Advances in Human Factors in Training, Education, and Learning Sciences

In our information-driven society, there is increasing use of statistical graphics to convey information in a variety of settings, including industry, mass media, government operations, and health care. Current methods for assessing a reader’s ability to comprehend statistical graphics are custom-written, not widely accepted, usable only once, and/or reliant on subjective interpretations and inferences. We have developed a method for generating queries suitable for evaluating graph comprehension capability. Our method is based on the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT), an empirically validated framework for measuring an individual’s comprehension of prose material. Compared to ad hoc methods for testing graph comprehension, our technique is less subjective, requires less manual effort and subject matter expertise, and addresses the essential features of a given graph: values and relationships depicted, frames of reference, and style attributes. The SVT, and therefore our method, combat superficial comprehension by testing what the reader has encoded, as opposed to testing the reader’s ability at visual recall or ability to look up data without reaching real comprehension. We motivate and describe our query generation method and report on a pilot study using queries generated with it.

A research on institutional policy regarding internationalization has been headed by the Netherlands Universities Foundation for International Cooperation (Nuffic) [1, 2], including many of the Dutch Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). From these higher education institutions, 27 of them representing 59% had a central-plan level, 8 of them (meaning 17%) were developing this type of plan, while for 7 of these institutions, representing 15%, such a central-level plan was missing. Just 4 institutions of the HEIs in this research were without a central-level policy on internationalization. Consequently, it can be stated that internationalization policies are adopted at a high level in the Netherlands. This paper assigns the new institutional progress as part of the framework for the strategic planning and internationalization policies as part of a comprehensive research project developed at HAN University of Applied Sciences. Mainly, this paper discusses with the “Administrative Leadership, Structure, and Staffing” as a dimension in the Comprehensive Internationalization CIGE model [3].

Higher education in Europe has been slowly implementing service-learning courses at the university in the last years. It allows students to take part in a community project as part of their course, providing a progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs. Madrid-based CEU University has been implementing service-learning elective courses on-site for the last five years through educational programs carried out in Fab Lab Madrid CEU, the digital fabrication laboratory based at the university. Thanks to it, students use digital fabrication technologies to design and make low-cost devices in cooperation with communities in need. As in the last two years, students have been increasingly taking their elective courses on-line; the number of students demanding e-service-learning courses has increased. To meet this demand, we have started to design an e-service-learning program, providing students remote access to Fab Lab technologies through the NEWTON Project platform and studying the outcomes of such effort.

Delineating the institutional perspective of international programmes, approaches and policies is a very useful method for every higher education institution to measure and assess internationalization as stated by Green [1]. Based on the Hudzik and Stohl [2] Brandenburg and Federkeil [3] and Green [1] models, the international landscape of both Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and HAN University of Applied Sciences (Arnhem Business School), the Netherlands will be measured and assessed around faculty and higher management as institutional strategic policies and plans. This paper discusses indicators those are definitely applied to the array of inputs and outputs of stated internationalization goals of both universities: enhance the global and international dimension of the curriculum, develop dissemination of knowledge and strengthen the value of research, increase international competencies and experience of faculty and stuff, increase students intercultural and international experiences.

Future Gate is a country-wide, large-scale initiative that aims to upgrade the quality of school education for all, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with an optimal combination of educational technologies and change management. Future Gate implements a continuous measurement and monitoring of human behavior towards the delivery of a successful digital transformation in the Saudi K-12 Education. This paper presents an overview of the results of a comprehensive empirical evaluation for the 1st year of Future Gate. The paper focuses on the interpretation of the human behavior in relation to the technologies and equipment introduced to Future Gate beneficiaries. Through this, the aim is to optimise the compatibility amongst all FG actors, technology, and environment. Overall, teachers and students are adopting the FG services, thus embracing the change brought about by the initiative.

