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This paper presents an implementation of Connected Spaces (CxS)—an ambient help seeking interface designed and developed for a project‐based computing classroom. We use actor network theory (ANT) to provide an underutilized posthumanist lens to understand the creation of collaborative connections in this Computational Action‐based implementation. Posthumanism offers an emerging and critical extension to sociocultural perspectives on understanding learning, by pushing us to decenter the human, and consider the active roles that human and non‐human entities play in learning environments by actively shaping each other. We analyse how students in this class adjusted their help‐seeking and collaborative habits following the introduction of CxS, a tool designed to foster (more inter‐group) collaboration. ANT proposes generalized symmetry—a principle of considering human, non‐human and more than human entities with equivalent and comparable agency, leading to describing phenomena as networks of actors in different evolving relationships with each other. Analysing collaborative interactions as fostered by CxS using an ANT approach supports design‐based research—an iterative design revision process highlighting understandings about design as well as learning—by providing a temporal and informative lens into the relationship between actors and tools within the environment. Our key findings include a framing of technologies in classrooms as bridging agentic gaps between students and becoming actors engaging in different behaviours; learners enacting new agencies through technologies (for instance a more comfortable non‐intrusive help seeker), and the need for voicing and teachers to connect help networks in CxS equipped classrooms. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Collaborative learning is a valuable skill and practice; opportunities to mentor others are critical in empowering minoritized learners, especially in STEM and computing disciplines.School norms solidify a power and expertise hierarchy between teachers and learners and fail to productively support learners in learning from each other.Additionally, lack of awareness about peers' knowledge is a common hindrance in students knowing who to ask for help and how.What this paper adds An example of a designed interface called Connected Spaces with potential to foster more inter‐student collaboration, especially outside of mandated within‐group collaboration—in the form of cross‐group help seeking and help giving.A design based research study using actor network theory highlighting the limitations of Connected Spaces in sparking notable behaviour change among students by itself but being retooled as a teacher support tool in enabling cross‐group collaborations.Presenting conceptions of collaboration through technologies as bridging agentic gaps and acting with new agencies in performing help‐seeking related actions.Provoking the idea of testing emerging technologies in classrooms along with sharing our analyses and reflections with the classroom as a key idea in computing education—surfacing the gap between designed intentions and the different kinds of extra social work needed in the on‐ground success of different technologies.Implications for practice and/or policy Designers and researchers should create and test more interfaces alongside teachers across different classrooms and contexts aimed at supporting different kinds of voluntary collaborative interactions.Curricula, standards and school practices should further center providing students with opportunities to engage as mentors and build communities of learning across disciplines to empower minoritized students.Researchers engaging in design based research should consider using more posthumanist lenses to examine educational technologies and how they affect change in learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the influence of the educational game design elements immersion, collaboration and debriefing, on fostering learning with educational escape rooms. We based the design of the escape room on an educational game design framework that aligns the learning goal and the game goal, that is, escaping from the room. One‐hundred‐and‐twenty‐six students, aged between 16 and 20 played the escape room. Measures for learning were pre‐and post‐tests. The game experience was measured through questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers. The results show a knowledge gain between pre‐and post‐test. Correlational analysis showed that all three design elements contributed to students' appreciation of the escape room, whereas only immersion had a direct contribution to knowledge gain. Based on the qualitative data it appeared that the used escape boxes contributed most to perceived immersion. Immersion helps students focus on each other and the tasks. Also, a narrative with distinct roles for each student helped to evoke immersion. Unexpectedly, these roles also scaffolded collaboration except for students in the school that engaged in a collaborative learning pedagogy. The study confirms the usability of the framework for game designs, based on theories for the design of physical and hybrid educational games. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic The escape room as a learning environment appeals to teachers of different disciplines, ages, gender and teaching experiences.Teachers implement escape rooms to create active (hybrid) learning spaces, where learners need a combination of knowledge and skills to solve the subject‐based activities.Students and teachers perceive that while participating in escape rooms, students are more engaged, active and learn more compared to regular classes. The assumption is that escape rooms support collaboration and automatically collaborative learning.Review studies on educational escape rooms show that a systematic evaluation is usually absent, disputable or indicates no knowledge gain.Teachers design their educational escape rooms based on digital escape games and/or their experience as players of escape rooms.For digital educational games, important game design aspects are researched.Three main challenges in designing educational games are (1) the participants' transition from the real world to the game world, (2) the alignment of game design aspects and educational aspects and (3) the transfer from attained experiences and knowledge back into the real world.What this paper adds This paper evaluates an educational game design framework for escape rooms, focussing on the above‐mentioned main challenges in designing educational games.It investigates the influence of the educational game design elements immersion, collaboration and debriefing, on fostering learning with a hybrid educational escape room.It informs that all three design elements contributed to students' appreciation of the escape room, whereas only immersion had a direct contribution to knowledge gain.The used hybrid escape boxes contributed most to the immersion; scaffolding students to focus on each other and the tasks.Students' collaboration was successfully fostered. However, it scarcely led to collaborative learning during gameplay, due to lack of discussion and reflection needed for deeper understanding.Implications for practice and/or policy The educational escape game framework would help educators creating immersive games, which not only confront