Emotional Regulation and Technology in Various Educational Environments

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of technology in various educational environments. Specifically, it looked at the ways in which technology is integrated into special education classrooms, and how it impacts learning. Two self-contained special education high school classrooms were studied, using qualitative methods of data. These included field notes based on observations and a semi-structured interview. In addition, a review of the literature on this topic was conducted to better place the study within the context of wider work done in this area. The data from the two classrooms were analyzed using the constant comparative method. The results of the study were presented along with a discussion regarding the findings, including the two main themes which were teacher comfort with technology and the impact that the technology has on the students. Although both teachers were different, and had vastly different teaching styles and experiences in the classroom, both found these themes to be the most important. Finally, conclusions were drawn based on the findings of the study, which included the type of training that might be helpful for teachers and staff working with special needs students using educational technology. Implications regarding future research and ways to generate deeper awareness and more effective use of educational technology with special education students were explored

Pervasive learning analytics for fostering learners' self-regulation

Today's tertiary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in Europe poses problems to both teachers and students. With growing enrolment numbers, and numbers of teaching staff that are outmatched by this growth, student-teacher contact becomes more and more difficult to provide. Therefore, students are required to quickly adopt self-regulated and autonomous learning styles when entering European universities. Furthermore, teachers are required to divide their attention between large numbers of students. As a consequence, classical teaching formats of STEM education which often encompass experimentation or active exploration, become harder to implement. Educational software holds the promise of easing these problems, or, if not fully solving, at least of making them less acute: Learning Analytics generated by such software can foster self-regulation by providing students with both formative feedback and assessments. Educational software, in form of collaborative social media, makes it easier for teachers to collaborate, allows to reduce their workload and enables learning and teaching formats otherwise infeasible in large classes. The contribution of this thesis is threefold: Firstly, it reports on a social medium for tertiary STEM education called "Backstage2 / Projects" aimed specifically at these points: Improving learners' self-regulation by providing pervasive Learning Analytics, fostering teacher collaboration so as to reduce their workload, and providing means to deploy a variety of classical and novel learning and teaching formats in large classes. Secondly, it reports on several case studies conducted with that medium which point at the effectiveness of the medium and its provided Learning Analytics to increase learners' self-regulation, reduce teachers' workload, and improve how students learn. Thirdly, this thesis reports on findings from Learning Analytics which could be used in the future in designing further teaching and learning formats or case studies, yielding a rich perspective for future research and indications for improving tertiary STEM education

Co-regulation in Technology Enhanced Learning Environments

International audienc