Question: Emerging technology trends in education: Seven years of predictions and convergence analysis.

Incorporating Digital Game-Based Learning into High School Computer Science Education: Effects on Educational Outcomes and Student Engagement

This study investigates the integration of digital game-based learning (DGBL) into the high school computer science curriculum, focusing on its impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation. The use of digital games as an educational tool has gained significant attention in recent years, particularly in the realm of STEM subjects, where engaging and interactive learning experiences are crucial. The research examines how DGBL can enhance student engagement, improve learning outcomes, and potentially increase student interest in pursuing computer science-related fields.

Digital game-based learning leverages the immersive and interactive nature of video games to deliver educational content. By incorporating elements such as storytelling, problem-solving, and real-time feedback, DGBL can make complex computer science concepts more accessible and engaging for students. The study explores how this pedagogical approach can address common challenges in computer science education, such as abstract concepts, high dropout rates, and the need for more hands-on, experiential learning opportunities.

Key findings of the research include the positive effects of DGBL on student motivation, as evidenced by increased participation and enthusiasm for learning. Students reported higher levels of engagement and a greater sense of enjoyment in the learning process, which is critical for fostering a long-term interest in computer science. Additionally, the study highlights the potential of DGBL to improve educational effectiveness by facilitating a deeper understanding of core concepts and promoting critical thinking skills.

The integration of DGBL into high school computer science education represents a promising trend in educational technology. By providing students with interactive and immersive learning experiences, DGBL can enhance the educational process, making it more engaging and effective. This approach not only supports the development of technical skills but also promotes a broader appreciation for the subject, potentially leading to a more diverse and enthusiastic group of future computer scientists.

This paper reports on the design and the implementation of the Technological Pedagogical Science Knowledge (TPASK), a new model for science teachers professional development built on an integrated framework determined by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model and the authentic learning approach. The TPASK curriculum dimensions and the related course sessions are also elaborated and applied in the context of a teacher trainers’ preparation program aiming at ICT integration in science classroom practice. A brief description of the project, its accomplishments, and perceptions of the participants, through the lens of TPASK professional development model, are presented. This is followed by the presentation of the evaluation results on the impact of the program which demonstrates that science teachers reported meaningful TPASK knowledge and increased willingness to adopt and apply this framework in their instruction. Finally, we draw on the need to expand TPACK by incorporating a fourth dimension, the Educational Context within Pedagogy, Content and Technology mutually interact, in order to address future policy models concerning teacher preparation to integrate ICT in education. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper presents learning analytics as a mean to improve students’ learning. Most learning analytics tools are developed by in-house individual educational institutions to meet the specific needs of their students. Learning analytics is defined as a way to measure, collect, analyse and report data about learners and their context, for the purpose of understanding and optimizing learning. The paper concludes by highlighting framework of learning analytics in order to improve personalised learning. In addition, it is an endeavour to define the characterising features that represents the relationship between learning analytics and personalised learning environment. The paper proposes that learning analytics is dependent on personalised approach for both educators and students. From a learning perspective, students can be supported with specific learning process and reflection visualisation that compares their respective performances to the overall performance of a course. Furthermore, the learners may be provided with personalised recommendations for suitable learning resources, learning paths, or peer students through recommending system. The paper’s contribution to knowledge is in considering personalised learning within the context framework of learning analytics.

A review and meta-analysis was performed of seventy-five articles concerned with innovation characteristics and their relationship to innovation adoption and implementation. One part of the analysis consisted of constructing a methodological profile of the existing studies, and contrasting this with a hypothetical optimal approach. A second part of the study employed meta-analytic statistical techniques to assess the generality and consistency of existing empirical findings. Three innovation characteristics (compatibility, relative advantage, and complexity) had the most consistent significant relationship to innovation adoption. Suggestions for future research in the area were made.

Finding topics from a collection of documents, such as research publications, patents, and technical reports, is helpful for summarizing large scale text collections and the world wide web. It can also help forecast topic trends in the future. This can be beneficial for many applications, such as modeling the evolution of the direction of research and forecasting future trends of the IT industry. In this paper, we propose using association analysis and ensemble forecasting to automatically discover topics from a set of text documents and forecast their evolving trend in a near future. In order to discover meaningful topics, we collect publications from a particular research area, data mining and machine learning, as our data domain. An association analysis process is applied to the collected data to first identify a set of topics, followed by a temporal correlation analysis to help discover correlations between topics, and identify a network of topics and communities. After that, an ensemble forecasting approach is proposed to predict the popularity of research topics in the future. Our experiments and validations on data with 9 years of publication records validate the effectiveness of the proposed design.

Distance learning is becoming a popular mode of learning among individuals seeking to add new skills to their repertoire or acquire an advanced degree. The availability of online course materials from institutions in academia aid this process, lending standardized and validated information to the audience seeking such knowledge. Although the online system of learning is extremely convenient for acquiring theoretical knowledge, the scope of hands-on experience is limited to the use of simulation software or involves the purchase of expensive laboratory kits. The proliferation of new technology like Virtual Reality (VR), Fifth Generation cellular networks (5G), and industrial robotics can be leveraged to bridge this gap, however. This will enable effective delivery of traditional disciplines like Electrical, Computer, or Mechanical Engineering using the online mode. This paper discusses the enabling technologies for implementing such a system. An ongoing effort to establish a proof-of-concept system in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is presented.

This paper reviews and assesses the emerging research literature on information technology and organizational learning. After discussing issues of meaning and measurement, we identify and assess two main streams of research: studies that apply organizational learning concepts to the process of implementing and using information technology in organizations; and studies concerned with the design of information technology applications to support organizational learning. From the former stream of research, we conclude that experience plays an important, yet indeterminate role in implementation success; learning is accomplished through both formal training and participation in practice; organizational knowledge barriers may be overcome by learning from other organizations; and that learning new technologies is a dynamic process characterized by relatively narrow windows of opportunity. From the latter stream, we conclude that conceptual designs for organizational memory information systems are a valuable contribution to artifact development; learning is enhanced through systems that support communication and discourse; and that information technologies have the potential to both enable and disable organizational learning. Currently, these two streams flow independently of each other, despite their close conceptual and practical links. We advise that future research on information technology and organizational learning proceeds in a more integrated fashion, recognizes the situated nature of organizational learning, focuses on distributed organizational memory, demonstrates the effectiveness of artifacts in practice, and looks for relevant research findings in related fields.

