Higher Education Learning Methodologies and Technologies Online

This research explores the impact of two widely used visual programming languages, VPL and Blockly, in educational robotics (ER) to enhance computational skills and address Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) gender disparities in K-12 education. To do so, an escape game was designed wherein children were tasked with programming a robot using either VPL or Blockly. The study gathered responses from 1635 children across 604 groups, primarily aged between 11 and 14. Statistical analysis revealed that girls tended to favour VPL more frequently than boys, while boys showed a preference for Blockly. Furthermore, participants with prior programming experience were more inclined to opt for Blockly, perceiving it as easier and more enjoyable. In sum, VPL emerged as the most utilized and preferred language, hailed for its ease of use and entertainment value compared to Blockly. These findings underscore VPL's appeal among K-12 students, particularly for girls and those lacking prior programming exposure and can be used to design learning activities and to train future teachers in ER.

The real/digital relationship is integrative, complementary, thus of a systematic relationship, in which subjectivity is expanded, supported and transformed into a series of duplicated pluralities of the individual and the socio-psycho-anthropological environment that distinguishes it. New ontologies of human/machine relationships and the neural parameters that underlie the human/environment relationship are being reorganized by the overlap between real and digital worlds. The environment is enriched and expanded by various elements that overcome the dichotomy between real and digital and confront other mediatized realities, rebuilt and replaced “by” and “in” the digital. In order to utilize Artificial Intelligence in education, it is necessary to combine intelligent technologies and educational learning environments, in both real and virtual contexts. The introduction of AI in education, if conceived as a new Paideia, involves not only improving learning processes to enhance student performance, but also improving teaching. Teachers’ digital competence in managing digital tools, software, and technological devices in relation to specific educational strategies is necessary for the application of Artificial Intelligence in educational contexts. To prepare a reasoned proposal regarding the possible use of AI within school contexts, we proposed a structured and semi-structured qualitative survey to ascertain the degree of acceptance and openness of digital technologies within some schools in Rome. Our research was directed towards confirming the teachers’ readiness to change and their understanding of the strong transitions taking place. To gain insight into current educational challenges, we conducted a cognitive analysis on schoolteachers of various grade levels in Rome.

Calculus marked an epochal change in the evolution of scientific thought. However, this subject poses several difficulties, and researchers in mathematics education highlighted obstacles and proposed different approaches in this field of mathematics. We think that a fruitful perspective can be rooted in the history of mathematics and scientific instruments. Indeed, we retrace the first approach, due to Leibniz, to the “inverse tangent problems” (nowadays lost, after the 19th-century arithmetization of calculus). One of the authors recently invented and patented an educational artifact called T-integraph, starting from these historical ideas. To overcome its material limitations, we propose an interactive and multitouch app for the tangent, one of the mathematical contents “touched” using the T-integraph. After a brief description of the software system, we sketch a hands-on workshop activity involving pre-service Mathematics teachers.

The authors investigated the impact of an internationalisation experience via a digital platform between students attending ITE courses in Scotland University of Glasgow and students attending Science of Education in Italy Niccolò Cusano University on self-efficacy perception among Italian college students. The intervention was based on a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) model piloted by the authors in a previous study and based on a topic of common interest, remote collaborative teaching, active participation, and mutual enrichment. Scottish and Italian college students took part in a three-session program on Health & Well-being delivered remotely by a multicultural and multilanguage teaching team from the School of Education, University of Glasgow and the course Science of Education, Niccolo’ Cusano University in Rome. Italian students completed a self‐efficacy questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the program; for a different process on the application for ethical approval, no questionnaires were administrated to Scottish students. Focus groups were also organized for both cohort groups to collect qualitative information about students’ perceptions. The statistical analysis seems to confirm that participation in an internationalisation program via a digital platform significantly impacts self‐efficacy perceptions in Italian students. The Italian focus group analysis confirms the quantitative results, highlighting that the possibility to face different culture, language and higher education system stimulates motivation and is an effective instrument for self-efficacy empowerment.

The learning process can benefit from the role played by a functional development of socio-emotional skills, in which digital and multisensory components can support the promotion of this. Literature demonstrates how digital storytelling is an educational and didactic model that supports emotional engagement and active learning (O'Byrne et al. 2018). The integration of multi-sensory stimuli in learning contexts influences the strengthening of information in memory and transmits emotional signals, thanks to the activity of amygdala (Matos et al. 2015). Based on scientific evidence, this research compares the level of emotional recognition in two different narrative methodology: traditional storytelling, proposed to a control group, and digital multisensory storytelling, proposed to an experimental group. This study, conducted on a sample of 49 children aged between 3 and 5 years, demonstrated that the digital multi-sensory storytelling influences positively the ability to recall the emotions felt by the protagonists of the story. The present research represents a deepening of a previous research which showed higher ability to recall the story orally and greater emotions in children during the retelling in digital multisensory storytelling (Chierichetti & Tombolini 2023).

Traditional teaching and learning methods in the field of Computer Engineering (CE) pose considerable obstacles for students and teachers in basic courses. These challenges are evident in programming projects, database-related tasks, or operating system-based assignments, as students often face delayed assessment and feedback. In addition, teachers must evaluate a range of submitted solutions while coping with the pen-and-paper context, subjective biases, fatigue, and lack of time. However, the undergraduate CE program at our institution has been purposefully redesigned by integrating specific software solutions into core courses. Using an automated online assessment system and a cloud-based programming platform, we have significantly improved the CE educational landscape and overcome the barriers of delayed feedback, biased evaluations, and complex development environment setups. We present two case studies demonstrating how the Online Judge and Google Colab tools have transformed the delivery of several key subjects, which may serve as motivation or an example to others looking to do the same.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is becoming more essential to ensure trustworthiness and comply with regulations. XAI methodologies help to explain the automatic processing behind data analysis. This paper provides an overview of the use of XAI in the educational domain. Specifically, it analyzes some of the most commonly used XAI tools, emphasizing their characteristics to help users choose the most suitable one. Additionally, two case studies have been analyzed to demonstrate how to use XAI tools in the educational domain by exploiting a subset of the Open University dataset.

