New Pub: Social Presence: Conceptualization and Measurement

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…
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New Pub: Digital self-control interventions for distracting media multitasking – A systematic review

New Pub: Digital self-control interventions for distracting media multitasking – A systematic review

General education, Journal, Open access, Publication
Digital distractions can interfere with goal attainment and lead to undesirable habits that are hard to get red rid of. Various digital self-control interventions promise support to alleviate the negative impact of digital distractions. These interventions use different approaches, such as the blocking of apps and websites, goal setting, or visualizations of device usage statistics. While many apps and browser extensions make use of these features, little is known about their effectiveness. This systematic review synthesizes the current research to provide insights into the effectiveness of the different kinds of interventions. The interventions showed varying degrees of effectiveness, and especially interventions that relied purely on increasing the participants' awareness were barely effective. For those interventions that sanctioned the use of distractions, the current literature indicates that the sanctions have to…
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New Pub: A short history, emerging challenges and co-operation structures for Artificial Intelligence in education

New Pub: A short history, emerging challenges and co-operation structures for Artificial Intelligence in education

Artificial Intelligence, Higher Education, Journal, Lifelong Learning, Publication, School
To accompany the special issue in Artificial Intelligence and Education, this article presents a short history of research in the field and summarises emerging challenges. We highlight key paradigm shifts that are becoming possible but also the need to pay attention to theory, implementation and pedagogy while adhering to ethical principles. We conclude by drawing attention to international co-operation structures in the field that can support the interdiscipniary perspectives and methods required to undertake research in the area. Reference: Mavrikis, M., Cukurova, M.,  Di Mitri, D., Schneider, J., & Drachsler, H. (2021). A short history, emerging challenges and co-operation structures for Artificial Intelligence in education. Bildung und Erziehung 2021 74:3, 249-263. https://doi.org/10.13109/buer.2021.74.3.249.
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New Pub: Literature Review on Co-Located Collaboration Modeling Using Multimodal Learning Analytics—Can We Go the Whole Nine Yards?

New Pub: Literature Review on Co-Located Collaboration Modeling Using Multimodal Learning Analytics—Can We Go the Whole Nine Yards?

General education, Journal, Literature review, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Open access, Publication
Collaboration is one of the important 21st-century skills. It can take place in remote or co-located settings. Co-located collaboration (CC) is a very complex process that involves subtle human interactions that can be described with indicators like eye gaze, speaking time, pitch, and social skills from different modalities. With the advent of sensors, multimodal learning analytics has gained momentum to detect CC quality. Indicators (or low-level events) can be used to detect CC quality with the help of measurable markers (i.e., indexes composed of one or more indicators) which give the high-level collaboration process definition. However, this understanding is incomplete without considering the scenarios (such as problem solving or meetings) of CC. The scenario of CC affects the set of indicators considered: for instance, in collaborative programming, grabbing the mouse…
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New Pub: Are We There Yet? – A Systematic Literature Review on Chatbots in Education

New Pub: Are We There Yet? – A Systematic Literature Review on Chatbots in Education

Artificial Intelligence, General education, Journal, Learning Analytics, Literature review, Open access, Publication
Are We There Yet? - A Systematic Literature Review on Chatbots in Education Chatbots are a promising technology with the potential to enhance workplaces and everyday life. In terms of scalability and accessibility, they also offer unique possibilities as communication and information tools for digital learning. In this work, we present a systematic literature review investigating the areas of education where chatbots have already been applied, explore the pedagogical roles of chatbots, the use of chatbots for mentoring purposes, and their potential to personalize education. We conducted a preliminary analysis of 2,678 publications to perform this literature review, which allowed us to identify 74 relevant publications for chatbots’ application in education. Through this, we address five research questions that, together, allow us to explore the current state-of-the-art of this educational…
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Now online: List of EduTec Journals and Conferences

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…
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New Pub: Towards Automatic Collaboration Analytics for Group Speech Data Using Multimodal Learning Analytics

New Pub: Towards Automatic Collaboration Analytics for Group Speech Data Using Multimodal Learning Analytics

General education, Journal, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Open access, Publication
Collaboration is an important 21st Century skill. Co-located (or face-to-face) collaboration (CC) analytics gained momentum with the advent of sensor technology. Most of these works have used the audio modality to detect the quality of CC. The CC quality can be detected from simple indicators of collaboration such as total speaking time or complex indicators like synchrony in the rise and fall of the average pitch. Most studies in the past focused on “how group members talk” (i.e., spectral, temporal features of audio like pitch) and not “what they talk”. The “what” of the conversations is more overt contrary to the “how” of the conversations. Very few studies studied “what” group members talk about, and these studies were lab based showing a representative overview of specific words as topic clusters…
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New Pub: A four-country cross-case analysis of academic staff expectations about learning analytics in higher education

New Pub: A four-country cross-case analysis of academic staff expectations about learning analytics in higher education

Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics, Open access, Publication
The purpose of this paper is to explore the expectations of academic staff to learning analytics services from an ideal as well as a realistic perspective. This mixed-method study focused on a cross-case analysis of staff from Higher Education Institutions from four European universities (Spain, Estonia, Netherlands, UK). While there are some differences between the countries as well as between ideal and predicted expectations, the overarching results indicate that academic staff sees learning analytics as a tool to understand the learning activities and possibility to provide feedback for the students and adapt the curriculum to meet learners' needs. However, one of the findings from the study across cases is the generally consistently low expectation and desire for academic staff to be obligated to act based on data that shows students…
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New Pub: Understanding Graph Problem solving with the use of Eye-tracking and Epistemic Network Analysis

New Pub: Understanding Graph Problem solving with the use of Eye-tracking and Epistemic Network Analysis

Journal, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Open access, Publication, School
Epistemic Network Analyses of Economics Students’ Graph Understanding: An Eye-Tracking Study Learning to solve graph tasks is one of the key prerequisites of acquiring domain-specific knowledge in most study domains. Analyses of graph understanding often use eye-tracking and focus on analyzing how much time students spend gazing at particular areas of a graph—Areas of Interest (AOIs). To gain a deeper insight into students’ task-solving process, we argue that the gaze shifts between students’ fixations on different AOIs (so-termed transitions) also need to be included in holistic analyses of graph understanding that consider the importance of transitions for the task-solving process. Thus, we introduced Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) as a novel approach to analyze eye-tracking data of 23 university students who solved eight multiple-choice graph tasks in physics and economics. ENA…
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