Recent meta-analyses and other studies of media's influence on learning are reviewed, Consistent evidence is found for the generalization that there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction. Research showing performance or timesaving gains from one or another medium are shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses concerning the uncontrolled effects of instructional method and novelty. Problems with current media attribute and symbol system theories are described and suggestions made for more promising research directions. Studies of the influence of media on learning have ken a fixed feature of educational research since Thorndike (1912) recommended pictures as a laborsaving device in instruction, Most of this research is buttressed by the hope that learning will be enhanced with the proper mix of medium, student, subject matter content, and learning task. A typical study compares the relative achievement of groups who have received similar subject matter from different media. This research has led to so-called 'media selection" schemes or models 1982). These models generally promise to incorporate existing research and practice into procedures for selecting the best medium or mix of media to deliver instruction. Most of these models base many of their prescriptions on presumed learning benefits from media (Jamison, Suppes, & Welles, 1974). However, this article will argue that most current summaries and meta-analyses of media comparison studies clearly suggest that media do not influence learning under any conditions. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability have followed the introduction of a medium, as was the case with television in El Salvador (Schramm, 1977), it was not the medium that caused the change but rather a curricular reform that accompanied the change. The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition. Basically, the choice of vehicle might influence the cost or extent of distributing instruction, but only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement. While research often shows a slight learning advantage for newer media over more conventional instructional vehicles, this advantage will be __________________ The author wishes to acknowledge the substantive advice of Gavriel Salomon, William Winn, and anonymous reviewers without making them responsible for errors. ___________ p 445 shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses. Among these rival explanations is evidence of artifact and confounding in existing studies and biased editorial decisions which may favor research showing larger effect sizes for newer media. After summarizing evidence from current meta-analyses of media research, I will discuss advantages and problems with current "media attribute" and 'symbol system" theories and will conclude by suggesting tentative solutions to past problems and future directions for research involving media. Media Comparison Studies In the 1960s, Lumsdaine (1963) and others (e.g,, Mielke, 1968) argued that gross media comparison and selection studies might not pay off. They implied that media, when viewed as collections of mechanical instruments, such as television and computers, were sample delivery devices. Nevertheless, earlier reviewers also held the door open to learning effects from media by attributing much of the lack of significance in prior research to poor design and lack of adequate models or theory. Lumsdaine (1963) dealt primarily with adequate studies that had used defensible methodology, and had found significant differences between treatments. With the benefit of hindsight it is not surprising that most of the studies he selected for review employed media as simple vehicles for instructional methods, such as text organization, size of step in programming, cueing, repeated exposures, and prompting. These studies compared the effects of. for example, different step size in programmed instruction via television. It was step size (and other methods), not television (or other media), which were the focus of thew studies. This is an example of what Salomon and Clark (1977) called research with media. In these studies media are mere conveyances for the treatments being examined and are not the focus of the study, though the results are often mistakenly interpreted as suggesting benefits for various media. An example of instructional research with media would be a study which contrasted a logically organized audiotutorial lesson on photosynthesis with a randomly sequenced presentation of the same frames (cf. Clark & Snow, 1975; Salomon & Clark, 1977, for a review of similar studies). Perhaps as a result of this confusion, Lumsdaine (1963) reached few conclusions beyond the suggestion that media might reduce the cost of instruction when many students are served because “the cost of perfecting it can be prorated in terms of a denominator representing thousands of students" (p. 670). A decade later, Glaser and Cooley (1973) and Levie and Dickie (1973) were cautious about media comparison studies, which apparently were still being conducted in large numbers. Glaser and Cooley (1973) recommended using acceptable medium as "a vehicle for making available to schools what psychologists have learned about learning" (p. 855). Levie and Dickie (1973) noted that most media comparison studies to that date had been fruitless and suggested that objectives can be attained through "instruction presented by any of a variety of different media" (p. 859). At that time televised education was still a lively topic and studies of computerized instruction were just beginning to appear. During the past decade, television research seems to have diminished considerably, but computer learning studies are now popular. This current h belongs to the familiar but generally fruitless media comparison approach or is concerned _____________ p 446 with different contents or methods being presented via different media (e.g., science teaching via computers). Generally, each new medium seems to attract its own set of advocates who make claims for improved learning and stimulate research questions which are similar to those asked about the previously popular medium. Most of the radio research approaches suggested in the 1950s (e.g., Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949) were very similar to those employed by the television movement of the 1960s (e.g., Schramm, 1977) and to the more recent reports of the computer-assisted instruction studies of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Dixon & Judd, 1977). It seems that similar research questions have resulted in similar and ambiguous data. Media comparison studies, regardless of the media employed, tend to result i n "no significant difference" conclusions (Mielke, 1968). These findings were incorrectly offered-as-evidence that different media were “equally effective” as conventional means in promoting learning. No significant difference results simply suggest that changes in the outcome scores (e.g., learning) did not result from any systematic differences in the treatments compared. Occasionally a study would find evidence for one or another medium. When this happens, Mielke (1968) has suggested that the active ingredient might be some uncontrolled aspect of the content or instructional strategy rather than the medium. When we investigate these positive studies, we find that the treatments are confounded. The evidence for this confounding may be found in the current meta-analyses of media comparison studies. The next section argues that it is the uncontrolled effects of novelty and instructional method which account for the existing evidence for the effects of various media on learning gains. Reviews and Meta-analyses of Media Research One of the most interesting trends in the past decade has been a significant increase in the number of excellent reviews and meta-analyses of research comparing the learning advantage of various media. The results of these overviews of past comparison studies seem to be reasonably unambiguous and unanimous. Taken together, they provide strong evidence that media comparison studies that find causal connections between media and achievement are confounded. Size of Effect of Media Treatments A recent series of meta-analyses of media comparison studies have been conducted by James Kulik and his colleagues at the University of Michigan (Cohen, Ebling & Kulik, 1981; C. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1980; J. Kulik, Bangert, & Williams, 1983; J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1979). These reviews employ the relatively new technology of meta-analysis (Glass, 1976), which provides more precise estimates of the effect size of various media treatments than were possible a few years ago. Previous reviews dealing primarily with "box score" sums of significant findings for media versus conventional instructional delivery were sometimes misleading. Effect size estimates often were expressed in portions of standard score advantages for one or another type of treatment. This discussion will express effects in one of two ways: (a) the number of standard deviations separating experimental and control groups, and (b) as improvements in percent) scores on a final examination. ____________ p 447 Box Scores versus Effect Size An illustration of the advantage of meta-analytical effect size descriptions of past research over "box scores" is available in a recent review of Postlethwait's audiotutorial instruction studies (J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen,, 1979). The authors found 42 adequate studies, of which 29 favored audiotutorial instruction and only 13 favored conventional instruction. Of those 42, only 15 reported significant differences, but 11 of the 15 favored audiotutorial and only 4 favored conventional instruction. This type of box

Despite its continuing popularity as the social network site par excellence, the educational value of Facebook has not been fully determined, and results from the mainstream educational paradigms are contradictory, with some scholars emphasizing its pedagogical affordances (e.g., widening context of learning, mixing information and learning resources, hybridization of expertise) and others cautioning against its use for educational purposes. Moreover, systematic reviews about documented educational usage of Facebook as a learning environment are lacking. This article attempts to provide a critical overview of current studies focusing on the use of Facebook as a technology-enhanced learning environment, with the aim of exploring the extent to which its pedagogical potential is actually translated into practice. Only empirical studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals with a specific focus on Facebook as a learning environment have been considered for the review. The authors conducted a comprehensive literature search that identified 23 relevant articles that were subsequently analysed according to a simplified list of guidelines. These articles were further analysed and recoded through a set of emerging categories. The results show that pedagogical affordances of Facebook have only been partially implemented and that there are still many obstacles that may prevent a full adoption of Facebook as a learning environment such as implicit institutional, teacher and student pedagogies, and cultural issues. Finally, a broad observation on the implications of the study is developed with some suggestions for future research.

Teachers have tried to teach their students by introducing text books along with verbal instructions in traditional education system. However, teaching and learning methods could be changed for developing Information and Communication Technology (ICT). It's time to adapt students with interactive learning system so that they can improve their learning, catching, and memorizing capabilities. It is indispensable to create high quality and realistic leaning environment for students. Visual learning can be easier to understand and deal with their learning. We developed visual learning materials (an overview of solar system) in the form of video for students of primary level using different multimedia application tools. The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of student’s abilities to acquire new knowledge or skills through visual learning materials and blended leaning that is integration of visual learning materials with teacher’s instructions. We visited a primary school in Dhaka city for this study and conducted teaching with three different groups of students (i) teacher taught students by traditional system on same materials and marked level of student’s ability to adapt by a set of questions (ii) another group was taught with only visual learning material and assessment was done with 15 questionnaires, (iii) the third group was taught with the video of solar system combined with teacher’s instructions and assessed with the same questionnaires. This integration of visual materials (solar system) with verbal instructions is a blended approach of learning. The interactive blended approach greatly promoted students ability of acquisition of knowledge and skills. Students response and perception were very positive towards the blended technique than the other two methods. This interactive blending leaning system may be an appropriate method especially for school children.

Digital games have caught the attention of scholars across a variety of disciplines. Today, scholars from fields as diverse as media design, literature, computer science, education, and theatre studies have together contributed to the understanding of this emergent medium and its phenomenon as a learning tool The unsatisfying experience of directly adopting game formats into educational contexts has motivated researchers to study successful (commercial) digital games, in particular to examine the play activities of digital games and the principles underlying the design of digital games in order to develop concepts and strategies for rich virtual learning contexts. In this review, provided is a brief account of academic arguments regarding digital games and learning.


Question: Emerging technology trends in education: Seven years of predictions and convergence analysis.