The adoption of big data technologies is becoming increasingly wide-spread across diverse domains. Simultaneously, there is a growing recognition of the crucial role played by data education in the lives of every citizen. BotBid stands as an educational initiative with a primary focus on establishing innovative and sustainable educational gardens within schools, with the objective of promoting data literacy, scientific and research methodologies, and citizen science practices. The incorporation of a blended modality and a platform for data collection and analysis also serves as an opportunity to enhance digital skills.This experience report paper shares the experiences from the inaugural year of the initiative, involving approximately 70 Italian schools with varying levels of engagement, and delves into the resultant learning outcomes. Additionally, we present the activity plan for the second year of the project, now integrated into the dissemination activities of the RAISE PNRR Ecosystem.

The adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the education context has been strongly increasing in the last years. A large range of possible applications shows the great opportunities derived from the use of LLM for learning and teaching tasks. However, LLM also introduces the risk that cheating students use existing tools to generate academic content, making it extremely difficult for the teacher to evaluate his/her performance. This drives a great interest in researchers and developers to study new approaches for distinguishing generated content from human content. However, the existing approaches are not able to adapt to the rapid improvement and evolution of content generators that have always been more effective in simulating human tasks. Starting from these considerations this paper proposes a new approach ensuring a great capability to adapt to the continuous generator market changes thanks to the adoption of generative adversarial networks (GANs). The proposed approach includes a generator that starting from the human-written content can obtain new generated content leveraging a continuous retraining process. The proposed approach is evaluated on a dataset composed of 150k human-written and LLM-generated texts. It is built starting from a free available dataset. The empirical validation shows good performance of the proposed approach to discriminate the contents obtaining an accuracy of 0.86.

The fast pace of technological development in the domain of engineering forces higher education institutions to continuously adapt their learning materials to offer up-to-date skills and knowledge to learners. In this context, cooperation among universities to develop educational units is a strategy that allows the efficient utilization of resources to meet the aforementioned challenge. Cooperation, per se, can be problematic due to different standards and approaches in describing the process related with learning. Constructive Alignment has emerged as a method that allows higher education institutions to both implement a modern pedagogical approach and standardize the related communication of learning content and context. This article investigates models that can be used to support the creation, use, and sharing of constructively aligned content and, building upon previous research, proposes an updated version of the CONstructiveALIgnment (CONALI) ontology. The aim is to extend its usage to the development of an online collaborative platform for the management of digitalized knowledge (e.g., educational material). In detail, this work, starting from the requirements emerged in the context of an Erasmus project, updates the CONALI 2.0 ontology, defining new key reference concepts and semantic relations between these concepts. These will enable a semantically rich description of the knowledge base content and a formal structure of the online platform utilizing ontology web language. This work showcases the application of the developed CONALI 3.0 ontology to four use cases from Universities in the Erasmus project consortium and serves as starting point for the initiation of a more dynamic, digitalized, and aligned educational knowledge base on collaborative platforms.

This contribution represents the fourth phase of a research project “Augmented Didactic”, which aims to investigate the benefits of using Augmented Reality in education. Specifically, this work aimed to implement Augmented Reality during lessons to understand the role of the possibility to manipulate a 3D model representing the topic explained by the teacher. The student could actively interact with the previously purely theoretical contents of the lesson, becoming a co-creator of the learning processes, abandoning the conventional condition of passive content acquisition. As a result, there was an improvement in performance due to the activation of more meaningful learning processes, where the acquired knowledge is no longer destined to be lost but instead becomes rooted in the student’s cognitive network, modifying its initial structure.

Digital Twin (DT) has gained significant traction over the last decade, and it has been defined many times from different perspectives by the academy and industry communities. Although DTs are widely used in e.g. manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, their potential applications will soon extend and cover other domains. In this scenario, education is required to play a major role in building its own DT models for purposes ranging from academic to professional training. The DT technology in the education context is expected to enhance the outcomes and scopes of the standard digital e-learning approaches. A particular aspect of the research includes how the DT concept can be transferred over to e-learning and its technology adjusted for a virtual to virtual model. Furthermore, DT is a unique phenomenon, often misinterpreted, that need to be well-defined within a proper framework. In this work, we present the architecture of a Prototypical Digital Twin architecture and explain the importance of defining a framework for a DT-Learning concept.

The educational experience is undergoing a transformation as studies increasingly emphasize the importance of emotions in various relationships, with individual feelings towards and about others proving crucial for the overall quality of the educational relationship and supporting students’ development. The growing exploration of the role of emotions in learning and teaching, particularly in higher education, heightened the interest in the significant impact of emotions and the quality and effectiveness of student learning.This study aims to shed light on the elicitation of emotions that promote successful learning experiences and to investigate the intricate relationships between emotions and teaching practices within an academic framework. Building upon the foundational role of the educational experience and drawing from classic socio-cognitive and pragmatic-cognitive studies, this research undertakes a comparative exploration of the connections between emotions and specific teaching practices in two distinct university settings: a traditional setting and a remote learning environment. Methodologically, the study adopts an exploratory approach, employing 160 questionnaires administered to students in two university courses – one at Politecnico di Torino and the other at eCampus online University. The investigation provides insights into the emotional dynamics of teaching practices in both traditional and remote learning environments, thereby enhancing our understanding of how emotions shape the learning experience in higher education.

This paper aims to outline an effective distance laboratory didactics focused on the concept of body in action, which implies the creation of a virtual space that maintains the relational connotations essential to didactics. The paper establishes an analogy between theatre and didactics by endorsing the theory of Embodied Cognition, which emphasises the inseparability of cognitive, bodily, and emotional dimensions within the teaching-learning process. It recognizes the potential of theatrical practices as pedagogical resources that can help structure an environment conducive to empathy, even in remote settings and with the use of technology. In order to investigate the impact of the CReAP+T Model on students’ perception of empathic relationships, communication, and emotional activation, an exploratory research project was conducted via two distance learning courses at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples. Qualitative survey instruments were used to collect data on students’ experiences, which will be discussed in this paper.

