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The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic impacts the learning and teaching experiences of faculty, students, and school staff at all levels of education around the world. While most schools face the challenges of closing down campuses, moving courses online, and relying on technology tools to deliver instructional activities, as one of the few countries with a regular semester schedule, universities in Taiwan have different experiences handling the current situation. This reflective essay aims to share the countermeasures that the Center of Teaching and Learning Development (CTLD) and Digital Learning Center (DLC) at National Taiwan University (NTU) took to keep everything going commonly during the uncommon time. The pandemic impact was discussed from the interrelationships of university policy, course, and instructor. We used Bloom's cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains of knowledge to guide the implementation of related actions. Based on our learned lessons and reflections, we provide five suggestions regarding future precautions to other educational institutions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the affordances of participatory simulations by comparing students' models of engagement and science learning outcomes in a multi-team participatory simulated game (MPSG) and a single-team participatory simulated game (SPSG). Two versions of a mobile-based game about marine fishery management were created. Participants were 105 seventh-grade students in Taiwan. Research instruments included a Science Game Engagement questionnaire and a Marine Ecosystem and Sustainability Test. Students' interviews and classroom videos were also collected. Students' models of engagement were analyzed by using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, and comparisons of subscales of engagement and learning outcomes were made by Analysis of Covariance statistics. The results showed that the students in the MPSG group had a higher level of behavioral engagement and better learning achievement than the students in the SPSG group did. Also, in exploring the interrelationships among the subscales of students' engagement, we found that, in the SPSG group, students' behavioral engagement was positively predicted by their emotional engagement, while in the MPSG group, it was positively predicted by their social engagement. In both groups, behavioral engagement predicted cognitive engagement. This finding was supported by the video data in that more interactions among the group members were observed in the MPSG group. This indicated that the multi-agent, dynamic modeling in the MPSG may have shifted the quality of the learners' social interactions. The affordances of participatory simulated games are discussed, and future research directions are provided.

As freely adoptable digital resources, OpenCourseWare (OCW) have become a prominent form of Open Educational Resources (OER). More than 275 institutions in the worldwide OCW consortium have committed to creating free access open course materials. Despite the resources and efforts to create OCW worldwide, little understanding of its use exists. This paper reports OCW project development at National Taiwan University (NTU) and investigates its use with Google Analytics. Reports include strategic plans to overcome challenges to OCW creation and implementation, the project's growth and maturation, overall use of OCW, and possible future directions. As a result of its 5-year development and of lessons learned, the NTU-OCW experience features: (1) integrating resources on campus and established operating procedures; (2) setting course selection criteria featuring the strength of NTU and Taiwan; (3) providing coherent program support to enhance faculty participation; and (4) adhering strictly to the Creative Commons license. Data from Google Analytics was reviewed for better understanding of the use, characteristics, course preferences, and behaviors of NTU-OCW users. Results show visitors were primarily lifelong learners (65%) in informal learning settings. Statistics indicate an overall successful use of NTU-OCW for Chinese speaking users, especially in urban areas where information and communication technology is more developed. Potential impacts and future improvements are discussed, including how to promote usage of OCW courses for on and off campus users, adding rating features and indexing for customizing search, and integrating OCW into the learning management system (LMS) as part of OER.

This cross-sectional research was conducted to probe how 626 Taiwanese children's conceptions of learning differ by age and gender via drawing. Participants were from the kindergarten, the first grade, and the third grade. A coding scheme categorizing the people, learning domain, and place in the drawings was developed. Chi-square tests were then performed to examine the associations among the children's three grade levels, gender, and three categories: people, learning domain, and place. The findings showed that the kindergarteners tended to draw more family members as well as family and outdoor scenes, while the third graders tended to draw more school figures as well as classroom and school outdoor scenes. The first graders drew more peers than the third graders did. The kindergarteners drew significantly more social, informal, and playful activities than the other two groups did. The place for literacy learning switched from school (kindergarteners and first graders) to home (third graders). No gender difference was identified. This study provides insight into developing curricula that smooth children's transition from kindergarten to elementary school.

