Video games are increasingly becoming more intelligent, able to adapt themselves to the individual gamer. Learning styles are a set of models used to categorize people into different types of learners to explain why some people learn better through different methods. Since learning and exploration are such fundamental parts of the video game experience, it is interesting to consider the possibility of applying these learning style models to video games, allowing the video game to adapt to its player, providing a better experience. To consider such adaptation, the game must first be able to detect that learning style from how the player has interacted with it. Simple metrics collected during game play of an instrumented game (opensource Supertux) are compared to the results of the Hay Group’s Kolb Learning Style Inventory, a paper test designed to determine one’s learning style. A relationship between recordable game play metrics and the academic model for learning would allow a game designer to potentially infer that model from game play and use it to adapt the game to that type of learner.

Under what conditions and in what situations is the telling of personal history and other stories an effective teaching tool?Storytelling has been used by many of the greatest teachers throughout history. Plato, Jesus and Gandi, used stories, parables and personal histories to educate students (Zabel 1991). In fact, storytelling has been referred to as the foundation of the teaching profession (Abrahamson 1998). In recent years, the use of storytelling has received attention from academic researchers and has been studied in several academic disciplines. It has been suggested that the use of storytelling in higher education settings increases student performance and recollection (Bryant & Harris 2011). However, few students have considered the potential for the use of storytelling in the accounting classroom.This archival research seeks to describe the value of storytelling as a pedagogical tool across academic disciplines, review the literature regarding the use of storytelling in other academic disciplines in higher education, synthesize the findings of existing research and describe the uses, benefits and difficulties with using storytelling in various accountancy classes across the curriculum, and suggest possible uses for storytelling in accountancy classes.

When the pandemic, which has yet to end, began in 2020, the Swedish public health authority strongly recommended employees to set up work from home. Instead of meeting colleagues and coworkers face to face at the office or in-person meetings elsewhere many employees moved such meetings to a variety of digital platforms. In addition to serving as a primary means by which organizations function, these meetings foster their growth and development. Before the pandemic a variety of office meeting places, including boardrooms, lunchrooms, cubicles, hallways and water fountains served as important contexts for organizational learning. After all, places both formal and informal where information and ideas were shared, shape organizations´ shared experiences and common understandings. Teleworking moved many activities to new contexts, including digital platforms. In this study, I examined how various employees at two departments of education perceived how shifting to digital platforms affected workplace dynamics, especially on tasks that involved communication, collaboration, experiences and feedback which are all conditions for learning and in that sense contributed to prior research on the topic. The study was informed by previous research on teams that worked remotely before the pandemic. My contribution involves participants who had little or no experience of teleworking nor had they choose that structure of working. The theoretical framework deals with theories of organizational learning, including experiential learning and team learning. The study largely confirmed a number of shortcomings that teleworking may have in terms of learning conditions, such as informal and spontaneous communication and the feeling of social presence, issues that may affect problem solving and common understandings and a risk of ideas “falling between the cracks”. However, the study shows that in some cases the habit of using a digital platform contributed to creating a greater feeling of social presence between employees, especially for those who had not worked in the “same corridor” nor in close proximity to each other. In general, the study shows that the option to meet via digital platforms creates future opportunities by allowing the precise nature of specific tasks to determine the optimal contexts for collaboration. That is, digital platforms might serve as the optimal context for some task whereas in person- meeting might be preferable for others.

Recent literature suggests that communicative language tasks widely used by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to try and improve Japanese students’ learning have had little effect on improving their language ability and their intrinsic motivation to improve. Consequently, a number of teachers are now using interactive technology in the classroom although it has not been systematically implemented or widely studied. Understanding the approaches of successful EFL teachers—specifically, how teachers using an andragogic approach through experiential learning might affect student engagement—was the purpose of this qualitative study. The conceptual framework focused on student-centered learning and included Knowles’s theory of andragogy and Kolb’s experiential learning. The perceptions of 10 EFL teachers chosen through purposeful sampling and who regularly used technology in the classroom were gauged through structured interviews, direct observations, and document analysis. Emergent themes were extracted from the data through interpretive analysis. Results supported the fact that andragogic-based tasks with technology increased student engagement in the Japanese EFL university classroom by directly improving interaction between students and by stimulating communication and autonomous learning. The outcome of the study was a professional development program that was designed to provide better teacher training on facilitating technology-based lessons that engage learners and improve their language skills. Positive social change will result from providing better teacher training that focuses on facilitating technology-based lessons that engage Japanese university learners’ full potential and improve their language skills in more meaningful ways.

