You cannot do this alone! Increasing task interdependence in cooperative educational videogames to encourage collaboration

Complex, multimedia software such as educational videogames offer a wide range of elements to modify learner behavior. The adjustment of such software might support learning, especially in complex settings like collaborative or cooperative scenarios. Coming from a theoretical background of educational psychology, our experiment seeks to implement the “jigsaw strategy” within educational videogames. We conducted an experiment with sixty participants to compare conditions with or without increased task interdependence through the jigsaw strategy (i.e., the distribution of game elements and essential information). The participants had to rebuild a house from the 1894 novel Effi Briest within an adjusted version of the “sandbox” game Minecraft. The results show increased play performance, and learning outcomes with increased task interdependence. We conducted mediator and moderator analysis, which revealed a strong impact of play performance on learning outcomes. Additional analyses of mental effort, cognitive load, and efficiency allowed for deep insights into the playing and learning process. These insights enrich current theories about collaboration, mental strain, and the working memory effect and highlight the applicability of collaborative mechanics within educational videogames.     

Print exposure across the reading life span

Reading and Writing - Leisure reading is a main contributor to print exposure, which is in turn related to individual differences in reading and language skills. The Author Recognition Test (ART)...     

Student Teachers’ Knowledge About Chemical Representations

Chemical representations serve as a communication tool not only in exchanges between scientists but also in chemistry lessons. The goals of the present study were to measure the extent of student teachers’ knowledge about chemical representations, focusing on chemical formulae and structures in particular, and to explore which factors related to the education in school and university contribute to inter-individual differences. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, 322 students from 12 German universities in different stages of their university education were tested with the Chemical Representations Inventory (CRI, Taskin, Bernholt, & Parchmann, 2015). In addition, a short questionnaire was administered containing demographic data and possible factors that could have an effect on students’ success in solving the items of the inventory. The data was analyzed by using Rasch modeling. The results show that student teachers’ knowledge about chemical representations is quite low, with an average of students’ total achievement of 50 % in the corresponding inventory on chemical representations. A multivariate linear model revealed that passing exam(s) in organic chemistry at university, the grade of school leaving certificate, gender as well as studying chemistry in upper secondary school on basic and advanced levels are significant predictors of student teachers’ knowledge. In total, these predictors are able to explain 30.3 % of the variance in the test results. The dominance of school-related variables in the regression analysis indicates that school education seems to be still important after several years of studying and is not equalized by education at university.     

Constructivism in Practice: an Exploratory Study of Teaching Patterns and Student Motivation in Physics Classrooms in Finland,Germany and Switzerland

For the last three decades, moderate constructivism has become an increasingly prominent perspective in science education. Researchers have defined characteristics of constructivist-oriented science classrooms, but the implementation of such science teaching in daily classroom practice seems difficult. Against this background, we conducted a sub-study within the tri-national research project Quality of Instruction in Physics (QuIP) analysing 60 videotaped physics classes involving a large sample of students (N?=?1192) from Finland, Germany and Switzerland in order to investigate the kinds of constructivist components and teaching patterns that can be found in regular classrooms without any intervention. We applied a newly developed coding scheme to capture constructivist facets of science teaching and conducted principal component and cluster analyses to explore which components and patterns were most prominent in the classes observed. Two underlying components were found, resulting in two scales—Structured Knowledge Acquisition and Fostering Autonomy—which describe key aspects of constructivist teaching. Only the first scale was rather well established in the lessons investigated. Classes were clustered based on these scales. The analysis of the different clusters suggested that teaching physics in a structured way combined with fostering students’ autonomy contributes to students’ motivation. However, our regression models indicated that content knowledge is a more important predictor for students’ motivation, and there was no homogeneous pattern for all gender- and country-specific subgroups investigated. The results are discussed in light of recent discussions on the feasibility of constructivism in practice.     

Exclusion Expected? Cardiac Slowing Upon Peer Exclusion Links Preschool Parent Representations to School-Age Peer Relationships

Attachment theory proposes that children’s representations of interactions with caregivers guide information-processing about others, bridging interpersonal domains. In a longitudinal study (N = 165), preschoolers (M_age = 5.19 years) completed the MacArthur Story Stem Battery to assess parent representations. At school-age (M_age = 8.42 years), children played a virtual ballgame with peers who eventually excluded them to track event-related cardiac slowing, a physiological correlate of rejection, especially when unexpected. At both ages, parents and teachers reported on peer and emotional problems. During exclusion versus inclusion-related events, cardiac slowing was associated with greater positive parent representations and fewer emerging peer problems. Cardiac slowing served as a mediator between positive parent representations and peer problems, supporting a potential psychophysiological mechanism underlying the generalization of attachment-related representations to peer relationships.     

Venture capital and the birth of the local area networking industry

Venture capital has played an important role in funding the development of a number of US high-technology industries. Economists and business scholars utilizing models based in traditional economics have studied venture capital from the perspective of investment decision-making. These models provide significant insights, and yet they do not explain the actual operation of venture capital. This case study of the creation of LAN industry utilizes a synthesis of the dominant design and social constructionist perspectives to create a more nuanced explanation of how the practice of venture capitalists operates to create firms and industries.     

Changes in ankle work,foot work,and tibialis anterior activation throughout a long run

Background:The ankle and foot together contribute to over half of the positive and negative work performed by the lower limbs during running.Yet,little is known about how foot kinetics change throughout a run.The amount of negative foot work may decrease as tibialis anterior(TA)electromyography(EMG) changes throughout longer-duration runs.Therefore,we examined ankle and foot work as well as TA EMG changes throughout a changing-speed run.Methods:Fourteen heel-striking subjects ran on a treadmill ...     

Missing children: how Chilean schools evaded accountability by having low-performing students miss high-stakes tests

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - High-stakes testing pressures schools to raise test scores, but schools respond to pressure in different ways. Some responses produce real,...