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Children on the autism spectrum (AS) often struggle with writing tasks at school. They commonly experience difficulty with two key aspects of writing: the skills required for handwriting (fine motor and perceptual) and the conceptual and language skills required for written composition. Specialist intervention to assist with written expression is, therefore, often needed for students on the AS to succeed academically. This research evaluated the impact of using self‐regulated strategy development (SRSD) in combination with assistive technology on the quality and length of written compositions of students on the AS. It also investigated how students felt about using the SRSD writing strategy. Eight primary school students on the AS between the ages of 9 and 12 participated in this single‐subject study. An ABAC study design was used to evaluate student writing performance across three conditions. Baseline handwriting measurements were collected during condition A. During condition B students used assistive technology alone; in condition C, students applied their understanding of SRSD while using assistive technology. Results from this study show that, in many cases, the quality and/or length of written compositions and feelings of self‐efficacy towards persuasive writing of students on the AS improved when they received physical and/or conceptual writing supports. This paper presents the research design, methods and results from this single‐subject study followed by a discussion of the results and final thoughts and areas for future research. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic? There is limited research about how the persuasive writing of students on the autism spectrum (AS) can be supported in a socially inclusive way.Research has shown that the use of assistive technologies like keyboards and writing‐support software can improve the writing outcomes of students on the AS.Research has shown that the use of self‐regulated strategy development (SRSD) writing strategies can improve the persuasive writing outcomes of diverse students.What this paper adds? A single‐subject study using an ABAC study design showed that persuasive writing outcomes improved in quality or length for some students when they used an app that combined the two strategies.Implications for policy and practice SRSD combined with writing‐support software appeared to improve the writing outcomes of some students on the AS. It can, therefore, be used as a tool to support teachers in developing strategies for inclusive classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious games are designed to improve learning instead of providing only entertainment. Serious games analytics can be used for understanding and enhancing the quality of learning with serious games. One challenge in developing the computerized support for learning is that learning of skills varies between players. Appropriate algorithms are needed for analyzing the performance of individual players. This paper presents a novel clustering‐based profiling method for analyzing serious games learners. GraphoLearn, a game for training connections between the speech sounds and letters, serves as the game‐based learning environment. The proposed clustering method was designed to group the learners into profiles based on game log data. The obtained profiles were statistically analyzed. For instance, the results revealed one profile consisting of 136 players who had difficulties with connecting most of the target sounds and letters, whereas learners in the other profiles typically had difficulties with specific sound‐letter pairs. The results suggest that this profiling method can be useful for identifying children with a risk of reading disability and the proposed approach is a promising new method for analyzing serious game log data. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic Serious games are used to improve learning and to tailor learning environments for people with various difficulties in learning.Learning analytics and serious games analytics are growing research fields, applying and developing data analysis methods to analyze, profile and understand learning using serious games.GraphoLearn is a learning game for training reading skills. The game provides preventive support for learners with varying skill levels including individuals who are struggling with reading.What this paper adds The paper develops and presents a novel approach for serious games analytics to analyze GraphoLearn players.The proposed data analysis approach produces an interpretable set of error profiles, which characterize the learning difficulties in a unique way.The profiling method can be used for longitudinal studies and applied to analyzing logs of other serious games.Implications for practice and/or policy It is possible to reveal and understand profiles of serious game players.The proposed data analysis method can be used to identify players who have a potential risk for reading difficulties or disabilities.Even though the proposed method provides only limited information about players' future skills, it offers a good starting point for other studies in which players' development can be monitored more accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guiding hints and challenge can help scaffold learners to progress beyond what they would achieve independently. The interactive and adaptive capabilities of mobile devices allow educational applications (apps) to support learning through scaffolding designs. However, little research has tested the effects of scaffolding features in apps on young children's learning. Using a 3 × 2 between‐subjects design, this study experimentally tests how three types of app feedback (nonverbal sounds, verbal encouragement, or scaffolded verbal hints) and two types of leveling (gradual vs. random‐ordered challenge) influence 4–5‐year‐old children's learning of novel words (N = 240). Results showed that scaffolded feedback was especially useful when provided at the beginning of app play (p <.01), and scaffolded leveling through gradual increases in difficulty supported faster and more accurate responses than random order challenge (p <.001). Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic Researchers have worked to apply what we know about traditional in‐person teaching with young learners and how that might translate to digital platforms.Parent and teacher scaffolding has been shown to successfully help young children learn. Guidance through increased difficulty and explanatory feedback can help learners gradually build their skills and reflect more deeply on the content they are learning.What this paper adds This study adds to the newly growing collection of experiments testing the design features of educational pre‐school apps.Findings show that scaffolding through educational app feedback and leveling can support young children learning.Results also show that the impact of scaffolding can depend on when the guidance is presented during app play – at the very beginning of play versus later on.Implications for practice and/or policy Findings can help educators and other consumers identify which types of apps are better for scaffolding young children's learning.Suggestions are provided to support educational app developers in designing products that are truly effective.Findings suggest that combinations of app designs may differently impact young children's learning, providing next step testing conditions for educational app designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a case study of English as a second language (ESL) vocabulary learning that examined a group of Grade 4 students' mobile learning experiences of bridging in‐class and real‐life vocabulary learning mediated by a mobile learner‐generated content (m‐LGC) tool. This study was premised on the proposed framework of mobile vocabulary learning from an ecological perspective using the concept of affordances, taking the topic of "Food" as an example. Data collection included learning logs created by students and a questionnaire about students' perceptions of the m‐LGC tool for vocabulary learning. The results revealed four types of affordances of the m‐LGC tool that the learners perceived and acted on in real life outside the classroom, namely: vocabulary form‐meaning mapping, consolidating vocabulary by productive use, vocabulary revision and social affordance. The students' perceptions of the m‐LGC tool for vocabulary learning were positive. This study shows that the various affordances helped students in applying newly learned words to real‐life contexts. Social affordance provided the social contexts for communication via peer interaction, vocabulary expansion as well as the creation of a learning community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of research looking at young people's use of digital technology in informal contexts. However, there is a gap in the literature about how to describe and categorise young people's digital practices in such contexts. This gap is important because in order to be able to understand the differences between young people's digital practices in informal contexts and how these differences arise, you first need to be able to describe and categorise those differences in meaningful ways. You need to be able to answer the question "How do young people use digital technology in informal contexts?" in order to be able to answer questions such as "How do children's digital practices in informal contexts vary?" and "Why do children's digital practices vary?". This paper is significant because it introduces The Digital Practice Framework, an original, theoretically informed, tool to fill this critical gap in the literature. It goes on to indicate how this framework has been used to analyse the factors that facilitate or hinder the development of young people's digital practices in informal contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the instructional effects of narrative framing elements in child learning games. In this study, second and third graders (Mage = 8.24) played one of two versions of a successful, commercial mathematical learning game at home for 2 weeks (N = 95; between‐subject design). The versions differed in the presence/absence of a background story conveyed through comic cutscenes at the beginning and the end of the game. Results showed that children played the game intensively in both conditions: despite not being forced to do so. Plus, they also learned from the game. As expected, children assigned to the cutscenes condition interfaced with the cutscenes. However, no between‐group difference was detected in pre‐post learning gains, parent‐reported engagement, self‐reported enjoyment, time spent with the game and the number of solved in‐game tasks (all |ds| < 0.29). Altogether, no advantage or disadvantage from the narrative comic cutscenes was revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have been devoted to exploring the impacts of immersive virtual reality (IVR) on education in recent years. However, efforts to probe the role of students' learning traits such as motivated strategies for learning in their IVR learning have been limited. Most studies commonly analyzed learners' perceptions of immersion with a single construct rather than with multiple constructs. Therefore, this study implemented immersive virtual field trips for science learning in three elementary classes (a total of 76 students) for understanding how students' inherent self‐efficacy, intrinsic value and self‐regulation for science learning related to their perceived immersion (ie, basic attention, temporal dissociation, transportation, emotional involvement, enjoyment) and attitudes (ie, perceived usefulness and behaviors of IVR learning) when engaging in IVR learning environments. The reliability and validity of the constructs in the PLS‐SEM path modeling were first confirmed. This study further identified that motivation of intrinsic value and self‐regulation may play a dominant role in the students' learning attitudes in IVR environments for science education. It was also verified that the students' immersive experiences of attention and enjoyment significantly mediated their IVR learning. Notably, the students with lower levels of self‐efficacy may have been more immersed in IVR environments and further held positive learning attitudes. The findings of this study have implications for practicing IVR‐related learning activities in elementary classrooms with considerations of learners' psychological characteristics and perceived immersion when confronting IVR technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]