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MOOCs popularly support the diverse learning needs of participants across the globe. However, literature suggests well-known scepticism regarding MOOC pedagogy which questions the effectiveness of the educational experience offered by it. One way to ensure the quality of MOOCs is through systematic evaluation of its pedagogy with the goal to improve over time. Most existing MOOCs' quality evaluation methods do not account for the increasing significance of learner-centric pedagogy towards providing a richer learning experience. This paper presents a MOOC evaluation framework (MEF), designed with a strong pedagogical basis underpinned by theory and MOOC design practices, which evaluates the integration of learner-centric pedagogy in MOOCs. Using mixed-methods research, the internal validation was conducted through expert reviews (N = 2), and external validation (N = 13) was conducted in the field to test model usability and usefulness. The framework was classified as "good" (SUS: 78.46) in terms of usability. A high perception of usefulness (84%-92%) was observed for the framework as a formative evaluation tool for assessing the integration of learner-centric pedagogy and bringing a positive change in MOOC design. Different participants acknowledged new learning from varied dimensions of the framework. Participants also recognized that the scores obtained using the MEF truly reflected the efforts taken to incorporate learner-centric design strategies in the evaluated dimensions. The framework focuses on learner-centric evaluation of MOOC design with a goal to facilitate improved pedagogy.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] We present the pedagogical design and implementation of "ESSENCe": Experimental problem solving using Staging, Scaffolding, Embedded information sources, iNstruments, and Collaboration. Research in experimental physics requires problem-solving skills that include designing investigations, developing instrumentation techniques, troubleshooting, planning data analysis, and evaluating experimental outcomes. Most of these skills can be taught at the undergraduate level but are unfortunately skipped in traditional cookbook-recipe style labs. Since many physics experiments require electronics, the ESSENCe pedagogy presented here has been developed in the context of undergraduate electronics laboratory courses. The goals of ESSENCe labs are to help students apply their theoretical knowledge of electronics to hands-on open-ended experiments, understand properties of physical systems and limitations of measurements, and to learn how to work with sophisticated instruments used in experimental research. ESSENCe emphasizes collaboration with peers and teaching assistants. This paper presents the results of ESSENCe implementation in a sophomore undergraduate analog electronics lab of 45--60 students over multiple years in a top-ranked technological university in India. A mixed methods study was conducted to analyze students' development of experimental problem-solving skills through repeated measures of performance on experimental tests and video analysis of students working on the experiments. We found statistically significant improvement in students' experimental problem-solving skills over the course of a semester. The study also analyzed students' perceptions about the benefits and challenges of the open-ended collaborative lab.

MOOCs support the global need of learning resources with large impact through online access and no geographical boundaries. However, pedagogical design limitations in MOOCs are known to result in passive role of the learner, lack of learner connect and engagement, limited interactivity with course content and peers, all of which result in low completion rates. In this paper, we present the goals of a learner-centric MOOC (LCM) model aimed towards addressing some of the critical pedagogical challenges of MOOCs and exhibit the use of the model through its primary implementation phase. The LCM model collates and translates all integral pedagogical elements of a MOOC into a learner-centric dimension to promote active learner participation and enhanced engagement with learning content and peers through fostered interactions. To demonstrate the primary use and effectiveness of the model, it has been adopted in the design and conduct of 15 different MOOCs, which were offered through two different MOOC providers. Initial empirical evidence has been presented for the effectiveness of the model towards improved learner participation through several measures, including completion rates, engagement of participants with LCM elements and perception of learners on the usefulness of the model and its adoption. The average completion rate for 15 LCMs was found to be 36.35 ± 25.61, 95% CI: 10.74-61.96%, which is significantly higher than the completion rates reported in literature. The average persistent rates, defined as the rate of completion for active learners, was 59.38% for LCMs. The model elements were also found to be effective in engaging learners in formative assessment activities and meaningful peer discussions on the forum. The learners' perception on the adoption of the LCM model voiced several pedagogical benefits of the model which were categorized into themes. These included enhanced learner motivation and engagement with content, enhanced interactivity and peer learning, formative assessment and feedback, and catering to diversity. These themes directly aligned with desired pedagogical outcomes of the model to address some of the existing limitations of MOOCs.

