Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development

Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0

The rise of social software, often termed Web 2.0, has resulted in heightened awareness of the opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to learning that are afforded by network technologies. Social software platforms and social networking technologies have become part of the learning landscape both for those who learn formally within institutions, and for those who learn informally via emergent web-based learning communities. As collaborative online learning becomes a reality, new skills in communication and collaboration are required in order to use new technologies effectively, develop real digital literacy and other 21st century skills

The Playground Game:: Inquiry‐Based Learning About Research Methods and Statistics

The Playground Game is a web-based game that was developed for teaching research methods and statistics to nursing and social sciences students in higher education and vocational training. The complexity and abstract nature of research methods and statistics poses many challenges for students. The Playground Game aims to address this issue and bridge the gap between theory and practice by providing students with a playful practical problem case that they have to analyse and evaluate: the player’s task is to make substantiated judgements about a study that was carried out to decide upon the most suitable location for laying out a children’s playground in a fictitious town. This paper reports about the evaluation of the Playground Game among 103 students of the bachelor psychology programme from Leuven University. A pre-questionnaire preceding the game was used to collect information about the students´ individual characteristics and included a self-assessment. A post-questionnaire collected the students´ appreciations and comments, and included the same self-assessment as well as five additional test questions. This set-up allowed us to not only collect the players’ judgements and appreciations about the game, but also to assess achieved learning gains. All student activities were carried out online. As an additional step we have set up a quasi-experiment for exploring to what extent score mechanisms and audio cueing could be used for influencing (reducing) the players’ trial-and-error behaviours. The students were randomly distributed over 4 groups each of which was linked to a different version of the game. We implemented two different game score mechanisms and either used short audio cues indicating a correct or incorrect decision, or omitted these. Technically the Playground Game was implemented on the EMERGO platform, which is an open source educational gaming platform developed by the Open University of the Netherlands (www.emergo.cc). The game (so far only a Dutch language version is available) is an outcome of the CHERMUG project (Continuing and Higher Education in Research Methods Using Games), which was sponsored by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission

Pros and cons gamification and gaming in classroom

The aim of the current work is to assess the challenges that gamification in education are facing nowadays. Benefits and disadvantages of using gamification in classroom are both discussed to offer a clearer view on the impact of using gamification within learning process. Exploratory study cases are provided to investigate the relation between motivation and engagement of the students and gamification in training. Following this idea, a survey was conducted to assess how students behavior and motivation is affected by introducing a single, specific gamification element during a semester learning process. To stimulate competition among students, a ranking type plugin was introduced within the university learning management system used for extramural education. The results prove that motivation decreases by comparison to the previous semester.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works

Considering the education-to-employment system as a highway with three critical intersections -- enrolling in postsecondary education, building skills, and finding a job -- this research has determined places where students take wrong turns or fall behind, and why. With increased data and innovative approaches, employers, educators, governments and youth can create a better system

Analyzing the Response of Learners to Use Kahoot as Gamification of Learning Physics

This study aims to investigate the response of learners to use Kahoot as a gamification of learning. Kahoot is available for free applications, and this platform can be used in gamification based learning. Kahoot allows educators to make games based on quizzed, surveys, and other things related. Kahoot can be accessed using a smartphone-based on android and ios as well as through a computer with address www.kahoot.it. The method used in this research is descriptive method qualitative data support the results of analyzing the response of pesetas learners. This research was conducted in SMP Tunas Bangsa, West Jakarta learner class VII, with several 16 students. The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire. Instrument used validated using product moment formula and reliability using the formula KR-20. Based on the results of data analysis and discussion, we can conclude that the response of learners in the use Kahoot as gamification of learning that is in the select category with an average overall score obtained is 87.28%