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The curricular unit Calculus I – Extraordinary Semester (UCCISE) – was explicitly created to respond to students’ difficulties in the curriculum unit Calculus I (UCCI). Only students who fail the UCCI are allowed to attend UCCISE. Considering the enrolled students’ familiarity with mathematical software, the potential of group work to stimulate collaboration among students, and the existence of several art pieces on the University Campus, led to the proposal of a groups’ project focusing on the calculus of areas based on sections of these pieces. Hence, a STEAM approach emerged to achieve the suggested UCCISE objectives. This study aims to understand how using a STEAM approach in a higher education Calculus course could improve students’ perceptions of mathematics, promote their learning, and contribute to lower levels of failure in UCCISE, using teaching experiments as a research methodology. Four researchers were involved in this study, including the Calculus teacher, so this study has action research characteristics. The interpretive paradigm of analysis was used with the triangulation of data. The collected data come from the students’ productions, interviews, and final questionnaires. Results show that the work developed by the 35 students was relevant and should be a practice to be used in UCCI. This experience led to a reduction in the levels of failure compared to the UCCI. However, in the first years at a university level, STEAM approaches are still challenging.

In this paper, we present 3D printing examples that we developed and unitized for hybrid teaching during the global pandemic. We highlight the benefits of 3D printing in classrooms and opportunities for developing different knowledge and skills, starting from mathematical and technological knowledge to communication and collaboration skills. During our activities, we used GeoGebra for 3D printing preparations, it was also utilized for online students’ activities, while supporting theoretical background students gained in real classrooms. Since 3D printing technology in the classroom is at its beginnings, the presented observations are highlighting teaching new kinds of strategies supported by 3D printing.

In this study, we develop mathematical educational practices for students to explore ancient buildings using GeoGebra, Augmented Reality and 3D printing. It is an interdisciplinary approach, intertwining history, culture, mathematics, and engineering. For example, the 3D modelling of Cheomseongdae in Korea and the Temple of Dendera in Egypt can enable students to practice a multimodal set of traditional and innovative learning approaches. Students might use their mathematical knowledge to reflect on architectural and cultural history in a modeling task.

This paper deals with the didactic objectives and content from the latest curricula of the different types of schools (schools, colleges, universities) in the D-A-CH regions. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the didactic goals of current and future curricula for primary, secondary, and high school, which are feasible with a single board computer. For this purpose, the curricula are analysed according to digital terms and methods of information technology with a qualitative deductive meta-analysis and assigned to different categories. The results are presented in different diagrams for evaluation, from which the results can be interpreted. The results include a list of digital didactic goals, structured according to school type, competencies, and feasibility, which can be implemented with a single-board computer. All in all, it was found that an inexpensive single-board computer is quite sufficient for the acquisition and implementation of the digital goals and skills to be taught in the curricula. Furthermore, it was found out how the changes in the curricula have established themselves in the different regions with a time lag and which competencies are taught at the individual school levels. The paper concludes with a recommendation for further studies.

This paper considers how creativity and creative activities can be encouraged in regular mathematical classes by combining different teaching approaches and academic disciplines. We combined origami and paper folding with fractals and their mathematical properties as well as with coding in Scratch in order to facilitate learning mathematics and computer science. We conducted a case study experiment in a Serbian school with 15 high school students and applied different strategies for learning profound mathematical and coding concepts such as fractals dimension and recursion. The goal of the study was to employ creative activities and examine students’ activities during this process in regular classrooms and during extracurricular activities. We used Scratch as a programming language, since it is simple enough for students and it focuses on the concept rather than on the content. Real-life situation of folding Dragon curve was used to highlight points that could cause difficulties in the coding process. Classroom observations and interviews revealed that different approaches guided students through their learning processes and gradually made the introduced concepts meaningful and applicable. With the introduction of this approach, students acquired understanding of the concept of coding recursion trough paper folding and applied it in the higher-level programming. In addition, our teaching approach made students enthusiastic, motivated and engaged with the learning of usually difficult subjects.