In this paper, we report some results from an experimentation where a new Moodle plugin has been used by students of the Master’s programme in Mathematics. Students were divided into small random groups and engaged in online activities. They used the Quick Chat Moodle plugin to communicate while solving two tasks: the Wason’s selection task and the variant introduced by Griggs and Cox. For both tasks, each group was asked to discuss and agree on a common solution in a Group Chat, and then to share it in a General Chat where members of all groups and the teacher could join in the discussion. The Quick Chat plugin allowed students to visualize the task, the Group Chat and the General Chat in a single web page. With a similar but more complete interface, the teacher was able to follow all the Group and General Chats in real time. All data were collected using the Moodle platform and analyzed within the theoretical framework introduced by Weinberger and Fischer. In particular, we focused on one of the fundamental dimensions involved in the construction of new knowledge in computer-based collaborative environments, that is the dimension of social modes of co-construction. Preliminary findings suggest that Quick Chat indeed helps to promote student collaboration and interactions; at the same time, it also allows the teacher to actively follow all group interactions, enabling him/her to intervene when necessary and prepare the final discussion more effectively.

Recent research has focused on the benefits of digital and video resources in promoting meaningful learning among students. The popularity of video-based learning and teaching has grown because of the widespread use of portable devices, the proliferation of online videos, and massive online open courses. At the university level, video design is primarily used for teacher professional development rather than university teaching and learning. The concept of engaging university students taking a pure mathematics course in encouraging their learning and making other students learn through the creation and use of a video is the foundation of our research. The goal is to encourage meaningful learning by involving third-year undergraduates in designing a seminar for themselves and their peers and then producing a video be addressed to second-year students, immersing themselves in both a peer and a quasi-peer activity in topology. Topology is a subject in which using a video resource can assist students in visualising some complex spaces, developing their imagination, visualising the key insights of a proof, and, more broadly, facilitating reasoning for knowledge construction. We face the issue of promoting students’ meaningful learning by providing them with topology-related design and learning opportunities for both themselves as creators and users, as well as other external users. Preliminary findings show encouraging outcomes both for 3Y-students in terms of engagement (93%), communication skills (95%), creative thinking, and deeper knowledge (91%), and for 2Y-students primarily through reflective thinking (92%), communication skills (78%),

In this study we present an experimental research concerning a special kind of Formative Assessment, developed in a workshop conducted with university pre-service training course for Primary school teachers. The educational path has been divided into various phases, in which pre-service mathematics teachers worked in small groups and had to solve an arithmetic task. The role of technology is very important, since it ensures some important interactions among teachers. This activity has favoured an improvement in communication skills. Moreover, in this paper we will show the very important role of the feedback in this Formative Assessment process. Indeed, it gives multiple perspectives for students and teachers, it makes the communication skills improve and it makes the students aware of their own work revealed. This awareness increases while analysing and evaluating the peers’ work.

Starting on the problem of the training of future primary school teachers whenever they use various online resources and other pedagogical software in teaching mathematics, the paper shows the results of an experiment carried out within the course of Mathematics Education I − in the master’s degree in Primary Teacher Education on the use of LearningApps.Specifically, the aim of this study was to familiarize students (future teachers) with LearninApp.org to create interactive modules to support Math teaching-learning in class or in their leisure time (e.g. lesson preparation, correction, homework, and fieldwork).The methodological approach chosen was non-linear to the topic of design to give depth and meaning to teaching practices. The underlying leitmotif was to consider design as ‘looking at the object’ from different points of view to connect them and draw operational indications. For this reason, the attention was focused on how to design a teaching practice using an ‘interactive module’ (app) the logical structure of which must orient and accompany the learner in the construction of mathematical meanings.

The research presented in this paper is framed in the strand of the use of digital technologies in mathematics educational activities. We present the digital device ‘Task Interpretativi – Digital Integrated Model’, which merges the two theoretical frameworks of Interpretative Knowledge and Formative Assessment. We implemented the device in a blended course of Mathematical Laboratory devoted to kindergarten and primary pre-service teachers, attending the Italian single cycle master’s degree in Primary Education. The research purpose is to investigate to what extent the presented device impacts on the assessment attitude of the prospective teachers. To do this, we carried out a qualitative analysis on a case study, looking at the improvement of a selected prospective teacher’s assessment practices along two cycles of the device’s implementation. We studied the effectiveness of our experimental design with respect to the main professional development goals: teacher’s shift of attention from the correctness of the product to the correctness of the process; teacher’s movement from a synthetic binary judgement to a text which comments the productions and possibly helps the actual or potential recipient to overcome difficulties and move forward. Finally we discussed the added value brought by the use of digital technologies in our experimental design.

The present paper deals with the Cybersecurity for Teens project, developed by Ludoteca del Registro .it (IIT-CNR), the educational section of Registro .it, with the aim of spreading cybersecurity awareness among high schools’ students. The project is presented into the landscape of Italian initiatives dedicated to cybersecurity education, also attempting to provide recent data highlighting how today's adolescents and young people are exposed to numerous cyber threats. CS4T entails a 10-hour educational program, and the paper describes the topics and teaching tools used in both the theoretical and practical parts. The practical part, carried out by researchers from IIT, is presented in detail, referring to the types of simulated attacks and the software used to make it accessible to students. A good part of the article also deals with the description of the results of the project evaluation project, highlighting improvements in student’s knowledge related to cybersecurity and appreciation, in terms of liking, of this educational initiative.

CyberTrials 2023 is a game-based educational program designed to counteract the gender gap prevailing in the STEM field by equipping Italian high school female students with knowledge and skills in computer science and cybersecurity while also providing them with relatable female role models. The program complements 11 theory-driven lectures with 9 hands-on training modules, consisting of a series of CTF challenges organized following an innovative, game-based narrative-driven framework. The program successfully engaged students, as indicated by the low dropout rate and the self-reported measure of interest. We employ an online survey to examine the relationship between higher engagement in innovative educational activities and students’ educational outcome. Our results indicate the existence of a positive relationship between higher engagement in training modules and students’ educational outcomes and a null relationship between higher engagement in lectures and students’ educational outcomes. Our results suggest the importance of complementing theory-driven lectures with hands-on, gamified activities for computer science and cybersecurity education.

