Using ubiquitous games in an English listening and speaking course: Impact on learning outcomes and motivation

This paper reports the results of a study which aimed to investigate how ubiquitous games influence English learning achievement and motivation through a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment. An English curriculum was conducted on a school campus by using a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment called the Handheld English Language Learning Organization (HELLO). HELLO helps students to engage in learning activities based on the ARCS motivation theory, involving various educational strategies, including ubiquitous game-based learning, collaborative learning, and context-aware learning. Two groups of students participated in the learning activities prescribed in a curriculum by separately using ubiquitous game-based learning and non-gaming learning. The curriculum, entitled ‘My Campus’, included three learning activities, namely ‘Campus Environment’, ‘Campus Life’ and ‘Campus Story’. Participants included high school teachers and juniors. During the experiment, tests, a survey, and interviews were conducted for the students. The evaluation results of the learning outcomes and learning motivation demonstrated that incorporating ubiquitous games into the English learning process could achieve a better learning outcomes and motivation than using non-gaming method. They further revealed a positive relationship between learning outcomes and motivation.     

E-character education among digital natives: Focusing on character exemplars

This study focused on open online character education implemented in e-HO, a holistic learning environment embedded with a character exemplar video-on-demand (VOD) system. E-HO, designed to use the Internet to enhance holistic and character education's efficacies in a way that is fitting for and favored by digital natives, also aimed to counteract the negative impacts of the mass media. A comprehensive investigation of a survey conducted among 1013 university students for this e-character education program is presented with a detailed study on students' preferences referring to various demographic variables including grade level, gender, discipline and the number of exemplar exposure instances concerning the five scales extracted in this particular survey. In accordance with previous studies, this study suggested that grade level differences could be explained by cognitive ability. Gender differences and discipline differences both emerged because of differences in “people-things” orientation between genders and also between disciplines with distinct, long-term professional foci and practices. Compelling counterbalancing effects were witnessed between the developments of discipline differences and grade level differences, which were greatly enhanced by consistently implementing holistic education. A preliminary “cognitive threshold” of VOD exposure within a semester among the female participants appeared at 10 viewings, beyond which substantially more effective pedagogical efficacies emerged.     

Understanding the ways in which design features of educational websites impact upon student learning outcomes in blended learning environments

This study investigated the effectiveness, in terms of the attainment of relevant learning outcomes, of the types of learning promoted by educational features commonly incorporated in course management systems. Twenty-one courses with significant use of the Internet, but with face-to-face teaching as the predominant instructional mode, were investigated. Five hundred and ninety-five students taking these 21 courses completed a questionnaire which gave feedback on the extent of use of and quality of implementation of internet features, as well as their perception of the attainment of outcomes relating to approaches to learning, communication skills and understanding of content. A confirmatory factor analysis of scales pertinent to information presentation and constructive dialogue features showed a very poor fit to the data, indicating that the two types of function did not act in concert. Structural equation modelling was used to test instructional models in presage–process–product format for ‘information’ and ‘dialogue’ features. The information one showed a marginal fit to the data, but the dialogue one a very good fit. This shows that using the Internet for presenting information in a blended environment does not seem to effectively help students achieve learning outcomes. Using features which promote constructive dialogue and interactive learning activities encourages a deep approach to learning, the development of communication skills and enhanced understanding of content.     

General and domain-specific influence of prior knowledge on setting of goals and content use in museum websites

This article explores the influence of prior knowledge on the setting of goals and use of content in museum website visits. Goal setting is a crucial process in organizing the activities of surfers in open environments, such as museum websites, where surfers faced ill-defined tasks. To this end, 12 graduate students were asked to surf through two museum websites in different domains (anthropology and natural sciences). Half of the participants had robust background in anthropology. Within each of these groups, half of the students had spent more than four years in graduate school, while the other half were first year students. Visited pages and concurrent comments were recorded, coded and analyzed. Results showed that domain specific knowledge influences goal setting process. Visitors with high domain knowledge tended to set larger and more consistent goal structures than first year students. Results showed also that general previous knowledge influences content use. Surfers with higher general skills tended to elaborate more on content and use more intensively the information available at the websites.     

