Special Issue Archives - EduTec Science

May272024 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

New BJET special section published

Special Issue

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, innovative technologies continue to shape the way we learn and acquire new skills. One such frontier that is gaining momentum is the realm of multimodal and immersive learning systems. Recently, a special section in a prestigious British Journal of Education Technology delved into this fascinating intersection, shedding light on the potentialities and challenges of these cutting-edge technologies. Di Mitri, D., Limbu, B., Schneider, J., Iren, D., Giannakos, M. and Klemke, R. (2024), Multimodal and immersive systems for skills development and education. Br J Educ Technol. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13483 Multimodal learning, as defined in the special section, engages learners through multiple sensory and action systems, offering a more holistic and immersive educational experience. This approach is supported by the theory of multimodality in communication, which emphasizes the emergence of…

Jan292024 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

New Pub: From the Automated Assessment of Student Essay Content to Highly Informative Feedback: a Case Study

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Computational Psychometrics, Empirical Study, Feedback, Higher Education, Journal, Publication, Special Issue, Technical paper

How can we give students highly informative feedback on their essays using natural language processing? In our new paper, led by Sebastian Gombert, we present a case study on using GBERT and T5 models to generate feedback for educational psychology students. In this paper: ➡ We implemented a two-step pipeline that segments the essays and predicts codes from the segments. The codes are used to generate feedback texts informing the students about the correctness of their solutions and the content areas they need to improve. ➡ We used 689 manually labelled essays as training data for our models. We compared GBERT, T5, and bag-of-words baselines for both steps. The results showed that the transformer-based models outperformed the baselines in both steps. ➡ We evaluated the feedback with a learner cohort…

Jan152024 by Dana KubeNo Comments

New Article – Gender diversity dynamics in a Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

Artificial Intelligence, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Digitalisation, Empirical Study, Gender, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Design, New Pub, Open access, Publication, Special Issue, Team

🎉 Exciting News! Our article has just been published in the magazine of Computer Assisted Learning! 📰 We delved into the fascinating world of online group learning among adults, unravelling the mysteries of emergent team roles and their intricate connection to gender dynamics in communication. 🌐👥 Have you ever wondered how team roles subtly surface and evolve in online group learning discussions? We did, too! Our research explores the subtle nuances of team roles and their subversive emergence, especially when viewed through the lens of gender diversity, in order to understand how to support more productive learning for all participants. Gender and gender diversity are group features affecting social interaction and are critical for gender-inclusive and equitable education. As such, the role of gender and gender diversity is of particular…

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…

Jun62023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New pub: Evaluating the Impact of FoLA on Learning Analytics Knowledge Creation

Journal, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Publication, Research Methods, Research topic, Special Issue

Learning analytics provides opportunities to improve the design of learning activities by supplying information on the effects of different learning approaches. Despite the existence of design methods that aim to facilitate the incorporation of learning analytics into learning design, there is a lack of research assessing their efficacy. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the FoLA2 method. In higher education settings, sixty participants utilized the FoLA2 method to develop fourteen learning activities. To gauge the impact, participants completed a technology acceptance test before and after each session. Furthermore, researchers analyzed audio recordings of the sessions using epistemic network analysis to gain insights into the discussions regarding learning analytics and the creation of enhanced learning activities. The results from both the technology acceptance test and the epistemic network analysis…

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…

Nov212022 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

New CfP: Multimodal and Immersive Systems for Skills Development and Education (BJET)

Special Issue

Call for Papers: Multimodal and Immersive Systems for Skills Development and Education Guest editor(s): Daniele Di Mitri, DIPF, Germany Bibeg Limbu, TU Delft, The Netherlands Jan Schneider, DIPF, Germany Deniz Iren, Open University, The Netherlands Michail Giannakos, NTNU, Norway Daniel Spikol, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Roland Klemke, Open University, The Netherlands Rationale for publications During the last decade, we have seen an enormous penetration of multimodal and immersive systems such as virtual, augmented reality and motion-based systems. Such systems, along with rapidly evolving technological affordances (e.g., multimodal interaction, tactile feedback) powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sensors, are attempting to redefine how we interact and learn with technology. This attempt has long-term implications for human-computer interaction and technology-enhanced learning, enabling new forms of personalised, contextual, and deliberate practice of skills…

Nov72022 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

New Pub: special issue “From Sensor Data to Educational Insights”

Special Issue

We are delighted to announce an editorial of the MDPI Sensors special issue "From Sensor Data to Educational Insights" published in Open Access written by José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, Roberto Martínez-Maldonado, Daniele Di Mitri Jan Schneider. The editorial introduces 12 novel scientific articles in the field of educational sensors. The full special issue can be found on the MDPI website.

Aug242022 by Dana KubeNo Comments

New Pub: Gendered differences versus doing gender: a systematic review on the role of gender in CSCL

Gender, Higher Education, Journal, Literature review, Meta-study, Open access, Publication, Special Issue, Team

How has CSCL research been treating the topic of Gender? Our systematic review on this topic is now published in Unterrichtswissenschaft and available online here. Gender equity in education is an essential UN sustainable development goal. However, it is unclear what aspects of gender are important to consider in regard to research outcomes as well as how findings can be interpreted in the context of gender stereotypes and bias. This lack of clarity is particularly salient in the STEM field. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a group learning method where learners work together on group tasks that aim at the sharing and co-construction of knowledge. Aside from the cognitive learning gains, the literature reports that CSCL can bring social and psychological benefits, such as fostering positive mutual relationships and increased understanding of equity and…

Jul272022 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

New Pub: Connecting the dots – A literature review on learning analytics indicators from a learning design perspective

Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Lifelong Learning, Literature review, Open access, Publication, Self-Regulation, Special Issue, Target group

[caption id="attachment_4329" align="alignright" width="450"] Occurrences of the most commonly used learning analytic indicators over the past 10 years[/caption] Background: During the past decade, the increasingly heterogeneous field of learning analytics has been critiqued for an over-emphasis on data-driven approaches at the expense of paying attention to learning designs. Method and objective: In response to this critique, we investigated the role of learning design in learning analytics through a systematic literature review. 161 learning analytics (LA) articles were examined to identify indicators that were based on learning design events and their associated metrics. Through this research, we address two objectives. First, to achieve a better alignment between learning design and learning analytics by proposing a reference framework, where we present possible connections between learning analytics and learning design. Second, to present how…