Proof Frameworks: A Way to Get Started

Many mathematics departments have instituted transition-to-proof courses for second semester sophomores to help them learn how to construct proofs and to prepare them for proof-based courses, such as abstract algebra and real analysis. We have developed a way of getting students, who often stare at a blank piece of paper not knowing what to do, to start writing proofs. This is the technique of writing proof frameworks, which is based on the logical structure of the statements of the theorems and associated definitions. Also, in order to unpack the conclusion and know what is to be proved, students need definitions to become “operable.”     

Calcium,a Cell Cycle Commander,Drives Colon Cancer Cell Diffpoptosis

The story of the cell commonder, calcium, reaches into all corners of the cell and controls cell proliferation, differentiation, function, and even death. The calcium-driven eukaryotic revolution is one of the great turning points in the life history, happened about two billion years later when it was converted from a dangerous killer that had to be kept out of cell into the cell master which drives the cell. This review article will take the readers to a tour of tissues chosen to best show the calcium’s many faces (proliferator, differentiator, and killer). The reader will first see calcium and its many helpers, such as the calcium-binding signaler protein calmodulin, directing the key events of the cell cycle. Then the tour will move onto the colon to show calcium driving the proliferation of progenitor cells, then the differentiation and ultimately the programmed death of their progeny. Moreover, the reader will learn of the striking disabling and bypassing of calcium-dependent control mechanisms during carcinogenesis. Finally, recommendations should be taken from the underlying mechanisms through which calcium masters the presistance, progression, and even apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells. Thus, this could be of great interest for designing of chemoprevention protocols.     

Categorizations of the interface of evolution and religion

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This piece responds to the article by Arif Rachmatullah, Soonhye Park, and Minsu Ha “Crossing borders between science and religion: Muslim Indonesian...     

The role of design ethics in maintaining students' privacy: A call to action to learning designers in higher education

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well-being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision-making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Existing codes of ethical standards from well-known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.
• Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.
• Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.
• Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.

What this paper adds

• A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.
• A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision-making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being.
• Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.
• Methods—using a practical ethical decision-making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.
• A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as “dark patterns” in online course design.

     

African philosophy for successful integration of technology in higher education

Due partly to the multimodal and multiscalar nature of technology applications, there lacks theories to explain successful technology integration in teaching and learning in higher education. Such multidisciplinary theories developed primarily within Western contexts as behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, connectivism, collaborationism, TPACK framework and authentic learning theory have been used to underpin technology-enhanced teaching and learning globally. However, their primary focus on basic education and their sensitivity to contextual reality seem to restrict their salience and fecundity to successfully explain technology integration in higher education in the Global South, including Africa. For more contextual relevance and significance, the embodiment in curricula and pedagogy of African knowledge systems and emerging societal needs and challenges is thus critical. Drawing on Asabiyya and Ubuntu humanistic philosophies respectively from Northern and Southern Africa and Yoruba empiricist and Zara Yacob rationalist epistemologies from Western and Eastern Africa, this study proposes African philosophical perspectives to underpin technology integration in higher education. The epistemologies define the nature of student and faculty engagements and strategies, whereas the humanistic philosophies offer values that could guide ethical technology use and engagement. Technologies are conceived alternatively as knowledge banks, communication media and cognitive tools to think through and with. Implications for further research and practice are identified.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Multidisciplinary theories developed primarily within Western contexts are used to underpin technology-enhanced teaching and learning globally.
• Their primary focus on basic education and their sensitivity to socio-cultural and economic contextual reality restrict their salience and fecundity to successfully explain technology integration in teaching and learning in higher education in the Global South, including Africa.
• African philosophical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological thinking is critical for successful technology integration.

