Radical Solutions and eLearning: Practical Innovations and Online Educational Technology [1st ed.] 9789811549519, 9789811549526

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi
Innovation in Collaborative Online International Learning: A Holistic Blend (Katherine Wimpenny, Marina Orsini-Jones)....Pages 1-25
Digital Education, Information and Communication Technology, and Education for Sustainable Development (Michel Ricard, Aravella Zachariou, Daniel Burgos)....Pages 27-39
Digital Transformation in Higher Education Institutions: Between Myth and Reality (John W. Branch, Daniel Burgos, Martin Dario Arango Serna, Giovanni Pérez Ortega)....Pages 41-50
The Challenge of Digital Credentials: How Should Universities Respond? (Gary W. Matkin)....Pages 51-61
Blockchain in Educational Methodologies (Antonio R. Bartolomé)....Pages 63-79
The Evolution of Educational Game Designs From Computers to Mobile Devices: A Comprehensive Review (Ahmed Tlili, Fathi Essalmi, Mohamed Jemni, Kinshuk, Nian-Shing Chen, Ronghuai Huang et al.)....Pages 81-99
Games and Gamification in the Classroom (Silvia Alicia Gómez)....Pages 101-115
Self-directed Multimodal Learning to Support Demiurgic Access (Jako Olivier)....Pages 117-130
Enhancing Practical Work in Physics Using Virtual Javascript Simulation and LMS Platform (Khadija El Kharki, Faouzi Bensamka, Khalid Berrada)....Pages 131-146
Computational Thinking in Primary School Through Block-Based Programming (Rosa Bottino, Augusto Chioccariello, Laura Freina)....Pages 147-166
Media Coverage of Digital Resources in Audiovisual Format: Evaluation of Six Years of Application and Proposal of Development Paths (Said Machwate, Rachid Bendaoud, Khalid Berrada)....Pages 167-182
Immersive Virtual Reality for Learning Experiences (Leticia Irene Gomez)....Pages 183-198
App Design and Implementation for Learning Human Anatomy Through Virtual and Augmented Reality (Santiago González Izard, J. Antonio Juanes Méndez, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, Cristina Moreno Belloso)....Pages 199-213
A Framework for a Semiautomatic Competence Valuation (Aída Lopez, Silvia Alicia Gómez, Débora Martín, Daniel Burgos)....Pages 215-236
Quality Research Through Peer Assessment (Mmabaledi Seeletso, Moeketsi Letseka)....Pages 237-247

Citation preview

Lecture Notes in Educational Technology

Daniel Burgos   Editor

Radical Solutions and eLearning Practical Innovations and Online Educational Technology

Lecture Notes in Educational Technology Series Editors Ronghuai Huang, Smart Learning Institute, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Kinshuk, College of Information, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA Mohamed Jemni, University of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia Nian-Shing Chen, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Douliu, Taiwan J. Michael Spector, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

The series Lecture Notes in Educational Technology (LNET), has established itself as a medium for the publication of new developments in the research and practice of educational policy, pedagogy, learning science, learning environment, learning resources etc. in information and knowledge age,—quickly, informally, and at a high level. Abstracted/Indexed in: Scopus, Web of Science Book Citation Index

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11777

Daniel Burgos Editor

Radical Solutions and eLearning Practical Innovations and Online Educational Technology

123

Editor Daniel Burgos Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED) Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Logroño, Spain

ISSN 2196-4963 ISSN 2196-4971 (electronic) Lecture Notes in Educational Technology ISBN 978-981-15-4951-9 ISBN 978-981-15-4952-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword by P. J. Wells

As revolutions go, the tech-revolution has been relatively painless for most—both for early and late adopters, albeit begrudgingly for many of the latter. Identifying precisely where/when this all began is, however, more problematic. What started off as a mere trickle 70 years ago suddenly became a technological tsunami on the senses in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Consider this: there is more computer power in a card singing Happy Birthday today than existed on planet earth in 1950; or that the average family car today requires more technology than put mankind on the moon in 1969.1 As little as 20 years ago, there were no smart phones/watches, MP3 players, no Google, no WhatsApp, or social media. As Thomas Friedman put it: When I wrote “The World Is Flat” in 2005, Facebook didn’t exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.2

Like it or not: shift happens. Progress is undeniably a force for good and technology continues to be the driving force in every facet of daily life and, depending on perspectives, is often out-pacing demand-driven change. The Polish poet and aphorist Stanislaw Lec once cynically questioned “is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?”3—a point of view that still resonates for some, including in some academia and higher learning spheres. The irony is, of course, that for the most part, higher education is responsible for the techno-revolution, since it is in its institutions that the brilliant minds created, invented, and imagined the world we live in today, beginning with Turing and the Enigma Code right up to the present with Tim Berners Lee, Steve Jobs, and the ever expanding Silicon Valley alumni dreaming up, and making social media a reality.

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Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance, Ridderstråle, J. & Nordström, K. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Friedman, T.L. 3 Attributed. 2

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Attuning these technological advances in higher teaching and learning have, again ironically, alas been largely overlooked at best, or at worst dismissed as a perversion of the academic traditions of personal interaction for debate, considered opinion, and personal growth. And there is some truth to this in the wider context, with studies now beginning to demonstrate the adverse effects that personal technologies are having on the abilities of millennials to communicate effectively away from their Back Mirrors.4 This, however, ignores the fact that technology has democratized learning for millions worldwide, which, in turn, has helped to lift millions out of poverty, allowed national economies to flourish, and social-cohesion to replace marginalization. Of course the effects are not spread evenly, and a digital divide is all too persistent, especially—but not exclusively—in developing countries. Nevertheless, the higher education community is beginning to rise to this challenge and to embrace the unique role it must play in shaping how technology-enhanced learning can break down barriers to access and inclusion. Take for instance open and distance learning (ODL). The Open University in the UK has educated over two million learners since it opened its doors in 1969, a model that has been replicated in dozens of countries around the world. Today the Indira Gandhi Open University of India alone boasts a staggering 4 million enrolled students. Yet more than simply widening access, these institutions have demonstrated that new technologies can improve the standard and quality of ODL, to the extent that a 2016 study showed that students studying online were actually better prepared and more competent upon graduation than their counterparts who studied the same programs on campus. The fact that more and more HEIs are taking their courses or full degree programs online via MOOCs and digital credentialing is testament to the new dependability of quality ODL, and a welcome shift in perceptions of an inferiority of delivery and attainment. Such changes in the modality of higher learning also speak to the changing expectations and needs of learners. Where in the last century, ODL was pigeon-holed as only for the non-traditional learner, today these students are increasingly the norm and hence the new-traditional, with the learner placed firmly at the centre: free to learn what they want, when they want, and where they want. Perhaps a lesser success story has been the introduction of learning enhancement technologies on campus. As the current volume demonstrates, the uses of technology in pre-tertiary school classrooms has helped deliver curricula in more innovative ways, resulting in better differentiation for individual pupil learning styles to address learner strengths and weaknesses. Alas, beyond an occasional powerpoint, the average university lecture/seminar room or laboratory on the other hand is still woefully bereft of technology enhanced learning to enhance knowledge, competences, and skill development. As the UNESCO International Conference on AI in Education5 in 2019 demonstrated, their now exists a plethora of programs, applications, and methodologies to help students learn better, “Charlie Brooker: the dark side of our gadget addiction”. The Guardian. London. 1 December 2011. Archived from the original on 5 October 2013. Retrieved 06 January 2020. 5 https://en.unesco.org/events/international-conference-artificial-intelligence-and-education. 4

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understand, and apply. From digital dissections and operations for medical students, to enterprise simulations for accounting students and virtual theatres for drama undergraduates, virtual and AI tools are transforming the way we can learn more effectively and more comprehensively. The underfunding of higher education clearly is a factor in the lack of uptake of such learning-enhanced technologies for many HEIs around the world. Perceived high investment costs are, however, more than compensated for the increasing quality of teaching and learning and hence the reputation of individual universities and their graduates. Even a modest outlay can have remarkable impact on the learning experience. Take, for example, the digital library at one college (see Fig. 1 below) that gives learners access to thousands of digital novels provided by an institutional subscription to the Kindle© App downloadable to learners’ smart phones or Ipad via a QR code. Physical library collections have long been held as the heart and soul of a university, and understandably sacrosanct, yet they are notoriously expensive to build and maintain. A digitally-physical library is the new now. The future academic library is already here. Returning briefly to AI in Education, as the above conference highlighted, advances in the capability of AI to replace a number of traditional jobs and professions is as staggering as it is potentially frightening. Roles once considered irreplaceable by machine learning are now the new reality: hologram hotel concierges, virtual teachers, automated simultaneous interpreters, hairdressers (yes— really!), and surveillance systems, are just the tips of the AI-berg. The ethical use of AI is now hence of growing concern and an area of research that the academy is well placed to address as the techno-revolution moves up a whole new level.

Fig. 1 Flat Wall Digital Library ©Image: Rita Maalouf. Photo: Library, Transylvania College, Romania

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Finally, technology-enhanced teaching and learning in HE needs to be supported by digitally savvy university administrative systems. Antiquated admissions processes, course enrollments, faculty evaluations, grade posting for example—all still so often paper-based—need to be brought into the twenty-first century and to be digitalized. There really is no excuse for professors posting print outs of course grades on boards on campus. Nor should any university be requiring students to register in person or have their qualifications physically verified. These days are over. Eliminating the excesses of administrative hard copy paper work will reduce costs and allow limited university funds to be better channeled into the technologies outlined above to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The world is, of course, not flat, and the world of higher education is anything but equal in its abilities to rise up to the technological opportunities that the above-mentioned broad brush-strokes suggest. In this context, the 3rd volume in the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja trilogy is laudably recommended. Each of the eminent contributors in what follows provides the higher learning community with positive and practical solutions to the technological opportunities availed by HEIs at the dawn of the 2020s. UNESCO applauds Prof. Burgas and his team at the UNESCO Chair on E-Learning for this bold and insightful compendium to the Radical Solutions in HE series, not least for highlighting how ICTs in HE can better serve learning communities, but also for showcasing its contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 4 of leaving no one behind in the digital age of access to quality higher education. P. J. Wells Chief, Higher Education UNESCO

Foreword: Educational Digital Transformation

Technology has drastically transformed society, changing the way of creating and transmitting knowledge and opening up new disruptive and innovative possibilities in education. This digitalization requires citizens digitally competent, with new digital skills and competencies, such as coding and computational thinking. Educational institutions face several challenges in the face of the effective digitalization of their processes, services, and contents, as well as their methodological approaches, putting the student and his/her experience at the center, which must be personalized and at the same time, go beyond of collective intelligence and the social construction of knowledge. In addition, learning experiences today are enriched by audiovisual media and mobile devices, which allow multimodal learning at any time and place. Likewise, the decentralization, internationalization, and sharing of knowledge, as well as its certification, also driven by this digitalization, are supported by emerging technologies such as blockchain, which allows monitoring and control over students’ competencies and knowledge throughout their entire lifetime. The globalization of education, and in particular, the online modalities, requires new virtual spaces for the implementation of knowledge and skills, for which virtual and remote laboratories, as well as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and simulators provides opportunities for students to live immersive and emotionally meaningful practical experiences. Likewise, other applications such as videogames and gamification in education can contribute to generate motivating and highly emotional and attractive experiences for students.

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In this sense, this book “Educational Technology for Higher Education” offers an excellent vision of emerging educational technologies and processes of educational digital transformation, presenting practical experiences and concrete case studies, as well as a different look at the processes of educational innovation and the possibilities and impact of digitalization, which can serve as a model of radical change in education for higher education institutions. Prof. Dr. Carina S. González Computer Engineering and Systems Department University of La Laguna, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

Editorial: Educational Technology as the Key to Enhanced Learning

Educational technology is the right couple to radical innovation (Saettler, 1968; Ely, 1990; Huang et al. 2019). Thanks to appropriate technology in the smart context with the best fit to the target audience, education can be drastically improved, meaning a better performance, competence achievement, match with the user’s expectations and with the market needs. Serious games, virtual reality, augmented reality, remote labs, online learning, blockchain, mobile learning, and many other key technologies allow for a better explanation of so many subjects, as well as complete student involvement and a teacher full engagement in the educational system (Balamuralithara & Woods, 2009; Akçayır & Akçayır, 2017; Chen et al. 2018; Kabassi, & Alepis, 2020). Technology gives another angle to the same content, provides the user with a personalised experience and pushes the limits of knowledge a little further every time. Current educational technology tools try to build on a meeting place to provide centralised services to users (i.e., students, teachers, tutors, professors, admin staff, etc (Transgeniclearning.com, 2017). If we use Sakai, Moodle, Claroline, Blackboard, Canvas or anything else in the market, all of them show similar facilities, like email, FTP, resources, IRC, grades, fora, and so on. When the learning management system (LMS) vision started (I designed corporate LMS back in 1995, so at least 25 years ago) (Lave, 1991; Hiltz, 1998; Palloff & Pratt, 1999; Hummel et al. 2005), this was the right and logical approach to take. Then, Internet services were not focused on education, but on technology enhancement. We were all thrilled when we could zip a file with ARJ by writing a long line of cryptic parameters, or when we could download files from a remote server. Not to mention the IRC (chat channels) or the email service, or the news service. What we all know as the Internet is, in fact, a bunch of services grouped under a common misconception of what the Internet is, to make the concept more digestible for everyone. So, when someone put all these things together, the end user found leverage for learning and teaching. Nowadays, over 25 years after the first “Hello World” web page went online, under the WWW service, things have changed (Gillies et al. 2000). The end user of a learning environment is also a regular user of other tools, apps, and services that xi

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have nothing to do with learning but are present in almost everyone’s daily life. Toys like Whatsapp, Skype, Telegram, WeChat, Hangouts, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, and others play a central role in so many people’s lives that ignoring them (the tools) is ignoring them (the users). Modern educational technology developments should adopt the service-aggregation model under a middleware paradigm, so that the integration of external tools into the same user model is smooth and useful. For instance, why develop a chat when we can integrate Telegram easily, or why use an ex profeso developed repository when we can integrate Dropbox or Drive. In doing so, we do not just save coding and development time, but we also integrate the LMS into the daily life of every user (Garg, 2009; Chhaya, 2019). We earn trust and penetration, we melt into the user’s habit, so that the interaction with the educational platform is not something isolated, but another resource to live with alongside the other apps. Indeed, integration and aggregation will guide the immediate future of educational technology as a result of a methodology focused on personalisation of the learning experience by the user, either the student, the teacher or the tutor. Indeed, methodology becomes the foundation on which to build the others. Along all these insights, needs, and risks, methodology becomes the actual backbone for success (Williams, 2000). When, and if, an educational technology tool leans or might lean on the above principles, methodology becomes the key to addressing various learner types, target groups, learning styles, and learning itineraries as part of a long list of learner inputs. Through methodology, a teacher becomes a learning designer, who brings into a comprehensive rationale every single input and resource, step, and result. Subsequently, the learner can take over the main responsibility in the learning process; he can even become learning designer for himself. This book presents a number of blind peer-reviewed chapters that show radical innovations through technology in the educational context, including case studies to be replicated and inspired by. It is a powerful resource handbook for cutting edge educational technology that will help the reader to integrate it into their daily practice. Daniel Burgos Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED) Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Spain e-mail: [email protected] http://ited.unir.net

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References Akçayır, M., & Akçayır, G. (2017). Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: A systematic review of the literature. Educational Research Review, 20, 1–11. Balamuralithara, B., & Woods, P. C. (2009). Virtual laboratories in engineering education: The simulation lab and remote lab. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 17(1), 108–118. Chen, G., Xu, B., Lu, M., & Chen, N. S. (2018). Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for education. Smart Learning Environments, 5(1), 1. Chhaya, N., Pai, D., Agarwal, D., Puri, N., Jain, P., & Kumaraguru, P. (2019). U.S. Patent No. 10,296,546. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ely, D. P. (1990). Conditions that facilitate the implementation of educational technology innovations. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 23(2), 298–305. Garg, S., Gupta, T., Carlsson, N., & Mahanti, A. (2009). Evolution of an online social aggregation network: an empirical study. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement (pp. 315–321). ACM. Gillies, J. M., Gillies, J., & Cailliau, R. (2000). How the web was born: The story of the world wide web. USA: Oxford University Press. Hiltz, S. R. (1998). Collaborative learning in asynchronous learning networks: Building learning communities. Huang, R., Spector, J. M., & Yang, J. (2019). Introduction to educational technology. In Educational Technology (pp. 3–31). Springer: Singapore. Hummel, H., Burgos, D., Tattersall, C., Brouns, F., Kurvers, H., & Koper, R. (2005). Encouraging constributions in Learning networks using incentive mechanisms. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL), 21, 355–365. Kabassi, K., & Alepis, E. (2020). Learning analytics in distance and mobile learning for designing personalised software. In Machine Learning Paradigms (pp. 185–203). Springer: Cham. Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, 2, 63–82. Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace (Vol. 12). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Saettler, P. (1968). A history of instructional technology. New York: McGraw-Hill Transgeniclearning (2017). Transgeniclearning.com, retrieved December 23rd, 2019 from http://transgeniclearning.com Williams, P. J. (2000). Design: The only methodology of technology?. vol. 11 Issue 2 (spring 2000).

Contents

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Innovation in Collaborative Online International Learning: A Holistic Blend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Katherine Wimpenny and Marina Orsini-Jones

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Digital Education, Information and Communication Technology, and Education for Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michel Ricard, Aravella Zachariou, and Daniel Burgos

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Digital Transformation in Higher Education Institutions: Between Myth and Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John W. Branch, Daniel Burgos, Martin Dario Arango Serna, and Giovanni Pérez Ortega The Challenge of Digital Credentials: How Should Universities Respond? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gary W. Matkin

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Blockchain in Educational Methodologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Antonio R. Bartolomé

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The Evolution of Educational Game Designs From Computers to Mobile Devices: A Comprehensive Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ahmed Tlili, Fathi Essalmi, Mohamed Jemni, Kinshuk, Nian-Shing Chen, Ronghuai Huang, and Daniel Burgos

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Games and Gamification in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Silvia Alicia Gómez

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Self-directed Multimodal Learning to Support Demiurgic Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Jako Olivier

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Enhancing Practical Work in Physics Using Virtual Javascript Simulation and LMS Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Khadija El Kharki, Faouzi Bensamka, and Khalid Berrada xv

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10 Computational Thinking in Primary School Through Block-Based Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Rosa Bottino, Augusto Chioccariello, and Laura Freina 11 Media Coverage of Digital Resources in Audiovisual Format: Evaluation of Six Years of Application and Proposal of Development Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Said Machwate, Rachid Bendaoud, and Khalid Berrada 12 Immersive Virtual Reality for Learning Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Leticia Irene Gomez 13 App Design and Implementation for Learning Human Anatomy Through Virtual and Augmented Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Santiago González Izard, J. Antonio Juanes Méndez, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, and Cristina Moreno Belloso 14 A Framework for a Semiautomatic Competence Valuation . . . . . . 215 Aída Lopez, Silvia Alicia Gómez, Débora Martín, and Daniel Burgos 15 Quality Research Through Peer Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Mmabaledi Seeletso and Moeketsi Letseka

Chapter 1

Innovation in Collaborative Online International Learning: A Holistic Blend Katherine Wimpenny and Marina Orsini-Jones

Abstract This chapter outlines innovative models and case studies of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) implemented at Coventry University (UK). The institutional drive towards the integration of COIL as part of internationalisation of the curriculum will be outlined, as well as a brief overview of the issues relating to the design and delivery of pedagogies for intercultural online learning. Staff incentives and capability development in facilitating students’ engagement in meaningful intercultural interactions will also be considered. In particular, and through the sharing of case studies, this chapter will discuss the ‘holistic blend’ that COIL can offer. We will illustrate what students stand to gain beyond the immediate action learning of the online dynamic alongside face to face interaction. Such interaction includes the development of critical digital literacy skills, the acquisition of interactional online communication skills, and importantly, openness to knowledge pluralization. It will be argued that consideration must be given to where in the curriculum students should encounter COIL pedagogies and to how to synchronise and merge COIL within the wider course programme. This is to enable students to make sense of COIL as part of their wider internationalised curriculum and not to see it as an add on. Finally, further research recommendations for the design and delivery of COIL, based on the last decade of practices at Coventry University, will be shared. Keywords Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) · Intercultural dialogue · Action learning · Critical digital literacies · Knowledge pluralization

K. Wimpenny (B) Global Education: Education and Attainment Research Centre, Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://www.coventry.ac.uk/globallearning M. Orsini-Jones School of Humanities, Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_1

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1.1 Introduction Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) around the globe are under pressure to strategic demands to internationalise their curricula (Higher Education Academy, 2014) and ensure that their students acquire intercultural capabilities as global citizens and as global graduates. Such capabilities include resilience, flexibility, the ability to relate to global others, and an awareness of global inequalities. Arguably more eminent capabilities relate to the world of work and are necessary to compete in the job market in an increasingly globalised workplace (Higher Education Academy, 2014; Jones & Killick, 2013; Killick, 2015). Supplementary capabilities relate to social justice and to an ethical understanding of the Other (e.g. Orsini-Jones, Conde, Borthwick, Zou, & Ma, 2015). Supporting students’ capability development in such areas has important implications concerning how universities design and deliver on their internationalisation ambitions. This includes the ways in which international and intercultural dimensions can be integrated into curricula, how staff expertise is steered by faculty, and how individual practices are resourced, and supported (Wimpenny, Beelen, & King, 2019). As Leask (2015) contends, internationalisation must be an all-embracing institutional approach, reflected in strategy, training, institutional values, and culture. International mobility has tended to be viewed as the most dynamic aspect of internationalisation within universities formal and informal curriculums. However, international student mobility cannot be the subject of focus without recognition of the potential negative effects of mobility and internationalisation on students and staff, and on university teaching and learning practice (Beelen, Wimpenny, & Rubin, 2019; Fabricus, Mortensen, & Haberland, 2017). Conversely, Internationalisationat-Home (IaH), which stresses purposeful international and intercultural dimensions in both the formal and the informal curriculum for all students has gained traction (Beelen & Jones, 2015). To a large extent this is in response to the fact that education abroad is limited to a minority of students. Rather, IaH looks beyond the mobility of a minority of students, emphasizing instead the resources to be utilised at a local level in the delivery of an internationally focused curriculum, including the embedding of intercultural communication (Watkins & Smith, 2018). In addition, the IaH curriculum can benefit greatly from advancements in technology which provide viable opportunities for staff and students to collaborate in teaching and learning experiences without meeting physically. Since the late 1990s, approaches to e-learning have gone from piloting media content in classrooms to slowly sharing relevant articles and information through electronic mediums, to fully fledged lessons and degree programmes offered online (Buhl Andreasen & Pushpanadham, 2018; Marshall, 2012; Sadeghi, 2019). Technology is now central to the teaching process, with various degrees and forms of what is broadly referred to as e-learning taking place across the educational spectrum (Sangra, Vlachopoulos, & Cabrera, 2012; Wimpenny, Adefila, & DeWinter, 2018). E-learning provides opportunities to reach more learners, including those that have been disadvantaged by geography and socio-cultural issues and arguably

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enables learners to learn at their own pace and ‘any time/anywhere’ (KukulskaHulme, 2018). Yet, as Buhl Andreasen and Pushpanadham (2018) and Affouneh and Awad Rabba (2017) contend, to be effective, e-learning needs to be underpinned with an effective pedagogical approach to ensure there is not an overemphasis on the use of technology at the expense of the potential pedagogical advantages. The use of the digital has resulted in the development of a range of initiatives within the home curriculum, for example, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) approaches, which is the main focus of this chapter. In particular, we will discuss the ‘holistic blend’ of what COIL can offer, in terms of what students stand to gain beyond the immediate action learning of the online dynamic alongside faceto-face interaction, including development of critical digital literacy skills. Further, the need to consider where in the curriculum students encounter COIL pedagogies and how to synchronise COIL within the wider course programme will be discussed. Such emphasis and focus on how students (and staff) see COIL as part of the wider internationalised curriculum is required to enable students to make sense of and integrate their learning, rather than COIL feeling ‘standalone’ and/or an ‘add on’. Issues relating to the design and delivery of pedagogies for online learning will also be considered, including staff incentives and capability development in facilitating students’ engagement in meaningful intercultural interactions. Such interactions include the importance of knowledge pluralization, whereby students can make productive intellectual connections and apply their knowledge as part of enriching epistemic diversity for active education engagement pedagogies (Icaza & Vázquez, 2018). The chapter will conclude with recommendations for further research, offered in light of the experience of COIL implementation at Coventry University since 2011.

1.2 Context of Collaborative Online International Learning Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) typically involves the codevelopment of a set of online tasks and/or a course module by two or more academic staff/tutors from different countries, where students from different parts of the world learn together on a common area of focus. COIL is also known through a number of other terms such as ‘virtual mobility’, (Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2016). Where there is more of a specific focus on the intercultural aspect of the interaction, it is also sometimes referred to as Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) ‘telecollaboration’, ‘virtual exchange’ or ‘e-tandem learning’ (Lewis & O’Dowd, 2016, p. 3). In guarding against an overemphasis on the digital aspect, COIL has been described by Rubin (2016, p. 134) as, ‘not a technology, or a technology platform, but a new approach to teaching and learning which provides faculty and students the ability to communicate directly and immediately with their peers far away.’ With emphasis on the benefits of an interconnected communicative learning environment, Siemens (2004) focus on connectivism can be usefully applied to theorise the impact of learning in today’s digital age, wherein critical decision making and

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interaction take place amongst people as well as with information sources. Nonetheless, alongside the inherent learning available within and across the ‘network’, we argue that COIL approaches might also be suitably underpinned by social constructionist learning theories. From a social constructionist perspective, and with acknowledgement of the digital space, emphasis is also placed on the learners’ active interaction and knowledge construction for meaningful learning impact (Chen, 2003). Attention is thus also focused on how learners engage with the learning community and make sense of their learning considering individuals’ experiences viewed in the context of history, social and cultural perspective and the political sphere (Gergen, 2003). COIL provides students with opportunities to develop a series of attributes, qualities or capabilities that may enable them to address the challenges of living and working in contemporary societies as citizens and professionals, and to assume associated responsibilities (Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2016). For example, COIL prompts students to develop problem solving skills whilst also requiring them to take responsibility for organising their own learning and that of others. Effective time management skills, and working to overcome obstacles, also provides students with space to become more resilient through greater awareness of how to negotiate and complete learning tasks with awareness of the needs of others (Dugdale, 2009; Wimpenny, Knowles, Ramsey, & Speculand 2018). COIL offers opportunity to promote openness to knowledge pluralization through diverse learners interacting and sharing knowledge perspectives. Thus, in considering the role of education in preparing students for a world that is increasingly interconnected, independent and diverse, online (international) (and intercultural) learning and communication1 offer students multiple opportunities to learn how to form and maintain relationships, and work cooperatively with people across different backgrounds (Krutky, 2008). Whilst the use of technology to enable virtual exchanges and collaborative assignments between geographically distant classrooms is not new, particularly in the field of language learning and teaching (e.g. Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, 2001; GodwynJones, 2013), efforts are increasing to scale up these kinds of activities introducing students to learning that seeks to address social relations and communications in the context of subject-specific know-how as well as transnational issues and concerns (Wimpenny et al., 2018).

1 Intercultural

communication is used here to refer to the communication amongst learners from diverse backgrounds.

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1.3 Coventry University and COIL The use of Internet-based digital technologies for the purposes of teaching and learning has been a feature of student life at Coventry University since the 1990s,2 with student portals and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) being implemented for student use. Explorations of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and more creative forms of teaching and learning through programmes such as Second Life, as early examples of online engagement were explored and implemented from the early 2000s (see Savin-Baden, 2010). The concept of COIL started to appear from 2011, with motivated lecturers experimenting with the available technology and making use of their international contacts, setting tasks that students could engage with at the partner universities yet could complete ‘at home’. These small-scale trailblazer projects, typically in engineering and the humanities, and at times with small numbers of students engaging, were promoted at university ‘roadshows’ to provide inspiration and motivation to academics across the campus. At the time of writing, in 2020, with global engagement a core component of strategic orientation, COIL is viewed as an integral component of the university IaH initiatives. In the academic year 2018–2019 alone over 3,000 students engaged across 89 COIL projects, delivered in conjunction with over 90 overseas institutions from 47 countries.3 Whilst internationalisation abroad via field trips, work experience placements and study visits for students is still a strategic focus at Coventry University (indeed the university continues to be a top overall provider for international mobility across HE in the UK4 ) COIL has become an institutional requirement for all courses, not only as part of the university’s internationalisation strategy, but also as a core component of the Corporate Strategy 20215 which has ‘Intercultural and International Engagement’ as one of its pillars. In defining the approach adopted at Coventry University, the following four principles for COIL are that it (O’Brien, 2018): 1. Involves a cross-border collaboration or interaction with people from different backgrounds and cultures. 2. Requires students to engage in some sort of online interaction, whether it is asynchronous or synchronous 3. Is driven by a set of internationalised learning outcomes aimed at developing global perspectives and/or fostering students’ intercultural competences. 4. Requires a reflective component that helps students think critically about such interaction. 2 Coventry

University were also leaders in pre-Internet technologies in the 80s. For example, machine translation (Transit/Tiger TELL) and BBC micros https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/ Thompson-AD/Transit-Tiger/9780340724699. 3 http://onlineinternationallearning.org/projects/. 4 https://www.coventry.ac.uk/primary-news/coventry-continues-to-top-tables-for-internationalstudent-experiences/. 5 https://www.coventry.ac.uk/globalassets/media/global/09-about-us/who-we-are/corporatestrategy-2021.pdf.

