Towards a Collaborative Society Through Creative Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic (from mid-March 2020) took most educational systems by surprise, forcing million educators and students to radically change how they teach and learn. Online teaching was forced for about 1.5 years and, during this period, digital technology played a major role in enabling teachers to teach students at a distance using various digital platforms and tools. The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities that come with online-digital education, in the post-COVID era. Opportunities to explore include the integration of digital education in the educational system, adoption of appropriate (mobile) pedagogies, more flexible and mobile forms of teaching and learning, reconsideration of National policies, redesign of curricula, improvement of institutional infrastructure, creation of educational resources, and enhancement of students’ and teachers’ digital technology (and online pedagogy) skills. With regard to learning from the crisis and moving forward in the post-pandemic normal, some recommendations are finally addressed.

P-TECH is a pioneering education reform initiative to prepare young people with the academic, technical, and professional skills required for 21st-century jobs and ongoing education. Mentoring is one of the key activities of P-TECH for students to think about their pathways and build engineering attitudes. After each mentoring session, we take surveys to evaluate how the sessions affected the students and we achieved our objectives. In addition to conventional method, we executed systematic analysis of the responses to the open-ended questions using text mining technology. The subjects of this paper were 30 high school sophomores in 2019. We mentored them eight times in 2019 and 2020 and took surveys after each session. We gathered 1784 documents in total as the responses to open-ended questions and analyzed them with a text mining tool. The tool showed the top three frequent nouns were synonyms for “myself”, and the top three correlated nouns of “myself” were “future”, “thought”, and “way”. This indicates many students considered their pathways during the mentoring sessions and discussed them in their surveys. The tool also showed that the top correlated noun/verb phrases were “build… Plan”, “obtain… Advice”, and “have… Interest”. This indicates that students correctly received the messages intended by the mentoring. Our results showed that the mentoring activities helped students consider their future. Text mining was a useful technique to analyze answers to open-ended survey questions.

In the field of Japanese language education, even though it is very important to solidify the foundation of a student’s pronunciation ability, this area is sometimes neglected due to a bias towards grammar lecturing and vocabulary building. In addition, although audio materials are commonly included in teaching materials, few students use them for self-learning. However, for non-kanji-reading learners, learning the Japanese writing systems (hiragana, katakana, and kanji) can be a major obstacle, which means audio materials increase in importance by providing an effective alternative way to learn the Japanese language. With those points in mind, this paper examines the development of digital education (DX) e-learning materials that can provide non-kanji-reading learners with authentic contexts and serve as a bridge to learning correct speech without causing them to feel psychologically intimidated by the intricacies of Japanese writing systems. We then report on the use of the first teaching materials developed for Japanese language education using neural speech based on a pedagogical method known as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). This material was developed as courseware on Moodle.

Modern technology is ubiquitous across all facets of life. The continuously evolving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education landscape has provided an excellent opportunity to integrate the knowledge of digital technology to solve STEM-based project problems. However, there is no consistency in how STEM programs are taught across Australian primary schools. Whilst primary school teachers have integrated technology into their classroom, the teaching of the Technology discipline has been very patchy. Moreover, using technology such as computers is not the same as learning about computer hardware or about writing software to make it function. To achieve effective integration of technology in teaching and learning, we need to educate and encourage students to become creators of digital solutions rather than consumers, which in turn requires primary school teachers to have the confidence and capacity to teach students this specialized discipline. To address this gap, this study focuses on primary school teachers’ intentions, beliefs, and perspectives on teaching Technology, as well as teaching STEM subjects overall. Understanding these beliefs and perspectives will help in building teachers’ capacity and ultimately improving learning processes for primary school children. The paper reports on one phase of the project – a pilot study investigating the attitudes of primary school teachers towards meaningful integration of digital technologies in primary school programs conducted through the lens of the conceptual framework for the Dimensions of Attitudes towards Science (DAS). The preliminary findings demonstrate an urgency in addressing primary school teachers needs in getting access to knowledge and resources to build their capacity in the Technology discipline.

In this contribution the resilience of students in the computer and information literacy (CIL) domain is focused. In this context, research towards individual student resilience is of relevance in order to examine characteristics from the student level that can be used as setscrews by educators and other educational stakeholders to minimize or overcome social issues in the CIL domain. Taking advantage of the representative cross-sections of students from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 (ICILS 2018), the question of the prevalence of resilient students (research question 1), differences between educational systems in international comparison (research question 2), and students’ related antecedents and process factors from the ICILS 2018 contextual model (research question 3) have been focused via using a logistic regression approach. The sample consisted of 46,561 students aged 14 from 14 countries. Cross country analyses revealed that student’s sex and their cultural capital are the strongest predictors for resilience in the CIL domain. However, including family’s process characteristics shows that students’ self-efficacy toward the use of information and communication technology (ICT), their use of ICT for information-related activities itself and the use of ICT for basic and advanced purposes have been identified as significantly related to student resilience.

The authors have developed a digital kamishibai system, for authoring and performing kamishibai is said to have good educational effects on children. The system is implemented so that even children can operate it easily. The characteristics of the system are authoring with drag-and-drop operation and performance with ad-lib animation. Through the experiment, the authors made sure that children over six years old could handle the system. In this paper, the authors carried out a workshop in which children authored and performed digital kamishibai. Forty-eight groups participated. From the questionnaire, both children and their parents were mostly favorable to the system. The effects mentioned above were observed. Through the workshop, various kamishibai works were made. The authors showed these works to a staff of a children’s hall (an expert of kamishibai) and had review them. He pointed out children’s comprehension of stories, characteristics and style of representation, and structures and originality of the works. One of the future works is a detailed analysis of the works.

