Tomorrow's Learning: Involving Everyone. Learning with and about Technologies and Computing

This paper examines the themes for two World Conferences on Computers in Education to characterize and theorize the shift in pedagogical rationale from ‘liberating the learner’ (the 1995 theme) to ‘involving everyone’ (the 2017 theme). The WCCE 1995 contributors’ responses to the theme of liberation are analyzed in terms of how the affordances of digital technology for learning are orchestrated by teachers, students and the technology itself. The pedagogical effects of developments in the use of technology in education since 1995 are considered using four key examples, and WCCE 2017 contributors’ responses to the theme of involvement are discussed in the context of these effects. The paper concludes that the shift from ‘liberation’ to ‘involvement’ represents a progression in expectations concerning how technology can aid learning, but that involvement requires that the learner should develop an intention to learn and an ability to orchestrate resources which teachers should help them to acquire.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education promotes the use of digital technologies in schools to support future-focused learning and to achieve the vision for New Zealand young people, as stated in the national school curriculum document, to become confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners. This vision statement, extended in meaning since its inception in 2007 to further encompass the development of digital citizens, has influenced the strategic direction for educational developments in New Zealand and is supported by a range of Ministry of Education initiatives. However, a number of challenges have arisen that impact the ability for New Zealand educators to fully implement this vision in schools. This short paper presents a review of literature that illustrates the vision for young citizens in New Zealand, and describes some current challenges faced by New Zealand educators as they aim to realize this vision in complex digitally enhanced environments.

With the New Zealand Ministry of Educations’ emphasis upon e-Learning in educational settings, and the correlating increase in approaches to learning with digital technologies in New Zealand primary schools, primary school-aged students in New Zealand are increasingly using digital devices in school settings and at a progressively earlier age. As availability of digital devices outside of school also increases and the boundaries between usages blur, there is an imperative to prepare primary them to use digital devices safely and responsibly across multiple contexts, and for multiple purposes. Implementing a school-wide, cross-sector, multi-stakeholder approach has been proposed as the most effective way to prepare young people in this area. However, little is known about how such an approach is actualized in primary school settings, and the benefits and challenges associated with its adoption. Drawing upon ecological systems theory, this interpretive case study will examine how one New Zealand primary school addresses digital safety and responsible use within the school ecosystems community, how they engage with individuals, groups or organizations situated within other ecosystem communities, and the drivers, enablers, barriers and tensions they experience within these endeavours.

This goal of this qualitative study was to identify the determinants that assist post-secondary Indigenous learners in an isolated fly in-only community to adapt and orient themselves between Eurocentric and Indigenous ways of learning. Digital technology (specifically mobile devices) was used to produce documentation for their adaptation and orientation. The outcomes of the study produced determinants that informed learning with digital technology in the research context. Informants showed a deep understanding of the problem, they were well meaning, eager and responsive to the study. The problem was more complex and participant responses indicated that rethinking and restructuring of the goals and tentative solutions for successful learning were needed. The solutions cannot be simply more technology or more pedagogy. Future research is key, but those research efforts must enter the community with a truly open mind and without any pre-fixed solutions.

This paper regards a validation study aiming to investigate secondary school pupils’ internet attitudes. An 18-item questionnaire was administered to 260 adolescents (12–15 years old) of an experimental school, in Greece. Four factors were extracted: “affection”, “perceived usefulness”, “perceived control” and “behaviour”. The factorial structure of the questionnaire was revealed. The majority of the pupils expressed strong perceptions towards the usefulness of the internet. Over 90% of the adolescents believe that the internet can allow them to do more interesting and imaginative work and that it helps them acquire relevant information. Gender and age were not significantly correlated to the factors. The frequency of internet use had positive correlations with the factor “Behaviour”. “Perceived control” was statistically significant correlated with each of the factors “Affection” and “Perceived usefulness”. The findings are discussed within the context of the safe introduction of digital tools ecosystems of this experimental school in Greece.

This paper describes and analyses a case of multidimensional collaboration of in the development of an educational game. The parties included Metropolia University of Applied Sciences from Finland, Tokushima University from Japan, and a lower secondary school in Helsinki. The development team involved students from three different departments of Metropolia. The two-year project produced two successive prototypes of the game, which contained two hundred questions about health and well-being including oral health. School pupils tested the game several times and commented on its features. They gave critical comments relating to its design and visual properties, even though they were positive about the idea of learning health facts in an entertaining way. Even though the coordination of such a project with many parties involved is challenging, the actual design of the real content and functionalities of a serious game pose more challenges. Effective advance preparation and research on educational game designs and aims will be needed in the following phases of the work.

This meta-level review of the literature set-out to examine the impacts of game-based/gamified learning on dispositions, cognitive abilities and behaviours of learners aged 6–12, and to identify the factors that contributed to these impacts. A total of seventeen relevant studies were identified that had been implemented across a range of disciplinary areas in the period under review (2005–2015). The results indicate that online gamified/games-based learning has been shown to increase the level of academic performance of learners, and improve cognitive competencies in problem-solving, multiplicative reasoning ability, self-efficacy and critical thinking. Learners’ intrinsic motivation has been shown to have been enhanced through motivational factors (confidence, satisfaction and enjoyment) promoted within the online game design, and this had a direct effect on increasing engagement and improving academic achievement.

This paper explores the potential of Alternate Reality Games, a type of Game-Based Learning experience, within higher education. The discourse opens by explaining the essence of ARGs; it then moves to present the findings from research in this domain, highlighting key benefits and challenges in using ARGs in higher education.

This report describes two computer-based interventions in Year 6 (age 11–12 years) classrooms. The interventions positioned sophisticated software alongside multimedia learning materials to teach topics from curriculum objectives many years ahead of these students’ chronological ages. These were transformative interventions (Fluck, 2003), changing what and how students learn when using computers. Students solved real world problems using integral calculus (Calculus for Kids) and studied both special relativity and quantum mechanics (Science-ercise). Calculus for Kids was conducted with 478 students in 26 schools from five Australian states; and Science-ercise was conducted with 187 students in five Tasmanian schools. Student learning achievement was measured using calibrated items in a post-test, with the students able to use the sophisticated software during the test. The results showed a majority of students exhibited learning achievements 4–6 years above their chronological age when using suitable computer tools. The studies bring into question the correct way to calculate effect sizes for such high impact interventions. Relying on Glass et al. (1981), we estimate this transformative use of computers in education achieved an effect size >4.0, well above Hattie’s (2007) hinge point of 0.4 for a significant innovation. This approach offers a pathway to shorten the time between knowledge generation and its incorporation in school curricula.

