Exploring the characteristics of an optimal design of digital materials for concept learning in mathematics: Multimedia learning and variation theory

Design principles emerging from the cognitive theory of multimedia learning can be applied to engage cognitive processing, and teaching methods that have evolved from variation theory can encourage thinking through comparisons in mathematics education. Applying these principles and teaching methods in designing digital material should be a sound proposition. However, there is a disconnection between research in digital educational material and classroom practices. Teachers often have doubts about the effectiveness of the materials. Thus, this paper presents a design-based research of developing a digital material for algebra concept learning. We collaborated with two experienced teachers and a subject expert from a university, and designed some digital learning material that was presented to 68 students through an iterative redesign development cycle; the effectiveness of the final product was tested on another group of 66 students the following year. Characteristics of an optimal design generated from the data collected are presented in this paper. The characteristics may have useful practical implications for instructional designers and teachers and contribute to improvements in the design of digital learning materials.     

The effects of geography lessons with geospatial technologies on the development of high school students' relational thinking

Geospatial technologies offer access to geospatial information via digital representations, such as digital maps, and tools for interaction with those representations. The question is whether geography lessons with geospatial technologies really contribute to the development of students' geospatial thinking, in particular geospatial relational thinking, as is suggested in the literature about geospatial technologies in secondary education. This paper reports about the outcomes of a quasi-experimental research project, in which a geography lesson series with geospatial technologies was compared with a conventional geography lesson series that had the same content. Although the lesson series covered only three lessons, the data showed that the lesson series with geospatial technologies contributed significantly more to the development of students' geospatial relational thinking than the conventional lesson series. The effect size was ‘medium large’.     

Reflections on information systems practice, education and research: 10 years of the Information Systems Journal

This paper celebrates the 10‐year anniversary of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) and the Editors reflect on the papers that have been published over that period and the changes that have occurred in the discipline of information systems. In the opening paper of ISJ, we suggested that the ‘launch of a new journal in information systems prompts thought and debate concerning the state of the subject area and some contemplation of its past and future’. We discussed three areas of this ‘not‐yet‐established discipline’: practice, education and research. In this follow‐up paper, we forgo our convention of ISJ editors not publishing in the Journal. We examine the issues raised in the first paper and consider what has happened in the intervening years as charted in the ISJ. The overview is necessarily selective, probably Anglocentric (with, perhaps, a slight Francophile tinge), sometimes downright opinionated, as well as over‐estimating, perhaps, the contribution of one particular IS journal.     

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.     

Exploring the educational potential of robotics in schools: A systematic review

This study reviews recently published scientific literature on the use of robotics in schools, in order to: (a) identify the potential contribution of the incorporation of robotics as educational tool in schools, (b) present a synthesis of the available empirical evidence on the educational effectiveness of robotics as an educational tool in schools, and (c) define future research perspectives concerning educational robotics. After systematically searching online bibliographic databases, ten relevant articles were located and included in the study. For each article, we analyze the purpose of the study, the content to be taught with the aid of robotics, the type of robot used, the research method used, and the sample characteristics (sample size, age range of students and/or level of education) and the results observed. The articles reviewed suggest that educational robotics usually acts as an element that enhances learning, however, this is not always the case, as there are studies that have reported situations in which there was no improvement in learning. The outcomes of the literature review are discussed in terms of their implications for future research, and can provide useful guidance for educators, practitioners and researchers in the area.     

Exploring the influence of game design on learning and voluntary use in an online vascular anatomy study aid

This research explores the educational impact of an online study aid-game for studying human vascular anatomy (n = 24) versus a similar non-game study aid (n = 22) and how it relates to medical students' demographic traits and voluntary use over a 35-day period. Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that study aid success rate (a metric for assessing performance through the study aids) was a significant predictor of anatomy test improvement with the game (β = 0.41, p = 0.05), but not for the non-game (β = 0.14, p = 0.56). Our analyses suggest that game mechanics encouraged more specific problem-solving strategies than did the control study aid, leading to greater predictability of learning outcomes. There was a non-significant trend among game treatment participants, who were more likely to complete study tasks than those assigned to the control treatment (p = 0.11). It would appear that students' studying habits had the greatest influence (though opposite in both tools) on level of engagement in study aid use. However, contrary to expectations, self-reported gaming habits did not impact participation. Overall, these findings support the integration of game design into undergraduate study aids as a means of increasing use of supplementary educational tools and assessing knowledge.     

