Supporting self‐regulated learning in computer‐based learning environments: systematic review of effects of scaffolding in the domain of science education

Despite the widespread assumption that students require scaffolding support for self‐regulated learning (SRL) processes in computer‐based learning environments (CBLEs), there is little clarity as to which types of scaffolds are most effective. This study offers a literature review covering the various scaffolds that support SRL processes in the domain of science education. Effective scaffolds are categorized and discussed according to the different areas and phases of SRL. The results reveal that most studies on scaffolding processes focus on cognition, whereas few focus on the non‐cognitive areas of SRL. In the field of cognition, prompts appear to be the most effective scaffolds, especially for processes during the control phase. This review also shows that studies have paid little attention to scaffold designs, learner characteristics, or various task characteristics, despite the fact that these variables have been found to have a significant influence. We conclude with the implications of our results on future design and research in the field of SRL using CBLEs.     

Computer based testing using “digital ink”: Participatory design of a Tablet PC based assessment application for secondary education

In this paper, we identify key challenges faced by computer-based assessment (CBA) in secondary education and we put forward a framework of design considerations: design with the students and teachers, select the most appropriate media platform and plan an evolution rather than a revolution of prior practices. We present the CBA application ‘MyTest’ which was developed using the participatory methodology We!Design, with the collaboration of 31 students and teachers. The application is targeted for the Tablet PC platform, provides “digital ink” capabilities and supports both closed-type and open questions, facilitating the transfer of traditional assessment practices to CBA. Both students and teachers were excited about the design sessions, and they asserted that they would rely more on educational software designed using this approach. The comparison of the ‘MyTest’ application with an assessment application developed with the same participatory methodology and the involvement of 40 undergraduate students revealed dissimilar expectations and needs of high school and undergraduate students that are often disguised or misinterpreted. A pilot evaluation of the application in real learning conditions was conducted with 31 students using Tablet PCs and with 37 students using traditional PCs. Interestingly, the Tablet PC platform rendered the ‘MyTest’ application more useful and usable to the students, validating our claims.     

The role of self‐explanation in learning to use a spreadsheet through examples

Abstract This papers describes an exploratory study into the early phase of getting to know end‐user software during which users make use of a variety of information resources, including the user interface/program itself, manuals, on‐line help, examples provided in the manuals and other sources. In particular, how do novices make use of the worked‐out examples often provided in manuals and during training? Building on earlier research on the self‐explanation effect, thinking aloud data from 10 participants were analysed to see how examples were studied and how they were used during problem solving. Important effects of self‐explaining comparable to findings in other domains were found in this study. For instance, those participants who self‐explain with the goal to discover meaning prove to be better problem solvers than those who do not self‐explain or who focus more on syntactical aspects of examples.     

Enhancing 5th graders’ science content knowledge and self-efficacy through game-based learning

Many argue that games can positively impact learning by providing an intrinsically motivating and engaging learning environment for students in ways that traditional school cannot. Recent research demonstrates that games have the potential to impact student learning in STEM content areas and that collaborative gameplay may be of particular importance for learning gains. This study investigated the effects of collaborative and single game player conditions on science content learning and science self-efficacy. Results indicated that there were no differences between the two playing conditions; however, when conditions were collapsed, science content learning and self-efficacy significantly increased. Future research should focus on the composition of collaboration interaction among game players to assess what types of collaborative tasks may yield positive learning gains.     

Electrocardiogram‐based emotion recognition system using empirical mode decomposition and discrete Fourier transform

Emotion recognition using physiological signals has gained momentum in the field of human computer–interaction. This work focuses on developing a user‐independent emotion recognition system that would classify five emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, surprise and disgust) and neutral state. The various stages such as design of emotion elicitation protocol, data acquisition, pre‐processing, feature extraction and classification are discussed. Emotional data were obtained from 30 undergraduate students by using emotional video clips. Power and entropy features were obtained in three ways – by decomposing and reconstructing the signal using empirical mode decomposition, by using a Hilbert–Huang transform and by applying a discrete Fourier transform to the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Statistical analysis using analysis of variance indicates significant differences among the six emotional states (p < 0.001). Classification results indicate that applying the discrete Fourier transform instead of the Hilbert transform to the IMFs provides comparatively better accuracy for all the six classes with an overall accuracy of 52%. Although the accuracy is less, it reveals the possibility of developing a system that could identify the six emotional states in a user‐independent manner using electrocardiogram signals. The accuracy of the system can be improved by investigating the power and entropy of the individual IMFs.     