This study proposes the need to introduce ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) education on digital technologies in school education, particularly primary and secondary education. Currently, various advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and data science, are being used in our daily lives. New ethical, legal, and social issues arise with the use of such new technologies, and the concept of ELSI, which examines these issues, is gaining popularity. To properly utilize advanced technologies, it is necessary to involve the general public in ELSI, and education regarding ELSI is necessary to obtain basic knowledge and understanding for this purpose. This paper defines ELSI education as “Learning with ELSI” and emphasizes the necessity of introducing ELSI education in primary and secondary education. To implement ELSI education, teachers must have sufficient knowledge of ethics, law, and society, and be up-to-date regarding the changes in the information society. ELSI education should not be introduced as an entirely new education but as a new concept assimilated in existing education. This paper introduces a practical example of using a chatbot as a subject and presents a practical form of ELSI education. In this age of advancing technologies, it is important to incorporate ELSI education in the curriculum at the elementary and secondary levels based on the developmental stage of learners.

Educational Technology (EdTech) can be both empowering or constraining depending upon the underpinning design. Drawing from the experiments conducted as part of a large scale EdTech intervention in India, this paper shares qualitative findings on designing digital learning environments (DLE) as tools that empower the learner. Building upon the literature on digital agency and microworlds, the first section propounds that for EdTech to become an empowering tool the design of EdTech should expressly cultivate a learner’s digital agency and extend the action space for learning. While digital agency encompasses aspects of competence, confidence and accountability; the action space for learning (ASL) is defined as a cognitive-pedagogic construct where learners operate. Subsequently, the paper outlines the key characteristics of EdTech that empowers, and shares research findings. It was found that when DLEs are thoughtfully designed to provide a manipulable action space in a microworld where learners can own the dynamics of the environment through variables and controls, then a learner’s digital agency is fostered through the extended possibilities of ASL.

Digital skills and competencies are necessary for thriving in the coming digital society, and it is important for youths to gain these competencies as well as to become empowered as actors in the digital environment. This paper contends that collaborative relationships established as part of an educational support group to develop socially disadvantaged young people’s digital skills and competencies positively impact their empowerment. We discuss the findings of four years of action research among a support group for socially disadvantaged youths in a provincial city in Japan. The results suggest that the collaborative relationships established within an educational support group can create a rich learning context and foster collaborative agency for youths. Moreover, computer programming carried out in the context of these relationships may generate cooperation and a unique programming culture shared among the youths.

Smart agriculture has assumed increasing importance due to the growing age of farmers and a shortage of farm leaders. In response, it is crucial to provide more opportunities to learn about smart agriculture at agricultural colleges and high schools, where new farmers are trained. In agricultural education, a system is used for managing environmental information, such as temperature and humidity, obtained from sensors installed in the field. However, it is difficult to make effective use of this system due to the time required to detect changes in the field interfering with class time and the problem of oversight. In this study, we proposed a field environment digest system that will help learners by providing the summarized field sensing information, and support them in analyzing the data. In addition, to examine the potential for using field sensing information in agricultural education, we investigated the usefulness of the summarized sensor information and students’ usage of this information. In this paper, we outline the contents of the developed system and the results of the digest evaluation experiments.

This paper is based on a study that developed and used a predictive evaluation method to evaluate educational software with embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionalities for children’s learning of English pronunciation. The approach built on Squires and Preece’s [1] heuristics which used a social constructivist view of learning but were developed before AI functionalities were commonplace in educational software. Three AI-powered English learning apps were selected for the predictive evaluation. The evaluation enabled a comparison between the AI-powered English-learning apps based on their potential for learning. The study is the first to predictively evaluate pedagogical values of AI functionalities for improving ESL pronunciation and may provide an approach to developing predictive evaluation more widely for educational software that embeds AI functionalities.

There is an urgent need to develop human resources which can utilize the power of AI and data in order to enrich society through technological innovation and value creation. On the other hand, in school education, due to the framework of each subject and time limitation, it is difficult to implement a curriculum to work on application creation. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to develop and evaluate teaching materials for developing iOS applications for junior high and high school students in order to provide opportunities for interested students to learn independently during after-school hours. As a result, the students’ responses on programming showed no significant change for the experienced students, but “surprise” and “feeling that I can do it” were meaningful learning opportunities for the beginners. Looking at the responses of the students regarding AI, although they knew the term AI, their perceptions varied from “humanistic”, “familiar”, and “coexistence with AI”.

Engagement is a multi-componential construct, difficult to measure in its general form as in the typical development but even more in the atypical development. Currently, there are no instruments in the literature to measure engagement in its different dimensions (behavioural, affective, social and cognitive) for students with intellectual disabilities involved in creative robotics activities. With this aim, we tried to apply a survey system based on the triangulation of three ad hoc tools: an observation grid, analysis of verbal productions and a questionnaire. This triple system of application allowed us to understand whether the creative robotics activity proposed to children with intellectual disabilities aroused their interest and involvement, and to what extent.

This chapter makes an argument for the development of a quantum computing curriculum. Building from a general look at innovation adoption, it presents survey data from 307 schools on the implementation of a new Digital Technologies subject in Australia. It was found that states and territories were taking 6–11 years to report student learning in the subject to parents. On a national basis, the analysis finds implementation is taking nearly 10 years from when the subject was framed, until full delivery. Despite this trajectory, the curriculum was radically revised after only 7 years. This rate of revision makes it difficult for schools to keep up with curriculum policy. With binary digit (bit) storage sizes predicted to fall to atomic levels in the next three decades, it is argued that quantum computing will become increasingly important. A future curriculum for this new computing paradigm therefore needs to be developed as a matter of urgency, so schools can anticipate innovation instead of lagging behind it. The chapter proposes a quantum curriculum for schools be developed as part of an international effort with the scope of recent Informatics frameworks.

PLAY is a design-based research project which gathers different communities of experts in collaborative workshops. Those latter are designed to create an educational game (Geome) to guide classroom visits to the Museum of Nature at Sion in Switzerland. Theoretical models in the sciences of education are tested through design, experimentation and evaluation of the game. In this paper, we investigate knowledge sharing during collaborative workshops. More specifically, processes of knowledge translation in verbal interactions are under our scope. We analyze the game Geome as a boundary object. We characterize uni- or multilateral transactions according to how reciprocally the meaning of knowledge is negotiated. We also note the explicitness dimension of translations. These transactions are finally addressed in the light (i) of the development of skills among actors and (ii) the creation of scientific knowledge.

