Eye tracking methodology for studying teacher learning: a review of the research

ABSTRACT

Eye tracking methodology offers insights into human attention, decision-making processes, and user behaviours. In the context of teacher learning, data generated from eye-tracking technology has the potential to provide important information about teachers’ behavioural patterns and cognitive processes that may or may not be occurring during learning experiences. This review analyses existing studies that use eye tracking methodology for studying teacher learning. The authors accessed three different databases (ERIC, PsycNet, and EBSCOHost) for their review. An iterative process of reviewing and coding the articles led to an in-depth review of 10 recently published articles. Emergent themes resulted from the in-depth review and include information processing, multimedia learning, learning tools and resources, and expert-novice knowledge construction. The reviewed articles also highlight how eye tracking can be used to determine teachers’ engagement with learning material, reading patterns, and sense-making strategies. Additional study characteristics, including context, data sources, eye tracking device and metrics were also reviewed. Results of this review shed light on how educational researchers can effectively use eye tracking methodology to investigate teacher learning at different career stages. This, in turn, can inform educational stakeholders about how to optimize learning opportunities and environments.     

Eye tracking as a tool to study and enhance multimedia learning

This special issue comprises a set of six papers, in which studies are presented that use eye tracking to analyse multimedia learning processes in detail. Most of the papers focus on the effects on visual attention of animations with different design features such as spoken vs. written text, different kinds of cues, or different presentation speeds. Two contributions concern effects of learner characteristics (prior knowledge) on visual attention when learning with video and complex graphics. In addition, in some papers eye tracking is not only used as a process measure in itself, but also as input for verbal reports (i.e., cued retrospective reporting). In the two commentaries, the contributions are discussed from a multimedia learning perspective and an eye tracking perspective, by prominent researchers in those fields. Together, the contributions to this issue give an overview of the various possibilities eye tracking opens up for research on multimedia learning and instruction.     

Designing learning experiences for outdoor hybrid learning spaces

With the support of various personal and institutional mobile technologies, numerous physical and virtual spaces can be turned into interesting and motivating hybrid learning settings. By its nature, outdoor mobile learning happens on the move is connected to specific locations and settings inviting learners to study their surroundings, inquire about natural phenomena and solve complex real-life problems. This poses challenges for teachers to design meaningful, contextualized and comprehensive learning experiences. The paper aims to explore what kind of mobile learning scenarios K-12 teachers create and what are the limitations and development perspectives of these scenarios. Content analysis of 25 location-based outdoor learning tracks with 465 questions and tasks was carried out. The results demonstrate that designing and implementing learning activities outside the safe, familiar classroom environment in new hybrid learning spaces is a challenging task for the teachers on many different levels. Taking Bloom’s revised taxonomy, types of contextualization and integrated learning models as frameworks for content analysis of the learning scenarios, the study shows that the teachers do not perceive the potential hybrid spaces and mobile technologies offer in order to design consistent learning experiences that emphasize higher order thinking levels, encompass contextual information and integrate knowledge from multiple disciplinary sources. The paper concludes that there is a need for more teacher training and systemic interventions into current teaching practices that encourage teachers to step outside of their existing teaching paradigms to acknowledge the pedagogical potential of hybrid learning spaces as well as the technological affordances.     

给学生创造有意义的学习经历

给学生创造有意义的学习经历旨在让学生主动参与到学习的全过程,有意义的学习经历具有自发性、参与性、发展性和反思性等特点,而学习内容的生活化、问题化、活动化和系统化则是学生经历有意义学习过程的重要保障.     

A feedback model for data-rich learning experiences

Feedback has been identified as one of the factors with the largest potential for a positive impact in a learning experience. There is a significant body of knowledge studying feedback and providing guidelines for its implementation in learning environments. In parallel, the areas of learning analytics or educational data mining have emerged to explore how to analyse exhaustive digital trails produced by technology mediation to improve learning experiences. Current conceptualisations of feedback do not take into account the presence of these trails nor the presence of knowledge extracted through analytics techniques. This paper presents a model to reconceptualise feedback in data-rich learning experiences. It acknowledges the presence of algorithms to analyse and predict learner behaviour and proposes an integrated view between these elements as part of the feedback process and aspects conventionally present in previous models. This new conceptualisation offers instructors, designers and researchers a framework to formulate feedback processes in scenarios with comprehensive data capturing, while retaining a solid connection with well-established educational theories.     

Modelling benefits-oriented costs for technology enhanced learning

The introduction of technology enhanced learning (TEL) methods changes the deployment of the most important resource in the education system: teachers’ and learners’ time. New technology promises greater personalization and greater productivity, but without careful modeling of the effects on the use of staff time, TEL methods can easily increase cost without commensurate benefit. The paper examines different approaches to comparing the teaching time costs of TEL with traditional methods, concluding that within-institution cost-benefit modeling yields the most accurate way of understanding how teachers can use the technology to achieve the level of productivity that makes personalisation affordable. The analysis is used to generate a set of requirements for a prospective, rather than retrospective cost-benefit model. It begins with planning decisions focused on realizing the benefits of TEL, and uses these to derive the likely critical costs, hence the reversal implied by a ‘benefits-oriented cost model’. One of its principal advantages is that it enables innovators to plan and understand the relationship between the expected learning benefits and the likely teaching costs.