Inventing motivates and prepares student teachers for computer‐based learning

A brief, problem‐oriented phase such as an inventing activity is one potential instructional method for preparing learners not only cognitively but also motivationally for learning. Student teachers often need to overcome motivational barriers in order to use computer‐based learning opportunities. In a preliminary experiment, we found that student teachers who were given paper‐based course material spent more time on follow‐up coursework than teachers who were given a well‐developed computer‐based learning environment (CBLE), leading to higher learning outcomes. Thus, we tested inventing as an instructional method that may help overcome motivational barriers of teachers' use of computer‐supported tools or learning environments in our main experimental study (N = 44). As a computer‐based environment, we used the ‘Assessment of Learning strategies in Learning journals’. The inventing group produced ideas about criteria to evaluate learning strategies based on student cases prior to the learning phase. The control condition read a text containing possible answers to the inventing problem. The inventing activity enhanced motivation prior to the learning phase and assessment skills as assessed by transfer problems. Hence, the inventing activity prepared student teachers to learn from a CBLE in a motivational as well as cognitive way.     

Building a user-based model for web executive learning systems — a study of Taiwan's medium manufacturing companies

Historically, business executives, among all company members, have the least opportunities to interact with computers. Executive information system is the only known mature information system dedicated to business executives. However, in the Internet era, computer-based tools have become essential for executives learning to cope with the competitive market. This paper focuses on an empirical study to build a user-based model for a web executive learning system (ELS) by describing the relationship between the learning preferences and content selection of business executives, and their computer usage, leadership style, and content awareness level. The study reached the following conclusions: (1) leadership style has strong influence on the learning style; (2) content awareness has a weak link to the content selections; and (3) user profile on computer usage provides useful clues at design level to meet the learning preference of business executives. The user profile on computer usage, taken from business executives of employee size between 50 and 200, reveals that (1) these executives are frequent computer users; (2) most of them are willing to give ELS a try; (3) they prefer learning after work; and (4) they are willing to spend, on average, 3 days to learn the web-based learning environment.     

A portable HCI system‐oriented EEG feature extraction and channel selection for emotion recognition

Emotion recognition has become an important component of human–computer interaction systems. Research on emotion recognition based on electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are mostly conducted by the analysis of all channels' EEG signals. Although some progresses are achieved, there are still several challenges such as high dimensions, correlation between different features and feature redundancy in the realistic experimental process. These challenges have hindered the applications of emotion recognition to portable human–computer interaction systems (or devices). This paper explores how to find out the most effective EEG features and channels for emotion recognition so as to only collect data as less as possible. First, discriminative features of EEG signals from different dimensionalities are extracted for emotion classification, including the first difference, multiscale permutation entropy, Higuchi fractal dimension, and discrete wavelet transform. Second, relief algorithm and floating generalized sequential backward selection algorithm are integrated as a novel channel selection method. Then, support vector machine is employed to classify the emotions for verifying the performance of the channel selection method and extracted features. At last, experimental results demonstrate that the optimal channel set, which are mostly located at the frontal, has extremely high similarity on the self‐collected data set and the public data set and the average classification accuracy is achieved up to 91.31% with the selected 10‐channel EEG signals. The findings are valuable for the practical EEG‐based emotion recognition systems.     

The theatre through the computer

There is a long history of the theatre being used with educational purposes. Now the evolution of multimedia resources provide an opportunity to implement theatre through the computer. Although software for the production of multimedia stories exist, they give little attention to the necessary interface aspects required for a virtual theatre implementation. The objective of this work is to present the Theatre in the Computer (TC); software especially developed for the education of children. This software can be used to produce and to distribute plays through the Internet. The educational possibilities of TC are discussed here.     

Game immersion experience: its hierarchical structure and impact on game‐based science learning

Many studies have shown the positive impact of serious educational games (SEGs) on learning outcomes. However, there still exists insufficient research that delves into the impact of immersive experience in the process of gaming on SEG‐based science learning. The dual purpose of this study was to further explore this impact. One purpose was to develop and validate an innovative measurement, the Game Immersion Questionnaire (GIQ), and to further verify the hierarchical structure of game immersion by construct validity approaches, including exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (n = 257) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (n = 1044). The second purpose was to investigate the impact of game immersion on science learning through SEG play (n = 260). Overall, the results supported the internal structure of the GIQ with good reliability and validity, and the inter factor bivariate correlations for each construct indicated a high internal consistency. Players did learn from playing an SEG, and game immersion experience did lead to higher gaming performance. Moreover, players' gaming performance plays a role in mediating the effect of immersion on science learning outcomes through SEG play. However, as players became more emotionally and subjectively attached to the game, the science learning outcomes were not definitively reliable.     