What this paper adds

• This study interrogated how African philosophies of humanity and knowledge could support successful technology integration in teaching and learning in Africa.
• Drawing on Asabiyya and Ubuntu philosophies, respectively, from Northern and Southern Africa, the study proposes strategies for making the oppressive faculty–student relationships rampant in African campuses more humane and emancipatory.
• Drawing on Yoruba empiricist and Zara Yacob rationalist epistemological orientations from Western and Eastern Africa, this study proposes strategies for supporting truly engaging and empowering pedagogies within technology-enhanced spaces.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• The purpose of education in successful technology-enhanced spaces needs to aim at improving student capacities and skills for further learning and to ensure full participation in practice communities within and outside higher education.
• The content of education or curriculum needs to primarily embody African/local philosophical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological thinking, as well as emerging community needs and challenges.
• The method of education and student assessment need to support and promote the cultivation of student skills and capabilities as well as values and ethics highly needed in their communities and beyond.

     

Exploring how children with reading difficulties respond to instructional supports in literacy games and the role of prior knowledge

Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty-six primary children (age 8–11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types—noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game—one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Instructional supports, such as elaborative feedback, are a key feature of learning games.
• To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge.
• Prior knowledge is an important moderator to consider in the context of elaborative feedback.

What this paper adds

• Providing additional instruction (eg, pre-training) may act as a knowledge enhancer building on children's existing disciplinary expertise, whereas the inclusion of elaborative feedback (eg, a hint) could be seen as a knowledge equaliser enabling children regardless of their prior knowledge to use the pre-training within their gameplay.
• Highlights the importance of children's preferred learning strategies within the design of pre-training and feedback to ensure children are able to use the instructional support provided within the game.
• Possible implications for pre-training and feedback design within literacy games, as well as highlighting areas for further research.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Pre-training for literacy games should highlight key features of the learning content and explicitly make connections with the target learning objective as well as elaborative feedback.
• Pre-training should be combined with different types of in-game feedback for different types of learners (eg, level of prior knowledge) or depending on the type of knowledge that designers want to build (eg, metalinguistic vs. epilinguistic).
• Modality, content and timing of the feedback should be considered carefully to match the specific needs of the intended target audience and the interaction between them given the primary goal of the game.

     

ECRIMO,an app to train first graders' spelling: Effectiveness and comparison between different designs

The present study assessed the effectiveness of the ECRIMO educational application designed to build first-grade level spelling skills. We tested whether using the app to teach spelling would be as effective as providing the same training using traditional paper exercises. The effect of integrating gamification into mobile learning apps, which has been little studied in the context of young children, is also investigated. A pretest/training/posttest design was implemented with 311 first-graders divided in four groups: no training, paper training, the ECRIMO app with gamification features, and the ECRIMO app without gamification. Spelling, reading and phonological awareness abilities was measured at both pretest and posttest. The training was conducted over a 7-week period (4.40 hours in total). The experimental design allowed us to answer three questions: (1) Is spelling training effective regardless of the medium used? (2) Is training through the app as efficient as paper-based training? (3) Does gamification impact students' learning performance? Mixed-model analyses revealed (1) a positive effect on the training outcome depended on the initial spelling ability of participants, (2) a comparable efficiency between autonomous training using the ECRIMO app on tablets and the same training provided by teachers using paper exercises and (3) a marginally positive effect of gamification that is greater for the weakest students. The present study proposes an original and pertinent experimental design to test the relevance of educational applications. The design features of learning apps can impact students' learning differently depending on their initial level. A critical step should be verifying that using online apps for training is at least as effective as the same training using paper exercises.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• A significant number of children experience difficulties in reading and spelling from the first years of learning.
• The use of new technologies to support classroom teaching is rapidly developing as a topic of interest for educational professionals and researchers.
• Evaluations of new technologies developed to enhance literacy skills suggest that many factors can vary their effectiveness.
• The effectiveness of a digital educational application can be enhanced or undermined by design choices, such as gamification.

What this paper adds

• Spelling training with the app ECRIMO seems effective for first year students, especially those with the lowest and middle level.
• Comparable effects of both the tablet-based and paper equivalent training on participants' spelling were found.
• The use of gamification in ECRIMO could be more suitable for the weakest students.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Educational technologies should be evidence-based and should be evaluated with both a passive and an active control group.
• The design should be carefully considered and tested, as it may be advantageous for some students and disadvantageous for others.
• The use of digital technology in education can be beneficial for classroom practice, when the activity can be carried out in total autonomy, leaving the teacher available for a group of pupils with specific needs.