Thai Computer Studies Student Teacher Complex Problem-Solving Skills Development: A Cooperative Learning Management Model

The research aim was to develop cooperative learning management (CLM) model using computational thinking (CT) and mind mapping techniques to promote Thai computer studies student-teacher (CSST) complex problem-solving skills (CPSS). The sample was 15 first-year CSSTs in the Faculty of Education's Computer Studies Department of Thailand's Thonburi Rajabhat University. The pre-study achievement test classified students into three levels (weak, moderate, or strong). Five experts were involved in the assessment of the CLM plan, which was determined to have a content validity index (CVI) at the highest level (mean = 4.00). They also evaluated the 21 indicator rubric scoring-type test tool for complex problem-solving skills (CPSS) and determined its CVI mean = 3.99. After a pilot test of 30 student teachers, a 42-item questionnaire was finalized. The final CPSS course involved five primary components within an eight-step process. The CSST used six sessions of four hours each. Results showed that the final course post-test score was 90.40 for all 15 student-teachers, significantly higher than the 70% achievement level setting

The trouble with STEAM and why we use it anyway

As an emerging field of theory, research, and practice, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) has received attention for its efforts to incorporate the arts into the rubric of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning. In particular, many informal educators have embraced it as an inclusive and authentic approach to engaging young people with STEM. Yet, as with many nascent fields, the conceptualization and usage of STEAM is somewhat ambivalent and weakly theorized. On the one hand, STEAM offers significant promise through its focus on multiple ways of knowing and new pathways to equitable learning. On the other hand, it is often deployed in theory, pedagogy, and practice in ambiguous or potentially problematic ways toward varying ends. This paper attempts to disentangle some of the key tensions and contradictions of the STEAM concept as currently operationalized in educational research, policy, and practice. We pay particular attention to the transformative learning potential supported by contexts where STEAM is conceptualized as both pedagogical and mutually instrumental. That is, neither STEM nor arts are privileged over the other, but both are equally in play. We link the possibilities suggested by this approach to emerging theories for understanding how designing for and surfacing epistemic practices linked to the relevant disciplines being integrated into STEAM programs may point the way toward resolving tensions in inter- and transdisciplinary learning approaches

Teacher Opinion on Technology

I f the introduction of technology into the curriculum is to be 'wholesome' then we must pay heed to the position of the teacher. We do not really know (I have yet to find evidence of investigation into this area) how they perceive their position or what reservations they have on this issue. I do however feel, through casual discussion and aquaintance, that there still exists a mood, amongst those not obviously involved with high profile initiatives, of concern that many educational values are undermined by such initiatives. Our picture cannot be complete until their position is ascertained. To this ends I undertook to simply ask as near to a typical cross section of teachers as possible how they viewed the matter. I approached three schools in the local consortium (including my own) with a possible maximum sample of 150-200 full and part-time teaching staff

VIRTUAL LANDSCAPE IN SERIOUS GAMES: A FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING THE PLAYER INTERACTION FOCUSING ON THE LEARNING RATE

