Interdisciplinary Week in Game Design: A Learning Experience

[EN] Interdisciplinarity promotes competencies like asking meaningful questions about a complex problem, examine, and synthesize multiple sources of information, methods, and perspectives, in order to integrate knowledge and ways of thinking across two or more established disciplines to produce cognitive advancement. The Interdisciplinary Week of Game Design challenges the students to demonstrate an interdisciplinary understanding of a complex problem that students define, organized by teams, having as its starting point a given theme. Teamwork between members of different academic years favors the sharing of knowledge among peers with different aptitudes, technical skills, and degrees of competence.Barroso, B.; Barbedo, I. (2023). Interdisciplinary Week in Game Design: A Learning Experience. En 9th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'23). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 263-271. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd23.2023.1637526327

Interdisciplinary week in game design: a learning experience

Interdisciplinarity promotes competencies like asking meaningful questions about a complex problem, examine, and synthesize multiple sources of information, methods, and perspectives, in order to integrate knowledge and ways of thinking across two or more established disciplines to produce cognitive advancement. The Interdisciplinary Week of Game Design challenges the students to demonstrate an interdisciplinary understanding of a complex problem that students define, organized by teams, having as its starting point a given theme. Teamwork between members of different academic years favors the sharing of knowledge among peers with different aptitudes, technical skills, and degrees of competence.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interdisciplinary practice: interdisciplinary game design week as case study

La interdisciplinariedad atraviesa los contextos académicos y profesionales. Las competencias interdisciplinares pueden destacarse en un CV o en una entrevista de trabajo como contribuciones que una persona aporta a un futuro equipo de trabajo. En los últimos años, el trabajo en equipos interdisciplinares ha adquirido cada vez más relevancia en la enseñanza superior (AWTI The Dutch Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, 2022; Ashby & Exter, 2019). Las tendencias interdisciplinares también afloran en los datos de publicación, agendas de investigación y centros de innovación interdisciplinarios (Klaassen, 2018). Diversos autores señalan que en el punto de encuentro de diferentes perspectivas se encuentra un espacio que estimula el pensamiento crítico, que permite el desarrollo de nuevos conocimientos, donde se desencadena la co-construcción del aprendizaje (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Almasi, 2016). Involucrar a los estudiantes en experiencias interdisciplinares les ayuda a desarrollar habilidades metacognitivas de orden superior, guiando-los a sintetizar conocimientos disciplinares para idear soluciones innovadoras (Ashby & Exter, 2019). Así, la interdisciplinaridad se materializa a menudo en áreas temáticas globales como la sostenibilidad, el emprendimiento o los macrodatos, por ejemplo, donde diferentes disciplinas se reúnen para crear soluciones, productos o explicaciones conjuntas del mundo (Lam et al., 2014). Esto sugiere un alto nivel de amplitud y complejidad en los problemas a abordar.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Improving Self-Regulation for Learning in EFL Writing in Secondary Education in Blended Environments