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To support internationalised teaching and learning activities, a dedicated Professional Services Centre–The Centre for Global Engagement (CGE)—was set up in 2010, (initially under the name International Experience and Mobility Service (IEMS), and then renamed to CGE in 2015) to support the development and delivery of COIL and other internationalisation activities across the university. In 2015, CGE developed a ‘Wheel’ of Intercultural Competences’, to support undergraduate students entering the university to develop knowledge of these concepts, which is then systematically developed through outward mobility, COIL, Add + Vantage modules (University-Wide modules with an employability focus) and other extra-curricular IaH activities. The idea is that students will develop their global graduate skills during their study and put these into practice. For example, a unique feature of the CGE internationalisation provision at Coventry University is the involvement of overseas students in the delivery of language courses for other students and staff who engage in physical mobility to the country they have carried out a COIL project with (Fig. 1.1. As of 2015/16, CGE collects data on all campus COIL exchanges for reporting purposes against the Corporate Strategy 2021. This centralized system has created a strategic approach to project management and capacity building of COIL initiatives.

Fig. 1.1 The wheel of intercultural competences (CGE, 2015)

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Further, CGE offers staff development training and guidance to academic staff and works closely with Faculty stakeholders to ensure effective delivery of projects and reporting. From 2019, CGE also now offer a COIL template via Moodle, which staff can customise for their COIL projects. This tool provides ‘off the shelf’ information for students to support their understanding and satisfaction of COIL, aids compliance and is used as a quality and reporting mechanism. With regards to implementing COIL, faculty have the flexibility to tailor learning experiences to subject areas and student needs, and as such the university does not adopt a ‘one size fits all’ model. This flexible approach is seen to be of significant benefit to the student learning experience, allowing for the freedom to be creative, and a substantial range of examples of creative excellence in COIL exist. For example, a simultaneous telepresence performance of Shakespeare with Finnish and Coventry student actors performing together via streaming won the Hybrid Learning category at the 2018 Reimagine Education Awards, and was a winner of the Gold Award in the 2016 Arts & Humanities category.6 Further, with a remit to conduct research dedicated to examining and questioning ways in which comprehensive internationalisation can be achieved, not least in considering staff expertise and pedagogies of COIL, the Research Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment (GLEA) (wherein the first author is based) was established in August 2017.

1.4 The Practicalities of Designing and Implementing COIL Pedagogies Although the educational content may be relatively easy to create, there are a number of practical considerations to consider when running COIL activity including issues such as subject area match and working across potentially different time zones. Communication means with the partners, for example, via synchronous and asynchronous activities, needs consideration. Examples of synchronous activity are real-time conversations, seminars and debates where both partners are able to contribute at the same time. Asynchronous interactions may be required where there are large time differences, and often include activities such as sharing pre-recorded videos and forum debates (Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2016). Such asynchronous interaction enables students to take time to not only review content posted but to reflect and discuss their reactions and response to COIL activities. As Deardorff (2011, p. 77) suggests, student reflection in relation to the subject area is an essential component of COIL activity, as well as meaningful ways in which student learning can be gauged and assessed as linked to specific intended learning outcomes. With regards to consideration of the disciplines, producing and delivering COIL teaching and learning outcomes can be aligned to a subject area, but equally can benefit greatly from students working across interdisciplinary boundaries. 6 http://telepresenceintheatre.coventry.domains/awards/coriolanus-online-wins-the-reimagine-

education-arts-humanities-gold-award/.

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In relation to digital literacies, students may be expert at using social media in their social networks, but they do not always translate this use to their formal or informal learning spaces without support. The importance therefore of digital pedagogy, is to enable students to engage in intellectual exchange, find one’s voice, engender reflection, and be confronted in ways of working in the open and may also help students to rethink their learner role as active agents rather than passive recipients of information (Wimpenny et al., 2018). COIL should not be viewed as an add-on to existing pedagogy and curriculum, as this may result in students not seeing the relevance or connection of such learning to their developing disciplinary perspectives, and the communication and interaction processes with others. Academics therefore, need to be skilled in both how to design virtual learning and in how to facilitate effective virtual interaction, with the necessary intercultural knowledge, skills, resources and time required to scaffold learners’ contributions and perspectives in order to stimulate students’ reflection on their biases, privileges and assumptions (Kumagai & Lypson, 2009). It therefore follows that COIL requires an infrastructure of technical and pedagogical support for students and educators, and that specific attention should be given to the types of courses that stimulate creative ways of mentoring students, not least in their interactions and dialogue with others (Rogers, Mulholland, Derdall, & Hollis, 2011; Wimpenny et al., 2018). The design of such learning, is not simply a case of academic staff transferring teaching and learning materials used in face to face interactions onto online platforms. Nor should we assume that being able to facilitate communication in face to face exchanges, results in such skills being equally effective in virtual learning environments (Yang, Kinshuk, Yu et al., 2014). Indeed, an important additional value of effective COIL models is that they engage, develop, and support the internationalisation of teaching staff as much as they do that of students. Therefore, staff, as well as students, need to learn how to engage with COIL and be trained in its use. For example, there is work being carried out on the training of COIL teachers in Europe: the EVE (Erasmus + Virtual Exchange) initiative, that provides online courses on COIL facilitated by COIL (Virtual Exchange) mediators and awards EVE ‘badges’ to the tutors who complete the course. https://evolve-erasmus.eu/news/erasmus-virtualexchange-launched/. Recognising the need to train staff at Coventry University, COIL training is provided by the Centre for Global Engagement, and by ‘expert users’, such as the Associate Heads of School International. Engaging the diverse viewpoints and epistemic knowledge of learners and academics within COIL therefore requires not only critical thinking, but also intercultural attitudes and skills such as valuing diverse perspectives and managing one’s anxiety, as well as effective online interactional skills (Orsini-Jones & Lee, 2018). Indeed, this type of education practice can at times take academics outside their comfort zone (Wimpenny et al., 2018). Working with and managing students’ expectations, is informing in many ways, and lecturers need the necessary skills to appreciate and understand which educational (Yang et al., 2014), cultural (Cortazzi & Lixian, 2013) and language (Orsini-Jones & Lee, 2018; Yang, 2013) related processes are at work in online collaborations. Moreover, COIL practices prompt consideration of intercultural attitudes towards how such learning sits within the broader context

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of educational culture (Wimpenny, Tombs, Gordan, et al., 2016) and the politics of monocultural approaches to knowledge practices (Icaza & Vázquez, 2018).

1.5 Coil Case Study Examples 1.5.1 The Role-Reversal COIL Threshold Concepts and Action-Research-Informed Pedagogical Approach Numerous COIL projects have been carried out in the School of Humanities (and the former Department of English and Languages) since the academic year 2011–2012. Their distinctive pedagogical feature is that they have all been underpinned by a student-centred and, in some cases, student-driven (e.g. Lloyd, Cerveró-Carrascosa & Green, 2018) ‘role-reversal’ approach, where staff look at areas of troublesome knowledge (as defined by Meyer & Land, 2005) ‘through the looking glass’ of their students’ eyes in a continuous series of action-research cycles (see Fig. 1.2). This action-research-supported model of threshold concept pedagogy designed at Coventry University (Cousin 2009, pp. 209–212) embeds the involvement of ‘expert students’ in COIL projects. Students collaborate with staff to identify troublesome knowledge so that their peers can be supported in overcoming ‘stumbling blocks’ in their COIL intercultural learning journey. Fig. 1.2 Role-reversal model of threshold concept pedagogy and languages and linguistics (Orsini-Jones, 2014)

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The difficulties that students can encounter when engaging in COIL is amply documented in the relevant literature (e.g. O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006; Ware & Kramsch, 2005), as COIL takes students out of their comfort zone (of the more ‘traditional curriculum’) and serves to disrupt their expectations relating to their learning experience at Higher Education level. However, because of all the reasons previously mentioned here, Coventry University is committed to COIL pedagogy because of the positive transformational impact it can have on the students’ experience, also evidenced in the literature (Orsini-Jones & Lee, 2018; Shulteis, Moore & Sunka, 2015; Wimpenny et al., 2018). An example of how an ‘expert student’ informed future iterations of an intercultural COIL project with Mexico (MexCo: Mexico-Coventry) is reported in OrsiniJones, Lloyd, Lee, Bescond, and Boylan (2017c). This student, studying on a Bachelors of Honours degree in English and Creative Writing, took part in a COIL project in his first year of studies at Coventry University as part of module Introduction to Studying English and Languages at University. Subsequently he became a COIL ‘expert student’ in his second and final years. His reflections and input were of fundamental importance in the identification and ways to address ‘troublesome knowledge’, knowledge that challenges the learner at both ontological (their ‘being’) and epistemological (their ‘knowledge’) level. (Land & Meyer, 2006). In 2013–2014, his first year of studies, he noticed that some of his British peers were struggling with keeping the interaction going online in the discussion forums. During the focus groups with staff that were carried out at the end of the academic year, when asked why he was so effective at communicating online while some of his peers were struggling with it, he suggested that some of his peers needed more training in politeness conventions (Leech, 2014) which he had previously studied as part of sociolinguistics at school. He proposed that more active interventions should be put in place to support his peers further with: gauging the correct level of formality; developing the ability to switch between registers and genres; interpreting intended meanings; negotiating the balance between spoken conversation and written communication. As such, he suggested some guidelines for his peers when using English as the Lingua Franca for online communication with partners whose language of instruction or L1 (Language 1) is not English (Orsini-Jones et al., 2017c, pp. 219–220): An excerpt from his reflective feedback during the focus group is illustrated below: Overall, I think what helped me maintain discussions, bearing in mind that I was communicating with people whose first language wasn’t English and that the point of going on the MexCo forums was to talk to people, was: having an interest in learning about other cultures; having an interest in grammar and helping people with it; and, remembering that I was informally an ambassador for both CU and the UK, which meant I aimed to be polite and friendly towards other participants [our stress].

More attention was therefore paid to the discourse features of effective online interaction and cyberpragmatics in the design of the project for the following academic year, 2014–2015, and the student designed online interaction exercises in collaboration with staff for the British COIL participants in the subsequent year too. Since the academic year 2015–2016, a new form of COIL project blend— BMELTET (Blending MOOCs into English Language Teacher Education with

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Telecollaboration) has been developed in the School of Humanities, where a COIL project is embedded into the curriculum together with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). BMELTET consists of the implementation of an hMOOC (hybrydMOOC)-blend-model (Sandeen, 2013). Face-to-face teaching is delivered in conjunction with both a repurposed off-the-shelf MOOC (distance education) and a COIL project (also known as telecollaboration), supported by a dedicated Open Moodle website. The MOOC selected for the iteration of BMELTET discussed here is relevant to the MA and BA programmes involved (MA at Coventry University and BA at La Florida Universitària in Valencia, Spain): Understanding Language: Learning and Teaching (designed by the University of Southampton with the British Council). The integration of a MOOC into a COIL project means that the work on tasks carried out by the COIL partners is amplified on a global scale by the engagement with the MOOC worldwide community of practice, (see Fig. 1.3, the community of practice plotted in the ZeeMap for the FutureLearn University of Southampton/British Council MOOC Understanding Language: Learning and Teaching, FutureLearn, 2018). Students engaged in this blended learning project (over 400 to date, from the UK, the Netherlands, China and Spain) have commented positively on how seeing the map gave them a feeling of being part of a global community of practice and that this felt empowering (Orsini-Jones, Cerveró, Alrashidi, Matharu, & Ni, 2019, p. 87). Furthermore, the repurposing of the MOOC for a blend that includes both faceto-face instruction and COIL, provides interesting opportunities of ‘flipped learning’ and an amplified ‘glocal’ (Bax, 2011) dimension to the learning experience. Participating students in the COIL partner institutions will, for example, view minilectures on Task-Based Learning on the MOOC before their face-to-face classes in their respective countries and start discussing the topic on the MOOC with the many participants there. Students will cover the topic in class face-to-face with their

Fig. 1.3 Zee map plotting the participants on the MOOC understanding language–learning and teaching, October 2018 Iteration. (Reproduced with permission from Kate Borthwick)

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tutors, and then reflect either ‘live’ on Skype or asynchronously on the Moodle dedicated COIL forum discussion space with the COIL partners. This module also has the added dimension of the optional COIL-related field trip embedded within it. At Coventry University it was decided to implement this blend for students on the MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics course, as it is known that teachers’ beliefs exert a strong influence on students’ learning (Klapper, 2006) and many students appeared to have serious reservations about blended and online learning. Therefore, it was essential to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to operate effectively in education in the 21st Century. Students undertaking teacher education must be supported in developing an ability to critically assess their own beliefs in relation to practice (Orsini-Jones, Conde, Borthwick, Zou, & Ma, 2018, p. 2) and BMELTET explores how the integration of an existing MOOC into ELT programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level can impact on students’ beliefs, while at the same time providing them with the opportunity to engage in reflection in an immersive and action-learning-driven way with a global community of practice in a holistic ‘in’/’on’ and ‘for’ action way (Orsini-Jones et al., 2018). During the academic year 2016–2017, BMELTET involved 121 students based in three different countries (UK, The Netherlands and China). The participants were, in the main, students reading for either an MA or a BA (Hons) in ELT/TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). The participating students were based in five different higher education institutions in three different countries: one in the UK, one in the Netherlands, and three in China. Thirteen different student nationalities were represented in the sample: Austrian, Bangladeshi, British, Chinese, Dutch, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Iranian, Malaysian, Nigerian, Russian, Swedish and Vietnamese. This heterogeneous sampling allowed for the collection of several perspectives relating to participants’ beliefs and the research results illustrated that BMELTET had had a positive impact on students’ understanding and discussion of both national and international perspectives in English language teacher education (Orsini-Jones et al., 2018). BMELTET aimed to address the following research questions (RQs) (Orsini-Jones et al., 2018, p. 15): 1. Can a blended learning curricular intervention project, based on integrating a MOOC into the curriculum, support the identification of ELT students’ beliefs, with particular reference to learner autonomy, across five higher education institutions from three different countries? 2. Can the project lead to a transformation in the ELT students’ beliefs about ELT? 3. What recommendations on how to integrate MOOCs into existing ELT courses could be made, based on the results of the project? 4. Can the use of blended learning help students on English language teacher education courses in Higher Education to acquire a holistic approach to the integration of technology into their learning and teaching? RQ4 above deliberately addresses the marginalisation of technology in the professional development of English language teachers. Most key theoretical texts on ELT used in language teacher education (e.g. the bestselling Richards & Rodgers,

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2014) do not appear to address the online dimension, its affordances and how transformative effective engagement with technology can prove to be for teachers’ agency. BMELTET aims to illustrate that teachers’ cognition, triggered by active learning with a MOOC/COIL blend, can be empowering for ELT practitioners, can help them develop critical digital literacy and thus support them in the troublesome journey across the uncertain terrain of autonomy in language learning and teaching, as autonomy had previously been identified as a threshold concept for them by ‘expert students’ (Orsini-Jones et al., 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Jiao, for example, (2018) argues that autonomy is particularly challenging as a concept for students who, like himself, come from a teacher-centred Confucian learning tradition. He was one of the MA in ELT ‘expert students’ who based his dissertation on BMELTET in the academic year 2017–2018. Table 1.1 below illustrates what courses the students were enrolled on and whether or not the COIL interactions was assessed. The feedback from the participating students (obtained via online surveys, interviews, the analysis of their postings in Moodle discussion and of their answers in relevant assessed tasks) appeared to indicate that the project had been successful in addressing the four RQs. Participating students engaged in the English language teaching topics covered in the MOOC and then discussed them in Moodle with their international partners. In relation to the discussion regarding digital contexts of teaching, two sub-trends emerged in the forum exchanges: the first one related to appreciation for how much could be gained by engaging with a global and digital community of teaching practice, for example7 : Participant 1 (HU), Moodle posting from 11/12/2016 In the MOOC, the discussion forum added extra value as compared to my blended learning experience as I really learnt from the many postings of other participants.

Participant 2 (HU), Moodle posting from 16/12/2016 I thought it was really cool about the MOOC that people all over the world could comment on your ideas and even add in some ideas of their own. It gave me, as a student teacher, a lot of tips to work with students face to face but also via the internet. It gave me a fresh perspective on how to deal with online learning and how to make the best of it for students and for myself as a future teacher. Technology is our future so we have to learn how to work with it and how to make sure your students can adapt easily towards the future and technology is a big part of that! I enjoyed this course and it will be likely I do one again.

The second ‘sub-theme’ related to how the BMELTT project raised awareness of specific teaching contexts and the need to teach intercultural awareness. Two participants from China (participants 13 and 6/SISU) shared powerful remarks about the dominance of English on the global linguistic arena (echoing remarks made in the post-MOOC survey): Participant 13 (SISU), Moodle posting from 14/11/2017 English is taught as a foreign or second language in many countries, this is the inevitable result of globalization. Many universities around the world offer courses through the medium of English to meet the needs of the global community. As far as I am concerned, this can 7 Please

note that all comments are reproduced verbatim here.

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Table 1.1 Module and respective institutional assessment—BMELTET University

No. of students

Degree course

Example key course/module learning outcomes

Assessment (Summative = S; Formative = F)

CU

36

MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

Analyse the suitability of needs of specific English language learners in specific English language learning contexts (national and international) and discuss the teaching and learning approaches most appropriate to their situation

S = 50% module mark ‘Seen’ in-class test with question requiring reflection on COIL project and its impact on the student’s beliefs as an ELT teacher. Optional essay title on one of the topics covered on the BMELTET project.

HU

26

BA Honours English Teaching

Critically appraise theories and practice of language learning and teaching

F = Portfolio of practice entry on BMELTET and its impact on the student’s beliefs on ELT

XJTLU

14

MA TESOL

Contrast and compare different approaches to online and blended learning and flipped classroom

F = Reflection on asynchronous exchanges

SISU

39

BA in English Pedagogy

Evaluate MOOC pedagogies for ELT

S = 20% module mark Report on the evaluation of MOOCs for ELT

6

MA in Applied Linguistics

As above

F = As above

ECUST

help students adapt to the society and further connection with the world. But every coin has two sides, this teaching methods does not take into account the individual differences of students. What’s more, some universities pay too much attention to English, but ignore the mother tongue. This is not conducive to the heritage and development of local culture.

Participant 6 (SISU), Moodle posting from 20/11/2016 There are many traditional festivals every year in China. While in these years, more and more people especially children celebrate western festivals, such as Christmas, Halloween, April fool’s day. It is difficult for our children to recognize what is tradition, why they are different. This may affect our culture’s inheritance. Learning a language, we must get to know some cultures of their country. If we blend them together with our own’s, the disadvantage is obvious.

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The exchanges above illustrate how BMELTET supported students engaged in teacher education to explore multiple perspectives on teaching and learning and provoked some interesting reflections. The transformational impact of the project is evident in the quotation below (verbatim): As a student, I have studied for about 20 years but I have never experienced this kind of learning before. In China, teachers always take control of the whole class, they decide what we learned every day and check our homework. Most of us study to pass the exam or to make our parents happy in order to go to a good university to get a good job. Most of the students never enjoyed the process of learning. […] Taking part in MOOC changed my perception of online learning. I used to think that online learning is not effective because it is not in class who wants to spend time what this and doing all of this activities. Students need to be controlled in order to learn. After I tried to learn in MOOC, I found that some of the videos are very interesting and not hard to understand. Communicating with others on MOOC is also interesting. If someone asked me about something, I could explain to them, I would also learn something new and understand better. This all proved that learner autonomy are effective in learning. Besides, each week’s MOOC related to what we learned in class and help us understand better. (CU13 Interview)

As the students’ journeys and learning experiences from BMELTT illustrate, becoming interculturally aware and digitally proficient teachers was enabled both by the social collaborative learning aspect of COIL and by the MOOC blend with it.

1.5.2 Graduate Preparedness for Complexity An example of COIL within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, which was formally researched with funding from the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (2014–2015) (Wimpenny, Lewis, Gordon, Roe, & Waters, 2016), involved three countries (Coventry University (CU) in United Kingdom, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa and PXL Limburg University, Belgium (PXL). The focus of the collaboration was to improve graduates’ preparedness for practice in the field of mental health and beyond, not least due to the increasingly complex global landscape of occupational therapy practice along with growing evidence that graduates were not sufficiently prepared for the challenges of an uncertain world (Wimpenny & Lewis, 2015). 215 undergraduate students were involved in the COIL project across the three university occupational therapy programmes, with students allocated to twenty international discussion forums. The students were linked to the discussion forums via a final year module on their respective course programmes. Each institution selected a final year module most appropriately suited to ‘house’ the international learning opportunity. Table 1.2 provides details of the modules in which the discussion forum was situated, an example of a key-learning outcome for that module, and the forms of assessment that students undertook. Twelve graduate occupational therapists in their first post were recruited from across the three universities by a range of means, including approaching practice education coordinators, and through the university Alumni. Each graduate donated a

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Table 1.2 Module and respective institutional assessment University

No. of students

Module

Example key learning outcomes

Assessment (Summative)

CU

155

354OT Employability and Entrepreneurship

Critically appraise and debate the national and global context and the future direction of the profession

(100%) Develop and produce a career narrative using digital storytelling software

PXL

16

AJ2104 Enabling Environments

Critically appraise occupational therapy in the contexts of our work in ‘enabling environments’, from both the clients’ and therapists’ perspectives

(40%) critical reflections and contributions to the discussion forum and module sessions (50%) group work task critiquing functioning teams (10%) oral report and peer evaluation

UCT

29

AHS4119W Occupational Therapy Research and Practice Management

Appreciate the scope of and the relationships between the universal management functions of controlling, leading, planning and organising in occupational therapy practice contexts Describe and critically appraise the principles and procedures of organizational development

(100%) Written exam paper

10-min Vodcast8 about a complex case scenario from their first year of practice that included the following: • Taking risks, seeing and making use of opportunities to extend professional reach • Integrated and responsive care • Demonstrating professional artistry and competence, through coping effectively with situations of complexity and uncertainty with clients 8 A vodcast is a video stored in a digital form (using a mobile device, or other recording equipment)

to enable it to be broadcast over the Internet.

1 Innovation in Collaborative Online International Learning … Table 1.3 Graduate vodcasts

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Graduate

Country

First post/community service setting

Females (2)

SA

Rural hospital, northern Kwazulu Natal Rural hospital, Eastern Cape

Males (1)

UK

Forensic hospital

Females (3)

UK

Community Mental Health Acute inpatient mental health Contemporary setting

Females (4)

Belgium

Psychiatric Hospital settings • Individual Placement & Support (IPS) • Drug & Alcohol team • Day centre • Peripatetic team

• Being visible and influential with others, and in the delivery of cost effective practices with a necessary understanding of professional discourse for contemporary occupational therapy practice • Generating knowledge relevant to global health practice issues. Each Vodcast had an accompanying word document (with translations available in Dutch/Flemish/French/German). Table 1.3 presents the graduates involved and the practice settings they represented across the three countries. The project used an Open Moodle platform to enable the international delivery of teaching and learning. Whilst this was an open platform it had the facility to be locked after a short registration period to ensure confidentiality of participants. The platform housed learning materials such as the graduate Vodcasts, graduate and student donated resources, website links, and other module resources. In order to engage with the site, students simply had to log on with their unique user name and password from any mobile or laptop device that had access to the Internet. The expertise of a learning technologist enabled development of a site for the project which was populated with website links to the three countries, news feeds, a photograph gallery, Google maps, as well as other module resources. Learning technologists from PXL and UCT were also on hand to support their respective staff and students. The discussion forums were facilitated by the graduates who donated the Vodcasts, along with academic support from module tutors across the three institutions. In these forums, over a six-week period, students explored a minimum of two scenarios, considering their response to the challenges faced when promoting professional perspectives within interagency, multidisciplinary team working. This pedagogical approach was designed to complement, and supplement students’ current educational experiences on the respective modules; to encourage students to think creatively, engage in individual and group reflection, problem solving, and develop innovative ways to deliver international culturally-sensitive services. Figure 1.4 provides an example of prompts used with the students to facilitate international dialogue and exchange.

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Week One: Enrolment and Group Cohesion • Introduce and participate in warm up activities online o Add a picture to the international gallery o Say hello online and introduce yourself. Share something unique about you or a story about your name o Say something about your hopes / aspirations for the international element of the module Week Two: Scene Setting • Introduce the scenario(s) • What are the key points to consider here in relation to professional perspectives? What are the key points in each scenario (min 1 online contribution per scenario)? • Think about the service setting – where are the potential assets and hindrances/challenges in taking forward occupational therapy in relation to the service user’s care within the team and in liaison with other agencies. The focus here is not about the actual case-based intervention but how do you challenge/change/be creative/visible / influential in problem solving and negotiating occupational therapy service delivery within the service/setting/context and to be able to effectively advocate for the service user(s)/communities. List these and contribute to discussion around them (min 2 online contributions per scenario). Week Four: learning form others and action planning • Share your plans for creative professionally-orientated problem solving within multidisciplinary team work in your scenario(s). What are your anticipated outcomes? How will you know what works for whom, when and why? (Minimum 2 online contribution per scenario) • From your international collaboration identify two key points that have informed/supported/developed your thinking/problem solving/creative approach to tackling these difficult situations in relation to (wider) team challenges (min 1 online contribution per scenario).

Fig. 1.4 Example weekly prompts for students on the online discussion forum

Using case study methodology, and with ethical approval, both qualitive (reflective diary entries and interviews) and quantitative data (the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) (Chen & Starosta, 2000) were captured pre and post the six-week discussion forums. In terms of the key findings, the learning was seen to provide students with a real-world opportunity to consider professional issues from a global perspective, aiming to facilitate students’ confidence as occupational therapists in a global context, considering contemporary mental health practice. The focus was therefore not only to enable the exploration of theory underpinning the current context, but to up-skill students with practical means of contributing to their future mental health practice. Complex scenarios donated by graduates from their first year of work provided students with clearly valued first hand content from the world of practice. Working in international groups offered students opportunities to interact with other students’ cultural models, leading to the disruption of their respective ways of thinking, and to the generation of new discourse. As students engaged with one another and encountered difference in fellow student perspectives and epistemologies the challenge to generate active dialogue or to reach productive consensus was evident. Indeed, it was interesting to observe how students coped with the situation of being with others in a learning situation having to

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manage the ‘not knowing’ and how they were able to be responsive within situations of uncertainty—a main aim and purpose of setting up the learning experience. In addition, as none of the PXL students were native English speakers, they expressed initial trepidation about being able to participate in the online conversation. To help problem solve this issue, PXL staff organised weekly participant meetings enabling students to overcome their initial fears, to express their difficulties and to encourage and help each other to engage in the new issues proposed. Using online discussion forums to discuss professional perspectives, and across different countries and cultures, was a new experience for all in many ways. Whilst the Coventry University students were used to communicating their learning through online learning platforms, the anticipated practices and skills of international online discussion required a new and different skill set. Nonetheless, from analysis of the ISS pre and post test data it was evident the students felt more engaged and confident in intercultural communication after they had participated in the module, and that their intercultural sensitivity subsequently increased, with a significant difference in students interaction engagement and interaction confidence. Setting up this innovative international online forum involved a great deal of work across the partners, led by Coventry. That said, the study revealed that COIL offered a powerful means of students’ ability to exchange ideas, professional knowledge, time-management and problem solving skills, appreciate cultural diversity, reflect on their intercultural awareness and the sensitivity required to be tolerant of diverse perspectives. It was also evident through the study, that more opportunity is needed within the curriculum to enable students to wrestle with uncertainty, risk and educational challenge, and to replace their feelings of doubt and insecurity with improved agency, in order to be able to manage the ‘not knowing’, to tolerate complexity, and be resilient (Wimpenny et al., 2016).

1.6 Synopsis: COIL as a ‘Holistic Blend’ As evidenced in the case study examples above, COIL can be used to promote students learning across a multi-faceted skillset including respect, self-awareness, critical cultural adaptation and relationship building. The findings of our studies include how the students’ experience of COIL is found to impact on their intercultural sensitivity within their disciplinary practices through the promotion of peers’ cultural approaches, epistemic knowledge and through a process of discovery and adaptation. Also, students appreciate how a subject area can be explored through many different ideas and forms of media, pushing them out of their comfort zone, inspiring them to work with the ideas and techniques of others, and exposing them to new practices and new cultural openings. COIL enables students to develop sensitivity to different intercultural contexts and knowledge perspectives in the way that real-world industry has to operate in work practices across different countries. This finding is supported by Wimpenny et al. (2016) research regarding COIL benefits in preparing graduates for complexity

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by providing students with learning spaces to develop resilience and be responsive within situations of uncertainty. Further, as Orsini-Jones et al. (2018) studies explored, COIL can be utilised to develop the critical digital literacy capabilities of students engaged in language teacher education in a COIL/MOOC blend that aims to support students to reflect in a holistic and immersive way on their teacher beliefs on online and blended learning. COIL is an ideal approach to encourage students in teacher education in particular, but in other subjects too, to reflect on their learning ‘in action’ (Schön, 1983) while carrying out their collaborative international tasks, ‘on action’ (ibid.), with reflections on what happened during their COIL experience ‘for’ action, thinking about their future practice (Orsini-Jones et al., 2018). The engagement with international partners also provides students (and staff) with opportunity to re-think their beliefs, be open to diverse epistemic knowledge, and approach tasks embracing multiple perspectives. Furthermore, by engaging with COIL, students also acquire linguistics skills relating to cyberpragmatics (Yus, 2011), that is to say the ability of engaging online in an effective and respectful way within a global community of practice.