This paper critically evaluates the discourse surrounding 'digital natives', a term used to describe a purported new generation of students who have grown up immersed in digital technology. Proponents argue that these young people possess advanced technical skills and have learning preferences that starkly contrast with traditional educational methods, necessitating radical educational reforms. The rhetoric often evokes a sense of urgency and crisis. Yet, the reality is far more complex and ambiguous. Drawing from educational and sociological perspectives, the authors dissect the 'digital natives' debate, scrutinizing the key assertions and the nature of the discussion. They contend that the debate lacks empirical and theoretical rigor, resembling more of an academic 'moral panic' than a grounded analysis. The authors advocate for a more measured and objective investigation into the phenomenon of 'digital natives' and their potential implications for education. It is worth noting that at every juncture in history, there have been assertions of 'radical changes', echoing Marcel Proust's observation that the one constant is the perception of change itself.

This paper considers the ways in which the interactive whiteboard may support and enhance pedagogic practice through whole-class teaching within literacy and numeracy. Data collected from observations of whole-class lessons, alongside individual interviews and focus group discussions with class teachers and Initial Teacher Education students, has provided opportunities to consider the potential of such technology to facilitate a more creative approach to whole-class teaching. The data suggests that, in the first instance, the special features of information and communications technology such as interactivity, ‘provisionality,’ speed, capacity and range enhance the delivery and pace of the session. This research seems to indicate that it is the skill and the professional knowledge of the teacher who mediates the interaction, and facilitates the development of pupils’ creative responses at the interface of technology, which is critical to the enhancement of the whole-class teaching and learning processes. Introduction The globalising phenomenon of information and communication technologies (ICT) is a distinct characteristic of modern times. The speed and immediacy of ICT, coupled with opportunities for increased information flow through multiple routes of communication, suggest that we are living in a time of unprecedented change, with ICT affecting the way we live and function as individuals and as a society (Castells, 2004). Within the context of education there are some technologies that appear to have attracted more interest than others; however, the degree to which they have been British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 39 No 1 2008 84–96 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00703.x © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. successfully integrated into the classroom environment has been varied. In recent years, there has been a growing level of interest in the electronic or interactive whiteboard (IWB), well documented by the educational press. Such technology is generally comprised of a triangulation between data projector, computer and an electronic screen. This allows an individual to interact with software at the front of a class rather than from the computer. Effectively, the computer screen is projected onto the electronic whiteboard and presented to the class with the teacher, or perhaps student, selecting, activating and interacting with the programs. At a time in England when the government has promoted whole-class interactive teaching, particularly within Literacy and Numeracy, access to IWB technology through targeted government funding is also increasing, and the IWB is steadily becoming a feature of most numeracy and literacy lessons. In January 2004, Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education in England, announced that, in addition to the £25 million previously made available to schools in September 2003; a further £25 million would be released for the purchase of IWBs. This technology is therefore likely to become a key resource in most schools. Introduction of new technologies such as this within the classroom context raises questions regarding the ways in which pedagogic practice may be supported and enhanced; this being the focus of this study, specifically, the links between three areas; whole-class direct teaching, creativity and the integration of technology. As IWBs are becoming more familiar within the educational market, additional challenges, which imply new priorities, have arisen from recent demands for ‘a much stronger emphasis on creative and cultural education and a new balance in teaching and in the curriculum.’ (The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education [NACCCE], 1999) The teacher educator is therefore faced with a complex set of demands that require resolution in terms of pedagogic practice. The aim of this study is to investigate how IWBs can provide opportunities for creativity in teaching and learning, particularly within whole-class lessons, by drawing upon observations of, and discussions with, classroom practitioners and ITE students. In so doing, the study will contribute to debates within educational fields (Bleakley, 2004; Craft, 2005; NACCCE, 1999) regarding the notion of creativity in primary teaching and learning. Current developments in creativity, interactivity and whole-class direct teaching The current focus on direct whole-class teaching, particularly in mathematics, developed in response to concerns in England about the level of children’s performance in English and mathematics compared to those in other countries. In particular, in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study of 1999 (Mullis et al, 2000) England was placed low in basic number skills although as Muijs and Reynolds (2001) note, faring better in geometry and problem solving. Research conducted by Professor David Reynolds, chair of the newly established Numeracy Task Force, singled out a substantial amount of direct whole-class teaching as a key feature of mathematics sessions in the top-attaining countries (Reynolds & Farrell, 1996), these findings The use of the interactive whiteboard in literacy and maths: a case study 85 © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. echoing those of previous studies, (Galton & Croll, 1980; Rosenshine, 1979), and more recently, Bierhoff (1996), Bierhoff and Prais (1995) and Burghes (1995). In response to these concerns about attainment and the related research findings, the National Literacy Strategy (NLS; DfEE, 1998) and National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) were introduced into most state-funded primary schools; the NLS in 1998 and the NNS in 1999, both providing a clear framework for the content of the curriculum and recommended teaching approaches. In both Literacy and Numeracy, sessions were expected to consist of a substantial amount of direct, whole-class teaching. A wholeclass approach, it was claimed, enables the teacher to interact more with each pupil; adapt activities quickly in response to pupils’ responses; use errors and misconceptions as a teaching point for the whole class and keep pupils on task for longer periods of time (Muijs & Reynolds, 2001). However, Muijs and Reynolds also noted that this approach was not necessarily the best to use in all circumstances. Brophy and Good (1986) are cited as finding this method more suited for teaching rules, procedures and basic skills, especially to younger pupils. Less structured and teacher-directed approaches, Muijs and Reynolds (2001) suggest, would be more appropriate when the aims of the lesson are more complex or open-ended (eg, developing students’ thinking skills) With the IWB featuring widely in whole-class teaching, there is a concern that its full interactive potential may not be explored through this structured, teacher-directed approach as the teaching and modelling of rules, procedures and basic skills is likely to take precedence over more complex and cognitively demanding activities. Where whole-class interactive teaching in mathematics lessons is concerned, the Numeracy Task Force stressed that ‘it is the quality of the whole class teaching which determines its success’ (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1999) rather than the whole-class approach per se. They note that whole-class teaching should not be viewed as a purely transmission-based approach, with children given instruction regarding knowledge and understanding in a product-driven mode of teaching. Rather, it should be seen as an interactive, process-oriented approach to learning with the quality of the interaction within the classroom being of prime importance, maximised effectively and efficiently through good whole-class teaching. The NNS goes on to state that ‘interaction is a two-way process in which pupils are expected to play an active part’ and that ‘high quality interactive teaching is oral, interactive and lively’, which is fundamental to a social constructivist view of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). This may be a laudable claim, however; Muijs and Reynolds (2001) caution that with direct whole-class teaching, pupils may find it easy to adopt a more passive role, becoming too dependent on the teacher and failing to develop independent learning skills. Nevertheless, it may be within a more social, interactive and lively learning environment that the IWB could be seen to make a valuable contribution. At present, there is a limited amount of research available that focuses specifically upon the IWB and associated pedagogy, however, Smith, Hardman and Higgins (2006) have undertaken a substantial study involving observations made in primary schools of 184 lessons in literacy and numeracy conducted over a 2-year period. The study suggests that, although the use of IWBs engages the pupils and sessions are generally faster in 86 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 39 No 1 2008 © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. their pace of delivery, the underlying pedagogy of whole-class teaching appears to remain unaffected, with teacher-led recitation and emphasis upon recall dominating proceedings. Previous research has highlighted the motivational impact of IWBs upon pupils, with the large screen, the multimedia capability and the element of fun enhancing the presentational aspects of a lesson (Glover & Miller, 2001; Levy, 2002). Essentially, there appears to be the potential for enhancements in whole-class teaching and learning through the use of IWBs if pedagogic practice were to adapt and change through creative and innovative use of the particular features of this new technology. Creativity Creativity has been described as ‘the word of the moment’ (Bruce, 2004, p. vi

The introduction of new consumer technology is often greeted with declarations that the way people conduct their lives will be changed instantly. In some cases, this might create hype surrounding a specific technology. This article investigates the adoption of hyped technology, a special case that is absent in the adoption literature. The study employs a consumer research perspective, specifically the theory of consumption values (TCV), to understand the underlying motives for adopting the technology. In its original form, TCV entails five values that influence consumer behavior: functional, social, epistemic, emotional and conditional. The values catch the intrinsic and extrinsic motives influencing behavior. Using a qualitative approach that includes three focus groups and 60 one-on-one interviews, the results of the study show that emotional, epistemic and social values influence the adoption of hyped technologies. Contrary to expectations, functional value, which is similar to the widely used information system constructs of perceived usefulness and relative advantage, has little impact on the adoption of technologies that are surrounded with significant hype. Using the findings of the study, this article proposes a model for investigating and understanding the adoption of hyped technologies. This article contributes to the literature by (1) focusing on the phenomenon of hyped technology, (2) introducing TCV, a consumer research-based theoretical framework, to enhance the understanding of technology adoption, and (3) proposing a parsimonious model explaining the adoption of hyped technology.

