Effective Pedagogical Strategies for STEM Education from Instructors’ Perspective: OER for Educators

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare (OCW) was launched in 2001. It is one of the earliest Open Educational Resources (OER). MIT OCW has published more than 2,400 courses which are available at no cost, the majority of which are STEM related. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the pedagogical strategies through reviewing instructor insights of 15 MIT OCW STEM courses using thematic analysis. The most effective pedagogical strategies used found by instructors were active learning, personalizing instruction, engaging learners, providing feedback, building learning community, and clarifying learning objective. Instructors used in-class formative assessment, such as quizzes and oral exams, for just-in-time teaching and online automatic assessment environments for students’ self-assessment. The primary summative assessments were final exams and projects. Instructors encountered challenges such as assessing students’ learning and changing pedagogical beliefs. Implications for practice were discussed as well

Innovative Learning Environments in STEM Higher Education

As explored in this open access book, higher education in STEM fields is influenced by many factors, including education research, government and school policies, financial considerations, technology limitations, and acceptance of innovations by faculty and students. In 2018, Drs. Ryoo and Winkelmann explored the opportunities, challenges, and future research initiatives of innovative learning environments (ILEs) in higher education STEM disciplines in their pioneering project: eXploring the Future of Innovative Learning Environments (X-FILEs). Workshop participants evaluated four main ILE categories: personalized and adaptive learning, multimodal learning formats, cross/extended reality (XR), and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This open access book gathers the perspectives expressed during the X-FILEs workshop and its follow-up activities. It is designed to help inform education policy makers, researchers, developers, and practitioners about the adoption and implementation of ILEs in higher education

Teaching with games: the Minesweeper and Asteroids experience.

The value of games as a vehicle for teaching concepts while inspiring students is now well accepted at almost all levels of education. Video games, arcade and computer games are rarely given the same kind of attention. This paper will describe the value of computer games as a motivator and some of the benefits that can be realized by using known computer games as programming applications, even in the first year of a CS program. The use of two such games as assignments in CS1 and CS2 is outlined and some feedback on the experience is offered

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Higher Education Edition

The NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This 14th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are placed directly in the context of their likely impact on the core missions of universities and colleges. The three key sections of this report constitute a reference and straightforward technology-planning guide for educators, higher education leaders, administrators, policymakers, and technologists. It is our hope that this research will help to inform the choices that institutions are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education across the globe. All of the topics were selected by an expert panel that represented a range of backgrounds and perspectives

Highly Interactive Web-Based Courseware

Zukünftige Lehr-/Lernprogramme sollen als vernetzte Systeme die Lernenden befähigen, Lerninhalte zu erforschen und zu konstruieren, sowie Verständnisschwierigkeiten und Gedanken in der Lehr-/Lerngemeinschaft zu kommunizieren. Lehrmaterial soll dabei in digitale Lernobjekte übergeführt, kollaborativ von Programmierern, Pädagogen und Designern entwickelt und in einer Datenbank archiviert werden, um von Lehrern und Lernenden eingesetzt, angepasst und weiterentwickelt zu werden. Den ersten Schritt in diese Richtung machte die Lerntechnologie, indem sie Wiederverwendbarkeit und Kompabilität für hypermediale Kurse spezifizierte. Ein größeres Maß an Interaktivität wird bisher allerdings noch nicht in Betracht gezogen. Jedes interaktive Lernobjekt wird als autonome Hypermedia-Einheit angesehen, aufwändig in der Erstellung, und weder mehrstufig verschränk- noch anpassbar, oder gar adäquat spezifizierbar. Dynamische Eigenschaften, Aussehen und Verhalten sind fest vorgegeben. Die vorgestellte Arbeit konzipiert und realisiert Lerntechnologie für hypermediale Kurse unter besonderer Berücksichtigung hochgradig interaktiver Lernobjekte. Innovativ ist dabei zunächst die mehrstufige, komponenten-basierte Technologie, die verschiedenste strukturelle Abstufungen von kompletten Lernobjekten und Werkzeugsätzen bis hin zu Basiskomponenten und Skripten, einzelnen Programmanweisungen, erlaubt. Zweitens erweitert die vorgeschlagene Methodik Kollaboration und individuelle Anpassung seitens der Teilnehmer eines hypermedialen Kurses auf die Software-Ebene. Komponenten werden zu verknüpfbaren Hypermedia-Objekten, die in der Kursdatenbank verwaltet und von allen Kursteilnehmern bewertet, mit Anmerkungen versehen und modifiziert werden. Neben einer detaillierten Beschreibung der Lerntechnologie und Entwurfsmuster für interaktive Lernobjekte sowie verwandte hypermediale Kurse wird der Begriff der Interaktivität verdeutlicht, indem eine kombinierte technologische und symbolische Definition von Interaktionsgraden vorgestellt und daraus ein visuelles Skriptschema abgeleitet wird, welches Funktionalität übertragbar macht. Weiterhin wird die Evolution von Hypermedia und Lehr-/Lernprogrammen besprochen, um wesentliche Techniken für interaktive, hypermediale Kurse auszuwählen. Die vorgeschlagene Architektur unterstützt mehrsprachige, alternative Inhalte, bietet konsistente Referenzen und ist leicht zu pflegen, und besitzt selbst für interaktive Inhalte Online-Assistenten. Der Einsatz hochgradiger Interaktivität in Lehr-/Lernprogrammen wird mit hypermedialen Kursen im Bereich der Computergraphik illustriert.The grand vision of educational software is that of a networked system enabling the learner to explore, discover, and construct subject matters and communicate problems and ideas with other community members. Educational material is transformed into reusable learning objects, created collaboratively by developers, educators, and designers, preserved in a digital library, and utilized, adapted, and evolved by educators and learners. Recent advances in learning technology specified reusability and interoperability in Web-based courseware. However, great interactivity is not yet considered. Each interactive learning object represents an autonomous hypermedia entity, laborious to create, impossible to interlink and to adapt in a graduated manner, and hard to specify. Dynamic attributes, the look and feel, and functionality are predefined. This work designs and realizes learning technology for Web-based courseware with special regard to highly interactive learning objects. The innovative aspect initially lies in the multi-level, component-based technology providing a graduated structuring. Components range from complex learning objects to toolkits to primitive components and scripts. Secondly, the proposed methodologies extend community support in Web-based courseware – collaboration and personalization – to the software layer. Components become linkable hypermedia objects and part of the courseware repository, rated, annotated, and modified by all community members. In addition to a detailed description of technology and design patterns for interactive learning objects and matching Web-based courseware, the thesis clarifies the denotation of interactivity in educational software formulating combined levels of technological and symbolical interactivity, and deduces a visual scripting metaphor for transporting functionality. Further, it reviews the evolution of hypermedia and educational software to extract substantial techniques for interactive Web-based courseware. The proposed framework supports multilingual, alternative content, provides link consistency and easy maintenance, and includes state-driven online wizards also for interactive content. The impact of great interactivity in educational software is illustrated with courseware in the Computer Graphics domain