A simple E-learning system based on classroom competition

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16020-2_42Proceedings of 5th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2010, Barcelona, Spain, September 28 - October 1, 2010.We present an e-learning system based on online forms that allows teachers to easily organise competitions in a classroom. This system is used in a preliminary study to evaluate whether cooperative competition is positive or not in education, and to identify which are the characteristics this kind of activity should have to be no harmful for students, motivating and helping them in their learning process.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2008-06566-C04-02), and the Community of Madrid (S2009TIC- 1542)

A Software Radio Challenge Accelerating Education and Innovation in Wireless Communications

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents our methodology and tools for introducing competition in the electrical engineering curriculum to accelerate education and innovation in wireless communications. Software radio or software-defined radio (SDR) enables wireless technology, systems and standards education where the student acts as the radio developer or engineer. This is still a huge endeavor because of the complexity of current wireless systems and the diverse student backgrounds. We suggest creating a competition among student teams to potentiate creativity while leveraging the SDR development methodology and open-source tools to facilitate cooperation. The proposed student challenge follows the European UEFA Champions League format, which includes a qualification phase followed by the elimination round or playoffs. The students are tasked to build an SDR transmitter and receiver following the guidelines of the long-term evolution standard. The metric is system performance. After completing this course, the students will be able to (1) analyze alternative radio design options and argue about their benefits and drawbacks and (2) contribute to the evolution of wireless standards. We discuss our experiences and lessons learned with particular focus on the suitability of the proposed teaching and evaluation methodology and conclude that competition in the electrical engineering classroom can spur innovation.Comment: Frontiers in Education 2018 (FIE 2018

DEVELOPING VISUAL NOVEL GAME WITH SPEECH-RECOGNITION INTERACTIVITY TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ MASTERY ON ENGLISH EXPRESSIONS

The teaching of English-expressions has always been done through conversation samples in form of written texts, audio recordings, and videos. In the meantime, the development of computer-aided learning technology has made autonomous language learning possible. Game, as one of computer-aided learning technology products, can serve as a medium to provide educational contents like that of language teaching and learning. Visual Novel is considered as a conversational game that is suitable to be combined with English-expressions material. Unlike the other click-based interaction Visual Novel Games, the visual novel game in this research implements speech recognition as the interaction trigger. Hence, this paper aims at elaborating how visual novel games are utilized to deliver English-expressions with speech recognition command for the interaction. This research used Research and Development (R&D) method with Experimental design through control and experimental groups to measure its effectiveness in enhancing students’ English-expressions mastery. ANOVA was utilized to prove the significant differences between the control and experimental groups. It is expected that the result of this development and experiment can devote benefits to the English teaching and learning, especially on English-expressions

An Online Interactive Competition Model for E-Learning System

This paper presents an Online Interactive Competition Model for E-learning System. The system allows a student to connect and interact with other students on the courses they offer in a semester using both synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication mechanisms. Each course lecturer e-supervises and e-moderates the students’ performances in his/her course. Following the semester course outlines, the system automatically and periodically selects topics for discussions. Each student’s questions as well as his/her contributions to questions posed by other students or even the lecturers on the e-learning platform are rated by the course lecturers who equally make their contributions in difficult cases. On registration, a student is assigned the rank of a starter in all courses.  Based on a course lecturer’s ratings on a student and how long the student had used the course page, the student may rise to the following ranks in the course: Senior, Master, Expert or Professional. In this paper, the scalable algorithm for the students’ ranking is presented. Moreover, a student’s ranks in different courses are independent; that is, a student can be an expert in one course and a starter in another. This ranking strategy serves as an incentive to encourage the students to participate actively and make meaningful contributions to questions posted on the platform. A working prototype of the system was developed using MySQL Database Management System (DBMS), PHP as the scripting language and Apache as the web server. The system was tested and the results were presented graphically in this paper.http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v34i3.1

Effects of competition in education: A case study in an e-learningenvironment

This is an electronic version of the paper presented at the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, held in Freiburg on 2010We analyse the effects of competition in education. We identify the benefits and drawbacks of forcing students to compete themselves during their learning process, and investigate a number of features a competitive learning activity should have in order to motivate students, and improve their academic performance. More specifically, by using a simple Web system, we conduct a competition undertaken for a symbolic value, performed in a short period of time, and characterised by all participants feeling like they have a chance to win. Following these principles, empirical results with 77 students show that a balance between competition and cooperation is achieved, and the focus on the learning goals instead of on the competition itself remains