learners with meaningful contexts but also give learning gains.The educational escape game framework would help researchers focussing on important and difficult aspects of designing and implementing educational escape rooms to develop and research more effective escape rooms.In guidelines on creating immersion in educational escape games, the notion of physical objects is lacking. In this hybrid escape room, the physical objects such as escape boxes were the most powerful in creating immersion. In addition, the use of sound design in escape games in classrooms seems overrated.Debriefing after the gameplay is perceived necessary to discuss common misunderstandings, to make connections between the topics in various puzzles and to add more content to interest high‐achieving students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socially shared regulation contributes to the success of collaborative learning. However, the assessment of socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) faces several challenges in the effort to increase the understanding of collaborative learning and support outcomes due to the unobservability of the related cognitive and emotional processes. The recent development of trace‐based assessment has enabled innovative opportunities to overcome the problem. Despite the potential of a trace‐based approach to study SSRL, there remains a paucity of evidence on how trace‐based evidence could be captured and utilised to assess and promote SSRL. This study aims to investigate the assessment of electrodermal activities (EDA) data to understand and support SSRL in collaborative learning, hence enhancing learning outcomes. The data collection involves secondary school students (N = 94) working collaboratively in groups through five science lessons. A multimodal data set of EDA and video data were examined to assess the relationship among shared arousals and interactions for SSRL. The results of this study inform the patterns among students' physiological activities and their SSRL interactions to provide trace‐based evidence for an adaptive and maladaptive pattern of collaborative learning. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence about how trace‐based data could be utilised to predict learning outcomes in collaborative learning. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Socially shared regulation has been recognised as an essential aspect of collaborative learning success.It is challenging to make the processes of learning regulation 'visible' to better understand and support student learning, especially in dynamic collaborative settings.Multimodal learning analytics are showing promise for being a powerful tool to reveal new insights into the temporal and sequential aspects of regulation in collaborative learning.What this paper adds Utilising multimodal big data analytics to reveal the regulatory patterns of shared physiological arousal events (SPAEs) and regulatory activities in collaborative learning.Providing evidence of using multimodal data including physiological signals to indicate trigger events in socially shared regulation.Examining the differences of regulatory patterns between successful and less successful collaborative learning sessions.Demonstrating the potential use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to predict collaborative learning success by examining regulatory patterns.Implications for practice and/or policy Our findings offer insights into how students regulate their learning during collaborative learning, which can be used to design adaptive supports that can foster students' learning regulation.This study could encourage researchers and practitioners to consider the methodological development incorporating advanced techniques such as AI machine learning for capturing, processing and analysing multimodal data to examine and support learning regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational agents can deepen reasoning and encourage students to build on others' knowledge in collaborative learning. Embedding agents in group work, however, presents challenges where groups may ignore the agents, and this calls for designs where students perceive agents as learning partners. This study examines group interactions with two text‐based agents (ie, chatbots) that posed as an expert and a less knowledgeable peer in a high school marine biology lesson. Student messages (N = 1764) from 18 groups (52 students ages 14–15) received codes for reasoning, building on prior ideas, and responsiveness to the agents. Results indicate no differences between agents in how often each discussion move occurred. Interestingly, sequential pattern mining suggests that the less‐knowledgeable‐peer agent prompted groups to show questioning and building on others' ideas, similar to how students may act as peer tutors to the agent. Meanwhile, sequences with the expert agent resembled student‐teacher exchange, where groups responded to the agent's nudges and then provided reasoning. Findings illustrate the affordances of embedding humanized features in technology designs to promote discussion. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Conversational agents can facilitate group discussions, but can get abused or ignored by student groups.To engage students, agent designs can simulate the characteristics of familiar classroom figures, such as peers or teachers.There are limited explorations of how student groups adapt their interactions to different agent designs in collaborative settings.What the paper adds Illustrations of the utilities of diversifying agent designs in collaborative learning.Insights into the unique interaction patterns that student groups displayed to different designs, such as questioning and building on others' ideas with a less‐knowledgeable‐peer agent.Implications for practice and/or policy Embedding signs of humanness in classroom facilitation and technology design can foster responsiveness among users.Pedagogy can consider adaptive designs to promote interaction sequences that contribute to learning (eg, questioning, expanding on prior ideas) at opportune moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media have unique potential to amplify student voice in both high school teacher preparation and academic development for college faculty. This paper applies narrative analysis to participant descriptions of how three uses of digital media amplify student voice in the context of a single higher education consortium: (1) high school students and prospective high school teachers use email to engage in dialogue as part of a larger project within the consortium's secondary teacher preparation program, (2) undergraduate student consultants use visual mapping technology as a classroom observation tool through one of the consortium's academic development programs for college faculty and (3) graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and staff engaged in pedagogical partnerships within and beyond this consortium use on an online platform to publish reflective essays on their collaborative work. Amplifying student voice through these uses of digital media has the following actual effects: it creates the possibility for exchanges between students and teachers across space and time; it supports the development of reflective practice; and it encourages the embrace of a partnership approach to teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]