This paper presents e-Fran, an on-going French initiative for linking academics from various disciplines and practitioners to design and test innovative ways of using digital technologies to improve learning outcomes. It is a research policy paper as first research results are not yet available. e-Fran is a nation-wide research program deployed in France from October 2016 over four years. The national context, the objectives, the project selection process and the funded projects are described as well as the follow-up actions.

Over a three-year period, academics from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, have partnered with a range of academics to facilitate an elective subject for pre-service teachers (PSTs). These academics include staff from the Faculty of Science (The University of Melbourne), the Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) and the Gene Technology Access Centre (GTAC) Together we have sought to develop and strengthen their teaching in the area of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Students in this subject were supported to develop 21st century skills that enabled them to work effectively in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Pre-service teachers observed and responded to each other’s teaching providing real time feedback using ‘Padlet’ (a readily available web based application). Following each lesson students used the resultant ‘Padlet’ data as a prompt to promote reflective discussion. We analyse excerpts of Pre-service teacher responses to an online survey as a means to gain some understanding of their perception of working in this way. Additionally, Padlet feedback was thematically analysed in an effort to understand how teacher candidates focussed their feedback and limitations of this approach to facilitating professional development. Through adoption of this tool, critical collaborative reflection was fostered.

Mobile phones appear to have become one of the main entertainment features in adolescents’ life, which has also been suggested to be potentially addictive. A shortened version of a scale used to detect this potential addiction, the Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale (MPPUS-10; Foerster, Roser, Schoeni, & Röösli, 2015) has been extracted from the Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale for Adolescents (MPPUSA; Lopez-Fernandez, Honrubia-Serrano, & Freixa-Blanxart, 2012). To validate this shortened scale, a cross-national study surveyed 1391 high school students in both Spain and Greece, assessing both socio-demographic variables and self- perceived mobile use dependency. The MPPUS-10 exhibited good factorial validity, good reliability, and similar mid scores in both countries. Results from sub-scale symptomatology showed consistency in elevated levels of craving, withdrawal, and loss of control related to mobile phone use in both countries. This study presents evidence of self-perceived mobile phone dependence in south-European high school students, but more research is needed.

Learning and working tasks in vocational education and training (VET) in the field of mechanical engineering comprise theoretical knowledge and practical activities, for instance, manufacturing a workpiece using a CNC turning machine. To clarify the requirements of these extensive tasks and the support by a mobile application, trainers of companies with training facilities were interviewed. The results of a qualitative content analysis with regard to application and task areas, communication patterns, learning materials, and expectations towards mobile learning are described in this article. Additionally, the resulting practical experiences and the expectations of trainers are included in an instructional design for the support of formal learning and working tasks in VET.

The use of new technologies has become increasingly important in the light of the rapid technological progress made in what is commonly referred to as the digital age. Schools are now facing the challenge of imparting digital competencies to their students in order to ensure their participation in the society. In this context, mobile technologies do not seem to be used on a regular basis in schools. The present paper aims to identify the relationship between the frequency of tablet computer use and students’ computer and information literacy (CIL), which currently constitutes a research gap. The data is gathered in a quasi-experimental design from an individual school in Germany. Drawing on data from tablet classes and control groups taught without tablet computers, the frequency of use and the students’ level of CIL are examined. While results suggest that (1) students in tablet classes use tablets significantly more often, (2) the control group’s level of CIL is higher than that of tablet class students, and (3) the theoretically established correlation between the use of tablet computers and CIL cannot be maintained, teachers indicate in interviews that there are indeed positive effects that go along with the use of tablet computers (4).

Collaborative learning is advocated because of its pedagogical advantage, which allows knowledge construction through group discussions among learners. In a collaborative learning environment, there will be many learners with diverse cultures. The pedagogical advantages of collaborative learning include learners from different cultural orientation sharing unique learning experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate learners’ experiences in a multicultural remote collaborative learning environment among three countries, South Africa, Kenya and Finland. An Informational and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) course was offered to 51 online students from three Universities in the countries mentioned. The course was group-work focused and groups were comprised of students from different Universities. A questionnaire was designed and distributed online to these students. The objective of the questionnaire was to assess students’ experiences in a remote collaborative, tools used and knowledge sharing in the course. Research findings indicated that students utilized well synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies but also faced challenges like time differences and unequal contribution and participation in groups. However, team work of the students was excellent owing to the fact that 17 students managed to achieve the goal of the virtual learning for ICT4D course through remote collaborative learning.

This research aimed to investigate the delivery of postgraduate study through incorporation of Google Applications and Skype technologies as collaborative tools. Participants were a cohort of full time working employees from a South African cohort of collaborating universities enrolled in the Post-Graduate Diploma in Higher Education course, located in Limpopo and Western Cape provinces. The data was collected through interviews from participants on Skype and Google technologies that include Google drive, Gmail, Google docs, Google spreadsheet, and Google chat. Data was analysed through ethnographic content analysis and conversational analysis. Based on the findings, it was evident that Google applications and Skype technologies support collaborative learning. The study results show that these technologies have an important role in future delivery of academic post graduate programmes in institutions of Higher Learning amongst working employees. This study recommends use of these technologies in scenarios involving multiple institutions across the world. Cloud computing has a pivotal role in enabling online collaborative learning activities and it enhances effective skills development in cases where students cannot afford to attend courses on full time basis due to work commitments or geographical location.

