Volume 12, Issue 2, October 2020

ABSTRACT

Instructional design and training skills have become a key competency that is expected of public health professionals. However, the research on educating public health students as instructional designers (ID) is lacking. The purpose of this study is to better understand how novice IDs design trainings using their design judgment in an authentic instructional design project in order to provide them with effective educational supports. The data sources of this case study include 11 training lesson plans generated by 37 students through a semester and six semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that: (1) online games, (2) instructional videos, (3) handouts, (4) PowerPoint presentation slides, and (5) infographics were designed and used by novice IDs. In the midst of the various challenges that were encountered, framing judgment, core judgment, instrumental judgment, navigational judgment, and appearance judgment were manifested in the design process of novice IDs. Based on the findings, practical implementations are recommended to develop effective instructional design curricula for novice public health student designers.

Keywords: design judgment, instructional design, instructional design challenges, instructional design practices, novice instructional designers, public health

ABSTRACT

Marczewski (2015) has introduced a new classification model for different user types. Tondello et al. (2016) developed and later revised (Tondello et al., 2019) “The Gamification User Types Hexad Scale” based on this model. The aim of this study is to adapt this scale into Turkish. The validity and reliability study of the scale was conducted on 330 university students. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the model also showed that the fit indices were acceptable. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the factors were also within the acceptable range. Additionally, it was found that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the lower 27% and upper 27% groups for both the items and the sub-factor scores. As a result, it can be concluded that this valid and reliable scale composed of 24 items and 6 factors can be used as an effective tool in the gamification solutions considering the characteristics of the target group.

Keywords: gamification, player/user types, scale adaptation, validity, reliability

ABSTRACT

Digital learning has reshaped education in many ways. The purpose of this study is to respond to the question of whether COVID-19 is the gateway for digital-learning in mathematics education. To this end, this study explores some uptakes of social media platforms by prospective secondary school teachers. Data was collected from 102 prospective mathematics teachers from the Copperbelt University (CBU). Cluster analysis approach was used. Results revealed that participants’ scores for digital learning in mathematics in cluster 2 were higher than those in both cluster 1 and 3. This is a clear indication that prospective teachers in clusters with low scores are more likely to exhibit low skill levels in the use of mobile technology and the adoption of social media in relation to mathematics pedagogy during the COVID-19 crisis. Results show different patterns. However, overall results show that digital learning could be a positive response to COVID-19 closure period.

Keywords: COVID-19, digital learning, social media, students, mathematics education, Zambia

ABSTRACT

This study investigated different modalities of videos in a flipped classroom for English writing classes in an intensive English program at a state university in Turkey. This quasi-experimental study was conducted with six experimental groups (n= 109) and one control group (n = 18). The dataset included the participants’ scores of an essay pretest and two posttests, namely, recall and essay posttests. The data analysis showed that the experimental group viewing the video lecture which includes simultaneous presentation of animation and on-screen text followed by a narration in a user-paced environment outperformed the control group on the recall posttest. The groups studying the video lecture including animation with simultaneous narration and sequential on-screen text in a whole presentation and in a part-by-part presentation outperformed the control group on the essay writing posttest. In the whole presentation, participants studied all the parts of a video in a system-paced design and answered the related questions whereas participants studied each part of a video and answered the related questions in a part-by-part presentation. The paper provides a discussion and a set of recommendations on how to design flipped classrooms.

Keywords: flipped learning, flipped classroom, multimedia learning, video modalities, English as a foreign language, academic essay writing

ABSTRACT

As a variety of commercial educational applications are currently being taken into daily use to provide technology-enhanced feedback, research is needed to observe whether pedagogical evidence of the impact of feedback on learning and well-being is being utilized. To this end, this study explores the connections between technology-enhanced feedback, motivation, competence and the relationship with teachers. A nationally representative sample of pupils undertaking Finnish basic education (N=2031) was analyzed using latent profile analysis. Seven patterns for receiving technology-enhanced feedback were identified. Most girls (80%) and boys (55%) belonged to groups receiving mainly positive feedback in the form of teacher praise, which was connected to the highest scores in all measured indicators. Although the results indicate teachers’ efforts to encourage pupils through technology-enhanced feedback, we also identified profiles in which pupils (up to 30%) repeatedly received negative feedback related to behavior problems or forgotten matters, as well as profiles in which pupils (5%) reported that they never received any technology-enhanced feedback at all. Pupils who did not receive any feedback reported the lowest values in all scales. The relationship with teachers was particularly weak for pupils receiving negative feedback or no feedback. The results indicate that current technology-enhanced feedback practices do not fully meet pedagogical knowledge concerning efficient feedback.