[eng] This study aims at improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing instruction at secondary level by implementing a blended instructional design that may foster self-regulation through public online learning diaries (Diaries) and formative feedback in a wiki device in combination with face-to-face (F2F) instruction. Also, all elements are interwoven in the assessment program strongly supported by personalised feedback. In Part I, comprehending chapters 1 to 4, we provide the general theoretical framework for this research, which is based on a competence approach to compulsory education that the countries in the EU have adopted. Our aim is helping students to improve in three of the eight key competences (European Parliament, 2006): Learning Foreign Languages, ICT and Learning to Learn. First, we have reviewed and contextualised what the literature says about EFL writing and different approaches to teaching it and discussed the role of grammar, vocabulary and multimodality pathways in learning to write in a foreign language. Then, we have reviewed the literature on self-regulation for learning (SRL) and self-efficacy and the effects that a public design can have on vicarious learning. We have appraised the role of Diaries, feedback and assessment to improve SRL. Subsequently, we have discussed Diaries in EFL writing in a blended design, and how they can help us improve the students’ autonomy in learning. This literature review leads us to formulate our basic assumptions for the instructional design that we will put to the test. From this review, we conclude that a Diary which integrates cognitive, metacognitive and free writing tasks is a suitable tool for EFL writing instruction and ongoing authentic assessment activities with interactive formative feedback to observe and improve self-regulation strategies. Additionally, a public design can act as a basic form of dialogic feedback, even if what students do is lurking at what other students are doing. In Part II, comprehending chapters 5 to 7, we state the three goals of our research to evaluate an instructional design grounded on literature findings that we developed to improve English as a foreign language (EFL) writing instruction in context. We describe the three main components of the learning diary (Diary) and the writing assignments. We study an EFL class of 10thgraders, aged 15 to 16, at a working-class state school in Barcelona and their English teacher, who was a long-experienced professional, newly arrived at that school. There were 26 students in this class (15 boys and 11 girls), of which we selected six (two strong, two average and two weak ones) for close observation. The instructional design combined face-to-face (F2F) teaching following a textbook with an online platform (a wiki) where students completed the Diary and a variety of writing assignments, with the online supervision of the teacher who provided personalised on-site feedback. In the Diary, and mostly as homework, students had to show their capacity to manage learning strategies and writing competence. In the first place, students had to file F2F instruction and produce examples of use of grammar and vocabulary in the form of sentences (cognitive tasks). Secondly, they had to monitor and correct their writing productions (metacognitive assignments) after the teacher had provided personalised feedback on them. She also developed a system of engagement rewards to incentive correct procedures and participation. In part III (Chapters 7-10) we present the results to our research questions. In Chapter 7 we depict the results concerning goal 1. We observe the activity in the online PWS and the students’ and teacher’s perception of it. In the first place, we consider the temporal dimension of the Diary. Then we move on to study how well the students completed it by task, student and term. Next, we study the writing assignments completion by task and term. Fourthly, we consider the positive and negative effects of the online platform. Finally, we deal with the teacher and students’ views of the PWS. Chapter 8 is devoted to feedback. We analyse the amount and characteristics of the teacher’s feedback depending on the task, as well as its timing for both the Diary and the writing assignments. We also consider the nature of conversations in the PWS. To conclude, we focus on the students’ views on feedback Results for goal 3 are exposed in chapter 9, which analyses in which ways the students’ actions and perceptions in the PWS evolved. In the first place, we ask ourselves which improvements can be reported in the Diary. Secondly, we look at the connections between the Diary and the writing assignments. Thirdly, we observe improvements in the writing assignments, comparing the teacher’s marks to external control measures, such as the state exam and the Write & Improve tool. Finally, we consider the teacher and students’ views. A final chapter 10 gathers a panoramic interpretive reading of each of the selected students and the teacher as to draw their learning profiles. For each of the six selected students, we consider their views on the PWS and the writing and feedback impact on them. In part IV we discuss our findings. About the PWS (goal 1), online designs can set students in action, but the technical problems some students face may cause frustration. It also confirms that stronger students are better at SRL, but their agency may not always be directed towards learning. If weaker students are more SRL focused, the chance is that they will advance more. Scarce metacognitive knowledge, low self-efficacy and lack of motivation make progress slow. Students will favour cognitive tasks over metacognitive, which are not adequate in compulsory education when they were based in understanding what the teacher said instead of in what they understood. Teachers need to plan supervising controls to ensure that students do not leave everything for the last minute, and can pay attention to the teacher’s corrections at different moments. Students did not like that the Diary was compulsory, and they did not like that it was public either, but their perceptions concerning the latter improved significantly, and they used each other’s productions as guidance. The Diary was a threat to average and weak students because it was hard work which, if not done, meant failing the term. The wiki’s lack of popularity was strengthened by technical problems. For goal 2, the teacher’s strategy to provide unfocused, indirect, personalised feedback was not appropriate because it meant a lot of work and did not make some of the students respond to it. The fact that it was timely could not solve the design flaw that it was delivered at the end of the term. These students were the same that show low interest for the design (Darío(a)) or weak students with low metacognitive strategies and linguistic knowledge. So, the students who needed it more (although Mariana(a) became an exception) were the ones who used it less. The students’ perception of feedback was positive enough, but somehow unconscious of the effort it meant to the teacher. For goal 3, when we study the students’ performance in the Diary in some depth, we observe that some students used agency for purposes other than learning, and this behaviour is not related to their linguistic knowledge, but bears relation to how much they make sense of a task and the characteristics of the assessment program. Students did not make sense of the cognitive part of the Diary because the sentences they wrote were not connected with the writing assignments. Furthermore, feedback that focuses only in WCF or sentences rather than paragraphs is not appropriate to teach EFL writing, because such input only addresses one aspect of the overall writing ability. Students value the sentences they wrote in the vocabulary task significantly worse at the end than they did at the beginning of the year. However, they value significantly better that the Diary is an efficient tool to learn English. As for its metacognitive part of the Diary, results were poor when the students were not capable of noticing for themselves what they had learnt, but depended on metacognitive explanations from the teacher which they often did not understand. Students expressed that they liked writing more when they could freely choose what to write about, and this perception improved significantly at the end of the school year. But results show that when students are free to write what they please, the use of translators increases. For this reason, designing tasks that makes them use the vocabulary and grammar they have just been taught would give more meaning to instruction and avoid the dangers of technical cheating. Rich environments where students are exposed to a lot of input (such as films in English subtitled in English) promote EFL writing, especially when the students are asked to carry out a diversity of tasks that stretch for some time