This paper describes the most recent phase of an innovative model of teacher professional learning that has evolved over a decade (2006 to 2016). Building on the experiences of implementing this face-to-face model, the paper reports on the most recent phase which attempts to harness the emergence of a 4th wave of online learning. The initiative involves the design and development of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that potentially enables the massive scaling up of access to this already validated model of teacher professional learning designed to shift teachers’ pedagogical orientations through school focussed, job embedded teacher professional learning. The importance of maintaining key elements, threshold concepts and signature pedagogies in the design of MOOCs for teacher professional learning are discussed. The paper also explores some of the challenges and potential opportunities different MOOC delivery models offer for sustaining the types of collaboration, rich dialogue and ongoing reflection observed in earlier phases of the project.

This paper investigates how teachers can be supported and guided in the planning of web-based learning scenarios. Using a graphical user-interface (GUI) the teachers should be able to choose existing learning-concepts and to realize them by web-based learning. Based on classical models of didactics a class-hierarchy of identifiers for learning-phases, learning-methods and learning-tools was developed, which is already in use by teachers in their practical work. After empirical studies this term set was transferred to scenarios of web-based learning. Didactical templates and patterns are derived. The developed term set and a competency model lead to a class-hierarchy, which is represented by an ontology for the semantic web. This ontological structure in combination with the GUI has to enable the saving, loading and sharing of learning scenarios based on web-standards. Using editors for creating the sets of meta-data and the ontology, this work offers first prototypical solutions. As part of an outlook on further research options for the mapping of the ontological structure into a learning platform are discussed. The aims of this investigation are first solutions to the largely automatic transfer of a planned learning scenario into a course structure of the chosen learning platform.

This paper shows key steps in the development of a Model for Digitally Mature Schools in Croatia and reveals the results of assessment of digital maturity of schools in Croatia. In total, 151 primary and secondary schools were assessed against maturity levels using the instrument, and two different methods for gathering the data: self-evaluation and external evaluation. Notable differences were recorded between results of self-evaluation and external evaluation in favour of self-evaluation. Some of the factors that contributed to differences are lack of experience in conducting self-evaluation and additional training for external evaluators in opposition to written guidelines for conducting self-evaluation. The next step is to refine and upgrade the instrument based on comments and suggestions gathered during external evaluation and self-evaluation. Towards the end of the pilot project the final self-evaluation and external evaluation is planned to monitor schools’ progress. In order to lower the differences between results of self-evaluation and external evaluation, besides upgraded instrument, school staff will be more intensively prepared for conducting self-evaluation.

In the 21st century, written exams continue to be the primary method of assessing factual knowledge. Conducting these exams online reduces the correction workload and offers advantages such as enhanced objectivity, assessment with the possibility to use software specific to the course and thus increased constructive alignment with teaching and learning processes. However, eExams are often conducted in spaces that are too small, since larger computer rooms are usually unavailable or not economically feasible. Hence, in June 2011, we implemented a system called Secure Exam Environment (SEE) that enables online testing in any lecture hall with electricity and LAN sockets using students’ own devices while blocking access to unauthorized files or internet pages. Loan devices are offered to students that have no suitable device for the SEE. Assessment is conducted via Moodle and additional software (e.g. Eclipse, GeoGebra) can be used as well. The SEE also addresses important issues such as security, reliability, high availability, privacy, and flexibility. As of August 2017 we have conducted 1,241 such online exams with 46,342 students and are able to test up to 220 students concurrently. Furthermore, we offer students the possibility to choose their preferred time slot to sit an eExam within predefined weeks.

Considering the importance of ageing well, the aim of this study is to understand how the elderly learn to use digital technologies of movement detection. With the study of motion detection devices, we intend to contribute to the development of knowledge regarding care and the occupational therapy needs of the elderly in the context of their quality of life.

The King Island Digital Stories (KIDS) project was an initiative to extend children’s literacies through developing digital stories. The project was conducted over a ten-week term with 21 children in a Year 4/5 class. An ethnographic approach was used where the research team worked collaboratively in the classroom to scaffold individual children to represent their story ideas. The children were told that their stories needed to be about King Island and in their voice (first person) but otherwise, the stories could be about any aspect. The project was slow to start but a weekly sharing session helped the children to conceptualise and develop their stories. As the resources began to emerge, it was evident that the children were engaging effectively with the process of digital storytelling and developing their literacies, especially digital literacies. The resulting digital stories were diverse but collectively they communicated a tapestry of life on the island through the children’s eyes.

There are several kits for sale in the educational market that aim to encourage children to interact with technology and programming through the use of enjoyable activities which incorporate tangible robots. However, less expensive “craft” alternatives are also available, including handmade robotics. This paper describes the development of Rospino, a robotics kit aimed at children aged from 9 to 11. The project is still being tested and is going through several design iterations based on feedback collected from teachers and children during the last year. The study presented in this paper is part of research still under development which aims to verify whether there are gender differences in self-efficacy and perceived engagement in handmade robotics activities. Despite the fact that some of the craft materials are not inherently attractive (e.g., rubber bands, bottle caps, pieces of wood, wires, etc. and could be labelled as “male stuff”) and the low self-efficacy of the girls as measured in the pre-test, the results (among 133 primary school students) demonstrate that females have been involved at the same level as males in the activity.

This paper examines the process of designing assessment and how teachers in higher education, who are developing blended learning materials, can be supported to consider their approach to assessment and to select from the range of assessment opportunities that are becoming available. The paper presents the design and evaluation of an online decision support tool for assessment design, which was developed on a collaborative project across Indian and European universities. The tool was designed based on a shared framework of design and assessment principles which took account of the purpose of the assessment, knowledge and skills to be assessed and how and by whom the assessment was to be conducted. The tool was not intended to provide definitive advice but rather to support the decision-making process and professional development of teachers. This support would be provided during the use of the tool and as a summary at the end of the teacher’s consultation with the tool. Overall, users were satisfied with the tool, as the data show, and were positive about using it in designing assessment. Recommendations that were made during the evaluation, for redeveloping the tool to make it more suitable for a wider audience are discussed.

