Educational Technology Research and Development最新文献

Although user-generated microgames, defined as very simple games made by non-professionals on open platforms, are popular and appear to have considerable advantages in facilitating learning, further exploration is needed to establish their potential in instructional practices. The present study investigates the design, participation and experience of teaching and learning facilitated by user-generated microgames on an open educational platform. Through an exploratory experiment research method, four elementary school teachers designed and implemented microgame-based learning utilising these very small games on GeoGebra Classroom attended by 129 students. Data were gathered from lesson plans, classroom activity records and self-reflection questionnaires. This study revealed that teachers designed learning with various user-generated microgames and debriefing methods respecting learning content, but they shared comparatively similar scenarios by inserting microgame-based learning into the middle of the main session. The completion rate for the debriefing activity is minimum although the total joining times overshoot the number of students. Teachers found that user-generated microgames are acceptable to orchestrate short serious gaming sessions even though they are limited to one player with basic interfaces. Notwithstanding several disadvantages of these microgames recognised by students, such as missing learning instructions and inadequate interfaces, they so far enjoy learning by playing the games. The most critical implication of this study is to provide sufficient instructions and additional time for microgaming sessions in elementary schools to ensure sustainable completion of the briefing, playing and debriefing activities.

Recent work in science education has emphasized the importance of the conceptual, social, and epistemic dimensions in science learning. But what about the material dimension—the actual physical materials that students use? The way their characteristics and affordances limit or determine instruction has thus far not been as thoroughly explored. Despite the vast body of work that exists on science and engineering practices, there are relatively few examples of how physical science materials are linked to and can support engagement with such practices for sensemaking. In this paper, we propose a framework for analyzing the design of these physical materials and the activities associated with them that can serve as lenses for educators and researchers to consider when planning and reflecting on classroom instruction. To validate our framework, we apply it to analyze activities developed and implemented by teachers during a four-year research-practice partnership project conducted in a city in Brazil, and investigate potential connections between the design of physical materials and students’ epistemic agency. We conclude with recommendations for the development of physical resources in labs and makerspaces for science learning.

In the United States, culturally responsive computing is a framework that aims to support broadening the participation of racially and linguistically diverse children in computing and technology education through bottom-up interventions that are community-oriented, technology rich, and culturally dynamic. Despite the important role that youth sports play in many local neighborhoods and communities across demographic groups there is only a small amount of research on developing culturally responsive computing education that incorporates these activities. We report findings from a culturally responsive computing collaboration between computing education researchers and coaches, mentors, and academic staff who ran a youth boxing program that predominantly served African American children. The purpose of the collaboration was to learn about and represent the adults’ expertise and knowledge in the co-development of culturally responsive computing activities. Using an emergent mixed methods research design, we collected qualitative data (i.e., interviews and group discussions) and quantitative data (i.e., pre- and post-surveys) throughout the collaboration. We analyzed these data to study how coaches, mentors, and staff members brought their knowledge and expertise to bear on the co-development of culturally responsive computing activities for the youth boxing program. Our findings show how the coaches, mentors, and academic staff used their expertise and knowledge in ways that leveraged boxing culture to go beyond boxing itself in the co-development of the activities. In addition, even when connections between computing and boxing did not appear authentically motivated this did not negate the adults’ engagement with the culturally responsive computing project. These findings have implications for anti-deficit theorizing about authenticity and inauthenticity in the co-development of culturally responsive computing in youth sports contexts. The construction of authenticity in culturally responsive computing might be less understood as a direct translation from community into education and more so as a negotiation between locally defined demarcations of what is considered authentic and inauthentic.

While the provision of peer feedback has been widely recommended to enhance learning, many students are inexperienced in this area and would benefit from guidance. This study therefore examines the impact of instructions and examples on the quality of feedback provided by students on peer-developed learning resources produced via an online system, RiPPLE. A randomised controlled experiment with 195 students was conducted to investigate the efficacy of the approach. While the treatment group had access to instructions and examples to support their provision of feedback, the control group had no such assistance. Students’ feedback comments were coded using an adaptation of the S.P.A.R.K. (Specific, Prescriptive, Actionable, Referenced, Kind) model. The results indicate that the instructional guide and examples led to students writing more comprehensive comments. The intervention notably enhanced the presence of feedback traits matching the S.P.A.R.K. model and increased instances where multiple traits of quality were observed in a single comment. However, despite the guide’s impact, the students’ ability to provide actionable feedback was limited. These findings demonstrate the potential of developing and integrating structured guidance and examples into online peer feedback platforms.

Educational technology plays an increasingly significant role in supporting Self-Regulated Learning (SRL), while the importance of Adaptive Learning Technology (ALT) grows due to its ability to provide personalized support for learners. Despite recognizing the potential of ALT to be influential in SRL, effectively addressing pedagogical concerns about using ALT to enhance students’ SRL remains an ongoing challenge. Consequently, learners can develop perceptions that ALT is not customized to their specific needs, resulting in critical or dismissive attitudes towards such systems. This study therefore explores the potential of combining Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance real-time contextual adaptive learning within an ALT to support learners’ SRL. In addressing this question, our approach consisted of two steps. Initially, we focused on developing an ALT that incorporates learners’ needs. Subsequently, we explored the potential of NLP to capture pertinent learner information essential for providing adaptive support in SRL. In order to ensure direct applicability to pedagogical practice, we engaged in a one-year co-design phase with a high school. Qualitative data was collected to evaluate the implementation of the ALT and to check complementary possibilities to enhance SRL by potentially adding NLP. Our findings indicate that the learning technology we developed has been well-received and implemented in practice. However, there is potential for further development, particularly in terms of providing adaptive support for students. It is evident that a meaningful integration of NLP and ALT holds substantial promise for future enhancements, enabling sustainable support for learners SRL.