1.7 Conclusion With the development of technology, and the strengthening of international collaboration and connectivity, COIL has become a valuable approach to pedagogy as part of internationalising the curriculum, with scope for diversity of practices across all subjects, and not just within the arts and humanities, which earlier exemplars of COIL have reflected (see Shulteis, Moore & Sunka, 2015). In the process of pursuing internationalisation, COIL can provide opportunities for students to become digitally literate global citizens, preparing graduates to live in and contribute responsibly to a globally interconnected society (HEA, 2016). That said, COIL can be challenging for all stakeholders concerned, not only in taking both students and staff out of their comfort zone, but also in disrupting expectations of what learning in HE is about. Designing and delivery COIL thus requires due care and consideration, not only the pedagogical approaches to be considered for meaningful learning gain, but also in subject content to be modified. Furthermore, the importance of the intercultural dimension is to be emphasised, not only in students being able to engage with peers in discourse across different geographies and worldviews, but encouraging students to develop critical skills to understand forces shaping their discipline, and to have accepted viewpoints challenged (Zimitat, 2008). This chapter has aimed to provide a background and context to the practices of COIL at Coventry University with international partners. As well as the practical considerations of COIL pedagogies, we have shared research based practice examples of innovative approaches to COIL being carried out, with particular emphasis on the holistic blend of learning students and staff stand to acquire from engaging in such learning spaces. We also are aware there is still much to learn from researching our practices in collaboration with international partners. Such research involves

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examining how COIL is embedded within the wider internationalised curriculum, including how COIL offers greater scope for inclusivity beyond physical mobility. We also need to understand more about how best to incentivise and support staff in the design and delivery of COIL practices, including the facilitation skills required as part of intercultural learning, co-existence and diversity. We suggest COIL can support the decolonisation of the curriculum, by presenting multiple viewpoints and opportunities for post-national perspectives, thus further research into how COIL can support decolonisation practices is required. A final recommendation is research into new models of COIL, building for example on COIL/MOOC blends. In particular, an area of interest is in the use of COIL pedagogies and methodologies for engaging learning communities beyond HE, and into our wider cities and communities.

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practice to communities of practice. Proceedings of the National academy’s sixth annual conference and the fourth biennial threshold concepts conference (pp 78–82). Dublin (Ireland): NAIRTL, ISBN: 978-1-906642-59-4. Orsini-Jones, M., Lloyd, E., Gazeley, Z., Lopez-Vera, B., & Bescond, G. (2015). Student-driven intercultural awareness raising with MexCo: Agency, autonomy and threshold concepts in a telecollaborative project between the UK and Mexico. In N. Tcherepashenets (Ed.), Globalizing on-line: Telecollaboration, internationalization and social justice (pp. 199–239). New York, USA: Peter Lang. Orsini-Jones, M., Lloyd, E., Cribb, M., Lee, F., Bescond, G., Ennagadi, A., et al. (2017a). Embedding an online intercultural learning project into the curriculum: The trouble with cyberpragmatics. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), 7(1), 50–65. Orsini-Jones, M., Conde Gafaro, B., & Altamimi, S. (2017b). Integrating a MOOC into the postgraduate ELT curriculum: Reflecting on students’ beliefs with a MOOC blend. In Q. Kan & S. Bax (Eds.), Beyond the language classroom: Researching MOOCs and other innovations (pp. 71–83). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2017.mooc2016.672. Orsini-Jones, M., Lloyd, E., Lee, F., Bescond, G. & Boylan, R., (2017c). Troublesome multimodal multiliteracy development for global citizenship in international intercultural exchanges: The MexCo project case study. PESTLHE (Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Special Issue: Threshold Concepts and Conceptual Difficulty) (Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 205–228). Orsini-Jones, M., Conde, B., Borthwick, K, Zou, B., & Ma, W. (2018). BMELTT: Blending MOOCs for English language teacher training, Teaching English, ELT Research Papers 18.02, British Council, J121. Retrieved September 14, 2019, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/ b-meltt-blending-moocs-english-language-teacher-training. Orsini-Jones, M., & Lee, F. (2018). Intercultural communicative competence for global citizenship: Identifying rules of engagement in telecollaboration. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Orsini-Jones, M., Cerveró, A., Alrashidi, A., Matharu, J., & Ni, S. (2019). Students-as-partners in collaborative online international learning (COIL). In C. Simmons (Ed.), Teaching and learning excellence: The coventry way (pp. 85–89). Coventry: Coventry University Higher Education Corporation. Retrieved September, 14, 2019, from https://acdev.orgdev.coventry.domains/index. php?cID=886. Richards, J. C. & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching (3rd ed.). New York: CUP. Rogers, L. G., Mulholland, S., Derdall, M., & Hollis, V. (2011). From all perspectives: Opinions of students and teaching staff regarding occupational therapy distance education. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74, 241–248. Rubin, J. (2016). Nautical musings on local and global innovation and change. In E. Jones, R. Coelen, J. Beelen & H. de Wit (Eds.), Global and local internationalization. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Sadeghi, M. (2019). A shift from classroom to distance learning: Advantages and limitations. International Journal of Research in English Education, 4(1), 80–88. Sandeen, C. (2013). Integrating MOOCs into traditional higher education: The emerging “MOOC 3.0” Era. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 45(6), 34–39. Sangra, A., Vlachopoulos, D., & Cabrera, N. (2012). Building an inclusive definition of E-learning: An approach to the conceptual framework. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(2), 145–159. Savin Baden, M. (2010). A practical guide to using second life in higher education, McGraw-Hill. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved August 20, 2019, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.

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Shulteis, Moore, A., & Sunka, S. (Eds.). (2015). Globally networked teaching in the humanities: Theories and practices. New York (NY): Routledge. Villar-Onrubia, D., & Rajpal, B. (2016). Online international learning: Internationalising the curriculum through virtual mobility at Coventry University. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 20(2–3), 75–82. Ware, P. D., & Kramsch, C. (2005). Towards an intercultural stance: Teaching German and English through telecollaboration. The Modern Language Journal, 89(2), 190–205. Watkins, H., & Smith, R. (2018). Thinking globally, working locally: Employability and internationalization at home. Journal of Studies in International Education, 22(3), 201–224. Wimpenny, K., & Lewis, L. (2015). Preparation for an uncertain world: Professional artistry and durability in mental health occupational therapy practice preparation. South African Journal of Occupational Therapy, 45(2), 22–28. https://doi.org/10.17159/2310-3833/2015/V45N2. Wimpenny, K., Lewis, L., Gordon, I., Roe, S., & Waters, S. (2016). Preparation for an uncertain world: International curriculum development for mental health occupational therapy, World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1080/14473828.2016. 1161960. Wimpenny, K., Adefila, A., & DeWinter, A. (2018). JOVITAL: A needs analysis report contextualising the state of the art in international online teaching and learning, with particular attention to the jordanian case. Coventry: Coventry University. https://dx.doi.org/10.18552/jovital/2018/001. Wimpenny, K., Beelen, J., & King, V. (2019). Academic development to support the internationalization of the curriculum (IoC): A qualitative research synthesis. International Journal of Academic Development. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KAVIXPPGZ88AHPBFXWXK/full?target= 10.1080/1360144X.2019.1691559. Wimpenny, K., Knowles, R., Ramsey, C., & Speculand, J. (2018). #3CityLink: Disrupting learning through a translocal art pedagogy exchange project. The International Journal of Art & Design Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12193, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10. 1111/jade.12193. Yang, Y.-F. (2013). Exploring students’ language awareness through intercultural communication in computer-supported collaborative learning. Educational Technology & Society, 16(2), 325–342. Yang, J., Huiju, Y., Cen, S.-J., & Huang, R. (2014). Strategies for smooth and effective cross-cultural online collaborative learning. Educational Technology & Society, 17(3), 208–221. Yus, F. (2011). Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated communication in context. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zimitat, C. (2008). Student perceptions of the internationalisation of the undergraduate curriculum. In L. Dunn & M. Wallace (Eds.), Teaching in transnational higher education: Enhancing learning for offshore international students (pp. 135–147). Abingdon: Routledge.

Katherine Wimpenny is Professor of Research in Global Education and Theme Lead for Intercultural Engagement and Global Education, Research Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment (GLEA). Katherine’s research is focused on the internationalisation of higher education and the inclusive curriculum as an all-embracing approach, reflected in strategy, training, institutional values, culture and importantly curricular experiences. Her curriculum studies with students and staff, locally and internationally, are viewed in the context of a wide set of influences between curriculum theory, educational practice, and the relationships between higher education and the geo-socio-cultural-political contexts in which learning is located. Alongside student perspectives, and analysis into the ways in which coloniality in classrooms, curricula and campuses are experienced, taking into account matters of privilege and marginalisation, Katherine is examining the central role of academics in supporting, and being supported, to engage in institutional internationalisation not least in considering the influence of discipline specific contexts. Her research interests consider a diversity of learning spaces (digital—in particular, Collaborative Online International Learning, face to face, blended, formal, informal and non-formal) which

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interweave to impact educational opportunities which can serve to connect international learning communities, as well as to connect the university to its locale. Marina Orsini-Jones is Professor in Education Practice in the School of Humanities at Coventry University. She has been involved in COIL since 2011 and has published work on COIL, elearning innovation, threshold concepts the internationalisation of the curriculum. She has investigated the features of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and has been involved in numerous intercultural knowledge transfer COIL projects. She was awarded Higher Education Academy funding for MexCo with Mexico (Universidad de Monterrey–UDEM), CoCo with France (Universite’ de Haute Alsace Colmar) and CoBo with Turkey (Bo˘gaziçi University, Istanbul). In 2016–2018 she obtained a British Council English Language Research Award (ELTRA) to carry out BMELTE (Blending Massive Open Online Courses in English Language Teacher Education) with Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), China; Sichuan International Studies University (SISU), China; East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), China; and the Hogeschool Utrecht (HU), the Netherlands. Since the academic year 2018 she has developed cycles of action research with BMELTET (Blending Massive Open Online Courses in English Language Teacher Education with Telecollaboration) with la Florida Universitària in Spain and X’ian Xiaotong-Liverpool University in China and explored the troublesome knowledge encountered by staff and students involved in COIL.

Chapter 2

Digital Education, Information and Communication Technology, and Education for Sustainable Development Michel Ricard, Aravella Zachariou, and Daniel Burgos Abstract With reference to the various United Nations programmes, especially the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and, in particular, Goal 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and to promote lifelong learning for life, “Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)” aims to meet the present and future challenges of our societies. This challenge can only be met through a renewed education in response to profound pedagogical and organizational changes based on a transformation of approaches and methods thanks to the contribution of digital technology. These transformations are particularly important when it comes to sustainable development education in which digital technology, in its various forms, represents both a powerful, but also complex, lever action. Indeed, the theme “digital education, information and communication technology (ICT), and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)” is part of a three-pronged approach because it involves both teaching sustainable development, mobilizing digital technologies, including ICT, and changing teacher and learner behaviours based on an innovative and interactive pedagogy. Changes in behaviour or mentality specific to ESD must be adapted to progress the implementation of digital resources to develop a structuring and integrative framework to address issues of education, communication, and learning to bring the policy institutions of knowledge and its diffusion to the use of technologies at all levels. This book chapter presents these concepts and provides a few recommendations for their effective implementation.

M. Ricard (B) Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, Talence, France e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] A. Zachariou Frederick University/Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus D. Burgos (B) Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_2

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For several years, the digital share has increased in all sectors, especially education, of our society. Collaborative learning and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly recognised as effective approaches to transforming education into Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by bringing, complementing, or reinforcing traditional approaches (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995; Vare & Scott, 2007). The traditional Web, based on static HTML pages and devoid of any interactivity, has seen a big change with the appearance of Web 1.0 technologies for generating Web content. With such an approach, users are able to interact with the Web and write and publish their own content. The evolution of Web 2.0 has had a strong impact on education systems by enabling the development of a new learning technology that allows learners to interact with others and with content. Furthermore, Web 3.0 provides a more personalised interaction to end users, including the Internet of Things and a user experience that is better adapted to each person or user cluster. In 2002, MIT’s OpenCourseWare (Abelson, 2008) led to the creation of courses accessible via the Internet; in addition, the Creative Commons license has defined free access to their content. The ensuing Open Education movement combines good practices, tools, resources, and user interactions in a framework to share and improve the educational experiences of users, from students to teachers, through content providers and policymakers. Indeed, Open Education clusters several core strands, all of them part of an open science global approach (e.g., open content, open learning, open access, open technology, open research data, open research results, open licensing, and open communities). As an example, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are an open educational resource in the form of open online courses distributed through the Internet (Kesim & Altınpulluk, 2015). In the field of education, ICTs are an essential means of training that allow the acquisition of new knowledge by allowing students, teachers, researchers, and, more widely, each person to benefit from the best possible education and to respond both to their own needs and to those of the society to which they belong. This is particularly true in the case of sustainable development, whose reference to multiple themes and disciplinary fields requires a global and transversal approach that contrasts with the usual pedagogical methodologies. ICT—and more generally, the digital approach— is undoubtedly one of the main levers to encourage the emergence of new pedagogical practices that facilitate access of knowledge to initial training, schools, and universities, to users of vocational training, and, more broadly, to all young people and citizens within the framework of education for all throughout life. ICT and digital tools and resources offer everyone the opportunity to capitalise on the knowledge and know-how to drive sustainable human development (Uday, Parida, Karim, Söderholm, & Candell, 2009). They also address the numerous challenges faced by many education systems such as a lack of teachers in specific regions or of specific subjects, a lack of adaptation to ICT skills, a lack of infrastructure or ICT access, and inadequate training of staff (e.g., lack of competence and a competence achievement plan).

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In most European countries, students and teachers are familiar with ICT because smartphones, tablets, and other devices are part of their daily lives. Under these conditions, formal, non-formal, and informal education must seize these opportunities to make intelligent and effective use of Web 2.0 to help learners develop their own knowledge management in preparation for lifelong learning (Leicht, Heiss, & Byun, 2018). ICT then becomes a connection hub where regular academic degrees (formal education), organised but not official training (non-formal education), and other ways of learning such as learning pills or everyday learning (informal) can work together to improve, strengthen, and enlarge the learner’s itinerary and the teacher’s experience.

2.1 Educational System and ESD To enable education to deploy its transformative capabilities in support of the various programmes related to sustainable development, we cannot be content with the status quo that has shown its limits; we must engage the educational system in profound pedagogical and organisational transformations from kindergarten to post-baccalaureate, which requires a strong mobilisation of existing potentialities (Spillane, Seelig, Blaushild, Cohen, & Peurach, 2019). This evolution of education related to Education for Sustainable Development does not consist of identifying and comparing existing methods but rather knowing how to optimise and change these methods through the contribution of new technologies that must apply to all fields of education. Digital technology represents a powerful lever of transformation to support an education policy in all its dimensions: for example, pedagogical transformation in the service of learning and evaluation, training in tomorrow’s issues and professions, simplification of relations with users, and modernisation operation with redesigned information systems. To this extent, the process of transformation must combine pedagogy, social context, institutional structure, and a digital approach (Castañeda & Selwyn, 2018). This definition leads to a digital transformation approach which is focused not only on technology but on a comprehensive, cultural, and cross-field input from various layers, stakeholders, and fields into a harmonised strategy.

2.2 Put Digital Technology at the Heart of the ESD Strategy Today, we produce a wealth of data related to education in all its forms, including a wide variety of digital data on sustainable development and ESD. These data are collected, stored, and processed by a multitude of actors directly or indirectly related to the world of education. This production highlights the pedagogical benefits offered by the collection and analysis of digital data and their use to rethink an education that meets today’s expectations.

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Digital education has major pedagogical potential offered by the collection, analysis, processing, and provision of data (Brudermann, Aschemann, Füllsack, & Posch, 2019). The use of statistical tools in collective analysis to provide personalised reports and recommendations to every type of user about objectives, performance, itinerary, and a large variety of potential inputs will benefit everybody. Further, Big Data becomes an invaluable resource to compare (to others or one-self), predict results or outcomes, provide counselling about the various options, and track and reroute the process if needed and requested (Daniel, 2019). The main types of these users include (Aguinis, Ramani, Alabduljader, Bailey, & Lee, 2019): – Learners, who can thus have personalised learning environments allowing them to take stock of their strengths and needs and to access specific learning paths, adapted aids, suggestions, activities, or resources corresponding to their margins of progress; – Teachers, who have the opportunity to develop new pedagogies and new resources while they possess knowledge of the specific needs of their students; – Researchers in education and ESD, who will better understand the interactions favouring the different types of learning and will thus be able to change practices; and – Those in management of the education system, who can use the statistical use of data to evaluate practices and model changes.

2.3 Innovate the Pedagogy of ESD Through Digital Development Digital development for ESD should help change teachers’ practices by, for example, aiding them in recommending content or resources, assisting in the evaluation of learners, and allowing them to gain useful information about courses. Digital resources make assessments easier and allow better value for data and sharing capabilities within the educational community. Students will have the opportunity to train, self-assess, and participate in diagnoses based on resources adapted to their levels and needs. Digital development also encourages specific interactions by groups (e.g., language, age, subject, and objective) for the benefit of that group and its individual members (Chin et al., 2018). The use of digital technology allows for immersive simulations (e.g., role play, augmented reality, and virtual reality) that let students enter into experiences from authentic situations and, in doing so, constitutes another structuring perspective in pedagogy. This approach is particularly promising for achieving skills-based learning, especially in the professional and technological fields. The possibilities offered by the distributed ledger technology/blockchain technology in reference to Web 3.0 also generate new opportunities for updating and the accreditation of free or open resources while also ensuring the traceability of these

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resources. This technology can provide a simplification of the database improvement and verification process, better accessibility, easy sharing, and tracking of the use of documents (Jirgensons & Kapenieks, 2018). By promoting an open, decentralised, and horizontal mode of governance, we can imagine another rapprochement with the Creative Commons licenses and additionally with the Commons, those goods whose “use is common to all”, in the framework for the production of shared resources. In addition, blockchain technology can also be particularly useful for decentralising data storage.

2.4 Support and Strengthen the Professional Development of Teachers Through Digital Tools Characterised by their diversity of supply and their organisational flexibility, digital tools are valuable for teacher training through competence acquisition and skill development. Digital tools make it possible to widen the range of training courses, make organising training times more flexible, and jointly provide training in and through digital technology. The development of students’ digital skills and the overall use of digital tools and resources require that teachers have adequate and more specific training in these areas. To encourage and better target the development of initial and continuous training in digital teachers, it is necessary to develop training specifically tailored to the needs of these personnel. This ICT-competence-based approach will support not only the ICT-based subjects but also every type of subject that might use ICT-based tools, such as learning management systems, digital repositories, and social networks. Digital technology must further strengthen the links between research results, training content, and pedagogical practices in the field of digital education.

2.5 Develop Inclusive Schools Through Digital Technologies Digital technologies are crucial in providing educational resources to struggling students. They can contribute significantly to improving the reception and full integration of knowledge to these students and facilitating the monitoring of their schooling (Raja, 2016). By systematically proposing alternative means of access and use, the proposed adaptations benefit all students with or without disabilities. Social inclusion means, in practice, a step forward in integrating functional diversity into the established educational and social structures. Further, inclusion takes a combined approach from a wide range of people and formulises a harmonised strategy and methodology, making the most out of every person. Thanks to the capabilities for

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adaptive interaction, a digital approach facilitates personalised mentoring, as an individual or a group, so that all users receive what they need or require to achieve in the right moment.

2.6 Strengthen Partnerships with Local Communities and Businesses Through Digital Tools Local authorities and the industrial sector are key partners in the digital rollout strategy to innovate in ESD. Digital technology strengthens linkages with these partners by bringing ESD closer to genuine community and business sector situations to increase learner motivation and familiarise them with different trades (Cebrián, 2017). Collaborations with these partners make it possible to offer digital resources to teachers and learners for professional and technological education. These resources, which can be coproduced, use all the potentialities of digital tools (e.g., animations and “serious games”) and are based on the realities of today’s communities and industry. They make it possible to satisfy many ambitions: valorize the technical and industrial culture; apprehend lessons in a concrete and motivating way; highlight the attractiveness of the trades; participate in a positive orientation; and favour a shared formation between the school and the communities and industries, fighting stereotypes and developing rights-free resources for education as well as for businesses and communities.

2.7 What Is UNECE and What Is Its Role in ESD? The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations, and it operates as a multilayer platform for promoting sustainable development and economic growth amongst its member states (United Nations (UN), 2005). In the framework of UNECE, in 2005, at the Vilnius high-level meeting of Education and Environment Ministries, the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Steering Committee (SC) was established as the responsible body and mechanism for monitoring and reviewing the UNECE ESD Strategy as a practically applied policy instrument that would facilitate promotion of ESD in the region (United Nations Economic Commission of Europe (UNECE), 2005). Since 2005, UNECE member States are working together on the implementation of the Strategy as a regional pillar of ESD integration. During these years, UNECE, through the ESD Strategy implementation, highlighted that hundreds of initiatives have been launched to integrate ESD into the content and process of formal, non-formal, and informal education, moving from policy to practice, and important advancements were made on policy integration, curricula, tools, resources, and networking (United Nations Economic

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Commission of Europe (UNECE), 2016). Through ESD SC, UNECE is the only institutional mechanism at the regional level that is working exclusively on ESD and is represented by governments with participation by a number of stakeholders from the academia, international and regional organisations, and NGOs. UNECE tools, especially the ESD Strategy as such, the ESD indicators, the development of teachers’ ESD competences, and the elaboration of the ESD school plans (United Nations Economic Commission of Europe (UNECE), 2009, 2012, 2014) impacted the formation of national policies and contributed to the UNESCO ESD decade (2004–2015) and to the gap on ESD (UNESCO, 2019a) through the UNECE future working plan for the period 2017–2019 (UNECE, 2017). Despite the progress that has been achieved in the field, challenges remain in the UNECE region. The UN Global Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other international and regional policies such as the UNESCO implementation framework on ESD beyond 2019 (UNESCO, 2019b) set ESD as the umbrella of quality education and as the driver for implementing the rest of the SDGs. In this new era of ESD, UNECE needs to rethink the approach to education, what it is for, and what we expect from it. Aligned with this critical view of ESD, which requires transformational, structural, and technological changes in education from pre-school to life-long learning, ESD in UNECE is in a transitional process, constantly reframing and reorienting its mission and actions. The UNECE “ESD Strategic Planning 2030” is an ambitious roadmap for ESD in the UNECE region for the next decade (2030). It aims to respond not only to the “what” of education (content and purpose) but also to the “how” (teaching, engagement, and learning opportunities). The challenging critical domains of change include (a) ESD and the whole institution approach as an approach that seeks to question policy, thinking, and practice so as to embed sustainability in the heart of an institution; (b) ESD as quality education that can provide a helpful framework to promote adjectival education (such as global education, development education, peace, citizenship, and intercultural education) and strengthen the active engagement of learners; (c) digital education and information technologies as crucial factors for achieving SDGs and implementing ESD in all its aspects by providing opportunities for connectivity all over the world, “making” local-global and vice versa, enhancing the educational tools and methods in formal and non-formal contexts at all educational levels; and (d) entrepreneurship, employment, and innovation as a key for driving society to new sustainable lifestyles and providing innovative solutions and alternatives for sustainable development (UNECE, 2019). The challenges above entail a series of risks such as (a) the degree and quality of youth engagement to these domains, (b) the resistance of institutions and reluctance of policy and decision makers to change, (c) the absence of supporting mechanisms and processes to monitor the integration of these domains in various levels and forms of education, (d) the absence of joint actions and partnerships for their implementation at the national and regional levels, (e) the different “views” and hidden agendas that are inherent among the various and diverse stakeholders, and (f) the lack of financial resources because of different priorities from country to country.

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2.8 What New Strategy for ESD Is Based on Digital Learning? In light of the results achieved over the last fifteen years, since the launch of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2005–2014, the triptych “Digital Education–ICT–ESD” has gone through two successive phases (Beynaghi et al., 2016). The first phase, still present, puts ESD in the context of e-learning. This constitutes completing training face-to-face through distance learning, which relies mainly on the use of digital tools. It has taken the forms of virtual classes, MOOCs, or interactive forums, which are based on innovative teaching practices (inverted classes, seriousgame, self-training modules, or group work remotely controlled). After a few years of technical and pedagogical innovation, this phase now allows SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analyses. The second phase, which has been gaining momentum over the past five years, places ESD in the context of digital learning, which considers digital tools in a global manner based on three approaches: (a) the transition from computers to all digital media (e.g., smartphones and tablets), (b) the use of all tools for learning via instant messaging social networks (e.g., WhatsApp and Telegram) to create a learning community or group on a specific topic, and (c) the setup of an e-learning path in which learners appropriate knowledge through exchanges amongst themselves or with the teaching team. Digital learning can then be transformed into social learning by focusing on target values such as conviviality, altruism, and the sharing of knowledge or by the creating of closed universes (e.g., small private open courses and corporate open online courses). In the case of ESD, these two phases are complementary and reflect a pedagogical desire leading to mixed training (e.g., blended learning). The combination of different learning modalities and training devices must allow learners to develop advanced skills that go beyond knowledge or basic skills. However, there are several questions to answer: 1. How should we move from digital tools and new technologies to changes in behaviour or mentality specific to ESD? The crucial point here is to use these tools not only for their fun and convivial side but also for their ability to highlight our representations of sustainable development. Tools are just a means to make something else (Lockton, Harrison, & Stanton, 2016). A flat use of social networks will entertain but not train the users; more so, it will not support any ICT competence achievement other than the ludic use, which is not enough for ESD. In other words, ESD must initiate content and language that everyone must be able to decipher in their own way. ESD should not be prescriptive but shared and accepted. ICT must rely on a real educational model to associate with ESD—not with eco-gestures or good practices, but with a rigorous scientific framework open to society and its values. The project approach involving ICT and personal investment must play an important role.

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2. How should we develop a structuring and integrative framework to address issues of education, communication, and learning? New technologies evolve in an area that combines information with communication, which has many possible biases. The mobilisation of communication sciences makes it possible to better define the issues: What is sustainable communication? What learning processes should be developed within a learning community? What role should the trainer play in this configuration? ESD has too often been taught by geographers, historians, and teachers of life sciences and the earth. If its interdisciplinary side is obvious, it remains to invent what we call “sustainability sciences”, which can be nurtured by the aforementioned profiles as long as they keep a cross-field approach to the problem at hand (Jabbour, de Sousa Jabbour, Sarkis, & Godinho Filho, 2017). Therefore, the teacher and the academic programme will not be subject oriented or restrained but transversally harmonised, irrespective of original background. 3. How will the institutions that today have the guarantors of knowledge and its diffusion integrate the more frequent use of new technologies, in particular those which develop within the interconnectivity? The development of e-learning has led to a strong reduction of face-to-face training models—a reflection on the value of this new medium. In the future, it seems necessary to engage ESD in several ways: (a) support innovative projects proposed by trainers (e.g., reverse class, development of a transversal module, and intercultural activity), (b) offer ICT training and modules for learners and teachers, (c) integrate these actions into a skills framework that would be enhanced by diplomas, (d) integrate disciplines and components that are too often absent in ESD (e.g., engineering sciences, social sciences and humanities, medicine, or pharmacy), (e) develop tools that fit into a lifelong learning path, (f) rely on these tools to adapt the methods of checking knowledge, and (g) establish a fluent multilateral dialogue with the stakeholders, including policymakers. 4. How can UNECE play the role of facilitator in this connection between the world of education and that of the Information and Communication Technologies? The relations between these two worlds are sometimes chaotic. On one hand, education is in the form of a model of socialisation, which supposes a more or less long process of learning; on the other hand, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) refer to snapshot news, playful and networked practices, alternative connections, and interconnected objects. In the case of Education for Sustainable Development, the most appropriate prescription would be the strengthening of skills via capacity-building projects like those initiated by the European Commission. However (and this is where the UNECE framework would be crucial), these programmes should include an institutional component (e.g., a rectorate, ministry of education, regional office for education, or network of institutions) in order to institutionalise Education for Sustainable Development. Capacity building would include an information and communication sciences component in the form of a portfolio (digital tools to use and

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mobilise) and an educational sciences component (a rigorous teaching framework to be defined) (Emery et al., 2017). This approach, aimed at engaging educational institutions and ministries, could lead to the award of a “UN Centre for Excellence in Education for Sustainable Development” label in which chairs could be integrated (e.g., UNESCO chairs, Jean Monnet chairs, company chairs, or Regional Centres of Expertise for ESD). This centre could deliver training modules in line with the skills targeted by ESD. Indeed, the need for an orchestrated effort to join forces amongst the various stakeholders (including content providers, publishers, and IT services) with a clear connection to the institutional ones is required for effective design and implementation of ICT in ESD. For instance, these institutions could be the UN, UNESCO, and other social entities (e.g., International Council for Open and Distance Education, Commonwealth of Learning, Open Educational Consortium, and Open Educational Resources Foundation) and professional bodies (chambers of commerce and accredited colleges and associations).

2.9 What Are Some Suggestions to Develop Digital Education, ICT, and ESD? ESD learning objectives can be summarised as cross-cutting key competencies for sustainability that are relevant to all SDGs. Achieving these objectives requires acquisition, in addition to basic knowledge, of a range of skills such as critical thinking, normative and strategic competencies, collaboration, self-awareness, problem solving, etc. ICTs have a range of potential applications to face the challenge of facilitating innovative pedagogies for ESD learning. In this perspective, several axes of reflection and action can be envisaged: 1. Develop digital resources and tools to strengthen the actual potential for ICT to combine formal, non-formal, and informal learning and to highlight the impact of ICT into the current educational scenario. This integration will encourage the design, creation, and sharing between students, faculty members, and society so that knowledge can be combined and jointly nurtured. 2. Generalise online and blended learning that combines face-to-face training, conducive to interactions between learners and trainers, and e-learning, which is an effective way to train through effective models of immersive learning. 3. Apply learning analytics and other AI techniques to the ESD to measure, collect, analyse, and process related data to learners and their environments in order to understand and optimise learning and the conditions under which it occurs. 4. Develop social networks as key tools, but be aware that these social networks are completely useless without an educational purpose and a sensible integration in a framework, strategy, or itinerary.

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5. Integrate an Open Science Framework, along with a practical implementation plan, to use, re-use, create, and share open educational resources and good practices at every educational level, including teacher training and a compliant administrative layer. 6. Use predictive techniques to anticipate the users’ next move and make a more personalised recommendation. 7. Design an analytics dashboard to store, retrieve, and report user behaviour and performance.