To ensure adequate skill competencies, many medical schools with large student cohorts have introduced clinical skills practice in the early years. However, the range of clinical signs that can be simulated on a standardised patient (SP) – an actor, is limited while physical elicitation of clinical signs on authentic patients by numerous novice students or on themselves as peers, may be discomforting or unsafe. Augmented Reality (AR) has the affordance of incorporating the virtual to a real life clinical space unlike a fully virtual environment (virtual reality). AR of real-life clinical signs can allow simultaneous authentic learning and multiple clinical skills practice and addresses the concerns of discomfort of clinical skills practices of actual patients by novice medical students. A literature review on current instances of AR technology to aid authentic learning of clinical skills is discussed in light of these affordances. Alongside, our pilot work on developing an AR application - Clinical Augmented Reality Objects in Physical Examination (CAROPE), for the simulation of gastrointestinal signs is illustrated briefly. CAROPE has shown that mobile learning through AR of authentic clinical signs superimposed on specific areas of the body is achievable and accessible with current technology and has the potential in enhancing learning and facilitating clinical skills practice.

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was the basis of this study to investigate students’ acceptance of a haptic learning resource in anatomy education. Based on the two main elements, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of TAM, this study used additional elements such as gender, prior experiences with similar resources, learning preference modes, and enrolled undergraduate courses to investigate students’ learning achievement and acceptance. No significant differences were found between genders or enrolled courses in the acceptance of the system in terms of ‘ease of use’ and ‘usefulness’ of the system. Students with previous experience with 3D were more favourable to a haptic device, this was statistically significant (p = .025) for “would use” and they also scored higher on the associated quiz (p = .050, Mann-Whitney U test).

Conversational Intelligent Tutoring Systems (CITS) are agent based e-learning systems which deliver tutorial content through discussion, asking and answering questions, identifying gaps in knowledge and providing feedback in natural language. Personalisation and adaptation for CITS are current research focuses in the field. Classroom studies have shown that experienced human tutors automatically, through experience, estimate a learner’s level of subject comprehension during interactions and modify lesson content, activities and pedagogy in response. This paper introduces Hendrix 2.0, a novel CITS capable of classifying e-learner comprehension in real-time from webcam images. Hendrix 2.0 integrates a novel image processing and machine learning algorithm, COMPASS, that rapidly detects a broad range of non-verbal behaviours, producing a time-series of comprehension estimates on a scale from −1.0 to +1.0. This paper reports an empirical study of comprehension classification accuracy, during which 51 students at Manchester Metropolitan University undertook conversational tutoring with Hendrix 2.0. The authors evaluate the accuracy of strong comprehension and strong non-comprehension classifications, during conversational questioning. The results show that the COMPASS comprehension classifier achieved normalised classification accuracy of 75%.

IT organisations and organisations with IT departments frequently procure project management training as part of their initiatives to improve business outcomes through professional education. This paper utilises the results of a research study that focused on the training of the project management methodology PRINCE2 in an organisation where IT was one of the departments. The longitudinal study over two and a half years reported on the adoption of the PRINCE2 project management methodology by sixteen employees following the successful completion of a PRINCE2 training course. Two different outcomes were observed: some individuals continued to develop their interest in PRINCE2 and looked for a stable network that will support their practice, even if they resigned from the organisation. The other outcome was that other individuals ceased using PRINCE2 for their projects if there was no imperative given by the organisation to use it and no example set by others in using it. The adoption outcomes from this study have implications as to the interventions that need to be implemented by organisations to derive the value from an investment in professional vocational education in project management for all relevant professionals.

This paper deals with teacher-driven learning analytics in primary and secondary education. First, it examines the transformation of the teachers’ role in relation to learning analytics and provides evidence suggesting an approach where affinity groups of teachers, systematically analyse and gauge their efforts in relation to student’s performance. Second, it presents results of research, currently in progress, concerning the implementation of teacher-driven learning analytics in educational settings (here in Danish schools). It focuses, among other things, on students’ self-efficacy as a parameter to be analysed together with their academic performance. The notion of self-efficacy refers to students’ beliefs about their capabilities to solve given tasks and problems and the paper provides evidence suggesting that perceived self-efficacy is an indisputably important factor to analyse.

The launch of millions of apps has made it challenging for teachers to select the most suitable educational app to support students’ learning. Several evaluation frameworks have been proposed in the research literature to assist teachers in selecting the right apps for their needs. This paper presents preliminary results of an innovative technique for evaluating educational mobile apps by analysing the feedback of past app users through the lens of a mobile pedagogical perspective. We have utilized a sentiment analysis tool to assess the opinions of the app users through the lens of the criteria offered by a rigorous mobile learning pedagogical framework highlighting the learners’ experience of Personalization, Authenticity and Collaboration (iPAC). The investigation has provided initial confirmation of the powerful utility of the feature based sentiment analysis technique for evaluating the mobile pedagogical affordances of learning apps.

This paper explores what young children can and will ‘say and do’ when positively positioned to think with scientific concepts using ICT interactives. The progress with meaning-making of three young children (7, 9 and 12 years old) when playing a game is tracked and analysed. How these children were positively positioned with the concepts and what this afforded them in the setting are outlined. Analysis of their ‘sayings and doings’, using affordances and positioning theory, details their progress in meaning-making with the offered chemistry concepts. What each child did with the three levels of thinking of chemistry (macro/sub-micro/symbolic), was tracked. Three chemical thinking storylines are described to highlight that exploring molecular and chemical symbolic thinking can lead young children to engage with more scientifically sophisticated thinking and is of interest to them. Many scientifically relevant questions were raised while ‘playing’ with the interactive. The game directed their attention to the chemistry concepts and led to meaning-making opportunities. This examination provides insights into how suitable interactives can offer, direct and help structure early ‘knowing of’ scientific concepts by positively positioning learners with the concepts. Implications for restructuring early learning opportunities with central concepts using ICT are proposed.

Problem- and Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a widely used pedagogical method in higher education. Although PBL encourages self-directed learning and works with the students’ own projects and problems, it also includes teacher presentations, discussions and group reflections, both on-campus and online. Therefore, the teacher’s plans might be relevant to the students’ projects, but that is not always the case. This study investigates how master’s students interact with an online Problem-Based Learning design and examines how technology influences these interactions. The empirical data stem from lessons at an online master’s course, and they were collected and analyzed using a netnographic approach. The study finds that concepts like self-directed learning and active involvement of everyone can have very different meanings from the teachers’ and the students’ points of view. If the students do not see the relevance immediately, they often leave the online sessions. Hence the title: This study describes an experience and provides a point of departure for further discussion, but it is not an example of best practices for online PBL.