Objectives of the article are: (1) to explore digital skills and media and information literacy, representing different aspects of the digital person who is responsible for how technology is used. (2) to present that these skills contribute to the development of identity, thinking and decision-making skills, and values. The article is based on several surveys: (1) “Cultural Universals in Academic Environment”, (2) “Fundamental transformations in media and communication systems and its reflections in society”, DN 05-11 2016/2019, team leader D. Peicheva; (3) “Digital Media Literacy in the context of “Knowledge Society”: state and challenges” KП-06-H25/4, team leader V. Milenkova. Students, who are respondents in surveys indicated that they use the Internet anywhere and feel confident in creating different digital content and on-line products. They are aware of the new dangers of emerging hybrid media wars and see the role of the digital media education and literacy in this direction.

The modality effect, which has been investigated by cognitive load theory, predicts that learning from visualizations supplemented with written text should be less effective than learning from the same visualizations supplemented with comparable spoken text. An explanation of the effect assumes a degree of separation between the processing of visuospatial and auditory information. Due to this separability, learning only from visuospatial information (visualizations and visual text) is more likely to overload visuospatial processing, as compared to learning from visuospatial and auditory information (visualizations and auditory text), in which both the visuospatial and the auditory processors share the load of the learning material. The aims of this review chapter are to: (a) describe the modality effect, (b) provide supporting evidence using computer multimedia about STEM topics, and (c) describe studies indicating the separability of visuospatial and auditory processing. We finish by suggesting future directions for research on the modality effect.

The interviews with experts from the field of nursing science and robotics, which were conducted as part of a project study, were intended to provide an overview of the current status of the use of AI, especially with focus on acceptance research. It was found that there is a change towards a service society. During this change, acceptance would have to be created partly trough participation and education, in addition to the focus on transparency in action. The focus here is on the degree of autonomy of the robots and the overcoming of technical knowledge barriers.

One of the key challenges in engineering education is the problem of teaching future engineers’ professional skills. Engineering students need to know what they do and do not know. This is termed metacognition. There is still quite a bit that we do not know about how metacognition develops in classroom settings. In this study, we discuss an exploration of these issues using both physical and virtual reality (VR) simulations of manufacturing systems; which are performed by student teams. We discuss the incorporation of measures of metacognition into a model of conflict and error to predict what types of experiences may be most helpful to produce improved metacognition in engineering students.

Many students are starting to rely on screens to consume their textbooks rather than paper. Does the screen influence reading speed according to its size or when compared to traditional paper? In this study, participants started the experiment with a different device and read four short stories for 10 min each. Participants read on a 17ʺ computer screen, a paperback book, a 10ʺ tablet and a 3ʺ cell phone screen. The number of words they read were counted and the actual words read per minute were calculated. No significant effect of reading speed was found across the screen sizes or the book. Individual participant’s reading speed was remarkably consistent across all the devices suggesting that reading speed does not vary with presentation mode for a brief period.

We used line_explorer, a novel programming instructional tool to administer tests, which involved assigning a math problem based on a programming concept (loops) and the accompanying instructions for solving it to students. There were two display options for the instructions: the first provided all instructional information at once, while the other displayed the instructional information in phases. Findings from the study confirmed that an interface can affect the comfort level of the user, and thus can influence the effectiveness of the tool. Results from the research will aid in identifying parameters that need to be improved or adapted to line_explorer and other programming instructional tools, to encourage better comprehension of programming concepts, as well as improve the willingness of students to use these instructional tools.

This paper provides a methodological and technological experience description in automated construction competence-oriented student models, young specialists in the field of knowledge engineering, in particular, specialists of the profession “system analyst” with use of tutoring integrated expert systems.

Learning-by-doing is an educational theory which establishes that the students learn in a more effective way if they are involved in experiences of the real world instead of passively listening. In the HCI course of the Master Program in Informatics, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, the professors proposed the active-learning approach for the teaching of several topics related to HCI such as usability, user-centered design, human factors, accessibility, ergonomics and internationalization that are nowadays relevant concepts for the design process of graphical user interfaces. For this purpose, we received the committed collaboration of a local financial entity, the BBVA Continental Bank, which voluntarily agreed to establish a set of requirements for the design of GUIs that support the implementation of new features in ATMs. This proposed exercise has allowed the students to apply what they learned in real work situations, and to consolidate the discussed concepts from practice.

