Identifying and catering for gifted learners in an inclusive classroom: A means of reducing delinquency, school drop out rate and increasing national development in Nigeria

A regular classroom contains a diverse group of learners. Learners with very divergent characteristics sometimes. Classroom activities should be planned in such a way that every learner‟s needs are provided for and every learner is guided towards achieving his maximum potential. Failure to do so may lead some learners into delinquent behaviors and some may even drop out. Classroom activities seem to be planned with the average learners and the learning disadvantaged in mind. Most times learning facilitators do not factor in the needs of gifted children when planning classroom activities. It is believed that 6% of students in the public school are gifted. This percentage of students have the capacity to impact positively on national development if their gifts are identified and maximized. However, this seems not to be the case. Only the gifted students who find their way into specialized gifted schools have the privilege of having their gifts developed. The program for selection of students into gifted programs seems to be flawed in climes where statistics exist. To the extent that minority groups and low-income groups seem to be discriminated from assessing gifted programs. The researcher‟s position regarding this situation is that every school prepares for the gifted child as well while selecting and designing learning experiences. That every classroom facilitator be equipped to identify and to cater the needs of the gifted child within the normal inclusive classroom in order that no child‟s gift is ignored. Teacher‟s training programs should include training for identification and catering for gifted children. This will also reduce the rate of delinquency and school drop out that results from boredom of gifted children who are under-challenged and contribute to national development. This paper covers the following areas: Introduction, theoretical framework, the concept of giftedness in the classroom, characteristics of gifted learners, Giftedness as a means for reducing delinquency, school dropout rate and achieving national development, identifying gifted learners, meeting the needs of the gifted child in an inclusive classroom, and conclusion

Moving College Students to a Better Understanding of Substrate Specificity of Enzymes Through Utilizing Multimedia Pre-Training and an Interactive Enzyme Model

Scientists’ progress in understanding enzyme specificity uncovered a complex natural phenomenon. However, not all of the currently available biology textbooks seem to be up to date on this progress. Students’ understanding of how enzymes work is a core requirement in biochemistry and biology tertiary education. Nevertheless, current pre-college science education does not provide students with enough biochemical background to enable them to understand complex material such as this. To bridge this gap, a multimedia pre-training presentation was prepared to fuel the learner’s prior knowledge with discrete facts necessary to understand the presented concept. This treatment is also known to manage intrinsic cognitive load during the learning process. An interactive instructional enzyme model was also built to motivate students to learn about substrate specificity of enzymes. Upon testing the effect of this combined treatment on 111 college students, desirable learning outcomes were found in terms of cognitive load, motivation, and achievement. The multimedia pre-training group reported significantly less intrinsic cognitive load, higher motivation, and demonstrated higher transfer performance than the control and post-training groups. In this study, a statistical mediation model is also proposed to explain how cognitive load and motivation work in concert to foster learning from multimedia pre-training. This type of research goes beyond simple forms of “what works” to a deeper understanding of “how it works,” thus enabling informed decisions for multimedia instructional design. Multimedia learning plays multiple roles in science education. Therefore, science learners would be some of the first to benefit from improving multimedia instructional design. Accordingly, complex scientific phenomena can be introduced to college students in a motivating, informative, and cognitively efficient learning environment

Remixing Pedagogy: How Teachers Experience Remix as a Tool for Teaching English Language Arts

