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Contribution: This article presents a comprehensive overview of characteristics of educational designs of collaborative engineering design activities found in literature and how these characteristics mediate students’ collaboration. Background: Engineers have to solve complex problems that require collaboration. In education, various collaborative engineering design activities have been implemented to prepare students for these professional practices. According to cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), educational activities can be described in terms of interrelated elements, i.e., subject, object, tools, rules, division of labor, and community, that influence learning outcomes. A key issue is how these elements mediate students’ collaborative efforts and how they contribute to learning. Research Questions: 1) How is collaborative learning implemented in engineering design education? 2) How do the elements of CHAT and their interrelations mediate collaborative learning? and 3) What is the evidence that the implementation of collaborative learning contributed to the achievement of desired learning outcomes? Methodology: A systematic literature review following preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analyses protocols guidelines was conducted, including 111 articles published between 2011 and 2021. CHAT was used as analytical framework. Findings: Collaborative learning was implemented in engineering design activities to develop technical as well as nontechnical skills. For the CHAT elements, it was found that establishing a common object, rules for collaboration, and division of labor are essential for effective collaboration and can be enhanced through digital technologies (tools) and support from a community, for example, educators. Finally, results showed that there is evidence that described implementations contribute to learning. However, this evidence needs to be interpreted with care, due to methodological issues in some included articles.

The application of sense-reason-act (SRA) programming in contemporary education can ensure the development of computational thinking (CT) at a more advanced level. SRA-programming has been identified as an instrumental way of thinking for learning to program robots and encourages the development of the more complex concepts of programming. Visual programming environments are diverse in appearance and prove to be an excellent way to teach pupils the basic ideas of programming. It is important to investigate whether the type of output has a characteristic influence on the level of development of CT in visual programming environments. In this research, we therefore explore whether characteristic differences in the development of CT can be measured when SRA-programming is applied in a visual programming environment with an on-screen output or a tangible output. It was expected that the observed effect of pupils' programming actions through the application of SRA would show that the type of output influences the understanding of complex programming concepts at a higher level. Our results indicate that SRA-programming with visual, on-screen output yields a significant increase in the development of CT, as opposed to SRA-programming with a tangible output. The development of complex programming concepts can also be demonstrated.

This paper presents a ubiquitous and mobile MOOC platform to foster lifelong learning. Harnessing the technological affordances of WeChat (a mobile social media app), learners accessed micro-learning activities and received personal learning analysis report on their mobile phones. Premised on activity theory, the mobile MOOC design model spans across five dimensions of intelligent distribution: learning objective analysis, learner persona analysis, platform improvement based on learning analytics, m-learn tool selection and m-learn interactive environment where the latter forms the core of individual and collaborative learning. To investigate learning effectiveness, we analysed the survey data of 117 Shanghai kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers in one mini-lecture. Findings showed that learning satisfaction and learning achievement are highly correlated with the learnability of the learning environment. The integration of a multidimensional activity and multi-scenario model showed great potential to successfully accommodate the complexity and diversity of mobile MOOC learning activities in a ubiquitous-learning environment.

In a controlled experiment on the effects of frequent and local digital annotations, 137 volunteers covered an online course under three possible conditions: no/free/question-based digital annotations. Results show no difference in performance between groups when annotation behaviour is considered in isolation. However, analyses conducted within treatments provide indications of a positive impact on performance when annotation rates are taken into consideration, and coupled with other enactments tracked in the course. Combined in engagement profiles ('Learning DNAs'), these enactments suggest that what makes active learning efficient might be an on-going crisscrossing between a first-order learning activity (the study of the course) and a series of second-order activities, such as making notes. Students who manage to coordinate these activities at a higher rate perform better. This observation opens a line of reasoning about what determines the quality of a mental engagement in a learning task, in terms of balance and rotation of cognitive and meta-cognitive operations.

Mobile and in particular pervasive games are a strong component of future scenarios for teaching and learning. Based on results from a previous review of practical papers, this work explores the educational potential of pervasive games for learning by analysing underlying game mechanisms. In order to determine and classify cognitive and affective learning outcomes, the authors propose employing game design patterns for mobile games and context information. Context information, in the course of this article, is introduced as an additional characteristic feature of mobile game design patterns. With the proposed framework the authors aim to understand how pervasive game content may support learning. Findings from their research indicate that context information directs the use and presentation of content within a game and thus influences learning effects of individual patterns. This work concludes with a discussion on the shortfalls and potentials, which the authors’ framework for analysis provides.