The impact of an innovative instructional intervention on the acquisition of oral presentation skills in higher education

The present study focuses on the design and development of an instructional approach to develop oral presentation skills. The theoretical base builds on the social cognitive perspective, and self-regulated learning. The aim of the study is to investigate whether the design of a multimedia-based instructional format - comprising of a standardised multimedia instruction, practical activities and feedback - will enhance oral presentation skills. In the study, the differential effect of three ‘modes of feedback’ on performance has been researched. The results reveal that oral presentation skills did improve significantly after the instruction. The multimedia nature of the design was favoured by all participants. In contrast, no significant impact of feedback was found. Nevertheless, feedback proved to be a useful process that was highly welcomed by participants.     

A typology of young people’s Internet use: Implications for education

Using data from a nationally representative survey of over a 1000 young people in the UK this paper proposes a typology of the ways young people are using the Internet outside formal educational settings; and examines the individual and contextual factors that help to explain why young people are using the Internet in this way. Specifically, this paper addresses two research questions. First, can we distinguish coherent profiles of young people’s Internet use? Second, how do these usage profiles relate to individual and contextual factors associated with the Internet user? From the results of latent profile analysis and multinomial regression four types of Internet usage profiles are identified: the peripherals, normatives, all-rounders and active participators, which were differentiated by individual characteristics and contextual features. Such research enables practitioners, researchers and policy makers to better understand how young people are using the Internet in order to think in a more informed way about how new technologies could be used to enhance education and learning; and to develop initiatives that more specifically target and support different segments of the population.     

Investigating learners’ attitudes toward virtual reality learning environments: Based on a constructivist approach

The use of animation and multimedia for learning is now further extended by the provision of entire Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLE). This highlights a shift in Web-based learning from a conventional multimedia to a more immersive, interactive, intuitive and exciting VR learning environment. VRLEs simulate the real world through the application of 3D models that initiates interaction, immersion and trigger the imagination of the learner. The question of good pedagogy and use of technology innovations comes into focus once again. Educators attempt to find theoretical guidelines or instructional principles that could assist them in developing and applying a novel VR learning environment intelligently. This paper introduces the educational use of Web-based 3D technologies and highlights in particular VR features. It then identifies constructivist learning as the pedagogical engine driving the construction of VRLE and discusses five constructivist learning approaches. Furthermore, the authors provide two case studies to investigate VRLEs for learning purposes. The authors conclude with formulating some guidelines for the effective use of VRLEs, including discussion of the limitations and implications for the future study of VRLEs.     

Effects of teaching and learning styles on students’ reflection levels for ubiquitous learning

Ubiquitous learning (u-learning), in conjunction with supports from the digital world, is recognized as an effective approach for situating students in real-world learning environments. Earlier studies concerning u-learning have mainly focused on investigating the learning attitudes and learning achievements of students, while the causations such as learning style and teaching style were usually ignored. This study aims to investigate the effects of teaching styles and learning styles on reflection levels of students within the context of u-learning. In particular, we investigated the teaching styles at the dimensions of brainstorming and instruction and recall and the learning styles at the dimensions of active and reflective learning. The experiment was conducted with 39 fifth grader students at an elementary school in southern Taiwan. A u-learning environment was established at a butterfly ecology garden to conduct experiments for natural science courses. The experimental results of one-way ANCOVA show that those students who received a matching teaching–learning style presented a significant improvement in their reflection level. That is, matching the learning styles of students with the appropriate teaching styles can significantly improve students’ reflection levels in a u-learning environment.     

‘First do no harm’: Factors influencing teachers’ ability and willingness to use ICT in their subject teaching

The paper reports on a Department of Culture, Museums and Sport (DCMS) funded project which provided modest amounts of time for teachers to be freed from their classroom teaching to explore the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in their subject teaching, and to meet up together to discuss their use of new technology. The funding was sufficient to provide a day of supply cover for two groups of secondary teachers in different curriculum subjects (history and science) to meet towards the start of the academic year to discuss their use of ICT, a day of supply cover to work on their ideas and interests, and a day to meet together again towards the end of the year to share ideas and experiences.     

