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In the field of education, there has been recent attention and call for transdisciplinary approaches related to learning mathematics and programming in schools. Despite the advent of theory and tools for such an approach, there is still a lack of a common ground and implicitness in the understanding of what exactly this would entail amongst teachers and curriculum designers. In this paper, we present a theoretical discussion in the light of our ongoing efforts to develop a more elaborated and precise language representing educational and epistemological values for integrating mathematics and programming. Accordingly, we provide an overview of our previous research efforts in this field followed by an elaborated example describing our approach. We conclude with a discussion addressing the pedagogical potential of our proposed ideas compared to the previous ones. © 2020, The Education University of Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Many countries and governments have laid down a national strategy for digitalization in schools with the intent to strengthen both pupils' and teachers’ digital competences. Computational Thinking (CT) can be regarded as a central ingredient of teaching and learning in the XXI century and should be part of these competences. The Swedish government has recently launched a national strategy for digitalization in schools stating that CT and programming should be integrated in many school subjects. Thus, one particular challenge that needs to be addressed is the one related to teachers' competencies and skills related to programming. Since 2016, The National Agency of Education has been working together with several Swedish universities on developing academic courses in the field of CT and programming for in-service teachers. One challenge we are exploring in this paper is the one related to teachers' perceptions and competencies related to programming. As part of our on-going efforts in the course “Introduction to Programming for Elementary Teachers” offered to in-service teachers we have analyzed data we collected representing teachers´ perceptions on CT and programming before the start of the course. We applied sentiment mining and word counting on 127 texts generated by the teachers. We examine their perceptions and cluster them accordingly in order to understand how teachers perceived different aspects related to CT education. By doing so, we lay down the foundations on how to tailor competence development efforts in this field so that they fit teachers´ need. We expect these efforts will lead to the development of a model enabling to identify teachers´ current perceptions in order to plan future actions that can increase their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

The term Computational Thinking is closely related to efforts connected to teach a systematic and well-structured way of problem solving that includes a set of tools and techniques used in Computer Science. While substantial research in this field has shown promising outcomes concerning distinct intervention programs and teaching initiatives, the term Computational Thinking itself requires to be revised in order to get a wider consensus about its meaning and purpose. This paper contributes to the ongoing quest concerning the definition of the term by starting with a fundamental perspective on computational theory and corresponding concepts in order to describe the theoretical building blocks of a systematic view to further elaborate on an approach for teaching and learning about Computational Thinking. Additionally, based on this foundational effort, more advanced concepts are presented and discussed in order to better understand this domain. Finally, the paper identifies and discusses a set of relevant challenges taking a cognitive psychology perspective on Computational Thinking.

In this paper, we describe our ongoing research focused on identifying requirements for designing, developing and deploying an environment capable to enhance educational activities relying on videos contributed by students. We present a joint effort conducted by researchers from three countries bringing their results from previous efforts focused on the interplay between learning and technology for optimizing the pedagogical exploitation of online videos. In order to reach these goals, we use data collected from 204 students where they shared their experiences and insights based on their experiences while using videos for their own learning. The presented research illustrates the transformation of these students' insights into actual system requirements. These requirements are collected and examined in order to be used for the design, development, evaluation and refinement of an existing system while aiming to deploy a mature environment enabling an optimized experience of on-line videos in. educational settings. Last but not least, we discuss the benefits of our approach in the light of benefits and future challenges to incorporate videos in educational activities supported by a software architecture that relies on web technologies. Finally, we summarize and discuss our efforts in the light of future research while aiming to practice future deployment of such architecture. In these future iterations, we discuss new stakeholders possibly assisting in identifying new requirements and contributing with innovative ideas for best optimization of videos supported by TEL environments offering meaningful and appealing learning.

In recent years, hardware for the production and consumption of virtual reality content has reached level of prices that make it affordable to everyone. Accordingly, schools and universities are showing increased interest in implementations of virtual reality technologies for supporting their innovative educational activities. Hence, this paper presents a flexible architecture for supporting the development of virtual reality learning scenarios conveniently deployed for educational purposes. We also suggest an example of such educational scenario for medical purposes deployable with the suggested architecture. In addition, we developed and used a questionnaire answered by 17 medical students in order to derive additional requirements for refining such scenarios. Then, we present these efforts while aiming at deployments usable also for additional domains. Finally, we summarize and mention aspects we will address in our coming efforts while deploying such activities.

In recent years, teachers have increasingly started to conduct pedagogical activitiesto promote different kinds of learning interactions supported by rich media. The deployment ofsuch activities is becoming common practice as teachers and students own technological meanssupporting them along such educational interactions. Such activities could be carried out inindoor settings while using regular computers. In addition, these activities could be alsoconducted from anywhere at any time while using smartphones and tablets. In this paper, wedescribe a multiphase pedagogical activity requiring students to author and later peer- assesseducational interactions incorporated to videos in YouTube. We describe the EDU.Tubeenvironment enabling them to create, share and consume such educational and rich mediaactivities across technological environments. We then detail a plan for the implementation of aneducational strategy taking place in 3 different classes dealing with diverse materials addressingcomputer science related topics. We also provide an evaluation presenting students' insights andfeedbacks resulting from the experienced activity. We discuss and elaborate on these outcomesin order to analyze them as concerns that could be applied to a further deployment of theEDU.Tube environment. Finally, we suggest that these set of concerns could be useful alsowhile designing and developing other technological environments offered for authoringeducational interactions supported by rich media aimed to empower teachers' pedagogicalpractice.

