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This article reflects upon the work by Tracey and Hutchinson, Empathic design: Imagining the cognitive and emotional learner experience. Educational Technology Research and Development, 67(5), 1259–1272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09683-2 , 2019, “Empathic design: imagining the cognitive and emotional learner experience”. They examined a notion of empathic design in the instructional designer’s practice of redesigning a course to promote interaction and collaboration among physicians, radiobiologists, and radiation physicists. Albeit the empathic design is important in designing any instruction including the ones in digital learning environments, instructional designers need to consider more aspects related to learner’s emotional experiences. Cognitive load theory can guide instructional designers towards identifying learner’s potential emotional experiences based on intrinsic, extrinsic, and germane cognitive load. Future suggestions and needs to consider other types of affective domain are also discussed.

The Korean Society for Educational Technology (KSET) hosted its second panel discussion partnering with the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) at the 2019 AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. A total of four panelists, two from Korea and two from the U.S., participated in the discussion on the trends of educational technology in Korea and in the U.S. for one hour. The topics covered were smart schools in a smart city of Korea, characteristics of mobile learning environments, learning analytics for instructional design, and artificial intelligence for learning sciences research.

Pre-service students in an elementary education program were involved in an educational technology course project where they created a virtual field trip using 360° virtual reality (VR) technology....

The Every Student Succeeds Act supports personalized learning (PL) to close achievement gaps of diverse K-12 learners in the United States. Implementing PL into a classroom entails a paradigm change of the educational system. However, it is demanding to transform traditional practice into a personalized one under the pressure of the annual standardized testing while it is unclear which PL approaches are more likely to result in better academic outcomes than others. Using national survey data of ELA teachers in identified learner-centered schools, this study compared high and low-performing learner-centered schools (determined by their standardized test results) in terms of their use of five PL features (personalized learning plan, competency-based student progress, criterion-referenced assessment, project- or problem-based learning, and multi-year mentoring) and their use of technology for the four functions of planning, learning, assessment, and recordkeeping. Generally, teachers in high-performing schools implemented PL more thoroughly and utilized technology for more functions than those in low-performing schools. Teachers in high-performing schools more frequently considered career goals when creating personal learning plans, shared the project outcomes with the community, and assessed non-academic outcomes. They stayed longer with the same students and developed close relationships with more students. Also, they more frequently used technology for sharing resources and reported having a more powerful technology system than those in low-performing schools. This study informs educators, administrators, and researchers of which PL approaches and technology uses are more likely to result in better academic outcomes measured by standardized assessments.

Personalized Learning (PL) has been widely promoted. Despite the increasing interest in PL, it is difficult to be implemented, because it can be complicated, costly, and even impossible without the help of powerful and advanced technology. This national survey study aimed at systematically investigating technology usage and needs of teachers in learner-centered schools in the U.S based on the conceptual framework of the Personalized Integrated Education System (PIES). PIES specifies four major functions: recordkeeping, planning, instruction, and assessment. A total of 308 learner-centered schools were identified that met at least three of the five criteria of PL: (1) personalized learning plans, (2) competency-based student progress, (3) criterion-referenced assessment, (4) problem- or project-based learning, and (5) multi-year mentoring. Survey responses of 245 teachers from 41 schools were analyzed. Results indicate that only 12% of teachers responded that they had a technology system that integrated the four major functions. Among the rest, 21% reported that they had no such systems. Technology was most widely used for planning and instruction but not for recordkeeping and assessment.

A modified conceptual framework called the Continuous-Change Framework for self-regulated learning (SRL) is presented. Common elements and limitations among the past frameworks are discussed in rel...

With growing interest in and popularity of online learning and lifelong learners, students’ ability to be engaged in self-regulated learning (SRL) has become more important. Moreover, online learning is becoming an important feature of K-12 education. Although SRL is known to be important and teachable, little research has been conducted on teachers’ practices and perceptions of SRL. Survey responses of 112 teachers who were teaching at K-12 online schools in the United States revealed that they perceived the importance of both their students’ SRL and their own responsibility for teaching SRL to their students. However, the survey also showed that their practices for supporting SRL had a narrow focus concentrating on conventional teaching, which may have prevented their students from developing the full range of SRL abilities. Possible solutions, limitations, and implication of the study were also discussed.

Action learning differentiates itself from other inquiry-based learning approaches in that it requires learners to take actions based on project outcomes. While implementing their plans and reflecting on consequences of their actions, learners are given more and varied learning opportunities. Despite the apparent benefits of action learning, it entails a more complex process and a higher level of involvement from top management than do ordinary training programs. This article seeks to identify benefits and limitations of action learning and proposes a process model that enhances its benefits and helps to overcome its limitations. Thirty-one research studies from academic journals were reviewed to identify espoused benefits and limitations of action learning. Those findings were used as the foundation for development of the PAIR model.

