Joshua Weidlich, Author at EduTec Science

Jan122024 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Toward a comprehensive framework of social presence

Computer-supported collaborative learning, Higher Education, Journal, Literature review, New Pub, Open access, Special Issue

Today, students in higher education likely come into contact with different modes of learning, e.g. online learning, blended learning, and, increasingly, hybrid learning. To the extent that communication is mediated by technology in these learning modes, students can experience varying degrees of social presence with regard to their peers. Social presence refers to the feeling that others are 'real' and 'close' despite the physical separation. Especially in learning scenarios that require communication and collaboration, social presence is a crucial consideration. Despite this, research on social presence is fragmented and many other relevant theoretical accounts, while potentially informative, have been neglected. This paper, coauthored by Karel Kreijns, Jane Yau, Joshua Weidlich, and Armin Weinberger, published in Frontiers in Education, Section Digital Education, attempts to provide a comprehensive account of social presence…

Nov132023 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Social Presence and Psychological Distance

Computer-supported collaborative learning, Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Design, New Pub, Publication

Social presence –the sense that others are 'real' and 'there'– is a key variable in understanding interpersonal dynamics in online learning environments. As students are separated in time and place, social cues are diminished and communication is affected. This is particularly relevant for social learning scenarios like computer-supported collaborative learning. Despite its relevance and decades of research, there are still many gaps in our understanding of social presence. In order to arrive at a more holistic understanding of social presence, it would be valuable to better understand how this experience fits within larger psychological frameworks. One particularly well-established psychological framework is Construal Level Theory by Trope & Liberman (2010). It posits that our mental representations of objects, events, and persons (i.e. construals) are affected by the psychological distance between us…

Oct232023 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Development and initial validation of an instrument to measure student feedback literacy

Empirical Study, Feedback, Higher Education, Journal, Open access, Publication

To ensure quality higher education, students should routinely receive feedback on their academic endeavors. Alongside the question of what makes feedback effective, there is also an emerging research literature about empowering students to understand and utilize that feedback effectively. These abilities and attitudes of students have recently been subsumed under the concept of feedback literacy. The concept of feedback literacy was conceived by Carless and Boud (2018) as “the understandings, capacities, and dispositions needed to make sense of information and use it to enhance work or learning strategies.” Since then, a vibrant research literature has developed theoretical frameworks, explored dimensions of feedback literacy, and investigated whether feedback literacy can systematically be enhanced, etc. However, what is still missing are larger-scale rigorous investigations of the extent to which feedback literacy actually…

Aug72023 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: How well does teacher education prepare for teaching with technology?

Competence development, Digitalisation, Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Open access, Publication

Despite large-scale investments into the technological infrastructure of K-12 education, research has repeatedly shown that many teachers lack the expertise to effectively incorporate technology into classroom teaching. To support teachers in this, there is a need to understand how and when the relevant knowledge develops during teacher training. To this end, Joshua Weidlich and Marco Kalz conducted a study at Heidelberg University of Education, sampling prospective teachers (N = 526) and analyzing their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) across the seven dimensions of the framework. Specifically, they assessed (1) the extent to which students more advanced in their studies reported higher TPACK, (2) the effect of gender on these trajectories, and (3) the potential role of curricular cornerstones of the teacher education program. Regarding (1), they found that not…

May312023 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New pub: Causal reasoning with causal graphs, published in ETRD

Journal, Publication, Research Methods, Special Issue

Educational Technology, like many other empirical research fields, needs to provide evidence for the causal effectiveness of their interventions. This is as important for establishing the efficacy of some novel educational technology as it is for theory-building. However, because educational research, especially field research, can be messy, tightly-controlled randomized experiments are not always the best option. Importantly, as our development paper shows, this does not mean that researchers should abandon all claims of causality. Instead, we highlight the importance of explicit causal reasoning, while equipping researchers with a tool to approach this daunting task systematically. Causal graphs (or Directed Acyclic Graphs = DAGs) are a low-barrier approach to reasoning about causality in all research contexts. Using a few construction rules, the resultant graphs allow researchers to figure out whether a…