There is considerable literature on ways to increase the participation of girls in the programming or computer science domains. However, further efforts are needed to foster ‘gendered innovations’ in today’s digitalized world. In this study, we focused on facilitating a gender-free image of programming among young children using two types of educational materials we developed. The learning materials have an opposite order of items from each other using Scratch based on materials provided from the Japanese Ministry of Education: ‘general’ material starts with introducing ‘move X steps’ while ‘gender-neutral’ material starts with ‘say X’ and ‘when I receive X’ (message passing). We conducted five rounds of afterschool programming lessons between November 2021 and January 2022 for two groups of four second graders (two boys and two girls) in primary schools using general and developed materials. The detailed analysis using transcripts from videotaped data of children’s construction process suggests that the developed materials were more effective for both girls and boys to support their programming construction process. Additionally, boys seemed to be helped more than girls when using the developed materials.

Learners can perceive algorithmic problem solving to be ambiguous, especially in computer science lessons. Tolerance to this individually perceived ambiguity is an internal factor that can influence the absorption and processing of knowledge both positively and negatively. Thus, it was examined whether there is a connection between tolerance for ambiguity and the performance of students such a task for algorithmic problem solving in computer science lessons. The results show that there is a significant correlation between tolerance for ambiguity and the number of points achieved in the test for algorithmic problem solving.

Although CT is a rapidly expanding field of educational research, it is a relatively new concept in official national curricula. From the perspective of curriculum policy, CT is closest to two subjects taught in primary and secondary schools: computing/informatics and mathematics. Since informatics is not present as a separate subject in many countries, proponents of CT should find alternative routes for introducing this new body of knowledge in curricula. There are three main ways as to how it has been done in various countries: (A) adding CT into the existing informatics/computing curriculum, (B) integrating CT in the curriculum of some other subject – most likely, mathematics, and (C) introducing CT through cross-curriculum theme and interdisciplinary STEM/STEAM projects. This paper discusses the similarities and differences of computational and mathematical thinking that could potentially empower each other though meaningful integration in math lessons. Using the cases of Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania as examples, different approaches to integrating computational thinking into K-12 education will be contrasted and compared.

Technological advances in the context of digital transformation are the basis for rapid developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Although AI is not a new topic in computer science (CS), recent developments are having an immense impact on everyday life and society. In consequence, everyone needs competencies to be able to adequately and competently analyze, discuss and help shape the impact, opportunities, and limits of artificial intelligence on their personal lives and our society. As a result, an increasing number of CS curricula are being extended to include the topic of AI. However, in order to integrate AI into existing CS curricula, what students can and should learn in the context of AI needs to be clarified. This has proven to be particularly difficult, considering that so far CS education research on central concepts and principles of AI lacks sufficient elaboration. Therefore, in this paper, we present a curriculum of learning objectives that addresses digital literacy and the societal perspective in particular. The learning objectives can be used to comprehensively design curricula, but also allow for analyzing current curricula and teaching materials and provide insights into the central concepts and corresponding competencies of AI.

Through a lexical analysis, this study examines the relationship between the terms used in various educational resources about robots. These resources were authored by novice or expert teachers in primary schools. Our hypothesis is that the computer science concepts discussed in an activity are different depending on the type of robot. The first results confirm dependence between the type of robot and the lexicon used in the resources. The corpus is explored according to three thematic sets of terms: Computer Science (CS), Pedagogy and Move with special attention for CS terms to compare the vocabulary used for sequential and event-driven programming robots.

Introducing artificial intelligence (AI) literacy to school students is challenging. As AI education is constantly growing, educators can struggle to decide which content is relevant and how it can be taught. Therefore, examining which practices and formats have already been evaluated with students and are used repeatedly and which are challenging or should be explored further is necessary to facilitate teaching AI and encourage the development of new activities. In this literature review, we address this need. Using a directed and conventional content analysis, we systematically analyzed 31 cases of introducing AI literacy in schools in terms of three categories: (a) competence areas, (b) pedagogical approaches, and (c) contexts and formats. When analyzing the results, we identified underrepresented competence areas and summarized common pedagogical practices and recurrent formats and contexts. Additionally, we investigated the approach to using data to make abstract AI knowledge accessible to novices.

Digitization is a crucial process that is transforming our modern lives. As such, it is essential for students to be able to act maturely in a digital world and to participate in society responsibly, based on their education [1]. This is where digital literacy comes in as a key competence for both: social participation and self-determination in a digital world. To gain a deeper understanding of the digital technologies that surround us, computing education is a valuable way to go. It can help to explain the underlying principles and phenomena of the digital world. Many countries have begun incorporating it into their primary school curriculum. In Germany, and in particular in its federal state North Rhine-Westphalia, computing education is embedded in the Primary Social and Science Education (PSE, in German Sachunterricht). However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive training and education concepts for (future) teachers and corresponding teaching materials to include computing education in this subject, aside from research projects. To support the integration of computing education into PSE, we have developed teaching materials on Artificial Intelligence (AI) using identification apps. These materials provide students with insights into how AI systems perform classification tasks, such as determining different types of leaves, and cover basic concepts of Machine Learning (ML). The materials have been tested in one primary school class and validated by student teachers during their teaching internship semester. This paper describes the action-oriented materials and first classroom experiences.

For several years, we have been developing educational content for informatics for lower primary education (years ranging from one to four and age ranging from six to ten). The resulting intervention is built of three complementary strands, with robotics as the most recently completed one. Here, pupils work with Blue-Bot programmable robots, equipped with blue wireless external control panels. Each team pairs the robot with the panel and controls it using small plastic command tiles. We also use the introduction of new content as a set of research instruments and aim to deepen our understanding of how pupils construct and extend their comprehension of basic computing concepts and related operations. We focus on determining which of these concepts are considered as more challenging to pupils. The current project is established on our previous research on different levels of control in programming and related program representations. Here, we focused on exploring whether, even when programming a physical robot using an external control panel, the transition from direct control to programming is a challenging cognitive transformation for young learners.