Handover of patient care is a time of particular risk and it is important that accurate and relevant information is clearly communicated. The hospital discharge letter is an important part of handover. However, the quality of hospital discharge letters is variable and letters frequently omit important information. The Cork Letter-Writing Assessment Scale (CLAS) checklist is an itemized checklist developed to improve the quality of discharge letters. The CLAS checklist, with an inbuilt scoring system, is available as the CLAS mobile application. Mobile applications offer an exciting opportunity for ‘point of practice’ knowledge acquisition and are widely used by medical students. Content quality is integral to the success of educational mobile applications. In a recent study, the CLAS checklist improved the quality (content, structure and clarity) of discharge letters written by medical students. Though retention of these skills into the work-place and effects on patient safety have yet to be demonstrated, the development of standardized electronic discharge letters allows faster and safer transfer of information between healthcare providers and is a welcome advance. Using Near Field Communication for mobile applications to seamlessly transfer discharge letters between devices is another important feature.

This paper presents results from a recent literature review on ambient displays. While the main background of the authors is education and technology-enhanced learning, the review starts more generic with a broader view on ambient displays and their interactional, instructional, and informational characteristics. Beside depicting characteristics and classifying prototypical designs, the review also sheds light on the actual use of the covered ambient displays, their application context and addressed domains as well as the type of studies conducted, including the used methodologies and evaluation approaches to measure their effectiveness and impact. The review concludes with a discussion of the presented results emphasising the derived implications for the user when interacting with ambient displays.

Wireless networks and mobile devices are widely available. This allows not only for education independent from time and place. Also, adaption to individuals, places, and situations may be realized, and different scenarios are seamlessly converging.

Within the past decade, a growing number of educational scientists have started to recognise the multifaceted potential that mobile learning games have as a tool for learning and teaching. This paper presents a review of current research on the topic to better understand game mechanisms with regard to learning outcomes. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we introduce a framework of analysis which is based on previous work on game design patterns for mobile games and on learning outcomes. The framework focuses on two aspects, motivation and knowledge gain. Second, we present a set of patterns which we identified in the literature and that positively influence these two aspects. Our results support the general assumption that mobile learning games have potential to enhance motivation. It reveals that game mechnisms such as Collaborative Actions or Augmented Reality provide incentive to get engaged with learning and/or a certain topic. With regard to knowledge gain, results are less comprehensive.

The paper investigates the potential of using widgets-based reflection amplifiers in e-learning courses. Reflection amplifiers are structured opportunities for students to examine and evaluate aspects of their learning experience. The paper deliberately chooses a non-technical viewpoint. It takes the teachers’ voices as a starting point. The study reports the results of a survey that asked open educational resources (OERs) course creators about their opinions on different types of reflection amplifiers. The outcomes demonstrate that several reflection techniques are recognised and acknowledged by these practitioners as being of relevance for their courses. Yet, practical application in their courses is quite rare. Results of the survey are subsequently used to inspect possible contributions of widgets technology to the implementation and dissemination of a selection of reflection techniques. The set-up of an experiment intended to test feasibility and relevance of widgets-based reflection amplifiers is eventually outlined.

This article reports on a qualitative study about the application of tag clouds for supporting meta-cognition in self-directed and incidental learning. Tag clouds are a popular and simple visualisation of the usage of free form keywords on the internet. The present study analyses the use of the ReScope system that provides a personal tag cloud visualisation of the tags that are used at a public social bookmarking service. ReScope is based on a reflection support use case developed by the TENCompetence project. The study focuses at the types of meta-cognitive control based on reflection notes of the learners. These notes were analysed regarding the contents of the reflections as well as regarding their meta-cognitive type. The study has two important outcomes. Firstly, a personal tag cloud can stimulate reflection on the tagging activity of a learner. Secondly, reflecting on the tagging activity is not built into the design of a tag cloud.

