs) such as serious game-based learning and learning by making games. Serious game-based learning involves the use of games designed primarily for purposes beyond entertainment, engaging students in learning activities. Learning by making games goes further by enabling students to construct and expand their knowledge through creative activities. Furthermore, the impact of students' weekly gaming hours on their academic performance under different GBPs has not been thoroughly explored. In this study, we analyzed pre- and post-science unit assessment data to investigate the effects of serious game-based learning and learning by making games, along with gaming hours, on the science learning outcomes of 129 sixth-grade students in a Midwestern urban school district in the United States. Employing Bayesian paired t-tests and ANOVA, we examined the effects of two GBPs (serious game learning and game-making) implemented by two science teachers and the interaction between each GBP and students' weekly gaming hours. Our findings indicate that both GBPs led to improvements in students’ learning, with those participating in making games showing an average increase of 3.5 points more on the posttests than those engaged in serious game-based learning. Additionally, data on student-reported weekly gaming hours showed that in both GBP conditions, students with medium gaming hours showed the most improvement compared to those with fewer or more gaming hours. There was also a potential interaction between types of GBP and the effect of gaming hours outcomes in that the learning gain difference between the two GBPs was more pronounced among students reporting fewer gaming hours, although this effect was not significant. This study contributes to the GBL field by providing practical design recommendations for integrating GBL into formal Kindergarten to 12th grade (K-12) settings, taking into account teachers' pedagogical agency and students' gaming experiences.

In today's world, specific skills are essential for success in work and life. Educators, governments, and industry leaders recognize collaborative problem-solving (CPS) and digital skills as necessary for the 21st century. However, our current understanding of these skills' interconnection and development within technical and vocational higher education remains limited. This study aims to achieve two main objectives. First, we want to examine the level of digital skills among technical and vocational higher education students in Chile and how it relates to their socioeconomic background. Second, we aim to investigate how students' different levels of digital skills influence their satisfaction with online collaboration and their assessment of group processes after completing an online CPS task. The study identified three distinct groups of students based on their digital skills: high-skilled, medium-skilled, and low-skilled. The low-skilled group faced more socioeconomic disadvantages compared to the other two groups. Moreover, students with low digital skills reported lower satisfaction with online group work and a poorer self-evaluation of the group processes involved in the collaborative online task. Insights for technical and vocational higher education institutions to foster targeted support of digital skills development for their student body are discussed.

Research indicates that educators value certain benchmarks of educational quality when choosing educational apps from app stores (i.e., curriculum, feedback, scaffolding, learning theory, and development team). However, it is unclear how other users' ratings of the app, or the app's ranking on the app store's list of “top” educational apps, might impact educators' evaluations. The present study examines how educational benchmarks, ratings, and rankings influence educators' selection of educational apps. One-hundred and fifty elementary educators viewed 18 researcher-created educational app pages and indicated their willingness to download, pay for, and rate each app. Results from a repeated-measures MANOVA and non-parametric tests revealed that educators preferred benchmark apps to buzzword apps, with a medium sized effect. However, they also had a strong preference for apps with positive user ratings, with a large effect, and preferred apps with a bottom ranking, with a medium effect. To improve app selection, educators should rely on their own knowledge to choose apps rather than relying on user ratings or company rankings. Companies running app stores should improve their user ratings and rankings systems to facilitate selection of apps that include evidence-backed benchmarks of app quality.

The prevalence of multi-channel information consumption, which involves the simultaneous engagement with multiple information sources across various platforms, underscores the urgent need for research on its effects as it profoundly influences how individuals seek, evaluate, and interact with information, ultimately shaping their information-related choices and behaviors. Using an innovative empirical method to extract a set of latent groups based on individuals' multi-channel practices, the study examined the role of channel plurality relative to how people evaluate and consume information online. Importantly, this research examined how conditions of the critical literacy and practices can be configured to benefit six distinct generational groups, ranging from the youngest generation group (1990s) to the oldest generation (1950s). Based on results of a nationally representative survey (N = 10,032), the current research demonstrated how individuals’ channel plurality contributes to their critical literacy and information verification behaviors. Finally, this study identified differences in information practices manifested in six generational groups. In the end, this study bridged two streams of research, new media literacy and the digital divide, and discussed how different educational and regulatory approaches can be made to encourage critical information consumption in an increasingly digitized network environment.

Research–Practice Partnerships (RPPs), in which researchers and teachers come together with the shared aim of driving educational improvement, have lately gained recognition in the education community. Whilst studies have demonstrated the positive effects of RPPs, potential challenges in establishing long-term and mutually beneficial RPPs have been reported. To understand these challenges, the present study explores dynamic changes in team interaction patterns and roles using Social Network Analysis (SNA), then employs qualitative analysis to elaborate the mechanisms underlying these changes and resulting outcomes. The visual and quantitative results of the SNA reveal that interaction patterns shifted from a researcher-centered (hierarchical) pattern to a decentralized pattern, with increasing numbers of participants exhibiting a higher level of activity and exchange over time across the four discussions in a RPP. As for role changes, researchers played more of a leading role in the first two discussions, while teachers played a more equal role in subsequent discussions. The qualitative findings identify some key factors that lead to the changes in interaction patterns and roles, including: the process of negotiating meaning through lesson study; the establishment of trust between participants; and a concern for how role changes may positively impact teachers' and researchers’ professional development. These findings thus offer insights into how to create more effective and long-lasting RPPs.