Knowledge Building has been advanced as a pedagogy of engaged learning where students identify as a community whose purpose is to advance their shared ideas. This approach, which has been studied for three decades (Scardamalia & Bereiter, in: K. Sawyer (ed) Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, Cambridge University Press, 2014), includes cognitive, social constructivist, and emotional elements

The emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) broadened the educational landscape by providing free access to quality learning materials for anyone with a device connected to the Internet. However, open access does not guarantee equals opportunities to learn, and research has repetitively reported that learners from affluent countries benefit the most from MOOCs. In this work, we delve into

Unlike the other studies on emotional design in multimedia learning, the present study differentiated the two confounding variables of visual interface design and structured content to manipulate the instructional material. Specifically, we investigated how the visual aesthetics of positive emotional interface design influenced learners’ cognitive processes, emotional valences, learning outcomes, and

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) engages students in solving ill-structured problems, creating group knowledge, and developing self-regulation and collaboration skills. Different scaffoldings, such as minimal-guided, task-oriented, and idea-oriented, can be used to facilitate students’ CPS activities, but their effects have not been comprehensively explored. In this research, we use minimally-guided

Access and personalized instruction required for laboratory education can be highly compromised due to regulatory constraints in times such as COVID-19 pandemic or resource shortages at other times. This directly impacts the student engagement and immersion that are necessary for conceptual and procedural understanding for scientific experimentation. While online and remote laboratories have potential

Several tools and resources have been developed in the past years to enhance the teaching and learning process. Most of them are focused on the process itself, but few focus on the assessment process to detect at-risk learners for later acting through feedback to support them to succeed and pass the course. This research paper presents a case study using an adaptive system called Learning Intelligent

Restrictions on physical gathering due to COVID-19 has compelled higher education institutions to rapidly embrace digital technologies to support teaching and learning. While logistically, the use of digital technologies offers an obvious solution, attention must be given to these methods' pedagogical appropriateness, mainly how students engage and learn in the spaces supported by these technologies

The objective of this article is to analyze the didactic functionality of a chatbot to improve the results of the students of the National University of Distance Education (UNED / Spain) in accessing the university in the subject of Spanish Language. For this, a quasi-experimental experiment was designed, and a quantitative methodology was used through pretest and posttest in a control and experimental

Augmented reality (AR) is a unique, hands-on tool to deliver information. However, its educational value has been mainly demonstrated empirically so far. In this paper, we present a modeling approach to provide users with mastery of a skill, using AR learning content to implement an educational curriculum. We illustrate the potential of this approach by applying this to an important but pervasively

Mobile has become the primary mode of Internet access for many people. Existing studies have generally indicated that mobile Internet represents an inferior substitute for traditional PC-based Internet. In particularly, mobile-only users are often found to be the most disadvantaged. This paper explores the usage characteristics of multimodal users by differentiating mobile-reliant users, who primarily

Educators who design and manage study abroad programs face a series of ethical responsibilities. Meeting these responsibilities is critical in the field of global health, where study abroad programs are often designed to provide healthcare services in under-resourced communities. Leaders in global health have thus formed working groups to study the ethical implications of overseas programming and have

In higher education, one commonly used teaching approach that is intended to develop deep learning is that of the ‘Oxford’ tutorial—a personalized Socratic approach in which an instructor discusses course-related issues with a handful of students. Even though this conventional tutorial model is well supported in the literature, it may be neglected by research-driven academics and is expensive to operate

Purpose This study explores pre-service preschool teachers’ acceptance and self-efficacy towards Educational Robotics (ER) during a university course, and also examines their perceptions of the course. Methodology This is a one-group intervention study with an associational research design that includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods: two pre-questionnaires and two post-questionnaires

Educational technology has become an indispensable aspect of higher education, playing a crucial role in affecting student engagement, in particular. The application, advantages and disadvantages of learning management systems (LMS) and social networking systems in Chinese EFL courses, represented by Superstar—Xuexitong and WeChat, are introduced. The study aims to explore the relationship between