Here we describe a course centered on three international online collaboration classes. The participants were students at Japanese and Malaysian universities and the course used Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools to contribute to university students’ language ability, willingness to study, and knowledge about their own cultures and those of their interlocutors. Various communication tools were used to support and monitor the project. The use of these ICT tools, including a newly developed application program (Dialogbook), will be presented. We describe how Dialogbook was used to set up small-group discussions, exchange comments, provide feedback between the instructor and students, and enable students’ reviewing of their performance via rubric questions. The availability of such a one-stop support tool for students in the collaboration classes reduced the burden on teachers. The data collected with this application is closely examined both quantitatively and qualitatively, and the results show that the course successfully facilitated students’ engagement in the project, with high motivation levels.

The curriculum for an undergraduate program in Japanese universities usually comprises a general education and special/major education programs, and in general education programs, informatics is widely taught. It is one of the characteristics of the informatics education in Japan. A nationwide survey on the informatics education in Japanese universities conducted in 2016 revealed that the teaching of informatics in general education depends largely on part-time faculty members as well as full-time ones. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Japanese universities were forced to conduct their classes online for 2020 and 2021 academic years. Online teaching was carried out in several modes, using various learning management systems and video conferencing services and student access terminals that differed across universities. Furthermore, the permission to access information systems depends on the employment contract renewal. In such situations, part-time faculty members faced various problems while using multiple platforms that were rarely recognized by full-time members. In this study, the authors point out these multiple platform problems faced by part-time faculty members and propose a common platform for informatics teaching in general education to resolve the issue and improve the teaching quality.

Video is just one of several modalities used in online courses to create digital learning experiences for learners. On the other hand, the development, design, and use of videos in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are poorly understood, a matter that is reflected in current research. For example, research on the use of videos is primarily approached from a learning analytic perspective which means mapping of user patterns and video performance. In fact, we find few studies that outline the design work and the use of different video genres in MOOCs. That said, the goal of this paper, is therefore to explore the learning design process and the effectiveness of a particular video genre that is seldom studied in online courses, video interview. To examine this matter, the paper explores the learning design process of using video interview and how it performed in a MOOC by analyzing click stream data. The study found that video interview can have a high view completion rate among learners.

This paper draws on an empirical work dedicated to assessing the relevance of an online training course for pre-service teachers. The course is dedicated to the legal rules governing the use of digital educational resources. It consists of a game-based learning session with Tamagocours, an online Multiplayer Tamagotchi. The players take care of a character by feeding it with “digital educational resources”. If the choice of resources does not respect copyright legislation, the character withers and eventually dies. Based on the digital traces collected from 242 players, we conducted a factor analysis to classify the players according to the interactions that took place during the game session. Our analysis shows that the game is played in very different ways depending on the teams. It also provides evidence that the interactions that take place are not always epistemic interactions and that some players use avoidance strategies that work against learning. Our contribution therefore focuses on a method for understanding how a game is played and the potential effects of playing on learning. In addition, these results may offer new perspectives for the design of learning games. Indeed, the result of the study emphasize the need to focus on the player’s learning experience in terms of epistemic interactions.

Is it possible to induce collaborative learning in non-face-to-face learning? The objective of this research is to collaboratively support the sports skill acquisition process in non-face-to-face learning, which is currently growing and becoming widespread, and to study the characteristics of the cognitive aspects therein. An experiment concerning the ice hockey “stickhandling” skill was implemented in a non-face-to-face fashion, with two university students as the participants. In the experiment, a descriptive questionnaire was used concerning cognitive aspects in the acquisition process. The experiment was conducted over the course of eight months. The results of analyzing the descriptive questionnaire revealed a number of descriptions where the participant viewed the other person’s movements, aiming to improve their own movement. However, descriptions concerning a participant attempting to improve the other subject’s movement could not be observed. In contrast, in a previous study targeting online meetings, collaborative speech was observed. The findings suggested that in a non-face-to-face sports skill acquisition process, with merely an environment that allows for comparative study of the other person’s movement and thinking, it would be difficult for collaborative settings regarding the other person’s movement to occur. However, the possibility was mentioned for collaborative learning occurring with the addition of online meetings.

Lifelong learning is a useful and beneficial skill to learn. In this paper, students from a university in South Africa are taught Sage Pastel in their first-year of study using the Instructional Methodologies Framework for Lifelong Learning. This framework includes problem-based learning, e-learning, reciprocal teaching, professional portfolios, reflections, and knowledge maps. The students were asked how they experienced the module and their responses were mapped to the framework to demonstrate their journey. It is concluded that the majority of the students found the approach useful as a lifelong learning skill, with an 85% positivity indicator. The teaching environment used for this paper is unique, as the data was gathered in 2021 when the university was teaching only online because of Covid-19 restrictions, but the benefits of following a lifelong learning approach are evident. Future research will include comparing this module to other first-year modules that follow a similar approach to determine if students do become life-long learners.

In the wake of the COVID-19 health crisis, governments around the world made educational continuity during school and university closure a priority. Many countries adopted online education as an alternative to face-to-face courses. This situation has led to an awareness of the importance of analyzing learning traces and data left by students to measure, evaluate and improve the learning process. This paper presents an interoperable online learning analytics dashboard that allows teachers to easily track the progress of their learners as well as to predict and remedy dropouts. For learners, the dashboard offers the possibility to visualize their learning process, analyze it and develop better self-regulation skills. The results of the study conducted on a blended learning course, showed that the dashboard led learners to spend more time on their online training, to perform the proposed activities much better and to respect the deadlines better, and finally to improve their academic success.

