Education Commons^™

Children's Media Making, But Not Sharing: The Potential And Limitations Of Child-Specific Diy Media Websites, Sara Grimes, Deborah A. Fields

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

From drawing pictures to making home movies, children have long produced their own, do-it-yourself (DIY) media at the individual and local scales. Today, children's DIY media creation increasingly takes place online, using digital technologies and tools that allow them to not only produce but also share their ideas with the world. This article relays findings from the first stages of a three-year inquiry project into the opportunities and challenges associated with the rise of children's online DIY media: an extensive media scan to identify websites and an in-depth content analysis of the terms and conditions, privacy policies and overall site …

Combining High-‐‐Speed Cameras And Stop-‐‐Motion Animation Software To Support Students’ Modeling Of Human Body Movement, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Biomechanics, and specifically the biomechanics associated with human movement,is a potentially rich backdrop against which educators can design innovative science teaching and learning activities. Moreover, the use of technologies associated with biomechanics research, such as high-‐‐speed cameras that can produce high quality slow-‐‐motion video, can be deployed in such a way to support students’ participation in practices of scientific modeling. As participants in classroom design experiment, fifteen fifth-‐‐grade students worked with high-‐‐speed cameras and stop-‐‐motion animation software (SAM Animation) over several days to produce dynamic representations of motion and body movement. The designed series of learning activities involved iterative cycles …

Understanding The Opportunities And Challenges Of Introducing Computational Crafts To Alternative High School Students, Maneksha Dumont, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In recent years, the integration of computation with crafting has garnered increased attention. Partly spurred by the growth of the “maker movement” and also by recognition of the importance of broadening computational interest and proficiency, computational crafts have become more familiar to educational technologists and designers. For example, computation has been combined with textile design in summer camps for young people (Buechley, Eisenberg, Catchen & Crockett, 2008) and integrated into media as pervasive as paper (Eisenberg, Elumeze, MacFerrin & Buechley, 2009). Additionally, maker spaces are being established in major metropolitan areas, Maker Faires are becoming increasingly ubiquitous (Dougherty, 2012), university …

Students’ Digital Photography Behaviors During A Multiday Environmental Science Field Trip And Their Recollections Of Photographed Science Content, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Taking photographs to document the experiences of an educational field trip is becoming a common activity for teachers and students alike. Considering the regular creation of photographic artifacts, our goal in this paper is to explore students’ picture taking behavior and their recollections of science content associated with their photographs. In this study, we partnered with a class of fifth-grade students in the United States and provided each student with a digital camera to document their experiences during an environmental science field trip at a national park. We report the frequency of photography behaviors according to which activities were most …

Building On Background Knowledge To Formulate Researchable Questions, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

At the recent ALA Midwinter Conference in Seattle, I moderated the AASL-sponsored Hot Topics discussion on “Genre-fying” the collection. Six panelists presented a variety of viewpoints on how to handle an issue that is being widely discussed. A number of librarians have implemented the change, reclassifying their nonfiction titles using letters identifying the genre. Some have used EBSCO’s NoveList as a source for the categories they chose, others have used their own ideas. A few have integrated fiction within the nonfiction. A more limited approach is to “genre-fy” the fiction collection. Those who have made the change point to increased …

Promoting And Evaluating Online Learner-Instructor Relationships, Yanghee Kim, R Burdo, T Chen

Yanghee Kim

Emotions that a learner brings to the learning context can influence engagement, self-regulation, and achievement. Recently, researchers have called for examination on the impact of learner emotions in online learning environments. This study examines how to incorporate learner/instructor relationship aspects in online instruction and promote affective relationships with the learners. Participants enrolled in a college statistics course took a weeklong video-based module covering Normal Distribution. Learner attitudes, learner self-efficacy, learner/instructor relationship, and learning gains were evaluated. The relationship building strategies were found to have positive impacts on learner attitudes and self-efficacy. The inclusion of the relationship building strategies, however, did …

Keeping Up: Shifting Access To Gateway Resources In A Cycling Community Of Practice, Joel Drake, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

While learning involves changes in one’s participation within a community of practice, changes in participants can also change access to resources key to newcomer participation. This poster presents a case study of a recreational cycling community illustrating how community changes diminished newcomers’ access to resources for drafting.