An adequate medical education is the key driver of healthcare quality improvement. Technological innovations have led to consistent improvement in learning outcomes but the systematic measurement of students performance and cognitive workload need further research. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative method for the Design and Development of new advanced learning models, to be used in the training of medical students, which includes also the analysis of students performance and cognitive ergonomics. A web-based survey, on team simulation training and technology role, has been administered to 180 medical students. On the basis of this analysis, a list of guidelines for the design of medical education training has been proposed.

Quality in education is directly linked to teachers’ professional qualities. Teacher quality develops over a career in terms of personality, knowledge, skills and approaches. A teacher’s professional portfolio is a comprehensive tool which provides the opportunity to acquire information not just on professional activities, but also professional identity, which may significantly affect career performance. A professional portfolio has a particular structure, such as a CV, career development plan, lesson planning, learning processes, teaching reflections, self-assessment and co-operation with colleagues, parents, the public and others. The professional portfolio is gradually becoming part of the job for teachers in nursery schools in the Czech Republic in order to improve teaching quality. If, however, this tool is perceived as just another obligatory document, its content also changes. So what is the real content of the professional portfolio? In this study, this content is structured on the basis of an analysis of the content of a preschool teacher professional portfolio. Since this type of portfolio is currently in the phase of being introduced to the nursery school environment, data from the portfolios of students who are just setting out on their journey to becoming a professional is used. Specifically, they are ending their third year having completed a month’s work experience in nursery school. Because the analysed document is very large, attention is mainly focused on self-reflection aspects.

Even though academic knowledge is provided to academic institutions under very specific academic standards in teaching and research, the instruction’s management can impact significantly the student engagement and commitment on receiving and utilizing such knowledge. To analyse this challenge, a Fuzzy Logic, expert system-based software application has been developed and applied on a private academic institution. In this research the institution participated with 40 undergraduate students, from 24 different countries from two different semesters on the same course. The technology measures the student engagement and commitment via the co-evolute methodology for knowledge elicitation. By utilizing this approach, the management of academic institutions can make development analysis based on concrete bottom-up results. The collective analysis of the test results clearly identifies where students see the needs for greatest development and how they view their current state of engagement.

The professionalization of nursery school teachers is currently a much-discussed topic within the Czech Republic. In this study, the authors present interim results of their research into the career trajectories of nursery school teachers, and compare these to the trajectories of junior level elementary school teachers. The research sample comprised thirteen nursery school teachers (3 of whom are currently Czech School Inspectorate inspectors), and also ten junior level elementary school teachers. This sample included five nursery school principals and five elementary school principals. In the qualitative design of the research, two research methods were used, specifically the writing of a themed text, and interviews. By analysing and processing the data obtained, categories were produced which capture different evolutionary phases in the career trajectory of nursery school teachers, elementary school teachers and inspectors.

Technical Institutes and participating stakeholders have to support the process of providing skill based education through inventive practices that blends classroom teaching and experiential-learning resources. Emphasizing to apply the concepts learnt, to develop project prototypes along with the professional software training in the campus are to be introduced as value added courses. Inclination towards student centric learning shall be encouraged. Project based learning will strengthen technical skills and thereby accomplishing quality in Technical Education. Practical knowledge equipped with fundamentals are essential to bridge academic-industry gaps. This paper describes the necessity of education with hands-on, methods that can enrich skills and knowledge that gains troubleshooting skills and employability.

In the practical application process, the flipped classroom teaching mode mainly utilizes the reversal and internalization of current teaching knowledge, changes the traditional teaching mode, makes learning become the main body, turns the teacher into a teaching guide, re-plans the content and time of the classroom teaching and improve the practical teaching efficiency. In this paper, the authors make an in-depth analysis on the structural contradictions in the course of “Music Aesthetics” and uses Schubert’s work, “The Devil” as a teaching case to provide teaching examples for the curriculum reform of “Music Aesthetics”.