This paper presents SuperCyberKids, a project funded by the European Union that focuses on integrating digital game-based learning into cybersecurity education for children. The project aims to equip educators with effective methodologies and tools for teaching cybersecurity, addressing rising cyber threats and the educational sector’s challenges. SuperCyberKids utilizes a gamified approach, harmoniously merging digital education with game-based learning, underpinned by fundamental cybersecurity principles. The initiative spans five EU countries, involving a collaboration of academic, cybersecurity and game design experts. The conceptual core of this project is the SuperCyberKids Learning Framework (SCKLF), which is the product of a comprehensive literature review, amalgamation of expert opinions, and analysis of current cybersecurity educational practices. The paper explores the application of two specific digital games, ‘Spoofy’ and ‘Nabbovaldo and the Cyber Blackmail’ in the framework, emphasizing their role in fostering critical thinking and cybersecurity skills among young learners in a dynamic and engaging manner.

This paper introduces a new strategy to enhance the trustworthiness of Short Answer Scoring (SAS) systems used in educational settings. Although the development of scoring models with high accuracy has become feasible due to advancements in machine learning methods, particularly recent Transformers, there is a risk of shortcut learning using superficial cues present in training data, leading to behaviors that contradict rubric standards and thus raising issues of model trustworthiness. To address this issue, we introduce an efficient strategy that aligns the features of responses with rubric criteria, mitigating shortcut learning and enhancing model trustworthiness. Our approach includes a detection method that employs a feature attribution method to identify superficial cues and a correction method that re-trains the model to align with annotations related to the rubric, thereby suppressing these superficial cues. Our quantitative experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in consistently suppressing superficial cues, contributing to more trustworthy automated scoring of descriptive questions.

Inclusive education is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that aims to guarantee access and participation to all students considering their learning needs and competencies. Such a goal is particularly relevant in developing countries where socioeconomic conditions make it difficult to provide education, leading to a rate of illiterate adults higher than 99%, and millions of children aged 6–11 either do not attend school or drop out before completing primary education. Inclusive education is organized according to the learner’s needs helping to smooth out the knowledge gap among peers.Reading proficiency is one-factor influencing students’ engagement in learning activities. A low level can hamper content comprehension, thus acting negatively on students’ motivation. In the higher education sector, students’ reading proficiency is affected by different factors such as background and experiences, special educational needs, and general interests. Consequently, increasing the students’ engagement needs a personalized didactic plan that includes educational material according to the reading proficiency. Innovative Artificial Intelligence approaches to language complexity play a key role in fostering inclusive education. In particular, Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) and Automatic Text Complexity Evaluation (ATCE) represent effective solutions in this context. This paper aims to introduce both ATS and ATCE research fields, focusing on how the application of related systems might be useful in tackling the inclusion problem in the educational environment.

The ongoing evolution of Artificial Intelligence technology is able to influence different fields of human experience, also including communication and professional activities. Artificial Intelligence has been playing a relevant role in education and literature has already addressed the design, impact, and challenges of such technological solutions designed for educational purposes. On the other hand, technology integration, and especially the integration of solutions related to Artificial Intelligence, has started to exert a crucial function in enabling and enhancing Personalized Learning experience. In this regard, the present paper reports the results of a scoping review conducted with the aim of describing the empirical research evaluating the impact of Artificial Intelligence tools and systems as integrated in Personalized Learning approaches designed for K-12 education. The results shows that personalized solutions supported by Artificial Intelligence technology mainly consisted in Intelligent Tutoring Systems designed for online learning platforms and addressed STEM (especially Mathematics and Physics topics) and language learning. Overall, all the studies selected for the purposes of the current reviews reported a positive impact of the Artificial Intelligence-based personalized systems on students’ learning outcomes.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized multiple sectors including education. The popularization of tools such as ChatGPT has sparked the debate concerning the impact of AI on traditional education and the nature of learning. This paper explores undergraduate students’ attitudes towards AI and ChatGPT acceptance. A descriptive cross-sectional study with 72 Public Relations students (M age = 19.2 years old) took place in Barcelona (Spain) during the first semester of 2023. The study implemented a mixed method approach with two validated questionnaires and an open text question to gather comprehensive insights. Findings reveal positive attitudes towards artificial intelligence and ChatGPT acceptance. The assessment of negative perceptions show concerns regarding artificial intelligence and the use of ChatGPT among participants. The correlational analysis of scales showed an intricate relationship between AI attitudes and ChatGPT acceptance while the qualitative analysis highlighted three major attitudes among students: openness, awareness, and alertness. The present study contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding the use of ChatGPT in educational settings, emphasizing the importance of exploring students’ attitudes and concerns. As artificial intelligence continues to permeate various aspects in our daily life, it becomes crucial to explore its impact on education, particularly in higher education. By understanding students’ attitudes, both educators and institutions can enhance their proficiency in integrating artificial intelligence in a more efficient manner, ensuring a well-balanced approach that maximizes benefits while mitigating potential drawbacks of adopting AI technology.

The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education has made significant advancements, particularly in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Among cutting-edge technologies, ChatGPT stands out as a tool which can generate human-like responses based on natural language prompts. While the release of ChatGPT has raised significant concerns about academic integrity in higher education, literature highlights its great potential for improving student learning.Accordingly, the present contribution aims to explore how to incorporate AI in the university educational context to enhance and support teachers and students in the teaching-learning process, while promoting a critical, ethical, and responsible use of the chatbot ChatGPT. Therefore, in this study an experimental research hypothesis to be carried out within the Degree course in Primary Education Sciences will be presented. Two groups of students will be involved: the first, the experimental group, made up of those enrolled at the University of Palermo and the second, the control group, enrolled in the same course, but attending the Agrigento site.The study aims to develop a critical and responsible approach in students, so that they are able to reflectively and consciously evaluate the role and effect of artificial intelligence in the educational environment, in order to achieve an improvement in the results of self-regulated learning, in the development of critical thinking and metacognitive processes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming essential in different working fields and in our daily lives. The renewed interest in AI sparked a discussion on the importance of teaching AI concepts and computational skills to young people, including whether professionals should introduce AI at K-12 level through Computer Science (CS) education. In this paper, we conducted an experiment for analyzing how AI can help students in searching for information, by comparing AI and traditional web searching, for determining how AI is changing learning approaches.

