The seductive details effect in technology‐delivered instruction

Seductive details are highly interesting information tangential to course objectives. The inclusion of seductive details generally harms performance on recall tests, but few studies have used multimedia training or investigated effects on performance on recognition tests or transfer tasks. We conducted two studies using computer‐based training, instructing college students to use either Excel or Word mail merge. Contrary to most prior results, we found no negative effect for seductive details on recognition tests, and we found a facilitative effect on transfer performance. We discuss implications for theories of learning and transfer, and practical implications for instructional design and delivery.     

Teachers' learning while constructing technology‐based instructional resources

Grounded in a constructionist paradigm, this study examined elementary school teachers' learning while creating technology‐rich instructional materials. Sixteen teachers at an elementary school were interviewed about their experience. Using the components of Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge as an analytical framework, inductive qualitative analysis indicated that these professional learning activities led to teachers' growth primarily in technological knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge. These findings as well as implications for designing professional learning activities for teachers are also shared.     

Counseling is not a Profession—Yet

Criteria for a profession established by McCully and Miller (1969) and others were applied to the occupation of counseling. It seems that counseling is not yet a profession primarily because it lacks professional autonomy and legal recognition.     

Literature‐informed,one‐turn action research: three cases and a commentary

Although action research is a common feature of courses of initial teacher training, the evidence as to its efficacy, in encouraging reflection among trainees, is mixed. This article discusses cases of action research assignments carried out by three trainees into their own practice in relation to (a) behaviour management, (b) monitoring and assessing, and (c) pupil‐centred education. The assignments are analysed using Bloom et al's. (1964) typology of thinking skills, Handal & Lauvas's (1987) model of reflective practice, and typologies of action research by Noffke (1997) and Rearick and Feldman (1999). They are positioned as cases of ‘literature‐informed, one‐turn’ action research; a concept which is discussed in relation to other concepts of action research.     

Challenging the knowledge‐transfer orthodoxy: Knowledge co‐construction in technology‐enhanced learning for children with autism

Experimental intervention studies constitute the current dominant research designs in the autism education field. Such designs are based on a ‘knowledge‐transfer’ model of evidence‐based practice in which research is conducted by researchers, and is then ‘transferred’ to practitioners to enable them to implement evidence‐based interventions. While these research designs contribute important knowledge, they lead to a gap between what the research evidence may prescribe and what happens in practice, with a concomitant disparity between the priorities of researchers and practitioners. This paper discusses findings from the ESRC‐funded ‘SHAPE’ project, which adopted a different model of evidence‐based practice, focusing on knowledge co‐construction. Pupils (N = 8), teachers (N = 10), a speech and language therapist and a parent in three different school communities investigated creative ways in which children's social communication skills could be enhanced through technology use. Through a participatory methodology, digital stories were used as a method to enable engagement with the practical realities of the classroom and empower practitioners to construct and share their own authentic narratives. Participants articulated precise knowledge about the learning opportunities afforded to them and their pupils through quality interactions that were mediated by the technologies, as evidenced through digital stories. The SHAPE project shows that it is feasible to develop methodologies that enable genuine knowledge co‐construction with school practitioners, parents and pupils. Such co‐construction could offer realistic opportunities for pedagogical emancipation and innovation in evidence‐based practice as an alternative to the currently dominant and narrow model of knowledge transfer.     

Use of a technology‐enhanced version of the good behavior game in an elementary school setting

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a variation of the Good Behavior Game (GBG) in which teachers used ClassDojo to manage each team's progress. ClassDojo is a computer‐based program that enables teachers to award students with points for demonstrating target behaviors. Dependent variables included class‐wide disruptive and academically engaged behavior, teachers’ ratings on the Behavior Intervention Rating Scale (BIRS), and the rate of teacher praise statements delivered in each phase. Overall, results indicated that the GBG with ClassDojo was effective at reducing disruptive behavior, increasing academically engaged behavior, and was rated as socially valid. Additionally, when the intervention was in place, increases in the amount of behavior‐specific praise statements delivered were observed across all three classrooms.     

Procrastination—Not all it's put off to be

Although procrastination has devastating negative effects on performance, many of us employ common myth‐like justifications for it, thereby attempting to alleviate the guilt and stress that commonly accompany putting things off when we know we should not. Working better under pressure, being more creative at the last minute, and avoiding tasks because of perfectionism are three rationalizations that we often give for delay. The consequences of procrastination include missed deadlines, health and financial problems, guilt, stress, and work that isn't our best. To overcome a tendency to procrastinate, focusing on avoiding it is not the best response. Instead, adopting a task‐oriented, problem‐solving focus or set of strategies can work even for people with a long history of putting things off. These strategies include increasing the perceived value of a task, adjusting expectations for success, reducing impulsive temptations, and approaching larger projects or those with longer timelines in smaller segments with progress checks along the way. Procrastinators can learn how to change their approach to getting work done and thereby reduce their tendency to delay.     