Becoming Reflective: Designing For Reflection On Physical Performances, Tom Moher, Cynthia Carter Ching, Sara Schaefer, Victor R. Lee, Noel Enyedy, Joshua Danish, Paulo Guerra, Alessandro Gnoli, Priscilla Jimenez, Brenda Lopez-Silva, Leilah Lyons, Anthony Perritano, Brian Slattery, Mike Tissenbaum, James Slotta, Rebecca Cober, Cresencia Fong

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Learners’ physical performances can serve as focal objects for reflection and insight across a variety of contexts and content areas. This session brings together a set of projects that leverage the physical performances of learners, construct concrete and abstract representations of those performances, and investigate how learners reflect on and understand the relationships between their performances and target content—physics, health and fitness, data literacy and navigation, animal foraging, and climate change. The session will share findings and design principles from each of the studies around constructing technological scaffolds for physical performance reflections. The symposium highlights the various ways performance can …

Examining How Students Make Sense Of Slow-Motion Video, Min Yuan, Nam Ju Kim, Joel Drake, Scott Smith, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Slow-motion video is starting to appear in science classrooms as a source of data for students to examine. However, seeing important features in such video requires a particular kind of student engagement and supported acts of noticing. This poster reports on an exploratory study of what students noticed and talked about when viewing slow-motion video during a classroom design experiment focused on bodily activity as it relates to motion and animation.

What's Happening In The "Quantified Self" Movement?, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Rapid adoption of wearable tracking devices and motion sensitive apps has led to the development of the “Quantified Self” movement (QS). Some in the learning sciences community have begun to take notice and incorporate ideas from QS into the research and design of new learning environments. Yet the QS movement is still new enough that very little is known about it, and there are many open questions about how QS might be of value to the learning sciences. This paper provides some history of the movement and through a qualitative analysis of a public video corpus of QS presentations, identifies …

More Than Just Plain Old Technology Adoption: Understanding Variations In Teachers' Use Of An Online Planning Tool, Heather Leary, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper examines variability in teachers’ usage patterns as they interacted with an online teacher support tool, the Curriculum Customization Service (CCS), as part of their professional work. The CCS is a web application that supports teachers in planning, adapting, sequencing, and enacting differentiated instruction in Earth science education. By mining the usage log files of over 40 teachers who used the CCS over a yearlong period, we analyzed for variability using a framework developed in marketing research to characterize appropriation of technology. This analysis helped reveal different kinds of teachers’ patterns along two dimensions: frequency and variability of use. …

Mixing The Emic And Etic Perspectives: A Study Exploring Development Of Fixed-Answer Questions To Measure In-Service Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, M. Brooke Robertshaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation study was to develop fixed-answer questions to measure teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge when teaching with online learning resources. Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a framework to describe the kind of knowledge that teachers use when they are teaching with technology. Online learning resources include text, video, images, and interactive websites that teachers can use to help teach subject matter to their students. Fixed-answer questions are the kinds of questions found on standardized tests like the SAT, and tests that K-12 students take as a part of state and national testing. Many measures have …

A Clinical Interview For Assessing Student Learning In A University-Level Craft Technology Course, Victor R. Lee, Deborah A. Fields

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper describes the design and development of a clinical interview protocol, the “Interactive Toy Interview” (ITI), that was used to assess prior knowledge and resultant learning among undergraduate students enrolled in a new, university-level “Craft Technologies” course. This new course involved several weeks of project work with electronic textiles and soft circuits. The ITI draws on prior work assessing learning with e-textiles, such as circuit diagram drawing tasks and ‘debuggems’, but it is based on use of existing commercial toys and objects. We present excerpts from interviews with a student who reported no prior background with sewing, circuitry, or …

The Quantified Self (Qs) Movement And Some Emerging Opportunities For The Educational Technology Field, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The Quantified Self (QS) movement is a growing global effort to use new mobile and wearable technologies to automatically obtain personal data about everyday activities. The social and material infrastructure associated with the Quantified Self (QS) movement provides a number of ideas that educational technologists should consider incorporating and using. This article discusses some recent efforts to bring the movement to the practices of the educational technology field and presents some issues to consider in the future.