The present study aimed to develop a method to estimate the state of attention from facial expressions while students are in online lectures. We con-ducted an experiment to measure the level of attention based on reaction time to detect an auditory target, which was the disappearance of noise sound, while watching lecture videos, assuming that reaction time for the detection of contents-irrelevant noise is longer when learners are focusing attention more to the contents of the videos. We sought facial features that are useful for predicting the reaction time and found that reaction time can be estimated in some amount from facial features. This result indicates that facial expressions are useful for predicting attention state, or concentration level while attending lectures.

Data Science has emerged as a field that will revolutionize science and industry. The development of human resources for Data Science has become an urgent issue in every aspect of the digitizing society. However, a curriculum to meet the needs in such a digitizing society is not available to higher education in Japan, especially in the realm of liberal arts. In response to the situation required of the approved program for Mathematics, Data Science, and AI Smart Higher education (MDASH), we proposed a conceptual curriculum model for the Data Science education program, which systematically incorporates the knowledge module of Data Science while remedying the weakness in the basic math skills and barriers to be considered in the process of learning Data Science concepts. This paper aims to propose an integrated curriculum based on the conceptual model for the faculty members in a small-sized private liberal arts university, where students lack basic math skills, IT skills, and the basic knowledge of Data Science. Issues consisting of curriculum on knowledge areas and subjects, implementation approach of Data Science education courses, and fusion of Data Science with expertise education are discussed. A sample course will be showcased at the end.

Students’ academic achievement is always a target of concern for educational institutions. Nowadays, the rapid development of digital transformation has resulted in huge amounts of data being generated by Learning Management Systems. The deployment of Educational Data Mining (EDM) is becoming increasingly significant in discovering ways to improve student learning outcomes. Those approaches effectively facilitate dealing with students’ massive amounts of data. The purpose of this review is to evaluate and discuss the state-of-art EDM for predicting students’ learning performance among higher education institutions. A scoping review was conducted on twelve peer-reviewed publications that were indexed in ACM, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct and Scopus between 2012 and 2021. This study comprehensively reviewed the final inclusion literature on EDM in terms of tools, techniques, machine learning algorithms and application schemes. We have found that WEKA (tool) and classification (technique) were chosen in most of the selected studies carried out in their EDM settings. This review suggested that Tree Structured algorithms as supervised learning approaches can better predict students’ learning performance, as it has been validated in several comparative analyses of other algorithms. In the present study, we demonstrate a future trend toward improving the generalizability of prediction models that can deal with a diverse population and the predictive results can be easily interpreted and explained by educators in the general market.

A cloud-based video platform was deployed into the pre-service PE teacher training course. One hundred and five students were enrolled in the course, and all demonstration (demo) lessons performed by students were video recorded and shared with the system. After each demo lesson, students were required to conduct two types of assessments by marking up the video with tags. As a result, the tags marked into each video clip were widely spread, and this suggests that it prevented a decrease in a student’s concentration to observe them. The number of tags became relatively large in some teams, and this suggests that mark-up may be influenced by tags that were marked in advance by their peers. Except for a few cases, students conducted the assessments correctly through the system. According to the survey completed by students, most of the comments were positive. This trial gave a direct and visual feedback of the demo lessons, and it provided a good opportunity for students for their reflection.

While the Internet has made it possible for people all over the world to be connected, they continue to face the barrier of value diversity. Although we often have to consider or respect other people’s values, it is not easy to sense them due to the limitations of our knowledge, experience, and imagination. We tackle this issue by developing AIR-VAS, a discussion support system that supports the mutual consideration of unfamiliar values and thus encourage synergistic communication. AIR-VAS is a group discussion system that supports awareness of other people’s values. AIR-VAS can recognize characteristic opinions raised in a session and share them among all discussion participants. Through the sharing of opinions, people can obtain different viewpoints on the issues currently being discussed so AIR-VAS can stimulate people to generate/evaluate/analyze ideas. AIR-VAS has the function of visualizing statements presented during a discussion in the form of a word co-occurrence network. We realized opinion sharing as the process of network re-construction, including the use of sub-networks to represent the opinions of other groups. Experiments show that the system successfully enhances the diversity of ideas.

With regards to the digital transformation, the consensus that computer science education plays a central role in shaping “digital education” is now emerging: Beyond the efficient and reflective use of information systems, new topics and methods arise for all school subjects that require computer science competencies and must be anchored in general teacher education. However, in light of students’ heterogeneity, the question of how motivation, subject-specific demands, and applicability in subject teaching can be harmonized presents a particular challenge. This paper presents key findings and experiences from the research-led development and subsequent evaluation of a blended learning course offering. This course offering provides student teachers of all subjects and school types with basic computer science competencies for teaching in the digital world. On this foundation, success factors and good practices in the design of the course are identified. It is shown that the design of such courses can be successful if illustrative examples are used, communication and collaboration are promoted and, in particular, references and application perspectives for the respective subjects are taken into account.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown policies forced higher education teachers to adopt remote teaching. This disruptive situation challenged teachers to continue delivering classes and carrying out assessment online. In order to investigate higher education teachers’ perceptions about the online assessment, a survey was conducted in Portugal. The study focuses on digital tools and methodologies used in online assessment, first-time digital tools used, and the tools and methodologies that teachers intend to maintain in face-to-face assessment, as well as confidence in students’ results. Data was collected online from May to July 2021. Participants (n = 868) were from all fields of science and technology. Most of them (80%) reported the use of new assessment tools and methodologies during this period. The majority (72%) has confidence in the results obtained by the students. However, some of them (36%) reported academic fraud situations. Digital tools related to summative assessment are the most prevalent, but methodologies related to formative assessment were also used. Some teachers (49%) intend to use methodologies and tools in face-to-face classes used for the first-time during the lockdown.

