New technologies are evidently gaining access to daily school life. Considering new challenges, the educators search for new ways to update educational content in the 21st Century when learning paradigms are changing. Soon, the new technological tools and solutions become predominant and change the traditional approach to teaching and learning. The new technologies not only help the educators to provide the relevant educational content in an easier and diverse way, but also to organise the evaluation of the results. This is particularly important for the educational process, taking into account the relevant issues of the period.
The article presents results of a survey. Participants of the survey were teachers who use the ActivInspire interactive evaluation system in their lessons. These teachers were the first to use this system in Lithuania. No studies on the experience in the use of the interactive evaluation system in Lithuania have been carried out before. During a school year, the teachers were writing reflections about their experience in using the interactive teaching tools in lessons: interactive whiteboard, electronic textbooks and the audience response system. Generally, the teachers had a positive opinion about the use of the interactive evaluation system in classroom. The teachers emphasized in particular the aspect of usefulness of the audience response system. In addition to the aspect of usefulness, other aspects marked by the teachers as important were those of attractiveness, time management and impact on learning. This experience of teachers in Lithuania in using the ActivInspire evaluation system in classroom is similar to the experience of teachers in other countries.
Notwithstanding the hype surrounding the enthusiasm and rush that characterises the employment of robotics in formal educational contexts, their use is described as nothing less than fragmented. In the circumstances that processes of adoption and application of digital tools are clearly outpacing their accommodation and enactment in formal educational settings, a teacher-training framework for the integration of robotics in primary schools is being proposed.
Anticipated to be editable in context by teachers, a mediating tool whose actions are defined by the Activity Theory is presented to provide a framework for activities, aims, learning outcomes and suggestive complementing hardware. Thematically built around a constructionist approach, and having a long-standing tradition in early childhood education, it should simultaneously enhance the student and teacher learning experience towards robotics in a meaningful manner.
The teaching of sorting algorithms is an essential topic in undergraduate computing courses. Typically the courses are taught through traditional lectures and exercises involving the implementation of the algorithms. As an alternative, this article presents the design and evaluation of three educational games for teaching Quicksort and Heapsort. The games have been evaluated in a series of case studies, including 23 applications of the games in data structures courses at the Federal University of Santa Catarina with the participation of a total of 371 students. The results provide a first indication that such educational games can contribute positively to the learning outcome on teaching sorting algorithms, supporting the students to achieve learning on higher levels as well as to increase the students' motivation on this topic. The social interaction the games promote allows the students to cooperate or compete while playing, making learning more fun.
Algorithms are hard to understand for novice computer science students because they dynamically modify values of elements of abstract data structures. Animations can help to understand algorithms, since they connect abstract concepts to real life objects and situations. In the past 30-35 years, there have been conducted many experiments in the field of usage of animations and visualizations in education, but they showed mixed results. In this paper, we review past research within the field and summarize recommendations regarding the graphic design and interactivity of the animations. In the second part of the paper, we present our interactive card sorting animations with conceptual views. The goal of these animations is to help students understand the main ideas and differences between basic sorting algorithms. In a pedagogical experiment related to these animations, 92 first-year computer science students of J. Selye University in Komarno (Slovakia) were asked to fill in a pre-test, experiment with the interactive animations, and fill in a post-test. The results showed that animations helped students to understand essential aspects of sorting algorithms. However, the participants were not able to understand the sorting algorithms in detail, so other types of animations are needed to teach algorithms in-depth.
This paper focuses on the results of the national research of cyberbullying of Czech teachers, which was realized in year 2016 in the entire Czech Republic. The research focused on the prevalence of cyberbullying of teachers, the impact of cyberbullying on teachers, strategies of coping with cyberbullying and methods of solving the incidents. The research involved a total of 5,136 primary and secondary school teachers from all regions of the Czech Republic. The research has shown that a fifth of respondents (21.73%) has experienced a cyber attack on their person, however cyberbullying during the last 12 months lasting over 1 week was confirmed only by 3.52% of the total number of respondents. Most often the cyberattacks were committed by students (34.92% of attacks).
