The impact of tablet devices on high school students' cognitive load and learning

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‘The best app is the teacher’ introducing classroom scripts in technology-enhanced education

A quasi-experimental study was set up in secondary education to study the role of teachers while implementing tablet devices in science education. Three different classroom scripts that guided students and teachers' actions during the intervention on two social planes (group and classroom level) are compared. The main goal was to investigate which classroom script leads to the best results regarding progress in domain-specific knowledge and inquiry skills. Besides student achievement, students' experiences towards the role of the teacher and students' perceptions towards learning with tablets within the three conditions were investigated. In the first condition, the classroom script included learning activities that were balanced between the group and the classroom level. In the second condition, the learning activities occurred predominantly on the group level. The third condition entailed the classroom script as the control condition in which the learning activities were situated only on the classroom level, with the tablet used in a traditional way or as ‘book behind glass’. Results show that students perform better on domain-specific knowledge in the conditions where the teacher intervened on the classroom level. Regarding the acquisition of inquiry skills, students performed best in the condition where the learning activities were balanced between the group and the classroom level. Moreover, students who perceived more structure achieved better. These results indicate that the role of the teacher cannot be ignored in technology-enhanced learning. Moreover, these results seem to suggest that one of the best apps remains the teacher

How authentic should a learning context be? Using real and simulated profiles in a classroom intervention to improve safety on social network sites

With the rise of social network sites (SNSs), there is an increasing need for safety education within the current cyber society. To this end, a variety of educational materials have been developed to prepare children to be vigilant when interacting on such sites. However, little is known about the critical design aspects necessary to make these materials effective. In this study, we build on the results of two previous studies, in which we found that general instructional principles drawn from constructivism, such as collaborative learning, are not always appropriate to teach children how to behave safely online. This study therefore focuses on the importance of authentic learning and active learning as critical design features. A quasi-experimental study was conducted in secondary schools in order to compare the impact of two classroom interventions about the risks on SNSs. As part of the intervention, students were presented scaffolds towards different risks related to an SNS-profile through a series of questions. In the control condition, these questions concerned a simulated SNS-profile on paper containing signs of many risks. In the experimental condition, students had to answer the same questions about their own SNS-profile on a computer. It was hypothesized that the simulated profile would not be experienced as realistic, and that students would have difficulties identifying with it. On the other hand, teenagers were expected to be able to recognize more risks on the simulated ‘worst-case scenario’ profile than on their own profile, which would facilitate the scaffolding process in the control condition. The results of the study mostly confirmed these hypotheses. Furthermore, the question arose as to whether the intervention based on the student’s own rea listic profile was educationally more valuable than the intervention based on the simulated profile, but no such added value was found. On the contrary, the scaffolding questions about the simulated profile were found to be more effective in teaching the teenagers about the different categories of risks that were tackled. Based on these findings, the importance of an authentic setting was put into perspective. Within the context of a classroom intervention to promote safety on SNSs, the exercise based on the simulated SNS-profile is put forward as the more effective teaching strategy

Anonymity as an instructional scaffold in peer assessment : its effects on peer feedback quality and evolution in students’ perceptions about peer assessment skills

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in European Journal of Psychology of Education 33.1 (2018): 75-99. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10212-017-0339-8Although previous research has indicated that providing anonymity is an effective way to create a safe peer assessment setting, continuously ensuring anonymity prevents students from experiencing genuine two-way interactive feedback dialogues. The present study investigated how installing a transitional approach from an anonymous to a non-anonymous peer assessment setting can overcome this problem. A total of 46 bachelor’s degree students in Educational Studies participated in multiple peer assessment cycles in which groups of students assessed each other’s work. Both students’ evolution in peer feedback quality as well as their perceptions were measured. The content analysis of the peer feedback messages revealed that the quality of peer feedback increased in the anonymous phase, and that over time, the feedback in the consecutive non-anonymous sessions was of similar quality. The results also indicate that the transitional approach does not hinder the perceived growth in peer feedback skills, nor does it have a negative impact on their general conceptions towards peer assessment. Furthermore, students clearly differentiated between their attributed importance of anonymity and their view on the usefulness of a transitional approach. The findings suggest that anonymity can be a valuable scaffold to ease students’ importance level towards anonymity and their associated need for practiceThe first author’s research was funded by Ghent University BOF fund number BOF13/24J/115. The second author’s research was funded by the Spanish Ramón y Cajal program number RYC-2013-1346

Son, are you on Facebook? The impact of parental involvement in school interventions about E-safety

Media literacy interventions in secondary education typically have a limited impact on the participants’ behavior. Therefore, we developed a new e-safety intervention using a design-based research methodology. In the current study, it was verified whether involving parents actively in this intervention was helpful to decrease unsafe behavior on social network sites, or at least the intentions to behave unsafely. A quasi-experimental study with pre- and post-test measures in secondary education (n=207) showed that parental involvement was beneficial to change the intentions to engage in certain unsafe behavior, and to reduce existing problematic behavior, particularly for boys. These findings have important implications for research and practice, guiding us toward more effective e-safety interventions

Pre-service teachers as designers in the context of advertising literacy education

The present study describes how teacher design teams (TDTs) in pre-service education were set up to create in-school programs about advertising. A multiple case-study design was employed to reveal what kinds of input-, process-, and output-related factors facilitate or hinder the collaboration of three voluntarily participating teams of pre-service teachers. By combining pre-TDT questionnaire data with an analysis of audiorecorded team design discussions and reflective data collected after the design process, we found that the participating student teachers (1) were unfamiliar with design assignments at the start of the project, but were all intrinsically motivated to take part; (2) especially express practical concerns when designing learning materials, and (3) argue that TDTs positively contribute to their professional development. As this study revealed both facilitating and hindering factors, recommendations for future organization of and research on TDTs in pre-service education are offered