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Pedagogical agents (PAs) are lifelike characters in virtual environments that help facilitate learning through social interactions and the virtual real relationships with the learners. This study explored whether and how PA gesture design impacts learning and agent social acceptance when used with elementary students learning foreign language grammar. Unlike prior research, this study examined the effects of PA gestures in three conditions: full gesture condition (deictic, iconic, metaphoric, and beat gestures), deictic gesture condition, and no gesture condition. Transfer of knowledge, retention, and agent social acceptance data were collected from 160 South Korean 5th and 6th graders learning about using "-er/more" for comparatives in English. Retention and transfer test data revealed no significant differences in learning outcomes across conditions. Regarding social acceptance, PA in the full gesture condition was perceived as significantly more human-like and engaging than PA in the no gesture condition. However, multiple regression revealed that social acceptance factors "human-like" and "engaging" were also negative predictors of learning outcome scores. This finding suggests full gesture PAs may have the ability to increase social perception by learners, but the novelty of PAs with full gestures may also have an initial negative effect on learning outcomes.

This paper addresses the need for enhancing our awareness of user-centered design in educational technology through a more explicit and systematic alignment between the needs of educational technology users (learners and educators) and the affordances provided by the technology. First, we define the term "affordance" and discuss it from the perspectives of cognitive psychology and user interaction design. Next, we propose a taxonomy of functional affordances that builds on prior research and reflects the current trends in the design of educational technologies. The paper is concluded with an illustration of how explicit alignment of needs, abilities, and affordances can inform the evaluation of an educational technology designed to support dyslexic readers. The four-step framework applied in this analysis helps (a) define user needs, (b) identify a potentially appropriate technology, (c) understand the abilities the technology affords and (d) align technological affordances with the specific needs of the target users. This framework is a step toward increased recognition of the importance of user-centered design of educational technologies; it provides the needed guidance and structure for aligning needs, abilities, and affordances during the design, implementation, and evaluation of technologies for learning and teaching.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the Teacher Intentions to Integrate Technology in Education Scale using pre-service teacher samples from three countries on three continents--Turkey, Spain and the United States. Study participants were 550 pre-service teachers from three universities in Turkey, Spain and the USA (219, 209, and 122 respectively). The majority of the participants were female. All of the participants were junior and senior students enrolled in elementary teacher education programs. Specifically, this study compared pre-service teachers' self-efficacy, outcome expectations, intentions (internal factors) and perceived school climate (external factor) for technology integration in education in these countries. The results of confirmatory factor analysis in this study supported the construct validity of the scale in all three samples. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to examine the relative contribution of self-efficacy, outcome expectations and perceived school climate on pre-service teachers' intentions to integrate technology into their future classroom activities. The external factor of school climate predicted pre-service teachers' intention to integrate technology in education in all three samples. However, there were certain differences among the teachers from different countries in our sample in terms of technology integration. Unlike Turkey and the US, self-efficacy predicted technology integration intention to a smaller degree than school climate in the Spanish sample. Interestingly, outcome expectations scores did not make a statistically significant contribution to predicting pre-service teachers' intention to use technology in the US sample. Given this study's findings, it is important to consider differences in technology integration intentions that exist in different countries, when conducting empirical research on teacher perceptions of using technology for teaching and learning.

Scholars from diverse fields and research traditions agree that the conceptual framework is a critically important component of disciplined inquiry. Yet, there is a pronounced lack of shared understanding regarding the definition and functions of conceptual frameworks, which impedes our ability to design effective research and mentor novice researchers. This paper adopts John Dewey's instrumental view of theory to discuss the prevalent definitions of a conceptual framework, outline its key functions, dispel the popular misconceptions regarding conceptual frameworks, and suggest strategies for developing effective conceptual frameworks and communicating them to the consumers of research. Examples of hypothetical and existing empirical studies in the field of educational technology are used to illustrate the analysis. It is argued in this article that conceptual frameworks should be viewed as an instrument for organizing inquiry and creating a compelling theory-based and data-driven argument for the importance of the problem, rigor of the method, and implications for further development of theory and enhancement of practice.