The effects of directive self‐explanation prompts to support active processing of multiple representations in a simulation‐based learning environment

Processing of multiple representations in multimedia learning environments is considered to help learners obtain a more complete overview of the domain and gain deeper knowledge. This is based on the idea that relating and translating different representations leads to reflection beyond the boundaries and details of the separate representations. To achieve this, the design of a learning environment should support learners in adequately processing multiple representations. In this study, we compared a scientific inquiry learning environment providing instructional support with directive self‐explanation prompts to relate and translate between representations with a scientific inquiry learning environment providing instructional support with general self‐explanation prompts. Learners who received the directive prompts outperformed the learners who received general prompts on test items assessing domain knowledge. These positive results did not stretch to transfer items and items measuring learners' capabilities to relate and translate representations in general. The results suggest that learner support should promote the active relation of representations and translation between them to foster domain knowledge, and that other forms of support (e.g. extended training) might be necessary to make learners more expert processors of multiple representations.     

Young children’s ability to use a computer mouse

Because there is little empirical data available on how well young children are able to use a computer mouse, the present study examined their proficiency in clicking on small objects at various positions on the screen and their skill in moving objects over the screen, using drag-and-drop and click-move-click. The participants were 104 children from Kindergarten 2 and Grade 1. The results show that children in Kindergarten 2 clicked and moved slower than children in Grade 1. Nearly all of the children were able to click within 3 mm horizontally and 6 mm vertically from the centre of a 3 mm target. The findings also demonstrate that in educational software drag-and-drop is the most appropriate movement procedure as it was found to be faster than click-move-click and resulted in fewer interaction errors. Interesting differences between horizontal and vertical movements were found. It is concluded that young children are generally well capable of using a mouse to operate educational software, making this a suitable input device for such applications.     

Development and evaluation of a system enhancing Second Life to support synchronous role‐based collaborative learning

Research and commercial interest toward 3D virtual worlds are recently growing because they probably represent the new direction for the next generation of web applications. Although these environments present several features that are useful for informal collaboration, structured collaboration is required to effectively use them in a working or in a didactical setting. This paper presents a system supporting synchronous collaborative learning by naturally enriching Learning Management System services with meeting management and multimedia features. Monitoring and moderation of discussions are also managed at a single group and at the teaching level. The Second Life (SL) environment has been integrated with two ad hoc developed Moodle plug‐ins and SL objects have been designed, modeled, and programmed to support synchronous role‐based collaborative activities. We also enriched SL with tools to support the capturing and displaying of textual information during collaborative sessions for successive retrieval. In addition, the multimedia support has been enhanced with functionalities for navigating multimedia contents. We also report on an empirical study aiming at evaluating the use of the proposed SL collaborative learning as compared with face‐to‐face group collaboration. Results show that the two approaches are statistically undistinguishable in terms of performance, comfort with communication, and overall satisfaction. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of a Moodle course for schoolchildren’s table tennis learning based on Competence Motivation Theory: Its effectiveness in comparison to traditional training method

Based on Competence Motivation Theory (CMT), a Moodle course for schoolchildren’s table tennis learning was developed (The URL is http://www.bssepp.com, and this course allows guest access). The effects of the course on students’ knowledge, perceived competence and interest were evaluated through quantitative methods. The sample of the study consisted of 32 primary school students, who were randomly assigned to two groups, one of which used the Moodle course (Group M, N = 16) and the other one (Group C, N = 16) didn’t, and the intervention lasted 6 weeks. The result showed that (1) students made significant learning gains and demonstrated statistically significant higher perceived competence by participating in the Moodle course, (2) there was no statistically significant mean difference in table tennis interest between the two intervention groups. These positive effects on knowledge and perceived competence suggest that Moodle can be used as a tool to supplement traditional motor learning.     

Collaborative learning with screen‐based simulation in health care education: an empirical study of collaborative patterns and proficiency development

This article is about collaborative learning with educational computer‐assisted simulation (ECAS) in health care education. Previous research on training with a radiological virtual reality simulator has indicated positive effects on learning when compared to a more conventional alternative. Drawing upon the field of Computer‐Supported Collaborative Learning, we investigate collaborative patterns, their causes, and their implications for learning. We investigate why the extent of application of subject‐specific terminology differs between simulation training and more conventional training. We also investigate how the student‐simulator interaction affordances produce collaborative patterns and impact learning. Proficiency tests before and after training, observations during training, and interviews after training constitute the empirical foundation. Thirty‐six dentistry students volunteered for participation. The results showed that not only the task but also the medium of feedback impacts the application of subject‐specific terminology. However, no relation to proficiency development was revealed. We identified turn‐taking as well as dominance patterns of student‐simulator interaction but again found no relation to proficiency development. Further research may give us deeper insights into if and how these collaborative patterns, in other respects, impact collaborative learning with ECAS in health care education.