Spatial perspective‐taking (SPT) ability positively influences performance in STEM fields. While limited research studies have been done with school students, they have yielded inconclusive findings and, hence, here we report findings from our study with an augmented reality (AR) enhanced learning environment (ARELE), GeoSolvAR, on middle‐school students' SPT ability. We conducted a sequential explanatory mixed‐method study with 90 students to test GeoSolvAR's twin features of augmented systems and inquiry‐based activities. The study had one experimental (n = 30) and two control groups (n = 30 × 2), where students were individually administered an online pre‐ and posttest to measure their SPT ability. The experimental group worked with both the features of GeoSolvAR, while the control group worked with only the AR feature or had no intervention. Our findings reveal that the experimental group showed significant improvement in SPT ability while students in the control groups showed non‐significant improvement or no change. Furthermore, we found that all experimental group students used certain body movements and imagined shifts in spatial positions while solving the activity questions. Thus, we conjecture that GeoSolvAR affords thinking and imagining with the body which makes it a potent tool for improving students' SPT ability. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Spatial perspective taking (SPT) belongs to a set of spatial abilities that have been shown to positively influence academic success and career success in STEM fields.Augmented reality systems with their ability to augment 2D images into 3D forms are being explored mostly in college and above levels to improve SPT ability.Limited research investigating the improvement of SPT in school students has used VR digital games or robots. These have either yielded inconclusive findings or not found any improvement in school students' SPT abilities.What this paper adds Conclusive evidence for improving SPT ability in middle‐school students.Empirical evidence for a design to effectively combine augmenting abilities of AR systems with inquiry‐based learning scaffolds to improve the SPT ability of middle‐school students.A conjecture about the mechanism by which middle‐school children's spatial perspective taking improves when scaffolded with an Augmented Reality Enhanced Learning Environment (ARELE) tool.Implications for practice and policy Practitioners such as teachers may directly use GeoSolvAR (the ARELE tool) to help middle‐school students improve their spatial perspective‐taking abilities.Researchers from the fields of both technology‐enhanced learning and science education may use the findings to design improved AR tools and test their impact on students' SPT ability. This work can serve as the basis for further investigating the effect of improved SPT ability on students' performance in STEM subjects.Our work provides support for embodied cognition being used as a strategy for solving SPT tasks. The identification of specific head and hand movements (gestures) can be further probed to understand the exact mechanism of how the ARELE mediates students' performance on the SPT tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioscientists such as geneticists and molecular biologists regularly demonstrate the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices/skills while explaining a natural phenomenon. The complexity of these concepts and skills becomes manifold at the tertiary undergraduate level and are known to be challenging for learners. They learn these in silos as part of theory classes, practical labs, and tutorial sessions while in an industry, they will be required to integrate and apply in a given authentic context. To support learners in this process, we have designed and developed Geneticus Investigatio (GI), a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment for scaffolding complex learning in the context of Mendelian genetics. GI facilitates this complex learning by the integration of domain concepts and science inquiry practices through inquiry-driven reflective learning experiences, which are interspersed with inquiry-based learning steps in an authentic context along with metacognitive reflection. In this paper, we present two cycles of iterative design, development, and evaluation of GI, based on the design-based research (DBR) approach. In the first DBR cycle, we identified the pedagogical design features and learning activities of GI based on an exploratory study with bio-science instructors for facilitating complex learning. We then report a pre-post classroom study (N = 37) in which we investigated the learning and perceptions of usability and usefulness of GI. The results indicate high learning gains after interacting with GI and learner perceptions that activities in GI help learn concepts and inquiry practices along with its integration. It is followed by the identification of interaction and other difficulties by the learner, which were triangulated with different data sources. It provided insights into the pedagogical and design changes required in GI. The revised version of GI was evaluated with a quasi-experimental classroom study (N = 121). The results indicate that the drawbacks of the previous version of GI were addressed. The main contributions of this research are a pedagogical design for facilitating complex learning and its implementation in the form of GI TEL environment.

Interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is a design theory that intends to inform the design of future education in Asia. It consists of three anchored concepts, namely, interest, creation, and habit. This paper presents the third anchored concept habit as well as the habit loop. IDC theory assumes that learners, when driven by interest, can be engaged in knowledge creation. Furthermore, by repeating such process in their daily learning routines, learners will form interest-driven creation habits. The habit loop, the process of building such a habit, consists of three component concepts--cuing environment, routine, and harmony. The cuing environment is a habit trigger that tells the students' brain to get prepared and go into an automatic mode, letting a learning behavior unfold. Routine refers to the behavioral patterns the students repeat most often, literally etched into their neural pathways. Harmony refers to the affective outcome of the routine activity as well as the integration or stabilization of habits; that is, through the routine behavior and action, students may feel that their needs get fulfilled, feel satisfied, and experience inner peace. It is our hope that such habitual behavior of creating knowledge can be sustained so long that students ultimately become lifelong interest-driven creators. This paper focuses on the description of the three components of the habit loop and discusses how these components are related to the interest loop and the creation loop in supporting learners in developing their interest-driven creation capability.

"Is this solution pink enough?" is a persistent question when it comes to phenolphthalein-based titration experiments, one that budding, novice scientists often ask their instructors. Lab instructors usually answer the inquiry with remarks like, "Looks like you have overshot the end point", "Perhaps you should check the amount of the indicator and redo", and "The pink can be fainter." However, in a large classroom setting, it often becomes tedious for teachers to provide personalized remarks to students on their titration conduct at frequent intervals. In an effort to get the learners to become independent in evaluating their titration experiments, in this paper, the design, development, and implementation of a new smartphone tutor application named Titration ColorDarts (TCD) has been presented. TCD uses the camera function to analyze the pink color of the titration solution to provide learners with a feedback report on their experimental conduct. TCD maps the gradient of pink (from light to dark) to a corresponding performance score (on a scale of 1 to 10) and presents it in a gamified manner on a dartboard. It generates a report that includes question prompts and hints to elicit a learner's reasoning for independently identifying potential sources of error in their experiment and for figuring out how they can be resolved. The results from the initial pilot exercise conducted with undergraduate students corroborate the effectiveness of TCD as a lab tutor.

The importance of affective states in learning has led many Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to include students' affective states in their learner models. The adaptation and hence the benefits of an ITS can be improved by detecting and responding to students' affective states. In prior work, we have created and validated a theory-driven model for detecting students' frustration, as well as identifying its causes as students interact with the ITS. In this paper, we present a strategy to respond to students' frustration by offering motivational messages that address different causes of frustration. Based on attribution theory, these messages are created to praise the student's effort, attribute the results to the identified cause, show sympathy for failure or obtain feedback from the students. We implemented our approach in three schools where students interacted with the ITS. Data from 188 students from the three schools collected across two weeks was used for our analysis. The results suggest that the frustration instances reduced significantly statistically (p < 0.05), due to the motivational messages. This study suggests that motivational messages that use attribution theory and address the reason for frustration reduce the number of frustration instances per session.