This document addresses the problem of psychosis, a mental health condition that affects one’s perception of reality. It delves into the symptoms, causes, and consequences of psychosis, which can lead to chronic conditions like schizophrenia. We specifically focus on its early stages, particularly on Ultra High Risk and First Episode of Psychosis patients. We propose a digital platform that integrates psycho-education, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and a Token Economy system to improve the treatment of psychosis. The platform comprises a web-based patient management platform, a predictive model and decision support system, and a smartphone application for patients. We explore how e-health and the Token Economy can enhance psychiatric care by providing access, effectiveness, motivation, and engagement while using evidence-based tasks, gamification, feedback, and rewards to help patients achieve their therapeutic goals.

Many recent studies highlighted the importance of feedback on the quality of learning. It empowers students to take ownership of their learning, fosters engagement and motivation, and enables personalized learning experiences. However, the use of feedback processes in real-world everyday teaching often becomes unsustainable, due to the number of students and the timing of the courses, especially in university contexts. The present study aimed to address this challenge in real university classes, laying the groundwork for the future development of an automated intelligent system that can support university teachers in delivering personalized feedback to a large group of students in real-world environments. Specifically, it focused on the prospect of gathering quality data from an actual academic course, intending to appropriately fuel AI-based techniques. These techniques could enhance the comprehension of students’ learning evidence and offer valuable insights to teachers. This paper presents an experimental work, carried out in the academic year 2020/21, which involved 220 students attending the first year of the Master’s Degree course in Primary Education. The components of teachers’ professional vision were explored using a rubric developed by the research team. Preliminary results suggested that the rubric can be effective in capturing sequential information about students’ development of professional vision. Thus, it can be further exploited to collect data from the process and feed AI-based algorithms. Further developments include exploring other machine learning techniques to reduce observers’ bias and support teachers in providing more effective personalized feedback.

The aim of this study is to examine critical perspectives in the field of research on Artificial Intelligence, its ethical uses, implications, and challenges in education, with a particular focus on individual well-being from a human-centered perspective. The study investigated the existing literature within a specific thematic area using the search query [(“Artificial Intelligence” or “AI”) AND “education” AND “human-centered AI” AND “ethics” AND “well-being”] to include documents with these terms in titles, keywords, or abstracts. The Scopus and Web of Science databases were consulted with research confined to English language articles in the educational research field, published from 2015 to the present. The results were sorted by relevance. The purpose of this review was to consolidate the ongoing academic discourse and pinpoint areas of inquiry that necessitate further examination in forthcoming research. These pathways incorporate utilising Artificial Intelligence in education (AIED) adopting a human-centered approach, with a focus on ethical considerations, individual welfare, and designing curriculum plans that equip future citizens with the requisite skills to build resilient and sustainable capabilities within the digital ecosystem [1].

The study was performed on the framework of the European-funded project called Blue Arrow (2020-1-IT-IT02-KA226-HE-095644) that aimed to enable the pre-service teachers to apply Tangible User Interfaces platforms in distance and blended teaching. The paper presents the teachers’ reflection triggered by the tool developed in the project. It is an authoring tool for the building of digital stories where the student needs to use tangible user interfaces and then, physical objects to proceed with the scenes. The stories could be played with a smartphone that recognizes, using the NFC antenna, the tangible objects. The results of this study showed that the teachers involved considered the Blue Arrow authoring tool to be a practical tool for addressing special educational needs. They underlined the characteristics of sensory engagement and dexterity, which sparks a sense of discovery that could motivate students in class. On the other hand, pre-service teachers see the introduction of innovative techniques such as digital storytelling through TUI methodologies as an additional workload.

The paper presents a pilot study about formative assessment conducted at the University of Foggia during the academic course 2022–2023 with the aim of improving students’ active participation and formative assessment opportunities. The peculiarity of this study is the use of the digital tool of Kahoot! with an active approach through the student-generated multiple choice tests (MCT). In two different courses, students have been divided into two groups: “the users” (only users of the MCT) and “the makers”, also creators of MCT for the classroom. This article presents the instructional and experimental design for the study as well as results concerning the learning outcomes and students’ participation to both in-class activity and final course examinations. The results of the pilot study are promising, showing high overall levels of participation and motivation among the students that are significantly higher for “makers” compared to “users”.

The post-pandemic “new normal” scenario of higher education highlights the need for active teaching and learning methodologies, capable of promoting immediate and effective feedback on students’ knowledge and understanding (assessment FOR learning) as well as improving students’ acquisition of content knowledge, study and learning strategies, and metacognitive abilities (assessment AS learning). In this exploratory study, we present an analysis of students’ perceptions concerning an experimental teaching and learning activity carried out in two courses of the University of Foggia in 2022/23. In this study, students took the role of either participants to gamified cognitive activation quizzes using Kahoot! or of the creators of multiple-choice questions for the activity. We investigate participating students’ reactions to the activity as well as their role, identifying areas for further improvement, and we investigate the reasons that prevented students’ participation to the activity.

In recent years, e-tutors are playing an increasingly pivotal role in e-learning and online education, particularly following the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in distance education. Several theoretical studies have outlined the roles, functions, styles, and competencies of this important professional figure. Here we present the preliminary results of an ongoing research project conducted with the purpose to investigate the role and professional development of e-tutors of the IUL Telematic University community. This research uses a mixed method design to obtain better inferences by combining different data sources and to increase the validity of the findings. In this paper we present the results obtained from the questionnaire administered to a group of e-tutors (n. 57) to investigate several elements and dimensions: interests, educational and cultural background of the e-tutor; previous professional experiences, perceptions, and expectations about one’s role; disciplinary, methodological and socio-relational competencies; tutorship styles, practices and strategies. For the analysis, five dimensions of the questionnaire were considered to study tutoring methodologies and strategies: i) “teaching strategies”, ii) “teaching practices”, iii) “tools”, iv) “feedback”, v) and “evaluation”. Through an internal Spearman correlation analysis within the five dimensions, it emerged a positive correlation between the variables within each dimension. The individual items were then aggregated into five composite indicators, one for each section, and these indicators were used as dependent variables in a multiple linear regression analysis to examine the association between tutor skills and certain demographic and academic characteristics. The results are analysed and discussed.