2.10 Conclusion This article attempts to explore and examine the relationships and interconnections that underlie ICT and ESD, which highlight the dynamic role of ICT in the ESD integration at all levels of education, both in terms of pedagogy and content. Given that ESD is a transformative pedagogical approach, while being the key driver for achieving SDGs as a global target, ICT could be seen as a vehicle to help individuals, groups, societies, and states understand both the systemic and global nature of sustainability issues and realise their role in pursuing change towards a world governed by the principles of sustainability. In such a context, the question is not how ICTs can contribute to the integration of ESD into formal, non-formal, and informal education but how ICTs can effectively co-exist with ESD to meet not only its challenge regarding education but more broadly on the social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. In such a context, ICTs can highlight ESD’s core principles at the local and global level, the connectivity, participation, and action towards a “glocal” perspective (term borrowed from the economic sciences; see Robertson, 1995), highlighting how local and global realities related to sustainable development are interconnected, compared, combined, and integrated (Gibson, Ostrom, & Ahn, 2000). As Sipos, Battisti, and Grimm (2008) noted, a global approach combines local experiences and knowledge with global communication and collaboration, which are requirements of ESD and could be reinforced through ICTs. In exploring and discussing the dynamic relationship of the two, it is important to realise that ICTs are not a panacea for ESD but constitute, as many other practices and means, a useful learning and teaching tool that, in addition to other techniques, can respond to ESD as quality and inclusive education. In this case, however, it is not enough for educational policymakers, teachers, pupils, and the wider participants in the educational process to have the knowledge and skills in relation to the contribution and use of ICT in ESD; they must realize how ICTs can be creative and productive in achieving ESD. In this regard, their critical approach to ICTs, their prudent and correct use in a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to sustainable development issues, and their interoperability with other instruments and sources are issues that need to be addressed in order for ICTs to be a truly useful tool for ESD instead of

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turning the planet into a virtual reality as a result of the orientation of education in the pace of digitization and technology. Acknowledgements The authors thank the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Steering Committee (SC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the UNESCO Chair in “Education, formation et recherche au développement durable” at the Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture, and the Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED) at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) for their continuous support on ESD and with this book chapter.

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Chapter 3

Digital Transformation in Higher Education Institutions: Between Myth and Reality John W. Branch , Daniel Burgos , Martin Dario Arango Serna , and Giovanni Pérez Ortega Abstract Nowadays, there are several technological trends in the world which promote changes of focus in organizations. This fact, coupled with the globalisation of information and economies, leads to a transformation aimed at achieving greater organizational efficiency and leveraging available digital resources in order to shift organizational cultures towards incorporating and taking advantage of digital instruments and tools. Digital transformation is approached as a turning point that leverages new paradigms emerging in the digital world. It has led experts to rethink how an institution can remain competitive and visible while undergoing social transformation, maintaining its validity and staying sustainable over time. This process is important in technological development, which produces constant changes in order to attend to the needs of the social environment where it is occurring. Universities occupy an important place among the institutions facing digital transformation, as they should lead the cultural shift that it implies. The transition to new ways of executing critical mission processes and procedures in the institutions leveraging digital artefacts leads to the consideration of the design and definition of strategic organizational units dedicated to implementing meaningful and valuable technology solutions. However, this should also lead to the creation of a digital culture aligned with the dynamics of new technological ecosystems. Higher education institutions are no stranger to these challenges. Many are undergoing renewals and structural reviews of their administrative J. W. Branch (B) Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación Y de La Decisión, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, Medellín, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] D. Burgos Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] M. D. A. Serna · G. P. Ortega Departamento de Ingeniería de la Organización, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, Medellín, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] G. P. Ortega e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_3

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and academic processes. The improvements they make using new technologies stand to benefit both the university community and wider society, which are the central reasons for the existence of universities. In accordance with the above, higher education institutions should propose the following as a general objective: ‘to foster a community attuned to innovation in the University, through a digital transformation, where the advancement of technology and emerging trends maximize collaboration, active learning, research and creation, in a way that encourages interdisciplinary critical thinking in order to help to the sustainable development of society’. It is not a myth but a reality that higher education institutions, like many other organizations, are being affected by several social and technological global trends towards digitalisation. The digital transformation process is potentially disruptive and needs further study due to its impact on their constitution. Therefore, the researchers suggest developing a complete research program around this phenomenon, in which new spaces for evaluation, reflection, redesign of processes and design of proposals can be created. Thus, culture of innovation, through a digital transformation, becomes an institutional way of life learned, shared and transmitted both by directive bodies, at both academic and administrative levels of the university. Keywords Organizational transformation · Digital transformation · Cultural transformation · Collaboration network

3.1 Introduction Digital transformation can be considered an inflection point that has been generated by different paradigms produced in the digital world. The changes that it implies have affected a broad spectrum of organizations, including universities and other higher education institutions. They have a very important role in addressing these changes and the accompanying challenges because these institutions should lead the process of cultural transformation. However, for universities and other higher education institutions, digital transformation goes beyond the incorporating digital artefacts to make their internal academic and management processes more efficient. It also implies rethinking the learning process in order to incorporate these artefacts in such a way that teaching work can evolve in two directions: one, complementing, enhancing and making traditional teaching approaches richer through the incorporation of digital technologies; and two, delivering high-quality education through online mechanisms by leveraging the same digital technologies (Jackson, 2019). Higher education institutions have an important influence in the process of human capital development. It is not strange that governments and corporations seek the help of academic institutions in support their training process in such a way that costs can be lowered, contributing to the viability of business and even economies. However, it is also a reality that higher education institutions show noticeable delays in adapting to the demands of the different stakeholders (Pucciarelli & Kaplan, 2016). Considering this situation, higher education institutions should review their role in

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order to reorient and become a service of global scope, capable of understanding and processing the needs and demands of stakeholders in a market that becomes more competitive and complex every day. Higher education should be able to show its value not only according to internal considerations, but also to external agents in the society (Jackson, 2019). In the context of higher education, technology has been used as complement to the teaching process. It has not been considered as a disruptive element, but rather as an answer to the question of how to enhance teaching and therefore student learning by leveraging controlled environments such as those provided in online learning systems. In some cases, these systems might also include platforms leading to centralisation for several universities (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2016; Rushkoff, 2016). However, the utilisation of these technologies is just an initial step (Jackson, 2019). Digital transformation in higher education goes beyond building greater instructor-driven innovations which improve learning management systems. It should also include digitalisation competencies. Emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data and platform technologies define a series of relevant skills that need to be taught. But even more important is the incorporation of other aspects such as ethics, project management and the ability to learn how to learn. These skills show how digital transformation in higher education is more than improving digital platforms or supporting learning systems driven by university considerations (Hildebrandt, 2019). In this book chapter, we focus on the duality of digital transformation as a concept. It usually exists between myth and reality, like the ritual process that Eliade (1963) already discussed over half a century ago.

3.2 Digital Transformation in Higher Education Institutions Digital transformation is a topic that has been studied for several decades. It is defined as the process by which organizations review their former state, their current state and the future requirements they will have, along with the changes that need to be implemented in order for them to face the future (Kilmann & Covin, 1988). Hence, digital transformation is considered an organizational transformation in a digital world. It can be viewed as a structural metamorphosis in which an organization will have to adapt across time in order to guarantee its survival. This will be done using the organization’s own resources, taking advantage mostly of human resources and the surrounding environment. However, an important challenge that higher education institutions must face is the fact they are conditioned by national policies and global political trends. It seems that these influences on higher education institutions are more powerful than the transformations that can be produced within institutions and the societies where they are installed (López Segrera, 2008).

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Digital transformation, defined as taking efficient advantage of the opportunities offered by the available digital technologies and redefining business, is a very complex task. This is even more compelling for those organizations trying to defend their competitive position in global markets. This concern also touches higher education institutions, since the competition to select the best students and researchers is increasing (Faria & Nóvoa, 2017). At this point, it is important to remark that digital transformation of organizations is much more than simple digitalization. Digital transformation is the result of an organizational change in which people, process and business models can understand technologies as tools that generate value among customers and collaborators. This is also valid for universities. Digital transformation goes beyond simply having online learning management systems. It means incorporating learning tools directly into the teaching process and, in parallel, and teaching students about the implications of these technologies in different aspects of society (McCusker & Babington, 2015). Four main drivers of digital transformation have been identified for higher education institutions: cost reduction, user experience improvement, increase in the agility of processes and competitivity increments. It is necessary to recognise them and analyse the impact they have had on digital transformation in higher education institutions. It is also necessary to identify resulting change factors, which become a model of digital transformation in higher education institutions from a prospective process (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1 Drivers in higher education institutions

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Fig. 3.2 Model of Digital Transformation for Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2030

A clear example of this process can be seen in Fig. 3.2, which displays the change factors of the Model of Digital Transformation for Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2030. Indeed, digital technologies have value when they are integrated and supported in a culture that fosters addressing risks. Investment in technology must occur in parallel with investment in cultural and organizational transformation (Gobble, 2018). Since people are a key element in digital transformation, signs of readiness to conduct a real digital transformation include a management staff and a committed work team trained and aligned with institutional policies that will make the process easier to adopt (García Peñalvo, 2019). Considering this, an organizational culture that facilitates digital transformation should be a culture based on participation in decision-making and agility derived from suggestion acceptance and capacity, leading to the continuous development of personnel (Schwarzmüller et al., 2018). The problem of digital transformation for higher education institutions can be framed in two stages, the first of which is the sensitisation of leading institutions to topics aligned with the fundamentals of digital transformation. The idea of this stage is to help leaders identify and understand the changes that this transformation requires in their context in such a way that they can lead it within their institutions. The second stage consists in spreading this knowledge to all different stakeholders in an organization, in such a way that they can identify their responsibilities and how they can make contributions to the process of digital transformation. Professors and lecturers are significant stakeholders at this stage. The main objective at this point is that they identify their role in not only using technologies in the teaching process, but in really teaching students the relevance and implications of incorporating technologies in different sectors.

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An additional factor, which becomes stronger when a policy of digital transformation is introduced within higher education institutions, is the direct and bidirectional relationship that should exist between industry requirements and the formation and interaction of proposals offered by higher education institutions. Hence, these institutions become forced to introduce internal transformation in order to respond to state policies. The global trends accompanying the fourth industrial revolution also force them to make internal changes that enable a flexible and timely global formation. They are required to create bridges between industry and themselves, so that academic programs and infrastructure such as innovation laboratories are built from these two perspectives, which become complementary. As a consequence of such efforts, students will be enabled to address the global and local problems that they will have to face in a work environment requiring new skills—not only academic ones, but also those involving teamwork, dynamic analysis and innovation. The trends in the digitalised world cause drastic changes in the microenvironments of many organizations, which also affect learning and people’s connections with society. Therefore, it is important to include modern applications of IT in education. With technical advances in software, web applications and network bandwidth, electronic learning systems have changed the educational ecosphere of schools, universities and corporate training systems (Tay & Low, 2017). Concepts such as living labels allow for cooperation in all stages of a process of creation, including conceptualization, testing, prototype creation, validation, development, exploitation and commercialization. They permit people to adopt a network approach in the participatory context of the real world, closing gaps between exploration and exploitation and knowledge and solutions and creating useful approximations. As can be seen, a digital transformation project can be considered at different scopes within a higher education institution. It becomes a macrosystem requiring flexible relationships and enabling not only the creation of new subsystems, but also the elimination of other factors limiting their growing and appropriation. That is, a moment of reflection and a deep restating of each of its subsystems, relationships, roles and functions provides value and makes it possible to meet a challenge like digital transformation in higher education institutions, in a similar way to what Faria and Nóvoa (2017) express. In order to be successful, this new approach requires a deep reengineering of all the support processes, a task that should be considered carefully in order to mitigate the natural reluctance to change. In this way, digitalised organizations should focus both on the technological domain and the social domain in order to reach a successful transformation. The digital reputation and global presence of an institution in the network are becoming increasingly important, and they do not exactly coincide with the traditional reputation.

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3.3 From Corporate Hypocrisy to Organizational Transparency Strategies Although universities’ social responsibility strategies have become been prioritised by university management and are needed in order to respond to the changes required by the new societies (Ruxandra Vasilescu, 2010). The universities offering virtual programs not only need to establish these to expand into global markets, but to establish mechanisms to avoid so-called hypocrisy or corporate irresponsibility. Pressures from interest groups are often strong. One of the causes for this is the appearance, since the end of the previous century, of international treaties that oblige every public and private institution to fulfill responsibilities of every sort (Hillman & Keim, 2001). On this topic (Wagner, 2009), claim that the difference or discrepancy between the social behaviour of an institution and its established standards of socially responsible behaviour is considered hypocrisy. This might lead to loss of competitiveness, represented by low reputation, a perception of quality loss and the risk of decreases in financial results. From this it can be said that if a company is irresponsible, it will be somehow punished by its customers and stakeholders. The digital transformation process should be structured to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy as much as possible. This could be achieved by using efficient, and effective, alternatives structures that allow the organizations for keeping their intellectual capital and offering security, reliability and value to their stakeholders. Accordingly, the use of managed processes for digital transformation becomes important for organizations, allowing them to improve their transparency and better meet the needs of citizens (Ying Liu, 2009). Those citizens then have trustworthy information available about institutions and their brands available, so that they can make the best possible decisions (Olivares, 2018). Figure 3.3, presents a schema of corporate transparency in the processes of an organization. The transparency and clarity of the educational process in universities are fundamental basis for the sustainability of their online or virtual programs. These become basic requirements for competitiveness, since customers (society) and other stakeholders desire certainty and the ability to trust their decisions are as accurate as possible.

3.4 Conclusion Digital transformation becomes an opportunity for higher education. Universities used to evolve slowly and get stuck in endless processes, meetings and loops, with no clear breakthrough. digital transformation brings a means to progress, a way to challenge the currents status quo, that can work with every single operational layer, department and individual across an institution. It also brings a connection to peers and to wider society, since it is not just a process, but a change in the culture that fosters healthy bi-lateral relations with the environment. To this extent, faculty

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Fig. 3.3 Transparency sphere

members, students and managers must become active contributors to the process, so that it is enhanced by cross-fertilised actions. We, the academic community, need to clarify the concept and the approach. There is a shadow of misleading information about what such transformation means and what it is useful for. Like with Eliade (1963) who described the difference, similarity and relation between myth and reality. There, even when the lines are blurred, clear boundaries help to make better matches between peers. In the same way, it helps the university ecosystem better define every stakeholder and step involved, and it also helps promote the necessary understanding amongst them, so that the process becomes significant for everyone.

References Bond, M. M.-R. (2018). Digital transformation in German higher education: Student and teacher perceptions and usage of digital media. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. Eliade, M. (1963). Myth and reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row. Faria, J. A., & Nóvoa, H. (2017). Digital Transformation at the University of Porto. International Conference on Exploring Services Science, 295–308.

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García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2019). Modelo de Docencia Virtual para una Universidad Presencial. IX Jornadas Internacionales de Campus Virtuales (Popayán, Colombia, 11–13 septiembre 2019). Salamanca, España: Grupo GRIAL. Disponible en: https://bit.ly/2m9p1NW, https://doi.org/10. 5281/zenodo.3406263. Gobble, M. M. (2018). Digital strategy and digital transformation. Research-Technology Management, 66–71. Hildebrandt, C. K. (2019). Whose interest is educational technology serving? Who is included and who is excluded? Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 207–220. Hillman, A. J., & keim, G. (2001). Shareholder value, stakeholder management, and social issues: what’s the bottom line?. Strategic management journal, [En línea]. http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/ dunn/rprnts.shareholdervaluesocialissues.pdf. Jackson, N. C. (2019). Managing for competency with innovation change in higher education: Examining the pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation. Business Horizons. Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2016). Higher education and the digital revolution: About MOOCs, SPOCs, social media, and the Cookie Monster. Business Horizons, 441–450. Kilmann, R. H., & Covin, T. J. E. (1988). Corporate transformation: Revitalizing organizations for a competitive world. Jossey-Bass. López Segrera, F. (2008). Tendencias de la educación superior en el mundo y en América Latina y el Caribe. Revista da Avaliação da Educação Superior, 267–291. McCusker, C., & Babington, D. (2015). The 2018 digital University: Staying relevant in the digital age. PWC: Talking Points. Olivares, F. (2018). Scope and nature of corporate transparency. In F. Olivares (Ed.), Black spots in the era of transparency (pp. 33–67). Barcelona: Gedisa. Pucciarelli, F., & Kaplan, A. (2016). Competition and strategy in higher education: Managing complexity and uncertainty. Business Horizons, 311–320. Rushkoff, D. (2016). Throwing rocks at the Google bus: How growth became the enemy of prosperity. Penguin. Ruxandra Vasilescu, C. B. (2010). Developing university social responsibility: A model for the challenges of the new civil society. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 4177–4182. Schwab, K. (2016). Libro: The fourth industrial revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum. Schwartz, P. (1991). The art of the long view: Planning for the future in an uncertain world. Nueva York: Bantam. Schwarzmüller, T., Brosi, P., Duman, D., & Welpe, I. M. (2018). How does the digital transformation affect organizations? Key themes of change in work design and leadership. MREV management revue, 114–138. Tay, H. L., & Low, S. W. K. (2017). Digitalization of learning resources in a HEI–a lean management perspective. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 66(5), 680– 694. Spathari, E. (2018). Mitología Griega. Atenas, Grecia: Papadimas Ekdotiki. Wagner, T. L. (2009). Corporate hypocrisy: Overcoming the threat of inconsistent corporate social responsibility perceptions. Journal of Marketing, 6(73), 77–91. Ying Liu, D. S. (2009). Truth designed: Transformation through design integration and transparency. Design Management Review, 1(20), 7–9.

John Willian Branch Bedoya received a B.Sc. Engineering in Mining and Metallurgy Engineering in 1995, an M.Sc. in Systems Engineering in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering in 2007; all of them from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin, Colombia. Currently he is a full professor at the Computing and Decision Sciences Department, in the Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia. His research interests include: automation, computer vision, digital image processing and computational intelligence techniques, digital transformation.

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Daniel Burgos Daniel Burgos works as Vice-rector for International Research (UNIR Research, http://research.unir.net), at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, http://www.unir.net). In addition, he holds the UNESCO Chair on eLearning ( http://research.unir.net/unesco), and the ICDE Chair on Open Educational Resources (http://www.icde.org). He also leads the Research Institute on Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED, http://ited.unir.net). He holds degrees in Communication (PhD), Computer Science (Dr. Ing), Education (Ph.D.), Anthropology (Ph.D.), Business Administration (DBA), and holds a postgraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Martin Dario Arango Serna received a B.Sc. Engineering in Industrial Engineer in 1991, Specialist in Finance, Formulation and Evaluation of Projects in 1993 by the University of Antioquia, Colombia, Specialist in University Teaching in 2007 by the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, M.Sc. in Systems Engineering in from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin, Colombia and PhD in Industrial Engineer in 2001 from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain. He is a full professor assigned to the Department of Engineering of the Organization, Faculty of Mines, National University of Colombia, Medellin, Colombia. Senior researcher according to Colciencias 2019 classification. Director of the R + D + i Industrial-Organizational Logistics Group “GICO”, group A1. Giovanni Pérez Ortega received a B.Sc. Engineering in Management Engineer in 1993, Specialist in University Teaching in 1999 by the Industrial University of Santander, Colombia, M.Sc. in Development in from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellin, Colombia and Ph.D. in management in 2017 from Universidad Yacambú, Venezuela. He is a Asociate professor assigned to the Department of Engineering of the Organization, Faculty of Mines, National University of Colombia, Medellin, Colombia. Asociate researcher according to Colciencias 2019 classification. Co-Director of the R + D + i Industrial-Organizational Logistics Group “GICO”, group A1.

Chapter 4

The Challenge of Digital Credentials: How Should Universities Respond? Gary W. Matkin

Abstract Digital credentialing is changing higher education across the world in significant ways and represents an institutional imperative for all colleges and universities. Higher education institutions will have to make decisions about their involvement, or lack of involvement, in this movement. Digital credentials (in this chapter called “Alternative Digital Credentials,” or (ADCs) call for institutions to focus on serving the needs both of students and employers by attesting to workplace relevant skills and competencies. This shift has a profound impact on the relationship between students and institutions, institutions and regional development, pedagogy, organizational structure, and faculty roles. This chapter briefly describes ADCs, the benefits of serious involvement in issuing ADCs, and focuses on some of the most difficult challenges faced by higher education as it considers deeper engagement in ADCs. In addition, this chapter is founded on, and extends, a report issued by ICDE in January 2019 which describes the steps and challenges facing institutions which want to become involved in ADCs (Matkin et al., 2019).

4.1 What are ADCs? ADCs are a major part of the alternative digital credentialing movement where “alternative” refers to the attestation of learning or competencies not associated with traditional forms of institutional verifications such as bachelor, master, or Ph.D. degrees, diplomas, or other traditional learning programs. Chart 4.1, The Alternative Credential Ecosystem, shows a portion of the ecosystem that is characterized by a proliferation of formal learning experiences not leading to a degree. While all of the elements of the ecosystem are prime targets for digital credentials, there are two main categories to which digitization would apply differently. The first category includes certificate programs, and nano- and micro-credentials, and might be called the “learning accomplishment” group. The assessments typically used in these elements usually measure the degree to which a student has learned G. W. Matkin (B) Continuing Education, Career Pathways, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_4

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Chart 4.1 The alternative credential ecosystem Certificate Programs NanoCredentials

Industry Credential

Workplace Training

The Alternative Credential Ecosystem

MOOCs

MicroCredentials

Boot Camps

something. Nano- and micro-credentials are usually intended to reference or lead to a formal degree of some kind. This category is distinguished from the second group, consisting of all the rest of the elements in Chart 4.1, by being focused primarily on the measurement of workplace relevant competencies. Later we will explore more deeply the difference between these two measurement goals. ADCs are portable, useful, transferable, easily understood, and are workplace relevant. They contain specific claims of competency and web-based evidence of those competencies. They can be curated, annotated, and distributed over digital networks under the earner’s control (Hickey, 2017, p. 18). Each ADC is represented by an icon that identifies the issuer and the competency gained.

Viewers of the ADC who click on the icon will gain information about the competency being verified in the form that is called “metadata.” The metadata typically verifies the earner’s identity, provides information about the issuer, the date issued, and the expiration date. It also offers a description of the competency and the criteria used to assess the competency, and, sometimes, the relationship to other competencies and examples of student work. ADCs are issued in a process illustrated in Chart 4.2, ADC Pathways.

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Secure, Unhackable Repository

ADC Pathways Permanent Record

Issuing Organization ADC Recipient

Friends

LinkedIn Digital Resume Social Media

Potential Employers

Chart 4.2 ADC Pathways

The issuer posts the ADC to a secure repository where it is assessable only to the issuer and the earner and in a form that can never be tampered with (such as blockchain,1 the utility that underlies the bitcoin2 transactions). The earner can then distribute the ADC however he/she wants in a digital form.

4.2 The Rationale for ADCs Institutions that fully embrace ADCs, and are willing to provide the oversight and discipline needed to maintain quality in their formation and issuance, will immediately realize some significant advantages, most of which will improve institutional effectiveness and reputation.

4.2.1 Alternative Credentialing is Growing Very Quickly In 2014 a study found that 30% of Americans hold some sort of alternative credential, very few of which were issued by universities (Marklein, 2014). This study underlines the fact that universities are beginning to lose some of their relevance to the world of work, as other providers fill in the gaps (mainly IT related corporations such as IBM, Google, Oracle, and Salesforce). Then, in 2016, a study of 190 four-year institutions 1 Blockchain

is the record-keeping technology behind bitcoin. The goal of blockchain is to allow digital information to be recorded and distributed, but not edited. 2 Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.

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found that 94% of them were issuing alternative credentials, 25% of which were offered in digital form (Fong, Janzow, & Peck, 2016). This movement, particularly the digitization of credentials, while widespread, has nevertheless passed by many institutions that are mired in a characteristic inability to embrace change, even when that change would clearly benefit students and increase institutional reputation as being more relevant to society, and particularly for regional economic development.

4.2.2 ADCs Will Stand Alongside Official Transcripts as the Most Important University Verification Increasingly, official university transcripts are becoming irrelevant in the job candidate evaluation process. A transcript serves the purpose for higher education institutions but is poorly designed and conceptualized in terms of what employers actually need to determine the skills possessed by a university graduate. While the completion of a degree will continue to be important in the initial screening of an applicant, grade point averages and the actual content of the curriculum will come to mean less and less. ADCs will be a strong supplement to the information provided on a transcript in terms of highly useful and relevant skills and abilities of job candidates. A B+ in “Artificial Intelligence” course means almost nothing to an employer who cannot determine from the transcript what aspects of AI were actually covered and what a B+ means (85% competency in what?). The careful selection of ADCs can make a big difference when employers are evaluating a candidate.

4.2.3 ADCs Promise Significant Improvement in Pedagogy Perhaps the least recognized feature of ADCs is that they can provide student feedback that is relevant to both to the mastery of the content of regular courses as well as their ability to adjust to the world of work. The goals of a traditional liberal arts education (critical thinking, problem solving ability, emotional intelligence, ability to communicate in writing and orally, ability to work in teams, and to face difficult situations) are remarkably consistent with what employers say they want in students. Chart 4.3, Academic Goals Compared to Workforce Skill Needs, depicts the desired outcomes of a liberal arts education that has been compiled by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).3 The list is compared to skills and

3 The

mission of the Association of American Colleges and Universities is to advance the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy.

4 The Challenge of Digital Credentials … Chart 4.3 Academic goals compared to workforce skill needs

55 AAC&U Value Rubric

1.

Inquiry & Analysis

2.

Critical Thinking

3.

Creative Thinking

4.

Written Communications

5.

Oral Communications

6.

Reading

7.

Quantitative Literacy

8.

Information Literacy

9.

Teamwork

NACE

Hart Research

10. Problem Solving 11. Civic Engagement 12. Intercultural Knowledge and Competence 13. Ethical Reasoning 14. Foundation & Skills for Lifelong Learning 15. Global Learning 16. Integrative Learning

abilities that employers want as measured by Hart Research and the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)4 (Hart Research Associates, 2018). The comparison indicates that 9 of the 16 outcomes listed by AAC&U are consistent with the employer studies. In June, 2018, the Strada Education Network5 collaborated with Gallup to create the first national survey that reached over 250,000 students from over 3,000 universities and colleges to determine their educational experiences, post high school, as they transitioned from school to work. Responses indicated that “relevance explains two and three times more variance in consumer ratings of quality and value, respectively, than public data widely used to create college and university rankings” (Strata Education Network and Gallup, 2018, p. 2). ADCs are well suited to provide feedback on more granular class-room based competencies. For instance, at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), a course that requires the 3D printing of a physical object provides an ADC to those students who fulfill the assignment by using Rhinoceros 6.0 to print the object. Research is beginning to show that when students can earn ADCs, along the learning pathway of a class, they are more fully engaged in and more successful in learning.

4 NACE

is the leading source of information on the employment of the college educated, and forecasts hiring and trends in the job market; tracks starting salaries, recruiting and hiring practices, and student attitudes and outcomes; and identifies best practices and benchmarks. 5 Trada Education’s mission is to ensure that Americans gain the workplace skills they need to launch meaningful careers.

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4.2.4 ADCs Promote Coordination Between Universities and Employers for Workforce Development As a consequence of the pedagogical improvements mentioned above, faculty members and employers tend to interact more frequently and creatively in the design of learning experiences that serve both students and the employers who hire them. This interaction positively serves students and keeps faculty up to date on the latest trends in their fields that will impact our economic environment. This coordination also helps address the “skills gap” that is such a catch word now, particularly as it relates to a criticism of the university. Employer assessment of graduating student skills, or lack thereof, of can be a powerful guide to curriculum development.

4.2.5 ADCs Are an Important Component for Universities to Demonstrate Accountability Increasingly, fueled by the growing cost of higher education and the accompanying student debt, universities are being held accountable for the success of their students after graduation. Some university rankings now track starting salaries and those salaries after five or ten years post-graduation. The more universities can prepare students to be successful once they graduate, the more they can demonstrate the value proposition of a university degree. The appropriate and systematic accumulation of ADCs, during and after graduation, is one way that students can become more competitive in the marketplace.

4.2.6 ADCs Offer High-Quality Service at Low Cost One of the most important characteristics of ADCs is that earners have full control over the distribution of their ADCs. This means that universities are not involved in distributing verifications. It is also true that Credley,6 Parchment,7 Badgr,8 and others present financial barriers to entry that are relatively low, as are the costs of issuing ADCs. (This low barrier to entry presents problems that are explained later in this chapter.). The cost of issuing an ADC can be as low as $2. The administrative burden on the university is relatively low. It is easy to issue an ADC and enter it into a secure data 6 Credly empowers organizations to officially recognize individuals for demonstrated competencies

and skills. It’s mission is to connect people to opportunity based on their talent and capabilities. is the most widely adopted digital credential service, allowing learners, academic institutions, and employers to request, verify, and share credentials in simple and secure ways. 8 Badgr for Canvas is a free service that enables organizations to automatically issue open badges to learners as they complete modules in Canvas courses. 7 Parchment

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repository. Further, since ADCs are “self-verifying,” meaning that they can present an immediate valid verification, and there is no subsequent verification required. The real cost in issuing ADCs comes in the administration of the assessment necessary to verify competency.

4.2.7 ADCs Are Consistent with Modern Hiring Practices Increasingly, employers are using technology to search for potential candidates. According to Linkedin, digital credential holders get viewed six times more frequently during a job hunt than those without digital representations. Further, ADCs minimize the chance of resume fraud from misreported achievements because they are secure from the moment the issuer posts them to the repository. In a 2017, a Hart Research Associates report titled, “Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the World of Work,” surveyed 500 hiring executives and found that: “business executives and hiring managers find electronic portfolios that summarize and demonstrate a candidate’s accomplishments in key skill and knowledge areas more useful than college transcripts alone in evaluating recent graduate’s potential to succeed in the workplace” (Hart Research Associates, 2018). This trend reveals the future—technology will play an increasing role in verifying skills and competencies.

