Joshua Weidlich, Author at EduTec Science

Jun32022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

Workshop @JTELSS – Causal Reasoning for TEL researchers

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…

May312022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

EduTec Team @ JTEL Summer School 2022

Summer School

JTELSS is the premier event of the European Educational Technology community to support early career researcher and connect them with their peers. Three years after the last summer school of the European Association for Technology-enhanced Learning (EATEL) hosted in Italy, PhD students and Postdocs of the EduTec Team visited this year's summer school in Haldikidi, Greece. More than 140 participants from 27 countries met in the wonderful and sunny area of Halkidiki, Greece to present their research, to network and establish connections. The program consisted of cutting edge topics like Artificial Intelligence in Education, Immersive Technologies (AR, VR), and Robotics, as well as methodological (e.g. qualitative research methods; causal inference) and soft-skills workshops (e.g. project management; how to present your research). The EduTec team contributed to a total of nine…

Mar152022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Measuring Productivity in CSCL groups

Assessment, Conference, Empirical Study, Higher Education, Learning Design, Publication

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a common pedagogical approach, in which groups of students work together digitally to engage in learning activities, solve problems, or create a shared artefact. CSCL is further interesting from a research standpoint, because different disciplines want to understand the processes and circumstances from which productive social interaction in online groups emerge to facilitate learning among group members. As such, group productivity is a central outcome to be considered in CSCL research. At the same time, the current literature does not provide a valid and reliable self-report instrument to measure group productivity. [caption id="attachment_3914" align="alignleft" width="325"] Wright Map[/caption] [caption id="attachment_3915" align="alignleft" width="323"] Category probability curves with six (top) versus 5 (bottom) rating scale steps[/caption] …

Feb252022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Creative students in self-paced learning environments

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

Creativity is a 21st century skill that is increasingly seen as an important goal of educational systems. At the same time, not enough research has been done on students that are high on trait creativity, i.e. how to accommodate and foster this important individual difference in learning environments. In educational technology in particular, we know next to nothing about how to design learning environments for creative students vs less creative students. While there is a literature from cognitive psychology suggesting that learning environments should be highly structured and guided to avoid disorientation and overload in *all* students, there is an opposing literature stating that students in creative domains (e.g. art & music education) profit from rich and unorganized stimuli. These students flourish in environments that are complex and afford multiple…

Jan62022 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Systematic Analysis of international EduTec Masters programs

Higher Education, Journal, Publication

Scientific fields share their knowledge and recruit young researchers by offering discipline-specific study programs. Thus, study programs are a reflection of the fields they represent. As technology-enhanced learning is considered to be particularly interdisciplinary and heterogenous, it is important to better understand the landscape of study programs that represents the field. Similar to its broader and longer-established counterpart, educational technology, the research focus of TEL has led to interdisciplinary perspectives integrating theories and methods from education, psychology, and computer science. The term has not only been used to describe a research domain, it has also been the foundation for a number of higher education study programs. At the same time, there is a relative lack of research that has systematically reviewed topics, themes, and trends of curricula in study programs…

Nov122021 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

Auftaktveranstaltung: Forschung über Studienerfolg und Studienabbruch II

Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Project, Project meeting

Am 11. November 2021 fand die virtuelle Auftaktveranstaltung der BMBF-Förderlinie Forschung über "Studienerfolg und Studienabbruch II" statt. Virtueller Gastgeber war die FernUniversität in Hagen. Das EduTec Team war mit dem Projekt LAMASS@DiLea, in dem Faktoren für Studienabbruch und Studienerfolg im Zusammenhang mit digitalen Lehrformaten untersucht werden, ebenfalls vertreten. [embed]https://static1.bmbfcluster.de/5/2/2/4/0_c464c1b3f1efcf4/52240_b0710c16e248bbf_web.mp4[/embed] Nach einer Begrüßung der Rektorin der FernUniversität in Hagen, Ada Pellert, stellte Prof. Hans-Dieter Daniel wichtige Erkenntnisse aus der ersten Förderlinie vor und formulierte Anregungen und "lessons learned" für die aktuelle Förderlinie. Danach begannen die Kurzvorstellungen der geförderten Projekte, in denen sich alle 19 Vorhaben zum Thema Studienerfolg und Studienabbruch innerhalb von 5 Minuten präsentierten. Innerhalb der jeweiligen Themencluster entstanden angeregte Diskussion, in denen projektübergreifende Herausforderungen und Lösungsansätze zur Sprache kamen. Im Anschluss an diese Präsentationen gab es Breakout-Sessions mit…

Oct232021 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Personality and Social Presence

Higher Education, Journal, Publication

Social presence is an important and well-established construct in learning scenarios that make use of online-based technology to mediate learning activities and communication among students, like online learning and distance education. Researchers and practitioners refer to social presence to better understand the socio-emotional dimension of these learning scenarios and/or improve the quality of the experience. As a construct that has emerged out of a socio-psychological research tradition, social presence has mostly been understood as a state variable, the result of situative/contextual factors, like the communication media, group size, or instructional design. What has been entirely overlooked is the possibility that some students are inherently more prone to experiencing social presence, while others may be less inclined to these perceptions. This study published in Open Education Studies, authored by Joshua Weidlich,…

Oct182021 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Social Presence: Conceptualization and Measurement

Empirical Study, Journal, Literature review, Publication

Social presence is an important and well-established construct for learning scenarios that make use of online-based technology to mediate learning activities and communication among students. Researchers and practitioners refer to social presence to better understand the socio-emotional dimension of these learning scenarios and/or improve the quality of the experience. However, many researchers in the past have pointed to the shaky foundation that is the conceptualization and measurement of social presence. In other words, there is no agreement on what social presence actually *is* and, consequently, how it should be measured. This makes it difficult to cumulatively build on prior research, possibly explaining the conflicting findings and the rather slow progress this field of research has been making. Our publication in Educational Psychology Review, authored by Karel Kreijns, Kate Xu, and…

Jul12021 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

Now online: List of EduTec Journals and Conferences

Conference, Journal, Open access, Publication

Due to popular request, we’ve pulled together a list of peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences where research into Educational Technologies and Learning Analytics is published. Although the list is surely not comprehensive, it may be used as a handy overview to learn about the breadth and diversity of this area of research as well the publication outlets that the EduTec team reads and values. The journals are sorted by the main scientific publishing houses, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, Wiley, and Sage. Journals that did not fit, either because they are published by a less represented publishing house (thus, not warranting its own category) or are published by scientific societies or universities, are listed under “Other”. Besides this, we further provide info whether the journals are subscription-based or open…

Apr62021 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

Joshua Weidlich joins the team

Computational Psychometrics, Learning Design, Team

Starting April 2021, Joshua Weidlich joins the team as PostDoctoral researcher. He completed his PhD on social presence in online learning environments at the FernUniversität in Hagen in February 2021. He holds a Master's Degree in E-Learning and Media Education from Heidelberg University of Education as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Educational Science from Chemnitz University of Technology. See profile page for more information.