Continuous Professional Learning is gaining currency in Kenya due to several factors, including the Teachers’ Service Commission’s policy (appraisal and development). This has facilitated practicum session inclusion. This explorative interpretive study undertook artifact analysis to establish the role of social media in practicum. The study reviewed 560 schools from 38 counties after a three-day face-to-face session during the school term practicum. Six platforms, Edmodo, WhatsApp, Slack, Kaizala, Twitter, and Facebook were reviewed. Activity logs (posts and contents) were analyzed over 12 months of practicum (communities of learning) sessions. The document analysis focused on enrolment, traffic, content, type of activities, quality of engagement, and opportunities for support and learning. The findings revealed that currency, relevance, importance, camaraderie, and learning as factors that guided the engagement. The use of social media extended the learning experiences, continued cohort engagement, increased numbers reached, and facilitated the transfer of principles into practice.

Information literacy has become extremely important not only in elementary and secondary education but in higher education as well. Thus, the quality of first-year information literacy education must be improved. To do this, it is necessary to visualize students’ information literacy and improve the curriculum accordingly. For this study, the authors surveyed basic information and communication technology (ICT) knowledge and developed a self-assessment checklist to assess computer operational skills. The checklist (designed as placement and achievement tests) contained a total of 40 items across four categories: (a) computer operations, (b) internet/e-mail, (c) Word, and (d) Excel/PowerPoint. Students selected an item if they could perform the operation described in that item. The authors conducted the study over four years with participation from 17,086 students at six universities in Japan. The results indicate that the placement test score in 2018 was lower than in other years, and the achievement test scores were markedly higher than the placement test scores in all years. By category, (d) Excel/PowerPoint had lower placement test scores than the other categories. However, even in category (d), achievement test scores were higher than the placement test scores. The results suggest that the first-year information literacy education programs were effective in these universities.

This article aims to reflect on the changes that are taking place today, considering them from different perspectives, as well as to describe the impact that results from these changes in social, economic, ethical, and academic terms, and the role of creative learning in this transformational process. A description is made of the main characteristics of this moment, mainly in what is considered the industrial 4.0 revolution, as well as the main global trends that are associated with it in this third decade of the millennium. Presenting the Universities of the Future (UoF) project, an assessment of its main results is made, as well as essential questions that must be asked so that several levels of decision-makers can consider as valid in building a different and better future for the planet we inhabit. Part of the answers found seem to suggest that the different social institutions must converge in a collaborative paradigm, in which the free sharing of knowledge, the distribution of resources, and the focus on common problems with different approaches and by different players, bring more creative, efficient, and sustainable solutions and knowledge.

The transition of education from face-to-face to electronic learning (e-learning) has been accompanied by the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve teaching, learning and assessment processes. Learning Management Systems (LMS) are used to conduct electronic learning (e-learning), and to facilitate student assessment through automatic generation of examinations from a question bank. However, the perceived low quality of these examinations has led them to be used for formative assessments and not for summative assessments. One way to ensure that high quality exams are generated by LMS systems would be to ensure that the questions cover different levels of difficulty as specified by an educational taxonomy. One commonly used taxonomy is Bloom’s Taxonomy, later updated to the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT). In this research, we review studies on automatic generation of examinations from question banks. From this review, we define the parameters necessary for a quality exam based on RBT. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework that applies machine learning algorithms to automatically generate a quality exam from an LMS question bank. We intend to do further research by developing a prototype based on the conceptual framework.

In recent years it has become clear that teachers need digital competency to master their everyday work. However, this digital competency is based on informatics concepts and phenomena that cannot be addressed in an appropriate way without informatics education. This article describes an approach to basic informatics education for all teachers, regardless of their subjects or stage of their professional life. The results of a funded project in the federal country of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany are presented in which, among other things, a community of practice (CoP) with members from all three phases of teacher education (pre-service, induction and in-service) developed and tested a modular concept of basic interactive informatics teaching units.

In this paper we argue for the need to incorporate basic informatics training for teachers of all subjects. We suggest that topics need to be carefully motivated by application scenarios all teachers can connect to. We present our ideas on which content should be taught in a course for teacher education students at a university, citing motivating examples. We then give insights into how the participants of our course judged the content to be relevant for them and to which extend they considered it to be part of general knowledge.

Teaching and learning from one another is one of the most effective ways for learners to acquire proactive learning attitudes. In this study, we propose a new learning support system that encourages mutual teaching and learning by introducing a mechanism that guarantees sustainability. Learners submit articles called “learning-articles” that summarize their own learning and knowledge. The proposed system not only accumulates and publishes these articles but also has a mechanism to encourage the submission of necessary topics. The proposed system has been in operation since the academic year 2020, and it has collected learning-articles across our university’s nine academic disciplines from more than 300 learners. To investigate the effects of sharing learning-articles on education from the learners’ perspectives, a questionnaire was distributed among 25 students.

Programming must be evaluated as a subject when taught in high schools. As a result, increasing the efficiency of question generation and grading has become a pressing concern. Waquema is a system for automatically generating and grading programming problems that we created. Waquema is available in the following two versions: web (generates web pages) and cloud (generates Google Forms). At our university, we used the questions generated by Waquema’s cloud version for exercises and exams in lectures. The system was then evaluated using a student questionnaire survey. We also conducted a questionnaire survey of the teachers who used the system and evaluated the time required for the exercises and examinations. The results showed that the difficulty level of the generated problems was appropriate for the students, and that the system could reduce the time required to prepare for the exercises.

Data structures and algorithms are fundamental subjects in the curricula of information science faculties and departments. Recently, they were also included in the curriculum as basic subjects of data science and artificial intelligence.In 2017, we developed a smartphone application, termed Data Structure Viewer(DSV), to promote the understanding of data structures and algorithms. This application has been used in our lectures. In this article, we describe the evaluation of the DSVs used in lectures from 2017 to 2021 through the use of questionnaires. The students’ evaluation and confirmation of the lecture content in class, revealed that the DSV contributed to the improvement of students’ comprehension. We also discuss important points to be considered when using the DSV in lectures.