Self-assessment and Peer-assessment in Physical Education. A Systematic Review

El objetivo de esta investigación es revisar sistemáticamente la evidencia existente sobre la utilización de procesos de auto-evaluación y co-evaluación en contextos formativos de Educación Física. En abril del 2020 se realizó una revisión de la literatura en cuatro bases de datos (WOS, SCOPUS, Sportdiscus y ERIC) hasta 2020. Se obtuvieron 365 resultados. Tras la aplicación de los criterios de selección, 11 artículos fueron incluidos en la revisión sistemática. Se analizaron: (a) autor/a y año; (b) objetivo; (c) nivel educativo; (d) forma de participación; (e) formación; (f) metodología; (g) instrumentos; (h) participantes; y (i) resultados. Los resultados de esta investigación muestran que los estudios se centran de forma mayoritaria en el nivel universitario, utilizan principalmente la co-evaluación, únicamente 3 de los estudios mencionan formación previa a la realización de estos procedimientos, predomina la investigación cuantitativa, se utilizan diversidad de instrumentos, el número de participantes es muy variable, y los resultados muestran que la aplicación de procesos de auto-evaluación y co-evaluación que hay bastante coincidencia entre la evaluación en tiempo real y tras el visionado en vídeo, que a mayor edad mayor precisión en la evaluación, y efectos positivos sobre el aprendizaje, el ámbito cognitivo y el social.The aim of this research is to review systematically the existing literature on the use of self-assessment and peer-assessment processes in education contexts of Physical Education: Primary Education, Secondary Education and Teacher Education. In April 2020, a review of the literature was carried out in different databases (WOS, Scopus, Sportdiscus and ERIC) until 2020. After applying the exclusion criteria, 11 articles were included in the systematic review. The following elements were analyzed: (a) author and year; (b) aim; (c) educational level; (d) form of participation; (e) education; (f) methodology; (g) instruments; (h) participants; and (i) results. The results of this research show that the studies focus mainly on the university level and quantitative research predominates in the studies. They mainly use peer-assessment, only three studies mention education prior to performing these procedures, there are a variety of instruments, and the number of participants is highly variable. The results show that the application self-assessment and peer-assessment processes that there is quite a coincidence between the assessment in real time and after the video viewing, that with greater age, greater precision in the assessment, and positive effects on learning, the cognitive and social spher

Linking Early Clinical Experience and Basic Science using Images of Disease

Short Communication 7C1 (Curriculum: Educational Strategies

Building 6C’s (Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Culture, Connectivity) in the Chinese Learning Classroom

This teaching portfolio is a product of the author’s studies in the Masters of Second Language Teaching Program at Utah State University and her experiences as a teacher of Chinese at the elementary school level in the State of Utah’s public school Dual Immersion program. The author provides a selection of teaching reflections and research that have had the most impact on her teaching practice. First, the author offers personal reflections and a theoretical framework for her pedagogy in the Teaching Perspectives section, through a discussion of her professional environment and teaching experience; this is followed by the Teaching Philosophy Statement, which explains the lens through which she views her teaching practice, and a discussion of a selection of teaching observations conducted. The Teaching Philosophy Statement speaks to the importance of connectivity and how learners may best connect with language. The Teaching Philosophy also offers some best practices for a student-centered, task-based, communicative, classroom environment and how best to facilitate language learning. Second, the portfolio focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, in the Research Perspectives section, in which the author includes two selected papers written in the course of the masters program, including: a paper that investigates teaching culture in the elementary Dual Language Immersion context and a paper that explores teaching Chinese as a foreign language through task-based learning and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. It concludes with an Annotated Bibliography that represents a literature review and crystallization of the topic of humor in enhancing learner engagement. Through these select theoretical and practical discussions of teaching, the author suggests that language teachers need to be mindful of 6 C’s: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, culture, connectivity, offering a modification of the 5 C’s in the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages standards. The portfolio culminates with the author’s career plans and the continuing journey to improve and innovate in her teaching