Mashups have become the driving force behind the development of personal learning environments (PLEs). Creating mashups in an ad hoc manner is, however, for end users with little or no programming background not an easy task. Various tools and platforms have been built in an attempt to support mashup creation. These platforms, however, are still considered complex and do not address crucial challenges in mashup development today, such as scalability, interoperability, reuse, and automatic service invocation and mediation. In this paper, we leverage the possibility to use the concept of model-driven mashup development (MDMD) as an approach that can drastically tackle the aforementioned issues and drive the rapid and user-friendly creation of mashups. We then present the conceptual and technical details of PLEF-Ext as a flexible framework for end-user, model-driven development (MDD) of mashup PLEs.

With a focus on the situated support of informal and non-formal learning scenarios in ubiquitous learning environments, the presented paper outlines the authors’ vision of ambient learning displays – enabling learners to view, access, and interact with contextualised digital content presented in an ambient way. The vision is based on a detailed exploration of the characteristics of ubiquitous learning and a deduction of informational, interactional, and instructional aspects to focus on. Towards the vision essential research questions and objectives as well as a conceptual framework that acquires, channels, and delivers the information framed in the learning process are presented. To deliver scientific insights into the authentic learning support in informal and non-formal learning situations and to provide suggestions for the future design of ambient systems for learning the paper concludes with a research agenda proposing a research project including a discussion of related issues and challenges.

This article concerns the design of self-contained digital games for the life-long learning context. Although the potential of games for teaching and learning is undisputed, two main barriers hamper its wide introduction. First, the design of such games tends to be complex, laborious and costly. Second, the requirements for a sensible game do not necessarily coincide with the requirements for effective learning. To solve this problem, we propose a methodology to the design of learning games by using game design patterns and matching these with corresponding learning functions, which is expected to reduce design effort and help determining the right balance between game elements and learning. First empirical results indicate that such a methodology actually can work.

Over the past decade, it has been argued that technology-enhanced learning (TEL) could respond to the needs of the new knowledge society and transform learning. However, despite isolated achievements, TEL has not succeeded in revolutionizing education and learning processes. Most current TEL initiatives still take a centralized technology-push approach in which learning content is pushed to a predefined group of learners in closed environments. A fundamental shift toward a more open and learner-pull model for learning is needed. Recently, the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) concept has emerged to open new doors for more effective learning and overcome many of the limitations of traditional TEL models. In this paper, the authors present theoretical, design, implementation, and evaluation details of PLEF, a framework for mashup personal learning environments. The primary aim of PLEF is to help learners create custom learning mashups using a wide variety of digital media and data.

Supporting the individual user in his working, learning, or information access is one of the main goals of user modeling. Personal or group user models make it possible to represent and use information about preferences, knowledge, abilities, emotional states, and many other characteristics of a user to adapt the user experience and support. Nowadays, the disappearing computer enables the user to access her information from a variety of personal and public displays and devices. To support a new generation of contextualized and personalized information and services, this paper addresses the problem of context management. Context management is a new approach to the design of context-aware systems in ubiquitous computing that combines personalization and contextualization. The presented framework for context management integrates user modeling and context modeling, which can benefit from each other and give rise to more valid models for personalized and contextualized information delivery. The paper will introduce a base framework and tools for designing context-aware applications and decompose the underlying framework into its foundational components. As two illustrative application cases, the paper discusses implementations of an intelligent advertisement board and an audio-augmented museum environment.

The Adaptive Courseware Environment (ACE) is a WWW-based tutoring framework which combines methods of knowledge representation, instructional planning, and adaptive media generation to deliver individualized courseware via the WWW. ACE is based on a domain model of the subject matter, a pedagogical model on how to teach a curriculum, and learner modeling on different levels, e.g., preferences, interests, and knowledge. Based on these three components individualized web-content (HTML, Java, pictures) is generated and presented to the learners. Taking into account the interests and the knowledge of a learner ACE can adapt different aspects of the instructional process, e.g., adapting the curriculum by selection of content, adapting the presentation of contents by choosing appropriate media and combining them, adapting the teaching strategies for specific contents, annotating hyperlinks, and by recommending appropriate hyperlinks and contents. Currently three systems have been realized on the basis of ACE and adaptive components of each system have been evaluated in empirical studies. Additionally experimental studies of the applied adaptive methods have shown improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of learning compared to classical static hypermedia.

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