Education Commons^™

Integrating Generative Ai In K-12 School Makerspaces, Sayed Mahmoud

Presentations

This presentation explores the integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) within K-12 school makerspaces. It delves into the role of AI in makerspaces, highlighting its potential to enhance creativity and innovation among students. Various makerspace stations augmented with AI are discussed, offering practical examples to illustrate the possibilities. By incorporating AI into makerspaces, educators can cultivate a dynamic learning environment that fosters exploration, problem-solving, and technological literacy in young learners.

Cross-National Comparison Of Gender Discrepancies In Distance Education, Patricia Fidalgo, Joan Thormann, Oleksandr Kulyk, José Alberto Lencastre, Maria João Figueiras

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This research focused on gender discrepancies regarding students’ opinions about distance education (DE). Data was gathered from Emirati, Portuguese, and Ukrainian university students through an online survey during the first term of the 2020/21 academic year before the war in Ukraine. A qualitative content analysis was used to understand gender discrepancies among the participants. Results show that greater gender discrepancies occurred in the categories of overall opinions and usefulness of DE. Men found DE more helpful and had a more positive opinion about DE overall. The discrepancies between males and females were smaller in several other categories, such as distractions …

Universities As Agents For Innovation, Living Values, Sustainable Community Development And Progressive Society Building, Danjoo Ghista, Ravi S. Sharma

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In this paper, we revisit Higher Education 4.0 and examine the power of universities as agents of new knowledge and innovations, for sustainable community development and progressive society building. With the benefit of retrospective economic analysis, we may posit that universities will continue to be central to socio-economic development. We can envision that in the face of a changing economic landscape, universities have the potential to serve as powerful agents of change toward a more equitable, just, and sustainable world. The power of universities in this modern era lies in their ability to create and disseminate knowledge, foster critical thinking, …

Transition To Distance Learning: Student Experience And Communication During The Covid-19 Pandemic In The United Arab Emirates, Soumaya Abdellatif, Aizhan Shomotova, Safouane Trabelsi, Salwa Husain, Najeh Alsalhi, Mohamed Eltahir

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The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 prompted higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to switch to online learning for the safety of their citizens. The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between four indicators of digital learning experience and the intensity of student socio-pedagogical communication after the transition to distance learning. The data were collected from Ajman University, a private university in the UAE, during the spring of 2020. The sample consisted of 381 students who were surveyed using an online survey tool or email. First, this study found that the majority of students …

Arabic Reading Fluency Rates: An Exploratory Study, Hanada Taha Thomure, Gail Brown, Richard Speaker, Haitham Taha, Rana Tamim, Nerolie O'Neill

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Reading fluency has been defined as the process of automatically associating graphemic and phonetic information in a text with minimal conscious attention if any at all. Research has found that the effect of fluency on reading proficiency is of importance to student learning and that increasing oral reading fluency (ORF) rates has been correlated in several studies to improved comprehension. However, no reading fluency rates (FR) or standards in Arabic have been established to date. This exploratory study begins to examine Arabic language ORF and proposes an initial Arabic reading fluency scale. Thirty-five teachers from six private bilingual schools across …

Thinking With Semiotic-Dialogism: Re-Orientating Augmented Reality And Visual Literacy, Zoe Hurley

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Augmented reality (AR) apps, like Adobe’s Aero, enable users to turn Photoshop layers into interactive AR experiences and are considered promising for higher education. But what we see or do not see are mediated via histories, cultural values, ideologies, social practices and technologies. Simultaneously, the ways we receive knowledge, communicate and learn are more than ever being communicated via visual technologies. Yet, theories of visuality within educational research represent a longstanding gap within scholarship and theorising of visual technologies, including AR, is lacking. This study re-orientates conceptions of AR visual literacy through ‘thinking with’ semiotics, which is the study of …

The Effectiveness Of Online Platforms After The Pandemic: Will Face-To-Face Classes Affect Students’ Perception Of Their Behavioural Intention (Biu) To Use Online Platforms?, Rana Saeed Al-Maroof, Noha Alnazzawi, Iman A. Akour, Kevin Ayoubi, Khadija Alhumaid, Nafla Mahdi Alahbabi, Maryam Alnnaimi, Sarah Thabit, Raghad Alfaisal, Ahmad Aburayya, Said Salloum