This systematic review aims to investigate the role and impact of new technological tools in supporting inclusive teaching practices. It explores the reflections, best practices, and experiences related to innovative teaching methods. Inclusive teaching practices have gained significant attention in education since the increasing use of technology, providing opportunities to cater to the different needs of learners. A systematic search was conducted in Scopus, Emerald Insight, ERIC, and Google Scholar for articles published from 2013 to July 2023. The reference lists of the included studies were also searched to retrieve possible additional studies. A total of 32 studies were included in the systematic review. The review highlights several technological instruments employed to support inclusive teaching practices. It reveals the positive impact of Assistive Technology (AT) on students with disabilities, the effectiveness of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) in creating immersive learning experiences, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in personalizing learning, the benefits of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in promoting inclusive content delivery, and the success of gamification in enhancing student engagement. The findings underscore the potential of new technological instrumentation to foster inclusive teaching practices. By personalizing learning experiences, ensuring inclusive content delivery, providing faculty training, and strategically incorporating technological instruments, educators can create equitable and engaging learning environments. These insights pave the way for advancing inclusive teaching and promoting positive student outcomes in diverse educational settings.

The emergence of E-learning platforms and portals is revolutionizing traditional educational paradigms in the quickly changing digital age. This article explores in depth how these online platforms, with a focus on the Loghat and Moodle platforms, have the power to transform the educational landscape.This study was conducted at the Faculty of Sciences Ben M’sick, and it focused on the implementation and impact of two e-learning platforms, Loghat and Moodle, on student learning experiences. A mixed-methods approach was used in the study, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses.A sample of 77 undergraduate students from a variety of faculty departments participated in the study’s quantitative phase. In order to ensure representation across various academic levels and programs, stratified random sampling was used. To gather information on students’ perceptions and experiences with the Loghat and Moodle platforms, a structured questionnaire created specifically for each platform was created and distributed. The questionnaire measured the usability, support for learning effectiveness, levels of engagement, and general satisfaction of Loghat and Moodle. Additionally, it gathered data on the academic standing of the students, their comprehension of the course material, and how they perceived the effects of Moodle and Loghat on their learning outcomes. The results showed that students believed Loghat and Moodle to be straightforward and helpful to their educational pursuits. Through the use of these platforms, students reported greater engagement, better comprehension of the course material, and improved academic performance. Students particularly appreciated Loghat’s interactive elements and Moodle’s extensive toolkit.

The main aim of this contribution is to report the results of a research project carried out at a lower secondary school. The project was focused on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). In particular, authors had the aim to investigate whether, through the use of a wearable biofeedback tool capable of converting the electrical variance on plants into musical notes, it is possible to qualitatively improve the pupils’ relationship with nature, increasing their connection to it and promoting the implementation of pro-environmental and inclusive behavior, as well as biophilic responses. The ex-ante/ex-post results were elaborated by comparing the answers given by participants, using validated questionnaires we administered to both the control group and the experimental group. Data were collected after a digitally and musically mediated intervention was applied with students. The intervention was designed not only for the students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), but for each student in the class who was able to participate in an active and personal way. Recent studies (Kollárová & Kačmárová, 2022) hypothesize that by mediating the experience of children with nature by artistic means, they will be more sensitive to the specific stimuli of natural environments, establishing a relationship with nature and feeling more attracted by it than before. Thus, music is configured as a channel of ecological literacy, in particular local musical practices and the sounds of nature (Shevock & Bates, 2019); furthermore, studies by Arbuthnott and Sutter (2019) about songwriting retreats held in a natural environment have shown an increase in connection with nature, as well as an improvement in emotional well-being and performance in a creative reasoning task. In a world in which disconnection with nature has become increasingly exacerbated, data (Adams & Beauchamp, 2019) suggest that the creation of music for children involves an interactivity with nature that provokes biophilic responses and this suggests that music, especially from the natural world, may constitute a connecting tool between human beings and the green world. Recent studies also show that making music outdoors, in rural landscapes, has positive effects on creativity, expressiveness and the desire to experiment. In addition, several authors agree that the bond with nature is formed as children (Guiney and Oberhauser, 2009; Barbiero et al., 2021) and that this can be developed through continuous engagement with nature and experiences that occur during childhood.

Innovative and inclusive teaching strategies in higher education institutions are at the core of this essay. The paper reflects the results of an interdisciplinary research project in the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Unimore) located in Northern Italy that is also in the process of creating a faculty development system. The essay allows to reconstruct, by means of a wide survey (consistent with the AsdUni, Italian Association for the Promotion and Development of Didactics, Learning and Teaching in University) on the Unimore academic staff, the inclusive teaching strategies enacted by Unimore lecturers as well as their interpretation of the very concept of inclusion.On the basis of the results of the initial survey that involved a statistically significant sample of academic staff, needs of support in teaching activities were collected that were further investigated through semi-structured interviews. These needs have been taken into account to design a series of training activities on inclusive and innovative strategies that have been implemented involving 151 participants, with some participants engaging in more than one seminar. The impact of the faculty development initiatives on the teaching staff was then evaluated by using Kirkpatrick’s model. Findings revealed a strong appreciation of training among lecturers, as well as a high level of perceived utility of it. Pre-post analyses based on microdata on students who have attended courses experiment-ting inclusive strategies allows us to capture positive results in terms of sense of belonging, greater satisfaction with the activity and feelings of social inclusion.