Epistemology and learning: Impact on pedagogical practices and technology use in Singapore schools

This paper reports on two studies conducted in 2006 in the Singapore schools to investigate the relationships between teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and learning, their pedagogical practices, and uses of information and communications technologies (ICT). Three primary research questions were examined in this research: First, do teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and learning influence the uses of ICT, pedagogical approaches, and types of assessments used in the Singapore schools? Second, does the school culture influence the uses of pedagogical approaches and ICT by Singapore teachers in their classes? Third, are the epistemic ideas about the nature of knowledge and learning beliefs that are stable cognitive structures or are they resources that are more adaptively shaped to different contexts? In Study 1, 1882 teachers from 51 schools took part in the 187-item online survey on these areas, and Study 2 involved eight principals, two vice-principals, 33 heads of department, and 60 teachers in structured interviews. It had been hypothesized that beliefs about the nature of knowledge being complex and changing would be associated with more learner-centered pedagogical practices and uses of technology in the classrooms. However, the main findings of Study 1 suggest that it is not epistemological beliefs of teachers about knowledge and knowing that shape pedagogical practices in Singapore schools, but rather teachers’ beliefs about learning. From the interviews in Study 2, it appears that teachers tend to mix pedagogical strategies consisting of both teacher-directed and learner-centered approaches primarily based on beliefs about learning. Our research findings also suggest that epistemic ideas teachers have may not be relatively fixed and stable “beliefs” but rather are more contextually influenced epistemic resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of these findings and their implications for theory, practice, and future research.     

Promoting college students’ knowledge acquisition and ill-structured problem solving: Web-based integration and procedure prompts

This study examined how web-based integration and procedure question prompts differentially affected students’ knowledge acquisition and ill-structured problem solving skills, particularly in representing problem(s), developing solutions, and monitoring and evaluating a plan of action within the social science context. Eighty-four undergraduate pre-service teachers were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: (1) an IP condition that required students to complete integration prompts, (2) a PP condition that required students to complete procedure prompts, (3) an IPP condition that required students to complete both integration and procedure prompts, or (4) a control condition that did not provide access to any prompts. The findings show that students who received integration prompts outperformed those who did not receive any in knowledge acquisition and problem representation for solving an ill-structured problem. Integration prompts also helped the development and integration of cognitive schema, whereas procedure prompts helped direct students’ attention to specific features of the problem in order to arrive at the solution(s). In fact, the presence of an integration prompt alone is not sufficient to support successful ill-structured problem solving unless a procedure prompt is provided. Based on these findings, this study offers implications for designing Web-based learning environments, engineered to promote integrative knowledge and ill-structured problem solving skills.     

How to improve the peer review method: Free-selection vs assigned-pair protocol evaluated in a computer networking course

This study provides field research evidence on the efficiency of a “free-selection” peer review assignment protocol as compared to the typically implemented “assigned-pair” protocol. The study employed 54 sophomore students who were randomly assigned into three groups: Assigned-Pair (AP) (the teacher assigns student works for review to student pairs), Free-Selection (FS) (students are allowed to freely explore and select peer work for review), and No Review (NR) (control group). AP and FS student groups studied and reviewed peer work in the domain of Computer Networking, supported by a web-based environment designed to facilitate the two peer review protocols. Our results indicate that students following the Free Selection protocol demonstrate (a) better domain learning outcomes, and (b) better reviewer skills, compared to the AP condition. Overall, the study analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of the FS vs AP review assignment protocol, providing evidence that the FS condition can be multiply beneficial to students who engage in peer review activities.     

Key instructional design issues in a cellular phone-based mobile learning project

Adding flexibility to the learning process, mobile learning offers great opportunities for education, especially for teenagers, who show great attentiveness to mobile technologies. Thus, the need to focus on design aspects of such learning is growing. This study aims to reveal critical issues in designing mobile learning based on a program for 11th graders and to unfold students’ perceptions about reasons for participation, satisfaction, implementation processes, and specific content representation types. Reflections on insights gleaned from the instructional design process of the project and students’ perceptions are presented with related recommendations.     

