Webquest Design Strategies: A Case Study Measuring the Effect of the Jigsaw Method on Students’ Personal Agency Beliefs, Engagement, and Learning

The WebQuest model continues to grow in popularity, with teachers from around the world and many teacher-educators and experts in the field of educational technology espousing its potential to extend content knowledge and promote higher level thinking. While the model is well received by teachers and students alike, most evidence of its effectiveness is anecdotal, and there is very little in the way of empirical research on the elements that make an effective WebQuest. Furthermore, rich descriptions of how students interact during a well-developed WebQuest are largely absent from the literature. In short, the WebQuest model suffers from a lack of scholarly research which may impede practitioners interested in using this approach to design and deliver effective Web-enhanced instruction. Successful WebQuests must address three pedagogical design challenges: Enhancing students’ personal agency beliefs; sustaining student engagement; and, promoting students’ deep understanding and critical thinking. This dissertation was a comparative two-case case study that investigated how one cooperative learning method. Jigsaw, was adapted for use with a WebQuest about living with AIDS. The researcher compared two versions of the WebQuest, one with and one without the addition of the Jigsaw method, and showed how they addressed each design challenge. Feedback from 89 students participating in two undergraduate history classes revealed significant differences by class in the following important areas: Students in the No Jigsaw class were more likely to use a negative statement to describe the quality of interaction with their teammates post-Jigsaw. Students in the Jigsaw class perceived more strengths and fewer weaknesses with the WebQuest than the No Jigsaw class, and shared more positive and fewer negative remarks regarding overall satisfaction with the WebQuest experience. Perhaps most importantly, students in the Jigsaw class spent significantly less time on task post-Jigsaw when controlling for Midterm Score and prior experience with the content domain. Finally, while students from both classes did equally well on the measures of content learned, the results suggested that the students from the Jigsaw classes were more efficient with the time they spent working on the WebQuest task outside of class

GROWING UP IN IRELAND. Cohort '08 (Infant Cohort). Design, Instrumentation and Procedures for Cohort ’08 of Growing Up in Ireland at 9 Years Old (Wave 5)

Growing Up in Ireland is the national longitudinal cohort study of children that commenced in 2006. The study has followed two groups of Irish children: Cohort ’98 (so-called because most of them were born in 1998; formerly called the ‘Child Cohort’); and Cohort ’08 (most of whom were born a decade later in 2008; formerly called the ‘Infant Cohort’). The primary aim of the study is to provide a strong evidence base to improve the understanding of children’s and young people’s health and development across a range of domains. This information is used to inform government policy in relation to children, yong people and their families

UNCONFINED WILDERNESS EXPERIENCES: WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO FEELING UNCONFINED WHILE VISITING THE SELWAY-BITTERROOT WILDERNESS?

The principal aim of this study was to increase our understanding of an “unconfined type of recreation”. This management objective is mandated by the Wilderness Act of 1964 and has received little empirical focus within visitor experience research. A 20-item survey research scale was developed and found to be valid and reliable when considering what is important to feeling unconfined in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. The scale included four components or factors that were labeled, “Free Choice”, “Untethering from Responsibility”, “Making Own Plans”, and “Exploring”. In addition, the Perceived Freedom in Leisure Scale was administered and showed that the majority of respondents display high leisure functioning. Three clusters of respondents were formed based on the 20-item unconfined component scores, but these groups were not found to differ by any trip or visitor characteristic. Therefore, when agencies manage for outstanding opportunities for an unconfined type of recreation they should not target any one type of wilderness visitor or trip characteristic

Psychology, Learning, Technology

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 1st International Workshop on Psychology, Learning, Technology, PLT 2022, Foggia, Italy, during January 2022. The 8 full papers presented here were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. In addition, one invited paper is also included. Psychology, Learning, ad Technology Conference (PLT2022) aims to explore learning paths that incorporate digital technologies in innovative and transformative ways and the improvement of the psychological and relational life. The conference includes topics about the methodology of application of the ICT tools in psychology and education: from blended learning to the application of artificial intelligence in education; from the teaching, learning, and assessment strategies and practices to the new frontiers on Human-Computer Interaction

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Psychology, Learning, Technology

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 1st International Workshop on Psychology, Learning, Technology, PLT 2022, Foggia, Italy, during January 2022. The 8 full papers presented here were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. In addition, one invited paper is also included. Psychology, Learning, ad Technology Conference (PLT2022) aims to explore learning paths that incorporate digital technologies in innovative and transformative ways and the improvement of the psychological and relational life. The conference includes topics about the methodology of application of the ICT tools in psychology and education: from blended learning to the application of artificial intelligence in education; from the teaching, learning, and assessment strategies and practices to the new frontiers on Human-Computer Interaction

Growing up in Ireland: The lives of 17/18-Year-olds of Cohort ’98 (Child Cohort). ESRI Growing Up in Ireland Report July 2020.

New Growing Up in Ireland research paints a picture of the lives of 17/18-year-olds in 2016: generally in good health and ambitious for their futures, but with inequalities persisting

Adult learners in online higher education:The complexity of students’ transitional experience of becoming a distance learner

Online learning is a rapidly growing aspect of higher education. However, while this learning mode offers the flexibility and convenience required by non- traditional adult students who face competing social demands and obligations, various barriers still exist that threaten their academic success (Dziuban et al., 2006). Although a large body of research has focused on challenges for adult learners in online education, there is still a lack of in-depth understanding of the conceptual variations in the experiences and perceptions of adults as they embark on online education. This paper aims to emphasize the complexity of experience of an adult student population in an online learning environment through a review of previous empirical research. The paper will stress the importance of looking at adult learners’ transitions to online learning environments in more depth, with a particular focus on their divergent perceptions of learning processes