To help meet an educational and societal requirement for all students to enjoy, have confidence and ability in creativity and technology, the “Kids Inspiring Kids in STEAM” (KIKS) EU project adopted an intensive Hothousing process challenging students in Finland, Spain, Hungary and the United Kingdom to engage in collaborative problem solving to develop solutions to: “How would you get your schoolmates to LOVE STEAM?” The project provided a process and technology toolkit for students, including those with special educational needs, to achieve their solutions.

In this paper, we describe an inclusive, collaborative learning approach in which both able and less able students engaged together in a contest combining Photography, Mathematics and Technology, in our case GeoGebra. Following three cycles of the contest, we analysed a selection of entries and the related post-participation survey. Based on the analysis, we concluded that the combination of these approaches could help to engage students with mathematical content by relating art, their surrounding environment with mathematics. This approach enabled us to offer different ways of mathematics learning through providing contexts for exploration and students’ creation of their own contents. Results also showed that school teaching is sometimes insufficient to solve emerging problems and this challenged students to find new kinds of solutions supported by new tools and concepts. It also allowed students to think creatively by inviting them to work together to develop their own questions, problems, and facilitating learning by research.

Persona development techniques are a well-established method to create relatable descriptions of representatives of target users of digital systems. In the field of education, research on learner characteristics has yielded comprehensive results that can help advance educational approaches. Nonetheless, these results often remain abstract and distant for researchers and practitioners. Personas offer a bridge to make this knowledge more accessible and to facilitate user-centred design processes. This study focuses on creating personas of mathematics school students to ease such accessibility. These personas are constructed based on an understanding of learners' goals, needs, challenges and problems, joys, fears, feelings and emotions, and strategies. Data collection was conducted through a multifaceted approach, encompassing qualitative and quantitative data from web surveys, think-aloud protocols, and interviews. The target demographic comprised upper secondary school mathematics students in Austria. We found five distinct patterns of characteristics prevalent in this target group. The patterns of characteristics reflected by the personas complement the scientific body of knowledge obtained from traditional approaches investigating characteristics and needs of learners. In practical terms, these personas empower the development of user-centred digital systems, learning materials, and lessons, thus fostering an enriched educational experience for mathematics students., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Today's teaching and didactical methods are progressively aiming to integrate digital technologies, computational thinking (CT), and basic computer science concepts into other subjects. An innovative and creative way of combining and integrating CT and teaching cross-curricular skills without digital devices is to include the game Poly-Universe (PolyUni). According to previous research, the game is expected to have a positive effect on visual perceptual progress, including isolation, and the development of shape-background skills. So far, however, comparatively few attempts have been made to explore the educational possibilities of PolyUni for different school levels and subjects, besides mathematics. Therefore, this article aims to close this gap by exploring how PolyUni can be used to promote CT in three subjects: physical education (PE), digital education (DGE), and biology (B). Furthermore, it evaluates whether the pre-defined learning objectives in those subjects have been achieved, and examines how PolyUni combines the requirements of the different curricula in Austrian secondary school, based on self-designed tasks. Additionally, further aspects of PolyUni such as engagement and collaboration are discussed. To explore the above-mentioned benefits, a mixed-methods study was implemented, whereas the workshops and accompanying teaching materials (e.g., worksheets) were developed based on the COOL Informatics concept. The participant observation method was employed for qualitative data collection, and a self-designed assessment grid as well as additional picture analysis were used for the quantitative data. PolyUni was introduced in three different workshops at Austrian secondary schools with 80 students observed and analyzed. Based on the present data, it can be assumed that PolyUni supports achieving the requirements of the different curricula and pre-defined teaching and learning objectives in a playful way. Furthermore, the game not only promotes CT in secondary school but also encourages enjoyment and collaboration between peers in biological, digital, and physical education lessons., Competing Interests: Author SH was employed by Dynatrace. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Schmidthaler, Schalk, Schmollmüller, Hinterplattner, Hörmann, Anđić, Rottenhofer, Lavicza and Sabitzer.)