Instructors face difficulty in creating student-centred, customized learning designs (LDs) for teaching with information and communication technology (ICT) tools such as visualizations (animations, simulations or videos). This problem is compounded for tertiary-level instructors teaching in instructor-mediated classrooms. In such classrooms, common in many parts of the developing world, students may not have 1:1 access with the visualization and have to interact with it via the instructor. Here, the instructors' pedagogy becomes an important factor determining effective learning with the visualization. To address this problem, a set of design impediments faced by instructors in this context were first identified. Design guidelines were created to address these impediments. These guidelines evolved into the Customized Visualization Integration System (CuVIS). It is a wizard-like interactive tool that provides guidelines to instructors on how to create effective LDs that incorporate the principles of constructive alignment and meaningful learning with ICT, and is customized to instructors' requirements. The effectiveness of CuVIS has been tested with instructors along multiple dimensions: usefulness and usability, impact on instructors' pedagogical practice and impact on student learning when taught with CuVIS-generated LDs.

MIC-O-MAP (MICroscopic-Observations-Macroscopic-Predictions) is a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment designed for developing micro-macro thinking skills among science and engineering undergraduate students. Micro-macro thinking involves being able to analyze dynamic processes and interactions on a microscopic level and establish co-relations to the outcomes which we can see and measure in the macroscopic world. In this paper, we report 2 cycles of iterative design, development, and evaluation of MIC-O-MAP, based on a design-based research approach. We first identify the pedagogical design features and learning activities of MIC-O-MAP based on a literature review of the development of micro-macro thinking. We then report an experimental study, which showed positive results that the design features and learning activities of MIC-O-MAP helped students develop micro-macro thinking. This was followed by a detailed interaction analysis, which provided insights into the redesign of MIC-O-MAP. An evaluation of the revised version of MIC-O-MAP showed that the shortcomings of the original version were addressed. The interaction analysis also led us to identify effective actions and learning paths as students learn in interactive TEL environments.

Learning from interactive learning environments enriched with multiple external representations (MERs) is often beneficial. The learning benefits of MERs highly rely on the development of Representational Competence. Representational Competence refers to an ability to translate and see relations between MERs. The relevant research findings have consistently reported learners' difficulty in relating and translating in MERs due to insufficient development of Representational Competence. Although dynamic linking is one of the strategies recommended to address this issue, it offers mixed results. This paper reports design of a new interaction feature that overcomes some of the limitations of traditional dynamically linked representations. We designed an additional interaction in dynamically linked MERs to support learners' cognitive demands; we refer to this as "Reciprocative Dynamic Linking." The goal of this additional affordance was to strengthen learners' cross-representation cognitive linkage by promoting Representational Competence. The paper reports the study conducted to investigate effects of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking on students' Representational Competence. The said study was conducted in a course on Signals and Systems from Electrical Engineering program (N = 24). The subjects were assigned to two conditions: a Simulation and a Simulation with Reciprocative Dynamic Linking. The representation competence was assessed with an instrument for measuring Representational Competence within Signals and Systems domain. The effect of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking on learners' cognitive load was also investigated. The results confirmed that Reciprocative Dynamic Linking could lead to improvement in Representational Competence and thus, higher learning for "Apply and Analyze Procedural knowledge" categories of tasks. Reciprocative Dynamic Linking also promoted germane cognitive load of learners, as it could offer the required cognitive support to improve learners' Representational Competence. The findings from semi-structured interviews and screen capture analysis corroborated the results. This paper provides details of how to design Reciprocative Dynamic Linking in interactive learning environments and its effect on learners' Representational Competence. Apart from establishing learning effectiveness of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking, the study further contributes by confirming the role of cognitive processing of learners while learning from interactive learning environments. The findings from the study suggest designing strategies not for just creating highly interactive learning environments but equipping a given learning environment with conducive interaction features that foster learning.