In addition to the memorization, algorithmic skills and vocabulary which is the default focus in many mathematics classrooms, professional mathematicians are expected to creatively apply known techniques, construct new mathematical approaches and communicate with and about mathematics. We propose that students can learn these professional, higher level skills through Laboratory Experiences in Mathematical Biology (LEMBs) which put students in the role of mathematics researcher creating mathematics to describe and understand biological data. LEMBs are constructed so they require no specialized equipment and can easily be run in the context of a college math class. Students collect data and develop mathematical models to explain the data. In this work examine how LEMBs are designed with the student as the primary focus. We explain how well-designed LEMBs lead students to interact with mathematics at higher levels of cognition while building mathematical skills sought after in both academia and industry. Additionally, we describe the online repository created to assist in the teaching and further development of LEMBs. Since student-centered teaching is foreign to many post-secondary instructors, we provide research-based, pedagogical strategies to ensure student success while maintaining high levels of cognition.

Michigan’s Food, Agriculture, and Resources in Motion (FARM) Science Lab is a 40-foot mobile classroom outfitted with 10 learning stations including scientific equipment and iPads. This quasi-experimental study analyzed preexisting data provided by Michigan Agriculture in the Classroom to evaluate the effectiveness of the FARM Science Lab mobile classroom as a method of teaching agriculture-themed, standards-based lessons to third- through fifth-grade students in order to increase their understanding of agriculture. From January through June 2018, more than 1,258 students participated in these lessons and completed the pretest and posttest and 72 teachers completed the post survey. Research questions not only addressed student learning but also teacher’s perceptions of the mobile classroom program and measured differences between rural, suburban and urban student populations. Four lessons were offered to students in third through fifth grade during the time of this study. Each lesson had a unique pretest and posttest provided to each school by Michigan Agriculture in the Classroom using Google Forms. Students and teachers participated in the agricultural lessons within existing classroom groups; therefore, this was not a random sample of either population. During the timeframe of this study, all sections of each grade level for each participating school were engaging in FARM Science Lab programming; therefore, no control groups were used in this research. The student and teacher data were analyzed using standard statistical tools including t-tests and Cohen’s d.Difficulty and item discrimination values provided more confidence in the reliability of the question as a measure of knowledge change after participation in the FARM Science Lab intervention. Results indicated there were statistically significant differences in knowledge between pretest and posttest scores for nearly all grade level/lesson groups. Each individual question was analyzed for statistically significant change in addition to overall test scores. Some questions did not see statistically significant changes from pretest to posttest for each group. These results suggested the FARM Science Lab was making a difference in students’ agricultural understanding, at a basic knowledge level, after a short intervention. The assessment questions tested the recall of facts rather than an understanding of a whole concept about science or agriculture. Teacher surveys indicated the FARM Science lab did address appropriate educational standards for their respective grade levels. Teachers also believed agriculture could be very effectively used to contextualize science concepts. The final research question addressed differences in rural, suburban and urban student gains from pretest to posttest. The FARM Science Lab did not visit any urban schools during the time of this study. Of the grade/lesson groups which did have a rural and suburban population to compare, there were some differences in scores between students’ responses in each geographic location. These populations were small therefore these differences may not be generalized to the larger population.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Simulation is an educational strategy used in prelicensure nursing education that has been demonstrated to effectively replace selected clinical experiences. Simulation experiences may include the use of differing roles including the active participant, who makes decisions during the simulation and the passive observer, who watches the simulation unfold. There is a lack of rigorous research testing whether students in the passive observer role during simulations demonstrate and retain knowledge similarly to those in active participant roles. In addition, differences in knowledge applied to a contextually similar case between those who actively participate and passively observe have not been studied. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between nursing student’s roles in simulation and cognitive knowledge demonstration, retention, and application about two contextually similar cases of respiratory distress. An experimental, pretest-multiple posttest, repeated measures study was conducted with a convenience sample of 119 baccalaureate prelicensure nursing students from a large multi-campus Southwestern university. Two knowledge instruments were administered throughout different stages of the simulation and four weeks later. Associations between role in simulation and scores on the knowledge instruments were examined using t-tests and mixed repeated measures-analysis of variance. Of the 59 active participants and 60 observers, there were no significant differences in knowledge demonstrated or retained after simulation, after debriefing, or four weeks later. Additionally, there were no significant differences in knowledge demonstrated when applied to a contextually similar case after debriefing or four weeks later between active participant and observer. Future research is needed to examine these relationships in larger and more diverse samples and different contextual clinical situations in simulation. These results will contribute to the further testing and implementation of using observation as a strategy for teaching and learning with simulation for nursing and health professions education.