Exploring the cognitive loads of high-school students as they learn concepts in web-based environments

This study measured high-school learners' cognitive load as they interacted with different web-based curriculum components, and examined the interactions between cognitive load and web-based concept learning. Participants in this study were 105 11th graders from an academic senior high school in Taiwan. An online, multimedia curriculum on the topic of global warming, which lasted for four weeks, provided the learning context. After students worked through the curriculum, their feelings about the degree of mental effort that it took to complete the learning tasks were measured by self-report on a 9-point Likert scale. An online test and the flow-map method were applied to assess participants' concept achievements. The results showed that curriculum components such as scientific articles, online notebooks, flash animations and the online test induced a relatively high cognitive load, and that a lower cognitive load resulted in better concept achievement. Also, students appeared to adopt different learning approaches that were corresponding to different levels of cognitive load.     

Systems of representation: a pedagogical model for design education in the information age

Abstract

The course SDR: Sistemas de Representación(Systems of Representation), is the last stage of a line of work which has the objective of integrating information technologies in the education of architecture in a meaningful way. A distinctive mark of this pedagogic approach has been to look upon computer technology as an opportunity to rethink the methods, contents and goals of architecturaleducation,in thelight of contemporary culture.

The course is structured in six themes, each one standing for a ‘system of representation’: ‘text’, ‘figure’, ‘object’, ‘image’, ‘space’ and ‘light’. Within every system, a variety of issues dealing with the concept of ‘representation’ are addressed in an interdisciplinary manner. It is a compulsory course lasting three semesters, in the second and third year of a five-year architectural program. It has been offered since the academic year 1999/2000.     

Editorial—A Survey of Research Questions for Intelligent Information Systems in Education

Education is an application domain in which many research questions from Intelligent Information Systems may prove their worth. We discuss three themes in this editorial: distributed education and learner modeling, semantic analysis of text, and intelligent information management.     

Identification of a rice drying model with an improved sequential optimal design of experiments

Getting relevant parameter estimation of a non-linear model is often a hard task from both an experimental and numerical point of view. The objective of optimally designed experiments procedure is to diminish the experimental effort needed such that the identification is within acceptable confidence ranges. After each experiment, the next experiment is optimally designed, taking into account all past experimental results. It allows quality information to be extracted from the experimental data with less experimental time and resource consumption.In this paper, we present an original approach and implementation of the classical A-, D- and E-optimality on the estimation of 5 unknown (transfer related) coefficients in a compartmental model used to describe the convective drying of rice. The originality of our method is that it uses reparameterization of both parameter and protocol vectors which permits to avoid using a global optimization algorithm. The presented method is implemented in Matlab as a Toolbox and fully tested on a pilot plant. The case study (drying of rice) is typical in the field of process engineering: the dynamic model is strongly non-linear in its parameters and cannot be analytically solved. In addition, the specific technical constrains (inertias, limits, etc.) on the pilot are explicitly taken into account for improved experimental feasibility.In this drying application, three experiments with non-constant drying conditions are shown to be quite as effective as a two-factor three-level grid of nine experiments at constant conditions, with only one third of the experimental effort.     

From consumer awareness to econometric analysis: the use of CAL throughout economics education

Abstract  This paper examines the use of CAL as a progression throughout economics education beginning at an economic awareness level and ending with a brief look at the use of computers for econometric analysis. Key pieces of software are identified and the environment in which they can be used is examined. The techniques and approaches to the use of the computer at all levels are shown to have similarities. Throughout the paper computers are shown to enhance the study of economics which in turn leads to comments about the future of CAL in economics and the content of the 'core' in economics education.     