Keywords: technology-enhanced feedback, motivation, competence, academic well-being

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the literature relating to the factors that contribute to the difficulties in learning of computer programming. Programming has been a difficult subject to learn and master even at the early stage of education. It has been a global problem and continues to worsen at the local level. Although, there are many education tools available to complement the teaching and learning of computer programming. The problem persists until present day. Even at the initial stage of computer introduction courses, there were high failure rates and high drop out. One of the rationalism behind this scenario is from the students’ lack of problem solving abilities. However, the problem does not only lie within the students’ level of efficacy. It involves the effective use of teaching and learning material as well. Therefore, the focus of this review is on the factors concerning the students learning method and the effectiveness of the teaching material. Based on plethora of literature review, it is vital that these two aspects need to be consider simultaneously to overcome the difficulties of learning computer programming. A much more comprehensive, effective and universal teaching and learning tools need to be design to address the severity of this problem.

Keywords: computer programming, difficulties in programming, phases of programming, teaching materials

ABSTRACT

Distance education delivery has shifted from the mere meaning of distance due to the use of abridged technologies. Current distance education utilizes technologies that have made the term distance a metaphor. The affordances of technology have promoted student-student interaction; teacher-student interaction as well as student-student interaction across boundaries. This has been possible due to blended leaning that combines both the online component in addition to the face-to-face sessions. One of the technologies that have made blended learning possible in distance education is the Learning Management System (LMS). However, intentions towards the use of LMS have been a crucial element in contemporary literature especially in Africa. Consequently, one of the key determinants of LMS use intentions is attitude towards the technology. Hence, this study is focused on unraveling the key determinants of attitude based on a Technology-Related Stimulus-Response Theoretical Framework (TR-SR-TF) while addressing empirically, the mediating role of attitude on these determinants. In view of this, the study employed a survey design with the questionnaire as an instrument for data collection from a sample of 267 course tutors in distance education. The results from a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach revealed performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions as key antecedents of attitude towards LMS for blended learning. Again, attitude had a significant mediating effect on all three antecedents in determining behavioural intention towards LMS use for blended learning in distance education. The results of the study suggests that factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions should be critically addressed while implementing LMS-enabled blended learning because the former factors have a direct effect on attitude towards use intentions of blended learning for distance education delivery.

Keywords: distance education, LMS, blended learning, use intention, attitude, determinants

(no abstract)

ABSTRACT

Cognitive learning complexity identification of assessment questions is an essential task in the domain of education, as it helps both the teacher and the learner to discover the thinking process required to answer a given question. Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive levels are considered as a benchmark standard for the classification of cognitive thinking (learning complexity) in an educational environment. However, it was observed that some of the action verbs of Bloom’s Taxonomy are overlapping in multiple levels of the hierarchy, causing ambiguity about the real sense of cognition required. The paper describes two methodologies to automatically identify the cognitive learning complexity of given questions. The first methodology uses labelled Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) as a machine learning approach. The second methodology uses the BERT framework for multi-class text classification for deep learning. The experiments were performed on an ensemble of 3000+ educational questions, which were based on previously published datasets along with the TREC question corpus and AI2 Biology How/Why question corpus datasets. The labelled LDA reached an accuracy of 83% while BERT based approach reached 89% accuracy. An analysis of both the results is shown, evaluating the significant factors responsible for determining cognitive knowledge.

Keywords: multi-class text classification, labelled LDA, pre-trained BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), question classification