The purpose of this study was to examine students' experiences using Facebook as a learning management system during a course. The study participants were 18 junior education faculty students attending a compulsory distance education undergraduate course delivered by the Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department at a university in Turkey. Upon completion of the 14-week Facebook-based course, participants were requested to answer nine open-ended questions. The results of content analysis show some advantages and some problematic aspects to using Facebook as a learning management system (LMS). Most students were satisfied with their learning experience using Facebook. The students favoured some features and situations, while other students saw the same things as being problematic. They also appreciated the sharing of course materials, instant messaging, opportunity to upload files, having discussions and getting instant notifications. A few students had negative thoughts about sharing materials in terms of accessing pre-uploaded files. However, their thoughts about synchronous and asynchronous communication were all positive. In particular, all students favoured the instant Facebook communications with their instructor and engagement in discussions. Almost half of the students had positive thoughts about the usefulness of Facebook in education. When these positive thoughts were examined, the students were found to consider that Facebook could be used as a LMS because it has many similar features.
The paper is aimed to present a methodology of learning personalisation based on applying Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard model. Research results are two-fold: first, the results of systematic literature review on Linked Data, RDF "subject-predicate-object" triples, and Web Ontology Language (OWL) application in education are presented, and, second, RDF triples-based learning personalisation methodology is proposed. The review revealed that OWL, Linked Data, and triples-based RDF standard model could be successfully used in education. On the other hand, although OWL, Linked Data approach and RDF standard model are already well-known in scientific literature, only few authors have analysed its application to personalise learning process, but many authors agree that OWL, Linked Data and RDF-based learning personalisation trends should be further analysed. The main scientific contribution of the paper is presentation of original methodology to create personalised RDF triples to further development of corresponding OWL-based ontologies and recommender system. According to this methodology, RDF-based personalisation of learning should be based on applying students' learning styles and intelligent technologies. The main advantages of this approach are analyses of interlinks between students' learning styles according to Felder-Silverman learning styles model and suitable learning components (learning objects and learning activities). There are three RDF triples used while creating the methodology: "student's learning style - requires - suitable learning objects", "student's learning style - requires - suitable learning activities", and "suitable learning activities - require - suitable learning objects". In the last triple, "suitable learning activities" being the object in the 2nd triple, becomes the subject in the 3rd triple. The methodology is based on applying pedagogically sound vocabularies of learning components (i.e. learning objects and learning activities), experts' collective intelligence to identify learning objects and learning methods / activities that are most suitable for particular students, and intelligent technologies (i.e. ontologies and recommender system). This methodology based on applying personalised RDF triples is aimed at improving learning quality and effectiveness.
Although there is no universal agreement that students should learn programming, many countries have reached a consensus on the need to expose K-12 students to Computational Thinking (CT). When, what and how to teach CT in schools are open questions and we attempt to address them by examining how well students around the world solved problems in recent Bebras challenges. We collected and analyzed performance data on Bebras tasks from 115,400 students in grades 3-12 in seven countries. Our study provides further insight into a range of questions addressed in smaller-scale inquiries, in particular about the possible impact of schools systems and gender on students' success rate.
In addition to analyzing performance data of a large population, we have classified the considered tasks in terms of CT categories, which should account for the learning implications of the challenge. Algorithms and data representation dominate the challenge, accounting for 75-90% of the tasks, while other categories such as abstraction, parallelization and problem decomposition are sometimes represented by one or two questions at various age groups. This classification can be a starting point for using online Bebras tasks to support the effective learning of CT concepts in the classroom.
The basis of the submitted study are the continuously rising demands to alter the curricula with the aim to develop students' key competences in order to increase their professional versatility. The lack of scientific research and discussions show that little investigation has been done on the issue of development of key competences. Therefore, the primary objective of our study is to present the teaching methodology, the process of creating the educational model and the pilot verification aimed at the development of key competences through interactive whiteboard in the subject of Technology. The partial results of the pilot research conducted on the research sample of 6th and 8th grade students of primary schools on Slovakia show its usefulness especially in the development of teamwork, in terms of interpersonal competences, problem solving in terms of learning competences and reading comprehension in terms of communication competences. The presented educational model reflects the contemporary requirements in terms of using information and communication technologies in the teaching of the subject of Technology, in which the acquisition of key competences becomes considerably important.
The current study investigates the attitudes of teachers towards Computer-Assisted Education (CAE) and their knowledge of technology, pedagogy and content via TPACK model that assesses the competencies for developing and implementing successful teaching. There were 280 participants in the study. The results of the study indicate that teachers' attitudes towards CAE scores are much higher than their TPACK scores. There is a low level positive correlation between their TPACK competencies and their attitudes towards CAE. Particularly, teachers' competencies of Technology Knowledge (TK) and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) have much higher relationship with their attitude towards CAE when compared to other competencies. Attitude toward CAE is observed to differ by gender. As for TPACK competencies, TK and Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) differ by gender. The TPACK framework explains 20% of attitudes towards CAE. TK is the construct having the highest effect in explaining the attitude towards using CAE.