This paper is about an investigation into student perceptions of peer affective factors during a Facebook-based collaborative writing activity among Turkish high school EFL learners. Two groups of three students, 16-year-old EFL learners at A2 level English proficiency (CEFR), undertook an online collaborative English short story writing exercise over seven weeks using Facebook. I gathered data from focus group discussions, online one-to-one chats and online discussion threads from both groups. Although small-scale, valuable insights were obtained into peer affective factors that emerged throughout the writing exercise, and were concerned with receiving/giving praise and motivational phrases, the use of informal language and humour in writing during the exercise as well as in relation to feeling comfortable with each other. The students claimed these factors greatly aided the development of their writing skills.

The process of learning how to write is a demanding, slow, and complex process. Primary school students often experience problems in writing and, therefore, teachers should provide scientifically validated strategies to empower their performance, such as Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). Reflecting on the changes in the social reality and students’ personal interests, the inclusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the educational context and practice in writing has also become exceedingly relevant. However, using ICT associated to other teaching methodologies is not always explored in the classroom. In a quasi-experimental study, 178 fourth grade students participated in an opinion essay writing intervention, during 12 weeks (90 min/week), using SRSD instruction model (n = 89) and an ICT variant of SRSD called SRSD + ICT model (n = 89). We analyzed the impact of these two interventions through the analysis of opinion texts produced, by handwriting, for students one week before and one week after the intervention according to the elements, quality, number of words and number of linking words. Both showed positive results in the students’ writing skills, although the results from the SRSD + ICT model were better. These results reinforce the pertinence and usefulness of this model in the teaching-learning process of writing that should be discussed and tested in different contexts.

Although increasingly schools are using Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to teach students and society now understands the importance of Emotional Intelligence, the VLEs currently installed in schools can be said to be ‘emotionally unintelligent’ and do not help to inspire and encourage students to become emotionally self-aware, empathetic and responsible citizens. Meanwhile, designing a VLE that is emotionally intelligent and consequently responsive to students’ emotional and academic needs remains a challenge for both developers and educators. By adopting a process of inductive reasoning, this study draws upon the perceptions of 150 students, 35 teachers and 5 learning support assistants (LSAs) from one secondary school in London (United Kingdom) as well as 2 VLE Content Developers, to propose a framework which, it is argued, can support teachers in helping their students to develop both Emotional Intelligence and academic abilities. Data collection methods used included semi-structured interviews, questionnaires as well as staff and students’ focus groups. 5 approaches towards validation (context-based, theory-based, criterion-related, response and consequential) are used to enhance the credibility of findings. Primarily, this paper aims to stimulate thinking and consequently knowledge that will lead to the design of VLEs that emphasise and capture the emotional dynamics of classrooms and society.

Virtual learning is increasingly common due to factors, such as technological advances and globalization. Research presented in this paper is based on a virtual ICT for Development-course that was offered three times by a Finnish university. The course participants were from Finland, Germany, South Africa and Kenya. During the three course implementations, three different learning modes – traditional teacher-focused learning, team-work focused learning and a blend of the two – were utilized. Our research goal was to better understand practices that enhance the learning process in a virtual environment. We collected data by three online questionnaires that were sent to the course participants by email after completing the course. In total, we received 61 responses. We discovered that the students’ perceptions of the richness in qualities of learning were different in each course. This paper discusses this difference in line with the different learning modes used. These results encourage us to further research the link between learning modes and qualities of learning to (1) validate the findings with a larger sample, (2) compare them to previous studies in the field, and (3) to potentially propose generalizability of the findings.

This case study focuses teacher education toward the design of online learning educational environments to guide in-service teachers’ development of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), the knowledge for effectively integrating technologies in their classroom instruction. This study describes a researcher-designed learning trajectory instructional approach that highlights key online instructional features that guide teachers in improving and refining their TPACK. In an online Masters’ degree program, the research-based learning trajectory transforms teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics with technologies by focusing on the development of their knowledge-of-practice through “systematic inquiry about teaching” with technology that considers “learners and learning, subject matter and curriculum, and schools and schooling” [6]. The multiple case, descriptive study provides a rich description of how the features of the learning trajectory influence nine K-12 teacher participants’ thinking about their own thinking with the technology for learning mathematics and their thinking about their students’ thinking and understanding when learning with multiple technologies. The study concludes by proposing that teacher educators consider incorporating such a researcher-designed learning trajectory instructional approach to interweave descriptive tasks with specific pedagogical strategies in order to enhance teachers’ knowledge for teaching their content with technology – their TPACK.

Every Australian school teacher is required to include instruction in information and communication technology (ICT) in their teaching. Thus, ICT in education, including technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), needs to be taught to every pre-service teacher (PST). A drop in the digital competence of high school students suggests many PSTs may not be reaching the levels of ICT competence envisaged to deliver the Australian Curriculum. Universities are grappling with the most effective way to address this. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of embedding ICT in education units in two different ways. Qualitative data was collected from PSTs from units in which ICT was actively embedded: in one, ICT was embedded as a content delivery tool only; in the other, PSTs were additionally required to create a digital learning object as part of the assessment task employing experiential learning. Findings indicate that when PSTs are required to create using digital technologies they gain a deeper understanding of TPACK and have greater intention to use ICT in their future classrooms.

The authors introduce their experiences gained in the EU project Do It Yourself in Education: Expanding digital literacy to foster student agency and collaborative learning (DIYLAB). The project was aimed to design an educational procedure based on DIY philosophy with a student-centred and heuristic approach to learning focused on digital literacy development and later to verify it in teaching practice in primary and secondary schools and HEIs in Finland, Spain and the Czech Republic. In the Czech Republic the project DIYLAB was realized as a teaching approach in initial teacher education with Bachelor and MA degrees for ICT, Biology, Primary Education and Art Education student teachers. DIYLab activities represented occasions for student teachers to bring interesting problems related to their study programmes and also their after-school interests. An integral part of DIYLab activities was problem visualisation using digital technology; visual, film, animation, etc. served as a basis for assessing both pupils’ digital competence and their problem-solving capability. The DIYLab have influenced student teachers’ pedagogical thinking of how to develop pupils’ digital literacy and to assess digital literacy development as a process and not as a digital artefact. Following the project, the DIYLab approach is being included in future Bachelor and MA level initial teacher education with the aim to teach student teachers (1) to design DIY activities for digital literacy development supported inter-disciplinary relations in school education, and (2) to use digital technology to oversee and assess learning as a process.