Transition and technology—Evaluation of blended learning delivered by university staff to 6th form students

This paper tackles two issues which are closely related: transition from pre‐entry learning to studying at university and the role blended learning strategies might have in supporting this transition. It draws on the pilot delivery of two credit‐bearing modules which were delivered in two pre‐entry institutions. The modules followed two different models in terms of their alignment to the pre‐entry curriculum and in their mode of delivery. They were evaluated through questionnaires and focus groups with students. Both university tutors and coordinators at the schools were also interviewed in order to identify barriers in the process from their perspectives. This paper contributes to research in this field by identifying, from the key stakeholders of students' and deliverers' vantage points, factors that are specific to the blended learning process and contribute to a more structured and positive transition experience for the students. It looks at how blended methodologies can enhance the transition process, as well as what some of the barriers might be. As a consequence, the paper will provide some suggestions as to how institutions may overcome some of those issues identified in order to replicate the practice successfully.     

Emotion recognition and communication for reducing second‐language speaking anxiety in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment

e‐Learning is becoming an increasingly popular educational paradigm because of the rapid growth of the Internet. Recent studies have argued that affective modelling (ie, considering a learner's emotional or motivational state) should also be considered while designing learning activities. Many studies indicated that various learning emotions markedly impact learning outcomes. In the language education field, many studies have investigated anxiety associated with learning a second language, noting that anxiety has an adverse effect on the performance of those speaking English as a second language. Therefore, how to reduce anxiety associated with learning a second language to increase learning performance is an important research issue in the language education field. Accordingly, this study employed a sensor, signal processing, wireless communication, system‐on‐chip and machine‐learning techniques in developing an embedded human emotion recognition system based on human pulse signals for detecting three human emotions—nervousness, peace and joy—to help teachers reduce language‐learning anxiety of individual learners in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment. The accuracy rate of the proposed emotion recognition model evaluated by cross‐validation is as high as 79.7136% when filtering out human pulse signals that have bias. Moreover, this study applied the embedded emotion recognition system to assist instructor's teaching in a synchronous English conversation environment by immediately reporting variations in individual learner emotions to the teacher during learning. In this instructional experiment, the teacher can give appropriate learning assistance or guidance based on the emotion states of individual learners. Experimental results indicate that the proposed embedded human emotion recognition system is helpful in reducing language‐based anxiety, thus promoting instruction effectiveness in English conversation classes.     

Boundary interaction: Towards developing a mobile technology‐enabled science curriculum to integrate learning in the informal spaces

This paper explores the crossover between formal learning and learning in informal spaces supported by mobile technology, and proposes design principles for educators to carry out a science curriculum, namely Boundary Activity‐based Science Curriculum (BAbSC). The conceptualization of the boundary object, and the principles of boundary activity as the key elements to fuse the merits of learning in informal spaces with formal learning, are discussed and elaborated. The key elements of BAbSC are further articulated to provide the framework for curriculum design and development from a holistic perspective. The proposed principles and framework will reinforce the theoretical underpinnings of mobile technology‐enabled curriculum design and development, and can be used to guide teachers to implement curriculum in a more principle‐based and structured manner.     

Using text mining to uncover students' technology‐related problems in live video streaming

Because of their capacity to sift through large amounts of data, text mining and data mining are enabling higher education institutions to reveal valuable patterns in students' learning behaviours without having to resort to traditional survey methods. In an effort to uncover live video streaming (LVS) students' technology related‐problems and to improve their learning experience, we applied text mining to data culled from LVS interactions. Our findings revealed low LVS student participation, which triggered us to initiate several actions to promote more active student participation. Our findings support previous studies regarding the effectiveness of data mining in transforming raw educational data into knowledge and decision‐making tools.     

Why Doers Do—Part 3: External‐Intangible Elements of Human Performance

The externality‐tangibility model of human performance is a human performance technology (HPT) model that categorizes nine all‐inclusive elements of HPT into families of elements that can be external or internal to a performer and tangible or intangible. This third of three installments looks at the two factors that are external to a performer and are intangible: management and leadership. Applying the externality‐tangibility model consistently entails a six‐step process. There are limits to the externality‐tangibility model because it is focused on human performance and not on other factors of organization performance.     

Give and take: A re‐analysis of assessor and assessee's roles in technology‐facilitated peer assessment

The study examined how playing two roles as assessors and assessees in technology‐assisted peer assessment contributes to students' performance. Data from a previous study was recoded and analysed to understand peer assessment processes from a different angle. Findings of our previous study supported the importance of the assessor's role, but not the assessee's role. In the present study, the assessee's role was re‐examined based on the assessee's ability to critically judge and act upon peer feedback, instead of quality of peer feedback that they received. Regression analysis was conducted, and results suggested that how students responded to peer feedback, as indicated by the number of good versus misleading suggestions incorporated, significantly predicted their final project scores. The findings support the importance of both assessor and assessee's roles in peer assessment and provide valuable implications for effective implementation of peer assessment.