Digital Tools to Empower 21st Century Learners

Discover how to ignite student creativity, increase communication and collaboration, support student-driven learning, and increase overall engagement in your courses through digital tools, apps, and teaching strategies. The workshop will begin with a quick overview of effective pedagogical techniques for enriching learning with technology, such as using the Universal Design for Learning principles to open up access to learning for all students. Then, you will discover 20 digital tools and apps that you can incorporate in your classroom right now. The workshop will conclude with a discussion about finding, evaluating, and implementing digital tools and apps to enrich teaching and learning

Teaching with Digital Tools and Apps

With the abundance in education technology (edtech) tools and apps currently available, and new ones popping up in app stores daily, how do you find the right ones for your practice? How do you ensure the digital tools and apps that you select for use in your classroom will enrich and extend your teaching, provide an accessible learning experience, and protect students\u27 privacy? What should you look for when evaluating the user experience of apps and tools? This free, open access eBook highlights the key steps and considerations for finding, evaluating, and teaching with digital tools and apps. The book was designed as part of a class project for the Teaching & Learning with Technology course at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The following undergraduate and graduate students contributed to the book: Michelle Barrett, Matthew Checrallah, Jacob Desgres, Alyssa Federico, Kiel Maurath, Madeleine Olson, Shaunak Shah, Khizar Shaikh, Alexander Shum, Caroline Sonnett, Isabelle Manrong Wang, Chenyang Xu, Chrystal Zajchowski, and Fred Zinn.https://scholarworks.umass.edu/tecs_ed_materials/1000/thumbnail.jp

State of the App: A Taxonomy and Framework for Evaluating Language Learning Mobile Applications

The widespread growth in availability and use of smartphones and tablets has facilitated an unprecedented avalanche of new software applications with language learning and teaching capabilities. However, little has been published in terms of effective design and evaluation of language learning apps. This article reviews current research about the potential of apps for language learning and presents a taxonomy of available apps and their use for language learning. The article also presents a framework consisting of four categories for evaluating language learning apps (technology, pedagogy, user experience, and language learning) and a set of criteria within the categories. Finally, the article proposes areas for further research

Evaluating teaching and management innovations in an online university: the case of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is an online university that has innovation as a transversal feature in all its activities and processes. Therefore, innovation is present in the annual objectives of all the academic and management departments in order to increase student satisfaction. UOC stimulates innovation by funding strategic projects as well as organizing regular internal calls for small projects which brings about innovative academic and management proposals. In this paper we present the method for evaluating teaching and management innovations through internal calls (APLICA), by selecting which initiatives are suitable to become strategic innovative projects (INNOVA) or which features should compose any application available at the OpenApps platform. Besides, general indicators used by the Innovation Program to evaluate the activities carried out are also reported

Evaluating Digital Math Tools in the Field

Many school districts have adopted digital tools to supplement or replace teacher-led instruction, usually based on the premise that these tools can provide more personalized or individualized experiences for students and at lower cost. Rigorously evaluating whether such initiatives promote better student outcomes in the field is difficult as most schools and teachers are unwilling to enforce rigorous study designs such as randomized control trials. We used study designs that were feasible in practice to assess whether two digital math tools, eSpark and IXL, were associated with improvements in 3rd – 6th grade student test scores in math. We also investigated the resource requirements and costs of implementing eSpark and IXL to assess whether these tools represent a valuable use of resources. We find that while IXL is substantially less costly to implement than eSpark, its use is not significantly associated with students’ math performance

Considering the Smartphone Learner: developing innovation to investigate the opportunities for students and their interest

Ownership of mobile smartphones amongst the general consumer, professionals and students is growing exponentially. The potential for smartphones in education builds upon experience described in the extensive literature on mobile learning from the previous decade which suggests that the ubiquity, multi-functionality and connectivity of mobile devices offers a new and potentially powerful networked learning environment. This paper reports on a collaborative study conducted by an undergraduate student with the support of two members of academic staff. The research sought to establish the extent to which students are autonomously harnessing smartphone technology to support their learning and the nature of this use. Initial findings were explored through student interviews. The study found that students who own smartphones are largely unaware of their potential to support learning and, in general, do not install smartphone applications for that purpose. They are, however, interested in and open to the potential as they become familiar with the possibilities for a range of purposes. The paper proposes that more consideration needs to be given to smartphones as platforms to support formal, informal and autonomous learner engagement. The study also reflects on its collaborative methodology and the challenges associated with academic innovation

Block-Based Development of Mobile Learning Experiences for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks.Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) - ERDF fund