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses online and/or use a blended learning approach. However, there are concerns around differences in student

This study aimed to chronicle and understand the emergency online teaching experience of five faculty members in a liberal arts college located in Tokyo, Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, adopting the autoethnographic method. It explored the nature and dimensions of problems the faculty members faced, resources used to make sense of problems encountered, and actions they took to solve the

This qualitative study examined how teachers fostered student engagement in blended learning (BL), i.e., blended, blended online, and blended synchronous courses that combine synchronous and asynchronous activities. Twenty semi-structured interviews with teachers in various disciplines, at the undergraduate or graduate level in four universities, were conducted and analyzed using an inductive approach

In a context where learning mediated by technology has gained prominence in higher education, learning analytics has become a powerful tool to collect and analyse data with the aim of improving students’ learning. However, learning analytics is part of a young community and its developments deserve further exploration. Some critical stances claim that learning analytics tends to underplay the complexity

This research investigates how learning groups affect student learning from two perspectives: first, the amount of group work students do, and second, the role that they take within the group. It is not clear from the current research how a student’s role in collaborative learning affects his/her development of critical thinking and the construction of knowledge. The present study looks into whether

It is demonstrated that the fully automatic generation of isomorphic questions allows for both repeat assessment, and for this assessment to be individualized. While this does require a substantial up-front effort, once prepared assessments can be reproduced with relative ease and with a near-zero probability of students receiving the same question a second time. We show the effectiveness of this approach

Since the conception of pedagogical agents in multimedia environments, researchers have advocated for agents to be designed to exhibit social cues that prime the social interaction of the target audience. One powerful social cue has been agent gesturing. While most agents are created only to use deictic (pointing) gestures, there is recent evidence that agents that perform all gesture types (iconic

In this paper, we explore the learning and teaching of a maritime simulation programme to understand its deep learning elements. We followed the mixed methods approach and collected student perception data from a maritime school, situated within a UK university, using reflection-based survey (n = 112) and three focus groups with eleven students. Findings include the needs for defining clear learning

Help-seeking is an essential self-regulatory and metacognitive skill. In the online learning environment, much of the learning is self-directed and there are generally less opportunities to receive help in real time. The uses of email and discussion boards are the most common method of seeking help in these environments. The current study explored students’ perceptions of the use of live chat technology

With the rampant pandemic of COVID-19, an increasing number of people are acquiring knowledge through online learning approaches. This study aims to investigate how to improve online learning effectiveness during this special time. Through a mixed design, this study revealed the effect of educational levels, gender, and personality traits on online learning outcomes. It was concluded that postgraduates

The aim of this study was to verify if the UTAUT model, enriched with anxiety and factors relating to students characteristics and to the specificities of online courses, influences persistence in online courses. A theoretical model encompassing 13 variables was tested. Three moderating variables (gender, age and prior online course experience) were taken into account in the analyses. Data was collected

This correlational study investigated the factors affecting cyberloafing behavior in an educational environment, specifically that of a computer laboratory teaching setting. A total of 272 students selected using convenience sampling responded to a questionnaire that collected data about cyberloafing behavior and student demographics, personality type, sense of belonging, motivation, locus of control

This study aims to examine whether it is possible to match digital society, academia and students interests in higher education by testing to what extent the introduction of gamification into active learning setups affects the skills development demanded by the workplace of the digital society of the twenty-first century, the academic achievement standards claimed by the academia, and the satisfaction

The rise of online modes of content delivery, termed e-learning, has increased student convenience and provided geographically remote students with more options for tertiary education. However, its efficacy relies upon student access to suitable technology and the internet, and the quality of the online course material. With the COVID-19 outbreak, education providers worldwide were forced to turn to

Computational thinking is the capacity of undertaking a problem-solving process in various disciplines (including STEM, i.e. science, technology, engineering and mathematics) using distinctive techniques that are typical of computer science. It is nowadays considered a fundamental skill for students and citizens, that has the potential to affect future generations. At the roots of computational-thinking