Remix, a type of digital multimedia composition created by combining existing media to create new texts offers high school teachers a non-traditional approach to teaching English Language Arts (ELA). As technology in the U.S. has become more accessible and affordable, literacy practices outside school classrooms have changed. While there is a growing body of research about remix and remix culture, most of it is set outside the ELA classroom by focusing on activities after school hours or specialty courses in creative writing or technology classes. Teachers’ points of view are largely left out of studies that examine in-school experiences with remix. Additionally, existing studies are often set in either higher education or elementary schools. This case study sought to understand how two high school ELA teachers experienced using remix as a tool for teaching and how practicing remix informed their pedagogies. The study revealed insight into why teachers find it challenging to practice new pedagogies in their teaching. I grounded my theoretical framework in sociocultural theories and a remix of Peirce’s (1898) semiotic theory with Rosenblatt’s (1938/1995) transactionalism. Designed within a case study methodology, data sources included teacher remixes, recorded conversations in online meetings, emails, texts, telephone calls, and a detailed researcher journal. Data analysis included multiple iterations of open coding of transcripts, informed by grounded theory and tools of discourse analysis, as well as visual analyses of teacher-created remixes. Key findings showed that, while teachers desired to incorporate remix teaching tools for meeting student needs, constraints of professional learning obligations, state standards, and administrator expectations limited their use of non-traditional practices. Both teachers approached remix differently, encouraging their students to construct meaning through multimodal tools, while still finding paths to meeting administrative requirements through remix. Further, remix allowed teachers to increase the student-centeredness of their pedagogy and at the same time support multiple student learning styles. This study also extends prior theoretical scholarship about remix by contributing a study of knowledge-in-action, focusing on teachers as their remix experiences unfolded

The Effectiveness of Instructional Video in the Acquisition of Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor Skills in Practical Sports Therapy Rehabilitation.

The use of instructional multimedia, particularly video, within education is steadily increasing although the evidence-base regarding its usage typically only indicates that it is equivalent to or as effective as live demonstration or traditional teaching methods. The current study undertook a longitudinal quasi-experimental crossover study, over three consecutive academic years to evaluate the efficacy of instructional video to teach cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills to level 5 undergraduate sports therapy students. Through the use of a crossover design students undertook both the video and control conditions, they were assessed formatively on a weekly basis to provide a consistent measure of performance throughout the eighteen weeks of data collection within each year. The instructional videos used within the study were based upon (as far as possible) the multimedia principles proposed by Mayer to reduce extraneous cognitive load and maximise essential intrinsic and germane cognitive load. The results from the study were analysed with the use of effect size statistics and interpreted though the use of magnitude based inferences, an emerging alternative to the traditional use of null hypothesis testing. The findings of the study indicate that the use of the instructional videos was beneficial to the vast majority of the students, which builds upon the current evidence-base as it demonstrates that they can be used to enhance academic practice rather than be used as an equivalent resource

Multimodal Literacy in School Science

This book establishes a new theoretical and practical framework for multimodal disciplinary literacy (MDL) fused with the subject-specific science pedagogies of senior high school biology, chemistry and physics. It builds a compatible alignment of multiple representation and representation construction approaches to science pedagogy with the social semiotic, systemic functional linguistic-based approaches to explicit teaching of disciplinary literacy. The early part of the book explicates the transdisciplinary negotiated theoretical underpinning of the MDL framework, followed by the research-informed repertoire of learning experiences that are then articulated into a comprehensive framework of options for the planning of classroom work. Practical adoption and adaptation of the framework in biology, chemistry and physics classrooms are detailed in separate chapters. The latter chapters indicate the impact of the collaborative research on teachers' professional learning and students’ multimodal disciplinary literacy engagement, concluding with proposals for accommodating emerging developments in MDL in an ever-changing digital communication world. The MDL framework is designed to enable teachers to develop all students' disciplinary literacy competencies. This book will be of interest to researchers, teacher educators and postgraduate students in the field of science education. It will also have appeal to those in literacy education and social semiotics

How does extraneous textbook material influence the reading comprehension of normal and impaired college students?