Multiple studies report that Computer Science (CS) instructors face problems on how to integrate visualizations in their teaching. This problem gets compounded for instructors in technology-constrained classrooms that are common in developing countries. In these classrooms, students are not able to interact with visualization directly; instead, their interaction is mediated by the instructor who alone may have access to the visualization. In the current study, we contrasted learning outcome from integrating program visualization at two different engagement levels in instructor-mediated classroom setting. The two levels were "Responding" (prediction activity with visualization) and "Viewing" (watching visualization with instructor commentary) as per Naps' taxonomy. The study was conducted for a programming topic of medium complexity. We found the strategy of prediction with visualization ("Responding") led to statistically significant higher active behavioral engagement and higher perception of learning among students than the strategy of watching the visualization with instructor commentary ("Viewing"). We also found statistically significant higher cognitive achievement in terms of the rate of problem solving for the "Responding" group, if the students had prior training in active learning. This study can serve as a reference guide to design effective integration of visualizations in instructor-mediated classrooms.

Educators have recommended that the affordances provided by ICTs should be used to promote student-centered constructivist learning. While the actual use of ICT in education has increased, not much change has occurred in terms of the pedagogical practices followed. Information transmission models of teaching are still being followed, albeit with the use of ICT. Efforts at the school level attempt to address this problem via teacher education programs that emphasize ICT integration with constructivist practices. In higher education settings, there are fewer reported studies on ICT integration at a systemic level, and most decisions related to the use of ICTs are left to the instructor. In this paper, we describe the design, implementation and evaluation of ET4ET, a large-scale faculty professional development program (1138 participants) on effective integration of educational technology for engineering college instructors in India. Guided by the Attain-Align-Integrate (A2I) model, the ET4ET program prepares instructors to implement ICT supported student-centric teaching strategies. To ensure engagement and learning of the participants, active learning strategies are implemented throughout the ET4ET program. This paper traces the development of ET4ET, from a small-scale face-to-face implementation to a large-scale mode mediated by technology, and suggests guidelines for similar training programs.

The paper introduces a set of formative assessment tasks and rubrics that were developed for use in an introductory physics instruction to help students acquire and self-assess various scientific process abilities. We will describe the rubrics, tasks, and the student outcomes in courses where the tasks and rubrics were used. (Contains 49 footnotes, 11 tables, and 2 figures.)

Restricted exploration of design space is a problem that novice designers face when solving engineering product design problems. Consequences of limited exploration can be the generation of sub-optimal solutions and fixation towards the first solution idea or known solution space. Expert designers sift through their vast repertoire of solution alternatives and choose the appropriate solution for the given design problem. Novices, however, lack this vast repository of alternative solution approaches. Therefore, it is good practice for novices to expand the problem and solution space and explore different aspects of the product design problem before identifying solutions appropriate for the design problem. Flare-fork collaborative strategy is a design exploration strategy that enables designers to generate opportunistic ideas related to the design problem and integrate them during the design process thereby expanding problem and solution space. The flare-fork collaborative strategy leverages rapid ideation, and semantic analogy thought transformation strategy to generate new ideas, interlinking ideas in design space map (DSM) for the elaboration of ideas, and thought transformer strategy to manipulate ideas for expanding problem and solution space. This paper describes a study to examine how the operationalization of the flare aspect of flare-fork collaborative strategy as an intervention supports the design process of three teams of students. We found that students frequently traverse between problem and solution space via an intermediate bridge space. Also, regardless of where the students begin, they do a comprehensive exploration of problem and solution space while using flare-fork collaborative strategy. Students' perception of using flare-fork collaborative strategy to explore engineering product design is predominantly positive, with students identifying several ways in which flare aspect of flare-fork collaborative strategy aided them in their expansion of problem and solution space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) engages students in processes mirroring the practice of science. Laboratories play a central role in this learning environment. Students in ISLE laboratories design their own experiments to investigate new phenomena, test hypotheses, and solve realistic problems. We discuss various issues associated with implementing these labs in large enrollment introductory physics courses. We present examples of experiments that students design, include a sample of student work, and discuss issues related to the choice of experiments for design and practical implementation. We also review assessment techniques and show results of students' acquisition and transfer of some laboratory-related abilities. [DOI: 10.1119/1.2238885]