This paper describes the user interface of anIntelligent Tutoring System that enables the customization of e-Learning systems according to the needs of students requiringrecommendation along pedagogical pathways. The interface hasbeen implemented for the Moodle e-learning platform by using astandard extension mechanism provided by this LearningManagement System (LMS) referred as “block”. The designedinterface allows the intelligent system to interact with the LMSand the learner, whose learning is continuously monitored andsupported by means of personalized recommendations andmessages. The system usability has been evaluated in the contextof a course about Computer Network Design. Results show thatthe designed interface is well integrated into Moodle andgenerates a non-intrusive user interface.

We investigate a novel approach to e-Learning using Seman-tic Web technologies and aiming to optimise the learners’ experience incorporating pedagogical strategies into the learning process. The in-creasing availability of Semantic Web based educational resources and the establishment of open metadata standards like IEEE LOM pave the way for enhanced e-Learning systems that support personalised learning based on a reasoning framework and formal ontologies. We use ontologies to describe learning objects and the learner state, and define pedagogi-cal recommendation axioms that specify which learning objects are best suited for the learner in a specific situation. Recent pedagogical findings suggest that the individual learning can be optimised by means of guid-ance through learning pathways, i. e., a particular order in which learning objects are to be studied. To this end, we offer an OWL model for learn-ing pathways as structured sequences. We show the strengths and limits of OWL and propose a solution to overcome problems such as handling of soft constraints and ranking of result sets. The calculation for ranking is based on individual weights for specific learner-related features and considers the degree of match between learning objects and learner’s needs. The feasibility of our approach is shown by modelling real-life course material, i.e. a complete course on the Philosophy of Didactics. We implemented our approach as a prototype system and interfaced it to a standard Learning Management System.

Nowadays, there is a growing variety of mobile devices and online video content that could be used to support a variety of pedagogical strategies used for different cross-context learning scenarios. In order to take advantage of these developments, this paper presents an approach that allows to integrate learning material represented as videos in mobile learning scenarios, mainly by the implementation of a mobile client that allows to consume learning material represented as small chunks of video content. The application of these ideas potentially provides new educational opportunities to support learning across different contexts. Additionally, the videos consumed by the mobile client allow the integration of interactive elements like questions that could be answered by the learner while consuming the video or additional comments that could be provided to the learner. The rationale for the integration of the interactive parts in the video is to increase learners´ engagement and therefore also to increase their involvement and participation in order to generate an active learning experience.

This paper presents an effort to enrich and expand the potential of CSCL scripts by combining different technologies. We introduce and describe a dedicated SMS- personal response system designed to support class activities and its integration with CeLS, an environment used to design and enact online collaboration scripts.

We present an effort to provide teachers with a dedicated environment for designing location based games conducted via mobile phones. Treasure-HIT allows teachers to define a set of locations (using Google Maps and Google Street APIs), to attach clues that direct the players to the locations and to offer specific activities for each location. The system is primarily aimed to support the outdoor learning activities of the subject My Village as part of the national curriculum for elementary schools.

The aim of this research is to develop a hands-on spatial geometry learning system to facilitate students’ geometry learning. The system is developed with Duval’s four critical elements of geometry apprehension including perceptual apprehension, sequential apprehension, operational apprehension and discursive apprehension. The system supports senior high school students in the process of spatial geometry problem-solving, allowing them to hands-on manipulate spatial geometry graphics and develop their visualization and mental imagery. In total, 58 participants from different classes were recruited. The experimental group used the hands-on learning system, whereas the control group followed the traditional paper-based approach. The study investigates the effects of the hands-on geometry learning system on students’ perceptual apprehension, sequential apprehension, operational apprehension, overall spatial geometry scores and learning attitude. The results revealed more learning attitude, and higher perceptual apprehension, sequential apprehension, operational apprehension in the experimental group.

This paper describes our on-going efforts regarding how combining the potential andaffordances of two approaches and systems can be used to provide teachers with the ability todesign and enact online learning scenarios that include activities performed in outdoor settings.We describe how different technical features of our systems have been integrated combiningweb-based solutions and mobile applications. We present a detailed example of a learningscenario that was implemented with undergraduate students and included outdoor activitiesperformed via mobile phones, as well as other learning tasks using the web and computers in theclassroom and at home. Our results imply of ways teachers and students may use technology inorder to support collaborative learning trajectories across different contexts, as well as insightspointing to the pedagogical and design challenges involved in combining a variety oftechnologies to support outdoors and indoors learning activities.

This chapter presents the potential and challenges of a new approach for the design of a platform aimed to foster and support the use of collaborative techniques in actual educational settings. CeLS is a webbased environment aimed to provide teachers of all subject domains and levels with a flexible tool for creating, enacting and sharing CSCL activities. CeLS special feature is the controllable data flow: the ability to selectively reuse learners’ artifacts from previous stages according to various Social Settings in order to support design and enactment of rich multi-stage scripts. CeLS offers content free templates and a searchable repository of sample activities previously implemented with students. Teachers can explore these resources and adapt them to suit their needs, or create new scripts from basic building blocks. During the last four years the system was piloted by teachers from 13 Colleges and Universities and by school teachers. The chapter presents CeLS approach focusing on its unique features, examples of activities implemented with students and some insights on teachers as developers of online collaborative activities and as active contributors to the development of the environment.

This paper describes our current efforts that combine the potential and affordancesof two approaches and systems aiming to provide educators and researchers with the ability todesign and enact pedagogical scripts to support collaborative learning activities to beconducted in classrooms and outdoors settings. We present and explain how the differenttechnical features of our systems have been integrated combining web-based solutions andmobile applications. One illustrative scenario is described and discussed in order to get abetter understanding of the different aspects and outcomes resulting from the integration ofour approaches. Our initial results indicate the potential benefits of our approach in order tosupport and orchestrate collaborative learning trajectories across different contexts.