Seductive details are interesting but irrelevant details added to a passage to make it more interesting, and research indicates that such details impair learning and recall of information. Seductive details have traditionally included illustrations, facts, names, and examples, but the effects of boxed material in textbooks have yet to be studied. If seductive details impede normal readers, they may have particularly adverse affects on students with serious reading problems, such as those with learning disabilities (LD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The present study examined the effects of boxed material on recall for both “Normal Control” (NC) and “Attentional Deficit” (AD) participants, who each read one of two versions of a text passage entitled “People with Severe and Multiple Disabilities.” The “Original Text” (OT) version contained extraneous information and illustrations, set apart from the rest of the text, as they appear in the textbook Human Exceptionality: Society, School, and Family (Hardman, Drew, & Egan, 1999). The “Modified Text” (MT) version presented this information imbedded in the text and illustrations and “Focus” questions from the margins were eliminated. The Wender Utah Rating Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, and a Personal History Questionnaire were administered, and students completed a 45-question multiple choice quiz on the passage material and a series of post-study questions. Results indicate that all readers performed significantly better on text information (TI) questions than on boxed information (BI) questions. Clearly contrary to prediction, however, AD participants performed better, on average, than did NC participants, with the effect nearly reaching significance. In addition, questionnaire data indicated that NC and AD participants did not rate significantly differently on either passage clarity or content; AD participants generally find information presented inside boxes in textbooks to be significantly more helpful than do NC participants; and AD participants read the preface and/or “Information for Students” at the beginning of a textbook significantly less often than do NC participants

Development and evaluation of a haptic framework supporting telerehabilitation robotics and group interaction

Telerehabilitation robotics has grown remarkably in the past few years. It can provide intensive training to people with special needs remotely while facilitating therapists to observe the whole process. Telerehabilitation robotics is a promising solution supporting routine care which can help to transform face-to-face and one-on-one treatment sessions that require not only intensive human resource but are also restricted to some specialised care centres to treatments that are technology-based (less human involvement) and easy to access remotely from anywhere. However, there are some limitations such as network latency, jitter, and delay of the internet that can affect negatively user experience and quality of the treatment session. Moreover, the lack of social interaction since all treatments are performed over the internet can reduce motivation of the patients. As a result, these limitations are making it very difficult to deliver an efficient recovery plan. This thesis developed and evaluated a new framework designed to facilitate telerehabilitation robotics. The framework integrates multiple cutting-edge technologies to generate playful activities that involve group interaction with binaural audio, visual, and haptic feedback with robot interaction in a variety of environments. The research questions asked were: 1) Can activity mediated by technology motivate and influence the behaviour of users, so that they engage in the activity and sustain a good level of motivation? 2) Will working as a group enhance users’ motivation and interaction? 3) Can we transfer real life activity involving group interaction to virtual domain and deliver it reliably via the internet? There were three goals in this work: first was to compare people’s behaviours and motivations while doing the task in a group and on their own; second was to determine whether group interaction in virtual and reala environments was different from each other in terms of performance, engagement and strategy to complete the task; finally was to test out the effectiveness of the framework based on the benchmarks generated from socially assistive robotics literature. Three studies have been conducted to achieve the first goal, two with healthy participants and one with seven autistic children. The first study observed how people react in a challenging group task while the other two studies compared group and individual interactions. The results obtained from these studies showed that the group interactions were more enjoyable than individual interactions and most likely had more positive effects in terms of user behaviours. This suggests that the group interaction approach has the potential to motivate individuals to make more movements and be more active and could be applied in the future for more serious therapy. Another study has been conducted to measure group interaction’s performance in virtual and real environments and pointed out which aspect influences users’ strategy for dealing with the task. The results from this study helped to form a better understanding to predict a user’s behaviour in a collaborative task. A simulation has been run to compare the results generated from the predictor and the real data. It has shown that, with an appropriate training method, the predictor can perform very well. This thesis has demonstrated the feasibility of group interaction via the internet using robotic technology which could be beneficial for people who require social interaction (e.g. stroke patients and autistic children) in their treatments without regular visits to the clinical centres

Multimodal interactive e-learning: An empirical study. An experimental study that investigates the effect of multimodal metaphors on the usability of e-learning interfaces and the production of empirically derived guidelines for the use of these metaphors in the software engineering process.