There is a critical need to develop new educational technology applications that analyze the data collected by universities to ensure that students graduate in a timely fashion (4 to 6 years); and they are well prepared for jobs in their respective fields of study. In this paper, we present a novel approach for analyzing historical educational records from a large, public university to perform next-term grade prediction; i.e., to estimate the grades that a student will get in a course that he/she will enroll in the next term. Accurate next-term grade prediction holds the promise for better student degree planning, personalized advising and automated interventions to ensure that students stay on track in their chosen degree program and graduate on time. We present a factorization-based approach called Matrix Factorization with Temporal Course-wise Influence that incorporates course-wise influence effects and temporal effects for grade prediction. In this model, students and courses are represented in a latent “knowledge” space. The grade of a student on a course is modeled as the similarity of their latent representation in the “knowledge” space. Course-wise influence is considered as an additional factor in the grade prediction. Our experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms several baseline approaches and infer meaningful patterns between pairs of courses within academic programs.

Interactive video in an e-learning system allows proactive and random access to video content. Our empirical study examined the influence of interactive video on learning outcome and learner satisfaction in e-learning environments. Four different settings were studied: three were e-learning environments—with interactive video, with non-interactive video, and without video. The fourth was the traditional classroom environment. Results of the experiment showed that the value of video for learning effectiveness was contingent upon the provision of interactivity. Students in the e-learning environment that provided interactive video achieved significantly better learning performance and a higher level of learner satisfaction than those in other settings. However, students who used the e-learning environment that provided non-interactive video did not improve either. The findings suggest that it may be important to integrate interactive instructional video into e-learning systems. # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We report on the results of a study in which 19 new mobile phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after service acquisition. Results show that new users tend to rapidly modify their perceptions of social appropriateness around mobile phone use, that actual nature of use frequently differs from what users initially predict, and that comprehension of service-oriented technologies can be problematic. We describe instances and features of mobile telephony practice. When in use, mobile phones occupy multiple social spaces simultaneously, spaces with norms that sometimes conflict: the physical space of the mobile phone user and the virtual space of the conversation.

Neuroscience has experienced rapid growth in recent years, spurred in part by the U.S. government’s designation of the 1990s as “The Decade of the Brain” (Jones & Mendell, 1999). The rapid development of functional neuroimaging techniques has given researchers unprecedented access to the behaving brains of healthy children and adults. The result has been a wave of new insights into thinking, emotion, motivation, learning, and development. As these insights suffuse the social sciences, they sometimes inspire reconsideration of existing explanations. This is most true in psychology, as marked by the births of cognitive neuroscience (Gazzaniga, Ivry, & Mangun, 2002), developmental neuroscience (Johnson, Munakata, & Gilmore, 2001), and social neuroscience (Cacioppo, Visser, & Pickett, 2005). It is increasingly true in economics, where the rapid rise of neuroeconomics (Camerer, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2005) has caught the attention of the popular press (Cassidy, 2006). Other social sciences, including communication (Anderson et al., 2006), political science (McDermott, 2004), and sociology (Wexler, 2006), are just beginning to confront the question of whether their research can be informed by neuroscience. Education is somewhere between the two poles of early adopters and tentative newcomers. A decade ago, in this journal, Bruer (1997) forcefully considered the relevance of neuroscience to education. His conclusion—that neuroscience is “a bridge too far”—was noteworthy because Bruer was then director of the McDonnell Foundation, which was actively funding research in both disciplines. Although it was in his best interests to find connections between the disciplines, he found instead poorly drawn extrapolations that inflated neuroscience findings into educational neuromyths. Since Bruer’s cautionary evaluation, a number of commentators have considered the prospects for educational neuroscience. Many sound a more optimistic note (Ansari & Coch, 2006; Byrnes & Fox, 1998; Geake & Cooper, 2003; Goswami, 2006; Petitto & Dunbar, in press), and a textbook has even appeared (Blakemore & Frith, 2005). In this article, we negotiate the middle ground between the pessimism of Bruer and the optimism of those who followed. Table 1 summarizes eight concerns about connecting education and neuroscience. Some are drawn from Bruer (1997) and the ensuing commentaries. Others come from conversations with colleagues in both disciplines, and still others from our own experiences. These concerns do not seem to represent a blanket dismissal but rather a genuine curiosity (tempered by a healthy skepticism) about the implications of neuroscience for education. We begin by articulating the concerns along with some facts about neuroscience that make the concerns more concrete. We voice them in the strong tone in which we have heard them espoused. We then revisit the concerns, reinterpreting them as potential opportunities (also in Table 1). This approach permits us to review a selection of neuroscience studies relevant to content learning. We focus on recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), or neuroimaging, studies for reasons of space and because these are the findings that have captured the most attention, both in the academy and in the popular press. Ideally, our review illustrates some elements of neuroscience so that education researchers can think more specifically about the prospects of educational neuroscience. We conclude with two reflections on moving from armchair arguments of a philosophical nature to scientific action on the ground. First, we argue that education and neuroscience can be bridged if (and only if) researchers collaborate across disciplinary lines on tractable problems of common interest. It is the success

The upshots of the former section can be put as follows: All our concepts and beliefs have their roots in a limited number of fundamental ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries and are carried from one domain to another by the language we use. One glance at the current discourse on learning should be enough to realize that nowadays educational research is caught between two metaphors that, in this article, will be called the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. Both of these metaphors are simultaneously present in most recent texts, but while the acquisition metaphor is likely to be more prominent in older writings, more recent studies are often dominated by the participation metaphor.

This study was planned to explore the impact of eLearning on the academic performance of student-teachers. The researchers' concern with e-Learning was sanctioned by the need for a teaching and learning strategy that can help institutions of learning address their problems and improve on their outcome. In this respect, the researchers conducted an experiment to find out whether student-teachers taught using the method of e-Learning (blended learning) perform better than studentteachers taught using the traditional method of teaching and learning. Findings offers new evidence that e-Learning has a significant influence on the performance of students as student-teachers taught using eLearning consistently performed better than student-teachers taught using the traditional method. Based on this result, recommendations are made to training institutions to embrace ICTs and become more flexible by adopting learning approaches that are dynamic and multidimensional as problems in education are becoming more complex.

