Digital literacy is considered to be crucial for social and professional participation. Hence, several projects have been launched in school, as well as extracurricular activities to promote digital literacy in middle school. They aim, among other things, to increase interest in the so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and…

Engineering has become an important subject in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which have raised engineering design to the same level as scientific inquiry when teaching science disciplines at all levels. Therefore, preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) need to know how to integrate the engineering design process (EDP) into their…

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st-century learning model to implement a week-long workshop, delivered as a "hackathon," to encourage preuniversity teenagers to pursue careers in STEM, with a particular emphasis on computer science. For Irish preuniversity students, their experience of computing can vary from word…

Living in the twenty-first century, life unplugged seems impossible without the Internet, mobile phones, i-products or other types of electronic gadgets for long. While language educators are overwhelmingly occupied with investigating the impact of computers and mobile learning, here is a call to address the value of face-to-face instruction in…

The aim of the study was to present the effect of Lego Mindstorms Ev3 based design activities on students' attitudes towards learning computer programming, self-efficacy beliefs and levels of academic achievement. The research is a pretest-posttest with control group semi-experimental study. The study group of the research consisted of 53 students…

This research paper identifies the way in which Minecraft Edu can be used to contribute to the teaching and learning of secondary students via a multiple case research study. Minecraft Edu is recognised as a gamification tool that enables its users to create and evaluate project-based learning activities within a classroom context. Learning…

"Beyond Blackboards" is an inquiry-centered, after-school program designed to enhance middle school students' engagement with engineering through design-based experiences focused on the 21st Century Engineering Challenges. Set within a predominantly lowincome, majority-minority community, our study aims to investigate the impact of…

Much research has been conducted in educational robotics, a new instructional technology, for K-12 education. However, there are arguments on the effect of robotics and limited empirical evidence to investigate the impact of robotics in science learning. Also most robotics studies were carried in an informal educational setting. This study…

As inspirations from flora and fauna have led to many advances in modern technology, the concept of drawing ideas from nature for design should be reflected in engineering education. This paper focuses on a maple-seed robotic flier (MRF) with various complexities, a robotic platform modeled after the samaras of maple or ash trees, to teach STEM…

In this study, the researchers attempted to extend the concept of learning companions from the virtual world to the real physical environment and made a breakthrough in technique development of tangible learning robots. The aim of this study was to explore an innovative way by combining the speech recognition technology with educational robots in…

This study focused on an intelligent robot which was viewed as a language teaching/learning tool to improve children's reading ability, reading interest, and learning behavior. The iRobiQ, with its multimedia contents, was employed to encourage children to read, speak, and answer questions. Fifty-seven pre-kindergarteners participated in this…

This study proposes a platform to provide a near-authentic environment, context, and situation for task-based learning. The platform includes two projection screens (a vertical and a horizontal screen) combined for situated or authentic learning. The horizontal screen extends the vertical screen scene to form a space for learning activities and…

This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated…

The objective of this study was to describe the task interpretation of students engaged in a design activity and determine the extent to which students translate their understanding of their design task to their planning and cognitive strategies. Twenty-nine students at one Colorado high school participated in this study. Students worked…

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students…