Throughout history, education has always been essential for humanity's justice and fundamental for the creation of a free and satisfying society with the dissemination of knowledge. Hence, in addition to the life occurrences educating people, traditional higher education methods have played an important role for a long period. However, the age of technology has changed the educational system along with the people's lifestyles to meet the continuously changing conditions. During the past twenty years, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) led to the emergence of e-learning non-traditional educational methods bringing about an innovative dimension of virtual learning. With its beneficial features provided by the Internet and various technologies, this method passes the control of time and location from the tutors to the students during the learning process. Despite the entrance of online education into the students' life many years ago, the Covid-19 outbreak initiated in 2020 turned this method into the only possible way of education for almost two years. Afterward, plenty of studies investigated its effects on students' social and academic life, mostly considering its negative impacts on their mental health and motivation due to interaction issues. They also pointed out the specific problems of tactile learner students in the lack of face-to-face design courses. As an innovative solution able to be adopted, game technologies, increasing immersion of the learner in a real-world skill, and triggering motivation are one of the best methods integrated into educational systems. Known as serious games, these games, adopted by almost any domain, convey educational content along with entertainment, increasing interaction. They train or enhance a certain skill or topic to the player by immersing them. While serious games are more expanded nowadays, they are still not being played by the mass public due to people's immersiveness expectations of a game. Hence, the Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), with their emergence, increased the players' engagement and immersion with all types of virtual environments in digital games. This technology, however, evolved serious games area most, among others, by enabling the opportunity to provide a riskless and low-cost learning environment for real-world skills. In the process of suggesting serious games as a replacement for the traditional educational methods, the most important factor is being aware of their effectiveness for education. Generally, digital games, one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing industries, rely heavily on the virtual landscape, a major part of its development process. Its design demands remarkable effort, and it directly affects the whole game's characteristics. Hence, serious games, as a type of digital game, carry the same attributes. With the appearance of virtual reality technology, gaming started to gain more immersiveness and engagement with artificial elements and environments. Although virtual landscapes were always being developed since the emergence of digital games, the studies taking virtual landscapes into account are mostly using them as a tool for enhancing real spaces, not as a domain for the sake of its development. While other design domains are applying various design methodologies, it is challenging to find a standard design methodology for the design and production of virtual landscapes in the gaming industry, leading to inconsistent and low-quality results. Hence, it comes to the question of what is the virtual landscapes' role in serious games and their effect on the data comprehension rate. Since the literature lacks regarding the gradual change of the virtual landscape in serious games and the content they transmit, this thesis aims to figure out the gradual chronological evolution of the virtual landscapes in serious games. It also aims to seek how this change and the virtual reality technology invention have affected the contents transmitted by digital games and its influence on the player interaction and learning rate. To do so, in the process of this thesis, we developed, tested, and evaluated various serious games, both text-based and with 360° photos. The steps taken revealed the reluctance of the players to follow the providing educational content and their inadequacy of interaction. Hence, the thesis seeks the reasons ending to this result and the ways of increasing this learning rate. Afterward, the thesis uses a currently available but not massively used digital game classification methodology. This methodology, which is based on the principles of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning, classifies the games based on their constituting virtual landscapes. Hence, the thesis considers all Steam games, one of the biggest video game digital distribution services, filtered with the 'education' tag, ending in 2531 digital games. Afterward, adding the 'game' tag the result reduced to 1102 games. Finally, with some manual filterings ignoring the irrelevant content, the final number decreased to 702. Sorting chronologically, we made an Excel database including the games' introductory information, the content they transmit, their release date, if they support HMD or not, and whether they are simulation games or not. Due to Steam's dating spectrum, our database includes games dating back from 1992 to 2020. Afterward, we classified all of these games using the virtual landscape classification methodology and generated their related codes based on their player scale, story, dimension, space shape, and interaction level. Investigating the results, they revealed some growth patterns relating to the content educated in the game, the VR technology, and the virtual landscape evolution. Adding the user reviews of Steam, we reverse engineered five of the best serious games on the database due to the digital game design methodology. This methodology divides the games' virtual environment into five layers, namely, player activity map (PAM), story layer, natural environment layer, virtual environment layer, and media layer. Reverse engineering the five best digital games ever, based on the IGN database, enabled us to compare the outcomes. Due to released data, we understand how the games' assets are distributed within the various layers of the virtual environment in the most successful games. Finally, the thesis aims to provide a framework based on these results for developing serious games to increase player interaction and enhance the learning rate. However, these results can be expanded to any virtual landscape other than only serious games' for their interaction enhancement. Currently, the landscape architecture domain only adopts the virtual landscape area as a tool for enhancing design in the real world. However, in the near future, landscape architects will perform in the virtual landscape area as a domain to be enhanced. Hence, that day, the results of this study will play an important role and will be a roadmap for generating highly interactive virtual landscapes

2020-2021 Graduate Catalog

https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/g_cat/1066/thumbnail.jp

Maine Perspective, v 12, i 3

The Maine Perspective, a publication for the University of Maine, was a campus newsletter produced by the Department of Public Affairs which eventually transformed into the Division of Marketing and Communication. Regular columns included the UM Calendar, Ongoing Events, People in Perspective, Look Who\u27s on Campus, In Focus, and Along the Mall. The weekly newsletter also included position openings on campus as well as classified ads. Coverage in this issue of the newsletter includes long-range goals of the institution emphasizing research, greater engagement with all constituencies; and providing a broad-based liberal arts education to undergraduate students; a $460,000 bequest to the University by Professor Emerita of History Alice Stewart to support Canadian studies; and the work of Reeser Manley, assistant professor of horticulture, to inform the public about non-native invasive species in Maine