AEINS: Interactive Narrative Role in Fostering Character Education

Promoting ethical, responsible, and caring young people is a perennial aim of education. Efforts have been done to find other teaching ways other than traditional ones such as games and role play. Narrative-based computer games have found their way as engaging learning platforms that allow collaboration of humans and computers in the creation of innovative experiences. In this paper, we focus on the design of an adaptive, interactive narrative model that makes use of a student model to provide an individualized story-path and an individualized learning process. In other words, we aim to have strong learning objectives underpinned by effective story telling. The adaptive narrative model has been deployed in the educational game environment, AEINS, along with the use of the Socratic Method and pedagogical agents to help teaching in the ethics domain. Evaluation results indicate the usefulness of the design and provide evidence on the development of moral reasoning and the transfer of moral virtues to its users

Serious Games to Teach Ethics

In this paper, we are focusing on digital serious games (edugames) and how they can be utilized in teaching in the ethics and citizenship domain. Our aim is to combine narrative techniques with intelligent tutoring techniques in a single model that adopts and based on educational theories and classroom educational strategies. The model has been used to implement an adaptive educational interactive narrative system (AEINS). AEINS is an inquiry based edugame to support teaching ethics. The AEINS version presented in this paper targets students between the age of 8 and 11. The idea is centered around presenting and involving students in different moral dilemmas (called teaching moments) within which the Socratic Method is the used pedagogy in the teaching process. AEINS monitors and analyzes the students actions in order to provide an individualized story-path and an individualized learning process. The student is an active participant in the educational process and is able to interact with the edugame as a first person player. We claim that such interaction can help in developing new or deeper thoughts about different moral situations. Our aim is to contribute to the design of serious games and help raise awareness of ethics and citizenship in children

An experimental study on the effects of cooperation and competition in the game-based mobile language learning

Abstract. As gamification gains popularity, it is a trend to implement gamified social features in the mobile language learning field based on Social Interdependence Theory (SIT), because the social interaction can positively affect learners. However, a detailed examination of how gamified cooperation and competition affect language learning process and outcome remains an open subject. The current study was conducted among university students in China (N=75), and those students were randomly assigned either gamified cooperation or gamified competition setting. All students were asked to complete a daily task: learning 20 English words for 14 days with an app named Baicizhan. The study used a quantitative methodology and the data, related to task completion, learning achievement, social relatedness and intrinsic motivation, were collected to compare the difference. In current study, firstly it confirmed that the cooperation outperformed competition in terms of promoting social relatedness; secondly, it identified that competition outperformed cooperation in terms of learning achievement; thirdly, it revealed that there was no significant difference in terms of task completion and intrinsic motivation between two settings. In a short, our study demonstrates that constructive competition can be as effective as cooperation in terms of motivating learners to put efforts and invoking intrinsic motivation; moreover, constructive competition was even more effective than cooperation in promoting learning achievement. Therefore, the constructive competition should be encouraged and taken into consideration when applying the gamified social features to learning activities

LifeLab: co-design of an interactive health literacy intervention for socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents’

Low socioeconomic populations, when compared to more affluent groups, are at greater risk of initiating risky behaviours and consequently developing health complications. Health literacy has been identified as a possible means to improve and sustain positive health behaviours, with adolescence being a time point when such behaviours can be embedded. To develop a meaningful health intervention, it has been recommended that relevant stakeholders be included in the design phase. This formative evaluation study was the second phase of co-design of an engaging health literacy intervention ‘LifeLab’ with, and for, socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents in Ireland. In Spring 2021, a series of co-design workshops (n = 17) were facilitated with a convenience sample of adolescents from socially disadvantaged areas (n = 22) to gather their perceptions, feedback, and suggested changes on the LifeLab learning activities that had emerged from Phase 1 of the work. The data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, resulting in the development of three themes: (i) preferred learning engagement strategies, (ii) practical and logistical considerations and Citation: Smith, C.; Goss, H.R.; Issartel, J.; Meegan, S.; Belton, S. LifeLab: Co-Design of an Interactive Health Literacy Intervention for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Adolescents’. Children 2022, 9, 1230. https://doi.org/10.3390/ children9081230 Academic Editor: Charles N. Oberg Received: 1 July 2022 Accepted: 10 August 2022 Published: 15 August 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). (iii) ideas for LifeLab content. The results highlight the value in adopting a participatory approach, as participants offered an array of suggestions and details to maximise the potential for LifeLab to be contextually relevant and engaging; suggestions which will directly inform the development and implementation of the intervention