Mindset Shift in Cyber Pedagogy: A Teacher's Strategy upon Learning from Home

As Covid 19 pandemic hits Indonesia, teaching-learning activities change dramatically. Learning from home becomes the only alternative in conducting distance education. From the earlier, this cyber pedagogy is assumed as an emergency step taken by the government. Consequently, teachers hold the learning process without clear objectives. Many complaints have occurred, and some improvements are proceeded to reinvent the quality of education. As a radical response toward the chaotic situation, this article is aimed at investigating two significant issues. The first is the requirement of mindset shift as the way to solve the cyber pedagogical problem. The second is the teachers' strategy in doing online learning. Theories about distance learning and quality are referred to as library research does. A descriptive qualitative approach was carried out, and in-depth interviews with parents, students, and teachers were taken. The result of the discussion is the mindset shift in teachers, parents, and stakeholders is required. The creative teachers who have good literacy in information technology are needed in running e-learning and conduct interactive learning from home

E-Learning no ensino superior - Satisfação dos estudantes e perspetivas para uma melhor aprendizagem

No presente artigo, apresentamos os resultados da investigação sobre Satisfação com a aprendizagem mediada por Plataformas de e-Learning, enquanto suporte ao Ensino Superior presencial. Foram eleitos como objetos de estudo os estudantes que tiveram oportunidade de explorar os Fóruns de Discussão, enquanto ferramenta de interação online existentes em plataformas LMS, nos cursos de licenciatura e mestrados integrados da Universidade de Lisboa, durante no ano letivo 2012/2013. Com uma abordagem metodológica quantitativa, o estudo foi feito a partir de um questionário online disponibilizado aos 3740 estudantes de 40 disciplinas. Foram analisadas 604 respostas que permitiram conhecer a opinião dos estudantes relativamente ao uso destes sistemas de suporte a e-Learning por parte dos professores, o grau de satisfação dos mesmos com o uso de tais ferramentas de interação em particular, bem como a medida que estes consideram que o uso de tais sistemas contribui para melhorar os seus processos de aprendizagem. Os resultados evidenciaram que os estudantes revelam elevado grau de satisfação com o uso das plataformas, reconhecendo que o uso de tais ferramentas de interação melhoraram o seu estudo e que aprenderam mais nas disciplinas onde os docentes tiram partido destes sistemas online

Developing Energy Concept Maps – An Innovative Educational Tool for Energy Planning

This paper represents a development process of the energy concept maps in higher education learning environment, in order to foster new and innovative learning experiences as well as improve the understanding of energy planning, especially from the interdisciplinary perspectives, including energy, environment, spatial planning. Energy concept maps were developed based on sustainable energy action plans to build a common knowledge base. The use of the energy concept maps developed were tested by 24 lecturers and 206 students from six European countries, comprising Slovenia, Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Malta. The learning processes were evaluated based on self-evaluation of competencies as well as external evaluation of students’ knowledge and understanding of energy planning. The evaluation process revealed that participants included in learning activities gained new knowledge and competences in the energy planning and have a better understanding of a relationship between different concepts, subjects, developed a critical thinking, and proved their problem solving ability. Our study acknowledges the efficiency of the learning process in energy planning education by using concept maps

Design of Education Methods in a Virtual Environment

The purpose of the presented article is to review existing approaches to modern training methods design and to create a variant of its technology in virtual educational environments in order to develop general cultural and professional students’ competence in pedagogical education. The conceptual modeling of a set of methods for students’ training in the conditions of an information-and-communication saturated environment was carried out by means of a subject-design method within the framework of prescriptive theory. This allowed us to allocate the stages in designing the methods of student training when using a virtual educational environment. The presented results reflect the general approach to the design of teacher activity including the design of training methods on the basis of accounting for the primary structural components of educational technologies. The given results of examining the features and the opportunities of the virtual educational environment allow us to define the essence of training methods enrichment as well as mechanisms of self-adjustment and self-improvement for a training methods system in educational information environments, and to formulate conclusions about the impossibility of creating modern educational processes without virtual educational environments

Credibility and Involvement of Social Media in Education—Recommendations for Mitigating the Negative Effects of the Pandemic among High School Students

