Exploring technology readiness and practices of kindergarten student-teachers in Saudi Arabia: A mixed-methods study

Education and Information Technologies - This study aims to explore kindergarten student teachers’ readiness to integrate technology into their future classrooms and factors affect their...     

Validation of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale–Short Form across different age groups in the Turkish context

A short 12-item version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale–Short Form (CAAS-SF) was validated across three different age groups in the Turkish context. Scale scores demonstrated adequate to high internal consistency and 4-week test–retest reliability, good fit with the original four-factor model, factorial invariance across gender and age groups, strong convergence with the 24-item version, negative associations with trait anxiety and work stress, and positive associations with career decision self-efficacy. It was concluded that the Turkish version of the CAAS-SF appears to be a valid and reliable measure for assessing career adaptability and using it in career education and counseling process.     

Participation in online discussion environments: Is it really effective?

This study aimed to develop a rubric to assess participation of students in online discussion environments. For this purpose, the study included 168 students who participated in a course offered online during the spring semester of the 2015–2016 academic year. Developed based on the literature, the rubric consists of two parts (Form and Content, and Number and Density) and seven criteria in total. “Form and Content” consists of congruity of the message in terms of subject, clarity of the message, original value of the message, interactional value of the message, and directing the subject; whereas, “Number and Density” consists of the number of messages and their density. Four different discussion subjects were presented to the students in an online discussion environment. The researchers analyzed the students’ messages individually. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed in order to obtain evidence for construct validity. After conducting the factor analysis, results showed that the first dimension, which is “form and content” sub-factor, is unidimensional. The “number and density” sub-factor was included in the graded scoring key based on the literature and expert opinion. The findings show that the graded scoring key is reliable and valid.     

Information retention’s relationships with flow,presence and engagement in guided 3D virtual environments

The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation of different variables with information retention in guided 3D virtual learning environments by employing three experimental designs. In each experiments, different participants were included in the same population and different variables were considered. Information retention test, flow, presence, engagement scales were used as data collection tools. Namely measures of flow, presence and engagement were examined to see their correlation with retention in experiment 1, 2 and 3. As a result, not the total score of flow but focused attention, enjoyment and skill dimensions has a weak but significant correlation with information retention, while the challenge has a moderate and significant negative correlation. In the second experiment, retention had a significant, low-level relationship with teaching presence and cognitive presence, but it did not have a similar relationship with social presence. In the third experiment, information retention significantly correlated with affective and cognitive engagement, but not with behavioral engagement. Although the three studies’ participants were from the same population, It was seen that the differences in the level of relationship between information retention and the variables studied in each study. Nevertheless, it was found that the levels of flow, presence and engagement of students are important for information retention in a guided 3D virtual learning environment. The study is thought to guide researchers to design 3D virtual learning environments for different purposes, considering these variables.     

Examining pre-service teachers’ opinions about digital story design

Math is a subject in which students are generally not very interested and are unsuccessful compared to other courses. It has been suggested that digital stories designed for educational purposes could be used to prevent students’ lack of interest and failure in this subject. However, designing stories that are fit for purpose is important if the use of digital stories is to be successful. The purpose of this study is to investigate pre-service teachers’ opinions about how they utilized the steps of Gagne’s model while designing digital stories for math lessons. The participants in the study were 49 pre-service teachers studying at a Math Department at a Turkish state university in the spring term of the 2014–2015 academic year. The Pre-service Teachers’ Opinion Form and a Personal Information Form, both developed by the researchers, were used as data collection tools in the study, in which the qualitative method was adopted. Content analysis was utilized to analyze the data collected through open-ended questions. When the findings were examined it was seen that pre-service teachers had designed digital stories in which they often chose to attract attention by creating interesting characters in the “gaining students’ attention” step of Gagne’s teaching model, that the main character stated the objectives/topic in the story precisely in the “informing students of the objectives” step, and that the characters created repeated the previous topic in the “stimulating recall of prior learning” step. In the current study, the integration of digital story design into lesson plans in accordance with Gagne’s model was carried out and pre-service teachers’ opinions about their experiences of this process were investigated.