Learning during COVID-19 in higher education around the globe:systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract. This Master’s thesis explores the significance of learning from the perspectives of both teachers and students in higher education institutions worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a systematic literature review, this study examines the experiences of teachers and students in the light of both mixed-methods and quantitative peer-reviewed studies (n=32). As a meta-analysis, this thesis aims to provide a synthesis in seeking stronger evidence for the conclusions drawn from the claims of individual studies. At the same time, the aim of this thesis is to highlight any contradictions that may arise from the results of different studies. The theoretical framework covers different definitions and perspectives of learning. The main learning theories that are discussed include the behaviorist, cognitive, and situated learning theories. In addition to these, brain-based learning will be considered as a more recent perspective that provides unique insights on learning experiences gained from the pandemic. Using thematic analysis for the data, five main themes were formed and analyzed. The themes are: (1) attitudes toward adoption and support provided, (2) resilience in adapting and coping with the transition, (3) emotional intelligence and the role of compassion, (4) pedagogy and online education itself, and finally (5) performance and motivational factors.Oppiminen koronapandemian aikana korkeakouluissa ympäri maailmaa : systemaattinen kirjallisuuskataus ja meta-analyysi. Tiivistelmä. Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan oppimisen merkitystä korkeakouluissa sekä opettajien että opiskelijoiden näkökulmasta maailmanlaajuisesti koronapandemian aikana. Systemaattisena kirjallisuuskatsauksena tämä tutkimus tarkastelee opettajien ja opiskelijoiden kokemuksia sekä monimenetelmätutkimuksena että määrällisten vertaisarvioitujen tutkimusten (n=32) valossa. Meta-analyysina tässä tutkielmassa on tarkoitus saada aikaan synteesi, jonka avulla haetaan vahvempaa näyttöä yksittäisten tutkimusten väittämiin johtopäätöksiin. Samalla tutkielman tarkoitus on tuoda esille ne ristiriidat, jotka esiintyvät eri tutkimusten tuloksissa. Tutkielman teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä tarkastellaan oppimisen eri määritelmiä ja näkökulmia. Keskeisimmät oppimiseen liittyvät teoriat, joita käsitellään ovat behavioristinen, kognitiivinen ja tilannesidonnainen oppimisteoria. Näiden lisäksi aivojen toimintoja huomioiva oppiminen (engl. brain-based learning) otetaan tarkkailuun uudempana näkökulmana pandemian tuottamien oppimiskokemusten valossa. Teema-analyysin avulla tutkielmassa muodostettiin viisi pääteemaa, joita ovat: (1) muutokseen liittyvät asenteet ja tarjolla oleva tuki, (2) resilienssi ja selviytyminen muutosvaiheen alla, (3) tunneälyn ja myötätunnon merkitys, (4) pedagogiikka ja verkkokoulutus sekä (5) suorituskykyyn ja motivaatioon liittyvät tekijät

A COMPARISON BETWEEN MOTIVATIONS AND PERSONALITY TRAITS IN RELIGIOUS TOURISTS AND CRUISE SHIP TOURISTS

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the motivations and the personality traits that characterize tourists who choose religious travels versus cruises. Participating in the research were 683 Italian tourists (345 males and 338 females, age range 18–63 years); 483 who went to a pilgrimage travel and 200 who chose a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Both groups of tourists completed the Travel Motivation Scale and the Big Five Questionnaire. Results show that different motivations and personality traits characterize the different types of tourists and, further, that motivations for traveling are predicted by specific —some similar, other divergent— personality trait

Coronavirus disease (Covid-19): psychoeducational variables involved in the health emergency

This monograph has allowed us to present a psychoeducational view of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We confirm here that research in education contributes its own evidence and specific models for identifying this problem

