Over the last years great efforts have been made within the University environment to implement e-learning technologies in the standard educational practice. These learning technologies distribute online educational multimedia contents through technological platforms. Even though specific e-learning tools for technical disciplines were already…

Many studies have shown that learners' sustained attention strongly affects e-learning performance, particularly during online synchronous instruction. This work thus develops a novel attention monitoring and alarm mechanism (AMAM) based on brainwave signals to improve learning performance via monitoring the attention state of individual learners…

Collaborative problem-solving in the classroom is a student-centred pedagogical practice that looks to improve learning. However, collaboration does not occur spontaneously; instead it needs to be guided by appropriate scaffolding. In this study we explore whether a script that explicitly incorporates constructing arguments in collaborative…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of embedding collaboration into a game with a self-explanation design for supporting the acquisition of light and shadow concepts. The participants were 184 fourth graders who were randomly assigned to three conditions: a solitary mode of the game with self-explanation, a collaborative mode with…

When faced with excessive detail in an online environment, typical users have difficulty processing all the elements of representation. This in turn creates cognitive overload, which narrows the user's focus to a few select items. In the context of e-learning, we translated this aspect as the learner's demand for a system that facilitates the…

This exploratory case study examined the process and potential impact of collaborative architectural design and construction in an OpenSimulator-based virtual reality (VR) on the social skills development of children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Two children with a formal medical diagnosis of HFA and one typically developing peer, aged…

A model is proposed to assess the effect of different content representation design principles on learners' intuitive beliefs about using e-learning. We hypothesized that the impact of the representation of course contents is mediated by the design principles of alignment, quantity, clarity, simplicity, and affordance, which influence the…

This paper reports on a global learning partnership using "the Café: the collaborative application for education" as an e-learning environment within the Facebook framework, for first-year animation students at the University of South Australia (USA) in Australia and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "The Café" has…

The new pedagogical opportunities that massive open online course (MOOC) learning environments offer for the teaching of fee-paying students on university-accredited courses are of growing interest to educators. This paper presents a case study from a postgraduate-taught course at the Open University, UK, where a MOOC performed the dual role of a…

Researchers have pointed out that interactive e-books have rich content and interactive features which can promote students' learning interest. However, researchers have also indicated the need to integrate effective learning supports or tools to help students organize what they have learned so as to increase their learning performance, in…

In Taiwan, teaching focuses around lecturing, with students having little opportunity to interact with each other. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a means of instruction where students learn the subject by being active participants in the pedagogical process, with the emphasis on problem-solving. In this study, the authors investigated whether PBL…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the degree that creative and playful learning (CPL) in a technology-enriched playground influences academic achievement of students and what factors are responsible for successes. The participants were 276 students from 12 elementary classrooms in the Netherlands and Finland. The…

This study investigates how scaffolding type and learners' epistemological beliefs influence ill-structured problem solving. The independent variables in this study include the type of scaffolding (task-supported, self-monitoring) and the student's epistemological belief level (more advanced, less advanced). The dependent variables include three…

This research explores issues related to the sequencing of structure that is provided as pedagogical guidance. A study was conducted that involved grade 10 students in Singapore as they learned concepts about electricity using four NetLogo Investigations of Electricity agent-based models. It was found that the low-to-high structure learning…

Because computers generally make children passive listeners, new technological devices need to support children's storytelling activities. This article introduces the StoryTech, a smart toy that includes a virtual space comprised of computer-based graphics and characters as well as a real space that involves stuffed animals, background cards…