No description available.

Field trips are visits to an out-of-school setting designed for educational and academic purposes whereby as a result students gain firsthand knowledge and experiences. Historically, it was the potential for student learning that motivated teachers to utilize field trips. However, there is reasonable suspicion among scholars today that teachers are utilizing field trips less since the start of the new millennia; the common reasons being cited among others include a slumping economy, an increase in accountability due to high-stakes testing, and rising fuel costs. Unfortunately, there is no empirical evidence that can confirm or deny this suspicion. Therefore, the purpose of this survey research study is twofold. The first goal is to investigate what proportion of Florida K-12 public school teachers, within the field of social studies, science, mathematics, and language arts utilized a field trip during the 2012-13 academic school year; along with investigating the total number and frequency in which they used those field trips. The second goal is to identify if there were any significant differences in the number of field trips that those teachers utilized based on four independent variables (a) the grade level at which the teachers teach, (b) teachers' years of teaching experience, (c) the content focus of the field trips, and (d) whether teachers graduated from a teacher preparation program or not. The study utilized a non-experimental causal-comparative research design to conclude that there were some significant differences in the number of field trips teachers utilized as a result of two of the independent variables.

Augmented Reality (AR) is fast-growing technology that has proved itself in many applications, including manufacturing environments. Manufacturing engineers benefit in an industrial environment by harnessing this technology in the workplace to guide workers through a variety of tasks. It is no longer a question on whether it is useful, but what are the best ways of applying the technology. Currently there are no published studies on ways to use augmented reality in a Manufacturing Engineering Educational Environment (MEEE). This study examines various ways that AR can be used in an MEEE setting and assesses the value of such applications. This study examines several different ways of creating and implementing AR and assesses whether there are notable gains from the use of AR over written instructions that are commonly used to teach in university environments. One portion of this research looks at instruction created using CAD based models to animate steps and uses model tracking and overlay to tie the experience to reality. A second type of AR uses video, audio and spatial tracking to guide the user through an experience without the use of any CAD model overlay. These two methods were presented to research subjects on either a Hololens 2 or a smartphone. Results showed that both methods of AR presentation were superior to written instructions. Students were able to complete instruction with fewer interventions and rated their experiences in regards to satisfaction and attention particularly highly. It was found that although there is a large wow factor associated with using the Hololens 2, the practical application favors the integration of AR with a smartphone. Research subjects are already familiar with smartphones, so asking them to use them for AR instruction was a seamless task. The Hololens 2 is a new and exciting technology that is on a steep learning curve with glitches that hamper immediate adoption although it will undoubtably grow in use over time. Overall, the use of AR as a teaching tool was met with enthusiasm, and results indicated that it was an effective teaching tool in an MEEE.