The development of technology has changed the way people communicate in academic contexts as well as working places, for example from print messages to screened messages, and from face-to-face classroom and office meetings to virtual classes and offices. This has prompted the shift from traditional teaching practices to student-centered in which students are guided by their teachers to develop skills for 21st Century careers through the Project-Based Learning model. However, in Tanzania colleges, the teaching of a Communication Skills Course perpetuates traditional teaching practices, which could reduce the chance for students to participate in global democratic activities. Consequently, the present study aimed at exploring how to enhance the 4 C's (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativ ity) among the college students of the Communication Skills Course in Tanzania through the Project-Based Learning model. Qualitative participatory action research with two cycles was adopted. Data from ten students, one teacher, and the curriculum were collected through observation, document analysis, and reflective journals. Data were analyzed thematically. Findings show that current teaching practices for Communication Skills Course in Tanzania colleges hardly enhance the development of the 4 C's among students. It was also observed that the implementation of PBL resulted in enhancing the 4 C's among college students in Tanzania colleges. However, large class sizes, poor technological infrastructure, and lack of facilities are among the challenges experienced during the implementation of PBL in enhancing the 4Cs. The study recommends the reformation of current teaching practices, to focus on developing skills needed to cope with students' real-life contexts, instead of focusing on content knowledge. Also, the study calls for the adoption of PBL in Tanzania colleges in teaching Communication Skills to develop necessary skills for the 21st Century. To cope with any potential challenges, the study suggests that there should be collaborative efforts among education stakeholders., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestNone., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

Microgames are rapidly gaining increased attention and are highly being considered because of the technology-based media that enhances students' learning interests and educational activities. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new construct through confirmatory factor analysis, to comprehensively understand the factors influencing the use of microgames in mathematics class. Participants of the study were the secondary school teachers in West Java, Indonesia, which had a 1-year training in microgames development. We applied a quantitative approach to collect the data via online questionnaires through google form. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with AMOS software was used to analyze the proposed model. Empirical results confirmed the perceived easy to use and subjective norm influence (PEU and SN) relationship with teachers' microgame usage behaviors and intentions. In this condition, SN was found to have the initial significant influence on behavioral intention (BI), as attitude, BI, and facilitating conditions also correlated with the actual use of microgames. Furthermore, the largest influential factor was BI, with the results subsequently showing that TPACK had no significant influence on the actual use of microgames. This report is expected to help bridge the gap across several previous studies, as well as contribute to the explanation and prediction of the factors influencing the teachers' mathematical utilization of the study's program. Besides this, it also helps to increase the use of microgames in teaching and learning activities., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Wijaya, Cao, Bernard, Rahmadi, Lavicza and Surjono.)

Basic Digital Education (BDE) is already planned to be integrated with the forthcoming curriculum for Austrian primary schools (6-10 years) as it was already implemented for lower secondary schools (10-14 years) in 2018. BDE includes the most essential and novel developments of Computational Thinking (CT), which are fundamentally responsible for nurturing students' problem-solving skills. Thus, evaluating teaching materials, scaffolding guidelines, and assessments is becoming increasingly important for the successful implementation of CT in Austrian classrooms. This study is a part of a longitudinal multi-cycle educational design research project aiming to explore how to foster CT and to raise the awareness, importance, and confidence of teachers and students in applying CT for everyday uses. Our paper focuses on a sub-study in which teaching units for grade 3 and 4 students (8-10 years) were designed by combining an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook and Physical Computing with the micro:bit device. The designed learning environment consists of three units and was implemented in two classes over 3 weeks. The two classes were further split into two groups each, to ensure better support during implementation. The class teachers received upfront teacher training and conducted pre- and post-test assessments with the students. The resulting data was then analyzed to gain insights into the effects on CT skills of the young learners. Results showed that combining block-based programming and physical computing devices could become a promising approach to promote computational thinking skills in lower school grades. Furthermore, the observed direction of the designed units supports low-barrier access to increase the desired uses of CT in classrooms., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Kastner-Hauler, Tengler, Sabitzer and Lavicza.)

