Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’ presents a range of research projects which aim to explore how to make engagement in learning (and teaching) more passionate. This interactive and experimental resource discusses innovations which pave the way to open collaboration at scale. The book introduces methodological and technological breakthroughs via twelve chapters to learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces. The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and the EU TELMap project have brought together the luminaries from the European research area to showcase their vision of the future of learning with technology via their recent research project work. The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more

Improving School Improvement

PREFACEIn opening this volume, you might be thinking:Is another book on school improvement really needed?Clearly our answer is yes. Our analyses of prevailing school improvement legislation, planning, and literature indicates fundamental deficiencies, especially with respect to enhancing equity of opportunity and closing the achievement gap.Here is what our work uniquely brings to policy and planning tables:(1) An expanded framework for school improvement – We highlight that moving from a two- to a three-component policy and practice framework is essential for closing the opportunity and achievement gaps. (That is, expanding from focusing primarily on instruction and management/government concerns by establishing a third primary component to improve how schools address barriers to learning and teaching.)(2) An emphasis on integrating a deep understanding of motivation – We underscore that concerns about engagement, management of behavior, school climate, equity of opportunity, and student outcomes require an up-to-date grasp of motivation and especially intrinsic motivation.(3) Clarification of the nature and scope of personalized teaching – We define personalization as the process of matching learner motivation and capabilities and stress that it is the learner's perception that determines whether the match is a good one.(4) A reframing of remediation and special education – We formulate these processes as personalized special assistance that is applied in and out of classrooms and practiced in a sequential and hierarchical manner.(5) A prototype for transforming student and learning supports – We provide a framework for a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system designed to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students and families.(6) A reworking of the leadership structure for whole school improvement --We outline how the operational infrastructure can and must be realigned in keeping with a three component school improvement framework.(7) A systemic approach to enhancing school-community collaboration – We delineate a leadership role for schools in outreaching to communities in order to work on shared concerns through a formal collaborative operational infrastructure that enables weaving together resources to advance the work.(8) An expanded framework for school accountability – We reframe school accountability to ensure a balanced approach that accounts for a shift to a three component school improvement policy.(9) Guidance for substantive, scalable, and sustainable systemic changes –We frame mechanisms and discuss lessons learned related to facilitating fundamental systemic changes and replicating and sustaining them across a district.The frameworks and practices presented are based on our many years of work in schools and from efforts to enhance school-community collaboration. We incorporate insights from various theories and the large body of relevant research and from lessons learned and shared by many school leaders and staff who strive everyday to do their best for children.Our emphasis on new directions in no way is meant to demean current efforts. We know that the demands placed on those working in schools go well beyond what anyone should be asked to do. Given the current working conditions in many schools, our intent is to help make the hard work generate better results. To this end, we highlight new directions and systemic pathways for improving school outcomes.Some of what we propose is difficult to accomplish. Hopefully, the fact that there are schools, districts, and state agencies already trailblazing the way will engender a sense of hope and encouragement to those committed to innovation.It will be obvious that our work owes much to many. We are especially grateful to those who are pioneering major systemic changes across the country. These leaders and so many in the field have generously offered their insights and wisdom. And, of course, we are indebted to hundreds of scholars whose research and writing is a shared treasure. As always, we take this opportunity to thank Perry Nelson and the host of graduate and undergraduate students at UCLA who contribute so much to our work each day, and to the many young people and their families who continue to teach us all.Respectfully submitted for your consideration,Howard Adelman & Linda Taylo

Visualization and Interaction Technologies in Serious and Exergames for Cognitive Assessment and Training: A Survey on Available Solutions and Their Validation