Taking a signal: A review of gesture-based computing research in education

This study used content analysis of journal articles from 2001 to 2013 to explore the characteristics and trends of empirical research on gesture-based computing in education. Among the 3018 articles retrieved from 5 academic databases by a comprehensive search, 59 articles were identified manually and then analyzed. The distribution and trends analyzed were research methods, study disciplines, learning content, technology used, and intended settings of the gesture-based learning systems. Furthermore, instructional interventions were also analyzed based on the learning context or the sub-education domain to which they belonged to ascertain if any instructional intervention was applied in these systems. It was found that experimental design research is the most commonly used method (72.9%) followed by design-based research (20.3%). The findings indicate that Nintendo Wii is the gesture-based device that is the most often used (40%), while the domain in which the technology is most frequently used is special education (42.4%). The same trend was also found in a further analysis which identified that the domain which uses Wii the most is special education (70%). Among all the identified learning topics, motor skills learning has the highest percentage (44%). When grouping these topics into three domains of knowledge (procedural, conceptual, and both), the result demonstrates that both procedural and conceptual type of knowledge are equally distributed in the gesture-based learning studies. Finally, a comparison of instructional intervention of gesture-based learning systems in different sub-education domains is reported.     

A fit-gap analysis of e-business curricula and job demand in Taiwan and the US

During the past decade, many enterprises have been re-directing their resources into critical business areas to keep up with economic and market changes. They have adopted electronic business (EB) systems, such as supply chain management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and enterprise application integration (EAI), to ensure seamless integration with internal processes as well as suppliers and customers. This phenomenon indicates that EB systems are playing an important role in attaining the effectiveness of enterprise operations. However, there is a constant complaint from recruiters that EB professionals with the right skills are hard to come by. To gauge the rapid changes in EB education and industry demand, EB curricula from top universities and job announcements from popular career Web sites in both the US and Taiwan are collected. We analyze the data and compare the results between the two countries to recommend remedial actions for narrowing the gap between industry and academia.     

Virtual games in social science education

The new technologies make the appearance of highly motivating and dynamic games with different levels of interaction possible, in which large amounts of data, information, procedures and values are included which are intimately bound with the social sciences.     

The effect of scaffolding students’ context-generating cognitive activity in technology-enhanced case-based learning

This study investigates the hypothesis that students’ learning and problem-solving performance in ill-structured domains can be improved, if elaborative question prompts are used to activate students’ context-generating cognitive processes, during case study. Two groups of students used a web-based learning environment to criss-cross and study case-based material in the software project management domain. The experimental group was additionally prompted to consistently answer a set of questions based on a model of context-generating processes, meant to engage students in deeper processing of information presented in cases. Students were also classified as having either “complex” or “simple” EB profile (based on their epistemological beliefs record), thereby establishing a 2 × 2 factorial design. Results indicated that scaffolding treatment had a significant main effect on students’ performance, with the experimental group performing better in both domain knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer post-test items. There is also tentative indication that EB profile and scaffolding treatment interact, with complex-EB learners benefiting most from the scaffolded condition. Overall, the study provides evidence that it is possible to improve individual learning in a technology environment for case-based learning, by implementing appropriate questioning strategies that trigger students to activate their context-generating cognitive processes, while studying the contextually rich material of cases.     

Unpacking and repacking the factors affecting students' perceptions of the use of classroom communication systems (CCS) technology

This exploratory study investigated the relationships between students' perceptions of their classroom experiences and instructional and contextual factors involved with the use of Classroom Communication Systems (CCS) technology. A mixed methods approach was employed to examine these relationships using data collected from 931 students enrolled in one public university. Thematic analysis explored students' perceptions of the use of CCS. Three logit models with a sound predictability and model fit were established using logistic sequential regression. These models identified crucial instructional and contextual factors and examined the degree to which each of these factors was associated with student perceptions of classroom experiences with CCS. This study found that positive student perceptions of classroom experience with CCS were closely associated with the use of specific types of questions, formative feedback and assessment approaches, and the pedagogical training of the classroom instructors. These findings elucidate specific aspects of CCS use that are related to how students perceive the effectiveness of this technology, and may ultimately assist instructional designers and faculty developers in designing and implementing CCS to enhance students' classroom experiences.