With the development of information technology and the advent of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and Small Private Online Course (SPOC), various online courses which include a lot of new resources and new teaching methods have appeared. The application of advanced teaching resources and educational concepts can improve students' learning experiences. This paper proposes a hybrid closed-loop teaching

Past MOOC research has tended to focus on learning outcomes valued in traditional higher education settings, such as achievement and retention. This study recognises that student ratings are an important alternative outcome measure in MOOCs. This paper adopted a semiautomatic text mining approach to collect and analyse 8475 ratings and reviews submitted for 1794 MOOCs. The analysis revealed six important

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

While course videos are powerful teaching resources in online courses, students often have difficulty sustaining their attention while watching videos and comprehending the content. This study adopted teacher annotations on videos as an instructional support to engage students in watching course videos. Forty-two students in an undergraduate course at a university in Taiwan were randomly divided into

Digital technologies have gained much popularity in education thanks to the cost efficiency they gain through scalability. While the acceptance of some of these new digital technologies has been investigated, there are few direct comparisons. The most established model for measuring acceptance is the technology acceptance model, which can predict the behavioral intention to use the technology. We compared

The use of online social networks (OSNs) has increasingly attracted attention from scholars’ in different disciplines. Recently, student behaviors in online social networks have been extensively examined. However, limited efforts have been made to evaluate and systematically review the current research status to provide insights into previous study findings. Accordingly, this study conducted a systematic

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics are likely to have a significant long-term impact on higher education (HE). The scope of this impact is hard to grasp partly because the literature is siloed, as well as the changing meaning of the concepts themselves. But developments are surrounded by controversies in terms of what is technically possible, what is practical to implement and what is desirable

Innovative information and communication technologies have reformed higher education from the traditional way to smart learning. Smart learning applies technological and social developments and facilitates effective personalized learning with innovative technologies, especially smart devices and online technologies. Smart learning has attracted increasing research interest from the academia. This study

Trust-based e-assessment systems are increasingly important in the digital age for both academic institutions and students, including students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Recent literature indicates a growing number of studies about e-authentication and authorship verification for quality assurance with more flexible modes of assessment. Yet understanding the acceptability

To understand the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in the smart classroom environment, a structural equation modeling analysis was used to examine the relationships between key factors that influence students’ learning and their HOTS within a smart classroom environment. A sample of 217 first-year Chinese college students, who studied in a smart classroom environment for

The COVID-19 outbreak has compelled many universities to immediately switch to the online delivery of lessons. Many instructors, however, have found developing effective online lessons in a very short period of time very stressful and difficult. This study describes how we successfully addressed this crisis by transforming two conventional flipped classes into fully online flipped classes with the

Students have different learning approaches and acquire knowledge in different ways owing to their varied perceptions and grasping abilities. Treating students equally, following the traditional teacher-cantered approach, may not be effective and calls for innovations in knowledge dissemination. This article takes a student-centric approach to implement a ‘flipped classroom’ model in an engineering

Many universities, especially in low-income countries, have considered the potential of cloud-supported collaborative learning in planning and managing students’ learning experiences. This is because cloud tools can offer students the necessary skills for collaboration with one another and improving communication between all users. This study examined how cloud tools can help students engage in reflective

In self-regulated learning (SRL), students organize, monitor, direct, and regulate their learning. In SRL, monitoring plays a critical role in generating internal feedback and thus adopting appropriate regulations. However, students may have poor SRL processes and performance due to their poor monitoring. Researchers have suggested providing external feedback to facilitate better student SRL. However

This article reports on a large-scale (n = 987), exploratory factor analysis study incorporating various concepts identified in the literature as critical success factors for online learning from the students’ perspective, and then determines their hierarchical significance. Seven factors--Basic Online Modality, Instructional Support, Teaching Presence, Cognitive Presence, Online Social Comfort, Online

Introduction In the last ten years digitalized data have permeated our lives in a massive way. Beyond the internet ubiquity and cultural change outlined in what Castells (1996) called the network society, we are now witnessing a datafied society, where large amounts of digital data—the DNA of information—are driving new social practices. The most enthusiastic discourses on this abundance of data have