Despite its importance in industry, code quality is often overlooked in academia. A number of automated tools to report code quality have been developed but many of them are impractical to use. They either are developed as a standalone tool, require the use of a particular IDE, and/or need historical data. This paper presents code quality issues reporter (CQIS), a tool that can be embedded in an assessment submission system; it identifies code quality issues for each student submission via static analysis, and reports those in an HTML page whose link is sent via email. The tool covers 52 code quality issues specifically curated for academia, 32 for Java and 20 for Python. According to four quasi-experiments with a total of 274 students, students with CQIS are likely to have fewer code quality issues so long as the expected solutions are long and complex and code quality is considered as part of the marking. These students are also more aware of code quality, and readability in particular.

We have developed a programming education tool, named ‘pgtracer’, which provides fill-in-the-blank questions in C programming. Pgtracer provides programs and trace tables with blanks. A trace table represents the execution sequence of the target C program. As a result of our research, we could estimate the achievement level of the students and clarify the answering process by analyzing the logs collected by pgtracer. To improve software quality and reusability, object-oriented technology is important from various perspectives, and there is an urgent need to train engineers proficient in object-oriented programming. Thus, we are extending pgtracer to the Java program. Trace tables are extended to represent individual instances and message sending among the instances. In this paper, we create fill-in-the-blank questions for the Java program and attempt to have students solve some of the fill-in-the-blank questions using the “embedded answer (Cloze)” question format of Moodle’s question function. The results of the trial are discussed, and improvements are made to the questions and the user interface. We also introduce the notion of ignorable blanks which students do not need to fill. This type of blank is useful to increase the variety of questions.

In recent years, Japan’s education system has started regarding trial-and-error favorably and is accordingly evaluating its strategy. Evaluation of trial-and-error has become crucial to learning analytics. Jigsaw Code is a programming exercise that gives students shuffled code blocks of a solution program, including fake ones, and asks them to rearrange the blocks in the correct order. It logs the solving actions of each student. This paper shows that the cycles in the state transition of the solution indicate the students’ trial-and-error process. Two hundred and thirty undergraduates solved 11 puzzles (problems) of Jigsaw Code. We analyzed the transition of the solution sequence at each solving action and found cycles in the state transition. For 97% of the plays, including the frequently appearing cycles, the first state of each cycle was the subsequence of the final solution. A cycle in the solution state transition shows that the student returned to the cycle’s first state after searching for other solutions, as they probably regarded the cycle’s first state as leading to the correct final solution.

To develop web applications, the design of a graphical user interface (GUI design) is combined with textual programming. As these two practices are inevitably interconnected, the relationship between students’ achievements in GUI design and textual programming should be a positive one. In order to improve instruction in web application development, this relationship should be clarified. This clarification is relevant because different kinds of GUI controls are available (e.g., standard input/output controls, data validation controls). These controls differ with respect to the nature and complexity of their properties, which need to be specified, possibly resulting in positive relationships of different strengths. To this end, this study used a sample of 74 second-year undergraduate students, who developed simple web applications through combining visual GUI design in the ASP.NET language and textual programming in C# language. By considering the students’ web development achievements regarding this design and that programming, a positive relationship between them was found. In one group of 36 students, whose achievements in a 3-variable task were modest (almost 65% correct), this relationship was very strong (Spearman’s $$rho = 0.868, df = 34, p < 0.01$$ r h o = 0.868 , d f = 34 , p < 0.01 ); the correlation between visual GUI design using validation controls and textual programming was also very strong ( $$r_{S} = 0.872, df = 34, p < 0.01$$ r S = 0.872 , d f = 34 , p < 0.01 ), whereas the correlation between visual GUI design using standard controls and textual programming was moderate ( $$r_{S} = 0.555, df = 34, p < 0.01$$ r S = 0.555 , d f = 34 , p < 0.01 ). In the other group of 38 students, whose achievements in a 5-variable task were quite good (about 90% correct), this relationship was moderate ( $$r_{S} = 0.564, df = 36, p < 0.01$$ r S = 0.564 , d f = 36 , p < 0.01 ); the correlation between visual GUI design using standard controls and textual programming was also moderate ( $$r_{S} = 0.540, df = 36, p < 0.01$$ r S = 0.540 , d f = 36 , p < 0.01 ), whereas the correlation between visual GUI design using validation controls and textual programming was rather weak ( $$r_{S} = 0.348, df = 36, p < 0.05$$ r S = 0.348 , d f = 36 , p < 0.05 ). Suggestions for practice and research are included.

Capstone projects are a common feature of software engineering bachelor’s degrees. We report on the experience and lessons learned from a decade of capstone projects at a small regional Israeli college. We first created a capstone process adapted to the department’s model-based software design philosophy, cultural aspects of the student body, and the sparse industrial environment surrounding the college. After several years, we improved the process through the introduction of mandatory fill-in report templates. Analyses of ten years of project statistics and outcomes led us to an understanding of what capstone features led to better outcomes and how the report templates affected grading outcomes. Our templates are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

In learning object-oriented programming (OOP), it is necessary to understand the concept of OOP and apply it to actual development. However, acquiring such skills is not easy for novice programmers. We propose a learning method based on fairy tales in order to make it easier for learners to work by assuming a specific situation, and to make it easier for other learners to share the situation. In the proposed method, the learners select one fairy tale as the subject themselves, and express the flow of the story by interaction between characters, changing attributes, exchanging objects, and outputting narrations. Finally, the learners design the classes and methods necessary for expressing them, and actually realize as an executable program. We applied the proposed method in a lecture at the graduate school and confirmed the feasibility.

Interest is growing in the role of metacognition in computing education. Most work to-date has examined metacognitive approaches of novices learning to code. It has been shown that novices navigate through discernible stages of a problem-solving process when working through programming problems, and that scaffolding can be beneficial. In this paper, we describe a novel scaffolding task aimed at guiding novices through a crucial stage of developing and evaluating a problem-solving plan. We presented novices with a problem statement before working through an Abstract Parsons Problem, where the blocks present structural elements rather than complete code, to aid high-level planning before writing code. Comparing groups who experienced this approach with those that did not, revealed that novices who worked on an Abstract Parsons Problem before coding were more successful in solving the task and demonstrated improved metacognitive knowledge related to task planning when asked to identify useful future problem-solving strategies. Our observations from two courses over two years suggest that scaffolding students through a planning step prior to coding can be beneficial for students. We provide directions for future work in exploring strategies for providing this type of guidance, including the use of different types of planning activities, and studying these effects at scale.

