Search

Although game-based learning strategies have been used in mathematics education for a period of time, the potential for enhancing students' learning achievement and math self-efficacy is still being explored. Students need to face complex mathematics concepts and calculations in mathematics courses. Even though using games to learn mathematics may enhance students' motivation, without efficiently personalized learning guidance, students may not be able to learn well in games. Therefore, adaptive educational games provide opportunities to give students personalized learning content and guidance. The concept-effect relationship is an effective tool for the organization of learning material in developing adaptive diagnostic systems for detecting students' learning problems. In this study, a concept-effect relationship and an interactive game-based learning system were conducted as an effective tool for the organization of learning material in developing a diagnostic and remedial system for detecting students' learning problems. An experiment was conducted on an elementary school mathematics course to evaluate the effects of the proposed approach. The experimental results clearly show that the proposed approach not only improves the efficiency of learning achievement for students, but also enhances their learning attitudes and self-efficacy, and reduces their cognitive load in mathematics courses.

Mathematics has been widely recognized as being challenging for most students. In this study, an online formative peer-tutoring approach was proposed to cope with this problem, and an online learning system was developed accordingly. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted to explore its effects on students' learning behaviors as well as their learning performance and perceptions of the mathematics course. The experimental results showed that both the formative and conventional peer-tutoring approaches significantly improved the students' learning achievement as well as reduced their cognitive load in comparison with conventional online collaborative learning approaches. In addition, the learning behavior analysis results showed that the students playing the role of tutor in the formative peer-tutoring group revealed more appropriate behaviors of assisting their tutees via discussing with them and providing hints to them as well as guiding them to solve the mathematics problems, while the tutees were more willing to ask questions than those learning with the conventional peer-tutoring approach. This implies that the proposed approach could motivate both the tutors and tutees to become active learners with good learning conceptions.

Peer-assessment and video comment-sharing are effective learning strategies for students to receive feedback on their learning. Researchers have emphasized the need for well-designed peer involvement in order to improve students' abilities in the cognitive and affective domains. Although student perceptions of peer-assessment have been studied extensively in higher education, few studies have focused on the effects of the peer-assessment strategy on students' performance from the affective perspective, especially in Physical Education courses. Therefore, in this study, a peer-assessment mobile physical education approach is proposed for developing a mobile learning system for a Kung Fu Tai-Chi physical education course. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted by assigning 42 college students to participate in this learning activity. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only promoted the students' learning interest and motivation, but also improved their learning self-efficacy and socialization.

For students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), reading exercises are critical not only for developing strong reading comprehension, but also for developing listening, speaking, and writing skills. Prior research suggests that social, collaborative learning environments are best suited for improving language ability. However, opportunities for English learners to collaboratively practice reading comprehension are minimal, and due to resource constraints and a lack of accurate evaluation methods, English instructors rarely assess student literacy effectively. In response to these problems, we propose a Tag-based Collaborative reading learning System (TACO) that makes use of Web 2.0 Internet social tagging techniques to provide a collaborative environment for reading English. We test our system's ability to both improve reading comprehension and aid teachers in accurately assessing literacy by conducting a three-month trial with 56 participating Taiwanese high school students from February to May 2009. During this period, post-testing results show a significant improvement in reading scores among participants in our tag-based system, and survey feedback from teachers suggests an improved capacity for literacy assessment. (Contains 5 tables and 11 figures.)