This paper briefly reviews the teaching and assessment strategies developed over ten years of trials with over 1200 undergraduate students to make effective use of virtual haptic simulators in higher education disciplines such as dentistry and nursing. In the last five years (2012–17) these strategies have evolved to include a range of technology enhanced learning resources (TEL) in a blended learning setting to assess the performance progression of students’ learning cavity preparation skills. Every students’ performance outcomes were retrieved from the hapTEL simulator log files for each task including the percentage of caries, healthy tissue and pulp removed. The use of a blend of video recorded short lectures followed by face to face teaching, pair working, haptic, visual images and sound feedback, and individual student assessment record keeping showed an improved reliability in performance of the work-stations and a consistently higher rate of student’s log files records compared with previous years. Records of students’ performance collected over two years showed that the HapTEL system enabled students to perform better at cavity preparation after practising over two sessions.

One of the main goals of introductory courses of a university is to make freshmen well prepared for subsequent intermediate courses. But nowadays it becomes difficult because academic skills of freshmen differ very much. To resolve this problem, this paper proposes an ontology-based backward learning support system called EduGraph. If a student cannot understand some learning item, EduGraph, based on its ontology, suggests him or her prerequisites for understanding the item, and he or she can learn them using EduGraph. For the student, to understand the incomprehensible item can be a short-term goal because prerequisites for it are suggested, and he or she is expected to keep intrinsically motivated to understand the item. EduGraph can also support a student to organize what he or she learns into his or her integrated knowledge, because its ontology is based on a well-designed upper ontology for learning and can organize learning items properly. Actual applications to several introductory courses from 2015 suggest that EduGraph is effective.

This study examined the growing number of emerging eExam systems that allow students to demonstrate academic achievement using computers in schools and universities. Using a mixed-methods case study approach, the research gathered data from a desk audit, followed by field observations and interviews in selected countries. Thematic investigation of the data revealed commonalities and differences in the eExam systems. The findings show the main systems under development are divided into two groups. The first are alternative booting systems that make an entire, identical operating system and application suite available to each candidate. The second comprises a variety of secure web-browser solutions. Both approaches permit the use of software applications, but it is not yet clear whether this affordance can transform curricula. It is clear there is tension between administrative convenience that saves staff time, and the transformational potential of computers in education that would alter what students learn as well as how they learn. This tension is epitomised by the different proportions of undergraduate examinations conducted using computers, ranging from 1% to 40% in some institutions. What was also clear from the data were the intentions of some countries and institutions to raise this to 100% in a five year span.

This paper is based on analysis and discussion undertaken over several years by researchers, policymakers and practitioners from a range of countries which vary in their approaches to the curriculum for Computer Science. The discussions, undertaken predominantly within the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) and EDUsummIT communities were motivated by a need to examine the rationale, issues and challenges following some concerns across the globe about the position and nature of Computer Science in the school curriculum. We summarise our findings and focus specifically on challenges for the computer science education community in communicating, clarifying needs and promoting curriculum change in order to encourage Computer Science in the curriculum both theoretically and practically.

Based on a nearly thirty years long history to implement digital education in Austrian primary and lower secondary schools, this paper deals with the current development and strategies to encounter this challenge. After a literature review across national borders and some findings on different approaches in two different countries, a compressed historical view and exemplary empirical results from online-surveys describe the current Austrian situation. The paper closes with the outlines of the new curriculum “Basic Digital Education” and some remarks about it.

To address dynamic needs of the industry, student learning must extend beyond the classroom. Considering the packed nature of traditional curriculum and logistics, incorporating new courses is challenging. A model is presented where the desired learning is acquired by engaging students in research partnerships, and without unduly extending the duration of their degree program. The success of this model has been demonstrated over many years by deployment of a variety of solutions for a diverse group of stakeholders, and an ever-growing demand for expansion. A few selected projects are presented in this paper to illustrate the skills acquired by students which include training in state-of-the-art technologies, creative thinking, research publications, and prospects for immediate hiring upon graduation. The benefits to faculty and industrial partners are also highlighted. Finally, the paper presents the challenges encountered which range from space, turnovers, transitioning, data access and perception of shadow IT. The ideas presented are applicable to all emerging areas.

We live in times of digital change, which manifests in the increasing pervasiveness of embedded and cyber-physical systems in our society. This change also needs to be reflected in education, as new knowledge and competencies become necessary to deal with everyday life challenges, for instance when estimating consequences of capturing, transmitting and evaluating sensor data in many devices and acting accordingly and responsibly. This article examines requirements that the digital society places on CS education. In our analysis, we identified numerous contexts, activities and knowledge areas relevant for students to cope with challenges of the digital world. Combined with content knowledge relevant in this domain, suitable phenomena and thus anchor points for teaching can be generated and, on this basis, specific learning scenarios can be developed that also consider general educative aims imposed by our society.

In this paper we describe the development of Information Systems (IS) curricula in the Business Faculty of an Australian university over the last 40 years, but then look at how what has happened is likely to affect future developments. The paper looks at how curriculum content was added over the years when it covered what was considered, at the time, to be important new material. In many cases in later years this material became mainstream and so there was no need to include it in IS courses. An example of this is eCommerce which was an extremely important new area in the late 1990s that was developed into new IS subjects and new undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses. By the mid-2000s, however, everyone was using eCommerce and it was included in many other subject areas, making it no longer necessary to be included in IS courses and it disappeared. Finally we question what might happen to IS courses into the future.