The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education

This open access handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the growing field of positive education, featuring a broad range of theoretical, applied, and practice-focused chapters from leading international experts. It demonstrates how positive education offers an approach to understanding learning that blends academic study with life skills such as self-awareness, emotion regulation, healthy mindsets, mindfulness, and positive habits, grounded in the science of wellbeing, to promote character development, optimal functioning, engagement in learning, and resilience. The handbook offers an in-depth understanding and critical consideration of the relevance of positive psychology to education, which encompasses its theoretical foundations, the empirical findings, and the existing educational applications and interventions. The contributors situate wellbeing science within the broader framework of education, considering its implications for teacher training, education and developmental psychology, school administration, policy making, pedagogy and curriculum studies. This landmark collection will appeal to researchers and practitioners working in positive psychology, educational and school psychology, developmental psychology, education, counselling, social work and public policy

Socio-technical analysis and design of digital workplaces to foster employee health

Recent socio-technical developments caused by ongoing digitalization (e.g., robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, anthropomorphic systems) or the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., an increasing number of remote working employees and hence, increasing number of virtual collaboration) change the work environment and culture. Digital and smart workplace technol-ogies facilitate business processes and provide tools for efficient communication and (virtual) collaboration, “increasing the productivity of the workforce in the information age” (Attaran et al. 2019, p. 1). Especially in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies play a crucial role in keeping us socially close, connected, and collaborative while increasing the phys-ical distance between humans. However, this development affects the health of employees (Tarafdar et al. 2013). In research, for example, it has long been known that the increased usage of digital technologies and media (DTM) may cause stress, leading to potentially harmful reac-tions in individuals. Research has noted this specific form of stress as technostress (Ayyagari et al. 2011; Tarafdar et al. 2007; Tarafdar et al. 2011; Tarafdar et al. 2019), which is an umbrella term for causes, negative organizational outcomes, and negative humanistic outcomes resulting from the use of DTM at work. The simultaneous consideration of humanistic (e.g., well-being, equality) and organizational outcomes (e.g., efficiency, productivity) is an integral part of a socio-technical system (Beath et al. 2013; Mumford 2006), which is at the core of the IS discipline (Bostrom et al. 2009; Chiasson and Davidson 2005). However, a review from Sarker et al. (2019) regarding published research articles in one of the top journals within the IS community revealed that most reviewed studies (91%) had focused exclusively on instrumental goals. They conclude that “many IS researchers have forgotten or ignored the premise that technologies need to benefit humankind overall (Majchrzak et al. 2016), not just their economic condition” (Sarker et al. 2019, p. 705). Especially as humanistic outcomes can lead to even more positive instrumental outcomes. Hence, Sarker et al. (2019) call for focusing on the connection between humanistic and instru-mental outcomes, enabling a positive synergy resulting from this interplay. For this reason, this dissertation adopts a socio-technical perspective. It aims to conduct re-search that links instrumental outcomes with humanistic objectives to ultimately achieve a healthier use of DTMs at the digital workplace. It is important to note that the socio-technical perspective considers both the technical component and the social component privileging nei-ther one of them and sees outcomes resulting from the reciprocal interaction between those two.Therefore, the dissertation focuses on the interaction while applying pluralistic methodological approaches from qualitative (e.g., semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions) and quantitative research (e.g., collection from a field study or survey research). It provides a theo-retical contribution applying both behavioral research (i.e., analysis of cause-and-effect rela-tionships) and design-oriented research (i.e., instructions for designing socio-technical information systems). Overall, this work addresses four different areas within the reciprocal interaction between the social and technical components: the role of the technical component, the role of the social component, DTMs fostering a fit between the technical and social compo-nents, and the imminent misfit between these two due to ongoing digitalization. First, to contribute to an understanding of the technical component’s role, this thesis presents new knowledge on the characteristics and features