Recent meta-analyses and other studies of media's influence on learning are reviewed, Consistent evidence is found for the generalization that there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction. Research showing performance or timesaving gains from one or another medium are shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses concerning the uncontrolled effects of instructional method and novelty. Problems with current media attribute and symbol system theories are described and suggestions made for more promising research directions. Studies of the influence of media on learning have ken a fixed feature of educational research since Thorndike (1912) recommended pictures as a laborsaving device in instruction, Most of this research is buttressed by the hope that learning will be enhanced with the proper mix of medium, student, subject matter content, and learning task. A typical study compares the relative achievement of groups who have received similar subject matter from different media. This research has led to so-called 'media selection" schemes or models 1982). These models generally promise to incorporate existing research and practice into procedures for selecting the best medium or mix of media to deliver instruction. Most of these models base many of their prescriptions on presumed learning benefits from media (Jamison, Suppes, & Welles, 1974). However, this article will argue that most current summaries and meta-analyses of media comparison studies clearly suggest that media do not influence learning under any conditions. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability have followed the introduction of a medium, as was the case with television in El Salvador (Schramm, 1977), it was not the medium that caused the change but rather a curricular reform that accompanied the change. The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition. Basically, the choice of vehicle might influence the cost or extent of distributing instruction, but only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement. While research often shows a slight learning advantage for newer media over more conventional instructional vehicles, this advantage will be __________________ The author wishes to acknowledge the substantive advice of Gavriel Salomon, William Winn, and anonymous reviewers without making them responsible for errors. ___________ p 445 shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses. Among these rival explanations is evidence of artifact and confounding in existing studies and biased editorial decisions which may favor research showing larger effect sizes for newer media. After summarizing evidence from current meta-analyses of media research, I will discuss advantages and problems with current "media attribute" and 'symbol system" theories and will conclude by suggesting tentative solutions to past problems and future directions for research involving media. Media Comparison Studies In the 1960s, Lumsdaine (1963) and others (e.g,, Mielke, 1968) argued that gross media comparison and selection studies might not pay off. They implied that media, when viewed as collections of mechanical instruments, such as television and computers, were sample delivery devices. Nevertheless, earlier reviewers also held the door open to learning effects from media by attributing much of the lack of significance in prior research to poor design and lack of adequate models or theory. Lumsdaine (1963) dealt primarily with adequate studies that had used defensible methodology, and had found significant differences between treatments. With the benefit of hindsight it is not surprising that most of the studies he selected for review employed media as simple vehicles for instructional methods, such as text organization, size of step in programming, cueing, repeated exposures, and prompting. These studies compared the effects of. for example, different step size in programmed instruction via television. It was step size (and other methods), not television (or other media), which were the focus of thew studies. This is an example of what Salomon and Clark (1977) called research with media. In these studies media are mere conveyances for the treatments being examined and are not the focus of the study, though the results are often mistakenly interpreted as suggesting benefits for various media. An example of instructional research with media would be a study which contrasted a logically organized audiotutorial lesson on photosynthesis with a randomly sequenced presentation of the same frames (cf. Clark & Snow, 1975; Salomon & Clark, 1977, for a review of similar studies). Perhaps as a result of this confusion, Lumsdaine (1963) reached few conclusions beyond the suggestion that media might reduce the cost of instruction when many students are served because “the cost of perfecting it can be prorated in terms of a denominator representing thousands of students" (p. 670). A decade later, Glaser and Cooley (1973) and Levie and Dickie (1973) were cautious about media comparison studies, which apparently were still being conducted in large numbers. Glaser and Cooley (1973) recommended using acceptable medium as "a vehicle for making available to schools what psychologists have learned about learning" (p. 855). Levie and Dickie (1973) noted that most media comparison studies to that date had been fruitless and suggested that objectives can be attained through "instruction presented by any of a variety of different media" (p. 859). At that time televised education was still a lively topic and studies of computerized instruction were just beginning to appear. During the past decade, television research seems to have diminished considerably, but computer learning studies are now popular. This current h belongs to the familiar but generally fruitless media comparison approach or is concerned _____________ p 446 with different contents or methods being presented via different media (e.g., science teaching via computers). Generally, each new medium seems to attract its own set of advocates who make claims for improved learning and stimulate research questions which are similar to those asked about the previously popular medium. Most of the radio research approaches suggested in the 1950s (e.g., Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949) were very similar to those employed by the television movement of the 1960s (e.g., Schramm, 1977) and to the more recent reports of the computer-assisted instruction studies of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Dixon & Judd, 1977). It seems that similar research questions have resulted in similar and ambiguous data. Media comparison studies, regardless of the media employed, tend to result i n "no significant difference" conclusions (Mielke, 1968). These findings were incorrectly offered-as-evidence that different media were “equally effective” as conventional means in promoting learning. No significant difference results simply suggest that changes in the outcome scores (e.g., learning) did not result from any systematic differences in the treatments compared. Occasionally a study would find evidence for one or another medium. When this happens, Mielke (1968) has suggested that the active ingredient might be some uncontrolled aspect of the content or instructional strategy rather than the medium. When we investigate these positive studies, we find that the treatments are confounded. The evidence for this confounding may be found in the current meta-analyses of media comparison studies. The next section argues that it is the uncontrolled effects of novelty and instructional method which account for the existing evidence for the effects of various media on learning gains. Reviews and Meta-analyses of Media Research One of the most interesting trends in the past decade has been a significant increase in the number of excellent reviews and meta-analyses of research comparing the learning advantage of various media. The results of these overviews of past comparison studies seem to be reasonably unambiguous and unanimous. Taken together, they provide strong evidence that media comparison studies that find causal connections between media and achievement are confounded. Size of Effect of Media Treatments A recent series of meta-analyses of media comparison studies have been conducted by James Kulik and his colleagues at the University of Michigan (Cohen, Ebling & Kulik, 1981; C. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1980; J. Kulik, Bangert, & Williams, 1983; J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1979). These reviews employ the relatively new technology of meta-analysis (Glass, 1976), which provides more precise estimates of the effect size of various media treatments than were possible a few years ago. Previous reviews dealing primarily with "box score" sums of significant findings for media versus conventional instructional delivery were sometimes misleading. Effect size estimates often were expressed in portions of standard score advantages for one or another type of treatment. This discussion will express effects in one of two ways: (a) the number of standard deviations separating experimental and control groups, and (b) as improvements in percent) scores on a final examination. ____________ p 447 Box Scores versus Effect Size An illustration of the advantage of meta-analytical effect size descriptions of past research over "box scores" is available in a recent review of Postlethwait's audiotutorial instruction studies (J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen,, 1979). The authors found 42 adequate studies, of which 29 favored audiotutorial instruction and only 13 favored conventional instruction. Of those 42, only 15 reported significant differences, but 11 of the 15 favored audiotutorial and only 4 favored conventional instruction. This type of box

The field of Augmented Reality (AR) has existed for just over one decade, but the growth and progress in the past few years has been remarkable. In 1997, the first author published a survey [3] (based on a 1995 SIGGRAPH course lecture) that defined the field, described many problems, and summarized the developments up to that point. Since then, the field has grown rapidly. In the late 1990s, several conferences specializing in this area were started, including the International Workshop and Symposium on Augmented Reality [29], the International Symposium on Mixed Reality [30], and the Designing Augmented Reality Environments workshop. Some wellfunded interdisciplinary consortia were formed that focused on AR, notably the Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory [50] in Japan and Project ARVIKA [61] in Germany. A freely-available software toolkit (the ARToolkit) for rapidly building AR applications is now available [2]. Because of this wealth of new developments, an updated survey is needed to guide and encourage further research in this exciting area.


Question: Emerging technology trends in education: Seven years of predictions and convergence analysis.

This document explores the application of bibliometrics and patent analysis in forecasting emerging technologies, particularly when historical data is scarce. By integrating these analytical methods with established technology forecasting tools like scenario planning, growth curve analysis, and analogical reasoning, the study offers valuable insights into three specific technology domains: fuel cells, food safety, and optical storage. System dynamics is employed to simulate the complex interplay and diffusion patterns within the technological ecosystem. The outcomes of these case studies not only demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology in predicting the trajectory of nascent technologies but also underscore the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in technology forecasting. The findings affirm the utility of bibliometrics and patent analysis as essential components in the arsenal of tools for anticipating and understanding emerging technological trends. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

As was empirically demonstrated in [3], “the adoption rate of the Internet has exceeded that of earlier mass communication technologies by several magnitudes,” making it an “irreversible” innovation. Studies have also shown that for the generation of U.S.-based youth that grew up with the Internet, it is gradually displacing television as their main source of entertainment, communication, and education [6]. Here, we explore how the Internet has become indispensable to people in their daily lives and develop a conceptual model allowing us to address the associated research questions. The idea is that the Internet has become so embedded in the daily fabric of people’s lives that they simply cannot live without it. How is the Internet indispensable and in what ways? For which groups of people is it indispensable, for what tasks, and how has BY DONNA L. HOFFMAN, THOMAS P. NOVAK, AND ALLADI VENKATESH