The social organisation of communication in the home of the twenty-first century: an analysis of the future of paper-mail and implications for the design of electronic alternatives

This paper reports ongoing investigations into the use and role of paper-mail communications in domestic environments. It utilises ethnographically informed data to analyse how paper-mail supports various social roles within the home, particularly a division of labour whereby women tend to be largely responsible for what may be called "managing the home". Implications for the future of paper-mail are considered, as well as suggestions made about how email tools may be designed to reflect the patterns of social organisation within the home. Electronic Publication     

Learning through playing Virtual Age: Exploring the interactions among student concept learning,gaming performance,in-game behaviors,and the use of in-game characters

Video games possess many unique features that facilitate learning. Meanwhile, teaching about evolution is never an easy task due to the existence of some barriers to its learning. Virtual Age, therefore, has been developed in an attempt to harness the power of gaming to increase student understanding of biological evolution. The aim of this study was to examine whether Virtual Age is effective for learning about evolution and to further explore the interplay of student concept learning, gaming performance, and in-game behaviors. A total of 62 7th graders took part in the study, and significant findings were revealed. The students did learn by playing Virtual Age, and their long-term knowledge retention was promising. The in-game behaviors, such as times and duration of viewing the relevant information embedded in Virtual Age, were significantly related to gaming performance (game score), which subsequently influenced learning outcomes. Moreover, the results of cluster analysis indicated that three clusters of low learning outcomes/low gaming performance, high learning outcomes, and high gaming performance emerged. Overall, Virtual Age is an effective game for learning about evolution based on its sound and sophisticated design. Implications derived from the study and suggestions for future work are proposed.     

A solution method for optimal weight design problem of the gear using genetic algorithms

In this paper, we formulate an optimal weight designproblem of a gear for a constrained bending strength of gear, tortional strength of shafts and each gear dimension as a nonlinear integer programming (NIP) problem and solve it directly by keeping the nonlinear constraint by using an improved genetic algorithm (GA). We discuss the efficency of the proposed method.     

A simulation-based approach for the optimal design of signalling block layout in railway networks

To meet the growing demand in railway transportation, practitioners are more and more required to upgrade or substitute the signalling system in order to increase the capacity of the network. Existing approaches for the design of the signalling layout, usually tend to maximize the technological efficiency of the system by shortening the length of block sections, thus reducing the minimum line headway and the energy consumption but increasing investment costs. This paper presents a design approach addressed to identify the signalling layout which minimizes the investment and management costs, while respecting the required level of capacity. To solve this problem an innovative design framework is introduced which integrates a stochastic multi-train simulation model within a “black-box” optimization loop. Results obtained from an application to a real metro line confirm the effectiveness of such method in finding the solution which minimizes total costs for the line manager. A comparison with the block layout which maximizes the technological efficiency highlights that the obtained solution constitutes a satisfying trade-off between total costs and network performances.     

Exploring Newtonian mechanics in a conceptually-integrated digital game: Comparison of learning and affective outcomes for students in Taiwan and the United States

This study investigates the potential of a digital game that overlays popular game-play mechanics with formal physics representations and terminology to support explicit learning and exploration of Newtonian mechanics. The analysis compares test data, survey data, and observational data collected during implementations in Taiwan and the United States with students in grades 7–9. Results demonstrate learning on some core disciplinary measures and high levels of learner engagement, indicating the potential benefits of this genre of conceptually-integrated games, but also suggesting that further research and development will be needed to more fully harness this potential. Encouragingly, striking similarities were observed across the two countries in terms of learning and engagement, suggesting that this genre of learning games may prove suitable for engaging students in active exploration of core science concepts across multiple countries.     