of DTM and their influence on employee health and productivity. Research on the design of digital workplaces examined different design approaches, in which information exchange and sharing documents or project support were regarded (Williams and Schubert 2018). However, the characteristics of DTM also play an es-sential role in the emergence of technostress (Dardas and Ahmad 2015). This thesis presents ten characteristics of DTM that affect technostress at an individual’s workplace, including a measurement scale and analysis on how these characteristics affect technostress. Besides, also, the provision of functional features by DTMs can affect instrumental outcomes or humanistic objectives. For example, affording users with certain kinds of autonomy regarding the config-uration of DTM while they work towards their goals could have a tremendous effect on pursu-ing goals and well-being (Patall et al. 2008; Ryan and Deci 2000). Therefore, this thesis presents knowledge regarding the design of DTM on the benefits of affording users with autonomy. Furthermore, it shows that merely affording more autonomy can have positive effects above and beyond the positive effects of the actualization of affordance. Second, to contribute to an understanding of the social component’s role, this thesis presents new knowledge on contextual and individual factors of social circumstances and their influence on employee health and productivity. In this context, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the intensity of technostress among employees is considered, as work became more digital almost overnight. Therefore, this thesis provides empirical insights into digital work and its context in times of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on employees’ well-being, health, and productivity. Furthermore, measures to steer the identified effects if the situation in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic persists or comparable disruptive situations should re-occur are discussed. On the other hand, this research takes a closer look at the effect of an individual preference regarding coping styles in dealing with upcoming technostress. A distinction is made between the effects of two different coping styles, namely active-functional and dysfunctional, on strain as a humanistic outcome and productivity as an instrumental outcome. In the course of this, evidence is provided that coping moderates the relationship between the misfit within the socio-technical system and strain as proposed by the psychological theory of job demands-resources model (Demerouti et al. 2001). Third, to contribute to a successful fit between the technical and social components, this thesis presents frameworks and guidelines on the design of DTM, which understand the social com-ponent (here the user and her/his environment) and adjust accordingly to the needs of their users. Therefore, the thesis provides knowledge on the design of DTMs that support users in applying stress management techniques and build the foundation for stress-sensitive systems (i.e., systems that aim to mitigate stress by applying intervention measures on the social and technical component (Adam et al. 2017)). As a matter of fact, a framework for collecting and storing data (e.g., on the user and her/his environment) is developed and experiences with im-plementing a prototype for life-integrated stress assessment are reported. The experiences from this and the existing knowledge in the literature will finally be aggregated to a mid-range design theory for mobile stress assessment. To contribute to the fourth and last aspect, the imminent misfit within the socio-technical sys-tem due to ongoing digitalization, this thesis presents new knowledge regarding digital work demands that potentially affect both employees’ health and instrumental outcomes. The current version of technostress’s theoretical foundation was introduced more than ten years ago by Tarafdar et al. (2007). However, the interaction with and use of DTM has considerably changed along with the societal and individual expectations. Therefore, this thesis puts the current con-cept of technostress to test. As a result, a new theory of digital stress, as an extension of the concept of technostress, is proposed with twelve dimensions – instead of five dimensions within the concept of Tarafdar et al. (2007) – that could be hierarchically structured in four higher-order factors. This theory holistically addresses the current challenges that employees have to deal with digitalization. To sum up, this dissertation contributes to the IS community’s knowledge base by providing knowledge regarding the interaction between employees and their digital workplace to foster the achievement of humanistic and instrumental outcomes. It provides both behavioral research and design-oriented research while using pluralistic methodological approaches. For this pur-pose, this thesis presents knowledge about the different components within the socio-technical system, design knowledge on DTMs fostering the fit between these components, and an under-standing of an upcoming misfit due to the ongoing digitalization. Overall, this research aims to support the successful change towards a healthy digital workplace in the face of digitalization