It has become apparent that increasing numbers of students arriving into undergraduate computing and engineering degree programmes in Irish 3rd-level institutions have prior experience of computer programming. As the extent of this prior exposure as well as its nature, origins, and usefulness is not known beyond anecdotal evidence, an annual survey of prior programming experience of freshman undergraduates who study programming as part of their degree has been designed and administered. This paper reports on the first two years of this survey in 2015 and 2016. It found that around one third had some prior experience of programming with nearly half of that group reporting a reasonable level of fluency in one or more languages. The authors expect that the effect of proposed changes to primary and 2nd-level curricula alongside the increasing popularity of informal programming clubs will be increasingly felt in coming years and therefore plan to continue and extend the survey in order to clarify the effect of such developments. The results should be of interest to 3rd-level educators in the planning of curriculum and teaching practice.

So far, there is hardly any empirical research on the question of what raises or influences the interest of school learners in computer science or computing education. Aspects to be considered are for example pedagogical decisions of the teacher concerning contexts, phenomena, situations, or concepts to which a lesson or a lesson sequence refers, planned learner activities and many others. This paper analyses a model for describing interest in physics on its transferability to computer science, reports about the development of an online questionnaire for investigating the computing-related interests of school learners and gives results of a first empirical pilot study (based on N = 141 datasets). Based on the participants’ answers concerning socio-demographical aspects, the computing interest of different groups of learners was analyzed. A higher level of computing interest was found at male pupils, learners who indicated that they were striving for a computing-related job, that computing was their favorite school subject, or that they had good or very good school marks in mathematics or computing.

Increasing the number of females in ICT-related university courses has been a major concern for several years. In 2015, we offered a girls-only computing summer camp for the first time, as a new component in our education and outreach activities to foster students’ interest in our discipline. In this paper, we describe the motivation for the camp and how we designed the program, and we report our experiences and survey findings from the first two editions of the camp. They can provide guidance for planning further events targeting females, and help to integrate awareness about underrepresentation of females in other activities.

Whilst there is a substantial body of research that shows how Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) can support schools and teachers to make their classrooms more inclusive, there is a need for more evidence describing how best to ensure that the teaching of computing itself is inclusive. This paper reports on a literature review of inclusive education in school computing lessons. It identifies a number of inclusive practices, including ensuring a relevant and authentic curriculum that focuses on depth of understanding, promoting culturally relevant tasks, and ensuring an inclusive environment that challenges bias. The review also identifies a need for much more research into what constitutes an inclusive computing classroom.

The paper discusses a research into civil empowerment in a developed country through promoting learning opportunities of computing and informatics based on a question as follows: What kind of possibility and limitation can be found in educational support on computing and informatics as a means of empowerment and social inclusion of socially disadvantaged youths in developed countries? For the question, following action research methodology, the author had joined a group’s activity of helping social participation of disadvantaged youths in a mid-sized city in Japan and engaged in supporting learning computing. We found that creative aspects of computing had involved the youths into autonomous learning of computing; however, their expanded capacities of computing hadn’t obviously been converted into their motivation for social participation. It suggests that more holistic support enabling them to find the meaning of learning computing in context should be designed and practiced for their further empowerment.

Smartwalk is a playful enrichment activity for sixth- or seventhgraders on computer science. It takes place outside on the schoolyard. The basic idea is to do things that Generation Z-kids usually do with their mobile devices in a different (metaphorical) way using the physical environment outside on the schoolyard. The goal is to make aware of computer sciences concepts adopted in smartphone apps and to promote the acquisition of computational thinking.

The general concept of self-efficacy is based on the individual’s own perception of being capable to handle challenging professional situations, for example in the fields of scientific knowledge, pedagogic expertise and conflict management. By means of existing literature, a questionnaire has been created to measure different aspects of self-efficacy in German informatics teachers as well as professional overload. Completed questionnaires of 58 informatics teachers have been analysed to investigate their perceived general self-efficacy and their informatics-specific self-efficacy. The results suggest that the majority of the surveyed teachers have a relatively high self-perceived overall self-efficacy and don’t feel professionally overloaded. In contrast to other studies, this investigation determines no correlations between informatics teacher’s general self-efficacy and their ratings of professional overload. However, there is only evidence for medium negative coherence between informatics teacher’s self-efficacy in a very subject-specific area of informatics and professional overload.

When it comes to studying learners’ perceptions, the most common methods range from arranged questionnaires to carefully structured interviews. While the former are arguably inadequate to understand learners’ perceptions correctly due to the lack of response, the latter lack the ability to flexibly focus on interesting points during the interviews. Since the importance of learners’ perceptions is well-known and many Computer Science concepts are not covered yet, we want to introduce a technique from the field of social psychology and apply it to the domain of Computer Science Education. With our field report on “Utilizing the Repertory Grid Method to Investigate Learners’ Perceptions of Computer Science Concepts” we want to encourage this qualitative approach in this field. We present our application of this method in order to study five 11- to 13-year-old secondary school students’ conceptions of the Internet and the corresponding IT devices. It turns out that the technique is a promising alternative when it comes to studying learners’ perceptions indeed.

Data management is a highly innovative field of CS, which evolved from the original field databases in the last years. With the ongoing developments, several topics from this field, such as cloud computing, large data collections or data analyses, pervade our daily lives. Although more and more students and teachers come in contact with data management topics and need to develop competencies in this field, current CS education typically does not sufficiently address them. Yet, both students and teachers already have experience with certain aspects of data management and may have built up knowledge and perceptions, which need to be considered in CS teaching. Hence, in a qualitative study, we investigated the attitudes and prior knowledge of teachers on several data management topics and explored students’ knowledge in this field.

From the early years of educational programming researchers considered procedural abstraction a key instrument of computational thinking and tried to understand the cognitive difficulties encountered through this concept. Defining procedures is promoted in renewed computing curricula in several countries. And yet, it is rarely acknowledged by more recent educational research. In this paper, we consider the fact that the delayed implementation of a mechanism for building procedures (known as definitions) within Scratch, a widely used programming environment for children, may have negatively impacted the focus within curricular content on this powerful idea. In our research, which is a part of a broader ScratchMaths (SM) research project, we set out to explore which factors play a role in upper primary pupils understanding and utilizing the concept of defining procedures as a common and inherent instrument of their programming. We present our observations from the project design schools and demonstrate how they guided the development of our SM pedagogic strategy for definitions.