The learner-centered paradigm of instruction differs in such fundamental ways from the teacher-centered paradigm that it requires technology to serve very different functions. In 2006, a research team at Indiana University began to work on identifying those functions and published their results in 2008. Subsequently, the team elaborated and refined those functional specifications, which are described herein as the Personalized Integrated Educational System (PIES), a technology system that has not yet been developed to support learner-centered education. The four major functions are recordkeeping for student learning, planning for student learning, instruction for student learning, and assessment for and of student learning. Secondary functions include communication and collaboration, PIES administration, and improvement of PIES. Each of these functions is described in detail, followed by specifications for the system architecture, including interoperability, modularity, and customizability.

This case study was conducted in two high school classrooms that utilized collaborative project-based learning (PBL). Collaboration is an important instructional strategy, especially used in conjunction with PBL, and is an essential learning outcome for the twenty-first century. This study examined how collaboration can be achieved as a learning outcome and used effectively as an instructional method by understanding what causes task-, process-, and relationship-related intragroup conflict and how social skills are related to intragroup conflict and collaboration at both the individual and group levels. Literature suggests that, while task-related conflict serves as a catalyst for collaboration, process- and relationship-related conflicts are detrimental to collaboration and impede learning. Social interdependence theory suggests that social skills play an important role in enhancing collaboration and resolving conflicts. Data were collected through online questionnaires and follow-up interviews. Interview data were analyzed using a qualitative data analysis approach. The survey data were analyzed using multi-level structural equation modeling, which allowed us to reveal an interesting relationship between group-level social skills and collaboration. Results suggest that different individual difference factors triggered each type of conflict, and most of the groups experienced more than one type of conflict simultaneously. Task and process conflicts were often transformed into relationship conflict, when social skills were lacking. Interestingly, group-level social skills were more influential than individual members’ social skills in reducing intragroup conflict and enhancing collaboration.

Effort to determine teachers’ effects on student has been continuously made with national data. However, paucity of research has been conducted on how teachers’ instructional strategies impact on student learning with national data, although instructional theories suggest a direct relationship between instructional strategies and learning outcomes. Therefore, the relationship between teachers’ use of instructional strategies and learning outcomes should be examined with national data. This study investigates how much teacher’s instructional strategies explain student learning in mathematics and what instructional strategies are positively related to student learning outcomes. Revised Bloom’s taxonomy was used to define instructional strategies that support different levels of cognitive processes. The U.S. 8th grade mathematics data from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study was analyzed using multilevel modeling. As results, teachers’ instructional strategies explained approximately 12% at the individual level and 17% at the teacher level of the learning outcome. Also, asking student to write equations and functions to represent relationships and to decide on their own procedures for solving complex problems were positively and significantly related to student learning outcomes.

Based on Bandura’s work, the four sources of efficacy shaping were examined in regard to frequency and students’ perception of importance in a computer-mediated, project-based high school classroom. In a context of group work where there was no designated leader, groups’ collective efficacy was examined if it has any relationship with individual’s leadership traits. In addition, the relationship between the existence of group-identified leader and the groups’ collective efficacy as well as the relationship between the collective efficacy and the groups’ performance outcome were examined. The results from survey and interview showed that mastery experience was the most frequent and powerful source of efficacy shaping among the four sources. Moreover, the groups with identified leader showed higher collective efficacy than the groups without leaders, and the groups’ collective efficacy level showed positive correlation with the groups’ performance outcome.

When I was completing my coursework for both my MS and PhD programs in instructional systems technology, I was exposed to a number of theories, models, principles, and frameworks for the fields of instructional and performance technologies. Theories have provided me with a solid understanding of the relationships among various constructs and also provided me with explanations of certain phenomena, whereas models, principles, and frameworks have provided me with concrete ideas as to how to apply theoretical knowledge to actual instructional design and development (IDD) and human performance technology (HPT) projects.

Aslan and Reigeluth (2011) described a possible future period of educational computing as a “Personalized Computing Period” (p. 12). They described a potential educational technology system, PIES (Personalized Integrated Educational System), to support student learning in this period of educational computing, based on the major and secondary functions proposed by Reigeluth, Watson, Watson, Dutta, Chen, and Powell (2008) for the information-age paradigm of education. Major functions include record keeping for, planning for, instruction for, and assessment for/of student learning. Secondary functions include communication, general student data, school personnel information, and technology administration. In this qualitative research study, seven classroom teachers and one technology coordinator from three high schools were interviewed to reveal how they used their current technology systems with respect to the functions described by Reigeluth et al. (2008). The results revealed that there were discrepancies between the participants’ current use of the systems and the ideal use for the information-age paradigm of education. Based on the results, recommendations are offered to teachers, policy makers and technology system designers for better meeting students’ information-age educational needs.