How to make the learning of complex subjects engaging, motivating, and effective? The use of immersive virtual reality offers exciting, yet largely unexplored solutions to this problem. Taking neuroanatomy as an example of a visually and spatially complex subject, the present study investigated whether academic learning using a state-of-the-art Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) yielded higher

Today, modern educational models are concerned with the development of the teacher-student experience and the potential opportunities it presents. User-centric analyses are useful both in terms of the socio-technical perspective on data usage within the educational domain and the positive impact that data-driven methods have. Moreover, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in

Universities are facing growing internal and external pressures to generate income, educate a widening continuum of learners, and make effective use of digital technologies. One response has been growth of online education, catalysed by Massive Open Online Courses, availability of digital devices and technologies, and notions of borderless global education. In growing online education, learning and

Massive Open Online Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been transitioning slowly from being completely open and without clear recognition in universities or industry, to private settings through the emergence of Small and Massive Private Online Courses (SPOCs and MPOCs). Courses in these new formats are often for credit and have clear market value through the acquisition of competencies and skills

Big data is an essential aspect of innovation which has recently gained major attention from both academics and practitioners. Considering the importance of the education sector, the current tendency is moving towards examining the role of big data in this sector. So far, many studies have been conducted to comprehend the application of big data in different fields for various purposes. However, a

Recommender systems for technology-enhanced learning are examined in relation to learners’ agency, that is, their ability to define and pursue learning goals. These systems make it easier for learners to access resources, including peers with whom to learn and experts from whom to learn. In this systematic review of the literature, we apply an Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI) approach

Student success is becoming a shared vision for quality in higher education. Majority data in higher education have not been transformed into actionable insights for quality enhancement. Data are dispersed among stakeholders, and stakeholders’ data literacy influences the effectiveness of using data for student success. However, existing studies mainly focus on students’ data literacy; the analysis

The majority of user models in gamification are based on user’s gamer personality. However, the motivations driving individuals’ learning behavior differ from their motivations when playing. There is no evidence that learners’ experiences in gamified activities are described by these models. Thus, an alternative model capturing learners’ motivational experiences and relating them to the motivational

Following asynchronous online discussion activities as a complex communication process is a demanding task for teachers. In this paper, the authors have explored the potential in supporting such activity through learning analytics. From the beginning, the authors acknowledged the limitations of technology to support the complexities of a pedagogical activity. Therefore, the methodology used was participatory

This research aims to explore and investigate potential factors influencing students’ academic achievements and satisfaction with using online learning platforms. This study was constructed based on Transactional Distance Theory (TDT) and Bloom’s Taxonomy Theory (BTT). This study was conducted on 243 students using online learning platforms in higher education. This research utilized a quantitative

This two-part observational and intervention study addressed the role of the smartphone in self-regulated learning (SRL) and student success as measured by achievement. Smartphone usage among students has been identified as contributing to lower academic achievement in a variety of settings. What is unclear is how smartphone usage contributes to lower outcomes. This study surveyed participants’ self-regulated

The use of fully online (FO) mathematics teaching has been increasing worldwide. Despite claims and findings that mathematics is more challenging to teach FO than face-to-face (F2F), we know little about FO mathematics teaching. In this paper, we address this gap by working to elucidate the differences between teaching in the FO and F2F modalities. We do this by examining FO and F2F teaching from the

Video lecture capture is one of the most attractive e-tools that has been introduced to support students learning and assist with grasping difficult concepts. A variety of benefits is offered through this system introduced at our institution nearly a decade ago. We evaluated lecture capture viewings for professional undergraduate pharmacy courses in the Fall and Spring semesters over three academic

While information and communication technologies (ICT) are prominent in educational practices at most levels of formal learning, there is relatively little known about the skills and understandings that underlie their effective and efficient use in research higher degree settings. This project aimed to identify doctoral supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of their roles in using ICT. Data were gathered