Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language

Language learning takes place in the context of social interactions, yet the mechanisms that render social interactions useful for learning language remain unclear. This study focuses on whether social contingency might support word learning. Toddlers aged 24–30 months (N = 36) were exposed to novel verbs in one of three conditions: live interaction training, socially contingent video training over video chat, and noncontingent video training (yoked video). Results suggest that children only learned novel verbs in socially contingent interactions (live interactions and video chat). This study highlights the importance of social contingency in interactions for language learning and informs the literature on learning through screen media as the first study to examine word learning through video chat technology.     

Anticipatory Eye Movements While Watching Continuous Action Across Shots in Video Sequences: A Developmental Study

Eye movements were recorded as 12‐month‐olds (n = 15), 4‐year‐olds (n = 17), and adults (n = 19) watched a 15‐min video with sequences of shots conveying continuous motion. The central question was whether, and at what age, viewers anticipate the reappearance of objects following cuts to new shots. Adults were more likely than younger viewers to make anticipatory eye movements. Four‐year‐olds responded to transitions more slowly and tended to fixate the center of the screen. Infants’ eye movement patterns reflected a tendency to react rather than anticipate. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that adults integrate content across shots and understand how space is represented in edited video. Results are interpreted with respect to a developing understanding of film editing due to experience and cognitive maturation.     

Screen design for children’s reading: some key issues

This paper draws attention to design issues that are likely to affect the way that children interact with screen‐based information texts. It is based on the findings of the Interactive Multimedia in Primary Schools (IMPS) project funded by the British Library, carried out at The University of Reading. The paper summarises the design‐related aspects of the project, highlighting those issues that relate to access, navigation and typography. It draws together observations from teachers and children based on tape‐recorded interviews and video recordings, and research from the fields of human computer interaction, information design and education.     

Converging Subjective and Psychophysiological Measures of Cognitive Load to Study the Effects of Instructor‐Present Video

Many online videos feature an instructor on the screen to improve learners' engagement; however, the influence of this design on learners' cognitive load is underexplored. This study investigates the effects of instructor presence on learners' processing of information using both subjective and psychophysiological measures of cognitive load. Sixty university students watched a statistics instructional video either with or without instructor presence, while the spontaneous electrical activity of their brain was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). At the conclusion of the video, they also self‐reported overall load, intrinsic load, extraneous load, and germane load they experienced during the video. Learning from the video was assessed via tests of retention and transfer. Results suggested the instructor‐present video improved learners' ability to transfer information and was associated with a lower self‐reported intrinsic and extraneous load. Event‐related changes in theta band activity also indicated lower cognitive load with instructor‐present video.     

Composing across modes: a comparative analysis of adolescents’ multimodal composing processes

Although the shift from page to screen has dramatically redefined conceptions of writing, very little is known about how youth compose with multiple modes in digital environments. Integrating multimodality and multiliteracies theoretical frameworks, this comparative case study examined how urban twelfth-grade students collaboratively composed across three multimodal projects when responding to and analyzing literature. Data sources included screen capture and video observations, student design interviews, written reflections, and multimodal products. Findings revealed that multimodal composing was a complex, dynamic, and varied process mediated by the interaction of multiple factors. Students exhibited modal preferences when working with open and flexible digital tools – spending a majority of time working with that particular mode and relying on it to carry the communicative weight of their compositions. The development of multimodal composing timescapes for this study provided new insights into students’ rapid and frequent cross-modal traversals as they worked on their digital projects.     

Understanding the effects of a teacher video on learning from a multimedia document: an eye-tracking study

The present study investigated the effects on students’ learning experience of adding a video of a teacher to an e-learning module. A total of 43 undergraduates were asked to learn the content of a pedagogical document either with or without a teacher video on the screen. Although video captures of teachers are increasingly being integrated into online courses, few studies have investigated their impact and the best way of optimizing them. According to the social-cue hypothesis, the presence of a teacher (face and gestures) positively influences learners’ motivation and engagement in their learning. By contrast, the interference hypothesis holds that the teacher’s presence can lead to poor performances, as it acts as a source of visual interference that diverts students’ attention away from the relevant information. By assessing subjective ratings and learning outcomes, the present study tended to support the social-cue hypothesis, as it showed that adding a teacher video on screen significantly improved students’ retention of the spoken explanations, without disturbing either their performances on diagram and transfer problems or the time needed to process the document. Eye-tracking data showed that students spent 25% of their time watching the teacher video. Adding this video had no significant observable effects on the subjective ratings (i.e., social presence, evaluation of the teacher’s motivational skills, situational interest, cognitive load). These results suggest that videos of teachers can be used to improve social cues in multimedia learning without creating interference effects.     