The flipped classroom has gained a great deal of attention in educational research and practice in recent years. The purposes of this study are to understand the relationship between students' online self-regulated learning (SRL) and their perceptions of learning in a flipped classrooms (FC), to identify possible mediators in this relationship, and to explain how this relationship predicts students' intentions to participate in an FC. Two questionnaires were used to gather data from 576 undergraduate or graduate students in Taiwan. The structural equation model showed that students' in-class interactions and online SRL are predictors of their perceived quality of usefulness of online learning activities and positive experience of FC, and these, in turn, associate with their intentional behaviours of participating in FC. While students' perceived value of interactions in physical classrooms directly related to their intentions to participate in FC, their online SRL predicts their intentions to participate in flipped learning only when mediated by the perceived quality of the usefulness of the online learning activities and positive experience of FC.

The major purpose of this study was to develop a survey to measure elementary school teachers' self-efficacy for web-based professional development. Based on interviews with eight elementary school teachers, three scales of web-based professional development self-efficacy (WPDSE) were formed, namely, general self-efficacy (measuring teachers' general capabilities of using Internet tools or completing basic web-based tasks), interaction self-efficacy (assessing teachers' perceived abilities of engaging in interactions in online professional development activities), and applying self-efficacy (evaluating teachers' confidence level of applying what they have learned in web-based professional development to their future teaching). The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) indicated that the three scales of WPDSE arising from the interviews and the Cronbach alpha values, ranging from 0.92 to 0.85, were acceptable. Subsequently, a large-scale survey was conducted to examine the relationships between teachers' self-efficacy and attitudes toward web-based professional development with a sample of 214 elementary school teachers in Taiwan using a questionnaire that included WPDSE and an established scale for measuring attitudes toward web-based professional development (AWPD). The results indicated that teachers' self-efficacy played a positive role in their attitudes towards web-based professional development. The results also indicated that teachers' confidence in their interaction self-efficacy and in their applying self-efficacy was more important than their confidence in their general self-efficacy in predicting their attitudes toward web-based professional development. Implications of the study findings were also discussed.

This study reported an investigation of eighth graders' (14-year-olds) web searching strategies and outcomes, and then analyzed their correlations with students' web experiences, epistemological beliefs, and the nature of searching tasks. Eighty-seven eighth graders were asked to fill out a questionnaire for probing epistemological beliefs (from positivist to constructivist-oriented views) and finished three different types of searching tasks. Their searching process was recorded by screen capture software and answers were reviewed by two expert teachers based on their accuracy, richness and soundness. Five quantitative indicators were used to assess students' searching strategies: number of keywords, visited pages, maximum depth of exploration, refinement of keyword, and number of words used in the first keyword. The main findings derived from this study suggested that, students with richer web experiences could find more correct answers in "close-ended" search tasks. In addition, students with better metacognitive skills such as keyword refinement tended to achieve more successful searching outcomes in such tasks. However, in "open-ended" tasks, where questions were less certain and answers were more elaborated, students who had more advanced epistemological beliefs, concurring with a constructivist view, had better searching outcomes in terms of their soundness and richness. This study has concluded that epistemological beliefs play an influential role in open-ended Internet learning environments. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

The flipped classroom has gained a great deal of attention in educational research and practice in recent years. The purposes of this study are to understand the relationship between students' online self-regulated learning (SRL) and their perceptions of learning in a flipped classrooms (FC), to identify possible mediators in this relationship, and to explain how this relationship predicts students' intentions to participate in an FC. Two questionnaires were used to gather data from 576 undergraduate or graduate students in Taiwan. The structural equation model showed that students' in-class interactions and online SRL are predictors of their perceived quality of usefulness of online learning activities and positive experience of FC, and these, in turn, associate with their intentional behaviours of participating in FC. While students' perceived value of interactions in physical classrooms directly related to their intentions to participate in FC, their online SRL predicts their intentions to participate in flipped learning only when mediated by the perceived quality of the usefulness of the online learning activities and positive experience of FC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]