An Analysis of Teaching Competence in Science Teachers Involved in the Design of Context-based Curriculum Materials

The committees for the current Dutch context-based innovation in secondary science education employed teachers to design context-based curriculum materials. A study on the learning of science teachers in design teams for context-based curriculum materials is presented in this paper. In a correlation study, teachers with (n?=?25 and 840 students) and without (n?=?8 and 184 students) context-based curriculum material design experience were compared on context-based competence. Context-based competence comprises context handling, regulation, emphasis, design, and school innovation. Context-based teaching competence was mapped using both qualitative and quantitative research methods in a composite instrument. Due to the differences in design team set-up for different science subjects, teachers with design experience from different science subjects were also compared on their context-based competence. It was found that teachers with design experience showed more context-based competence than their non-designing colleagues. Furthermore, teachers designing for biology showed more context-based competence than their peers from other science subjects.     

Introducing serious games with Wikis: empowering the teacher with simple technologies

Despite the continuous and abundant growth of the game market the uptake of games in education has been hampered by the general impression that games require complex technologies and that games are difficult to organise and to embed in education curriculums. This article explores to what extent a simple serious game scenario that can be easily adopted and adapted by individual teachers and that only uses a common, relatively simple technology can leverage the adoption of serious games. It discusses the design of such a game, Argument, based on a Wiki and its use in a six weeks trial by students of a Master of Learning Sciences Programme. The results indicate that, even though a Wiki has clear limitations, it is a useful instrument to build game alike educational activities, to gain experience with and as a first step to use (more) complex serious games.     

Schools and Moral Education: Conformism or Autonomy?

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education.     

Testing the Intervention Effect in Single-Case Experiments: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

This article reports on a Monte Carlo simulation study, evaluating two approaches for testing the intervention effect in replicated randomized AB designs: two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and using the additive method to combine randomization test p values (RTcombiP). Four factors were manipulated: mean intervention effect, number of cases included in a study, number of measurement occasions for each case, and between-case variance. Under the simulated conditions, Type I error rate was under control at the nominal 5% level for both HLM and RTcombiP. Furthermore, for both procedures, a larger number of combined cases resulted in higher statistical power, with many realistic conditions reaching statistical power of 80% or higher. Smaller values for the between-case variance resulted in higher power for HLM. A larger number of data points resulted in higher power for RTcombiP.     

Constructing Rotating Item Pools for Constrained Adaptive Testing

Preventing items in adaptive testing from being over- or underexposed is one of the main problems in computerized adaptive testing. Though the problem of overexposed items can be solved using a probabilistic item-exposure control method, such methods are unable to deal with the problem of underexposed items. Using a system of rotating item pools, on the other hand, is a method that potentially solves both problems. In this method, a master pool is divided into (possibly overlapping) smaller item pools, which are required to have similar distributions of content and statistical attributes. These pools are rotated among the testing sites to realize desirable exposure rates for the items. A test assembly model, motivated by Gulliksen's matched random subtests method, was explored to help solve the problem of dividing a master pool into a set of smaller pools. Different methods to solve the model are proposed. An item pool from the Law School Admission Test was used to evaluate the performances of computerized adaptive tests from systems of rotating item pools constructed using these methods.     

A Statistical Test for Detecting Answer Copying on Multiple-Choice Tests

A statistical test for the detection of answer copying on multiple-choice tests is presented. The test is based on the idea that the answers of examinees to test items may be the result of three possible processes: (1) knowing, (2) guessing, and (3) copying, but that examinees who do not have access to the answers of other examinees can arrive at their answers only through the first two processes. This assumption leads to a distribution for the number of matched incorrect alternatives between the examinee suspected of copying and the examinee believed to be the source that belongs to a family of "shifted binomials." Power functions for the tests for several sets of parameter values are analyzed. An extension of the test to include matched numbers of correct alternatives would lead to improper statistical hypotheses.     

Towards multimodal emotion recognition in e-learning environments

This paper presents a framework (FILTWAM (Framework for Improving Learning Through Webcams And Microphones)) for real-time emotion recognition in e-learning by using webcams. FILTWAM offers timely and relevant feedback based upon learner's facial expressions and verbalizations. FILTWAM's facial expression software module has been developed and tested in a proof-of-concept study. The main goal of this study was to validate the use of webcam data for a real-time and adequate interpretation of facial expressions into extracted emotional states. The software was calibrated with 10 test persons. They received the same computer-based tasks in which each of them were requested 100 times to mimic specific facial expressions. All sessions were recorded on video. For the validation of the face emotion recognition software, two experts annotated and rated participants’ recorded behaviours. Expert findings were contrasted with the software results and showed an overall value of kappa of 0.77. An overall accuracy of our software based on the requested emotions and the recognized emotions is 72%. Whereas existing software only allows not-real time, discontinuous and obtrusive facial detection, our software allows to continuously and unobtrusively monitor learners' behaviours and converts these behaviours directly into emotional states. This paves the way for enhancing the quality and efficacy of e-learning by including the learner's emotional states.     

Can visual aids in representational illustrations help pupils to solve mathematical word problems more realistically?

We investigated the effect of two visual aids in representational illustrations on pupils’ realistic word problem solving. In part 1 of our study, 288 elementary school pupils received an individual paper-and-pencil task with seven problematic items (P-items) in which realistic considerations need to be made to come to an appropriate reaction. These items were presented together either with representational illustrations, representational illustrations in which an element was added to make the realistic modelling complexity more apparent, or representational illustrations in which this element was cued. In part 2, the pupils received the same P-items together with a realistic and a non-realistic answer option, with the request to choose the best answer. The findings show that there was no positive effect of the visual aids on the number of realistic reactions in part 1 and that when reviewing possible answers to P-items in part 2, there again was no positive effect.