Digital video for fostering self‐reflection in an ePortfolio environment

The ability to self‐reflect is widely recognized as a desirable learner attribute that can induce deep learning. Advances in computer‐mediated communication technologies have led to intense interest in higher education in exploring the potential of digital tools, particularly digital video, for fostering self‐reflection. While there are reports pointing to the salutary effects of digital video on learners’ reflective ability, a systematic inquiry into how digital video can be utilized to promote self‐reflection in an ePortfolio context remains under‐reported. In this paper, we pose two questions: (1) Do students have the confidence to create their own digital videos for reflection and do they find this activity relevant to their learning needs?; and (2) To what extent does digital video affect the level of self‐reflection and the nature of peer feedback? Results from this small‐scale exploratory case study provide evidence in support of video use as a reflective tool in an ePortfolio context and highlight the need for considering pedagogical and technological issues that are of significance for teachers, educators and ePortfolio developers.     

HTTP动态自适应流技术中码率选择算法研究综述

HTTP动态自适应流技术利用现有的内容分发网络和互联网基础设施,部署方便、快捷,具有良好的防火墙穿透能力、NAT转换功能,成为网络视频分发业务的主流技术。为保证媒体传输的流畅性,为用户提供良好的用户体验质量（QoE）,需要采用合理的码率选择算法,由此码率自适应选择算法成为研究热点,大量新方法不断涌现。对HTTP动态自适应流技术背景和概念进行了概述,从流媒体传输涉及的服务端和客户端两个决策实体出发,对大量方法进行了分类阐述,指出该领域存在的问题,对研究趋势进行了展望。     

Modality and placement of a pedagogical adviser in individual interactive learning

Fifty‐eight graduate students in an education programme took a 40‐minute computer‐based instructional module on introductory statistics with a built‐in solicited guidance mechanism. Students were randomly assigned to programs that used one of four types of advisement: on‐screen digitised video of a human adviser, on‐screen text‐based adviser, pull‐down digitised video of a human adviser or pull‐down text‐based adviser. Results indicated that the on‐screen video‐based adviser condition resulted in higher adviser use than both the text‐based and video‐based pull‐down adviser conditions. Adviser use was significantly correlated with performance during instruction, with time spent during instruction and with television hours watched per week, but not with retention scores. Two non‐significant but suggestive findings were that the video‐based on‐screen advisers were used twice as much as text‐based on‐screen advisers, and active learners used advisement three times as often as passive learners.     

MOOC视频如何影响学生学习参与度——增强MOOC视频吸引力研究

研究和实践表明,在MOOC学习中,影响学生学习参与度和学习效果的因素除学习者自身的学习动机之外,还有MOOC教学视频的吸引力。该文以一级维度文理科和二级维度课程主题作为分层抽样依据,从Coursera、Udacity、edX、爱课程、学堂在线、UOOC联盟等平台中选取了508门课程作为MOOC视频分类研究的样本,依据MOOC视频中的媒介表现差异,将目前的在线开放课程教学视频呈现形式概括为八类,即叠加式、全屏式、可汗式、动画式、实景式、访谈式、情境式及虚拟仿真式,并分别阐述各种呈现形式的特点,在此基础上提出增强MOOC视频吸引力的设计原则与建议,为MOOC视频开发者和MOOC教师提供可行的参考依据。     

Screen media exposure and young children's vocabulary learning and development: A meta-analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes research on media use in early childhood (0–6 years), word-learning, and vocabulary size. Multi-level analyses included 266 effect sizes from 63 studies (N_total = 11,413) published between 1988–2022. Among samples with information about race/ethnicity (51%) and sex/gender (73%), most were majority White/Non-Hispanic and between 40%–60% female. Analyses revealed a small overall positive relation between screen media exposure and vocabulary (r = .23). Experimental studies yielded a small-to-medium effect (r = .30), with stronger effects for e-books than TV/video or games/apps, and non-significant effects for video chat. In correlational studies, there was no overall association between vocabulary size and naturalistic media exposure (r = .07), with the exception of naturalistic exposure to educational media (r = .17).     