A Review of Work Based Learning in Higher Education

The idea of work based learning in higher education might sound like a contradiction in terms. Work based learning is surely in the the workplace. The senses in which it might also, under certain conditions, be in higher education are explored in this review. There are increasing arrangements whereby people can obtain academic recognition for learning which has taken place outside of educational institutions. In addition to traditional forms of professional education and sandwich courses, one can add a host of relationships between employers and higher education institutions which involve quite fundamental questioning of the roles and responsibilities of each in the continuing education and training of adults. Such developments can be related to broader themes concerning the organisation of knowledge in society, the changing nature of work and career, the learning society and the implications they hold for individual workers, their employers and educational providers. The Department for Education and Employment sponsored the study to produce a substantial literature review of progress and issues raised in the field of work based learning in higher education. The first part of the book provides a contextual and conceptual backdrop against which more practical aspects of work based learning are then considered in part two. The final part considers strategic issues of implementation for higher education institutions, employers and individuals, before turning to more wide ranging issues of policy

In Quest of Walter Smith: The Past, Present, and Future Impact of Visual Art in Adult Education

Walter Smith is a relatively unknown historical figure in the art world, but he is essential to defining adult education\u27s past, present, and future in the area of visual art. His artistic endeavors in America sparked facets of the way art education is practiced today. However, along the way we have lost the tenets of social change which he sought but never accomplished. In chapter one, I introduce the purpose of the research. In chapter two, I explain the position Walter Smith entered when coming to America. I also detail Smith\u27s Herculean social reform efforts for adult education and why popular appreciation of what he did was impossible. In chapter three, I analyze the changes in American adult art education inspired by Smith, and the paradigmatic changes in adult art education since Smith up to present-day. In chapter four, I assess documentation of the present situation of adult education in art in the United States. I review the thought process behind what is required in teaching adult students and its current practice. In chapter five, I discuss Paulo Freire\u27s theory of social transformation as a backbone for adult art education within some possible frameworks: CBAE, DBAE, and through the aid of Internet and computer technology. In chapter six, I address the dichotomy that is simultaneously splitting the fields of adult education and adult art education

The Status of Computer-Related Elective Courses in Public Secondary Schools in Tennessee

The problem was to determine the status of computer-related elective courses in public secondary schools in Tennessee. A descriptive research design was used for this study. A search was made to locate public secondary schools which housed grade twelve and whose curricula were in keeping with State requirements for a diploma. A search of Preliminary Reports was made of identified schools to determine those which offered a computer-related elective course. A questionnaire was sent to teachers of computer-related course electives. The data were examined and presented in narrative form with the use of appropriate tables. The following findings emerged: (1) There were 306 schools in Tennessee in 1979-80 which housed grade twelve and whose curriculum was reflective of State diploma requirements. Twenty-four of these schools (8 percent) offered one or more computer courses. There were twenty-one computer math courses and six computer programming courses. There were thirty-two total class sections of computer-related courses. (2) There were 568 students enrolled in computer-related courses for the first semester of the 1979-80 school year. The average school enrollment was 1254 and the average student-teacher ratio was 1:19.5. The teacher-student ratio in computer-related classes was 1:17.5. (3) There were twenty-seven certified persons teaching computer courses in 1979-80. One held a specialist degree, two held master\u27s plus forty-five hours, fourteen held master\u27s and ten held bachelor\u27s degrees. Twenty-four were endorsed in math, two in science and one in business. Twenty of the twenty-seven held multiple endorsements. (4) The majority of schools awarded both a minimum and a maximum of one-half unit of credit with a range of one-half to two. (5) Computers and terminals were available for student use in computer courses and were primarily housed in the classroom where the course was taught. (6) Software was produced primarily by staff and/or students. (7) No decreases were reported for the 1980-81 offerings of computer-related courses. Increases were reported by less than 25 percent of the respondents in the study. (8) Objectives of computer-related courses were awareness and introductory in nature. Simple programming was included in schools which offered more than one-half Carnegie unit credit as maximum. (9) In comparison with information gained from opinion survey to forty-nine State Departments of Education, Tennessee ranks in the lower 18 percent of states where less than 10 percent of the secondary schools offer one or more computer-related courses