This study investigated infusing health promotion topics into an engineering course via problem-based case studies and lecture to assess student learning and self-reported behavior. Junior-level systems engineering students in two sections participated: one section with 52 students and one with 36. One section received a celebratory drinking case; one received distracted driving case and a lecture about hazardous drinking. Student ability ratings related to the course subject matter generally improved with both cases. The lecture appeared to enhance health promotion knowledge. Students self-reported behavior change with both cases. Case studies as a form of curriculum infusion for health promotion topics show promise. The use of case studies overall was well-received by students and coupled with lecture material can increase student health promotion knowledge and behavior change.

The aim of this study is to identify preschool children’s strategies in choice and play with didactic toys. The research was based on participatory observation of children with the set of original didactic toys. In total, 77 children aged 2 to 6 years from four different kindergartens were observed, with children always in small groups. The data obtained in the form of video recordings and field notes was then transcribed and analyzed using qualitative methods. The results point out the teacher’s influence, usually determined what the toy serves or what task have to accomplished. We also point out the possible conditionality of the child’s interest in the toy. Findings highlights the child’s strategy in the play, especially the modification of the toy that arises just when the child has the opportunity to independently explore the toys. The importance is to support the didactic thinking of kindergarten’s teachers including pre-service teachers.

The university students of initial levels are marked by the process of transition from one educational system to another superior one; and they bring with them habits and failures that attempt against the adequate academic performance, which generates a high student desertion in the initial university levels. In the current study, reference is made to the application of a system of educational training for university students at the initial levels of the UTE University, through student coaching and mentoring strategies. The research shows as a novelty the design of a training system where outstanding students of the same university specialty perform student mentoring with new students, and also evidences the results of applying student coaching by academic tutors and the department of student welfare.

The construction manager requires an educational background, technical skills, practical experience with specific soft skills in the competency domain and a specific personality profile – in order to ensure the success of a project. To enroll the correct profile student for construction management can reduce the probability of skills lost over time. The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) was used to test the personality profiles of construction management industry participants sample (N = 10). The student group sample (N = 16) included students in their 3rd year of construction management studies enrolled at three different universities in South Africa. The online SAPI personality results suggested a remarkably similar profile between the industry group and the students’ group. The online SAPI personality tests’ main dimension results scored the highest in Intellect/Openness, followed by Conscientiousness, the lowest were Neuroticism and Negative Social Relational Disposition. Construction management students need to do practical work for a year before they start their studies. This will give them a better understanding of the work conditions, pressure and work-life balance associated with the construction industry, as this is not tested in the online SAPI personality test.

Back injuries caused by poor postures are very common among home caregivers. Real-time biofeedback may be helpful for training caregivers to use safer patterns of movement. Twenty novice caregivers repeated a series of simulated care tasks to investigate the effectiveness of biofeedback in decreasing time spent in end-of-range spine flexion. Participants in the intervention group (n = 10) received real-time auditory biofeedback when their forward spine flexion exceeded a threshold during training trials, while participants in the control group (n = 10) did not. All participants returned after two weeks to repeat the care tasks and perform a new skill transfer task (sling insertion). The intervention group maintained decreased end-of-range (80th and 95th percentile) spine flexion after two weeks during care tasks compared to controls, but there was no difference between groups with the new skill transfer task. Biofeedback has good potential for reducing spine flexion but training does not transfer to new tasks.

The paper is focused on new educational activities focused on attracting young people for technical education. The idea is based on realization of the project under Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership (Key Action 2). The project based on exchange of good practices involves seven partners. Three of them represents sector of higher education and four are schools located in the neighbor of the technical university. Partners exchange ideas how to increase number of students who starts education in technical area, which seems a bit difficult, but engineers are very expected by the industry. The second project goal is to examine possibilities how the university can contribute in increasing quality of technical education at schools. Main project ideas and results of realized project activities are reported in the paper.

