Recent research into Japanese as a foreign language education has strongly emphasized the link between Japanese popular culture and learning Japanese. However, these studies have only targeted Japanese language learners in formal education contexts and have largely ignored those who are not studying Japanese or studying Japanese informally. This…

Lack of social presence is one of the many challenges that online education is facing right now in spite of its numerous benefits and growing popularity. While different strategies, primarily behavioral- or cognitive-based, have been proposed and adopted to improve online social presence, affect-based intervention remains a novel approach to…

Previous studies have shown that students learn better from an online lesson when a gesturing pedagogical agent is added (Mayer & DaPra, 2012; Wang, Li, Mayer, & Liu, 2018). The goal of this study is to pinpoint which aspect of a gesturing pedagogical agent causes an improvement in learning from an online lesson. College students learned…

The higher education system of the Republic of Kazakhstan emphasizes the need for the development of institutional science, including the field of information technology, with a priority on fundamental research. Professional training of future computer science teachers requires them to know the range of tasks related to computer graphics, and the…

There is a need for research-informed instructional approaches that promote school students' deep conceptual understanding of abstract geological concepts. Given that a type of learner-constructed stop-motion animation, 'slowmation', has been shown to offer affordances for learning in science preservice teacher education, we extended its…

Black consumers watch and stream television at a higher percentage than any other demographic. Research has shown that presence of Black teachers, administrators, and school officials has positively influenced Black students' academic success. Research on how Black students understand and connect to portrayals of Blackness is needed in order to…

Spatial-Temporal Math (ST Math) is game-based, instructional software for K-12 students created by the MIND Research Institute (MIND). ST Math is integrated into classroom instruction, but can also be used in a computer lab or at home. The ST Math software games begin without language and symbol abstractions by posing math programs as purely…

Well-designed digital games hold promise as effective learning environments. However, designing games that support both learning and engagement without disrupting flow is quite tricky. In addition to including various game design features (e.g., interactive problem solving, adaptive challenges, and player control of gameplay) to engage players,…

Inculcating collaborative problem solving (hereinafter CPS) skills to help develop students' knowledge, especially for problem solving (PS) involved in the subject of physics is of utmost importance in the 21st century. It was on such grounds that in the present study, physics PS learning was innovated by engaging students' generated animation…

Video is a preferred medium of instruction over other media for learning about digital animation. However, there is lack of understanding of how and why students use video instructions for learning digital animation. The purpose of this study is to explore how learners use online videos for learning from the perspectives of Uses and Gratification…

Educational agents (including animal companions) are a kind of interface agent, which is a significant component in educational systems, and has great impacts on student learning. However, with the development of emerging technologies (e.g., tangible technology), few studies have yet investigated how tangible technology can be used to combine with…

This paper reports an interdisciplinary research (IDR) initiative conducted by two lecturers from different university faculties who found they shared an interest in using animations to support teaching and learning. The research comprised an exploratory pilot to test the feasibility, and to explore the impact on learning, of having undergraduates…

Algorithms are hard to understand for novice computer science students because they dynamically modify values of elements of abstract data structures. Animations can help to understand algorithms, since they connect abstract concepts to real life objects and situations. In the past 30-35 years, there have been conducted many experiments in the…

The intent of this research is to evaluate the use of a formative assessment probe about balance and torque. The lesson was conducted with 52, 11th grade students studying in two physics classes at a state high school. A formative assessment probe was used at both the beginning and end of the study. After the students' prior knowledge about…

There is equivocal evidence as to whether there is a deficit in recognising emotional expressions in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study compared emotion recognition in ASD in three types of emotion expression media (still image, dynamic image, auditory) across human stimuli (e.g. photo of a human face) and animated stimuli (e.g. cartoon…