Through the use of humanoid robots, a rural school in South Australia has included both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in embedding the “sleeping” language of the traditional owners of the land (the Narungga people) into the classroom. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students worked with virtual and real humanoid robots to develop in parallel both their programming skills and their understanding of the Narungga language and culture. This research is part of a larger three-year study investigating the impact of humanoid robots on students’ learning and engagement and draws on questionnaires, interviews and journals from the educators. The study demonstrated how pride and interest in Aboriginal culture can be partially reclaimed using these inclusive and adaptive technologies. Simultaneously, students and educators were learning two languages; the coding language required to program the robot and the Narungga language.

Recent learning sciences have revealed some of the mechanisms of how people learn through interactions in collaborative educational settings. In this research, we tried to capture the nature of constructive interaction by in-depth qualitative analysis of the discourse in a programming learning environment. The analyzed group was comprised of three female students, all in the sixth grade, who engaged in making an animation using Scratch. However, they had trouble with their object modelling during the task. Through their problem-solving procedure, the students attempted externalizations of their solution ideas, and these interactions promoted their understanding of the problem through the iterative process of each individual. Working collaboratively, the three students used various procedures to solve their shared object-modelling problems.

This conceptual paper presents work which is part of an ongoing research project into the design of a software development process aimed at freshman, undergraduate computing students. The process of how to plan and develop a solution is a topic that is addressed very lightly in many freshman, undergraduate courses which can leave novices open to developing habit-forming, maladaptive cognitive practices. The conceptual software development process described in this paper has a learning process at its core which centres on declarative knowledge (in the form of threshold concepts) and procedural knowledge (in the form of computational thinking skills) scaffolding freshman software development from initial planning through to final solution. The process - known as Computational Analysis and Design Engineered Thinking (CADET) - aims to support the structured development of both software and student self-efficacy.

Agile methods are replacing former, highly systematic project management practices in software development. Many studies have shown that agile methods are already mainstream in the software industry. Academia has incorporated these changes in development practices into education rather reluctantly. Much of higher education still depends on very traditional teaching practices and conventional curricula. In this paper, we describe a series of efforts to bring the agile world fully to ICT education, and discuss results for students and teachers alike. Agile methods can be taught, and moreover, they can also be part of the teaching toolkit. Teachers of agile courses face certain personality requirements: they need to be able to tolerate uncertainty and to be professionally proficient because of demands for flexibility and quick adjustment. The results of using agile methods as course structure, as well as agile planning of course content in small instructor teams have been successful.

In this paper, we demonstrated an evidence-based action research in an introductory programming class with the use of an information dashboard which provides coding metrics to visualize students’ engagement of their assignments. The information dashboard was designed for teachers to improve their classroom teaching using the same coding metrics which was verified in our previous research [9]. The system was equipped with a cross-filter functionality for exploring the entire classroom metrics. Accordingly, teachers can easily conduct a temporal analysis, an across-year comparison, and a cross metrics analysis. We examined the system for the improvement of the 5th year course using a dataset from the past four years from a non-CS introductory programming course at a university. Qualitative analysis was conducted using the discourse between teachers and teaching assistants with the proposed dashboard. The results showed that the system succeeded in promoting discourse, which included a clearer understanding of the class and its improvement, such as teaching method, assignments, or of students’ behavior.

This study investigates the difference between novice and expert programmers in memorizing source code. The categorization was based on a questionnaire, which measured the self-estimated programming experience. An instrument for assessing the ability to memorize source code was developed. Also, well-known cognitive tests for measuring working memory capacity and attention were used, based on the work of Kellog and Hayes. Forty-two participants transcribed items which were hidden initially but could be revealed by the participants at will. We recorded all keystrokes, counted the lookups and measured the lookup time. The results suggest that experts could memorize more source code at once, because they used fewer lookups and less lookup time. By investigating the items in more detail, we found that it is possible that experts memorize short source codes in semantic entities, whereas novice programmers memorize them line by line. Because our experts were significantly better in the performed memory capacity tests, our findings must be viewed with caution. Therefore, there is a definite need to investigate the correlation between working memory and self-estimated programming experience.

At the Faculty of Computer Science at the TU Wien, Vienna, Austria, the studies of computer science (CS) face two issues in the first year: a gender gap and a high student dropout rate. In order to tackle these problems, the faculty has set up a project called START Informatics to analyse the status quo, to identify potential pitfalls, to take actions and to develop measures to improve the quality of the first year of CS studies. Therefore, we will first examine the current situation in teaching with a mixed methods approach comprising lecture observations, student and teacher interviews and a large-scale questionnaire for first year students. As a result, the objective of the project is to describe recommendations and measures to improve the learning and teaching experience with a focus on student retention and potential gender issues.

In the context of the implementation of computing education for all school students, different implementation models are proposed and discussed: integration of computer science concepts and competencies into existing school subjects, establishment of a separate computing subject, offers of workshops and projects in schools, and out-of-school activities. Within the context of this position paper, the afore-mentioned implementation variants are discussed and evaluated.

The steadily advancing digitalization of our world requires that educational systems adequately prepare everybody for the resulting challenges. Different actors in educational systems often see the solution either in digital media education, or computing education. This position paper presents a combined model – the so-called “Dagstuhl triangle”, which was developed in collaboration of about 30 computer scientists, computing and media education researchers, teachers, and representatives from IT companies and foundations.

The paper describes an approach of improving Slovenian Computer Science Education in general secondary school by forming an active and sustainable Computer Science Community of Practice (CS CoP). In project NAPOJ three systems teachers use in teaching programming are combined: CS e-textbook, LMS Moodle and TOMO, automatic assessment system for learning programming. Group of master teachers were selected, who prepared the initial set of in-class resources and material at a half a week workshop. This was followed by the regional workshops for other CS teachers throughout the Slovenia and run by master teachers. Development of CoP was observed and analyzed through various data gathering tools, such as questionnaires, discussions and observations, and preliminary results are highlighted.

During a one-year-subproject, student teachers develop and pilot learning scenarios and materials in mathematics classrooms for third and fourth graders fostering ‘Computational Thinking’. To evaluate these interventions regarding the impact on the student teachers as well as the schoolchildren ‘impact models’ are used. These models based on program impact theory will be continuously refined to converge to a ‘proof of the success’ of the project.