Reaching beyond the Classroom through the Use of Push Notifications

New technologies enable educators to modify their \ teaching methods and extend their reach beyond the \ classroom. One of these methods that can be applied to \ communicate with students is through the use of push \ notifications on smartphones. Instead of relying on \ students to use a spaced learning approach, which is \ proven to be more efficient than trying to study \ something in a short period of time, it is now possible \ to remind them to learn and stick to a learning \ schedule from day one. For this research we \ implemented a mobile application that enables \ students to subscribe to a course and get push \ notifications on their smartphone if new questions are \ being made available by the teacher. The experiment \ we conducted shows that students who use push \ notifications are returning more often to the \ application and better stick to a given learning \ schedule than students who don’t have push enabled

Playtesting for a Better Gaming Experience: Importance of an Iterative Design Process for Educational Games

Digital game-based learning is a widespread trend in education. Nevertheless, many educational games fail because their designers concentrate on achieving learning goals instead of creating an enjoyable gaming experience with a balance between learning success and fun. Traditional game design processes including playtests are seldom used in the development of educational games. For this reason, in this paper playtesting is used to iteratively improve a game-based learning application in two revisions. Gaming experience is measured with the EGameFlow scale. The results show a significant improvement in almost all measured dimensions

Biased group decision-making and the effect of computer-mediated communication: separating the effects of anonymity, voting and blind picking

The influence of communication technology on group decision-making has been examined in many studies. But the findings are inconsistent. Some studies showed a positive effect on decision quality, other studies have shown that communication technology makes the decision even worse. One possible explanation for these different findings could be the use of different Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) in these studies, with some GDSS better fitting to the given task than others and with different sets of functions. This paper outlines an approach with an information system solely designed to examine the effect of (1) anonymity, (2) voting and (3) blind picking on decision quality, discussion quality and perceived quality of information

Learning Success: A Comparative Analysis of a Digital Game-Based Approach and a Face-to-Face Approach

This study compares traditional face-to-face learning with digital game-based learning. A student group has to learn aspects of internet search in a face-to-face learning environment that combines lecture and tutorial and a further group has to learn the same aspects within a serious game. The comparison focuses on learning success. Measuring learning success is difficult and therefore the study includes questions to assess knowledge, motivation, fun and satisfaction in a pre- and post-tests. The results of the study show that the students evaluate game-based learning better in all surveyed categories

Exploring the Impact of Inclusive PCA Design on Perceived Competence, Trust and Diversity

Pedagogical Conversational Agents (PCAs) conquer academia as learning facilitators. Due to user heterogeneity and need for more inclusion in education, inclusive PCA design becomes relevant, but still remains understudied. Our contribution thus investigates the effects of inclusive PCA design on competence, trust, and diversity awareness in a between-subjects experiment with two contrastingly designed prototypes (inclusive and non-inclusive PCA) tested among 106 German university students. As expected by social desirability, the results show that 81.5% of the probands consider an inclusive design important. However, at the same time, the inclusive chatbot is highly significantly rated as less competent. In contrast, we did not measure a significant effect regarding trust, but a highly significant, strongly positive effect on diversity awareness. We interpret these results with the help of the qualitative information provided by the respondents and discuss arising implications for inclusive HCI design

EGameFlow in a Serious Game: Gaming Experience with the Same Game Design but Different Learning Content

The development effort of game-based learning applications is very time-consuming and costly, especially when applications are developed that provide students an enjoyable gaming experience and support them to achieve their learning objectives. This is largely to be explained by the iterative development process with the conduction of playtests. Therefore, this study analyzes whether an identical gaming and learning experience is achieved with the same game design but different learning contents. A serious game for learning information literacy that was developed and iteratively improved through three conducted playtests is used in this study. The results show that an identical gaming and learning experience is achieved. This makes it possible to re-use the game design in combination with other learning contents without negatively affecting the learner’s playing and learning experience

Adapt or Die! - A Board Game to Support Dynamic Business Model Creation in Digital Darwinism

Adapt or Die! is an educational serious game developed to support the business model creation process in the era of Digital Darwinism by guiding players dynamically through the key building blocks of a digital business model while experiencing the need for adaption to the quickly changing environment. The artifact was developed with the design science research approach and gains from the positive effects of games to foster creativity, motivation and multifaceted thinking. The interaction and dynamic in the method itself better harmonize with the increasing market complexity. In parallel, the integrated educative content is adapted to specifics of digital business models. Future research includes the development and evaluation of a digitized version of the artifact

Assess and Promote Students\u27 Group Cohesion in Larger Sized Classrooms

Courses that exceed regular class sizes represent a challenge for teachers. With an increasing number of students, it is not only difficult to assess students’ academic performance but also their social integration. A teacher who is not able to determine which students are isolated may not be able to intervene if they choose to cut their studies short. In this research paper we demonstrate how teachers are able to assess their students’ social integration by leaving it up to the students to self-select their group work partners and solve tasks together. The introduction of a newly created artifact helps to automate this process and gather the necessary data to discover companionless students even in larger learning environments

Von der Hand in den Kopf in die Stadt

Von der Hand in den Kopf in die Stadt: So können sich zukünftig Bewohner über eine digitale Plattform und mit vielen Aktivitäten an der Gestaltung ihres Lebensraums in der Stadt beteiligen

A Design Science Approach to High Immersive Mnemonic E-learning

Today’s students often have to interact with a lot of information and content, more precisely declarative knowledge, whereas their studying technique often is simple repetition and retention. To facilitate the process of learning the approach of this article is to suggest a novel paradigm of e-learning IS that rely on old memorization strategies. These strategies are based on the mechanism of mental associations like imagery, phonetic similarity or spatial imagination and will be applicable to a vast amount of subjects. In this extended abstract, we describe a mnemonic concept that is meant to encourage further research in mnemonic e-learning. This concept relies on the Method of Loci in combination with a head-mounted display. Due to its highly immersive character, we theorise that a head-mounted display is more appropriate to apply the virtual Method of Loci (vMOL) than a casual desktop display. The application of the vMOL with the help of a desktop display had been analysed in earlier studies. These studies indicated a high potential of the application of a vMOL