Exergames and serious games, based on standard personal computers, mobile devices and gaming consoles or on novel immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality techniques, have become popular in the last few years and are now applied in various research fields, among which cognitive assessment and training of heterogeneous target populations. Moreover, the adoption of Web based solutions together with the integration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms could bring countless advantages, both for the patients and the clinical personnel, as allowing the early detection of some pathological conditions, improving the efficacy and adherence to rehabilitation processes, through the personalisation of training sessions, and optimizing the allocation of resources by the healthcare system. The current work proposes a systematic survey of existing solutions in the field of cognitive assessment and training. We evaluate the visualization and interaction technologies commonly adopted and the measures taken to fulfil the need of the pathological target populations. Moreover, we analyze how implemented solutions are validated, i.e. The chosen experimental designs, data collection and analysis. Finally, we consider the availability of the applications and raw data to the large community of researchers and medical professionals and the actual application of proposed solutions in the standard clinical practice. Despite the potential of these technologies, research is still at an early stage. Although the recent release of accessible immersive virtual reality headsets and the increasing interest on vision-based techniques for tracking body and hands movements, many studies still rely on non-immersive virtual reality (67.2%), mainly mobile and personal computers, and standard gaming tools for interactions (41.5%). Finally, we highlight that although the interest of research community in this field is increasingly higher, the sharing of dataset (10.6%) and implemented applications (3.8%) should be promoted and the number of healthcare structures which have successfully introduced the new technological approaches in the treatment of their host patients is limited (10.2%)

Addressing barriers to learning: In the classroom and schoolwide.

IntroductionPublic education is at a crossroads. Moving in new directions is imperative. Just tweaking and tinkering with old ideas is a recipe for disaster.Continuing challenges confronting public education highlight why moving school improvement policy and practice in new directions is imperative. With a view to enhancing graduation rates and successful transitions to post-secondary opportunities and well-being, pressing challenges include:Increasing equity of opportunity for every student to succeed, narrowing the achievement gap, and countering the school to prison pipeline Reducing unnecessary referrals for special assistance and special education; Improving school climate and retaining good teachers Reducing the number of low performing schools.As education leaders well know, meeting these challenges requires making sustainable progress inimproving supports for specific subgroups (e.g., English Learners, immigrant newcomers, lagging minorities, homeless students, students with disabilities) increasing the number of disconnected students who re-engage in classroom learning and thus improving attendance, reducing disruptive behaviors (e.g., including bullying and sexual harassment), and decreasing suspensions and dropouts increasing family and community engagement with schools responding effectively when schools experience crises events and preventing crises whenever possible.In some schools, continuous progress related to these concerns is being made. For many districts, however, sustainable progress remains elusive – and will continue to be so as long as the focus of school improvement policy and practice is mainly on improving instruction. Efforts to expand the use of instructional technology, develop new curriculum standards, make teachers more accountable, and improve teacher preparation and licensing all have merit; but they are insufficient for addressing the many everyday barriers to learning and teaching that interfere with effective student engagement in classroom instruction.Most policy makers and administrators know that good instruction delivered by highly qualified teachers cannot ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school.Even the best teacher can’t do the job alone. Teachers need student and learning supports in the classroom and schoolwide in order to personalize instruction and provide special assistance when students manifest learning, behavior, and emotional problems. Unfortunately, school improvement plans continue to give short shrift to these critical matters.We recognize, as did a Carnegie Task Force on Education, that school systems are not responsible for meeting every need of their students. But as the task force stressed: when the need directly affects learning, the school must meet the challenge.The most pressing challenge is to enhance equity of opportunity by fundamentally improving how schools address barriers to learning and teaching. The future of public education depends on moving in new directions to accomplish this.Now is the time to fundamentally transform how schools address factors that keep too many students from doing well at school. And while transformation is never easy, pioneering work across the country is showing the way. Trailblazers are redeploying existing funds allocated for addressing barriers to learning and weaving these together with the invaluable resources that can be garnered by collaboration with other agencies and with community stakeholders, family members, and students themselves.The first step in moving forward is to escape old ideas. The second step is to incorporate a new vision in school improvement planning for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students. Our analyses envision a plan that designs and develops a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system of student and learning supports. The third step is to develop a strategic plan for systemic change, scale-up, and sustainability.This book highlights each of these matters. We invite you to join us in the quest to enhance equity of opportunity for all students to succeed at school and beyond. And we look forward to hearing from you about moving schools forward to make the rhetoric of the Every Student Succeeds Act a reality

A Preliminary Study of Integrating Flipped Classroom strategy for Classical Chinese Learning

[[abstract]]This is a multiphase study which aims to investigate how to provide learners with an method to acquire classical Chinese through integrating mobile technology with the flipped classroom approach. Currently, in the first phase of study, the researcher adopts informant design through questionnaire survey to understand students' and instructors' perceptions of using mobile learning devices for classical Chinese learning, and afterwards the researcher constructs the system based on the pilot results. The pilot questionnaire results, structure of the developed mobile learning system and the practical application of the developed system for classical Chinese teaching and learning are described in the paper.[[notice]]補正完