This article proposes a reflection on the meanings, models and practices aimed at supporting and promoting inclusive processes in universities. A review of recent literature on inclusive cultures and practices in higher education confirms the idea of inclusion as a “universal value”, albeit with different declinations, in terms of intentions, priorities and operativeness, as in the case of didactics. In general, inclusive teaching is one of the indicators of a university’s inclusiveness and innovativeness, even if a ‘double track’ remains. The framework of the ‘inclusive university as a complex ecosystem between economics and ecology [56] has guided the construction of an operational framework, consistent with an integrated ecological-relational vision of the inclusive model, and the definition of a set of related indicators that characterize inclusive teaching – specialized for all, in order to support processes that foster the collective construction of inclusive universities [1, 12].In line with this model, two schemes have been developed for the definition of the “original” model of inclusion and for the implementation of inclusive and innovative universities (integrated model) that allow for the integration and focusing of different elements, dimensions and levels, in a single framework, consistent with an idea of special and inclusive pedagogy and didactics [10], and with the ecological-relational model. Within this model, the increasing attention paid to new technological tools is reconceptualized as a valid support for the promotion of authentically inclusive education. Tools and technologies find an epistemological position.

As part of a Morocco-French cooperation aimed at strengthening distance education at the Moroccan university, a training of trainers on the subject of «Open Education Resources» OER, was conducted for the benefit of Moroccan professors, researchers and PhD students. Throughout the training, a strong commitment expressed by active involvement was expressed by the participants opening the debate to a reflection to understand the factors leading to the success of this training. Thus, with this article, we seek to define the factors that led to its success. In order to answer our question, we based our research on the tetrahedron presented by «Faeber 2003» with an emphasis on the motivation of the learners, the roles provided by the trainers, the interactions within the group as well as the learning environment (platform). Based on a quantitative research methodology, a questionnaire on self-determined motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and the roles of trainers (Charlier & Peraya, 2002) was administered to the participants (n = 53). The main results of the research confirmed that the success of a distance training is based on a high motivation of the learners, a real commitment of the trainers, a quality in the knowledge provided and a group dynamic built around the digital learning environment. Such results help to define the model of distance learning to be followed for an optimal learning experience.

Teachers play a crucial role in students’ lives, influencing not only their education but also their interpersonal development. Positive teacher-student interactions are fundamental for the students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development, contributing to positive learning outcomes. Educational research has evolved from focusing on teacher characteristics and teaching methods to analyzing the broader impact of the teacher on the entire class.Teachers’ professional identity is a key factor in understanding their motivation, commitment, effectiveness, satisfaction, and students’ learning results. Maintaining high motivation is essential to improve teaching quality and receive positive feedback from students and the school community. While continuous teacher training is highly recommended, there are currently no statutory provisions for it in Italy.This contribution introduces tools to measure teacher satisfaction during training, assessing both acquired skills and their satisfaction and self-perception in the professional role. An example is the BEST questionnaire, which collects data on self-assessment by special education teachers and their perceived self-efficacy. The Learning Science Hub at the University of Foggia plans to administer the BEST questionnaire to special needs training teachers to enhance ongoing teacher training efforts.”

Climate change is one of the most challenging issues of our times, but it seems that humanity does not always realize the kind of consequences our current everyday habits will have on our planet. Virtual Reality is a powerful technology that can provide a wide range of immersive experiences, including representations of circumstances that can be far in space and in time. The current work presents a virtual reality futuristic depiction of the city of Torino, in Italy, that includes the scary representation of some of the effects of climate change on nature, people, and urban assets. We run a user study to measure the positive and negative emotions induced by these audio-visual effects, and found that the ones related to nature have the highest negative emotional impact.

Studies showing the positive effects of introducing Virtual Reality into learning contexts are still at an explorative phase, especially those dealing with primary school students. Involving a sample of 125 pupils from three primary schools, this study aims to provide empirical evidence about the development of collaborative skills through the introduction of an immersive learning approach based on the creation of escape rooms in Virtual Reality. A six-month experimental pathway based on the use of VR headsets and on the design of immersive games was introduced, adopting a social constructivist approach. To assess the results of this experimentation, the participants’ social skills were analyzed using a pre-test/ post-test design through tests administered to students and to their teachers. Results show a significant increase in collaborative skills, pointing to the opportunity of involving 4th and 5th graders in activities based on immersive learning and on preparing teachers to integrate this approach at school through preservice training and continuous professional development delivered in higher education. The findings of this research are relevant and affirm the value of adopting this approach for teacher training within higher education contexts. These results suggest a promising avenue for further exploration and research in this direction.

Protecting personal data in research has gained significant importance in recent years. Data-intensive research fields that require extensive data analysis, such as Multimodal Learning Analytics, rely on data collected through various sensory devices, such as wearable devices or visual sensors. Depending on the type of sensor used, the data collected may contain personal information about the users, such as full video recordings to examine their kinematic behaviour. This can become controversial due to ethical considerations and international regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. In this study, we propose using animations instead of videos to analyse multimodal data, such as learning analytics, in educational settings. Visual animations can preserve the participants’ privacy while maintaining the data analysis’s quality. We test the method by annotating the performance of a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) procedure using either video or animation. We find out that the agreement between the raters is similar for both methods, suggesting that animation is a feasible alternative to video.

In recent years, Augmented and Virtual technology has been extensively applied in the educational domain, opening up new methods and opportunities in the field of digital learning. A Virtual Reality (VR) environment can offer new forms of interactive learning, especially for subjects from the STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) area and Computer Science is no exception. We present XRBlocks, a Visual Programming Language developed for an eXtended Reality (XR)-based block coding system called XRCoding. XRCoding provides an innovative immersive environment for learning the basics of computational thinking in an immersive VR environment. The XRBlocks language provides a very basic instruction set that can be used to build exercises for introductory programming courses. Passive haptics is used to improve interaction and give tactile feedback to the users. Physical placeholders are tracked in real-time, and aligned with the XR coding blocks. The language has been designed to increase engagement in computer education, and has been preliminarily tested with secondary school students. In the paper, we present the design principles for the XRBlocks language and for the XRCoding system, and we provide examples of coding exercises designed to control different types of arcade games.