Using an interactive ubiquitous learning system to enhance authentic learning experiences in a cultural heritage course

This paper proposes a novel interactive ubiquitous learning system (IULS) for authentically teaching a cultural heritage course and imparting relevant concepts to students. Experimental results demonstrated that learning performance was significantly improved after students used the IULS. This study also demonstrated that students using the IULS achieved superior results to those achieved using conventional teaching models. No gender bias affecting the performance of students in the experimental group was observed because each student consistently performed to a higher standard on the learning tasks compared with students in the control group, particularly in learning comprehension-related content. The IULS was more effective in enhancing the overall learning performance of students exhibiting different cognitive styles in liberal arts education courses. Furthermore, the results of a survey on Instructional Materials Motivation Survey revealed that Relevance was the most highly rated motivational factor among students who used the IULS, suggesting that students were motivated to use the IULS. Thus, we believe that a liberal arts education supplemented with the IULS yields a significant learning advantage for students by improving overall learning performance and motivation.     

Learning management system and course influences on student actions and learning experiences

Educational technology research and development - From massive open online courses (MOOC) to the smaller scale use of learning management systems, many students interact with online platforms that...     

Writing as a tool for constructive learning: Students' learning experiences during an experiment

Education students' learning experiences were investigated in an experiment where writing was used as a central tool for learning. Experimental group students (n = 15) studied three textbooks, carried out writing assignments requiring knowledge transforming, discussed their assignments in groups and wrote a long essay. Control group students (n = 13) read the same books on their own without engaging in activating learning tasks, attended lectures and took an exam. After the course the students were interviewed and asked what they felt they had learned during the course. They were also asked to fill in a learning assessment form. The interviews and the questionnaire assessments produced similar results. The experimental group students described their learning in a greater variety of ways than did the students in the control group. They emphasised the development of their thinking, changes in their conceptions of the topics studied and their acquisition of communication and study skills more than the control group students. The findings of the present study support earlier studies of writing-to-learn, suggesting that activating textbook reading by means of writing tasks and group discussions may enhance learning of the kind that higher education is aiming at: understanding, conceptional change and the development of critical thinking.     

College credits for previous learning experiences: Reaching nontraditional students

This paper describes how an undergraduate department in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee grants college credits for previous learning experiences to attract and retain nontraditional students from an urban environment. At first students earned these credits by writing a loose biography, but the process by which these credits are earned has become more structured. These Prior Professional Educational Experience credits (as they are named) are now granted on a course-specific basis, where students respond in writing to questions designed to test their knowledge of competency areas offered by the department. Earning these credits has helped older students get through the university and has given them a sense of accomplishment about learnings acquired in nonuniversity settings.     

What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students’ activities than of their fixed characteristics. The teacher's job is then to organise the teaching/learning context so that all students are more likely to use the higher order learning processes which “academic” students use spontaneously. This may be achieved when all components are aligned, so that objectives express the kinds of understanding that we want from students, the teaching context encourages students to undertake the learning activities likely to achieve those understandings, and the assessment tasks tell students what activities are required of them, and tell us how well the objectives have been met. Two examples of aligned teaching systems are described: problem‐based learning and the learning portfolio.     

What the student does: teaching for enhanced learning

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students' activities than of their fixed characteristics. The teacher's job is then to organise the teaching/learning context so that all students are more likely to use the higher order learning processes which “academic” students use spontaneously. This may be achieved when all components are aligned, so that objectives express the kinds of understanding that we want from students, the teaching context encourages students to undertake the learning activities likely to achieve those understandings, and the assessment tasks tell students what activities are required of them, and tell us how well the objectives have been met. Two examples of aligned teaching systems are described: problem-based learning and the learning portfolio.     

小组合作学习的四个基本经验

合作学习是主体性课堂教学中的一项重要策略。近几年来我们在开展主体教育的研究中，把“合作”的观念引进了课堂，在教学中增加了小组合作学习的组织形式，把集体教学、小组教学、个别教学有机地结合起来，取得了较好的效果。首先是教师们通过学习、实践和研究，对合作学习有了更深刻、更清晰、更科学的认识，能站在更高的层面上来理解合作学习，形成了这样的共识：即合作学习不仅仅是一种教学组织形式，而且是一种现代教育思想。因为教学过程本身就是师生之间和生生之间的信息传递、情感交流、人际交往的互动过程，通过合作对学生的认知发…     

李塨的学习经历与经验

李塨是颜孛学派的创始人之一,是清朝初年蟹声全国的大学者.他不仅学富五车.而且好学、善学、苦学.具有极高的学法造诣.好学和善学也是他最终能成为大学问家的关键所在.他所提倡并终身实行的"好""问""行""论"等学习方法与学习经验,很值得后人参考.     

多Euler-Lagrange系统有限时间跟踪控制

为解决多Euler-Lagrange系统有限时间的跟踪控制问题,提出了一种基于非奇异终端滑模的有限时间跟踪控制方法。通过建立多Euler-Lagrange系统动力学跟踪误差模型,将引入连续超螺旋高阶控制项,与所提出的非奇异终端滑模面相结合,设计了一个基于超螺旋的非奇异终端滑模控制方法,使多Euler-Lagrange系统能够消除抖振现象,同时在有限时间内实现对期望目标的跟踪。通过选取合适的Lyapunov函数和相应的仿真证明了所设计控制方法的有效性。