1,720,979 research outputs found
Finding the connection between Game-Design and Problem-Solving: Game-Design and Learning Programs
Full text linkIn today‟s complex and fast-evolving world problem solving is an important skill to possess. For young children to be successful at their future careers they need to have the skill and the will to solve complex problems that are beyond the well-defined problems that they learn to solve at schools. One promising approach to teach complex problem solving skills is using visual programming and game design software. Theoretically and anecdotally, extant research enlightened us about the cognitive and motivational potential of these software. Due to lack of empirical evidence, however, we are far from knowing if these claims are warranted. In this quasi-experimental study, the cognitive (i.e., problem solving) and motivational (i.e., interest and value) impacts of participating at the Game Design and Learning Courses (GDL) on middle school children (n = 49), who designed games following a curriculum based on problem solving skills, were investigated. Compared to students in a control group (n =24), the results showed that students who attended the GDL courses showed significant gains in general and specific (i.e., system analysis and design, decision-making, troubleshooting) problem solving skills, (Wilks‟s Λ = .64), F (4, 68) = 9.564, p\u3c.001. In this presentation, I report empirical outcomes, as well as detailed accounts of the design process for the GDL curriculum. Finally, I discuss implications of the GDL intervention for practice and theory
Instructional Leadership in Turkish Primary Schools: An Analysis of Teachers' Perceptions and Current Policy
No full textSchool leadership, one of the most important aspects of school improvement, has not received much attention from either policymakers or researchers in Turkey despite many countries embrace creating and developing effective leaders as one of the important first steps to improve their education. This research looked at the instructional leadership skills of Turkish principals from the teacher's perspective measured through a survey collected from primary school teachers in five different cities in Turkey, first, to describe the current situation and, second, to find out if teachers' experience and gender affect their views. The results show that Turkish principals practice their instructional leadership roles only occasionally and teachers' gender significantly affects their perception. © The Author(s) 2013
Review of PodOMatic
No full textIn Hampel and Hauck (2004) the basic second language learning theory is summarized as follows: For language acquisition to take place, students must be provided with comprehensible input (Krashen, 1981, 1985), they have to be able to interact to negotiate leaning (Gass & Varonis, 1994; Varonis & Gass, 1985), and they must produce comprehensible output (Swain, 1985). In accordance with this basic theory, most language instruction starts with a good amount of comprehensible input and with the advent of Communicative Language Teaching and other communicative types of teaching methodologies, students are forced to interact with either other learners or the teacher to negotiate meaning. However, while trying to find grounds for learners to communicate and produce comprehensible output, the lack of native speakers has always been seen as something which reduces the effectiveness of communication in that it was not authentic. For years, many institutions have hired native speakers – not necessarily ELT teachers – and made them responsible for speaking classes as the easiest way to solve this problem. The success of this approach can be discussed; however, the dependence upon such outer resources is losing its power in today’s world as new technologies enable us to communicate internationally without any charge and with good audio and even video quality. In this paper, one of these technologies, podcasting, is going to be touched upon and a web-site which enables even the most novice users to use this kind of high-tech technology is reviewed
Cognitive and motivational impacts of learning game design on middle school children
No full textIn today`s complex and fast-evolving world, problem solving is an important skill to possess. For young children to be successful at their future careers, they need to have the skill and the will to solve complex problems that are beyond the well-defined problems that they learn to solve at schools. One promising approach to teach complex problem solving skills is using visual programming and game design software. Theoretically and anecdotally, extant research enlightened us about the cognitive and motivational potential of these software. Due to lack of empirical evidence, however, we are far from knowing if these claims are warranted. In this quasi-experimental study, I investigated the cognitive (i.e., problem solving) and motivational (i.e., interest and value) impacts of participating at the Game Design and Learning Courses (GDL) on middle school children (n = 49), who designed games following a curriculum based on problem solving skills. Compared to students in a control group (n =24), students who attended the GDL courses showed significantly higher gains in general and specific (i.e., system analysis and design, decision-making, troubleshooting) problem solving skills. Because the survey data seriously violated statistical assumptions underlying the analyses, I could not study the motivational impacts of the GDL courses further. Nevertheless, the GDL intervention bears implications for educators and theory.Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, 2013Includes bibliographical references (pages 124-134
Learning Problem-Solving through Making Games
No full textToday’s complex and fast-evolving world necessitates young students to possess design and problem-solving skills more than ever. One alternative method of teaching children problem-solving or thinking skills has been using computer programming, and more recently, game-design tasks. In this pre-experimental study, a group of middle school students (n = 18) with an age average of 12.6 attended a game-design summer program for 10 days. Students were assessed in their problem-solving skills, specifically in system analysis and design, decision-making, and troubleshooting domains, at the beginning and end of the program. The results indicated that there were significant improvements in students’ problem-solving skills after attending the summer program, Wilks’Λ = .258, F (3, 15) = 14.397, p \u3c .001, η 2 = .742. For system analysis and design, and decision-making follow-up t-tests pointed to large and medium effect sizes, while for troubleshooting the gains were not significant. This study is a contributes to the growing body of literature investigating the benefits of designing games for young children by adding that game-design activities can be suitable venues for young children to learn and practice problem-solving skills
Teaching Problem-Solving Skills Through Game-Design: Game-Design and Learning Courses
No full textIn this presentation, I will describe the design, development, and implementation of Game-design and learning (GDL) courses, research-based technology-rich environments that are offered to middle-school students to support their development in important thinking and STEM skills
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Increasing Social Presence in Online Learning through Small Group Discussions
No full textSocial presence is a difficult to achieve, but an imperative component of online learning. In this study, we investigated the effect of group size on students' perceptions of social presence in two graduate-level online courses, comparing small group versus whole class discussions. Our results indicated that when in small group discussions, students perceived a higher level of social presence in terms of sociability, t(32) = 3.507, p = .001; social space, t(29) = 3.074, p = .005; and group cohesion, t(32) = 3.550, p = .001. We discuss how placing students in small and permanent discussion groups can augment social presence. Designers and educators of online learning can strategically modify group size to promote social presence in asynchronous online discussions
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