This thesis investigated the use of novel combinations of multimodal metaphors in the presentation of learning information to evaluate the effect of these combinations on the usability of e-learning interfaces and on the users¿ learning performance. The empirical research described in this thesis comprised three experimental phases. In the first phase, an initial experiment was carried out with 30 users to explore and compare the usability and learning performance of facially animated expressive avatars with earcons and speech, and text with graphics metaphors. The second experimental phase involved an experiment conducted with 48 users to investigate their perception of avatar¿s facial expressions and body gestures when presented in both the absence and presence of interactive e-learning context. In addition, the experiment aimed at evaluating the role that an avatar could play as virtual lecturer in e-learning interfaces by comparing the usability and learning performance of three different modes of interaction: speaking facially expressive virtual lecturer, speaking facially expressive full-body animated virtual lecturer, and two speaking facially expressive virtual lecturers. In the third phase, a total of 24 users experimentally examined a novel approach for the use of earcons and auditory icons in e-learning interfaces to support an animated facially expressive avatar with body gestures during the presentation of the learning material. The obtained results demonstrated the usefulness of the tested metaphors to enhance e-learning usability and to enable users to attain better learning performance. These results provided a set of empirically derived innovative guidelines for the design and use of these metaphors to generate more usable e-learning interfaces. For example, when designing avatars as animated virtual lecturers in e-learning interfaces, specific facial expression and body gestures should be incorporated due to its positive influence in enhancing learners¿ attitude towards the learning process

Augmented Reality in Chemistry Higher Education

Augmented reality (AR) has the capacity to afford virtual experiences that obviate the reliance on using two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional phenomena for teaching chemistry higher education, in addition to positioning students as the protagonists of the learning experience. Thus, the subsequent blending of constructivist pedagogical approaches and AR technology is logical, with this paradigm having enormous methodological potential. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative instruments, this research project explored the cognitive and affective impacts of engagement with four developed educational interventions, supported using ChemFord, a developed AR application. Firstly, an AR-supported educational escape activity, based on topics of inorganic stereochemistry was constructed. Reported measures of competency were seen as a positive predictor of intrinsic motivation. However, this was not observed to be a positive predictor of academic performance. Next, a Game-Based Learning activity was developed, based on topics of the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory. This activity was facilitated both synchronously and asynchronously, exploring the relationships between students’ attitudes, perceived cognitive load, spatial ability, and academic performance. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in spatial ability over the study period. In addition, a moderate correlation was found between spatial ability and VSEPR conceptual understanding. The third educational intervention, constructed within a framework of Cognitive Load Theory, illustrates how AR-supported worked examples may enhance learning of electrophilic aromatic substitution. The achievement motivation of learners was also explored, and how this may be impacted by the provision of AR technology and worked examples. Measures of challenge and interest were found to correlate positively with reported germane load, whereas reported extraneous load negatively correlated with measures of challenge and interest for students displaying higher prior relevant chemistry experience. Lastly, a peer instruction session, focusing on topics of coordination chemistry was facilitated. Students’ self-efficacy, response switching, and discussions were analysed, in addition to their interactions with the ChemFord application. Students with a lower assessment of their problem solving and science communication abilities were significantly more likely to switch their responses from right-to-wrong than students with a high assessment of those abilities

The Big Five:Addressing Recurrent Multimodal Learning Data Challenges

The analysis of multimodal data in learning is a growing field of research, which has led to the development of different analytics solutions. However, there is no standardised approach to handle multimodal data. In this paper, we describe and outline a solution for five recurrent challenges in the analysis of multimodal data: the data collection, storing, annotation, processing and exploitation. For each of these challenges, we envision possible solutions. The prototypes for some of the proposed solutions will be discussed during the Multimodal Challenge of the fourth Learning Analytics & Knowledge Hackathon, a two-day hands-on workshop in which the authors will open up the prototypes for trials, validation and feedback