User experience of government documents: A framework for informing design decisions

People still use documents in many everyday government processes. From tax payments to passport requests, citizens have to interact with low-interactivity information artifacts such as reports, maps and datasets, among many others. Despite efforts to improve information delivery in the public sector, effective information usage remains a critical topic of action and research. The user experience of government documents has rarely been assessed, despite them being regularly published and frequently used. Considering this, the two following research questions arise: 1) How can government documents be classified (or grouped) in terms of user experience? 2) How can the user experience of government documents be monitored over time in order to inform design decisions? Working with a public agency in Chile, we develop and test a classification and monitoring framework based on two online surveys (N?=?338 and N?=?298). We then propose a framework for understanding user experience of government documents in these three dimensions: interaction goal, volume of information and ease of understanding. Using a graphical representation to classify user experience provides greater visibility of the current status of information produced by a public organization. Furthermore, by monitoring the user experience of a government document at different times, organizations can understand the effect of their design decisions and improve their service quality by implementing user-centered processes.     

Practicing Formative Assessment for Computational Thinking in Making Environments

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Making activities and environments have been shown to foster the development of computational thinking (CT) skills for students in science, technology,...     

Influence of teachers and schools on students' civic outcomes in Latin America

The authors investigated to what extent teachers' practices and school characteristics can influence students' civic knowledge, civic attitudes, and future participation in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico and how this can be related to their specific curricular structures and educational content. It uses data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. The results show that in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, teacher practices and attitudes relate to the civic outcomes. Although teachers' practices and attitudes significantly predict students' civic knowledge, this relationship does not seem relevant for students' expected participation and students' attitudes toward diversity. Still, the democratic environment of the school is a relevant variable in the case of expected participation of students and their attitudes toward diversity, which shows a possible indirect influence of teachers through the school environment. The results are discussed in relation to the civic education curriculum in place in the countries analyzed.     

Word Score: A serious vocabulary game for primary school underachievers

This paper describes a study of “Word Score”, a serious game designed to extend the vocabulary of pupils in upper primary school in the Netherlands. Word Score was used in one school community as part of the national project “Educational Time Extension” (ETE). In ETE class time is extended beyond normal school hours with the aim of improving the learning outcomes of under-performing pupils. The study showed that the use of Word Score can be effective during ETE. The vocabulary of the pupils who played the game outside the regular class time significantly increased. The experiences of both pupils and teachers were very positive. The pupils liked playing Word Score and the teachers were very enthusiastic about the game and the pupils’ results.     

Depth of lexical knowledge among bilingual children: the impact of schooling

The majority of studies examining the language and literacy skills of second generation immigrant bilingual children have focused on the breadth of lexical knowledge in populations with a low level of involvement in literacy activities. This study extends previous work in three ways. First, we focused on a sample of second generation immigrant bilingual children from favorable socio-cultural backgrounds. Second, we examined whether these children show lexical knowledge gaps in their second language on various measures of breadth and depth, as compared to their monolingual peers. Finally, we asked whether this gap tends to increase, remain stable, or decrease with formal schooling. Bilingual (n?=?70) and monolingual (n?=?55) children between the ages of 7 and 8?years were evaluated on measures of depth and breadth of lexical knowledge in the second language of the bilingual group. Both groups were tested twice: at the beginning of second grade and at the beginning of third grade. The findings indicate a significant gap between the target groups with respect to most measures of both depth and breadth at the beginning of second grade. However, after a year of schooling, the bilingual children showed significant progress in their lexical knowledge in their second language. The discussion addresses theoretical and clinical implications of these findings.     

Developmental Change in Notetaking during Scientific Inquiry

This paper addresses the development in children’s and adults’ awareness of the benefits of writing through the analysis of change in notetaking while engaged in scientific inquiry over 10 weeks. Participants were given a notebook that they could choose to use. Our results indicate consistent differences between the performance of adults versus children and also across time. First, there were clear differences in the number of participants who chose to take notes. Second, not only did adults write more notes than children, but also the adults’ mean number of notes slightly increased over time, whereas children’s notes actually decreased in frequency. Third, children and adults differed in the types of notes they took. These results are interpreted in terms of participants’ awareness of what needs to be noted in a scientific task and why it needs to be noted, and they suggest implications for educational practice. First, because learners often have inaccurate representations of the task demands and their own future state of knowledge, they do not perceive the utility of notetaking. Second, because of these misperceptions, learners do not refer back to their notes and thereby miss feedback that would spur the refinement of their metacognitive (particularly metastrategic) knowledge and strategy use. Educators need to design opportunities for students to engage in activities that increase metacognitive knowledge of their own cognitive abilities and the demands of the task.     

Elementary Students' Laboratory Record Keeping During Scientific Inquiry

The present study examines the mutual interaction between students' writing and scientific reasoning among sixth‐grade students (age 11–12 years) engaged in scientific inquiry. The experimental task was designed to promote spontaneous record keeping compared to previous task designs by increasing the saliency of task requirements, with the design goal of making the relationship between record keeping and inquiry strategies more explicit and visible. Compared to previous studies, this new task design resulted both in a higher amount of record keeping overall and in a higher quality of information, which is interpreted to be a result of increased participants’ metatask and metastrategic knowledge arising from greater engagement with the task. The study found a significant relationship between the quality of students' record keeping and the inquiry strategies that were investigated. However, this relationship varied depending on the type of inquiry strategy. Strategies that are employed during the design of experiments (i.e., factorial combination strategy and control‐of‐variables strategy [CVS]) were statistically related to the number of complete comments (plans and intents), but not with the total number of comments. In contrast, the study found that for strategies employed while evaluating evidence (i.e., drawing inferences), student production of quality records is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective evidence evaluation; in addition to recording high‐quality information, students must also review their records (both from design and evaluation phases).     

Difficulties in L2 Hebrew Reading in Russian-speaking Second Graders

The present study examined factors that influence the process of learning to read in a second language. The Hebrew reading comprehension skills of 68 Russian-speaking children (mean age 7 years 6 months) were screened at the start of Grade 2. From this sample, 40 participants were selected: 20 successful learners and 20 unsuccessful learners. These two groups were then tested on a wide range of language skills (e.g., phonological processing, vocabulary, syntactic and morphological awareness) in both languages (Hebrew and Russian) and reading skills in Hebrew (e.g., reading speed and accuracy). Two factors, level of spoken Hebrew and phonological awareness deficits in both languages, were significant. Phonological awareness difficulties constituted the key factor associated with poor decoding whereas insufficient mastery of spoken Hebrew was important in the case of reading comprehension. An interesting dissociation was also found in our poor readers between impaired phonological awareness and other unimpaired phonological processing abilities such as oral pseudoword repetition and working memory. These findings suggest that, in addition to poor spoken L2 proficiency, poor readers are characterized more by a metalinguistic rather than a linguistic deficit in their native tongue.