Dec142022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Causal Inference and Bias in Learning Analytics

Journal, Learning Analytics, Literature review, Open access, Publication, Research Methods

Learning Analytics is an applied field of research with the goal of producing actionable knowledge to improve student learning. This requires knowledge about cause-and-effect. However, randomized experiments, the usual vehicle for causality, are not always feasible nor desirable. Researchers are then left with observational data, from which they are, understandably, hesitant to draw causal inferences. Fortunately, there has been a lot of progress on the topic of causality in the last two decades. One prominent framework uses Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) to graphically reason about cause-and-effect and/or bias. This primer, authored by Joshua Weidlich, Dragan Gasevic, and Hendrik Drachsler, published in the Journal of Learning Analytics, introduces DAGs to Learning Analytics. Using fictitious and published examples, we show how DAGs are a principled approach to a) improve causal inferences for…

Sep122022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

DGHD Nachwuchspreis for Joshua Weidlich

Award, Conference, Higher Education, PhD defense

At this year's DGHD2022 in Paderborn, the German Society for Higher Education Pedagogy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hochschuldidaktik: DGHD) awarded Dr. Joshua Weidlich for his dissertation on the topic of social presence in online distance education. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Theo Bastiaens, he conducted his dissertation at FernUniversität in Hagen, the largest distance education provider in Germany. The jury commended the scientific merits of advancing this line of research while also providing ample practical implications for higher education teaching. The dissertation is available online here and further information about the award will be published here.

Aug192022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

EARLI EFG Grant awarded

Award

The European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) offers an Emerging Field Group (EFG) funding scheme. The goal of the EFG initiative is to support the development of a research group focused on exploratory, innovative, and risk-taking research. EARLI supports the EFG over the course of a two-year period. See the following video for a short intro about EFG funding: [embed]https://youtu.be/P3ErXQdLU2U[/embed] This year, the EARLI EFG committee awarded funding to the "Social- and Telepresence in Online Social Learning" emerging field group, which consists of Emmy Vrieling Teunter (Open University, Netherlands), Kamakshi Rajagopal (KU Leuven, Belgium), Karel Kreijns (Open University, Netherlands), Maartje Henderikx (Open University, Netherlands), Derya Orhan Göksün (Adiyaman University, Turkey), and Joshua Weidlich (DIPF, Germany). The group will explore how perceptions of social-and telepresence are fostered in…

Jun172022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Extending Social Presence Theory

Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Design, Publication

In the area of online learning and distance education, social presence is considered a key concept to understand interpersonal processes that are mediated by technology. At the same time, theory surrounding social presence remains underdeveloped. For example, under which conditions is social presence particularly important? Do students always need high perceptions of social presence in their learning experiences? A strong theory should provide tentative answers to questions like these. Yet, as of now, our knowledge is mostly restricted to correlations coefficients between measures of social presence and outcome variables like satisfaction. Without further nuance, learning designers do not know under which circumstances they should prioritize designing for interpersonal aspects or instead focus on other aspects. To advance a more nuanced understanding of social presence, Joshua Weidlich, Derya Göksün, and Karel…

Jun32022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

Workshop @JTELSS – Causal Reasoning for TEL researchers

Summer School, Workshop

At this year's JTEL summer school in Halkidiki, Greece (see previous blog post here), Joshua Weidlich presented a workshop on the topic of causal inference and causal graphs. The goal of this workshop was to equip young educational technology researchers with a toolkit for reasoning about causality and improving causal inference in their own research studies. Central to this approach are Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), simple visual structures that encode variables and hypothesized causal effects. The resulting graphs can then be inspected with a few simple rules to learn whether a) causal inference is possible, b) bias is present. After establishing groundwork by laying out why causal inference is central to most research endeavours, information about the unique features of randomized experiments was provided alongside major sources of bias (see…