0950-5849/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2009.11.005 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0) 1782 734090; E-mail address: m.turner@cs.keele.ac.uk (M. Turne Context: The technology acceptance model (TAM) was proposed in 1989 as a means of predicting technology usage. However, it is usually validated by using a measure of behavioural intention to use (BI) rather than actual usage. Objective: This review examines the evidence that the TAM predicts actual usage using both subjective and objective measures of actual usage. Method: We performed a systematic literature review based on a search of six digital libraries, along with vote-counting meta-analysis to analyse the overall results. Results: The search identified 79 relevant empirical studies in 73 articles. The results show that BI is likely to be correlated with actual usage. However, the TAM variables perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived usefulness (PU) are less likely to be correlated with actual usage. Conclusion: Care should be taken using the TAM outside the context in which it has been validated. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Recent meta-analyses and other studies of media's influence on learning are reviewed, Consistent evidence is found for the generalization that there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction. Research showing performance or timesaving gains from one or another medium are shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses concerning the uncontrolled effects of instructional method and novelty. Problems with current media attribute and symbol system theories are described and suggestions made for more promising research directions. Studies of the influence of media on learning have ken a fixed feature of educational research since Thorndike (1912) recommended pictures as a laborsaving device in instruction, Most of this research is buttressed by the hope that learning will be enhanced with the proper mix of medium, student, subject matter content, and learning task. A typical study compares the relative achievement of groups who have received similar subject matter from different media. This research has led to so-called 'media selection" schemes or models 1982). These models generally promise to incorporate existing research and practice into procedures for selecting the best medium or mix of media to deliver instruction. Most of these models base many of their prescriptions on presumed learning benefits from media (Jamison, Suppes, & Welles, 1974). However, this article will argue that most current summaries and meta-analyses of media comparison studies clearly suggest that media do not influence learning under any conditions. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability have followed the introduction of a medium, as was the case with television in El Salvador (Schramm, 1977), it was not the medium that caused the change but rather a curricular reform that accompanied the change. The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition. Basically, the choice of vehicle might influence the cost or extent of distributing instruction, but only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement. While research often shows a slight learning advantage for newer media over more conventional instructional vehicles, this advantage will be __________________ The author wishes to acknowledge the substantive advice of Gavriel Salomon, William Winn, and anonymous reviewers without making them responsible for errors. ___________ p 445 shown to be vulnerable to compelling rival hypotheses. Among these rival explanations is evidence of artifact and confounding in existing studies and biased editorial decisions which may favor research showing larger effect sizes for newer media. After summarizing evidence from current meta-analyses of media research, I will discuss advantages and problems with current "media attribute" and 'symbol system" theories and will conclude by suggesting tentative solutions to past problems and future directions for research involving media. Media Comparison Studies In the 1960s, Lumsdaine (1963) and others (e.g,, Mielke, 1968) argued that gross media comparison and selection studies might not pay off. They implied that media, when viewed as collections of mechanical instruments, such as television and computers, were sample delivery devices. Nevertheless, earlier reviewers also held the door open to learning effects from media by attributing much of the lack of significance in prior research to poor design and lack of adequate models or theory. Lumsdaine (1963) dealt primarily with adequate studies that had used defensible methodology, and had found significant differences between treatments. With the benefit of hindsight it is not surprising that most of the studies he selected for review employed media as simple vehicles for instructional methods, such as text organization, size of step in programming, cueing, repeated exposures, and prompting. These studies compared the effects of. for example, different step size in programmed instruction via television. It was step size (and other methods), not television (or other media), which were the focus of thew studies. This is an example of what Salomon and Clark (1977) called research with media. In these studies media are mere conveyances for the treatments being examined and are not the focus of the study, though the results are often mistakenly interpreted as suggesting benefits for various media. An example of instructional research with media would be a study which contrasted a logically organized audiotutorial lesson on photosynthesis with a randomly sequenced presentation of the same frames (cf. Clark & Snow, 1975; Salomon & Clark, 1977, for a review of similar studies). Perhaps as a result of this confusion, Lumsdaine (1963) reached few conclusions beyond the suggestion that media might reduce the cost of instruction when many students are served because “the cost of perfecting it can be prorated in terms of a denominator representing thousands of students" (p. 670). A decade later, Glaser and Cooley (1973) and Levie and Dickie (1973) were cautious about media comparison studies, which apparently were still being conducted in large numbers. Glaser and Cooley (1973) recommended using acceptable medium as "a vehicle for making available to schools what psychologists have learned about learning" (p. 855). Levie and Dickie (1973) noted that most media comparison studies to that date had been fruitless and suggested that objectives can be attained through "instruction presented by any of a variety of different media" (p. 859). At that time televised education was still a lively topic and studies of computerized instruction were just beginning to appear. During the past decade, television research seems to have diminished considerably, but computer learning studies are now popular. This current h belongs to the familiar but generally fruitless media comparison approach or is concerned _____________ p 446 with different contents or methods being presented via different media (e.g., science teaching via computers). Generally, each new medium seems to attract its own set of advocates who make claims for improved learning and stimulate research questions which are similar to those asked about the previously popular medium. Most of the radio research approaches suggested in the 1950s (e.g., Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949) were very similar to those employed by the television movement of the 1960s (e.g., Schramm, 1977) and to the more recent reports of the computer-assisted instruction studies of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Dixon & Judd, 1977). It seems that similar research questions have resulted in similar and ambiguous data. Media comparison studies, regardless of the media employed, tend to result i n "no significant difference" conclusions (Mielke, 1968). These findings were incorrectly offered-as-evidence that different media were “equally effective” as conventional means in promoting learning. No significant difference results simply suggest that changes in the outcome scores (e.g., learning) did not result from any systematic differences in the treatments compared. Occasionally a study would find evidence for one or another medium. When this happens, Mielke (1968) has suggested that the active ingredient might be some uncontrolled aspect of the content or instructional strategy rather than the medium. When we investigate these positive studies, we find that the treatments are confounded. The evidence for this confounding may be found in the current meta-analyses of media comparison studies. The next section argues that it is the uncontrolled effects of novelty and instructional method which account for the existing evidence for the effects of various media on learning gains. Reviews and Meta-analyses of Media Research One of the most interesting trends in the past decade has been a significant increase in the number of excellent reviews and meta-analyses of research comparing the learning advantage of various media. The results of these overviews of past comparison studies seem to be reasonably unambiguous and unanimous. Taken together, they provide strong evidence that media comparison studies that find causal connections between media and achievement are confounded. Size of Effect of Media Treatments A recent series of meta-analyses of media comparison studies have been conducted by James Kulik and his colleagues at the University of Michigan (Cohen, Ebling & Kulik, 1981; C. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1980; J. Kulik, Bangert, & Williams, 1983; J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen, 1979). These reviews employ the relatively new technology of meta-analysis (Glass, 1976), which provides more precise estimates of the effect size of various media treatments than were possible a few years ago. Previous reviews dealing primarily with "box score" sums of significant findings for media versus conventional instructional delivery were sometimes misleading. Effect size estimates often were expressed in portions of standard score advantages for one or another type of treatment. This discussion will express effects in one of two ways: (a) the number of standard deviations separating experimental and control groups, and (b) as improvements in percent) scores on a final examination. ____________ p 447 Box Scores versus Effect Size An illustration of the advantage of meta-analytical effect size descriptions of past research over "box scores" is available in a recent review of Postlethwait's audiotutorial instruction studies (J. Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen,, 1979). The authors found 42 adequate studies, of which 29 favored audiotutorial instruction and only 13 favored conventional instruction. Of those 42, only 15 reported significant differences, but 11 of the 15 favored audiotutorial and only 4 favored conventional instruction. This type of box

