Ethical dilemmas on social media: Swedish secondary teachers’ boundary management on Facebook

With the aim of contributing to the research about the educational use of social media, the paper explores teachers’ experiences of ethical dilemmas on Facebook. The paper draws upon focus group interviews with Swedish secondary teachers. Two main categories of ethical dilemmas, related to the border between private and professional, are detected. The dilemmas concern (1) teachers’ moral responsibility for pupils’ actions and (2) how teachers appear on social media. Different boundary work practices created and used by teachers are identified. The main conclusion is that, by having contact with pupils in a virtual social arena originally intended for private use, teachers’ use of social media brings to fore and intensifies deep-rooted ethical questions about what the teacher role is and should be. Teachers’ participation on social media such as Facebook compels them to reflect upon and position their preferred teacher role in these new social arenas.     

Strategies to reduce the negative effects of spoken explanatory text on integrated tasks

Two experiments involving 125 grade-10 students learning about commerce investigated strategies to overcome the transient information effect caused by explanatory spoken text. The transient information effect occurs when learning is reduced as a result of information disappearing before the learner has time to adequately process it, or link it with new information. Spoken text, unless recorded or repeated in some fashion, is fleeting in nature and can be a major cause of transiency. The three strategies investigated, all theoretically expected to enhance learning, were: (a) replacing lengthy spoken text with written text (Experiments 1 and 2), (b) replacing lengthy continuous text with segmented text (Experiment 1), and (c) adding a diagram to lengthy spoken text (Experiment 2). In both experiments on tasks that required information to be integrated across segments, written text was found to be superior to spoken text. In Experiment 1 the expected advantage of segmented text in reducing transitory effects was not found. Compared with written continuous text the segmented spoken text strategy was inferior. Experiment 2 found that adding a diagram to spoken text was an advantage compared to spoken text alone consistent with a multimedia effect. Overall, the results suggest that spoken text is a cause of the transient information effect, which can be best avoided by substituting written text for spoken text on tasks that require integration of information.     

The effect of narrative-based E-learning systems on novice users’ cognitive load while learning software applications

Educational technology research and development - When novice users try to learn to use a software application that includes a variety of high element interactivity tools, the complex structure of...     

Analysis of anticipation by 3D motion capturing – a new method presented in karate kumite

Anticipation is an important performance factor in karate kumite. A new approach analysing anticipation in realistic combat situations by motion capturing with a high temporal resolution is presented. The advantage of this approach is that both karate athletes interacting sports specific can be recorded synchronously; thus, the presented method has the potential to analyse visual information pickup due to coordination pattern of interaction between real athletes. The aim is to demonstrate the usability of the current method for anticipation research and to investigate if the distance between two athletes and their attacking technique play a role in the reaction of the defending athlete. Furthermore, relevant cues lying within each attacking technique and little individual differences are shown. Four male karate athletes took part in this study. Logistic regression indicated that both factors (distance × attacking technique) play a significant role in reaction. However, a correlation between these factors shows that only the attacking technique is a good predictor for reaction. Results show that the attacking technique jabbing punch (jap. Kizami-Zuki) was easier to anticipate than the attacking techniques reverse punch (jap. Gyaku-Zuki) and the round kick (jap. Mawashi-Geri).     

A Nomadic Information System for Adaptive Exhibition Guidance

The paper describes the electronic guide HIPS that can be used duringthe process of a visit in a museum, i.e., for preparation, execution andevaluation. Users can access the system via the Web to prepare a visitby receiving information about the content and organization of anexhibition and practical issues like location and opening hours. Thevisitor can also prepare a tour for the actual visit or define hotspotswith important exhibits. The system should remind the user when on site.Once the user is in the museum he or she has two specific options to usethe system: the visitor can walk around in the museum and remainstanding where he or she finds an item of interest. The current locationin the room identified by infrared emitters at all exhibits triggers anindicator for the information presentation. Or, the visitor can select atour prepared by a curator, prepared by the user in advance (at home) orgenerated by the user ad hoc. In the museum, the information access isprovided via wireless technologies. This allows the user to accessinformation by moving in the physical space and navigating in theinformation space concurrently. The Web-based server approach allows foradaptive information selection and presentation based on a user modelevaluating the history of the usage of the system. The user canaccelerate the adaptation by specifying interests and preferences in theuser model. Before the visit the user can define tours and hotspots andenter annotations that will be presented or activated by the system inthe appropriate physical environment. After a visit in the museum theuser can evaluate the experience at home for further own inquiries orfor communication with other interested people. Thebefore-during-after-the-visit-support of visitors via nomadicinformation system has been designed based on evidence from ourquestionnaire pre-study, which showed that visitors actually useinformation available in or about museums before and also after avisit.