The ultimate result of each training should be acquisition of practical skills. ‘Practical’ means not only to obtain abilities (to carry out an activity or use something) but also to be able to apply those abilities for particular purposes. Process of development of such a training depends on its goal, subject and nature of trainees. In the article two approaches followed during development of online training related with acquiring and/or improving vocational competences were presented – one applied in e-MOTIVE project (Methods and tools for efficient use of existing resources and for support of the development of effective training content by VET Teachers) and one applied in 3DSPEC project (Specialized training in 3D printing and practical use of acquired knowledge).

The present article focuses on an entrepreneurship education concept which enables experienced professionals to further develop their knowledge as mentors in order to provide vocational orientation to young people searching for a job against the background of digitization, thus supporting them, for example, on their way to independence. The corresponding three-year EU project “Job Developer” was funded by the European Commission. Potential aspects to improve the quality of the concept itself but also in relation to the implementation of this concept were worked out. The following article focuses on the question which quality criteria can be used to improve the quality of the implementation of the Job Developer concept with the help of specific existing or future IT-solutions. On this basis, a potential and resistance analysis was carried out during the project.

This paper imparts part of the results of an ongoing PhD research, which focuses on the promotion of entrepreneurship in Fashion Design education. The paper addresses the development of relevant skills that might prepare fashion design students for their upcoming careers in the fashion industry. The results, which were withdrawn from literature review and semi-structured questionnaires administered to alumni from our institution, suggest that there is a need for an immersive and hands-on approach to education so as to foster the development of entrepreneurial skills among the next generations of fashion designers, while giving them further preparation for the challenges of a career in this particular field.

This paper has the goal of investigating the Brazilian low-income student’s education problems and their relation with environmental and social context. It was observed that many low-income teenager’s students have difficulties to properly read and write. Thus, the students find a large gap in their literacy level and often cannot even read and write although they are at a middle level school classroom. This investigation was conducted in a public school from Manguinhos’ shantytown in Rio de Janeiro city, Brazil. The investigation’s development consisted of systematic observation, interview, meeting and gamification’s activities. Through an ergonomics approach with Participatory Design and Action Research, it was possible to analyze the relations of social critical literacy and gamification approach toward inclusive and effective education.

The damage of staying up late to our body is enormous, which can lead to physical and psychological problems such as decreased immunity, fatigue, endocrine disorders [1]. The paper takes Shanghai Jiao Tong University as an example, and is based on the psychological characteristics of contemporary Chinese college students. This paper proposes an educational strategy to cope with the problem of college students staying up late. The innovation of this paper lies in the two-dimensional perspective of students and college education, in-depth analysis of the motivation behind students staying up late, establishing a user psychological model of interview cases, and proposing strategies to ameliorate students’ staying up phenomenon from the psychological acceptance level and actual results of students.

In this research, the application of K-means clustering analysis on pilots’ gaze points was studied in order to develop a quick evaluation approach for gazed-based training interventions. Detailed analysis of eye movements’ data takes a considerable amount of time which makes it difficult to use in some stages of training intervention. As a result, a more efficient indicator of trainees’ performance is needed to allow trainers the ability to provide timely feedback on trainees’ performance. In this research, the potential of using clustering analysis on pilots’ gaze points was assessed in order to classify bad and good gaze behaviors. One expert pilot and six novice pilots participated in the experiment. Pilots were equally divided into experimental and control groups.

Though different College’s curriculums in Design point to different objectives, there may be low awareness about different stakeholder’s real needs in issues like design relevance, planning, production, marketing, selling and recycling of designed products. The curricular programs include the approximation of the Design students (DS) to the job market with the purpose of professional success. However, the labor-market-approach focus must also include the challenge of entrepreneurship, based on the transformation of DS projects into competitive products. Having in mind the relevance of the analysis of DS entrepreneurship predisposition, and the need to stimulate this target to transform the DS skills in order to develop business, this paper intends to: (1) profile the DS regarding their entrepreneurial competencies and capabilities, and (2) to know how to tailor Design curriculum and proposing tools (Canvas) in order to develop/align new DS skills for development/implementation of business projects.