The need to innovate teaching-learning practices to enhance students’ learning outcomes and promote transversal skills often clashes with the reiteration of standardized and outdated teaching and assessment methods. Recent developments in the assessment field have highlighted the need to shift the focus of assessment from the product to the learning process itself, moving from an assessment of learning and for learning to an assessment as learning, in which the student actively participates in the process. The need to improve students’ Self-Regulated Learning is even more compelling in the postdigital society since it’s becoming increasingly significant how students interact with information rather than its possession. This paper presents a research-action pathway carried out by the University of Macerata during the school year 2022/23 involving several schools in the Marche region, aimed at investigating whether the change in assessment methods affects the ability of primary and secondary school students to self-regulate their learning path. We collected useful data from the perspective of both teachers and students using several tools. In this contribution, we focused on students’ data using logbooks and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires to trace and analyze this impact. From a preliminary analysis, we notice an overall improvement in self-regulated learning areas for all school orders, with the main impact on the macro-area of self-efficacy. The data analysis will be deepened, and the research-action pathway will be pursued to investigate long-term results and improve the proposal through the valuable collaboration between researchers and teachers.

In the Higher Education context there is a growing focus on the development of academics’ digital competencies to sustain their competences as Digital Scholars [1]. The importance of this topic is also highlighted by frameworks such as the DigCompEdu [2] with its six main areas of competence (1 Professional Engagement; 2 Digital Resources; 3 Teaching and Learning; 4 Assessment; 5 Empowering Learners; 6 Facilitating Learners’ Digital Competence). This study explores the area of assessment and in particular, this work aims to describe the research process carried out during the last year in terms of Technology-Enhanced Assessment (TEA) [3] and Feedback models and practices in national and international context. Starting from the results produced by two main previously research actions - a national syllabi analysis to identify university teachers’ use of technology-enhanced assessment and feedback practices and a systematic literature review process that aimed to explore the existing Academic Development actions, programs and models to scaffold TEA practices in the international scenario - the research group of the Teaching and Learning Centre of the University of Trento is now creating a Massive Open Online Course to scaffold the development of digital competencies connected to the field of assessment and feedback practices enhanced by the use of technology.

Higher education is experiencing a transformative phase, marked by rapid technological and pedagogical shifts. With these changes come both challenges and opportunities, primarily focused on adequately preparing faculty for innovative teaching methods and technological integration. Recent trends show a surge in e-learning and the digitisation of educational content. External factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have further amplified the urgency for this shift, revealing both the potential and pitfalls of such a transition. While universities have initiated faculty training programmes to address these needs, there remains a gap between technological adoption and effective pedagogical change. The SIPED work group has undertaken a systematic review based on the PRISMA framework to delve more deeply into these aspects, emphasising the dual role of technology in faculties’ professional development and as a subject of training. The review started by identifying the research question: What are the possible interactions between instructional technologies and faculty development in higher education? The overarching aim is to understand and enhance the role of technology in faculty development, teaching methods, and community building in the academic sphere.

The TeachIng and Learning Development (TILD) project, promoted by the University of Foggia within the initiatives of the University Strategic Plan 2020–2022, is a research/training model addressed to university teachers with the aim of increasing their planning, methodological-didactic, technological, communicative-relational, evaluative, research and professional development competences. The evaluation of the project's effectiveness in implementing the professional competences envisaged different levels of impact. The aim of this contribution is to verify how the training has produced changes in the quality of the syllabi produced by the teachers, especially in relation to: the formulation of observable and measurable learning outcomes; the effective alignment between learning outcomes, teaching methods and evaluation methods; the definition of teaching methodologies and activities proposed. For this purpose, the syllabi of 66 teachers who participated in TILD compiled both before (a.y. 2021/22) and at the conclusion of the training activities (a.y. 2022/23), were evaluated by a group of experts using an adaptation of a validated rubric. Analysis of the data shows an improvement in the quality of participating teachers’ syllabi and highlights areas for future improvement for the development of university teachers’ professional competencies.

Monitoring the reach of faculty development programs is needed to effectively support efforts and design future actions. However, evaluation requires careful integration into the organisational culture and processes. The University of Padua established the “Teaching4Learning@Unipd” (T4L) Faculty Development program in 2016 and a Monitoring Group has been put in place to oversee the program using various data sources. The present paper presents findings from the Monitoring Group's research. The study explored perceptions of teachers and students about the use of active teaching methods: data from 241 academic teachers and 130 students was collected and analysed. The results showed: Teachers trained in T4L were more likely to use technology-mediated interactive methods than non-T4L teachers. A positive correlation was found between teachers and students’ perceptions of the implementation of active teaching methods. T4L-trained teachers showed higher motivation and self-reflection about their teaching skills. There was also a perception of increased workload for teachers switching to active teaching methods. The study's results emphasize the significance of promoting, monitoring, and improving the sustainability of a quality-focused, data-driven, and participatory approach to teaching.

This study explores the important connection between knowledge and artistic-cultural beauty, focusing on the revolutionary synergy between educational institutions and museums. Indeed, with the advent of the digital age and the accessibility of knowledge through the Web, schools, formerly seen as the exclusive focus of knowledge, must be able to identify, beyond traditional boundaries, opportunities for dialogue with the educational agencies that inhabit the surrounding area in order to remain in step with the times. It is imperative to give a new identity to the museum, recognizing it not only as a cultural institution but also as a space for popular culture and a meaningful learning environment. Through targeted collaboration between school and museum, we aim to shape a cutting-edge educational approach that transcends the mere transmission of knowledge, making museum resources valuable tools that can foster students’ learning experience, channeling their curiosity and creativity. An additional key element is the analysis of the growing importance of the metaverse in transforming educational interactions, which implies an interdisciplinary approach and openness to the use of virtual and augmented reality. In this context, the goal is to transform the classroom into a dynamic space in which students not only assimilate academic notions, but actively immerse themselves in cultural beauty through a virtual experience (Cadei and Simeone, 2021). This synergy between knowledge, culture and metaverse opens new horizons, enhancing students’ cognitive and emotional progress.