Most textbooks in HCI and CSCW do not offer a coherent and over–arching understanding of social and technological issues. They present a variety of techniques and technologies, and outline a little history, but offer little in terms of theory that addresses the complexity of collaborative systems’ structure and use. The majority of practitioners and researchers do not see theory as one of the things that they do. Immersed in their craft, focusing on technological innovation or ethnomethodological detail, they do not engage in theoretical abstraction. Technologists contentedly explore new tools and devices, with little heed to older disciplines or deeper discussion about the limits and assumptions inherent in their craft. The area of sociology most influential in CSCW, ethnomethodology, deliberately keeps theorising and generalisation at a distance, seeing abstraction as brutish and creativity as foreign. In our field, theory is like the public library. If asked, most of us would say that we are glad that it is around—but few of us actually go there. Most see it as a haven for the old, the unemployed and the eccentric. Paul Dourish is a card–carrying member, however. He reads avidly and widely, but is also a skilful system designer and developer. The result is a book that is deep, accessible and useful, which is a rare thing nowadays. In the introduction, Dourish lays out the structure of the book. He describes and reflects on two current trends in system design: tangible and social computing. By looking at the usually hidden assumptions in system design, he makes his later theoretical discussion more relevant and accessible to a computer science audience. He does not develop new philosophy or social theory, but draws upon established 20th century philosophy of language and phenomenology. Much of this material is likely to be unfamiliar to ‘the average programmer’ and, although Dourish presents it well, it may still be challenging to the reader. However, its use is one of the book’s main contributions. He uses it to ground a conceptual framework and a corresponding set of principles for system design practice. He aims to do justice to the sociality and heterogeneity of interactive media, and to avoid putting theory above practice—or vice versa. His ideal is balance: “the ability to develop systemsthat resonate with, rather than restrict (or, worse, refute), the social organization of action”. The term ‘tangible computing’ is used very broadly in this book. The chapter on this theme covers the designs of Hiroshi Ishii’s group at MIT’s Media Lab, but also ubiquitous computing work such as the badges, tabs and LiveBoards of Xerox PARC, and augmented reality systems such as Pierre Wellner’s DigitalDesk. Although ‘UbiComp’ is more fashionable nowadays, Dourish chooses a term that helps him focus more on our perception and “the ways we experience the everyday world” than on computation and technology. Much of this discussion centres on exemplary systems, and the way that an increasing number and variety of computational devices and sensors are distributed in our environment. This contrasts with older systems that used very few media and which were encapsulated in the beige box of the traditional PC. The following chapter is on social computing: “the application of sociological understanding to the design of interactive systems”. This stands in contrast to the more traditional tendency for designers to treat people as isolated system users, with little account taken of organisational and social context. Dourish draws upon some influential studies of existing technology such as that of an air traffic control room by Hughes et al., and the ethnography of a print shop by Bowers, Button and Sharrock. Compared to the previous chapter, exemplary systems are scarce. There are none of the previous chapter’s attractive images of exotic displays and devices, so beloved in undergraduate lectures and conference presentations, as this chapter addresses systems’ internal structure rather than external interaction. Dourish has developed more systems in the ‘social’ category than the ‘tangible’, and here he offers as examples Mansfield et al.’s Orbit and some of his own work: using a system design technique, computational reflection, to offer users an account of deep system structure. In describing this particular technique, Dourish touches on the essence of the entire book: What is radical is the relationship it proposes between technical design and social understandings. It argues that the most fruitful place to forge these relationships is at a foundational level, one that attempts to take sociological insights into the heart of the process and fabric of design. (p. 87)

The purpose of this article is to examine students’ views on the blended learning method and its use in relation to the students’ individual learning style. The study was conducted with 31 senior students. Web based media together with face to face classroom settings were used in the blended learning framework. A scale of Students’ Views on Blended Learning and its implementation, Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory, Pre-Information Form and open ended questions were used to gather data. The majority of the students’ fell into assimilators, accommodators and convergers learning styles. Results revealed that students’ views on blended learning method and its use are quite positive.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to describe the usage of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) by the faculty members of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), at the College of Basic Education, the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), Kuwait. Design/methodology/approach – A survey conducted to collect data from 33 faculty members of whom only 21 members were using SNSs, representing 63.6 per cent of the total sample, and 12 members were not using SNSs, representing 36.4 per cent of the total sample. This study revealed that SNSs are used moderately by the faculty members. Findings – This study showed that faculty members who were using SNSs tend to be males, aged between 41 and 50 years, PhD holders, ranked as assistant professors, full-time members, specialized in information technologies with a relatively new experience of teaching ranged from one to five years, and most of the faculty members who were not using SNSs tended to be also males, aged between 41 and 60 years, PhD holders, ranked as lecturers, full-time members specialized in organization of information with a teaching experience ranged from 16 to 20 years. More than half of the faculty members were using SNSs for three years to less than six years, and a large number of them were using SNSs several times a week and were accessing these sites more from their school office, home and school laboratory. There are no any statistical significant differences between the demographic data of participants (gender, age and education level) and either their use or non-use of SNSs. There are no significant differences between the academic rank, teaching status and teaching experience of faculty and their use of SNSs. However, there is a significant relation between the faculty’s area of teaching and their use of SNSs. Faculty members were interested in the use of SNSs. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blogs respectively were used mostly by faculty members, but Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were the most famous SNSs they have profiles on. Faculty members have adopted SNSs mainly for the purpose of communicating with others, finding and sharing information with peers and students as well. Tasks on SNSs made by faculty members were mostly to make communication, send/receive messages and find general and specific information. Faculty members’ profiles on SNSs were mostly on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, wikis and podcasting respectively. Faculty members confirmed that the use of YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, wikis and podcasting respectively was at least effective and the use of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Wikis respectively was at least fairly useful fairly easy to them. Faculty members are in general agreement about the effectiveness of SNSs especially for disseminating and sharing information, communication and informal collaboration. The study showed The researcher would like to thank the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), the state of Kuwait, for supporting this paper (BE-11-10). The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm

The use of educational games in learning environments is an increasingly relevant trend. The motivational and immersive traits of game-based learning have been deeply studied in the literature, but the systematic design and implementation of educational games remain an elusive topic. In this study some relevant requirements for the design of educational games in online education are analyzed, and a general game design method that includes adaptation and assessment features is proposed. Finally, a particular implementation of that design is described in light of its applicability to other implementations and environments. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In recent years the amount of data stored in educational database is growing rapidly. The stored database contains hidden information which if used aids improvement of student's performance and behaviour. In this paper predictive modelling approach is used for extracting this hidden information. Data is collected, a predictive model is formulated, predictions are made, and the model is validated as additional data becomes available. The predictive models will help the instructor to understand how well or how poorly the students in his/her class will perform, and hence the instructor can choose proper pedagogical and instructional interventions to enhance student learning outcomes. The implementation is done in Hadoop framework with MapReduce and Revolutionary R Enterprise RRE.

In an e-learning environment that emphasizes learner-centered activity and system interactivity, remote learners can outperform traditional classroom students.

In view of the recent developments in many countries, for example, in the USA and in the UK, it appears that computer science education (CSE) in primary or secondary schools (K-12) has reached a significant turning point, shifting its focus from ICT-oriented to rigorous computer science concepts. The goal of this special issue is to offer a publication platform for soundly based in-depth experiences that have been made around the world with concepts, approaches, or initiatives that aim at supporting this shift. For this purpose, the article format was kept as large as possible, enabling the authors to explain many facets of their concepts and experiences in detail. Regarding the structure of the articles, we had encouraged the authors to lean on the Darmstadt Model, a category system that was developed to support the development, improvement, and investigation of K-12 CSE across regional or national boundaries. This model could serve as a unifying framework that might provide a proper structure for a well-founded critical discussion about the future of K-12 CSE. Curriculum designers or policy stakeholders, who have to decide, which approach an upcoming national initiative should follow, could benefit from this discussion as well as researchers who are investigating K12 CSE in any regard. With this goal in mind, we have selected six extensive and two short case studies from the UK, New Zealand, USA/Israel, France, Sweden, Georgia (USA), Russia, and Italy that provide an in-depth analysis of K-12 CSE in their respective country or state.


Question: Emerging technology trends in education: Seven years of predictions and convergence analysis.

This paper discusses the emergence of new technology trends in education over the past seven years, highlighting a convergence of forecasts and developments. The authors commend the field's efforts in identifying and integrating innovative educational technologies, akin to how public health researchers have attempted to estimate the prevalence of foodborne diseases in the United States. Just as the study by Dr. Mead and colleagues provided more comprehensive estimates of foodborne pathogens than previous studies, educational technology forecasts have similarly evolved, offering more accurate predictions of technological impacts on learning.

However, the publication of these educational technology forecasts raises critical issues, similar to the challenges in estimating disease burdens. The authors note that while accurate estimates of technological impacts are crucial for sound educational policy, most forecasts are based on assumptions rather than empirical data. Known technological tools clearly do not account for the majority of learning innovations, akin to how known foodborne agents do not account for most gastrointestinal illnesses.