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The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ intention to continue using online learning platforms during face-to-face traditional classes in a way that is parallel to their usage during online virtual classes (during the pandemic). This investigation of students’ intention is based on a conceptual model that uses newly used external factors in addition to the technology acceptance model (TAM) contrasts; hence, it takes into consideration users’ satisfaction, the external factor of information richness (IR) and the quality of the educational system and information disseminated. The participants were 768 university students who have experienced the teaching environments of both …

Tutors’ Beliefs About Language And Roles: Practice As Language Policy In Emi Contexts, Marion Heron, Doris Dippold, Necmi Aksit, Tijen Aksit, Jill Doubleday, Kara Mckeown

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It has been well established that for all students, but particularly second language (L2) English speaking students, academic English speaking skills are key to developing specialist terminology and disciplinary content in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) context. However, what is less clear in many contexts is the institutional language policy necessary to guide and support both L2 English speaking students and disciplinary tutors. In this paper, we focus on disciplinary tutors’ beliefs of language and their roles with respect to language support to surface implicit and covert language policies. We argue that in the absence of explicit …

The Acceptance Of Social Media Video For Knowledge Acquisition, Sharing And Application: A Comparative Study Among Youyube Users And Tiktok Users’ For Medical Purposes, Rana Al-Maroof, Kevin Ayoubi, Khadija Alhumaid, Ahmad Aburayya, Muhammad Alshurideh, Raghad Alfaisal, Said Salloum

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YouTube and TikTok have gained increasing recognition as social network sites to support online knowledge acquisition, sharing, and application via social media platforms in the medical field. This study examines which aspect of TikTok and YouTube stimulates doctors, nurses, and any other YouTube and TikTok in the medical setting, to rely on them as sources of knowledge acquisition and sharing to keep their medical repertoire updated. A hybrid model is designed to investigate users’ acceptance of YouTube and TikTok as social media platforms. The model focuses on four main external factors: Content richness, innovativeness, satisfaction, and enjoyment. These factors are …

Media And Information Literate Citizens: Think Critically, Click Wisely!, Alton Grizzle, Carolyn Wilson, Ramon Tuazon, Chi Kim Cheung, Jesus Lau, Rachel Fischer, Dorothy Gordon, Kwame Akyempong, Jagtar Singh, Paul R. Carr, Kristine N. Stewart, Samy Tayie, Olunifesi Suraj, Maarit Jaakkola, Gina Thésée, Curmira Gulston

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Can we improve our societies by clicking wisely?

Content providers such as libraries, archives, museums, media and digital communications companies can enable inclusive and sustainable development. However, they do not always live up to these ideals, which creates challenges for the users of these services. Content providers of all types open up new opportunities for lifelong learning. But at the same time, they open up challenges such as misinformation and disinformation, hate speech, and infringement of online privacy, among others.

Media and information literacy is a set of competencies that help people to maximize advantages and minimize harms. Media and …

On The Significance Of Students’ Appraisals Of Their Language Learning Experiences At University: A Phenomenological Approach, Amir Kaviani

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© 2020 Amir Kaviani. This study focusses on students’ appraisals of their language learning experiences at university. Forty students in the third and final academic English course at a university in the UAE participated in the study. The participants completed a written survey which was developed based on Scherer’s (1987, 2001, 2011, 2013) framework of appraisals, i.e. pleasantness, novelty, goal-conduciveness, coping potential and self-compatibility checks. The analysis of the qualitative data indicates that almost all of the participants evaluate their language learning experiences positively and consider the programme to be of great value in enabling them to achieve their academic …

Life Outside Your Comfort Zone: The Power Of Reflection For Cultural Adjustment, Jobila Sy, Natalie Cruz

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© Journal of International Students. This reflective article explores the different experiences of two higher education professionals who utilized intentional reflection to help with the transition to new countries and cultural environments. Both stories focus on how these higher education professionals grappled with challenges of being members of majority and minority groups within the racial and religious contexts of their new environments. The article concludes by sharing recommendations for how other higher education professionals can utilize reflection to help with transition and cultural adjustment.