Recent developments in educational technology have led to a renewed interest in the utilisation of user-generated microgames for facilitating learning. The advantages and disadvantages of microgames which have been voluntarily created, modified, shared and used by users on open learning platforms to support learning are not yet clearly understood. The present study explores the strengths and weaknesses of user-generated microgames for assisting learning followed with some recommendations for the development and effective use of microgames from elementary teacher perspectives. This study is exploratory research conducted within the GeoGebra application with the participation of elementary school teachers from Indonesia. The study found that, on the one hand, user-generated microgames have multiple advantages to support learning mainly by their simplicity and short duration gameplay. On the other hand, the games have several disadvantages, especially due to the lack of content directly related to learning objectives and less interesting interfaces. It is recommended for users of open learning platforms to create more targeted microgames respecting a particular learning objective and for teachers to creatively connect games to learning for mastering knowledge, skills, or literacies., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021.)

Official documents in several educational systems reflect the importance of integrating Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) and consider project-based learning (PBL) as a way of integrating such disciplines in the classroom. Although STEAM-PBL has been characterized and evaluated in different ways, its impact on school mathematics teaching remains unclear. Mathematics is recognized as the fundamental basis of other disciplines; however, many students still perceive it as a difficult subject and abandon it. To analyze STEAM-PBL classroom implementation from a school mathematics standpoint, we examined 41 classroom experiences from 11 Spanish secondary education teachers (five in-field mathematics teachers), who participated in a STEAM training program for more than 4 years. To frame this study, Thibaut et al.'s (J STEM Educ 3(1):02, 2018) and Schoenfeld's (Educ Res 43(8):404-412, 2014) characterizations of well-designed and implemented projects, respectively, were employed. The results showed that in-field mathematics teachers avoided transdisciplinary projects in which school mathematics is difficult to address, while out-of-field teachers tended to overlook the mathematics in interdisciplinary projects. Unlike out-of-field teachers, mathematics teachers often eluded design-based learning processes for deeply exploiting school mathematics. The latter teachers promoted high cognitive demands and positive perceptions about mathematics in projects where formative environments were generated through discussion and a meaningful feedback loop., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

The global spread of COVID-19 has resulted in learning and teaching being confronted with immense challenges and changes since spring 2020. Measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic had and continue to have a particularly strong impact on non-formal and informal learning, which are important features of out-of-class on-line STEM workshops combining science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We developed and carried out online STEM workshops for approximately 250 students during times of isolation in the spring and summer of 2020. To identify potential success factors and stumbling blocks for designing and implementing online STEM workshops, we conducted a qualitative interview-based study with a selection of eight experts in the summer and autumn 2020, i.e. after the STEM workshops. The experts were Austrian and German teachers who planned and implemented STEM workshops for students age 10 to 18. Our collected data was examined using techniques of grounded theory approaches. Using techniques of qualitative interview studies and grounded theory approaches, we found that removing learning barriers and creating new types of learning spaces, online socio-constructivist learning, and teachers' TPACK for STEM Workshops are important factors when considering and designing STEM workshops for online learning environments. These same factors will also be central when planning and implementing online STEM workshops in post-COVID-19 times. To facilitate student participation and to increase social interaction are critical elements for practitioners working on online STEM workshops-both during and after COVID-19. Highly trained teachers with in-depth technical, pedagogical, and content skills are essential to facilitate participation and interactions among students, teachers, and learning contents., Competing Interests: Competing interestsAuthors declare that there is no conflict of interest in this article from any of the authors., (© The Author(s) 2021.)