Aspectos motivacionais no design de tecnologia para mudanças sociais

Orientador: Maria Cecília Calani BaranauskasTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Conectando pessoas e presente em todos os aspectos da vida, quando projetadas para este fim, as tecnologias têm potencial de influenciar a forma com que pessoas em um grupo social percebem e se relacionam com as coisas no ambiente. Este estudo de doutorado em Interação Humano-Computador (IHC) investiga como elementos motivacionais da Psicologia podem ser aplicados para informar o design, explo- rando esse potencial da tecnologia em promover mudanças sociais. O estudo é instanciado no domínio de consumo de energia elétrica, lidando com o desafio contemporâneo de cons- cientizar a sociedade dos limites naturais do planeta no que diz respeito ao uso de recursos naturais. Informar o design com aspectos motivacionais é uma abordagem recente em IHC. Quando encontrada na literatura, comumente tem foco em aspectos individuais e intrín- secos da motivação. Contudo, como argumentado nessa pesquisa, o contexto sociocultural evidencia a importância de considerar também os fatores externos que motivam as pessoas a se engajarem com uma tecnologia e com uma determinada questão social. Por considerar tanto fontes intrínsecas quanto extrínsecas de motivação, a Teoria da Autodeterminação é então considerada o principal referencial teórico da Psicologia nessa investigação, e a Semiótica Organizacional é a base metodológica para analisar os elemen- tos socioculturais que influenciam a motivação extrínseca. A análise situada dos dados socioculturais por uma perspectiva motivacional levou ao design da Tecnologia Socialmente Informada para Eco-Feedback de Energia (sigla SEET, em inglês), uma arquitetura que tem por objetivo estabelecer um novo padrão de com- portamento, ou uma nova maneira de perceber o consumo de energia coletivamente. O SEET é composto por um sistema interativo que promove colaboração, e pela Árvore da Energia, um dispositivo de feedback tangível para locais onde há encontro de pessoas. O SEET é avaliado em dois cenários complementares: uma Escola de Ensino Funda- mental no Brasil, onde os dados socioculturais foram coletados, analisados e aplicados para informar o design; e no contexto de um departamento de uma universidade no Reino Unido. Aspectos motivacionais da arquitetura do SEET são então analisadas, assim como o impacto dessa tecnologia ao desencadear as esperadas mudanças sociaisAbstract: By connecting people and being present in almost all aspects of life, when properly de- signed for that, technology can potentially influence the way people in a social group perceive and relate with things in their environment. This PhD study in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field investigates how motivational elements from Psychology can be applied to inform the design aiming at exploring this potential of technology for promoting a social change. The study is in- stantiated in the energy consumption domain, coping with the contemporary challenge of raising awareness among the society of the planet¿s natural resources usage and limits. Informing the design with motivational aspects is a recent approach in HCI. When found in literature, it is mostly focused on individual and intrinsic aspects of motivation. However, as argued in this research, the sociocultural context evidences the importance of considering also the external factors that motivate people to be engaged with technology and the social issue. By taking into account both intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation, the Self- Determination Theory is then considered the main theoretical background from Psychol- ogy in this investigation, and the Organisational Semiotics the methodological basis to analyse sociocultural elements that influence extrinsic motivation. The situated analysis of sociocultural data with motivational lenses has led to the de- sign of a Socially-informed Energy Eco-feedback Technology (SEET), an architecture that aims at establishing a "new pattern of behaviour", or a new way of perceiving collective energy consumption. The SEET is composed by an interactive system that promotes collaboration and The Energy Tree, a tangible and public feedback device for gathering places. The SEET is evaluated in two complementary scenarios: an elementary school in Brazil, where the sociocultural data was collected, analysed and applied to inform design; and in the context of an university department in the United Kingdom. Motivational as- pects of the SEET architecture are then analysed, as well as the impact of this technology to trigger the desired social changeDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutora em Ciência da Computaçã

Theory development for the use of DVD technology based on brain research

This thesis will provide the importance to teachers how brain based research on visual and motion activities can be assimilated into technological innovations that are easily utilized in classroom instruction. This is significant because in order to ensure that best practices are being implented, teachers must recognize the validity of an approach, understand its applications and find it easily accessible on a routine basis

Capturing the interconnected and interpersonal nature of emotion concepts: implications for social-emotional learning