Cognitive Task Analysis-Based Training: A Metaanalysisof Studies, Colby Tofel-Grehl, David F. Feldon

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Cognitive task analysis (CTA) is enjoying growing popularity in both research and practice as a foundational element of instructional design. However, there exists relatively little research exploring its value as a foundation for training through controlled studies. Furthermore, highly individualized approaches to conducting CTA do not permit broadly generalizable conclusions to be drawn from the findings of individual studies. Thus, examining the magnitude of observed effects across studies from various domains and CTA practitioners is essential for assessing replicable effects. This study reports the findings from a meta-analysis that examines the overall effectiveness of CTA across practitioners and settings in …

Examining Relationships Among Student Interim Proficiency, School Environment, And Student End-Of-Year Proficiency, Kathy Janzen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research on variables that are related to student academic proficiency has intensified due to the increased emphasis on high achievement for all students. The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the relative strength of the relationship between the school's learning environment and student achievement, and a literacy benchmark assessment and student achievement. Schools in the state of Utah that administered the Indicators of School Quality (ISQ) survey during the 2010-2011 school year and the Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments during the same school year were included in the study.

The study examined a combination of …

Quantified Recess: Design Of An Activity For Elementary Students Involving Analyses Of Their Own Movement Data, Victor R. Lee, Joel R. Drake

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Recess is often a time for children in school to engage recreationally in physically demanding and highly interactive activities with their peers. This paper describes a design effort to encourage fifth-grade students to examine sensitivities associated with different measures of center by having them analyze activities during recess using over the course of a week using Fitbit activity trackers and TinkerPlots data visualization software. We describe the activity structure some observed student behaviors during the activity. We also provide a descriptive account, based on video records and transcripts, of two students who engaged thoughtfully with their recess data and developed …

Digital Physical Activity Data Collection And Use By Endurance Runners And Distance Cyclists, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The introduction of sensor technologies to sports has allowed athletes to quantify and track their performance, adding an information-based layer to athletic practices. This information layer is particularly prevalent in practices involving formal competition and high levels of physical endurance, such as biking and running. We interviewed 20 athletes who participated in distance cycling or endurance running and also had experience using these technologies. This paper presents two cases and a number of shorter descriptive examples from these interviews that illustrate the factors salient to the introduction of these athletes to their respective sports, their continued participation in running or …

Knowing And Learning With Technology (And On Wheels!): An Introduction To The Special Issue, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This special issue of Technology, Knowledge and Learning is dedicated to bicycles and computing. Yes, you read that correctly. The theme of the issue is really and truly bicycles and computing.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Utah Career And Technical Education Introduction Course, Debra Marie Spielmaker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Utah State Office of Education Career and Technical supported this quantitative study that evaluated the gains and outcome evaluations of the compulsory Career and Technical Education (CTE) Introduction course. All public school seventh grade students are required to enroll in this school-year course. The matched pair design used preexisting data to analyze 6,078 pre- and postsurvey responses collected at the beginning of the course and again at the end of the course during the 2011-2012 school year. The evaluation was viewed through a postpositivist lens and used a theory-based evaluation model as the framework for analysis. The research questions …

Searching To Learn : Using Search Results To Build Concept Knowledge, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Teacher Design Using Online Learning Resources: A Comparative Case Study Of Science And Mathematics Teachers, Mimi Recker

Mimi Recker

Using a comparative case study design, this paper explores the impacts of a technology-related professional development (TTPD) design aimed at helping science and mathematics teachers design classroom activities using the wealth of resources available on the Internet. Using the lens of curricular adaption and the notion of teachers’ varying pedagogical design capacity, we analyzed the experiences of four teachers in terms of the kinds of instructional activities teachers designed, how these were supported with online resources, and teachers’ perceptions of impacts on student learning. Findings suggested that participants used a variety of personally relevant design strategies when applying TTPD concepts …

Teacher Design Using Online Learning Resources: A Comparative Case Study Of Science And Mathematics Teachers, Mimi Recker

