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Technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs) are educational tools that enable students to acquire knowledge, improving the quality of their educational experience. Educators face many challenges when teaching difficult histories about French resisters in World War II, such as Lucie Aubrac. Resisters' histories include deep emotions, choices, and hard decisions. There is a need for a new approach for teaching these topics and designing innovative digital tools to encourage educators and students to explore them. The current study designs and evaluates a TELE to teach difficult history via a historical empathy approach that engages students with difficult histories and provides them with means to empathize with historical figures. French academic historians from different universities across the U.S. collaborated and informed the design of the TELE. This study answers two main questions: First, how can a project-based classroom TELE help teach difficult history via a historical empathy approach? And second, in what ways do educators think the final prototype will help in teaching difficult history content, such as the Lucie Aubrac scenario, thematically? The methods used in this study are focus groups and surveys. The outputs of this study are in the form of knowledge and products. These include design principles, the final prototype, and the revised historical narrative of Lucie Aubrac. The results indicate the potential for using the final prototype in classrooms. The significance of this study is found in its contributions to the literature of history, pedagogy, design, and technology.

Digital stories—two- to five-minute videos consisting of a first-person voiceover set to a slideshow of personal photographs—combine personal reflection with digital technologies. The stories and the process of making them appeal to many organizations, particularly those with a mission of outreach or education. However, despite the inexpensive and fairly easy-to-use digital technologies involved, organizations have typically had difficulty implementing the practice. This dissertation presents a case study of one organization that hoped to implement digital storytelling, detailing the 15 months after its Writing Director completed a digital storytelling train-the-trainer workshop. The case study organization, Tech Year, is a one-year intensive college and job-readiness program for urban 18-24 year-olds. The case study aims for descriptive detail, and reflects 300+ hours of site visits, 29 interviews, and extensive document collection. Everett Rogers’ theory of organizational innovation is used to frame the case study description. Tech Year hoped to integrate digital storytelling into its Business Writing curriculum and imagined a number of other utilities for digital storytelling related to fundraising, recruiting, and student development. During the 15-month research period, a wide range of digital storytelling-related activity happened at Tech Year, including a pilot of digital storytelling in the Business Writing classroom. At the conclusion of the study, however, Tech Year had not settled on a sustainable organizational use or uses for digital storytelling, and organizational members were uncertain whether the practice would persist. Besides telling an implementation story, the study has a second major aim: to explore theoretically informed reflective tools that might be used by researchers and organizations to assess and direct ongoing digital storytelling implementation efforts. A novel methodology that examines digital storytelling pilots through the lens of North American genre theory, called genre-informed implementation analysis, is both described and applied to the case of Tech Year.

Gamification, the implementation of game elements in a non-game context, is a rapidly growing field of research. One element of gamification that has experienced a rapid growth in popularity is the use of digital badges. Despite widespread adoption in educational settings, there are still gaps in the understanding of their effects on motivation, engagement, learning, and other factors. Furthermore, feedback delivered through badges can include a symbolic reward for successful completion of a task, providing a credential for gaining a skill, or acknowledging mastery of a particular piece of knowledge. This study implemented digital badges in online courses at a large urban two-year college. Badges were used to deliver embedded feedback and analyze the results on motivation, engagement, and learning. An experimental group received badges over the course of a three week module composed of various learning activities targeting course learning outcomes. A control group experienced the same learning activities without receiving the digital badges. Results indicated insignificant differences in perceived motivation, learning gains, and perceived engagement between the two groups. Positive results were observed regarding increased peer-to-peer engagement evidenced by a significant increase in discussion board activity. The increased engagement of peers leads to the subsequent building of a strong learning community. This positive group association can provide a feeling of support which leads to increased effort, persistence, and goal achievement. Potential causes are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

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No description available.