The cognitive impact of interactive design features for learning complex materials in medical education

To identify the most effective way for medical students to interact with a browser-based learning module on the symptoms and neurological underpinnings of stroke syndromes, this study manipulated the way in which subjects interacted with a graphical model of the brain and examined the impact of functional changes on learning outcomes. It was hypothesized that behavioral interactions that were behaviorally more engaging and which required deeper consideration of the model would result in heightened cognitive interaction and better learning than those whose manipulation required less deliberate behavioral and cognitive processing. One hundred forty four students were randomly assigned to four conditions whose model controls incorporated features that required different levels of behavioral and cognitive interaction: Movie (low behavioral/low cognitive, n = 40), Slider (high behavioral/low cognitive, n = 36), Click (low behavioral/high cognitive, n = 30), and Drag (high behavioral/high cognitive, n = 38). Analysis of Covariates (ANCOVA) showed that students who received the treatments associated with lower cognitive interactivity (Movie and Slider) performed better on a transfer task than those receiving the module associated with high cognitive interactivity (Click and Drag, partial eta squared = .03). In addition, the students in the high cognitive interactivity conditions spent significantly more time on the stroke locator activity than other conditions (partial eta squared = .36). The results suggest that interaction with controls that were tightly coupled with the model and whose manipulation required deliberate consideration of the model's features may have overtaxed subjects' cognitive resources. Cognitive effort that facilitated manipulation of content, though directed at the model, may have resulted in extraneous cognitive load, impeding subjects in recognizing the deeper, global relationships in the materials. Instructional designers must, therefore, keep in mind that the way in which functional affordances are integrated with the content can shape both behavioral and cognitive processing, and has significant cognitive load implications.     

Improved performance of PSO with self-adaptive parameters for computing the optimal design of Water Supply Systems

This paper deals with a new variant of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) in which no a priori parameter tuning is necessary. PSO, as an efficient and powerful problem-solving technique, has been widely used, but, as in other Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), appropriate adjustment of its parameters is cumbersome and usually requires a lot of time, effort and luck. Thus, a self-adaptive framework is proposed to improve the robustness of the PSO. In this paper, within a framework that also includes other variants previously introduced by the authors, the algorithm’s parameters are co-evolved with the particles. Its performance results show that the use of this self-adaptive feature averages out the performance of standard PSO and other EA applied to the same problems, namely the design of Water Supply Systems (WSS), while avoiding the process of localizing and fine-tuning suitable parameters values, when using two benchmarking problems presented in the literature, namely the Hanoi Water Supply System and the New York Tunnel Water Supply System. The results provided in the case of a real-world problem demonstrate the scalability of the proposed variant to the realistic water distribution design problems, which are much larger.     

A case study of the in-class use of a video game for teaching high school history

This study examines the case of a sophomore high school history class where Making History, a video game designed with educational purposes in mind, is used in the classroom to teach about World War II. Data was gathered using observation, focus group and individual interviews, and document analysis. The high school was a rural school located in a small town in the Midwestern United States. The teacher had been teaching with the game for several years and spent one school week teaching World War II, with students playing the game in class for three days of that week. The purpose of this study was to understand teacher and student experiences with and perspectives on the in-class use of an educational video game. Results showed that the use of the video game resulted in a shift from a traditional teacher-centered learning environment to a student-centered environment where the students were much more active and engaged. Also, the teacher had evolved implementation strategies based on his past experiences using the game to maximize the focus on learning.     

The `adequate' design of ethnographic outputs for practice: some explorations of the characteristics of design resources

The community of `appliance design' rests generally upon a successful use of multidisciplinary user-centred design and often draws on an ethnographic component. Much has been made of the need for a multidisciplinary team and of the difficulties of making good use of ethnographic outputs in such a team. Discussions often centre upon the precise placement of the boundary between ethnography and design and the possibilities of hybridisation of these disciplines. Another way of looking at the issues of multidisciplinary teams is to look at the nature of the representational devices used to encapsulate and aid the communication of the ethnographic work in coherent and useful ways. Taking lessons from existing design practice, we look at how such representational devices actually work and propose some possible features important in the realisation of future best practice.