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Given the importance of digital technology in daily life, computational thinking (CT) has become a necessary skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists. For CT development, students need to receive appropriate social learning support. However, instructors find it difficult to provide such support to many students in online courses. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of e-mentoring via social network services (SNS) in developing students' CT during large-scale online courses. A total of 327 undergraduate students volunteered to participate in this study, which included 16 weeks of lectures aimed at developing CT. The effects of SNS-based e-mentoring on CT development, the influences of each e-mentoring activity on CT development, and gender differences were analyzed using data on participants' CT assistance scores and their utilization of e-mentoring activities. The findings indicated that SNS-based e-mentoring was effective in developing the CT of undergraduate students' engagement in a large-scale online course. The most influential ementoring activities for students' CT development were informational and technical support in a group and informational support in a private environment. Female students benefited more from SNS-based e-mentoring than male students, and they also engaged in more types of e-mentoring activities than male students. Participation in SNS-based e-mentoring was found to lower the gap in CT between students with and without prior learning experience. Our study findings can be used by educational institutions and instructors when designing courses for students' CT development in large-scale online courses or when developing strategies to close the gender gap in CT ability.

The goal of this study is to explore the perceptions of teachers in Korean rural schools regarding teaching and learning, including technology preparedness, performance, demanding activities, difficulties, and continuing integration in tablet-based interactive classrooms. A survey instrument was designed, and responses were analyzed from 54 teachers who participated in a social contribution project for rural schools. The results indicate that student preparedness is significantly correlated with the frequent integration of tablets in classroom lessons. Furthermore, the most frequent types of pedagogical activities performed using tablets in the classroom are activities intended to motivate students. Teachers noted that their continuing integration of lessons with tablets was correlated with their beliefs about the applicability of tablets for lessons, students' satisfaction with previous lessons, students' expectations and requests, and the teacher's personal interests. This research contributes to the literature on tablet integration by extending existing findings to the study of rural schools with limited educational resources. Moreover, this study provides implications for educators and school administrators who are interested in supporting teachers and their instruction using tablets and relevant technologies.

This article aims to examine the effects of an instructional model that leverages innovative technologies in the classroom to cultivate collaboration that improves students' comprehension, fosters their creativity, and enables them to better express and communicate their ideas through drawing. This discussion focuses on classroom interaction systems and technologies that can foster creativity, including tablets, electronic blackboards, interaction management solutions, and high-speed wireless internet. To address the study aims, we conceptualized an instructional model entitled "Visual Thinking through Tablet-based Classroom Interaction" (VTTCI) and applied it for one semester in English classes in a high-tech middle school in Korea. This model aimed to enable students to better express and communicate their ideas through drawing; to understand the lesson material's text and topic; to conceive of core ideas related to the topic; to visually express concepts through drawings, presentations, and discussions; and to ultimately gain a better understanding of the material based on the drawings. After applying the instructional model for one semester, we assessed the creativity of the students in the six treatment classes using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural form, (TTCT), and we compared their scores with those of the students in the six control group classes, who did not receive the treatment. The results revealed that the students in the treatment group scored significantly higher on the Originality, Abstractness of Titles, and Elaboration subscales and on overall creativity. Thus, the VTTCI model can be seen to affect creativity. The results show that the students' creative proficiency improved with the adoption of the instructional model for tablet-based interactive classrooms.

Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy education has become an important issue, and the necessity of computational literacy (CL) has been increasing in our growing information society. CL is becoming an important element for future talents, and many countries, including the USA, are developing programs for CL education. Accordingly, Korea's Ministry of Education has modified the ICT education program created in 2000. The revised curriculum has emphasized computational thinking and informational ethics since 2007. However, in revising the ICT curriculum, we need to develop a new ICT test tool because the previous tool did not include CL. Thus, we developed a new ICT literacy test tool consisting of fundamental concepts, contemporary skills, and CL. We then carried out a test on 40,072 elementary students nationally. To determine the CL level of students, we used the standard level obtained from ten experts using the Angoff method (1971) and analyzed the difference between the standard level and students' level in the test. The results showed that students' CL scores were remarkably lower than their scores on fundamental concepts and contemporary skills. We consequently found that the revised ICT curriculum did not apply to the current ICT education domain, implying that we need to develop a strategy to expand CL to different educational fields, which would help researchers and administrators to measure CL in ICT education.

This article describes the development of learning widget on m-learning and e-learning environments. A widget is a small, simple and useful application supporting user-oriented contents. The user may select and install widgets that are convenient as well as an auto-updating application including weather or calendar. These widgets are especially more useful, because they are able to be installed on a mobile device, a website or a desktop computer. If we take advantage of widgets for education, we may use this learning tool for delivering and pulling learning contents, essences of lessons or word learning. To that end, we developed an effective learning widget and then verified its usability, usefulness and effectiveness for m-learning and e-learning. That is, we evaluated the learning widget with a heuristic evaluation method. We identified 72 interface problems by using a set of 10 usability criteria or heuristics. In addition, we considered how to design the learning widget with consideration given to devices on m-learning and e-learning. Moreover, we experimented by conducting a pilot test with 34 students, a field test with 60 teachers and technology acceptance model (TAM) analysis with 15 teachers. We verified the effectiveness and usefulness of learning with a questionnaire, a quiz and TAM, where the subjects, after using the learning widget in real learning activities, rated the widget's efficacy. The result shows that the learning widget is useful for m-learning and e-learning environments. (Contains 3 tables and 10 figures.)