This study is to develop and validate a scale that measures the acceptance intention of secondary school teachers toward gamified English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) tools. Drawing upon the technology acceptance models (TAM) and related frameworks, we synthesized a framework that includes six main factors contributing to teachers’ acceptance intention of gamified learning tools. These factors are perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEoU), perceived risks, facilitating conditions, and control variables. The study involved 361 and 512 secondary school teachers who participated in qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, respectively. Surprisingly, in the context of implementing gamified tools for the teaching of English-as-a-second-language, the results indicate that only two factors can be retained in the proposed framework (PU and PEoU). However, PU and PEoU in the current research contexts brought new connotations, which is of significance for future studies. Eventually, a five-item scale measuring PU (PU-gamification-EFL) and a six-item scale measuring PEoU (PEoU-gamification-EFL) have been validated. Implications and limitations were discussed, as well as suggestions for future studies.

Abstract

Emergent technologies present platforms for educational researchers to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and collect rich data to study students’ performance, behavior, learning processes, and outcomes in authentic learning environments. As educational research increasingly uses methods and data collection from such platforms, it is necessary to consider the most appropriate ways to analyze this data to draw causal inferences from RCTs. Here, we examine whether and how analysis results are impacted by accounting for multilevel variance in samples from RCTs with student-level randomization within one platform. We propose and demonstrate a method that leverages auxiliary non-experimental “remnant” data collected within a learning platform to inform analysis decisions. Specifically, we compare five commonly-applied analysis methods to estimate treatment effects while accounting for, or ignoring, class-level factors and observed measures of confidence and accuracy to identify best practices under real-world conditions. We find that methods that account for groups as either fixed effects or random effects consistently outperform those that ignore group-level factors, even though randomization was applied at the student level. However, we found no meaningful differences between the use of fixed or random effects as a means to account for groups. We conclude that analyses of online experiments should account for the naturally-nested structure of students within classes, despite the notion that student-level randomization may alleviate group-level differences. Further, we demonstrate how to use remnant data to identify appropriate methods for analyzing experiments. These findings provide practical guidelines for researchers conducting RCTs in similar educational technologies to make more informed decisions when approaching analyses.

This special issue aims to sketch the present state of maker learning research, reveal possible tensions, and present future possibilities to articulate principles for learning through design in the era of maker education. The special issue was announced in 2022 in ETR&D, a leading academic journal in educational technology. Of the 50 submissions to the special issue, eighteen (18) were accepted for publication. The editors favored a robust inclusion of papers to help define the contours of the field at present. Four clusters of topics are identified in this collection of papers: (i) STEM+ disciplinary and transdisciplinary learning spaces; (ii) Digital technologies in making, opportunities and challenges; (iii) Assessment practices and frameworks; (iv) Representation, inclusion, and tensions around maker-centered initiatives and reforms. The editors of the special issue believe that these clusters reflect the current state-of-the-art in the field as well as significant questions to guide near future research. Reflecting on these papers but also the overall editorial process, the editors identified several opportunities and provide suggestions on how the field might expand moving forward.

This study aims to provide a systematic review of recent eye-tracking studies conducted with children and adolescents in learning settings, as well as a scoping review of the technologies and machine learning approaches used for eye-tracking. To this end, 68 empirical studies containing 78 experiments were analyzed. Eye-tracking devices as well as the ever-evolving mechanisms of gaze prediction endorsed in the prior and current research were identified. The review results indicated a set of salient patterns governing the employment of eye-tracking measures and the inferred cognitive constructs in learning, along with the common practices in analyzing and presenting the eye-tracking data. Eye-tracking has been used to track engagement, learning interactions, and learning-relevant cognitive activities mainly in a research lab or a highly-controlled learning setting. The mechanisms of gaze capturing and prediction with learners in a dynamic and authentic learning environment are evolving.

Abstract

In this paper, we report findings from a larger study that investigated design failure, as a phenomenon, in instructional design (ID) practice from the perspective of ID practitioners. Following an interpretive phenomenological study design, we interviewed 17 ID practitioners working in diverse settings, seeking their stories of design failure. Throughout the interviews and the analysis of the practitioners’ stories of design failures, we found that ID practitioners define design failure in different ways that are mostly not captured in design literature, that is: design failure as “failure during use of design,” design failure as “failure during process of design,” design failure as “an opportunity for reflection on design actions,” design failure as “an outcome or an event that needs to be avoided/prevented during the process of design,” and design failure as “an outcome or an event that could not be avoided/prevented during the process of design.” These findings and our discussions of them emphasize the generative role design failure plays in ID practice, the richness and the complexity of this phenomenon, and point to implications for IDT scholarship and ID education. In an upcoming paper, we report what ID practitioners attribute design failure to and what is the essence of design failure in ID practice.