4.2.8 ADCs Are a Natural Component to Open Education Open education continues to advance aggressively with available open resources that are expanding dramatically every year. YouTube alone shows a large increase in education related videos every week and the primary Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) providers, (Coursera, EdX, FutureLearn, Udacity, Canvas Networks, Udemy, and many others) continue to exist and thrive. MOOCs are part of the open education movement and students are willing to pay for academic credit and other forms of verification of learning and competency. For instance, both of the two largest providers of MOOCs, Coursera and EdX, have instituted curriculum leading to, and sometimes qualification for, enrollment in formal degree programs. “MasterTracks” (Coursera) and “Micro-Masters” (EdX), when completed by a student with the accompanying fee, can lead to degree programs at a few universities, including MIT. Coursera is also offering full degrees on its platform (IMBA from the University of Illinois) and credit bearing certificate programs (Project Management from the University of California, Irvine). ADCs are the answer for what might be called the “high end of the scale”— high quality, verifiable, and trusted attestations of competency. As open education grows, so will ADCs and the pressure on institutions to correlate ADCs to other free education.

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4.2.9 ADCs Are Consistent with Younger Learner Demands Younger learners are demanding shorter learning projects, particularly in continuing education. They want short courses that provide them with the skills that they need to use immediately in their careers and lives. ADCs, and their ability to be very granular and specific to the skills they verify, are well suited to their growing audience. Of course, employers are also looking for these “just in time” skill achievements, so again there is a match between the needs of the supply side (individuals) and the demand side (employers). In a study conducted in 2017, the University Continuing Professional Education Association (UPCEA) found that the majority of millennials (ages 21–35) exhibit a strong interest in earning alternative credentials (Fong, 2017). In another survey of over 1,000 students, Parchment found that 71% want competency-based credentials that certify skills gained and over 60% want to be able to share these credentials on networks such as LinkedIn (Hanson, 2017).

4.3 The Challenges of ADCs While there are compelling reasons for institutions to adopt ADCs, there are also some very daunting challenges that are facing those who want to make ADCs a serious component of their offerings and strategy. Curiously, cost is not high on the list. In fact, the low cost of entry into the world of ADCs is, itself, part of the problem, making it easy for ADCs to be issued for many things that universities and learners would like to see reported. Ultimately, the usefulness and integrity of ADCs will be based on an institution’s own reputation and control over the ADC issuing process. While there are many efforts to try, on a national or international scale, to establish standards for ADCs or even just to compile a directory of digital credentials, these efforts are doomed to failure because there is just too much disagreement over the best use of ADCs. For instance, the Lumina Foundation has been very active in seeking to bring together in one place a listing or index of digital credentials, an initiative it calls the “connecting credentials framework.” The basis of this framework is a web-based portal that allows credential offerors the ability to post information about their credentials to the framework for students to view. The Lumina contribution includes the underlying infrastructure to categorize the offerings. However, postings and the use of the framework have proven lower than hoped for—there is just too much change in any item once posted for the index to be reliable over time. So, it will remain an institutional responsibility to define how ADCs are controlled.

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4.3.1 The Tension Between Learning Achievement and Competency Assessment The best use of ADCs is to certify competencies that are relevant to the work force. This concept for ADCs clearly limits the extent of their use when compared to the desires of students and institutions to recognize other kinds of experiences. The main issue has to do with the difference between attesting to learning achievement and verifying competency. To verify a competency means that an individual has not only learned (gained knowledge) about something, but is also able to apply that knowledge in a practical way. While competency is the result of learning, that learning can come from any source—formal courses, work experience, innate ability, etc. A competency assessment decouples the learning process from the assessment while a learning assessment verifies only the degree to which an individual has learned a defined body of knowledge. Imagine a student who gains a B+ in civil engineering. Does this mean that student is 85% competent to build a bridge? The issue is that universities are mainly involved in verifying learning achievement. To exclusively endorse competency assessments is unfamiliar in all but for the most focused professional schools. But opening the door to issuing ADCs for both competency-based assessments and learning achievement assessments will lead to confusion in the marketplace and will erode the value of ADCs for employers. A related issue has to do with the difference between an alternative credential and the digitization of traditional transcripts. Digitizing transcripts is a highly desirable service to provide students, but there are two levels of such digitization. The first level is to simply put the traditional transcript into digital form and distribute it to students in the way we have described as applied to ADCs. The second level is to provide information about each course entry on the transcript, including the learning objectives of the course and the syllabus. This second level would address at least some of the issues in the increasing lack of relevance of traditional transcripts. But still, this transcript digitization is addressing only learning achievement. Despite this important difference, it is unlikely that institutions will be able to resist issuing ADCs for learning achievement. The only mitigation in yielding to such pressure might be in the metadata description of the ADC, which could explain the difference.

4.3.2 Governance and Oversight of ADC Issuance ADCs challenge university leadership in several ways and the most crucial issue to be addressed is the institutional control over ADC issuance. Establishing criteria for the issuance of ADCs is the first step and should logically involve all the stakeholders, especially the faculty and local employers. The danger is that, given the low barrier to entry, university units (professional schools, libraries, HR departments) will all

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develop their own ADC issuance process, possibly using different icons, criteria, platforms, and so on, thereby eroding the reputation of the institution. ADC issuance should be the responsibility of an identified specific unit through which university oversight (academic and administrative) can be accomplished. Record keeping, financing, earner support/questions, and a platform liaison should be assigned to this single unit. In many large institutions this will require strong central and senior leadership to avoid the confusion and chaos that proliferation could create.

4.3.3 Competency-Based Assessments To base ADC issuance on competency assessment presents many challenges. The critical challenge is to create competency-based assessments that accurately measure true competency. In some subjects, this is relatively easy, particularly those in the IT area. Assessing competency in Python programming, Excel, C++, .net, and other software programs is usually relatively straightforward. In other skill areas, including some of the most popular and in-demand (such as leadership, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and ability to work in teams,) competency based assessments are much more difficult. Further, such assessments can be expensive to create and to administer, particularly where the judgement of an expert is required. These factors again argue for the simpler, familiar, and cheaper verifications of learning achievement.

4.3.4 Financing ADCs While ADCS are relatively inexpensive to set up and to maintain, they nevertheless incur costs, both for administrative and in the assessment process. Charging students, particularly matriculated students, for ADCs is often problematic. Fees take administrative costs to bill and collect and this adds to expense. Most universities are not charging for their early experiments with ADCs, but as the demand for ADCs grows the costs will begin to be noticeable. Whether and when to charge an issuance fee for an ADC will depend on the institutional circumstance. The cost of the competency assessment is another matter. Costs of these assessments, both in development, and in on-going practice, is usually substantial and needs to be covered by some form of income stream. There is an underlying logic to charging for ADC assessments— either they are of value to students and employers, or they are not of value and should be discontinued.

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4.4 Conclusion There is no doubt that ADCs will be a strong and ongoing force in the alternative credentialing ecosystem—serving all manner of needs for skill identification, assessment, verification, and distribution. Eventually every major university will be forced to issue and recognize ADCs for the compelling benefits they bring to students, alumni, the institution, and the community. This imperative will force institutions to reassess their relationships with students, to restructure their pedagogy and content, to become closer to the workforce concerns of the region and communities that they serve, and to take more responsibility for serving students and community college graduates after they graduate. It will also force institutions to address the immediate concerns about what skills are most important in the community, how to control the issuance of ADCs to maintain the integrity and reputation of the university, and how best to engage the faculty in curricular redesign to capture the pedagogical and social advantages of ADCs. ADCs open new vistas for universities to serve students and society, but they come with significant challenges and require strong institutional leadership.

References Fong, J. (2017). Increasing millennial interest in alternative credentials. UPCEA Center for Research and Marketing Strategy. Retrieved from https://upcea.edu/increasing-millennial-interest-inalternative-credentials/. Fong, J., Janzow, P., Peck, K. (2016). Demographic shifts in educational demand and the rise of alternative credentials. Pearson Education and UPCEA. Retrieved from https://upcea.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Demographic-Shifts-in-Educational-Demand-and-the-Rise-ofAlternative-Credentials.pdf. Hanson, G. (2017). The comprehensive student record: What to include and why. Parchment Blog. Retrieved from https://www.parchment.com/blog/comprehensive-student-record-include/. Hart Research Associates. (2018). Fulfilling the American dream: Liberal education and the future of work. Conducted on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Retrieved from https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/2018EmployerResearchReport.pdf. Hickey, D. T. (2017). How open e-credentials will transform higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Open-E-CredentialsWill/239709. Marklein, M.B. (2014). A cheaper, faster version of a college degree. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/11/nanodegrees-alternative-credentials/ 11236811/. Matkin, G. M.et al., (2019). The present and future of alternative digital credentials. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b99664675f9eea7a3ecee82/t/ 5cc69fb771c10b798657bf2f/1556520905468/ICDE-ADC+report-January+2019+%28002%29. pdf. Strata Education Network and Gallup. (2018). From college to life: Relevance and the value of higher education. Retrieved from http://stradaeducation.gallup.com/reports/232583/fromcollege-to-life-part-2.aspx.

Chapter 5

Blockchain in Educational Methodologies Antonio R. Bartolomé

Abstract Blockchain is a technology that records events through a distributed and recurring system, and its application for the certification of competencies or knowledge is transforming university teaching. Its implementation to try to solve some underlying problems of the educational system is in the process of development, but it has already generated two lines of personalization of training: one based on curricular itineraries a la carte and another based on global subjects adapted to each person. This chapter summarizes the current state of development of these new methodologies, within the framework of the application of Blockchain in Education. Keywords Blockchain · Learning objects · Adaptive learning · Curriculum design

5.1 Blockchain in Education Since 2017, when educational institutions such as MIT, UT Austin and the University of Nicosia weighed up the awarding of digital diplomas based on Blockchain (Schmidt, 2017), there have been many educational centres and governments that have worked in the same direction. The most known use of Blockchain in Education is that of the certification of academic degrees. However, from the very first moment, the question of whether this technology could also certify learning was also raised. The starting point was the work of Sharples and Domingue (2016) in the Knowledge Media Institute (Open University, UK) when they linked Blockchain to a test of intellectual work. Advancing in this line, the Learning, Media & Social Interactions research group (Universitat de Barcelona, ES) implemented in the 2018–2019 academic year, a methodological design of the individualization of itineraries in which Blockchain certify learnings. In this experience, a technological change solves a problem of documentary reliability becomes a catalyst for methodological changes, providing a solution to problems of instructional design that had been outstanding for over a century. A. R. Bartolomé (B) Institute of Research in Education, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_5

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However, it is necessary to start from the beginning: what is Blockchain, and how can it be used in the field of Education?

5.1.1 What Is Blockchain Blockchain is a technology that enables the recording of events in a decentralized way: the events are grouped into blocks, and these blocks, encrypted, are added successively by adding a “hash” that would give away any modification not only in the last block but at any point in the chain. Since the chain is stored and replicated in all the nodes that make up the system’s network, the possibility of making a change in any of the records of any of the blocks of the chain is minimal: it would be necessary to modify the chain in all or, at least, a significant majority of nodes. This technology was developed to record a specific type of events: digital transactions made in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency environment (Nakamoto, 2008). The chain is, therefore, a record of transactions or public “ledger”, shared by all the nodes of the network but the details of the individuals who have made the transaction, are hidden. (Dwyer, 2014). A weak point in the process occurs when a new block is added to the chain: all nodes must agree that the new block is legitimate. To do this, one of the computers must perform a complicated job called “proof of work”. It is the well-known “minery”. Given the high cost of this task, other alternatives have been proposed, based on the reputation of the one who introduces the block, the so-called “proof of stake” (Buterin, 2015). The energy consumption and cost associated with this phase is one of the problems that Blockchain technology must solve in its development over the next few years. The fact that the whole database is stored in its entirety on each computer in the network may lead one to think that it will occupy an unattainable amount of space, resulting in a significant decrease in the cost of digital storage. In reality, each block occupies little space, less than 1 Mb. It means that each of the records that make up the block can occupy to just a few Kb, that is, it would be equivalent to less than a paragraph of this chapter. It is not a problem in the Bitcoin economic transactions since each one requires little data: date, amount, issuer, receiver… Nevertheless, when thinking about learning or university degrees, things can change. It is not possible to save a large amount of information such as the “European supplement to the degree”, or the precise description of the task performed by the student and the results obtained. Contrary to what happens in the digital portfolios used as a learning test, here each record should be limited to a small amount of information that can be sent to other databases, other than Blockchain, which will contain the final information. Other technologies apply here, such as smart contracts that allow the automatic approval of transactions under certain conditions.

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Seen as a whole, Blockchain is an underlying technology that can be open to very diverse uses, in a similar way to how a spreadsheet can be used for many purposes. It offers: • Reliability in environments where there is a certain distrust of the possibility of falsified records, • Privacy based on the encryption of the blocks, • Security in the event of contingencies that can alter or destroy databases on centralized records.

5.1.2 Some Old Problems in Education Why was the use of Blockchain contemplated for the education system? Possibly because some wanted to experiment with technology, but the essential initiatives came from researchers who detected the potential it offered to solve some problems of the system. There are problems that, in some cases, have their roots in the advent of the public school in the nineteenth century, but others have emerged in recent years with the development of powerful digital technologies that allow the reproduction and the tampering of paper documents. They have also emerged as a result of the changes that have occurred in the educational ecosystem, generated mainly by digital technologies. The use of Blockchain seems to be the solution to four problems: – The ease by which academic degrees and diplomas in their traditional version can be falsified while solving the need for employers to access reliable information on the worker’s competencies. – The emergence of new training-oriented companies that respond flexibly and quickly to the needs of the world of work, which sometimes must be done aside from the traditional plans of formal education. – The growth of information and knowledge that has rendered the old approach obsolete to be trained during the initial stage of life and to devote the next to production. Now it is necessary to continue learning throughout life, which significantly complicates the accreditation of knowledge that we continually incorporate. On the other hand, the network has become a great training centre in which millions of users share their knowledge and facilitate learning to other users. The difference between formal and non-formal education disappears. – There is a need to individualize student learning once technology offers the resources for tailored learning. The concept of groups and degrees is unnecessary, conditioned to the presence of other social learnings approaches. Complex models that can respond to this need require verification systems for reliable and safe learning activities.

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5.2 The Falsification of Academic Titles It is a problem that is mainly present in countries where there is no legislation on this issue. However, even in those countries where these academic titles are highly controlled, for example in the European Union, and despite the creation of the European Higher Education Area educational centres do not have the management capacity to ensure the veracity of the title presented by a student, for instance through direct consultations to the archives of the issuing educational institution. Employers face candidates that build up their curriculum vitae whose truthfulness is challenging to confirm. As a result, what is stated in them is taken for granted since the cost of a thorough review of all them would take too long. Some aspects such as the level of language proficiency are of particular concern and so easily tested, but most of the sections included by the candidate are not usually examined. Thus, there are frequent cases in which it is discovered that an individual does not possess the required accreditations for a position many years after working in it. On many occasions, employers prefer to rely on the impressions obtained in an interview than on what is stated in the curriculum vitae. The academic world also suffers from this problem. The hiring of teachers as well as the accreditation of certain levels of education require an analysis of their academic and professional background. This includes, for example, reviewing hundreds of references to articles, book chapters, monographs, presentations at congresses, conferences in all kinds of events, participation in projects, membership in associations or committees, and many other academic merits whose veracity merely is impossible to verify. Some of them are usually checked and only if errors are found are they analysed in more detail. However, as a general rule, what is written in the curriculum vitae is considered to be sound. In some tests, the candidate must deliver a copy of some of their work or the certificates of other materials that can be reviewed by the commission in charge as well as by any other academic or candidate. Nevertheless, the truth is that these materials are rarely reviewed with strategies that ensure their reliability. Imagine for a moment that all those sections that appear in a curriculum vitae include references to records kept in Blockchain. Hence, the selection board or the employer would need the candidates to allow them (with their private key) to access their curriculum vitae on any Blockchain platform. That is the first problem that brought some educational centres to consider that Blockchain could provide a solution to a severe problem.

5.3 The Entry of New Educational Operators to the Market That is a specific situation of countries in which the neoliberal vision has been actively implemented. Even in those in which the legislation there controls the quality of Higher Education centres requiring rigorous accreditation processes, it is observed

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that companies each time more value new training centres that do not seek that “official recognition” when offering its services. Some are quite known and with widespread recognition, so they are considered de facto educational centres recognised by government training systems. Nevertheless, many others are not as well known, especially when they seek recognition in other countries. Hospital associations, for example, create departments or training companies that provide a continuous updating of their doctors, who thus specialize in new techniques or the use of new machines. Within the network of health centres, this learning is recognized and valued, but in the case, they change networks or countries it is difficult to certify what they have learned since it is not considered recognized training in universities or official centres. Another similar situation occurs when large companies, such as car manufacturers with a presence in many countries, provide training to their employees. Once again, it is a kind of training that would require some recognition system outside the company to be useful in cases of changes of address or employer. Moreover, beyond these more global systems, there are numerous training processes taken on by new operators that have emerged outside the formal system. Blockchain may represent an option for the recognition of this training

5.4 The Society that Learns: Formal Versus Non-formal The problem is extended when we also consider the lessons learned outside training centres, whether they are approved or not. Blockchain has not yet addressed this issue, but it is a critical element of that “knowledge economy” proposed by Sharples and Domingue (2016). Years ago, we would have referred to the individuals who learn without the need of a trainer as being self-taught, but that is not exactly the current situation. We all become trainers and students at the same time: we are masters of some competencies or skills that we possess while we are learners of others that we need. There are environments like the Khan Academy with extensive collections of videos, in this case, related to academic themes. Moreover, there are other proposals, such as EdTed, etc. However, above all, these resources are located through search engines on the web, which leads us to training materials collected in all types of environments: blogs, YouTube, personal pages, forums, … For some, a society with such a volume of knowledge exchange requires a “knowledge currency” that represents the knowledge we possess in our “wallet”. Blockchain permits, through the use of tokens, the creation of a new currency.

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5.5 The Individualisation of Learnings For the first time in the history of Humanity, anyone can find resources to respond to their learning needs in virtually any subject. The Internet, and notably some sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube or the Khan Academy, provide answers to such disparate questions as “what is the Armistice of Compiegne?”, “What does the Pythagorean Theorem state?” or “how can I clean a red wine stain?”. No matter what the complexity or simplicity of the question, Internet search engines will offer us hundreds or thousands of answers in all kinds of media and from all perspectives. How is one to take advantage of these resources to design a learning itinerary that meets the needs of each student? Several problems will be analysed later concerning the use of learning objects as a basis for an individualized itinerary of each student, but one of the most relevant is the one that refers to the recording of the learning carried out. The individualization of the itineraries can be considered at various levels. Students can be allowed to make their school curriculum, choosing courses, even in different educational centres. Blockchain will be in charge of guaranteeing their achievements and ensuring their curriculum is trustworthy. It is something significant at a time when the old “degrees” or closed degrees seem not to respond to the professional needs, located in intermediate spaces such as Forensic Sciences, Bioengineering, Industrial Engineering and Economic Analysis. Some educational centres such as the Universitat Pompeu Fabra offer an “open degree” in which the student can enrol in subjects in up to three different degrees. Some authors cite that we are preparing our students for jobs that do not yet exist or they do not know of. The possibility of students who follow flexible itineraries seems an excellent solution to organising the training of future professionals. We can go further on this issue and refer to specific skills such as individual maths skills or even specific themes. Students today are incapable of knowing the use of all the technologies within their reach, for example, in communication degrees. Nevertheless, rather than forcing all students to be competent in them, how about allowing each of them to choose anyone that they wish to be trained in? Managing these itineraries, mainly if they occur outside the walls of the centre, requires a reliable system of accreditation of the activities or learning acquired.

5.5.1 Applying Blockchain in Education The most known application of Blockchain in education refers to its use to certify academic titles. The first two endeavours in this line are attributed to the University of Nicosia (Koulaidis, 2018) and MediaLab, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Raths, 2016). Blockcerts has stemmed from this last project, an open certification system based on Blockchain, possibly the most successful in its line (Jirgensons & Kapenieks, 2018).

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Many projects have followed in their footsteps. The Educhain project began incorporating 15 educational centres (Abdul, 2018). Other projects arose at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (Grech & Camilleri, 2017), Southern New Hampshire University, Central New Mexico Community College and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Kamišali´c, Turkanovi´c, Mrdovi´c, & Heriˇcko, 2019). The same authors explain the EduCTX Project that, in the same line as Blockcerts, provides a space to implement academic certifications although, in contrast to the one that uses Bitcoin as a platform, Ethereum is used in this case. In a few years, however, Blockchains have been used for many other purposes in Education. A recent bibliographic review of Alammary, Alhazmi, Almasri, and Gillani (2019) cites these application categories: • • • • • • • • • •

Certificates management Competencies and learning outcomes management Evaluating students’ professional ability Securing a collaborative learning environment Protecting learning objects Fees and credits transfer Obtaining digital guardianship consent Competitions management Copyrights management Enhancing students’ interactions in e-learning Examination review Supporting lifelong learning.

The second point indicated is the most relevant for the theme at hand in this chapter; the management of learning outcomes. The authors collect ten contributions in this category, the majority from international congresses. The first surprising thing is that all but one corresponds to proposals, models, frameworks that have not been applied and do not present any experimental validation. Hori and Ohashi (2018) propose an identification system for educational systems in the cloud, applied in a pilot study but not in a real situation. That is the basis that would later allow the widespread use of the application of Blockchain to different educational situations. Another approach focuses on the need to preserve privacy while ensuring the recording (trace) of the learning path (Farah, Vozniuk, Rodríguez-Triana, & Gillet, 2018). But most of the proposals analysed in that review explore how the learning record, as long as it reflects professional competencies, can be valuable information for employers (Duan, Zhong, & Liu, 2017; Liu et al. 2018; Lizcano, Lara, White, & Aljawarneh, 2019; Williams, 2019; Zhao, Liu, & Ma, 2019). There is an exciting proposal that records the results of exams and assignments explicitly, thus providing transparency to this ever-present controversial task (Shen & Xiao 2018). The accreditation of learning and competencies was initially worked on by Sharples and Domingue (2016), but its OpenBlockchain project was designed to provide mobility within the institution in which they operate, the Open University of the United Kingdom. Srivastava et al. (2018) advance in that line but now opening

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the system to an exchange between universities. The possibility of creating a “global” university, in which the students from their learning centre undertake learnings across the globe, this being the objective of the Edublocs project, in which each student of a course follows a personalized itinerary through activities carried out in other learning centres (Bartolomé & Lindín, 2018).

5.6 New Methodological Designs Based on Blockchain Blockchain appears related to the assessment and accreditation of the results obtained. It should come as no surprise to us that changing something in the assessment process results in changes in the methods of learning, and finally, in the very objectives pursued in teaching. The designs of Blockchain do not try to change the education system but, in trying to solve problems of the old system, they end up producing that change. What challenges does the use of Blockchain in Education solve?: certification and individualization.

5.6.1 Adaptive Learning Through Academic Certification We have seen that learning is no longer an activity that is carried out during the initial period in schools, and that is enriched with the experience obtained in professional practice. Lifelong learning has become a labour necessity (Longworth, 2005), in line with that of human learning (Bruer, 1999), a requirement for citizens of the 21st century (Martín Ortega, 2008), which affects both the social framework in which we move, and the biographical social learning (Alheit & Dausien, 2002). Other alternative training systems such as boot camps emerge, especially in the computer field (Smith & Bickford, 2004), MOOC or massive open and online courses (Dinevski & Kokol, 2004), videos of the Khan Academy (Thompson, 2011) or only YouTube, among others. The overcoming of the distinction between formal education on the one hand and informal and non-formal education on the other is noted (La Belle, 1982; Tuijnman & Boström, 2002). Some programs would be considered as part of non-formal systems but that resort to “badges” within a learning framework based on gamification to incorporate motivational elements (incentives) to learning. These badges in the form of prizes also acquire creditable value by changing the perspective of these programs (Abramovich, Schunn, & Higashi, 2013; Gibson, Ostashewski, Flintoff, Grant, & Knight, 2015) even in fields as delicate as medical training (Mehta, Hull, Young, & Stoller, 2013). Traditionally, the training of the professional is credited by the validity of an academic title that has been provided by a central authority. This reality contrasts with the existence of platforms, such as Google Scholar, which provide information on the merits of an author’s publications based on the citations received. The social networks

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of research and the standardized ID of researchers are other solutions to the problem of verification of CVs in the academic field: Orcid, ReserarchGate, Academia, Mendeley, Researcher ID … (García-Peñalvo, 2018). Although again, errors, even intentional ones, introduced by the subjects themselves, are not uncommon. Is it possible to have an accreditation system that attests to the competencies possessed, guaranteeing that they have not been falsified and that at the same time preserves the privacy of the information outside of the moments in which the citizen agrees to provide it to a potential employer? Blockchain allows employers to certify the elements of a CV prepared by the user, preventing tampering or alteration without saving the data of a training centre that is subject to attacks or violations of its integrity. The essence of this design is to maintain the current subjects, whether face-toface, remote or in mixed formats, managed by a teacher who instructs, guides and at the same time assesses. Individualization is achieved because the student chooses the subjects or courses from many different programs, or even among those offered by different training centres. Each centre validates the course and certifies it in Blockchain. Upon completion, the student does not leave “graduated in XXX by the University of …” but offers their own training itinerary that can respond to the specific needs of a specific post. Besides, we can consider it from a dynamic perspective: that “a la carte program” does not have to have an end in time. It can continuously be enriched with new learning, creating a “portfolio” of continuous adaptation.

5.6.2 New Global Subjects in an Adaptive Design With the emergence of the public school of the nineteenth century, there was a massive influx of new students to the educational system: we can attend the individual needs and capacities of each person, but at an unattainable cost if on a 1:1 ratio (one educator per one student). Thus, groupings by degrees and the current structure of the education system appear, based on a structure linked to certified recognition. Nonetheless, that recognition is based on the application of the same criteria, objectives and methodologies to all students, depending on the level at which they are. Students are different: they have different needs, different interests, different skills and different learning styles. Some many initiatives and theories have sought to address these differences, often with the help of technology: programmed teaching, Skinner’s teaching machines (Skinner, 1960), personalized education, a school without degrees, CAT (computer-assisted teaching), intelligent CAT systems, tutorials, smart tutorials, intelligent teaching agents … right up to the current adaptive learning based on data mining. The needs related to lifelong learning are also turning the system of grouping by classes and the stratification by degrees into an excessively burdensome solution. Thus, the interest aroused by solutions like that of adaptive learning is not surprising.

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Blockchain is configured as a technology that allows students to choose their learning packages from a varied offering, guided by a trainer and with the support of assessment and guidance programs, managing smart contracts, generating a tracking record of their learnings. Blockchain allows one to record the stages in the learning path of each student, no matter where or how it is done. In a globalized ecosystem in which the student finds learning opportunities in very different places, Blockchain ensures the veracity of their learning records.

5.7 Design of an Individualised Teaching Model: Edublocs The problem that gives rise to this model is the need to address individual differences in learning processes and, at the same time, make it compatible with the accreditation mechanisms used in formal education systems today. The problem, then, focuses on how to assess different learnings to different students while establishing some criteria that justify the accreditation that the student has achieved specific skills, at a certain level. On the one hand, it is a practical problem. If students follow different learning paths, how can the teacher assess everyone? This problem is not oriented so much to a summative assessment but the formative assessment, to the day-to-day monitoring of the student.

5.7.1 “Adaptive” Learning Based on People The inability of carrying out a personalized follow-up even for not too large groups of students has led to the development of “machine-managed” solutions such as TEALE (Technology-Enhanced Adaptive Learning Environments). In them, computer systems, using algorithms and from the information collected in large samples of students, assess the students’ work, and the itinerary to follow is determined. However, these systems, conceptually based on an associationist vision of learning, have severe limitations for more complex learning. They also present shortcomings in the social dimension of learning. The Edublocs project tries to develop a formative model that permits students to have differentiated itineraries, in which the four actors intervene and guide as best they can, at different times and in different ways. The actors are the ones that assess the student: the trainer, the student, his/her classmates and the automatic systems. An initial form gathers information about students’ competencies and interests, mainly focused on their ability to self-regulate learning. A computer program analyses the answers and provides a useful first orientation to the student. Then the student has the opportunity to analyse the different activities that are proposed, in a limited offer and with some conditions related to the requirements

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of the subject under study. It is the moment when he/she also shares it with their classmates and consults the tutor. Finally, an itinerary is proposed that, after some negotiation/validation of the tutor, is set as the way forward. During the following weeks, this path may change, always as a result of a dialogue between the student and tutor, to better adapt to their needs, interests and abilities. It should be remembered that at the beginning of the subject, the knowledge that one has about the effort and the ability to carry out an activity is limited, and even with all the possible help, it is necessary to envisage operational malfunctions.