Feminist Perspectives On Education And Pedagogy: A Meta-Synthetic Insight Into The Thought Of Four American Philosophers, Khadija Alhumaid

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© 2019 Khadija Alhumaid. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). The present paper reports on the views of four prominent feminist intellectuals and philosophers (Maxine Greene, bell hooks, Christine Sleeter and Patti Lather) and how their ideas, coloured by their lifestyles, experiences, careers and beliefs, impacted the educational field. In common, these feminists championed the universal values of equality, freedom, pluralism using different educational and political stratagems. Together, they mapped new terrains of equity and fairness and anti-racist practices as social and educational practices. A free informed conscientious aesthetic and artistic imagination …

Family Volunteers As Alternative Future Resources: School Leaders' Beliefs And Practices, Hazar Hekmat Malluhi, Nayel Musa Alomran

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© 2019, Kassel University Press GmbH. Schools and community engagement are seen as effective factors for making schools a thoughtful place. This case- study employed mixed methodology to explore the phenomena of parent involvement and to know the exact characteristics of the leadership style in the school. This case study examined and described school leaders' perspectives, attitudes and practices towards parents' involvement in an Abu Dhabi primary school using a variety of data sources including, interviews, open-ended teachers' questionnaires, school selfassessment surveys and mothers' council self-assessment surveys. The findings revealed that the school leaders effectively employ multiple collaborative, shared and …

Strategies For Promoting Social Justice In The Math Classroom, Ram Krishna Panthi, Bal Chandra Luitel, Shashidhar Belbase

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the strategies used by the teachers for promoting social justice in the math classroom. An interpretive qualitative research method was applied for data construction, analysis and interpretation through an iterative process. Three math teachers and their three students (one for each teacher) were selected as the research participants purposively from three public secondary schools in Kathmandu. Qualitative narratives were generated through in-depth interviews and classroom observations with each participant. The data analysis went through multiple layers of thematic analyses and interpretations of the narratives from the interview data. Altogether six themes emerged …

Teachers' Perception Of Social Justice In Mathematics Classrooms, Ram Krishna Panthi, Bal Chandra Luitel, Shashidhar Belbase

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The purpose of this study was to explore mathematics teachers' perception of social justice in mathematics classrooms. We applied interpretive qualitative method for data collection, analysis, and interpretation through iterative process. We administered in-depth semi-structured interviews to capture the perceptions of three mathematics teachers about social justice in mathematics classroom at three public secondary schools in Kathmandu. We carried out multiple layers of thematic analysis and interpretation of the narratives from the interview data. Altogether five themes on perception of social justice emerged from the analysis of the data. These themes were associated with - equality, equity, fairness, social process, …

Inquiry-Based Learning: Emirati University Students Choose Whatsapp For Collaboration, Robyn Albers, Christina Davison, Bradley Johnson

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Considerable research has shown the value of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) regarding student engagement and motivation, depth of learning, and cognitive flexibility. Student collaboration is one component of this approach, since students must communicate and work together inside and outside of class time when engaging with an IBL project. Choosing a mobile learning tool can benefit student collaboration in so far as the tool enables anytime/anywhere collaborative learning. This study looked at how 118 Emirati undergraduate students in a government-sponsored university in the United Arab Emirates chose to collaborate in an IBL semester-long assignment. Unlike some approaches that dictate the technology …

Dietary And Activity Habits In Adolescents Living In The United Arab Emirates: A Cross-Sectional Study, Dalia Haroun, Ola Elsaleh, Lesley Wood

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Background : The Global School Health Survey 2010 reported that 40% of pupils aged 12-15 years are overweight or obese; double what was reported in 2005. Following such concerns the government introduced mandatory school health education sessions to students, and produced strict guidelines on school food and drink provision (September 2011). The aim of this survey was to obtain information about adolescents' dietary and activity habits, and their association with the increased prevalence of obesity. Methods : A cross-sectional study of 1,022 students (539 boys; 483 girls) aged 12-16 years, from 17 government schools in Dubai, UAE. Dietary practices and …

Book Review: What Our Stories Teach Us: A Guide To Critical Reflection For College Faculty, Amir Kaviani

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No abstract provided.

A Preliminary Study On The Use Of Mind Mapping As A Visual-Learning Strategy In General Education Science Classes For Arabic Speakers In The United Arab Emirates., Kenesha Wilson

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Mind mapping was introduced as a culturally relevant pedagogy aimed at enhancing the teaching and learning experience in a general education, Environmental Science class for mostly Emirati English Language Learners (ELL). Anecdotal evidence suggests that the students are very artistic and visual and enjoy group-based activities. It was decided to integrate an intervention that would incorporate Emirati artistic and collaborative practices, in an effort to engage them on all levels, such that their academic attainment is positively affected. Preliminary results based on a group of 60 students, from on-going active research, suggest that this method is quite useful in helping …

Book Review: Critical Perspectives On Technology And Education, Jerry Spring

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No abstract provided.