This work was supported by the Cultural and Educational Grant Agency (KEGA) of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic based on the project "Implementation of e-learning in the chemistry education for applied ecology and environmental science", number 029UKF-4/2020.In the context of considerations on the potential attenuation of the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic with the use of credible social media in online education during a pandemic, the subject of our own research was the fulfillment of two goals. The main research goals were to identify, categorize, and evaluate the possibilities of using social media in online education during the pandemic from the perspective of selected teachers and students from secondary schools in Slovakia. The research methods of the first phase (qualitative) of the research involved brainstorming among nine secondary school teachers. The second research phase (quantitative) used a questionnaire, which was completed by 102 high school students from all over Slovakia. The collection of both quantitative and qualitative data was used in this research. The research results revealed the most representative opinions of teachers on the current and real possibilities of engaging credible social media in online education and the views of high school students on their desired use and involvement of social media in online education. The intersection of the two findings presents a picture of the possibilities of using credible social media in online education, which can help maintain students’ interest in online education during a pandemic. Based on these findings, it can be stated that the opinions identified in the research group of teachers correspond to a large extent with the desired use of social media in education from the perspective of students. In addition, however, students would welcome more opportunities to use and engage social media in today’s online education. The result of this research is an analysis of social media patterns applied to online education, which are of greater interest to students and could act as elements for reducing the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., six forms of online education and 24 educational activities that could contribute, inter alia, to mitigating the different negative effects of the pandemic among youth generation. The findings also benefit from the presentation of many specific options and recommendations for the use of social media in online education during a pandemic.Cultural and Educational Grant Agency (KEGA) of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic based on the project "Implementation of e-learning in the chemistry education for applied ecology and environmental science" 029UKF-4/202

The impact of interactive augmented reality based education on the learning and remembering of empirical science lesson

Background and Objectives: Education plays a key role in human life. While the teaching of experimental sciences is one of the most important topics that should be accompanied by student's direct experience, in many cases, due to spatial, temporal, or cost-related constraints, it is based solely on traditional books and their one-dimensional media. With the spread of new technologies, there are new opportunities for existing teaching and learning methods that can transform the educational structure. Augmented Reality (AR) technology, as a novel paradigm, potentially adds a new feature to the range of traditional student books that not only adds multimedia elements, but also allows interactive engagement with the content of them. Augmented reality, as one of the ways of distance learning, by simulating the real world in the form of animation, virtual objects, three-dimensional images, sound and similar elements makes it possible for the user to interact with the with the experiments of a lesson virtually. This study aims to evaluate the effect of interactive augmented reality based education on the learning and remembering of the content of textbooks. Methods: An experimental study in the pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental framework was performed on two groups of 18 sixth grade elementary school students. For this purpose, two scenarios have been selected from student science book and implemented in an interactive augmented reality application. The control group was trained through traditional teaching method. On the other hand, in addition to the traditional teaching method, the experiment group’s training was reinforced with the AR application. Students' learning and remembering evaluation was carried out through two tests. The validity of tests confirmed by the teachers of science in Education District 2 of Tabriz and their reliability has been calculated through Kuder – Richardson Formula. Findings: The results of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed a significant statistical difference between the control and experimental groups. Also, the learning and remembering in students who were trained in interactive augmented reality were more effective than the other group. Conclusion:  According to the results of the experiments, and the comparative review of the theoretical subjects, the use of augmented reality technology has been reported as a useful and effective supplemental tool for textbooks that can, beyond the spatial and temporal constraints, facilitate the training process. Also, the interaction in AR encourages learners to replace the active role with the passive one and to learn the topics with more mental participation. On the other hand, the possibility of repeating augmented reality scenarios in educational topics, regardless of spatial, temporal, and cost-realted constraints, allows users to fix bugs and ambiguities, which are other advantages of using this technology. Finally, by examining these capabilities and the ubiquity of mobile phones in today's world, we can predict the presence of virtual laboratories in mobile smartphones in the near future; which can be useful in deprived areas of the country as a replacement of the lack of minimum facilities.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2020 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

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Student Use Of Technology For Collaboration

According to the U.S. Department of Education, students need to be prepared for higher education and remain competitive in a globally changing society schools should intertwine 21st century skills including collaboration in the classroom. The purpose of the study is to examine the current use of online tools for group collaboration among high school students. Social constructivists assume learning is collaborative and meaning comes from multiple perspectives. In a social constructivist environment, the goal is for student learning to be maximized. Many states have set guideline and standards that require schools to incorporate collaboration across the curriculum. A nonexperimental, correlational research design was used in this study. An adapted version of the Student Information Technology Use and Skills in Higher Education: Survey Questionnaire was used in this study. A total of 140 students in a single high school completed the online survey. The participants were in the 10th through 12th grades and were enrolled in business classes. Collaboration among the students was low and their skill levels with programs and apps varied depending on how much they were used for at school and home. The largest group of students preferred having a moderate level of technology in their classes. The findings for the three research questions posed for the study indicated that use of collaborative technology helped students and skill level with applications could predict experiences in collaborating with other students. Students perceptions of the benefits and barriers associated with collaboration were related to the self-reported experiences with technology. Students with more experiences tended to perceive benefits in a positive way and barriers negatively. A MANOVA using benefits and barriers of collaboration as the dependent variables and self-reported learning styles as the independent variable was not statistically significant. The implications for this study is to begin collaboration early, preferably in elementary school, and continue through high school and into college. Further research is needed to determine if the students are meeting the standards set by state departments of education and the U. S. Department of Education

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