The authors argue that unknown technological agents may be as likely to have the transformative characteristics of established tools as they are to have the limited impact of some less effective technologies. Furthermore, it was assumed that the detection of educational breakthroughs or cases of innovative teaching practices follows the model of established educational practices, similar to how the detection of toxin-mediated illnesses was modeled after Salmonella cases. In the entire list of known educational technologies, data are presented for cases identified both from educational innovations and active surveillance for only a few tools, akin to how data for Salmonella, Shigella, and Campylobacter cases were presented in the foodborne disease study.

The authors conclude by emphasizing the need for more empirical data to support educational technology forecasts and the importance of understanding the true prevalence of technological impacts on education, akin to the need for accurate estimates of foodborne disease burdens in public health. This will ensure that educational policies are based on sound data, leading to more effective integration of technology in educational settings.

In the last few decades, education has witnessed some advances in technologies involving computeraided learning that promises to drastically change the methods of teaching and learning. The World Wide Web has played a major role in information storage and dissemination in the educational community. Conventional classroom based teaching involves the delivery of course materials by the lecturer in a particular place at a defined time. Hence it imposes a constraint of time and place on both the instructor and the student. Due to human factor arising from the traditional classroom method, the lecturer may not always be able to put in optimum effort towards preparing and delivering course materials. There may also be inconsistencies in the pedagogy and learning style due to repetitive nature of teaching/learning. The objective of this paper is to develop a virtual classroom system to enhance learning on campus. The system was developed using PHP and MySQL as server side programming and database respectively. The web-based virtual classroom provides a web enabled interactive model for e-learning in which the course material is presented using multimedia and hypermedia.

This study extends the technology acceptance model to identify factors that influence technology acceptance among pre-service teachers in Ghana. Data from 380 usable questionnaires were tested against the research model. Utilising the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) as a research framework, the study found that: pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness of computer technology and attitude towards computer use to be significant determinants of actual use of computer technology. Results obtained employing multiple stepwise regression analysis revealed that: (1) pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs significantly influenced both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, (2) both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness influence attitude towards computer use and attitude towards computer use significantly influences pre-service teachers’ actual use of computers. However, statistically, perceived ease of use did not significantly influence perceived usefulness. The findings contribute to the literature by validating the TAM in the Ghanaian context and provide several prominent implications for the research and practice of technology integration development.

This study was planned to explore the impact of eLearning on the academic performance of student-teachers. The researchers' concern with e-Learning was sanctioned by the need for a teaching and learning strategy that can help institutions of learning address their problems and improve on their outcome. In this respect, the researchers conducted an experiment to find out whether student-teachers taught using the method of e-Learning (blended learning) perform better than studentteachers taught using the traditional method of teaching and learning. Findings offers new evidence that e-Learning has a significant influence on the performance of students as student-teachers taught using eLearning consistently performed better than student-teachers taught using the traditional method. Based on this result, recommendations are made to training institutions to embrace ICTs and become more flexible by adopting learning approaches that are dynamic and multidimensional as problems in education are becoming more complex.

Characterizing the content of a technical document in terms of its learning utility can be useful for applications related to education, such as generating reading lists from large collections of documents. We refer to this learning utility as the “pedagogical value” of the document to the learner.While pedagogical value is an important concept that has been studied extensively within the education domain, there has been little work exploring it from a computational, i.e., natural language processing (NLP), perspective. To allow a computational exploration of this concept, we introduce the notion of “pedagogical roles” of documents (e.g., Tutorial and Survey) as an intermediary component for the study of pedagogical value. Given the lack of available corpora for our exploration, we create the first annotated corpus of pedagogical roles and use it to test baseline techniques for automatic prediction of such roles.

The primary questions addressed in this paper are the following: what are the factors that affect students‟ adoption of an e-learning system and what are the relationships among these factors? This paper investigates and identifies some of the major factors affecting students‟ adoption of an e-learning system in a university in Jordan. E-learning adoption is approached from the information systems acceptance point of view. This suggests that a prior condition for learning effectively using e-learning systems is that students must actually use them. Thus, a greater knowledge of the factors that affect IT adoption and their interrelationships is a pre-cursor to a better understanding of student acceptance of e-learning systems. In turn, this will help and guide those who develop, implement, and deliver e-learning systems. In this study, an extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was developed to investigate the underlying factors that influence students‟ decisions to use an e-learning system. The TAM was populated using data gathered from a survey of 486 undergraduate students, who were using the Moodle based e-learning system at the Arab Open University. The model was estimated using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). A path model was developed to analyze the relationships between the factors to explain students‟ adoption of the e-learning system. Whilst findings support existing literature about prior experience affecting perceptions, they also point to surprising group effects, which may merit future exploration.

New systems are designed with improved quality or features. However, not every new system lives to its pre-development expectations when tested with end-users. The evaluation of the first version of our LOCO-Analyst tool for providing teachers with feedback on students learning activities and performance led to the enhancing the visualization features of the tool. The second evaluation of the improved tool allowed us to see how the improvements affect the user perceptions of the tool. Here, we present the qualitative results of our two evaluations. The results show that educators find the kinds of feedback implemented in the tool informative and they value the mix of textual and graphical representations of different kinds of feedback provided by the tool.

Educational Data Mining (EDM) is the field of using data mining techniques in educational environments. There exist various methods and applications in EDM which can follow both applied research objectives such as improving and enhancing learning quality, as well as pure research objectives, which tend to improve our understanding of the learning process. In this study we have studied various tasks and applications existing in the field of EDM and categorized them based on their purposes. We have compared our study with other existing surveys about EDM and reported a taxonomy of task.

In recent years the amount of data stored in educational database is growing rapidly. The stored database contains hidden information which if used aids improvement of student's performance and behaviour. In this paper predictive modelling approach is used for extracting this hidden information. Data is collected, a predictive model is formulated, predictions are made, and the model is validated as additional data becomes available. The predictive models will help the instructor to understand how well or how poorly the students in his/her class will perform, and hence the instructor can choose proper pedagogical and instructional interventions to enhance student learning outcomes. The implementation is done in Hadoop framework with MapReduce and Revolutionary R Enterprise RRE.

This paper surveys knowledge management (KM) development using a literature review and classification of articles from 1995 to 2002 with keyword index in order to explore how KM technologies and applications have developed in this period. Based on the scope of 234 articles of knowledge management applications, this paper surveys and classifies KM technologies using the seven categories as: KM framework, knowledge-based systems, data mining, information and communication technology, artificial intelligence/expert systems, database technology, and modeling, together with their applications for different research and problem domains. Some discussion is presented, indicating future development for knowledge management technologies and applications as the followings: (1) KM technologies tend to develop towards expert orientation, and KM applications development is a problem-oriented domain. (2) Different social studies methodologies, such as statistical method, are suggested to implement in KM as another kind of technology. (3) Integration of qualitative and quantitative methods, and integration of KM technologies studies may broaden our horizon on this subject. (4) The ability to continually change and obtain new understanding is the power of KM technologies and will be the application of future works. q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Despite its continuing popularity as the social network site par excellence, the educational value of Facebook has not been fully determined, and results from the mainstream educational paradigms are contradictory, with some scholars emphasizing its pedagogical affordances (e.g., widening context of learning, mixing information and learning resources, hybridization of expertise) and others cautioning against its use for educational purposes. Moreover, systematic reviews about documented educational usage of Facebook as a learning environment are lacking. This article attempts to provide a critical overview of current studies focusing on the use of Facebook as a technology-enhanced learning environment, with the aim of exploring the extent to which its pedagogical potential is actually translated into practice. Only empirical studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals with a specific focus on Facebook as a learning environment have been considered for the review. The authors conducted a comprehensive literature search that identified 23 relevant articles that were subsequently analysed according to a simplified list of guidelines. These articles were further analysed and recoded through a set of emerging categories. The results show that pedagogical affordances of Facebook have only been partially implemented and that there are still many obstacles that may prevent a full adoption of Facebook as a learning environment such as implicit institutional, teacher and student pedagogies, and cultural issues. Finally, a broad observation on the implications of the study is developed with some suggestions for future research.