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Using a comparative case study design, this paper explores the impacts of a technology-related professional development (TTPD) design aimed at helping science and mathematics teachers design classroom activities using the wealth of resources available on the Internet. Using the lens of curricular adaption and the notion of teachers’ varying pedagogical design capacity, we analyzed the experiences of four teachers in terms of the kinds of instructional activities teachers designed, how these were supported with online resources, and teachers’ perceptions of impacts on student learning. Findings suggested that participants used a variety of personally relevant design strategies when applying TTPD concepts …

The Effect Of The Visual Gender Of An Embodied Agent: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, Yanghee Kim, A Guiz, A Silveryarg, M Haake, T Chen, N Kim

Yanghee Kim

This study explored if the visual gender representations (androgynous, male, or female) of an embodied agent would influence students’ perceptions of their agent and their attitudes toward the agent as their conversational partner. The study also explored if students’ gender and cultural background would interact with the agent’s visual gender to influence their perceptions and attitudes. Participants were 208 early-teen students sampled from US and South Korea. The results revealed that student gender was a significant factor for influencing students' perceptions and attitudes and that the students showed positive attitudes toward an androgynous agent more than toward a gendered agent …

Variable Appropriation Of An Online Resource Discovery And Sharing Tool, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker, Tamara Sumner

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Even when following best practices for participatory design, the appropriation of tools in formal education settings can be hampered by a number of factors. Drawing from a case of a web tool built to help teachers in five school districts find and share free resources in an educational digital library, we describe patterns of tool use and provide some explanations for variability in tool appropriation. We also suggest that future research consider school districts as complex systems of professionals whose interactions and inter-relationships may yield unexpected technology adoption behaviors.

Picking Up The Mantle Of “Expert”: Assigned Roles, Assertion Of Identity, And Peer Recognition Within A Programming Class, Deborah A. Fields, N. Enyedy

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Changing an established role in a classroom is difficult. It involves constructing a new set of relations within a community. In this article we investigate how students with newly developed interest and experience in programming developed outside the classroom pick up and establish their roles as experts in programming within the classroom community. More specifically, we focus on how two 11-year-old software designers shifted their established roles in their classroom to gain status as expert programmers. We use an identity lens to understand how peer expertise was established in the context of a classroom community, adopting a multifaceted perspective of …

As Seen Through The Lens: Students’ Encounters And Engagement With Science During Outdoor Field Trips, Jonathan Z. Boxerman, Victor R. Lee, J. R. Olson

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gendered Socialization With An Embodied Agent: Creating A Social And Affable Mathematics Learning Environment For Middle-Grade Females, Yanghee Kim, Jae Hoon Lim

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This study examined whether or not embodied-agent-based learning would help middle-grade females have more positive mathematics learning experiences. The study used an explanatory mixed-methods research design. First, a classroom-based experiment was conducted with one hundred and twenty 9th-graders learning introductory algebra (53% male and 47% female; 51% Caucasian and 49% Latino). The results revealed that learner gender was a significant factor in the learners’ evaluations of their agent (η2 = .07), the learners’ task-specific attitudes (η2 = .05), and their task-specific self-efficacy (η2 = .06). In-depth interviews were then conducted with 22 students selected from the experiment participants. The interviews …

Navigating Life As An Avatar: The Shifting Identities-In-Practice Of A Girl Player In A Tween Virtual World, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In this chapter we study how one girl learned to participate in what was for her a new setting of play – a virtual world called Whyville.net with an emphasis on science education, populated by over a million young people ages eight to sixteen. Girls in particular have become prominent players in virtual worlds, a trend counter to many early observations that documented the absence of girls and women in gaming and technology at large (e.g., Cassell & Jenkins, 1998). The study of virtual worlds as play spaces then allows us to continue a conversation about gender and gaming to …

Designing For Problem-Based Learning: A Comparative Study Of Technology Professional Development, Lei Ye, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, M. Brooke Robertshaw, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Despite of much focus on professional development aimed specifically at developing teachers' technology integration skills, rigorous studies of effective PD (professional development) are lacking. Evidence is also lacking on how these skills can best be integrated with pedagogical and content knowledge to improve student learning. The purpose of this article is to present two "design-oriented" TTPD (technology-related teacher professional development) designs and investigate the designs' impact on teachers. In one TTPD (tech-only), teachers learned technology skills to create activities using online learning resources. In the other (tech+PBL), teachers learned to create PBL (problem-based learning) activities using online resources. All teachers …