5.7.2 Strategies, Actions and Materials for Learning Although we work with the four previous actors, another new problem appears and is the need to offer the student scenarios, activities and resources for learning. From the development of the first multimedia courses, the problem of the cost inherent in the design and production of an offer rich enough to respond to the needs of different students became apparent. Learning Objects represented a solution to the problem. Nevertheless, the problems derived from the costs of their proper encapsulation, the initial multiplicity of standards, and the natural evolution of the Internet, have reduced them to a symbolic presence. It should be added that, in many cases, these objects could be called “knowledge” rather than “learning” because they were limited to presenting content. On the contrary, the network has been flooded with numerous spaces in which resources for learning are found: some are organized spaces, such as Khan Academy or Ted Ed. In other cases, they are resources framed in training programs such as OCWs or some MOOCs. We also have the resources generated and shared in open source by numerous educators around the world, for example, through YouTube. All this offer lacks a complete training structure: objectives, level of access, assessment, … consisting of many cases of didactically organized content. On the other hand, this whole approach focuses on the production of “digital” objects for online learning. It leaves aside valuable learning spaces such as seminars, discussion groups, conferences, exhibitions in front of classmates, “fairs”, and a long list of many other highly valued strategies. The Edublocs project responds to a Blended Learning organizational model but not based on an alternative distribution of face-to-face and virtual activities, but on the integration of the two worlds, in which virtuality and physical reality coexist at all times. One also has to look at online activities, midway between face-to-face and virtuality, such as webinars, and this is especially the case when they work as mixed activities in which one can participate in person or remotely. This requires careful programming in time, available to the student from the beginning so that the construction of the personal itinerary also includes the programming of a personal agenda of activities for the school period.

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5.7.3 The Trainer: Designer, Instructor and Evaluator of Each Activity The Edublocs project must include the elements of a formative design (for a specific element) and at the same time not overlook any of the possible learning strategies. For this to occur, the itinerary is organized by what was initially called “learning objects”, and later, to avoid confusion “activities”. Each activity is based on a design in which the activity is presented; the intended objective is indicated, the activity is described in detail, the expected products, the assessment procedures with the criteria to be applied, and any other necessary information in order to decide it. Also, each activity offers indications about the prerequisites. Moreover, above all, each activity has a signature: a trainer who designs it, and who will follow up with the students who carry out this activity. The first and second edition of Edublocs includes five types of activities organized in blocks. Students must perform at least one activity in each block, but to qualify for the maximum grade, they will need to undertake a minimum of 8. Each activity permits access to a specified maximum number of points, depending on factors such as complexity or effort that it takes to carry it out. The blocks correspond to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Group seminars Development of skills in the use of specific technologies Participatory conferences Presentation of a symposium Writing up of academic articles.

While some blocks (1, 3, 4) are programmed on specific dates, others (2, 5) are developed over a long period.

5.7.4 The Teacher-Tutor In our formal systems, students are organized into “class” groups, for example of 40 students. The educational centre assigns each group a teacher, who is traditionally responsible for “teaching” and “assessing” students. In Edublocs, the teacher-tutor guides the student in the choice of the itinerary, with the help of the results provided by an initial test and through a process of dialogue/negotiation with the student. This figure remains there during the process, both in terms of changes in the itinerary, and to guide the student at a general level. Furthermore, at the end of the process, based on the assessment provided by the trainers responsible for the different activities, and continuous dialogue with the student, a summative assessment is provided that will be transferred to their official results. That is one of the elements in which Blockchain is critical in the design. Each teacher-tutor must accept the assessment given to each of their students by the trainer

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responsible for each activity. They must have full trust in that the information received is reliable and has not been modified. In the first editions of Edublocs, this could have been easily solved since all the teachers involved belonged to the same institution and department. However, when, later on, we understand the overall dimension of the project, we comprehend the need for a distributed, reliable, secure, horizontal system to manage these records.

5.7.5 The Social Dimension In the absence of formal “class groups”, one might think that students work at an individual level, losing the social dimension of learning. That is not so since the students not only work on activities that are directly assessed in groups (seminars, presentations at the symposium) but also in those that are subject to individual assessment (blocks 2 and 3) in which collaborative work is promoted. However, these groups do not respond to the “formal team” model, a characteristic of other educational designs, but rather reproduce the functioning in social networks, in which the individuals form groups or “networks” that vary according to the activity or interest (for example on WhatsApp, a Twitter list or a Facebook group). These groups, on the other hand, are made up of students from different “class groups”, and may vary from one activity to another. They are “causal” groups that are organized for a specific purpose at a given time and, as in the networks, have a diffused character of belonging; however, of course, it is also possible to establish more stable, strongly cohesive groups. The design is especially useful for students in the first year/first semester of studies, but its objective is to respond to the need that not all the members of the group always follow the same itinerary, nor perform the same activities.

5.7.6 A Design for a Global Dimension of Teaching Everything seen so far could be resolved through a tool shared by the teacher-tutors involved. In Edublocs, the TEA was developed, an assessment tool that allowed one to operate with the different roles of trainer and teacher-tutor, with all students. It would be another example of Team Teaching. The project has another vision. In the current situation, the offer of activities will always be limited. However, let us consider another scenario. Teachers of similar or relatively similar subjects from different educational centres and countries act as “trainers” offering one or two activities. On the other hand, these same or other professors of different subjects, also in different centres, act as “teacher-tutors” and guide their students, with the help of initial tests based on the indications of those activities that they consider relevant for their group, and negotiate itineraries.

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Each student performs different activities, guided by “trainers” who can be anywhere in the world, and who give assessment providing a score on an agreed scale. Each “teacher-tutor” consults Blockchain the results obtained by each of their students in the different activities; they give them a weighting and significance in the framework of their subject, and the final grade is generated. Of course, this could be resolved with a centralized system, through a database, conveniently protected on a secure server. However, Blockchains are precisely offered as an alternative to these systems, providing more excellent reliability, greater security and greater privacy. It is important to note that teacher-tutors, as well as the trainers, do not need to form a structure, enrol in a space, negotiate a program or even work on the same subject. Blockchains ensure the reliability of the assessments corresponding to each activity, while the process of selecting the available activities by the teacher-tutor ensures their validity and their adequacy to their specific program. In addition, they can also offer greater transparency throughout the project.

5.7.7 A Transparent System that Respects the Privacy Blockchains are consultable, unalterable, but also private chains. This feature has been used in the project to offer students the possibility to consult at any time not only their grade in a given activity but also its significance within the framework of those of other students who have performed the same activity. However, the identity of the students is always protected, except for the students themselves. Likewise, they allow a system of certificates that students can use with future teachers or with future employers to certify specific learning. These certificates are guaranteed by Blockchain, and are unalterable, persistent, … but private unless the students wish to show them. Again, we must consider the scenario of the global project. At an internal level of an educational centre, centralized databases could solve the problem, but when the student has carried out activities generated by trainers in different training centres, the certification process through Blockchain displays all its power. The design of the program includes other elements that are also important, but those mentioned here allow us to sufficiently understand how the problem of individualization of learning itineraries is addressed while offering a new global training model, and how Blockchains help to manage this design.

5.8 Conclusion Blockchain offers great versatility to provide reliability to student learning and achievement. In this chapter, a proposal for the design of global subjects has been

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described in detail, and the options of other designs that may change the teaching methodology in the coming years have been presented. These proposals are only possible because they take advantage of previous methodological developments, such as programmed teaching, learning objects, multimedia tutorials, team teaching, social learning, etc. The technology Blockchain will undoubtedly change dramatically soon, adapting to new realities far from its beginnings in the financial world. A distributed and recurring recording system of events will contribute to critical methodological changes in university teaching. However, we are not yet aware of the importance of these changes, nor of the global character, they will entail. Perhaps, just as a technological change in the recording of events is transforming teaching methodology, these changes, in turn, modify the Higher Education system as we know it today.

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Chapter 6

The Evolution of Educational Game Designs From Computers to Mobile Devices: A Comprehensive Review Ahmed Tlili, Fathi Essalmi, Mohamed Jemni, Kinshuk, Nian-Shing Chen, Ronghuai Huang, and Daniel Burgos Abstract With the rapid growth of mobile technologies, mobile devices have become very popular and have reached a very high spread. Consequently, mobile games have started gaining an increasing attention from researchers and practitioners. This paper investigates the impact of mobile technologies on designing and delivering educational mobile games. In particular, it investigates the evolution of educational games design from being used on computers to being used on mobile devices. To do so, forty studies regarding computer and mobile educational games are reviewed. The obtained results showed that: (1) computer and mobile educational games still share some game design elements. (2) the new embedded mobile devices’ technologies made educational mobile games more immersive and fun. (3) a set of game design recommendations regarding designing mobile educational games which researchers and practitioners can refer to in their context. Keywords Game design · Mobile technologies · Computer educational games · Mobile educational games

6.1 Introduction During the last few years, one of the problems that teachers have been struggling with is learners’ boredom in class (Daschmann, Goetz, & Stupnisky, 2011; Tlili, Essalmi, & Jemni, 2016). Prensky (2005) claimed that the motivation factors used before are not effective with the nowadays generation of learners. Consequently, learning methods and mediums have been adapted over time to deliver the learning content in an interactive way, hence make learners more motivated while learning. This adaption started from the classic learning through the e-learning systems and A. Tlili (B) · F. Essalmi · M. Jemni · Kinshuk · N.-S. Chen · R. Huang Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] D. Burgos Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_6

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then educational games on computers. With the rapid growth of mobile technologies, different mobile devices have appeared and have become crucial in people’s life no matter where they are. These devices are used in various fields such as press (Väätäjä, Koponen, & Roto, 2009), medicine (West, 2013) and education where the learning is mobile. In this type of learning, the learner is not limited to a predetermined place or location (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). According to Hashemi, Azizinezhad, Najafi, and Nesari (2011), mobile learning can be defined as the use of mobile devices and technologies to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning. Also, mobile technologies and Internet have made mobile learning gain more attention from researchers (Kinshuk, Huang, Sampson, & Chen, 2013). Mobile devices (In this paper, “mobile devices” refer to mobile phones, tablets and PDA) compared to computers (In this paper, “computers” refer to personal computers and laptops) are smaller, wireless, cheaper and easier to use (Fotouhi-Ghazvini, Earnshaw, Robison, & Excell, 2009, 2011). Therefore, researchers have thought about using them in the learning process to provide more interactive learning environments, as well as to mix both the physical learning environment with the virtual one for more learning experiences. At the same time educational games are gaining an increasing attention from researchers and practitioners, since they combine both learning and fun. Additionally, several researches have shown that educational games can enhance learning outcomes of students and make them more motivated to learn (). However, limited investigation was conducted about how to design educational games for students, and the different design features that should be considered for a better learning outcome. Lavin-Mera, Torrente, Moreno-Ger, Vallejo-Pinto and Fernández-Manjón (2009) insisted that the design experience for mobile devices is not the same for computers. Therefore, this paper conducts a comprehensive review to investigate the design evolution of educational games from being used on computers to being used on mobile devices. It also highlights the importance of mobile technology in designing mobile educational games. Finally, this paper proposes a set of recommendations to enhance designing mobile educational games. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Sect. 6.2 defines educational games. Section 6.3 presents the followed research method in this research to investigate the design evolution of educational games. Section 6.4 presents the obtained results, followed by the discussion of the results in Sect. 5. Section 6 concludes the paper with a summary of the findings, the limits and potential research directions.

6.2 Educational Games Digital games are considered as the fastest growing industry in America. According to the Entertainment Software Association (2014), video game industry’s revenue in the United States grew by 9%. This has touched various domains across the country, contributing $6.2 billion to the American economy in 2012. Additionally, children’s attitudes towards their games are completely different from the one towards school (Prensky, 2003). Thus, it is not surprising that there is a large and growing interest in

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using games in education. According to Carbonaro et al. (2006), educational games add the immersion criterion which does not exist in classrooms. In addition, they encourage team work by offering a virtual world that keeps learners active and give them the chance to collaborate (Klopfer et al., 2009). Furthermore, educational games made learning more fun and engaging for learners (Tlili et al., 2016) and supported creating personalized learning strategies by modeling learners (Tlili, Essalmi, & Jemni, 2015). A good and effective educational game should combine good learning content, pedagogy and game design (Amory & Seagram, 2003; Oblinger, 2006). Prensky (2001) mentioned that a good educational game design should deliver a balanced amount of fun and educational value. Koster (2004) stated that game design is not a simple task since it is not a precise science. Also, not understanding the learning process within games can affect implementing a structured instructional game design (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2005). With the new wave of mobile technologies, educational games started to be used more on mobile devices rather than on computers. According to a study investigating the most used devices for playing games in Western Sydney high school (Beavis et al., 2015), 67% of learners reported that they play their games on their mobile devices. Tlili et al. (2016) found that the design experience of educational computers on mobile devices is different than the one on computers. Therefore, there is an important need to investigate the effective designing mobile educational games for better learning outcomes. The next section presents the research method used in this research to investigate the evolution of educational game design from computers to mobiles devices.

6.3 Method To investigate the evolution of educational games design from computers to mobile devices, a comprehensive literature review was conducted based on the main steps provided by Okoli and Schabram (2010) as described below. The review was conducted using several search words such as “mobile educational games”, “mobile design & educational games”, “game based learning & mobile devices” and “game-based learning & mobile technology”. The search was in several electronic databases, including Taylor & Francis Online, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley Online Library, and ACM Digital Library. During this comprehensive literature review, white and conference papers were excluded from the search, as well as papers which are not written in English. Additionally, from each paper, specific data are extracted from the reviewed studies, as shown in Table 6.1. These data are different game design elements used in both mobile and computer educational games that can help in presenting systematic results about the evolution of educational games from computers to mobile devices. As shown in Table 6.1, designing an educational game requires a lot of design elements which are able to manage the learning process (between the learner and the device). These design elements can be classified into three dimensions, namely

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Table 6.1 Game design elements Game design elements

Definition

Learning strategies

The set of thoughts or behaviors which help learners to understand and retain information (O’malley & Chamot, 1990)

Role of instructor

Presents the instructor’s involvement and position within the learning process (Kumar & Lichack, 1997)

Input device

The control devices which link the learner’s actions to play the game (Kavakli & Thorne, 2002)

Game play mode

Refers to the number of learners playing the game. It can be single player, multiplayer or massive multiplayer (Stenros, Paavilainen, & Mäyrä, 2009)

Game graphics

The graphics dimension used while designing a game (Masuch & Röber, 2004)

Game platform/operating system

The operating systems or platforms used on computers and mobile devices to handle different applications including games

Power supply

The source of energy used by games during the learning process

Internet connection

The used technology within games to connect to the Internet

learner communication

The methods used to support the learner’s communicative activities, such as talking and listening within the game

Learning immersion techniques

The techniques used within games to make the learning-playing experience more motivating and realistic

Value of errors

Investigates if the learners can commit errors and learn from their mistakes during the learning process or not (Reeves, 1994)

pedagogical, software and hardware. Figure 6.1 presents the classification of these game design elements (presented in Table 6.1) within the three dimensions. As shown in Fig. 6.1, the pedagogical dimension focuses on the design elements which support the learning process within the educational game. This is assured by five design elements, namely learning strategies, role of instructor, learning immersion techniques, learner communication and value of errors. The software dimension focuses on the design elements which handle the way the educational game is designed. It includes three design elements, namely game graphics, game play mode and game platform. The hardware dimension is basically the device elements used in the game. It is needed to display the game and make it excitingly more advanced. The three design elements featuring this dimension are: input devices, internet connection and power supply. After applying the search method (presented in Sect. 6.3), forty relevant studies were obtained and used to investigate the evolution of educational games design from being used on computers to being used on mobile devices. The next section

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Fig. 6.1 Classification of the game design elements

highlights the obtained results regarding the game design elements (presented in Table 6.1) within these obtained studies.

6.4 Method The following subsections present the obtained results of the three dimensions (pedagogical, software and hardware).

6.4.1 Pedagogical Dimension Pedagogical dimension is considered as one of the keys for a successful learning. It focuses on the way an educational game handles and serves the learning content to learners. It includes the below game design elements.

6.4.1.1

Learning Strategies

Various strategies are used to deliver the learning content to learners. These strategies can be classified as formal and informal. They both can be achieved by computer and mobile educational games. According to Koutromanos and Avraamidou (2014), these two learning strategies differ on where the learning process is taking place. Formal learning takes place in schools or universities while informal learning goes beyond that and occurs within the daily life (e.g., homes). Particularly, mobile devices

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allow learners to learn and use their mobile educational games even in places where computers cannot be accessed, such as rural areas (Kim et al., 2012). An educational game is also designed based on the learning strategy defined by the instructor. For instance, both computer and mobile educational games support cooperative learning strategy through multiplayer mode. For example, in a computer educational game for teaching Operating system (Jong, Lai, Hsia, Lin, & Lu, 2013), the learner plays within a team versus another team. Each member of the group selects a question with multiple answers regarding operating system to ask to the member of the opponent team. Also, the other team members can help their team mate in answering. Also, in a mobile educational game called EcoRangers (Lim & Wang, 2005), learners of grade 9 and 10 cooperate together to learn skills of relevance to the social studies syllabus. In addition, compared to computers, mobile devices allow exploiting the wasted time in learning a particular subject based on the Just-In-Time learning strategy. Consequently, learners instantly access information and learn when it is needed without too much effort. For example, when learners are waiting in a queue or for public transportations, they can make use of that time to play and learn using their mobile devices (Lavin-Mera et al., 2009). Furthermore, mobile devices made context-based learning strategy possible. In this strategy, learners can play and learn in an environment context similar to the one in the game. For example, learners use their mobile devices to learn the culture of Taiwan (e.g., religion) by playing a mobile educational game within a temple and a church (Chen, Shih, & Ma, 2014).

6.4.1.2

Role of Instructor

The role of an instructor can differ from a learning situation or an environment to another. For example, in traditional classrooms the instructor is usually a lecturer where he/she provides information to learners through lectures. However, when it comes to computer and mobile educational games, the role of instructors become more related to management and guidance tasks instead of being a lecturer (Watson, Mong, & Harris, 2011). Also, it becomes more focused on facilitating the transfer of skills by leading discussions and encouraging learners (Arnab et al., 2013). This is satisfied by providing sessions for instructors within the game to log in and supervise or manage the learning. For example, in a computer educational game for elementary and middle school mathematics, the instructor can access the game to evaluate the involvement degree of his/her learners (Katmada, Mavridis, & Tsiatsos, 2014). Besides, he/she can update the learning content supported by the game according to the course progress in class. Tüzün, Yılmaz-Soylu, Karaku¸s, ˙Inal, and Kızılkaya (2009) developed as well a computer educational game for teaching geography. The role of the instructor was only guiding learners and managing the game content. Furthermore, in an educational mobile game for teaching English (Liu & Chu, 2010), the role of the instructor was to easily upgrade the learning content supported by the mobile game through a simple interface on a desktop server computer.

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Learning Immersion Techniques

Computer educational games include different immersion techniques. These techniques use technologies related to sound effects, virtual environment and narrative story. For example, Beserra, Nussbaum, Zeni, Rodriguez, and Wurman (2014) designed a set of computer educational games which allow learners to learn and practice arithmetic. These games were designed with narrative stories to keep learners immersed and attached to the learning-playing process. Melero and Hernández-Leo (2014) stated also that immersion within puzzle educational games can be achieved using virtual environments and the interactivity within it. Mobile games, on the other hand, have kept these techniques and used other technologies to make the learning process more immersive and interesting, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Global Positioning System (GPS) (Liu, Tan, & Chu, 2009; Wu, Lee, Chang, & Liang, 2013). For example, in Frequency 1550 (Akkerman, Admiraal, & Huizenga, 2009), a mobile game for teaching the history of medieval city of Amsterdam, two teams are competing in a real environment to win. Each team has a member equipped with GPS walking through the streets of Amsterdam. Thus, both teams can track the position of their team member on the map and guide them through video calls to finish different assignments. Also, in a forensic science mystery game which uses AR technology (Bressler & Bodzin, 2013), learners navigate through their school and use the camera embedded within their mobile devices to scan Quick Response (QR) codes. This allows them to collect information and evidence to win the game.

6.4.1.4

Learner Communication

Different methods are used while designing computer educational games to allow interacting with the game elements and learn (e.g., microphones, chat box and dialogue items). For example in paired interactive speaking game (Hwang et al., 2014), learners use microphone to ask each other English questions and select the correct answer offered by the game using body motion. This helped them to hear and understand words and speak English confidently. Kim et al. (2009) designed a computer educational game for practicing the rules of negotiation in cultural context. The learner should rearrange meetings and negotiate virtual characters in order to solve certain problems using chat box and actions from a menu. When it comes to mobile games, researchers and designers have used the technologies defined within mobile devices to make educational games more interesting. One of these technologies is SMS (Short Message System). This technology is widely used in mobile learning fields because it is very interactive and familiar among learners (Markett, Sánchez, Weber, & Tangney, 2006). For example, during the SMS Crossword puzzle game, learners had to send their answers (set of words) of a puzzle displayed on a projector screen by the instructor using the SMS technology (Goh & Hooper, 2007).

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Value of Errors

Both computer and mobile educational games offer the chance for learners to learn from their mistakes during their learning-playing experience. In computer educational games, this experience occurs virtually within the game virtual environment. Learners have to make various choices (e.g., choosing paths, selecting answers). Then, based on the choice made (correct or wrong), a feedback is displayed to them. For instance, in a game designed to help 6th and 7th grade learners practice number factorization (Conati, 2002), a learner has to collaborate with his/her friend to climb a series of mountains. Each mountain is divided into hexes labelled with numbers. The learner can only move to a number that does not share any common factor with his/her partner’s number. For each done movement, the game provides immediate feedback on the correctness of this movement. In mobile educational games, learners can learn from their mistakes during a virtual or even a realistic learning-playing experience. For instance, in a mobile game to reinforce children’s knowledge about the water cycle (Furió, González-Gancedo, Juan, Seguí, & Costa, 2013a), learners get visual feedback within the game virtual environment for each wrong answer they give. In another mobile game for teaching history of Amsterdam (Akkerman et al., 2009), the learner gets the chance to play in medieval city and solve different quests provided by the mobile game. For each choice or step made within the real environment, the learners get further feedback and direction to go to a particular place within the real environment.

6.4.2 Software Dimension Software dimension focuses on the soft elements used within educational games. It is considered an important dimension because it influences the satisfaction of a user (learner/player). This dimension includes the below design game elements.

6.4.2.1

Game Graphics

Despite the differences between computers and mobile devices, educational games kept the same design features when it comes to graphics. Both computer and mobile educational games are designed with 2-D and 3-D graphics. For example, Zualkernan (2006) designed a computer educational version of the famous game snake. This game has a 2-D graphics. It aims to identify the precedence relation between two activities. The game maps the “eating” activity to the precedence relation. The learner has to pick the correct precedence unless the snake’s length will increase. Su and Cheng (2013) designed a 3-D computer educational game which aims to teach and explain the “waterfall development” model. Liao et al. (2011) designed a 2-D mobile educational game which aims to teach fourth grade learners about pets and nutrition. Sánchez and Olivares (2011) designed a 3-D mobile educational game to support

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eighth grade learners develop problem solving and collaboration skills. In particular, mobile devices’ screen size is smaller than computers’ screen size. This can cause the non-clarity and comprehensibility of the graphical representation (Churchill & Hedberg, 2008).

6.4.2.2

Game Play Mode

Computer educational games support different game modes, namely single player where only one player can play the game, multiplayer where few players can play the game simultaneously and massive multiplayer where hundreds or thousands of players can play the game simultaneously as well. In the last two modes, the learningplaying process can be cooperative where learners are playmates or competitive where learners are opponents. For example, in a multiplayer role playing game (Sung & Hwang, 2013), the learner has to play the role of a king and collaborate with other learners to learn about plants. This allows them to help their people within the game. Hou (2012) created a massive multiplayer educational game where learners play in New York City virtual environment and collaborate to learn English. But, in mobile educational games only single and multiplayer modes are supported. No current research work was found which present a massive multiplayer educational game on mobile phones. This could be because massive multiplayer mode requires high: internet connection speed, computer graphics and memory processing capacity (Susaeta et al., 2010) which are not fully supported in mobile devices. Chen et al. (2014) designed a mobile multiplayer game to teach the culture of Taiwan. In this game, learners play within a temple and a church. They have to collaborate to solve different missions.

6.4.2.3

Game Platform/Operating System

Just like computers, mobile devices are equipped with different installed platforms (iOS, Android, etc.). Each platform has its own unique features and characteristics. This highlights the problem of designing educational games which run on all platforms (e.g., games which are deployed on Android platform are not compatible with iOS platform and vice versa). For example, Sandberg, Maris, and De Geus (2011) designed a mobile educational games dedicated to Android platform. It aims to teach primary school pupils English. Furió, González-Gancedo, Juan, Seguí, and Costa (2013b) developed a mobile game which aims to teach about multiculturalism, tolerance, and solidarity. Learners will have to play in three different poor continents (Central and South America, Africa and Asia) to achieve the game missions. This game is dedicated to mobile devices with iOS platform.

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6.4.3 Hardware Dimension Hardware dimension highlights the hardware devices needed for the designed educational games to work perfectly. It includes the below game design elements.

6.4.3.1

Input Device

Computer educational games are designed to use as input devices mouse and keyboard. For example in LearnMem1 (Papastergiou, 2009), the learner uses the keyboard and the mouse as inputs to control the game character through a maze and answer correctly different computer memory questions. Mobile technologies took mobile game design to a higher level where input devices have become an accelerometer which is used for screen orientation or a touch screen with fingers or stylus. For instance, in a game designed to enhance children’s knowledge regarding water cycle, learners control their game characters to move or pick up items by touching the screen (Furió et al., 2013a). In addition, Tarng, Lu, Shih, and Liou (2014) designed a mobile educational game which aims to support teaching ecology (e.g., aquatic animal). In this game, the accelerometer allows learners to see from different angles their virtual ecological pond by simply rotating their mobile devices.

6.4.3.2

Internet Connection

Internet connection is a vital factor when it comes to games in general and educational ones in particular. This is seen when the game can only be played online or in case of multiplayer mode. In computer educational games, learners use ADSL (with both forms wired and wireless) to access game virtual environments and servers (Anderson et al., 2010). However, mobile games, and in addition to the use of ADSL technology, use the 3/4G mobile technology embedded within mobile devices. This technology has offered learners the access to their mobile educational games wherever they are, even with no ADSL access point (e.g., busses). According to Demirbilek (2010), 3G technology has allowed the use of mobile educational games in both formal and informal learning environments. For example, Wong, Hsu, Sun, and Boticki (2013) designed a mobile game where learners can learn about Chinese characters by playing in a group. The game connects to the server side using 3G connection. Then, learners have to log into the game using 3G network and start composing Chinese characters using some provided Chinese components.

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Power Supply

Computer games consume energy from the live electricity used by computers. However, mobile educational games consume energy from the battery attached to the mobile device. According to Wei, Ren, Juarez, and Pescador (2014), mobile devices’ batteries have not seen as much improvement as other technologies of mobile devices. Consequently, these devices have limited battery power. This restricts learners from learning using their mobile educational games for a long duration. For instance, MobileGame allows learners to learn about their university and the buildings surrounding it. Learners have to go to different places shown on maps and complete different tasks. In this game, one of the limitations found is that the learner cannot play for a long period due to the battery limitation (Schwabe & Göth, 2005).

6.5 Discussion and Recommendation This study (presented in Sects. 6.4.1, 6.4.2 and 6.4.3) highlighted that mobile educational games kept some game design elements already found in computer educational games (e.g., role of instructor). In addition, it showed that the new technologies embedded within mobile devices can be used while designing mobile games. Table 6.2 summarizes the results of this study by comparing the three dimensions (pedagogical, software and hardware) in respectively computer and mobile educational games. As shown in Table 6.2, a new set of embedded mobile technologies (camera, GPS, etc.) can allow an interesting design procedure of mobile educational games. Therefore, compared to computer educational games, mobile games are: • More Friendly: Learners get to use familiar simple technologies (e.g., touch screen, SMS, GPS) embedded within their mobile games to interact with the learning content and play. This makes the learning process effortless. • More Accessible: Learners can use their mobile games to learn anytime and anywhere even in rural places without being limited to any conditions. This makes the learning procedure flexible. • More Immersive: Learners get to have an amazing learning experience (virtual or realistic) where the learning content is delivered in a new fun and interesting way. This makes learners more motivated to learn. • More Social: Learners can create anywhere a network for learning simultaneously in groups (multiplayer mode) without the need for a particular place equipped with ADSL access point (like the case of computer educational games). This is possible using the 3/4G technology embedded within mobile devices. On the other hand, due to some hardware limitations, learning using mobile educational games has some drawbacks compared to computer educational games which are as follows:

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Table 6.2 Computer versus mobile educational games Dimensions

Design elements

Computer educational game

Mobile educational game

Pedagogical

Learning strategies

Formal, Informal

Formal, Informal, Just in time, context-based

Role of instructor

manage and administrate game tasks, facilitate the transfer of skills

manage and administrate game tasks, facilitate the transfer of skills

Learning immersion techniques

Virtual environment, narrative story, sound

Virtual environment, narrative story, real environment, augmented reality, sound, GPS

Value of errors

Learn from errors within virtual experience

Learn from errors within virtual and realistic experience

Learner communication

Microphone, chat box

Microphone, chat box, SMS

Game graphics

2-D, 3-D

2-D, 3-D

Game play mode

Single player, multiplayer, massive multiplayer

Single player, multiplayer

Game platform

Multiple

Multiple

Internet connection

ADSL

ADSL, 3G/4G

Power supply

Live electricity, supports long period learning

Battery, supports short period learning

Input device

Keyboard, mouse

Touch screen technology, stylus, accelerometer

Software

Hardware

• Short Duration: The learning process using mobile educational games cannot be for a long period. This is because mobile devices use battery as a source of energy. In particular, mobile games are known with their high use of energy. This affects the duration of learning. • Small number of learners: Mobile educational games support learning with only few learners simultaneously (multiplayer mode). However, computer educational games support learning with hundreds or thousands of learners (massive multiplayer mode). This limitation is because massive multiplayer mode requires high hardware quality. Furthermore, based on the educational game design evolution (from computers to mobile devices) highlighted in Table 6.3, a set of design recommendations are found which are classified according to the three dimensions (pedagogical, software and hardware) as follows:

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Pedagogical dimension: • Role of Instructor: Instructors have an important role in learning in general and in e-learning in particular (George & Serna, 2011). Therefore, the designed mobile educational game should take into consideration the role of instructor as a part of the learning process and not only as a task manager. This can be achieved by designing an instructor session where he/she can be a player-instructor within the game. • Focus of users: Some researchers highlighted that using mobile devices can take all the users’ focus. This can lead users to lose attention on their surroundings and intentionally be in risky situations (Göth, Frohberg, & Schwabe, 2006). Pascoe, Ryan, and Morse (2000) on the other hand presented a mobile user interface which requires minimal attention where the mobile device is handled with only one hand. Therefore, designers should design their mobile educational game to be handled only with one hand as well. To do so, it is possible to use touch screen technology instead of stylus as game inputs. • Virtual buttons: Touch screen technology can be tricky especially for learners who have fat fingers (Siek, Rogers, & Connelly, 2005). Therefore, virtual buttons should be designed with large sizes. This facilitates controlling the game even by learners with fat fingers. Software dimension: • Game graphics: Despite that computer and mobile educational games share the same feature of graphics design (2-D, 3-D), designers should take into consideration the “responsive” feature while designing a mobile educational game. This feature allows the game interfaces and graphics to be adapted to the different resolutions of mobile devices’ screen. Consequently, the new designed mobile educational game will work properly on various mobile devices. According to Jesse Freeman (2014), one of the four key requirements which summarize the responsive game design is “game graphics and user interfaces” which supports multiple screen resolutions. Besides, the clarity of graphics should be taken into consideration when resizing them to fit mobile devices’ screen. This makes the designed educational games have high graphics quality (Churchill, 2011; Tlili et al., 2015). • Game Platform: Mobile devices are equipped with different platforms (Android, iOS, etc.). This makes the designed mobile educational not played by all learners (i.e. if the designed game works on Android platforms, the learners having iPhone will not make use of it). Therefore, designers should use cross platform applications. These applications allow exporting one single developed code to different operating systems (Litayem, Dhupia, & Rubab, 2015). This will reduce the overhead time and cost dedicated to develop mobile educational games for each platform. In addition, Tlili et al. (2016) recommended investigating the most used platform within the learners’ mobile devices before designing an educational game.