Game-inspired Pedagogical Conversational Agents: A Systematic Literature Review

Pedagogical conversational agents (PCAs) are an innovative way to help learners improve their academic performance via intelligent dialog systems. However, PCAs have not yet reached their full potential. They often fail because users perceive conversations with them as not engaging. Enriching them with game-based approaches could contribute to mitigating this issue. One could enrich a PCA with game-based approaches by gamifying it to foster positive effects, such as fun and motivation, or by integrating it into a game-based learning (GBL) environment to promote effects such as social presence and enable individual learning support. We summarize PCAs that are combined with game-based approaches under the novel term “game-inspired PCAs”. We conducted a systematic literature review on this topic, as previous literature reviews on PCAs either have not combined the topics of PCAs and GBL or have done so to a limited extent only. We analyzed the literature regarding the existing design knowledge base, the game elements used, the thematic areas and target groups, the PCA roles and types, the extent of artificial intelligence (AI) usage, and opportunities for adaptation. We reduced the initial 3,034 records to 50 fully coded papers, from which we derived a morphological box and revealed current research streams and future research recommendations. Overall, our results show that the topic offers promising application potential but that scholars and practitioners have not yet considered it holistically. For instance, we found that researchers have rarely provided prescriptive design knowledge, have not sufficiently combined game elements, and have seldom used AI algorithms as well as intelligent possibilities of user adaptation in PCA development. Furthermore, researchers have scarcely considered certain target groups, thematic areas, and PCA roles. Consequently, our paper contributes to research and practice by addressing research gaps and structuring the existing knowledge base

The promise of digital healthcare technologies

Digital health technologies have been in use for many years in a wide spectrum of healthcare scenarios. This narrative review outlines the current use and the future strategies and significance of digital health technologies in modern healthcare applications. It covers the current state of the scientific field (delineating major strengths, limitations, and applications) and envisions the future impact of relevant emerging key technologies. Furthermore, we attempt to provide recommendations for innovative approaches that would accelerate and benefit the research, translation and utilization of digital health technologies

Digital teaching materials and their relationship with the metacognitive skills of students in primary education

Metacognition is a construct that is noteworthy for its relationship with the prediction and enhancement of student performance. It is of interest in education, as well as in the field of cognitive psychology, because it contributes to competencies, such as learning to learn and the understanding of information. This study conducted research at a state school in the Community of Madrid (Spain) with a sample of 130 students in Grade 3 of their primary education (8 years old). The research involved the use of a digital teaching platform called Smile and Learn, as the feedback included in the digital activities may have an effect on students' metacognition. We analyzed the implementation of the intelligent platform at school and the activities most commonly engaged in. The Junior Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Jr. MAI) was the measuring instrument chosen for the external evaluation of metacognition. The study's results show a higher use of logic and spatial activities. A relationship is observed between the use of digital exercises that have specific feedback and work on logic and visuospatial skills with metacognitive knowledge. We discuss our findings surrounding educational implications, metacognition assessment, and recommendations for improvements of the digital materials.This research was funded by Community of Madrid ‘Industrial PhD grants’, under project number IND2017/SOC-7874

Integrating knowledge tracing and item response theory: A tale of two frameworks

Traditionally, the assessment and learning science commu-nities rely on different paradigms to model student performance. The assessment community uses Item Response Theory which allows modeling different student abilities and problem difficulties, while the learning science community uses Knowledge Tracing, which captures skill acquisition. These two paradigms are complementary - IRT cannot be used to model student learning, while Knowledge Tracing assumes all students and problems are the same. Recently, two highly related models based on a principled synthesis of IRT and Knowledge Tracing were introduced. However, these two models were evaluated on different data sets, using different evaluation metrics and with different ways of splitting the data into training and testing sets. In this paper we reconcile the models' results by presenting a unified view of the two models, and by evaluating the models under a common evaluation metric. We find that both models are equivalent and only differ in their training procedure. Our results show that the combined IRT and Knowledge Tracing models offer the best of assessment and learning sciences - high prediction accuracy like the IRT model, and the ability to model student learning like Knowledge Tracing