Social Information Processing,Moral Reasoning,and Emotion Attributions: Relations With Adolescents’ Reactive and Proactive Aggression

Connections between adolescents’ social information processing (SIP), moral reasoning, and emotion attributions and their reactive and proactive aggressive tendencies were assessed. One hundred mostly African American and Latino 13‐ to 18‐year‐olds from a low‐socioeconomic‐status (SES) urban community and their high school teachers participated. Reactive aggression was uniquely related to expected ease in enacting aggression, lower verbal abilities, and hostile attributional biases, and most of these connections were mediated by adolescents’ attention problems. In contrast, proactive aggression was uniquely related to higher verbal abilities and expectations of more positive emotional and material outcomes resulting from aggression. Discussion focused on the utility of assessing both moral and SIP‐related cognitions, and on the potential influence of low‐SES, high‐risk environments on these findings.     

Infants’ and Young Children's Imitation of Linguistic In‐Group and Out‐Group Informants

Although children can use social categories to intelligently select informants, children's preference for in‐group informants has not been consistently demonstrated across age and context. This research clarifies the extent to which children use social categories to guide learning by presenting participants with a live or video‐recorded action demonstration by a linguistic in‐group and/or out‐group model. Participants’ (N = 104) propensity to imitate these actions was assessed. Nineteen‐month‐olds did not selectively imitate the actions of the in‐group model in live contexts, though in‐group preferences were found after watching the demonstration on video. Three‐year‐olds selectively imitated the actions demonstrated by the in‐group member regardless of context. These results indicate that in‐group preferences have a more nuanced effect on social learning than previous research has indicated.     

Perspectives in Science — Exploring Science,Technology and Society

Abstract

The National Film Board of Canada is breaking new ground in educational technology with a pilot series of ‘interactive’ videos entitled Perspectives in Science. The series, aimed at the junior high school level, addresses issues of environmental and sociological concern not traditionally dealt with in formal science curricula. This paper examines the rationale behind the development of the Perspectives in Science video series. Science curriculum guidelines across Canada are being re‐written to reflect a change in education strategies that will encompass not only the teaching of scientific concepts, but also the applications of those concepts, as well as the implications of utilizing those concepts. Referred to as the ‘S‐T‐S’ connection, or, Science‐Technology‐Society, the new focus has been extensively documented by the Science Council of Canada and is currently causing a stir in the science teaching community as teachers scramble to find audio‐visual productions that address these new concerns and, at the same time, engage their students.

This paper also explains the design concept for presenting materials on S‐T‐S in an interactive model. Each video includes a short, open‐ended drama, followed by a number of ‘interactive components’. The tapes are ‘interactive’ in that teachers and students can choose to follow the material linearly or search for specific segments using the running time code as an electronic page reference. The interactive components consist of documentary style discussions with Canadians involved in some aspect of the scientific, technological, and societal issues presented, animated sequences, experiments, and filmography. The videos investigate issues of water, biotechnology, and toxic waste—with additional topics on soil, forestry, and air in production.

Finally, this paper documents the formative evaluation of the series noting the favourable response of teachers and students to the design concept and material content. The findings of this research indicated that the interactive video was both timely and appropriate for science teaching in view of major changes now being made to science curricula.     

How television production specialists learn distance education skills and knowledge

The purpose of this study was to examine how television‐production specialists, who had no previous experience or educational background in the field of distance education, learned the distance education‐related skills and obtained the knowledge necessary to perform their jobs. The purposive sample for this study comprised 12 full‐time television production specialists who were employed for at least one year at universities across the United States to produce live, interactive, video‐based educational programs, but who, prior to employment at their respective universities, had no experience or educational background in the field of distance education. Qualitative methods, including semi‐structured interviews, observation, and concept maps, were used to collect data. This study found that television production specialists used both incidental and informal learning strategies to learn the necessary skills and knowledge they needed to perform their jobs. Participants learned predominantly by three means: assessing previously held assumptions and beliefs; learning by doing through a trial‐and‐error‐type format; and watching other's videoconference programs. Participants also experienced a ‘mindset change’, brought about by such factors as identifying audience and subject‐matter specialists’ needs, in how they viewed their own performance.     