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Hardware dimension: • Saving energy: Mobile educational games consume too much energy supported by mobile devices’ battery. This makes mobile devices run out of charges fast. Consequently, a short learning duration occurs. Therefore, in order to overcome this problem, designers should upload their game engines to a server (where processing data which requires energy will be online) in the cloud and let the learners interact only with the game interface on their screens (Prasad, Gyani, & Murti, 2012). This reduces the battery energy consumed by mobile educational games. Thus, the learning process will be longer.

6.6 Conclusion and Future Direction This study presented a comprehensive literature review to investigate the design evolution of educational games from computers to mobile devices. This investigation was based on eleven game design elements, classified into three dimensions, namely pedagogical, software and hardware. The obtained results highlighted that: (1) Mobile educational games kept some design elements found in computer educational games (e.g., role of instructor, game graphics). (2) The new embedded technologies (GPS, camera, Bluetooth, etc.) within mobile devices can deliver a very fun, immersive and interesting learning-playing experience using mobile educational games. (3) Mobile educational games have some limitations which may affect negatively the learning process (e.g., they do not support long learning process). These limitations are due to the limited hardware devices used by mobile devices (compared to the one found in computers). Besides, this study highlighted a set of design recommendations that all interested people (researchers, teachers, designers, etc.) should take into consideration while designing their mobile educational games. On the other hand, this study has a number of limitations. For example, it focused only on eleven predefined game design elements. This can make other elements not included and discussed during the review process. The review process was limited by the used search keywords and terms. This can limit the number of obtained studies. Despite all these limitations, this review provided a solid ground to investigate the evolution of educational game design from computers to mobile devices. Future research directions investigate the efficiency of mobile technologies in enhancing the learners’ level of knowledge in a particular subject. This can be done by designing a mobile and a computer version of the same educational game. After that, the obtained results, after using these two versions in the learning process, are compared.

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Ahmed Tlili is a former Assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Kairouan, Tunisia, where he has supervised over 20 undergraduate students and taught different subjects, such as Human Computer Interaction (HCI), game development, web development, software engineering and XML. Dr. Tlili is now working as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University. He is currently leading projects in the fields of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Edutainment. Dr. Tlili is a member of IEEE, OER laboratory of Smart Learning Institute, China and the laboratory of Technologies of Information and Communication & Electrical Engineering (LaTICE), Tunisia. His current research interests include open education, learning analytics, game-based learning, distance education, learner modeling, adaptive learning, artificial intelligence in education and educational psychology. Dr. Tlili has published several academic papers in international referred journals and conferences. He has served as a guest editor in the Smart Learning Environments journal, as a local organizing and program committee member in various international conferences, and as a reviewer in several refereed journals. Dr. Tlili is also the co-chair of IEEE special interest group on Artificial Intelligence and Smart Learning Environments. Fathi Essalmi is currently an Assistant Professor at Kairouan University and a former director of the computer science department at the University of Kairouan, Tunisia. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Tunis, in 2007. He supervises master students and co-supervises Ph.D.-students in two fields: (1) Learner modeling based on computer games and (2) federation of personalization efforts. He has several publications with international team appeared in journals with impact factor and ranked conferences. He is also a program committee member in several conferences, and a reviewer in several journals.

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Mohamed Jemni is he is currently the Director of ICT at Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO). He received the Engineer Diploma and Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Tunis, in 1991 and 1997, respectively. He obtained the HDR (Habilitation to Supervise Research) in Computer Science from University of Versailles, France in 2004. He was a professor of Computer Science and Educational Technologies at the University of Tunis. He is leading several projects toward promoting the effective use of ICT in education in the Arab world, namely, OER, MOOCs, mobile applications, and cloud computing. He published more than 250 papers in international journals and conferences. Kinshuk is currently a Professor of Computer Science and the Dean of the College of Information at the University of North Texas, USA. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of De Montfort, England, in 1996. He held the NSERC/CNRL/Xerox/McGraw Hill Research Chair for Adaptivity and Personalization in Informatics, funded by the Federal government of Canada, Provincial government of Alberta, and by national and international industries. Areas of his research interests include learning analytics; learning technologies; mobile, ubiquitous and location aware learning systems; cognitive profiling; and, interactive technologies. Nian-Shing Chen is currently Chair Professor in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. He has published over 400 academic papers in the international referred journals, conferences and book chapters. One of his papers published in Innovations in Education and Teaching International was awarded as the top cited article in 2010. He is the author of three books with one textbook entitled “e-Learning Theory & Practice”. He has received the national outstanding research awards for three times from the National Science Council in 2008, 2011–2013 and the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2015–2017. His current research interests include assessing e-Learning course performance; online synchronous teaching & learning; mobile & ubiquitous learning; gesture-based learning and educational robotics. Ronghuai Huang is currently a Professor in Faculty of Education and Dean of Smart Learning Institute in Beijing Normal University, the Director of UNESCO International Rural Educational and Training Centre and the Director of National Engineering Lab for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology. He serves as Vice Chairman of China Association for Educational Technology; Vice Chairman of China Educational Equipment Industry Association; Deputy Director of Collaborative and Innovative Center for Educational Technology; Director of Digital Learning and Public Education Service Center; Director of Professional Teaching and Guiding Committee for Educational Technology; Director of Beijing Key Laboratory for Educational Technology. Daniel Burgos Daniel Burgos works as Vice-rector for International Research (UNIR Research, http://research.unir.net), at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, http://www.unir.net). In addition, he holds the UNESCO Chair on eLearning ( http://research.unir.net/unesco), and the ICDE Chair on Open Educational Resources (http://www.icde.org). He also leads the Research Institute on Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED, http://ited.unir.net). He holds degrees in Communication (PhD), Computer Science (Dr. Ing), Education (Ph.D.), Anthropology (Ph.D.), Business Administration (DBA), and holds a postgraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Chapter 7

Games and Gamification in the Classroom Silvia Alicia Gómez

Abstract The power of seduction generated by video games in the new generations makes its use in education promising, which helps to achieve a highly motivated group of students and obtain a more efficient learning. This is how the Serious Games and the Gamification arise. The first ones are interactive software specially designed to favor the acquisition of knowledge and skills or behavior changes, in an environment similar to videogames. The second one just applies the elements and mechanisms that make videogames captivating, although used in non-game contexts. The idea behind this consists in offering students playful/fun motivational experiences and transforming the learning process into a much more attractive one. The experiences already conducted with both proposals provide results that invite us to continue moving forward on that path. Keywords Games · Gamification · Active learning · Motivation

7.1 Introduction While playfulness has always been present in society, video games have introduced a new game mechanic that has captivated users for several decades, especially young generations. These digital applications generate unique behaviors, which can motivate users to interact with them with incomparable intensity and duration (Dele-Ajayi, Strachan, Pickard, & Sanderson, 2019; Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011). As an example, we can observe our students performing the same repetitive action over and over again to move to the next level in a video game, while in a traditional course they give up after the first failure in the attempt to solve an assignment. This leads us to think that, obviously, there is some aspect in computer games that we are not offering in the classroom. At this point, the question is, if the games are so captivating, why do not incorporate them into educational practices to achieve that same engagement in the classroom. S. A. Gómez (B) Independent Consultant in Education, Vidal 2470 3B, C1428 Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_7

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Thus, the use of computer game techniques in education is part of the effort to address the needs of generations of digital natives, known as “Generation Z”, “Gen Next” or “Gen I”, (born between 1990 and early 2010), which are characterized by being self-directed, capable of processing information quickly, exhibiting short term thoughts and preferences, and wanting to achieve everything immediately (Furdu, Tomozei, & Kose, 2017; Wilson, Calongne, & Henderson, 2016). Many researchers have analyzed the characteristics of games that propitiate players to have fun, in order to apply them in the educational process (Llorens-Largo et al., 2016). Thus, two strategies appeared, at different historical moments. On the one hand, the use of video games, either on desktop computers or mobile devices, specifically designed to train students in some skills or to achieve levels of understanding on some topics, which are called Serious Games (SG). On the other hand, the use of some rules and mechanisms typical of video games (which may or not involve software) throughout the development of a topic or complete course, which is called Gamification. Regarding the last strategy, it is worth mentioning that the term Gamification applies to the design and development of the approach to a complete course or a whole topic (including its evaluation), applying videogame mechanisms, without actually playing those games. That is, create levels that must be achieved through challenges, offer prizes, progress status, etc. In this chapter, we will cover both strategies, taking into account that the application of steps to gamify a course or a topic may be more accessible to a professor than the use of serious games which should be acquired or developed for computers or devices.

7.2 The Key: Motivation Through Neuroscience, we know that students need motivation and a sense of achievement to fight a challenge. It they feel that they have overcome a difficulty/challenge, they will go a step forward to the next level (Villagrasa & Duran, 2013). This is consistent with Fogg’s behavior model, in which all behavior is reduced to three factors: trigger, ability, motivation. The first is the action that triggers the potential behavior, the ability indicates how easy it is for the person to perform the action and the last factor refers to how much the individual wants to take the action or obtain the desired result. In order to exist an action, all three components must be present. For example, the trigger could be somebody knocking at your door, then you can have the ability to go and open de door, but you need the motivation to do it. In particular, when there is no motivation, no matter how easy the task is, the individual will not do it (Chou, 2017). Regarding motivation, the theory of psychological self-determination proposed by Deci and Ryan (1985), identifies three factors that determine the motivation of people to perform a task, namely, the need for competence, the need for autonomy

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and the need for social relationship. The first one refers to the level of efficiency that moves each human to feel competent in the environment with which she/he interacts. The second one refers to the freedom to make decisions based on their own values and interests without external pressure. The third one represents the individual’s basic desire to integrate coherently with the social environment (Chou, 2017; Furdu et al., 2017; Llorens-Largo et al., 2016; Sailer, Hense, Mayr, & Mandl, 2017). However, we can recognize two types of motivation: extrinsic (external incentive) and intrinsic (personal satisfaction). Intrinsic motivation is what is obtained by inherently enjoying the task itself. Extrinsic motivation is the motivation that derives from a goal or reward, compared to a task that is not attractive, but we do it to receive the award (Chou, 2017). It is clear that, in routine tasks that do not require creativity and have little intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation can contribute for improving results. On the contrary, in creative tasks that need some cognitive ability, the rewards can reduce the approach. It is very important to take this aspect into account in the education environment. Llorens-Largo et al. (2016) expresses that the combination of both types of motivation produces a deeper level of motivation. In this sense, game-based learning can increase learning efficiency if intrinsic motivation is achieved by linking learning materials with a specific objective of the game, beyond the extrinsic motivation produced by the game elements (Elaish, Ghani, Shuib, & Al-Haiqi, 2019).

7.3 Serious Games and Pervasive Games for Learning Formative games are defined as games specially designed for a specific purpose other than pure entertainment, such as military, medical or labor training, among others. In this sense, a card game whose purpose is for young children to learn colors becomes a formative game. With the arrival of the video games, the term Serious Game (SG) become synonym of computer formative game, that is, a software designed to acquire knowledge, skills or behavior changes (Hussein, Ow, Cheong, Thong, & Ale Ebrahim, 2019). From the end of the 20th century, this new kind of interactive software begun to being used in classrooms with the goal of add motivation and fun to the learning process (Deterding et al., 2011). For example, Wired is an SG designed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, which allows young people to understand concepts of electricity. As with other types of software, SGs have moved from desktop computers to mobile devices, which, most of them, run interchangeably on multiple platforms. It is important to note that, although authenticity is important regarding the reality that the SG presents (physical laws, recreation of professional environment, etc.), this does not imply that it should be a perfect reproduction of reality. Moreover, high fidelity can lead to a lower learning performance, since the student may require too much time to familiarize himself with numerous details, instead of focusing on the main learning objectives (Ney, Goncalves, & Balacheff, 2014).

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Related to motivation, given the way in which these games are usually designed, with several short-term objectives and a long-term final objective, in general, students are motivated by gradual progress in obtaining intermediate achievements until reaching the ultimate goal (Dele-Ajayi et al., 2019; Llorens-Largo et al., 2016). Taking into account this flow of playability, it is essential to achieve a good balance between the challenges and the skills of the student: if the tasks are too easy or the challenges are extremely difficult to achieve, the student will lose motivation. Software designers must take care of increasing challenges, to match individual skills and student progress (Chou, 2017; Llorens-Largo et al., 2016; Thomas & Young, 2010). Augustin, Hockemeyer, Kickmeier-Rust, and Albert (2011) express that, in order to be educationally effective and to keep the student’s motivation in playing and learning, it is crucial to achieve intelligent adaptation to his/her preferences, skills and motivational and emotional states. It is clear that this adaptation is not trivial and requires a subtle balance between the challenges presented through the game and the student’s abilities at each stage. Undoubtedly, educators must be included in the development team of an SG software. Another advantage of the SGs is that they can be designed to provide a high degree of personalization, guiding the student in their progress through small tips and instant feedback. This effect decreases any frustration and increases the effectiveness of learning (Bowen, 2012; Cheng-Yu, Kuo, Sun, & Pao-Ta, 2014). Cheng-Yu et al. (2014) show several results of research on the use of SGs. Most of them indicate the potential of using digital educational games to improve student learning performance, since they can increase their interest and motivation. In particular, some findings show that although a mobile game generates a learning result equivalent to its computer game version, students prefer the game with a multi-touch mobile interface. As Dele-Ajayi et al. (2019) mention in their work, the SGs give the student the possibility of failing in a safe environment where their actions have no catastrophic consequences. In addition, they significantly reduce the stigma felt by students who take longer to complete their tasks, since they can move at their own pace, without delaying the rest of their classmates. The latter results are very important, since the error must be a source of learning and progress. Perceiving error as normal and using it for deeper analysis makes students less fearful and more open to experiment (Llorens-Largo et al., 2016). In this sense, serious games offer the great advantage of allowing experimentation without fear of failure, in a playful environment and at the student’s own pace. For this, the design of the activities must allow repetitions in case of an unsuccessful attempt, with the corresponding feedback that ensures the correctness of the stimuli in future activities (Furdu et al., 2017). The options of SGs in education are enormous, and they keep growing and branching out. In fact, the appearance of mobile SGs has allowed the development of a new type of SG, the pervasive game (PG). The PGs introduce context awareness, as they connect the virtual game with the physical environment of the student’s location (Laine, Sedano, Joy, & Sutinen, 2010).

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We want to emphasize that the key of the PGs is not that the student can play them at any time and physical space (what is known as ubiquitous learning), but that the objects, actors and situations of the geographical space in which the student is located are introduced in the scene, through sensors and smart tags. The surrounding context becomes central, as it provides outstanding resources for learning (for example, objects in a museum). As a limitation to the strategy of using SGs in learning, we must mention that there would be two ways to acquire them, buying the applications or developing them. The second one involves forming a team of experts, including education experts, visual designers and software developers, which means lots of resources. In fact, both of them involve costs that, probably, an institution cannot always afford.

7.4 Gamification in the Classroom Adapting game practices within the workplace dates back to 1984, when Charles Coonradt explored the value of adding game elements at work, summarizing in five aspects the fact that people would pay for the privilege of working harder on their chosen recreational activity, with respect to what they would work in their usual job, where they really get paid. These aspects are: clearly defined objectives, better punctuation, more frequent comments, greater degree of personal choice of methods and consistent coaching. However, the first documented use of the term Gamification itself dates back to 2008 and its widespread adoption only appears in mid-2010 (Deterding et al., 2011). The basic principles of gamification have been used for more than a decade in areas such as electronic commerce, user loyalty programs and fitness programs for health. The ultimate goal of these schemes is to increase the commitment of users (customers, employees). For example, companies such as Starbucks, Nike, eBay, Salesforce and Badgeville are among the organizations that have been successful with the concept of employing game-like activities to improve business and customer interaction (Burke, 2014). For most authors, gamification is not a game, nor a serious game used in the classroom, nor a generalized game used in non-formal contexts. But, as is often the case in all new and expanding fields, there is no single unanimous definition. The simplified definition, based on Dixon, Khaled and Nacke, is that Gamification is the use of video game design elements in non-game contexts (Deterding et al., 2011). In (Llorens-Largo et al., 2016) we find a more complete and descriptive definition, created from all existing definitions, and on which we will base this section: “Gamification is the use of strategies, models, dynamics, mechanics and game elements in non-game contexts, in order to convey a message or content or change behavior through a playful experience that fosters motivation, involvement and fun” (p. 227). To define the components of a Gamification, we will use the Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek (2004) model, who defines a framework to develop videogames, which recognizes three central components: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. The first

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one is made up of the rules and basic operation, that is, the restrictions under which the game operates. It indicates what can or cannot be done, and what effects each action produce. The second one describes the operation when the rules are set in motion, and reference to the strategies that emerge from the rules and the way in which the participants interact. The third one, contrary to what we can intuitively think by its name, does not refer to the visual aspect, but to the emotional response of the player to the game. The Mechanics of the game are based on tools, techniques and elements that stimulate the motivating aspects of the participants. They must be well defined and must specify, among other aspects, what they are and how to obtain the elements of the game, how to gain reputation, etc. (Da Rocha Seixas, Gomes, & de Melo Filho, 2016). The Dynamics must guarantee activity cycles with tasks that are rewarded by the system, to generate positive emotions and increase engagement. Through game techniques, players are driven to different behaviors in game time. For example, fellowship can be encouraged by providing challenges that are easier to achieve in cooperation with other participants. It should be mentioned that, the rules of mechanics can also help to adjust the dynamics. As an example, you can define rules to keep the lagging students competitive and interested for longer periods of time. Finally, the mechanics and dynamics of the game come together to trigger fun in the players, which in the model is called the Aesthetics of the game (Ibanez, Di-Serio, & Delgado-Kloos, 2014; Sailer et al., 2017). In Table 7.1 we can see a list of the most used gamification elements, together with a brief description of each one. Although gamification is promising to increase the motivation and engagement of students, especially digital natives, its application to the learning environment deserves some clarification. Promoting student autonomy is a very important point. In that sense, offering optional elements is a good strategy. Our brain hates having no options, but neither does it enjoy having too many options, which leads to a decision paralysis. Having two or three significant options ensures empowerment without overwhelming (Chou, 2017). With this premise, a Gamification system should not present a guide to exercises or mandatory tasks. Students should be able to choose the tasks they wish to perform, probably based on the strategy that more points can be earned if difficult tasks are chosen (Furdu et al., 2017; Llorens-Largo et al., 2016). Other ways to promote autonomy could be letting the student to choose a reward from a pool. For example, a reward could allow the student to choose between 30 extra minutes of time or the triple help option for the execution of the next challenge. Regarding the competition, many authors suggest that personal interactions offer more effective learning compared to those achieved in competitive environments, partly because a greater variety of learning styles and perspectives is accessed (DeleAjayi et al., 2019).

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Table 7.1 Most used elements in gamification Element

Description

Status points

They are awarded for completing tasks, for reaching winning states

Exchangeable points

They can be accumulated strategically with special event and redeemed for other valuables, or exchange them with other players

Levels

They are the different stages of progression and/or difficulty

Trophies, medals, badges

Visual representation of the achievements. It is used as a form of feedback on the progress and behavior of users within a system

Challenges

Goals to achieve. In general, they are regulated from less to greater complexity, to some very difficult final challenge

Feedback

Instant feedback is closely related to intrinsic motivation to want to solve a challenge

Progress bars

Graphical representation of progression and own achievements

Leaderboards

Allow you to see an achievement compared to the rest of the participants

Evanescent opportunities

It is an opportunity that will disappear if the user does not take the desired action immediately

Countdown timer

It is a visualization that communicates the passage of time towards a tangible event

Appointment dynamics

An absolute time is stipulated for an event to occur. For example, every Friday at noon

Torture breaks

Sudden pause, usually triggered in the desired actions. For example, try again within 3 h

Milestone unlock

It opens up some exciting possibility that didn’t exist before reaching that milestone

Animated pop-up

Pop-up window with an animation, which appears suddenly

Easter eggs

Unexpected rewards that appear suddenly

Random rewards

Unknown reward at the time of doing the required action (the use of chance increases emotion)

Collection set

Series of elements of a certain theme that can be accumulated

Gifts

Resources that can be shared with others

Social treasures

Rewards that can only be obtained as gifts from other players

Virtual goods

Intangible objects that can be acquired with interchangeable points

Embedded videos

Video embedded in the middle of an activity

Avatar

Visual representation of the player

In that sense, we believe that it would be interesting to generate rules so that in the dynamics of the game the most advanced students offer help to their classmates, taking into account that, far from being delayed in their own progress, they would increase their status. In support of this, instead of classification tables, it would be useful to offer contextual status maps. That is, maps in which each student sees their position, both with respect to their personal progress, and with respect to group progress. An

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alternative is to use the color map strategy, indicated in (Auvinen, Hakulinen, & Malmi, 2015). It is also interesting to include a narrative. The narrative allows students to be more interested in everything that is being presented and will give more meaning to the participation. There is no need for complex stories, just a simple and well thought out base story that provides a framework for the rest of the game elements (Chou, 2017; Furdu et al., 2017).

7.4.1 Methodology to Gamify a Course Methodology to gamify a course is not a trivial task, since it must be carefully designed to maximize student enjoyment, without detriment to the level of the course. How to use the elements, when they should appear and for what specific purpose, make the essence of a good design, ensuring double motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Many people think that gamify a course to make it more enjoyable and motivating could be limited to add points, badges and a leaderboard to the usual boring tasks. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As we mentioned in the Sect. 7.2, the fun is not only given by the extrinsic elements of the game, but also by the elements of strategy and significant activities offered (Burke, 2014; Chou, 2017; Ibanez et al., 2014). An effective design implies the integration of the game elements with the task itself, rather than simply adding them above it. In fact, a scoring system that simply counts the number of exercises solved will not help the student to establish a meaningful connection with the underlying task, nor will it motivate him. Without a doubt, organizing a gamified context requires hard initial work, but once students get into the dynamic, the burden on professor changes and the game feels like an organic and natural part of the course (Wilson et al., 2016). To achieve a true connection between the students and the gamified context, they must feel something significant, feel that through this strategy they will achieve a final objective, progressing through the achievement of intermediate objectives. This will balance the external motivation, given by the rewards, with the internal motivation, obtained by completing challenging tasks. Beyond the proposals of many authors, Chou (2017) has spent a decade working to analyze strategies around the various systems that make games attractive and fun, to determine the factors that make people passionate about them. The end result is a design framework called Octalysis, composed of eight specific motivations offered by the most successful games. The eight motivations, with strong justification through Psychology and Neuroscience, work together to create a unified and motivating experience, although for each user some of them have greater preponderance than others. This framework can help define the best motivational solution for the design of gamification experiences. The Core Drives for Gamification of the Octalysis Framework (Chou, 2017) are:

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1. Epic Meaning & Calling: motivation to feel involved in something bigger than yourself. 2. Development & Accomplishment: motivation for the desire for personal growth and the achievement of objectives. 3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: motivation generated by the satisfaction of creating elements and transforming reality. 4. Ownership & Possession: motivation driven by our feelings of owning something and, consequently, the desire to improve it, protect it and get more. 5. Social Influence & Relatedness: motivation based on the desire to interrelate and position oneself in relation to the rest of the people. 6. Scarcity & Impatience: motivation to obtain something that we perceive as scarce or difficult to obtain. 7. Unpredictability & Curiosity: motivation that comes from the attraction produced by the element of surprise. 8. Loss & Avoidance: motivation comes from the fear of losing something that represents our investment of time, effort, money or other resources. Based on the proposals of Chou (2017) and Wilson et al. (2016), we offer a sequence of steps to design a good Gamification experience. • Step 1: Identify the main objective. This step is crucial to give meaning to the whole gamification. In the education environment, this objective could be to increase student achievement, increase the presentism to the course, etc. • Step 2: Identify the type of user. Although in our case we talk about students, a sub-classification of the group, based on some small initial survey, would allow better adjustment of some game elements. It is important to detect the distribution of the Octalysis cores (kind of motivations) among the students of the course. • Step 3: Identify other objectives that are interesting for students. These objectives will form the basis on which the mechanics and dynamics of the game should be built. • Step 4: Define the desired actions that lead winning states at each stage. We must think of actions for the stage of incorporation, scaffolding, etc. For example, actions can range from watching an interactive video, searching for an article on the web or solving an exercise to create a question for the rest of the classmates, among many other options. • Step 5: Define the feedback mechanisms. The chosen mechanisms, in addition to informing the students that their actions are significant, should allow them to track their progress towards the winning state. All feedback mechanisms should become triggers that further promote the desired actions. (Remember Fogg’s theory in Sect. 7.2). Table 7.2 shows some of the game elements described in Table 7.1 in relation with the 8 Octalysis motivations. • Step 6: Define incentives and rewards. These elements are provided to the student when they perform the desired actions and reach the winning state. They can be elements of the game, or even tangible objects, such as a gift book, temporary participation in a project, etc.

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Table 7.2 Impact of elements in the motivations of Octalysis Element

1-EM&C

2-D&C

3-EC&F

4-O&P

5-SI&R

Countdown timers x x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

Certificates

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

Exchangeable points

x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x

Progress bar

Social treasures

x

x

Collection sets Insignias

8-L&A

x

Status points

Animated pop-up

7-U&C

x

Milestone unlock Embedded videos

6-S&I

x

x

x

x x

x x

x

x

Once again, we emphasize that the choice of the elements that will be used in the gamified course or subject should cover all possible types of motivations, to ensure that all students are deeply involved and achieve their maximum commitment and performance. All people respond more or less to the eight mentioned cores, but some of them will always have more preponderance than others according to each personality. If only recognition badges and leaderboards are offered, those students who have a greater inclination towards the Epic core and little enthusiasm for the Social Influence and Relatedness core, will not feel really motivated.

7.5 Examples of Appying Game Practices in Learning In this section, we present some serious game developments and various experiences of gamification designs for education. We hope to motivate the readers to apply some of these ideas in their courses.

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7.5.1 Serious Games Applications As an example of SG, we will detail the ELEKTRA (Enhanced Learning Experience and Knowledge Transfer) project, in which a SG was developed through an interdisciplinary approach to cognitive science, neuroscience, pedagogy, and videogame design and development, led by researchers from universities in Austria, Germany and Belgium (Kickmeier-Rust et al., 2006). In it, students acquire specific concepts of a physics course through a series of first-person adventures. The goal is to save Lisa and her uncle from the hands of the black Galileans. To achieve learning, there are various resources, from listening or reading to freely experimenting. For example, to learn about the propagation of light, the student must experience several options, using a torch and blinds on a basement table. Until the student can understand that the light propagates in a straight line, she/he will not be able to open a door with a laser beam to continue the game. To provide micro-adaptive interventions, the non-player character named Galileo is used. The interesting thing is, as the system continuously interprets the student’s actions in terms of their knowledge, the students gather information about the progress of their learning (Augustin et al., 2011). Taking into account that students easily manage mobile devices and the fact that objects in the real-world environment can be incorporated within the applications, we present below two PG developments for learning. For more details, read (Laine et al., 2010). SciMyst is a PG adventure, which was used at the annual SciFest science festival in Joensuu, Finland. SciMyst players use mobile devices to explore the festival arena by solving intriguing puzzles related to surrounding objects and phenomena. The game can be played alone or in groups. The puzzles range from multiple-choice questions to tasks to take a picture in which a certain object appears. The game uses 2D barcodes to detect objects and player locations. At the end of the game, the player has to overcome a final challenge where the acquired knowledge is checked. Heroes of Koskenniska is an environmental awareness PG that was used in the Koskenniska Mill and Inn Museum area in the UNESCO North Karelia Biosphere Reserve. The temperature, humidity and lighting sensor readings are used as base data for the game, in which the student crosses the forest and the museum area while solving various types of tasks. The game’s story is based on the epic battle between Ukko and Hiisi, characters from the Finnish epic story Kalevala. At the end of each level, the student faces Hiisi in a special battle where they must combine the acquired knowledge of the level and the sensor data. While these applications are extremely fun for students while they achieve their learning objectives, obtaining them can be a limitation for the professor, as we explained at the end of Sect. 7.3. Finally, it should also be noted that although so far SGs have been applied to content understanding and knowledge building, future research should explore how SGs could influence student learning in other areas, such as creativity and critical thinking skills (Hussein et al., 2019).