This paper describes theory (systemic structural model) of learning activity, as well as demonstrates (on experimental data) changes in intelligence structure on “micro-age” intervals. They are compared specific changes of intelligence structure of pupils of grades 10–11 and students of the 1st year of Kiev University of Economics, masters of psychophysiology, physicians (psychophysiologists), and patent experts. Principles of ergonomic design for learning workplace are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the shared goals of those involved in the learning process of Operations Research at undergraduate level in a Mexican institute. It is because some contradictions and disturbances were discovered within that process affecting mainly the relationships between involved individuals. Also, these can produce change and innovation in that process. For this, there is particular relevance on uncovering which elements actively participate and affect that process. Activity Theory as a novel and systematic approach and a qualitative and interpreting parading were chosen to gain a rich picture of these elements. Three activity systems were developed catching the material and abstract tools and other activity elements. Diverse links between these activity systems and their elements were revealed in the light of contextual features making sense of the relationships between the individuals. It was discovered that their clash produce innovation.

In this paper we investigate different visualizations of learners’ data related to collaborative online learning in terms of suitability and attractiveness to students. Furthermore, we analyze whether positioning and color appearance of these data visualizations might have an effect on learners’ behavior. To that end, we conducted an online study (n = 120) as well as an eye tracking study (n = 20) to compare different types of visualizations. Results show that students prefer classical data visualizations like bar charts. Visualizations placed in the sidebar of a two column web interface get less attention than visualizations in the header of the main content area. Color schemes do not seem to influence the perception of visualizations. We discuss possible explanations and implications for designing data visualizations in learning environments.

We report on a job interview simulation game developed as part of the BRAINTRAIN project funded by the EU. The on-line accessible single-player 2D narrative game is adaptive to the trainees’ (a) answering responses to questions by a virtual interviewer, (b) point of gaze towards the interviewer, and (c) his/her stress levels. Adaptiveness was realized by changing the game world in terms of more or less abstract interviewing questions, increasing or decreasing visual and audio clutter in the game interface. The game is intended to be an intervention instrument aiming to improve social communication and interaction skills. The target group are high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) adults. To test the feasibility of such a tool, we report on findings from a market study in terms of a SWOT analysis, and we show the results from a user study in terms of hypothesized effects on social skills improvements.

This study aims to discuss the joint relationship of trainer directiveness and trainee learning experiences with training engagement. Survey responses were gathered from 99 employees at Johor Port, Johor, Malaysia using self-administered questionnaires. The result revealed that trainer directiveness has a positive relationship with training engagement. It was also found that trainees’ learning experiences are positively correlated with training engagement. This study suggests that organizations take into account the differences in trainer’s instructional style and trainee’s cognitive process and motivation when implementing training programs since both factors may significantly affect the outcome of the training program as implied by the findings of this study. The study also proposes to the trainers the use of directive style in instructional settings as the specialization of directiveness give a positive influence to training engagement and subsequently, provide benefits to the trainee learning.

The article presents experiences from the implementation of three development programs for employees in the construction industry. Development programs were implemented in organizations culturally rooted in three different countries: Poland, Austria and France. Each of the programs had a similar goal - to increase the competence of project managers. However, each of the programs was based on different assumptions and used the experience of the organisations? employees to a different level. It resulted from cultural differences in the approach to knowledge management of the organization. The article attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of development programs in the function of using the knowledge of the employees. The research was conducted for over two years, it resulted from the duration of development programs of the surveyed organisations.

The article represents the model of the organization of independent out-of-class students’ learning activities. The main purpose of the model is to stimulate students’ cognitive activity while transferring accent from the academic knowledge to making independent research and practical skills application. The model is based on the results of students’ psychological characteristics diagnostics that had been carried out by authors in the period 2016–2018 in order to define the features of personal motivational sphere. The model implies an application of project-oriented educational technologies based on the interaction scheme “teacher-student” and “student-student”. It is described the experience of model integration in the courses “Marketing” and “Mathematics in Management” for bachelor-students of the polytechnic university. Within the presented model, the training tasks are designed so that all members of the group are interconnected but at the same time independent in making research and solving problems.