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The combination of education and robots is becoming an increasingly important issue. Although researchers have conducted some studies on educational robotics in STEM education at the undergraduate level, no research examined the effects of gamified educational robotics on participants' motivation and creativity. Therefore, this study examines the effects of gamified educational robots on participants' learning motivation and creativity in STEM. A quasi-experimental research design was used in this study. A total of 108 students from two classes enrolled in the information technology course were involved as participants. Learning motivation and creativity scales were used to collect data. The participants were introduced to a gamified educational robot as the course objective, learning content, and game mechanism to increase motivation and help students solve problems. In contrast, students in the control group received conventional instruction consisting of group discussions and lectures. Activities in both groups were held for eighteen weeks in three phases. The results showed that gamified educational robots could enhance learning motivation and positively influence learners' creativity. The results also indicate that learning motivation has significant effects on creativity, and students with high motivation perform better in terms of creativity. The results strengthen interdisciplinary STEM teaching and promote students' learning outcomes.

The role of communication variables such as communication apprehension (CA), self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), and intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC) in improving L2 WTC has rarely been compared or even considered in detail in project-based learning (PBL) classroom contexts. Given this research gap, a mixed-methods study was designed to examine the interconnection of the above-mentioned communication variables in PBL contexts. A questionnaire was administered to a total of 82 senior-year students from four sections of a PBL course at a university in northern Taiwan at the beginning and the end of the 18-week semester. The findings showed that SPCC and IWTC had significant explanatory power for L2 WTC, with the former exerting a greater impact on L2 WTC. Furthermore, with the exception of CA, the results for all the communication variables indicated significant positive change towards the end of the course. To gain more insight into the cognitive, affective, and contextual factors that may influence L2 WTC in PBL contexts, qualitative data derived from reflection reports revealed that situational WTC in PBL L2 classrooms was regulated and mediated by the interplay of multiple factors: group member support, learner engagement, mastery experience and practice, intrinsic motivation, and positive feedback and interaction.

BackgroundThe quality of care of the 6.5 million Americans living with dementia has been suboptimal, leading to worse outcomes and higher costs. Few health systems have formal systems in place to guide the care of these patients. To help improve the care of persons living with dementia, we developed and preliminarily evaluated the effectiveness of electronic health record (EHR)-generated recommendations for patients with dementia.MethodsThis quality improvement study was conducted from October 2020 through June 2022 at a single academic healthcare system and included patients identified as having dementia on their problem list and their physicians. Ten (seven outpatient and three inpatient) algorithms based on clinical logic and evidence were embedded in an EHR system to generate specific recommendations based on combinations of utilization, diagnosis, and medications. The number of each type of recommendation generated, and orders for each type of recommendation were recorded, as well as physician's perceptions of this approach.ResultsThree thousand six hundred and nine recommendations on 763 patients were triggered by the algorithms in the outpatient setting, and 185 referrals were placed. The most common recommendations were for ongoing care through the UCLA Alzheimer's and Dementia Care program, Palliative Care, the Extensivist Clinic, Urogynecology, and Clinical Pharmacy. The most commonly acted upon by providers were recommendations for referral to Pharmacists and the UCLA Alzheimer's and Dementia Care program. The most common reason for not responding to specific recommendations was that these were not perceived as relevant to the patient. Compared to general medicine physicians, geriatricians felt more comfortable managing dementia care without a referral to a service (23% (95% CI 15%-34%) versus 3% (95% CI 0%-17%), p = 0.012) and less commonly felt the recommendation was appropriate (1% (95% CI 0%-7%) versus 13% (95% CI 4%-30%), p = 0.02).ConclusionsEHR-generated algorithms can help guide patients with dementia to appropriate clinical services.

This study examines how English-as-lingua-franca (ELF) learners employ semiotic resources, including head movements, gestures, facial expression, body posture, and spatial juxtaposition, to negotiate for meaning in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. Ten ELF learners participated in a TaiwanSpain VR virtual exchange project and completed two VR tasks on an immersive VR platform. Multiple datasets, including the recordings of VR sessions, pre- and post-task questionnaires, observation notes, and stimulated recall interviews, were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively with triangulation. Built upon multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2004) and Varonis and Gass' (1985a) negotiation of meaning model, the findings indicate that ELF learners utilized different embodied semiotic resources in constructing and negotiating meaning at all primes to achieve effective communication in an immersive VR space. The avatar-mediated representations and semiotic modalities were shown to facilitate indication, comprehension, and explanation to signal and resolve non-understanding instances. The findings show that with space proxemics and object handling as the two distinct features of VR-supported environments, VR platforms transform learners' social interaction from plane to three-dimensional communication, and from verbal to embodied, which promotes embodied learning. VR thus serves as a powerful immersive interactive environment for ELF learners from distant locations to be engaged in situated languacultural practices that goes beyond physical space. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Flipped classroom is one of the important teaching modes among many novel teaching methods in recent years, students watch the video in the pre-class. However, if students cannot focus on the pre-class video learning or have problems with the learning content, the learning effect will be less than expected. Therefore, this research proposes a flipped classroom combined with the WPAQ learning model extended by the WSQ learning model to carry out programming courses, allowing students to perform flipped classroom learning with peers online before class and jointly complete the tasks of flipped classroom learning lists, and share with them a summary of learning content to enhance learning effectiveness. The research results show that the use of flipped classrooms combined with the WPAQ learning model of the learning system can help students improve learning effectiveness, learning motivation, self-efficacy, reflective ability, programming learning attitudes, and reduce students' cognitive load.