Novices in introductory programming courses typically learn the fundamentals of programming using one of a wide of programming environments. These vary greatly in terms of the mechanisms they employ to assist programmers, including their approaches to compilation and error message presentation. It is yet to be established which, if any, of these mechanisms are more beneficial for learning. In this study, we utilize Java programming process data to investigate the interaction between novices and two different versions of the BlueJ pedagogical IDE, which differ substantially in terms of compilation mechanism and error message presentation. Specifically, we compare novices that used both BlueJ 3 and BlueJ 4 with those who exclusively used either and the effects of the order in which they transition between BlueJ versions. We find substantial differences between different cohorts in terms of error messages and compilation which provides evidence that programming environments play an important part in influencing the programming practices of novices. This work supports the hypothesis that the choice of programming environment significantly affects user behavior with respect to specific programming interactions and therefore it is reasonable to expect a difference in how these environments affect learning.

Code plagiarism – taking code from external sources and using it without reference in one’s own programs – can be a serious issue for programming students, depending on the policies being applied by their instructors. However, plagiarism can be inadvertent, due to a lack of knowledge among students. Our research shows varied understandings of correct code reuse, suggesting that students are not provided with appropriate guidelines. Our goal is to introduce good code referencing practice to students, to help raise students’ awareness of academic integrity and reduce the possibility of accidental plagiarism. We present Corona, a code referencing system that can assist students in creating references for their code while simultaneously educating them about ethical code reuse. Technical evaluation of the system shows that Corona can successfully generate references for code taken from 20 of 24 distinct programming assistance websites, and that it can find matches between students’ code and instructors’ example code and generate appropriate references. Our research in a small-scale environment suggests that the use of Corona as a demonstration tool in a lecture about code referencing increases student awareness of correct referencing practice. To improve our intervention, we also show steps that lecturers can take to further elevate students’ engagement in code referencing.

The ever-changing nature of technology in a globally inter-connected world has placed our educational institutions at the forefront of ensuring a future-ready workforce. More than ever before, the regular revisions, refreshes and re-designs of school curricula, especially in the domain of computer science education, need to ensure that the knowledge and skills that students acquire will adequately prepare them for progressing into either university, a vocational pathway, or directly into the workforce. School computer science courses are therefore uniquely positioned with multiple opportunities to immerse students in authentic real-world problem-solving challenges, that will encourage the development of a collection of key skills. When faced with a complex problem to solve, students need to be able to demonstrate the resilience and ability to work collaboratively, creatively and to think critically. One other fundamental set of skills that is gaining much-needed traction around the world, are the computational thinking skills of decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithm design. This paper will provide a brief overview of the teaching of the Digital Technologies curriculum from the Foundation Year to Year 10, before sharing a deeper insight into the current aims, rationale, knowledge and skills as they manifest across each Australian State and Territory.

This study aimed to gain insights into the design of computer science curricula in primary schools in Japan by analyzing K–12 computer science curriculum sequences in England, South Korea, and New Zealand. This study focuses on the progression of key areas of computer science learning in K–12 education. This study identified trends in the sequence of computer science concepts and practices in K–12 education in the three countries. The trends were classified into three categories: (1) learning the concept itself is limited below Grade 6 and learning related to advanced concepts becomes extensive above Grade 7, (2) learning about the concepts becomes progressively more advanced and extensive throughout K–12 education, and (3) learning about the concepts becomes more advanced in scope and complexity throughout K–12 education as the context in which concepts are applied becomes more advanced. These implications can be applied to K–12 computer science curriculum design in Japan and also in other countries around the world.

Researchers and policy makers have consistently agreed that the quality of teachers is one of the most important factors in determining the quality of an educational system and that teachers need to be supported and developed through rigorous initial teacher education and continuous professional development. In the specific case of teachers’ ability to make effective use of technology, it has been noted that teachers require both technological and pedagogical training and education that equips them with the knowledge, confidence and skills they need. Given this broad, international consensus about the importance of teacher education for effective technology use, this paper explores the ‘golden thread’ of teacher development proposed by the UK government for teachers in England. This sets out a detailed curriculum for teacher development with very little reference to educational technology. The paper considers some of the potential missed opportunities to develop teacher expertise and practice with technology.

Digital competence of educators is one of the key factors affecting wide-scale digital transformation of education and is considered as one of the major aims in the European Digital Education Action Plan (2021–2027). To plan, conduct and report progress in digital competence development requires the ability to measure this competence. Hence, the importance of valid, reliable and usable digital competence assessment has been increasing among researchers, policy makers and teacher educators in recent years. While there exist a number of different instruments for assessing digital competence, there are not many comparative studies that would inform different stakeholders how to choose a suitable instrument to match specifically their context and goals. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding of needs and expectations of various stakeholders when they consider assessment of educators’ digital competence. This paper summarizes a study that explored the stakeholder perspectives in digital competence assessment and related trade-offs.

Just like the rest of the EU, Estonia has prepared a national strategy for the next 15 years and this strategy focuses on a smarter, digitally transformed and sustainable economy and society. Digital competence of citizens is an important prerequisite for wide-scale digital transformation in industry and society at large. This paper describes and analyzes the coordinated activities at the national level to create a coherent system of services for assessing, developing and making use of digital competence among learners and teachers on different levels of education.

Education policy implementation is a complex, evolving process that involves many stakeholders often with seemingly conflicting and opposing visions. This paper presents an account of work in progress in which the authors are conducting an analysis of the enactment of a strategy for digital learning in schools in Ireland. The aim of the study is both to analyse and theorise the extent to which the policy has achieved its aims but also to identify a means of tackling the perennial challenge of policy development and enactment at the school and classroom level. This paper presents the findings of the first phase of analysis.