Recent advances in publicly available natural language processors (NLP) may enhance the efficiency of analyzing student short-answer responses in physics education research (PER). We train a state-of-the-art NLP, IBM's Watson, and test its agreement with human coders using two different studies that gathered text responses in which students…

Software is usually considered enabler for innovation in education. Thus, it is necessary to investigate: What leads to innovation in education and which, therefore, should be considered in the development of educational software? How to support decision-making for choosing software to be used in teaching and learning? How to evaluate software…

There are several educational software (ES) used in the classroom environment for the teaching and learning of geometric contents that are part of the Portuguese basic education mathematics program. There are studies that show that the use of this type of artifact has a fundamental role in the behavior of students, raising, among other aspects, a…

Immunology is a knowledge area of paramount importance in life sciences and health care professional education with diverse applications, as well as for a general public understanding of issues related to vaccination. However, many concepts are complex and difficult to understand based only on conventional classes or static images. The use of…

This study aims to examine the difference in students' satisfaction with the Quality Characteristics (QualChar) of the Digital Learning Systems (DLs) with regards to gender and frequency of interaction between students-students and students-teachers. A cross-sectional online quantitative survey was used to collect data from English language…

MOTIVATIC WEB is a software platform in which teachers can co-design activities for their students using three different gamified mechanics. This article presents the results of the technology acceptance evaluation by users. The evaluation considered aspects related to perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use, behavioural intention to use, and…

Students within higher education increasingly expect a teaching and learning environment which makes effctive use of technology enhanced learning and respond particularly well to information delivered using a visual medium. One way in which colleagues have responded is through the increased use of new, free presentation software. This review…

Since the advent of the iPhone and rise of mobile technologies, educational apps represent one of the fastest growing markets, and both the mobile technology and educational app markets are predicted to continue experiencing growth into the foreseeable future. The irony, however, is that even with a booming market for educational apps, very little…

Written clarity and conciseness are desired by employers and emphasized in business communication courses. We developed and tested the efficacy of a cueing tool--Scribe Bene--to help students reduce their use of imprecise and ambiguous words and wordy phrases. Effectiveness was measured by comparing cue word usage between a treatment group given…

This paper presents a piece of educational software covering a comprehensive number of topics of chemical kinetics, which is available free of charge in Portuguese and English. The software was developed to support chemistry educators and students in the teaching-learning process of chemical kinetics by using animations, calculations, and…

The MiGen project is designing and developing an intelligent exploratory environment to support 11-14-year-old students in their learning of algebraic generalization. Deployed within the classroom, the system also provides tools to assist teachers in monitoring students' activities and progress. This paper describes the design of these Teacher…

This article presents the case for a theory-informed approach to designing and evaluating representations for implementation in digital tools to support Learning Design, using the framework of epistemic efficacy as an example. This framework, which is rooted in the literature of cognitive psychology, is operationalised through dimensions of fit…

This paper reports a study conducted to formally evaluate a social problem-solving skills game during the start of the development to ensure that the desired game attributes were successfully embodied in the final game. Two methods, heuristic evaluation and participatory design, were adopted to assess whether the features of the game pose…

The increasing number of digital anatomy teaching software packages challenges anatomy educators on how to best integrate these tools for teaching and learning. Realistically, there exists a complex interplay of design, implementation, politics, and learning needs in the development and integration of software for education, each of which may be…

Assessment of practical clinical skills is essential in the health fields. Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs), where examiners assess students performing clinical procedures on simulated patients (actors), are central to the evaluation of practical skills. However, traditional OSCEs require considerable time-investment to administer, and…