画面主体位置布局的眼动实验及对网络视频资源建设的启示

在视频画面中传递信息的主要对象是画面主体,画面主体能否引起学生的注意,注意的持久性如何直接影响着学生的学习效果。在归纳＂井＂形构图的基础上,通过对教学视频画面主体位置的统计发现,教学视频画面中的主体位置普遍以＂三分法构图＂形式存在。采用心理学研究手段与方法（眼动实验法）,研究画面＂三分法构图＂中主体位置对学生注意的影响,结果显示,主体位于画面中间更能吸引学生的注意力,学生观察画面根据一定的顺序进行的,不同专业学生的眼动指标有差异。     

How do students define their roles and responsibilities in online learning group projects?

The goal of this study was to explore the processes of group role formation in online class settings. Qualitative analysis was used to code chat logs and discussion threads in six undergraduate Family and Consumer Sciences online courses that required online group projects. Four themes related to the process of group role formation emerged: testing the waters, apologies as being nice, tag – you’re it, and struggling to find one’s role. Students created roles of leader, wannabe, spoiler, agreeable enabler, coat‐tails, and supportive worker as the group process evolved over the course of the semester. Results lend support for a balance between allowing students to create and experience roles on their own and faculty assignment of roles. Questions are raised related to faculty approaches toward directing and scaffolding the group process.     

The Multiple Subfunctions of Attention: Differential Developmental Gateways to Literacy and Numeracy

Attention is construed as multicomponential, but the roles of its distinct subfunctions in shaping the broader developing cognitive landscape are poorly understood. The current study assessed 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds (N = 83) to: (a) trace developmental trajectories of attentional processes and their structure in early childhood and (b) measure the impact of distinct attention subfunctions on concurrent and longitudinal abilities related to literacy and numeracy. Distinct trajectories across attention measures revealed the emergence of 2 attentional factors, encompassing “executive” and “sustained–selective” processes. Executive attention predicted concurrent abilities across domains at Time 1, whereas sustained–selective attention predicted basic numeracy 1 year later. These concurrent and longitudinal constraints cast a broader light on the unfolding relations between domain‐general and domain‐specific processes over early childhood.     

Project Cheddarfield: Supporting Co‐Curricular Themes Through Creative Use of Video Course‐Casting

This article chronicles the coordination and better integration of existing institutional resources to support cocurricular themes embedded in the provision of a large enrollment, video‐mediated undergraduate operations management (OM) course. The name Project Cheddarfield refers to a 2008 initiative in which two professors team‐taught an OM course to over 600 undergraduates on two different continents through the repeated rapid exchange of digital video between the United States and Singapore. Simultaneously infused in this core curricular delivery were themes of global awareness and study‐abroad, including the promotion of one particular opportunity that bridged the two campuses. This action research narrative spans over 5 years of related activity leading up to the initiative, as this project is best understood as a trajectory, or the evolving result of design adapting to unfolding realities.     

Teacher professional development as an effect of policy and practice: a Bourdieuian analysis

This article draws on Bourdieu’s field theory and related concepts of habitus and capitals, to explore policy implementation in relation to a particular case of teacher professional development in Queensland, Australia. This implementation process is described as an effect of the interplay between what is called the policy field and the field of teachers’ work. The policy field demonstrates intra‐field tensions between the federal Quality Teacher Programme (QTP) and a raft of state policies, particularly those associated with the Queensland meta‐policy, Queensland State Education 2010 (QSE2010). To investigate the effects of this complex policy ensemble, the article draws upon the experiences of principals and a group of teachers engaged in professional development across a cluster of six schools in south‐east Queensland, Australia. The specific focus is on the ‘Curriculum Board’, a cross‐school body created by the principals in the participating schools, and its mediated work in policy implementation and teacher learning. The article analyses the effects of the involvement of the principals in the creation of the board, the limiting impact of QTP requirements to involve consultants rather than support for teacher release, and the limited influence of the board on teacher learning and policy implementation in the individual schools. By doing so, the analysis shows the disjunctions between the logics of practice of the policy field and that of teachers’ work, and the ways in which the differing habitus of principals and teachers and teacher members of the board affected teacher learning and policy implementation. It is argued that effective implementation requires learning within and across fields, and more reflexive habitus of policy makers, principals and teachers.