The current multimethod study adopts a developmental perspective to address how emotional learning relates to social learning and its import to education settings. The aim is to add to the social-emotional learning (SEL) literature by setting precedent for future research on how we identify emotions in others that simultaneously addresses the roles of language, temperament/personality, and interpersonal accuracy (IA). Three studies were undertaken to approach the main research question via different lenses. The first, a systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies with SEL programmes universally implemented in Primary Years 4 to 6, addressed the question of how emotions have been ‘taught’ in primary schools in the past decade, and whether SEL programme participation directly promotes child emotion understanding (EU). The second study, a linguistic analysis of child-produced emotion definitions, explored the relationship between emotion representation and emotion language across middle childhood. The third study focused on the impact of emotion representation on IA in a sample of first- and final-year undergraduates, and potential links with personality, the ability to identify and describe one’s own emotional states, and sense of social connectedness. Results: A total of 54 studies were included in the review (Study 1) based on the presence of an SEL programme targeting a specific aspect of EU and transparent reporting of programme components. EU areas most frequently targeted were: ‘Recognition’ (38 programmes), ‘Regulation’ (33 programmes), ‘Decision/Action’ (33 programmes), ‘External Cause’ (30 programmes), and ‘Belief’ (26 programmes). A sub-set of 20 studies from the systematic review were included in the meta-analysis that indicated SEL programme participation had a small positive impact on child EU (Hedge’s g = 0.22) as compared to a control group. Study 2 was a small-scale corpus analysis of 1,239 definitions of 27 emotions produced by 49 children (Mage = 9.24; SD = .75; 46.9% Female). All emotion words appearing in definitions co-occurred with at least one additional emotion term. Emotion term co-occurrence patterns were also operationalized as a ‘blend score.’ A significant regression equation was found between emotion term co-occurrence and non-emotional mental state term (MST) production (F(1, 47)= 20.879, p less than .001) with an R2 of .308; average MST production increased by 1.233 for each average blend score. Independent samples t-tests indicated a statistically significant difference based on gender for average MST production (t(47) = -2.811, p = .007), with female children producing more MSTs across emotion definitions as compared to male children, but there was no statistically significant relationship between gender and emotion blend score. Thematic analysis indicated that common topics across child emotion definitions included: interpersonal dynamics (e.g., rejection, conflict), experiencing a non-social situation (e.g., a disappointing/negative event), non-emotional human behaviour (e.g., sleeping), and performing an activity (primarily leisure, such as playing or reading a book). Study 3, an online cross-sectional study with a sample of 150 undergraduates (67.3% Female; Mage = 19.93, SD = 2.05), found a small positive relationship between an emotion language manipulation (i.e., condition) on the researcher-developed IA task and below-average trait-based behaviour prediction accuracy (rs(148) = .18, p = .025). General difficulty appraising one’s feelings predicted self-reported levels of social connectedness (R2 = 0.147, F(1, 148) = 25.431, p less than .001), and was inversely correlated with personality dimensions—specifically participant ‘Extraversion’ (r(148) = -.19, p = .020) and ‘Agreeableness’ (rs(148) = -.20, p = .016). Social connectedness was also positively correlated with certain participant personality dimensions including ‘Agreeableness’ (rs(148) = .26, p = .001) and ‘Extraversion’ (r(148) = .29, p less than .001). Conclusions: The three studies provide preliminary evidence in support of: a) the positive impact of SEL programme participation across middle childhood on EU development (Study 1); b) the interrelated nature of emotion concepts across middle childhood, the importance of context for anchoring EU, and a relationship between gender and MST production rates in emotion definitions across middle childhood (Study 2); and c) positive relationships between levels of social connectedness, the ability to describe and identify one’s own emotional states, and personality in young adults (Study 3). To the researcher’s knowledge, this study is the first to: a) identify trends in how emotions have been taught across middle childhood by synthesizing SEL intervention literature to reflect broader emotion socialization practices in schools; b) provide statistically significant evidence of the direct impact of SEL programme participation on the development of child emotion understanding; c) provide evidence of spontaneous emotion term co-occurrence across definitions in order to stress the inter-relational dimension of emotion concepts from the child’s perspective, a consideration often lacking in SEL literature and programme content; and d) to directly explore the impact of emotion representation on IA. By ‘inter-relational’ is meant the interconnected nature of emotion concepts within a representational system as well as the primacy of social experience in forming the conceptual understanding of emotions. In addition to findings, contributions to the field include the creation of a corpus of child emotion definitions, a data visualization protocol for translating emotion term co-occurrence patterns found in emotion definitions into network maps that highlight interrelationships amongst emotion concepts, and a new IA task that captures personality trait attribution, trait-based behaviour predictions, and trait covariance ratings. Implications for the promotion of social-emotional development in classroom settings (in particular the need to consider the classroom’s social-emotional reality pre-intervention) and the potential for student well-being are discussed, in addition to how SEL as a field can embrace individual and cross-cultural differences in understanding SEL programme implementation