This article presents an analysis of active crowdfunding campaigns posted on ten crowdfunding platforms in May 2013 to provide a glimpse of the recent trends in the crowdfunding of educational technology startups. We describe the characteristics of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in educational technology and identify the most popular crowdfunding platforms. This research provides important implications for educational technology entrepreneurs. Top performing educational technology fund raisers tend to a) request a modest but reasonable amount for each phase of the project, b) focus on the informal, out-of-school, rather than formal contexts of learning, c) attract supporters with a tiered system of rewards, and d) communicate with supporters and inform the public of the status of the project through periodic updates and progress reports. Directions for future research include conducting an in-depth content analysis of archived data and exploring the perspectives of successful educational technology entrepreneurs using qualitative interviews.

From an instrumental view, conceptual frameworks that are carefully assembled from existing literature in Educational Technology and related disciplines can help students structure all aspects of inquiry. In this article we detail how the development of a conceptual framework that connects theory, practice and method is scaffolded and facilitated in an online doctoral program in Educational Technology. For online professional practice students, conceptual frameworks provide a lens to critically examine experiential knowledge and a solid foundation for the implementation of interdisciplinary research at a distance from their university campus and faculty mentors.

Collaborative problem solving is an essential component of any 21st century science career. Scientists are hired, retained, and promoted for solving problems in dynamic and interdisciplinary teams. They discuss issues, explain and justify their opinions, debate, elaborate, and reflect on their collective knowledge. At the same time, both educational researchers and practitioners note a dissonance between the demands of real-world scientific problem solving and the current educational capacity to prepare effective problem solvers. This article addresses this issue by describing the DEEPER framework for scaffolding collaborative problem solving that was designed to address the student outcomes outlined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011). The DEEPER scaffolding framework was empirically tested in a large-enrollment undergraduate Entomology course, and although no effects were observed on domain knowledge acquisition or transfer of problem solving, DEEPER served as a useful model for developing the process skills required for 21st century collaborative problem solving.

This study investigated changes in inservice teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge and technology integration self-efficacy as a result of engaging in collaborative instructional design with Web 2.0 tools. We collected survey and interview data in the pre/post format, and teaching portfolios served to triangulate survey and interview results. We observed improvements in both perceived technological pedagogical content knowledge and technology integration self-efficacy. Interestingly, the successes in implementing learning activities recorded in the teaching portfolios were attributed to the collaborative nature of instructional design, whereas the perceived weaknesses were attributed to personal planning skills. Although these findings cannot be generalized to the larger population, our results suggest that instructional design 2.0 can be a useful professional development activity for inservice teachers.

Cluster analysis is a group of statistical methods that has great potential for analyzing the vast amounts of web server-log data to understand student learning from hyperlinked information resources. In this methodological paper we provide an introduction to cluster analysis for educational technology researchers and illustrate its use through two examples of mining click-stream server-log data that reflects student use of online learning environments. Cluster analysis can be used to help researchers develop profiles that are grounded in learner activity--like sequence for accessing tasks and information, or time spent engaged in a given activity or examining resources--during a learning session. The examples in this paper illustrate the use of a hierarchical clustering method (Ward's clustering) and a non-hierarchical clustering method ("k"-Means clustering) to analyze characteristics of learning behavior while learners engage in a problem-solving activity in an online learning environment. A discussion of advantages and limitations of using cluster analysis as a data mining technique in educational technology research concludes the article.

Informed by the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, this study examined the effects of three multimedia design principles on undergraduate students' learning outcomes and perceived learning difficulty in the context of learning entomology from an educational video. These principles included segmenting the video into smaller units, signalling to direct students' attention to relevant information, and weeding to remove any non-essential content (SSW). It was hypothesized that the SSW treatment would decrease perceived learning difficulty and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the structural knowledge acquisition. Results of the study demonstrate that participants in the SSW group outperformed the non-SSW group on the tests of knowledge transfer and structural knowledge acquisition and reported lower levels of learning difficulty. These findings support the use of SSW to help novice learners organize and integrate knowledge from complex, dynamic audio-visual media like video. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)