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7.5.2 Gamification Experiences Contrary to the use of SGs, which involves the development or purchase of some specific software, the gamification of a course can be easily developed by any professor, although its initial design is not a trivial task. Below, we present several reported experiences. At the University of Michigan gamification has been applied in an IT course, at the University of Indiana the experience was carried out in a multi-user game design course, and at the University of Bond (Australia) professors gamified two courses, the Game Design and Logic, and Animation courses. In all cases, they worked on the modification of the material to adapt it to the game challenge. In addition, optional activities were provided and the grades were changed to experience points. The results indicated a lot of engagement of the students, who also expressed that they had acquired better knowledge regarding other traditional courses. Even in the case of Michigan, the average grade of the gamified course rose from C to B, compared to the traditional course (O’Donovan, Gain, & Marais, 2013). At the University of Cape Town (UCT) a very thorough work was done to gamify a computer course, with the aim of improving class attendance, understanding of content and problem solving skills (O’Donovan et al., 2013). The experience began with a survey to classify the type of personality of the students, to adapt the strategies of the game to those profiles. Gamification was pushed to the limit, giving it a visual aspect of the Victorian era and a narrative based on a subgenre of science fiction. Several short-range secondary objectives were raised, each explicitly linked to a reward structure, through a system of experience points. Puzzles and riddles were also raised to develop lateral thinking. The results determined that the gamification techniques used significantly improved students’ understanding and particularly their commitment, in addition to a significant impact on course grades and class attendance. We want to remark that, all the studies on the application of gamification in educational contexts report positive results, especially in regard to greater motivation and participation in learning tasks, as well as the enjoyment of them. However, some research indicated that attention should be paid to possible adverse effects, such as the increase in competition (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014), an issue that we have already discussed earlier in Sect. 7.4. Finally, it should be noted that, since gamification allows the game design elements to be combined in many different ways, the diversity of specific designs in the implementation of this technique makes it difficult to carry out a study on its effects in a generic way, without taking into account the combination of the elements that respond to the results obtained (Sailer et al., 2017).

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7.6 Discussion and Conclusion The incredible power of video games to captivate players, making them to spend hours repeating actions to move to the next level, promises to be useful for improving student engagement in solving classroom tasks. The study of the factors that give this feature to the games has led to the creation of different strategies for education. One of them consists in generating dedicated video games, called Serious Games, which are specially designed and developed to achieve the learning of a subject or the development of some skills. The other strategy, called Gamification, consists in using the elements that were detected as the triggers of engagement in the games, and using them to make the students achieve small secondary objectives, until achieving the definite final objective, in a funny environment. In both strategies, it is very important to amalgamate the intrinsic motivation given by the significance of the task to be performed with the external motivation given by the rewards that the game is delivering. Although the use of serious games allows focusing on a particular knowledge acquisition or skill development, the required software for this must be developed or obtained, which can often be somewhat complicated. On the contrary, the gamification of a course, through the use of game strategies, is more accessible for professors. Although this facility has led to increase in the number of gamification experiencies in many environments, it is worth mentioning that in education many cases are not really a topic gamification, but only decorated tasks obtained by adding budgets and leaderboards, which is far from being a gamification. The correct gamification of a course or topic implies a careful design of mechanics and dynamics elements, which will stimulate the students by covering all possible motivations through an adequate balance. Different students will have different types of motivations. Some of them will enjoy developing creativity, others will be moved by the surprise factor and others will be motivated to obtain something that is exclusive or very difficult to achieve. If the used game strategy balances these factors and manages to give each one what really motivates them, the maximum potential in their learning will be obtained.

References Augustin, T., Hockemeyer, C., Kickmeier-Rust, M., & Albert, D. (2011). Individualized skill assessment in digital learning games: basic definitions and mathematical formalism. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 4(2), 138–148. Auvinen, T., Hakulinen, L., & Malmi, L. (2015). Increasing students’ awareness of their behavior in online learning environments with visualizations and achievement badges. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 8(3), 261–273. Bowen, J. A. (2012). Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your college classroom will improve student learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Burke, B. (2014). Gamify: How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things. New York: Bibliomotion Inc. Cheng-Yu, H., Kuo, F., Sun, J., & Pao-Ta, Y. (2014). An interactive game approach for improving students’ learning performance in multi-touch game-based learning. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 7(1), 31–37. Chou, Y. (2017). Actionable gamification: Beyond points, badges, and leaderboards. California: Yu-kai Chou press. Da Rocha Seixas, L., Gomes, A. S., & de Melo Filho, I. J. (2016). Effectiveness of gamification in the engagement of students. Computers in Human Behavior, 58, 48–63. Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. United States: Springer. Dele-Ajayi, O., Strachan, R., Pickard, A., & Sanderson, J. (2019). Games for teaching mathematics in nigeria: what happens to pupils’ engagement and traditional classroom dynamics? IEEE Access, 7, 53248–53261. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek’11 (pp 9–15). New York: ACM. Elaish, M., Ghani, N., Shuib, L., & Al-Haiqi, A. (2019). Development of a mobile game application to boost students’ motivation in learning English vocabulary. IEEE Access, 7, 13326–13337. Furdu, I., Tomozei, C., & Kose, U. (2017). Pros and cons gamification and gaming in classroom. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, 8(2), 56–62. Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2014 (pp. 3025–3034). Hawaii: IEEE Computer Society Press. Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M, & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In D. Fu, S. Henke & J. Orkin (Eds.), Challenges in Game Artificial Intelligence Papers from Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI’04 (pp. 1–5). Menlo Park, CA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Hussein, M., Ow, S., Cheong, L., Thong, M., & Ale Ebrahim, N. (2019). Effects of digital gamebased learning on elementary science learning: A systematic review. IEEE Access, 7, 62465– 62478. Ibanez, M., Di-Serio, A., & Delgado-Kloos, C. (2014). Gamification for engaging computer science students in learning activities: A case study. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 7(3), 291–301. Kickmeier-Rust, M., Schwarz, D., Albert, D., Verpoorten, D., Castaigne, J., & Bopp, M. (2006). The ELEKTRA project: Towards a new learning experience. In M. Pohl, A. Holzinger, R. Motschnig, & C. Swertz (Eds.), Interdisciplinary aspects on digital media & education, USAB 2006 (pp. 19– 48). Viena: Austrian Computer Society. Laine, T., Sedano, C., Joy, M., & Sutinen, E. (2010). Critical factors for technology integration in game-based pervasive learning spaces. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 3(4), 294–306. Llorens-Largo, F., Gallego-Duran, F. J., Villagra-Arnedo, C. J., Compan-Rosique, P., SatorreCuerda, R., & Molina-Carmona, R. (2016). Gamification of the learning process: Lessons learned. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias Del Aprendizaje, 11(4), 227–234. Ney, M., Goncalves, C., & Balacheff, N. (2014). Design heuristics for authentic simulation-based learning games. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 7(2), 132–141. O’Donovan, S., Gain, J. E. & Marais, P. (2013). A case study in the gamification of a university-level games development course. In J. McNeill, K. L. Bradshaw, P. Machanick & M. Tsietsi (Eds.), Proceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference, SAICSIT ´13 (pp. 242–251). South African: ACM. Sailer, M., Hense, J., Mayr, S., & Mandl, H. (2017). How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 371–380.

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Thomas, J. M., & Young, R. M. (2010). Annie: Automated generation of adaptive learner guidance for fun serious games. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 3(4), 329–343. Villagrasa, S., & Duran, J. (2013). Gamification for learning 3D computer graphics arts. In F. J. García-Peñalvo (Ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference on Technological Ecosystem for Enhancing Multiculturality, TEEM’13 (pp. 429–433). España: ACM. Wilson, D., Calongne, C., & Henderson, S. (2016). Gamification challenges and a case study in online learning, Internet Learning, 4(2), 84–102. Washington: Westphalia Press.

Silvia Alicia Gomez Ph.D., is an Independent Consultant in Education with focus in active learning methods and skill evaluation strategies. She is a former Head of Innovation in Education Department and she was Head of Computer Department at Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA). Dr. Gomez received a Bachelor’s in Mathematics Teaching (High Honors) and Physics Teaching (High Honors) from Instituto Superior Roque Saenz Peña. She received a Bachelor’s of Computer Science degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She got her Ph.D. from Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires. Her thesis studied spatio-temporal databases. She taught programming and databases courses to college students, Big Data courses to graduate students, and imparted methodology workshops for university professors. Her training allows her to incorporate data analytics techniques to address education issues.

Chapter 8

Self-directed Multimodal Learning to Support Demiurgic Access Jako Olivier

Abstract This chapter provides a framework—based on the theoretical background of self-directed multimodal demiurgic learning—that supports students to be able to act as content creators within higher education. This critical literature review shows how self-directed learning and multimodality provide affordances towards extending formal and epistemological access in order for students to take charge of their own learning and play a prominent role in generating new content. This chapter makes recommendations through a wider framework and description of a learning cycle towards enabling demiurgic access through self-directed multimodal learning within a South African university context. Keywords Self-directed multimodal demiurgic learning · Self-directed learning · Multimodal learning · Formal access · Epistemological access · Demiurgic access · Student content creation

8.1 Introduction In this chapter, learning is considered within the process of self-directed learning (SDL) and more specifically self-directed multimodal demiurgic learning (SDMDL). This chapter also specifically focuses on learning within the South African context where some common but also unique challenges persist. In this regard, education in South Africa is marked by historical divides in terms of socio-economic and educational opportunities. Furthermore, the population in the country is diverse regarding digital literacy and language; yet English pervades as the most prominent language of learning and teaching. The aim of this chapter is to determine, from the literature, what the requirements are for successful SDMDL.

J. Olivier (B) Research Unit Self-Directed Learning & UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources, Faculty of Education, North-West University, Internal box 539, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 2520, Potchefstroom, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.jako.nom.za © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_8

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Due to the rise in student numbers, the changing nature of the workplace, and the diverse and changing requirements of the so-called 21st-century skills as well as the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, education needs to prepare students to be adaptable and learning to be continuous. In this context, SDL becomes an essential student characteristic. From the literature, the role of SDL towards lifelong learning is evident (Brockett & Hiemstra, 2019). Consequently, this characteristic and process is also discussed in this chapter. An important aspect in this chapter is the concept of multimodal learning. This construct draws from multimodality as it is approached from levels identified by Olivier (2018, p. 7): multimodal communication; multimodal learning/teaching; and multimodal delivery. Here, however, these levels are presented as interactional multimodality, instructional multimodality and institutional multimodality with the added level of individual multimodality. Within learning in general, and more specifically when technology is involved, multimodality should be considered. The way in which multimodal learning is conceptualised also relates to the notion of multimodal education, which, according to Wentzel and Jacobs (2004), pertains to the fact that “learners conceptualise information differently if it is offered via various (multiple) instructional methods (modes)” (p. 322). Similarly, Picciano’s (2009) multimodal model also concerns multiple modalities within a blended learning context. Epistemologically, SDMDL also shares foundations and aims with Bull’s (2017) concept of self-blended learning where SDL is combined with blended learning. In this context, self-blended learning refers to when a “student begins to play a greater role in finding and using various digital resources to enhance the otherwise teacherdirected learning experience” (Bull, 2017, p. 17). However, multimodal learning involves a wider educational context. Finally, to the determine a framework and internal learning cycle of SDMDL, the educational access context should be understood, specifically in regard to South Africa. To this end, a distinction needs to be made between formal and epistemological access as well as an understanding of the proposed concept of demiurgic access. These three forms of access relate to formally being able to enter an educational institution; being able to access knowledge; and, on a demiurgic level, being able to contribute to that knowledge. This conceptual chapter concludes with an explication of the SDMDL cycle and an overview of a framework for practical SDMDL implementation.

8.2 Self-directed Learning Self-directed learning (SDL) is central to all learning within SDMDL. Knowles (1975, p. 18) defines SDL as “a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies and evaluating learning outcomes”. For Gibbons (2002), SDL refers to “any increase in knowledge, skill, accomplishment,

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or personal development that an individual selects and brings about by his or her own efforts using any method in any circumstances at any time”. From these definitions, the parameters of the SDL process are clearly drawn. These definitions also link up with Brockett and Hiemstra’s (2019) statement that, for SDL, a “learner assumes primary responsibility for and control over decisions about planning, implementing, and evaluating the learning experience” (p. 36). Hence the student is at the centre of the educational activity. SDL then not only involves the learning process but also specific characteristics of a student. Merriam and Bierema (2014) through the following statements distinguish SDL as both a personal attribute and a process: “SDL as a personal attribute refers to an individual predisposition toward this type of learning, and comfort with autonomy in the learning process. SDL as a process is an approach to learning that is controlled by the learner.” (p. 63). For lecturers, both the attribute and process are of importance as this would inform any interventions or actions within the multimodal environment. Specific essential elements of SDL were identified by Gibbons (2002). These involve students having control of the learning experience as much as possible; students’ skills being developed; students challenging themselves for better performance; students managing themselves and their learning; and students being responsible for the motivation and assessment of themselves. Within higher education, SDL also takes place within the context of broader multimodal learning, specifically as regards individual preferences, forms of communication, learning as well as delivery. Furthermore, for SDL to be fostered, some access to resources is also implied and hence formal, epistemological and especially demiurgic access are relevant. SDL does not imply that students function totally independently and in isolation. Due to differing needs by students, varying degrees of support might be necessary. Brockett and Hiemstra (2019) observe that “individuals will vary in their readiness for self-direction thereby requiring varying degrees of assistance by facilitators, especially as self-directed learning skills are developing” (p. 34). Furthermore, SDL is considered a “continuum rather than as some dichotomous model” (Brockett & Hiemstra, 2019, p. 35). Bull (2017) also regards SDL as a spectrum. In this chapter, it is considered that learning takes place multimodally and within a context that is multimodal.

8.3 Multimodality The concept of multimodality is used commonly in the scholarship about language and communication. However, recently it has been increasingly used in other fields and specifically in education. In this chapter, multimodality refers to the dynamic application of different modes, while multimodal learning refers to individual modal preferences, communicating through different modes, learning and teaching by means of different modes, and education taking place through different modes of delivery.

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The concept of a mode is defined by Bezemer and Kress (2008) as “a socially and culturally shaped resource for making meaning” (p. 171), and it is considered that such modes contain different modal resources. Furthermore, according to Bezemer and Kress (2016), “modes offer different potentials for making meaning, this entails that signs—and their effects—made in one mode differ from signs made in other modes” (p. 21). In the context of multimodal education, Wentzel and Jacobs (2004) describe educational modes as “channels through which learners access information” [emphasis in the original] (p. 323). So, the focus is on mode as both resource and channel. The link between multimodality and education has been clearly established in the literature. In this regard, Nouri (2019) states that “the emergence of digital technologies and new media has created new conditions for learning, as new semiotic resources have been made available for consuming and producing knowledge representations” (p. 686). These semiotic resources become the tools for lecturers and students to convey meaning for learning within a specific level of multimodality. Within this context, semiotic resources refer to resources carrying specific signs and would convey meaning. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, multimodality is realised at different levels; however, these levels are in dynamic interaction with each other. The levels of learning multimodality are summarised as interlocking entities (Fig. 8.1). The lowest level of multimodality relates to the mode of cognition or individual multimodality. At this level, the focus is on the modal preferences of the individual and it also relates to certain cognitive dispositions on the part of the student and potentially also the teacher. In addition, individual multimodality is concerned with the mode of communication as here it relates to the use of different modes to convey semiotic information. Furthermore, in the learning environment, instructional multimodality is in play and here it relates to the way learning and teaching take place. Finally, all of the above function within a certain mode of delivery, and this is where institutional multimodality is relevant. In order to understand the described levels of multimodality, it is important to consider the concept of multimodality, specifically focusing on its origins in social semiotics.

8.4 Conceptualising Self-directed Multimodal Learning Individual multimodality for self-directed multimodal learning implies being selfdirected in selecting modes of learning and communication appropriate to an individual. Interactional multimodality can be associated with the extensive scholarship on multimodal communication. Bezemer and Kress (2016) state that “communication and learning are interlinked, mutually constituting and defining of each other in a closely integrated domain of meaning-making” [emphasis in the original] (p. 14). This statement highlights the notion that learning is indeed not just facilitated through

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Fig. 8.1 Levels of multimodality for multimodal learning

communication but is in itself communication. Picciano (2019) also approaches online learning in this manner. On the part of the lecturer, multimodality is also pertinent as Bezemer and Kress (2016) are of the opinion that “teaching is an instance of multimodal communication” and through “a range of different communicative resources”, a design of “a multimodal learning environment” (p. 13) is possible. This role also has implications for the design of learning contexts. Not only the process but also the environment can be multimodal by nature (cf. Ioannou, Vasiliou, & Zaphiris, 2016). In addition, for Moreno and Mayer (2007), an “interactive multimodal learning environment is one in which what happens depends on the actions of the learner” (p. 310). In their opinion, the multimodal nature of the environment lies in the combination of both verbal and nonverbal content. Furthermore, it is evident that “the most effective learning environments are those

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that combine verbal and non-verbal representations of the knowledge using mixedmodality presentations” (Moreno & Mayer, 2007, p. 310). This aspect also ties in with individual preferences in multimodality. A particularly important aspect within any educational context is instructional multimodality. This concept pertains to the use of different modes in the learning and teaching context, and in terms of self-direction, this relates to the resources that are relevant within this setting. Here, the focus is not only on face-to-face strategies but also specifically the inclusion of technologies. Consequently, the concept of blended learning (cf. Olivier, 2018) is often associated with this level of multimodality. The final level of multimodality relates to the mode of delivery, or as it is realised here, institutional multimodality. This concept specifically pertains to whether learning takes place through contact, hybrid or distance mode of delivery. In this regard, the literature on distance learning is highly relevant. Specifically, an increase of distance education has supported further access to education, especially in the South African context.

8.5 Access to Higher Education In the South African higher education context, access to university is not merely a question of being accepted into an institution and even being able to get access to certain resources, be it classrooms, textbooks, or learning management systems. In this context, access extends farther and also implies being able to function effectively in an academic sense (i.e. epistemological access) but also being able to ultimately contribute through demiurgic access. These three aspects of access are subsequently discussed.

8.5.1 Formal Access In this chapter, formal access relates to being able to access university but also being able to access the resources relevant to this context. For Morrow (2007), formal access refers to “access to the institutions of learning, and it depends on factors such as admission rules, personal finances, and so on” (p. 2). In South Africa, there are stark differences in the nature of access to technologies. This digital divide (cf. Merriam & Bierema, 2014, p. 194) is related to differences in wealth, and this phenomenon is aligned with the historical differences along racial lines in the country (Hoadley, 2017). However, as Olivier (2018) states, “[w]hen it comes to multimodal learning, there has been a clear trajectory towards an increase in use and blending of technologies in the educational context” (p. 15). Brockett and Hiemstra (2019) make an important observation regarding increased use of technology and the availability of information: “Self-directed learners may, in fact, benefit the most from access to increased information and improved retrieval systems and

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know how to use them”. This statement highlights the importance of having access but also the relevant skills to use such resources. Importantly, Morrow (2007) makes the following observation: “[w]e promise our students higher education by offering them formal access to our higher education institutions, but we renege on our promise by being unable to offer them epistemological access” (p. 41). Hence, in addition to formal access, the so-called epistemological access is also relevant to this chapter.

8.5.2 Epistemological Access The concept of epistemological access is described by Morrow (2007) as “access to knowledge” where teaching is regarded as “the practice of enabling epistemological access” (p. 2). This knowledge access implies that students are able to understand the content used in university classrooms. Furthermore, issues around epistemological access can relate to what can be described as “situational barriers” (Brockett & Hiemstra, 2019, p. 274) that need to be addressed before learning can take place. Quite often, access to knowledge is problematic due to insufficient preparation at school level and language challenges, since English is the main language of higher education in South Africa, while many other languages are used as mother tongues in this country. In addition, the extent of the lack of SDL and general learning skills has not been gauged widely within the South African context. Morrow (2007) criticises the focus on uninformed learner-centeredness and overemphasis of the teacher as facilitator to the point that “teaching” does not happen. In contrast, when it comes to SDL, the same criticism has been made and consequently, Brockett and Hiemstra (2019) state that “the successful facilitator of self-directed learning assumes a very active role that involves negotiation, exchange of views, securing needed resources, and validation of outcomes” (p. 40). It is clear that, in the South African context, epistemological access is something that needs to be addressed in addition to formal access. However, this chapter also proposes that a further aspect requires more attention, and this relates to students’ role in creating knowledge.

8.5.3 Demiurgic Access The word demiurgic is derived from the Greek d¯emiourgos or δημιoυργÒς and literally means worker of the people and historically refers to someone working for the city or the people, and for Plato, this refers to the person creating the world out of disorder (Preus, 2015, p. 118). In this chapter, however, the word is used in the context of demiurgic access to refer to the type of access for students that would make the circumstances optimal for them to be successful co-creators of knowledge

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and contributors to content. This concept is not new within the educational context; however, the emphasis on access in this regard can be considered as novel. Theoretically, demiurgic access draws on the foundations of social constructivism. The social aspect of learning is emphasised by Vygotsky (1978, p. 88) as he notes that “human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them”. A constructivist approach also ties in with a multimodal view as Redman (2018, p. 5) proposes that students “can invent his/her own multidisciplinary, multimodal and uniquely personal systems of knowing and sharing knowledge” (p. 5). Furthermore, the importance of social constructivism for SDL is also apparent as, according to Merriam and Bierema (2014), “aspects of constructivism, especially the social construction of knowledge are central to self-directed learning, transformational learning, experiential learning, reflective practice, situated cognition, and communities of practice” (p. 37). A further extension of social constructivism is communal constructivism, as defined by Holmes et al. (2001, p. 1): “an approach to learning in which students not only construct their own knowledge (constructivism) as a result of interacting with their environment (social constructivism), but are also actively engaged in the process of constructing knowledge for their learning community” [emphasis in original]. This approach implies some manner of cooperation between students. For Johnson and Johnson (1991), cooperation means “working together to accomplish shared goals” (p. 6). Therefore, communally, students have a specific demiurgic role to fulfil as they are not merely generating knowledge but generating knowledge for the benefits and reuse by others. In this context, encouraging students to create assessments that can become learning resources is a way to counter what Wiley (2013) describes as disposable assignments. As regards the cognitive process of knowledge creation, this chapter links up with Moreno and Mayer’s (2007) concept of generative processing, which, according to them, relates to “making sense of the new information, such as the processes of mentally organizing the new information into a coherent structure and integrating the new knowledge representations with prior knowledge” (p. 315). Apart from being motivated, students would also require essential processing, which, in turn, refers to “the cognitive processes that are required to mentally select the new information that is represented in working memory” (Moreno & Mayer, 2007, p. 314). Crucially, SDL is relevant in this context as, according to Gibbons (2002), “students will learn best by coherently extending their experience in their own emerging style that takes full advantage of their individual strengths” (p. 6). Moreover, “the emphasis in SDL is on the development of skills and processes that lead to productive activity” (Gibbons, 2002, p. 11). For Bull (2017), SDL also “represents a collection of skills that are valuable, sometimes critical, for independence and a high degree of agency in the rest of life” (p.11). Furthermore, the issue of social interdependence also comes into play in SDL. Johnson and Johnson (1991) observe that “[s]ocial interdependence exists when each individual’s outcomes are affected by the actions of others” and that “[w]ithin any social situation, individuals may join together to achieve mutual goals, compete to see who is best, or act individualistically on their own” (p. 3).

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Any demiurgic activities would imply not only student knowledge about the discipline and topic but also specific skills. The concept of metaliteracy is relevant to this context. Metaliteracy builds on the theoretical background of information literacy but also, importantly, includes a focus of students being able to collaboratively produce and share information in digital environments (Mackey & Jacobson, 2014). Furthermore, according to Mackey (2019), “[m]etaliteracy prepares individuals to be thoughtful and collaborative producers of information in all forms including text, image, sound, and multimedia” (p. 2). Hence the demiurgic actions are once again communal but also multimodal. However, within a post-truth world—which Mackey (2019) qualifies as “a significant cultural shift in the definition of truth as a result of the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom” (p. 2)—metaliteracy becomes even more relevant. Consequently, “learner empowerment through metaliteracy is especially vital in a post-truth world when the distinction between truth and deception has been intentionally blurred and distorted” (Mackey, 2019, p. 2). Accordingly, being able to determine the reliability and validity of information will increasingly be an aspect of learning at all levels of multimodality.

8.6 Framework for Self-directed Multimodal Demiurgic Learning This chapter proposes a broader framework of variables and requirements for the process and environment within which a SDMDL cycle would function. The proposed framework can also be used in conjunction with existing structures such as Gibbons’s (2002) Framework for Teaching SDL and Picciano’s Blending with a Purpose model. Any framework towards successful SDMDL would imply that certain variables need to be considered, and for the purposes of this chapter, I draw on what Brockett and Hiemstra (2019, p. 197–199) propose: • • • • • • • • •

Identification of learning needs Learning goals Expected outcomes Evaluation/validation methods Documentation methods Appropriate learning experiences Variety of learning resources Optimal learning environment Learning pace.

In the South African context, however, additional situational factors also need to be considered as there are specific needs around both formal and epistemological access. The above-mentioned variables would, therefore, also be influenced by issues such as socio-economic levels, schooling background and language.

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This framework is also informed by the Major Principles of an SDL Program as determined by Gibbons (2002, p. 9–10): 1. Programmes should be congruent with a life of learning, the natural ways we learn and the unique methods by which each of us learns best. 2. Programmes should be adapted to the maturation, transformations and transitions that adolescent students experience. 3. Programmes should be concerned with all aspects of a full life. 4. Learning in SDL programmes should employ a full range of human capacities, including our senses, emotions and actions as well as our intellects. 5. SDL activities should be conducted in settings suited to their development. These principles emphasise the contextualised nature of SDL as regards real-life situations, the nature of students and wider applicability. In addition, the multimodal character and appropriate context of learning are also evident. Furthermore, the design of any learning environment—whether it is a specific learning management system or collection of online resources—should also contribute towards supporting SDMDL. In this regard, Moreno and Mayer’s (2007) design principles should be considered: • Guided activity: “Students learn better when allowed to interact with a pedagogical agent who helps guide their cognitive processing.” • Reflection: “Students learn better when asked to reflect upon correct answers during the process of meaning making.” • Feedback: “Students learn better with explanatory rather than corrective feedback alone.” • Pacing: “Students learn better when allowed to control the pace of presentation of the instructional materials.” • Pretraining: “Students learn better when they receive focused pretraining that provides or activates relevant prior knowledge.” A further requirement for successful SDMDL is making students metaliterate learners. In this context, Mackey (2019) states that a “metaliterate learner is a critical consumer of information, continuously developing effective questions, verifying sources of information including authorship, and always challenging his or her own biases through metacognitive thinking” (p. 1). It is proposed that learning take place within the SDMDL cycle. The proposed cycle builds on the literature on multimodal learning and specifically also Knowles’ (1975) six-step process for planning SDL and Gibbons’ (2002) approach to SDL in stages. Students enter the cycle in an environment that is reliant on some form of interdependence in which peers, teachers or lecturers could provide a context for learning. Johnson and Johnson (1991) describe positive interdependence, which informs this interdependence zone, as “when students perceive that they are linked with groupmates in such a way that they cannot succeed unless their groupmates do (and vice versa), or that they must coordinate their efforts with the efforts of their groupmates to complete a task” (p. 55–56). Hence peer interaction is key to this zone. This zone

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Fig. 8.2 Self-directed multimodal demiurgic learning (SDMDL) cycle

also relates to a process of linking new knowledge with existing knowledge as Gibbons (2002) observes that “brain research shows that people learn better when new concepts are tied to what students already know, teachers are encouraged to connect the lesson to students’ past experience and to begin with their current state of knowledge about the subjects they are teaching” (p. 6). The first step, as well as the other steps that follow, can happen in a formal or even nonformal manner. A number of steps follow this entry point as is indicated in Fig. 8.2. Students then take initiative on their own or in collaboration with others to commence with the SDMDL cycle. In the case of the individual, this process is often cyclical; but a view of a specific class or learning entity over time can also be cyclical. The next step involves goal setting by the student to reach specific multimodal demiurgic learning objectives. Goal setting requires the completion of what Brockett and Hiemstra (2019) call a “needs assessment” or “needs-diagnosis” (p. 191). In order to reach the identified goals, students must identify appropriate resources and modes of learning. In this resource- and mode selection step, students can draw from both human and material resources. It is also important that students are informed about which modes of interaction and instruction are the most relevant to their needs in this context. This selection also relies on students’ metaliteracy in order to be critical in resource selection. The next step involves selecting appropriate learning strategies as well as demiurgic strategies where the way in which resources will be created by the students are chosen. This is followed by an important and dynamic step in which resources are created by students. This step not necessarily implies the creation of original content but can also involve retaining, reusing, revising and remixing of existing open

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resources (cf. Wiley, 2019). An essential element in this creation process is the use of appropriate licensing and an awareness of copyright implications. With regard to SDL, Gibbons (2002) notes that “[t]hrough productive activities, students learn to find and develop their own strengths and interests” and that from the aforementioned, “students develop the directions they wish to follow both within course boundaries and beyond them in pursuit of personal visions of excellence” (p. 51). Furthermore, the cycle involves an evaluation of created resources as well as the process conducted by the student. This step can inform future iterations of the cycle and careful reflections at this point can have valuable pedagogical implications. Finally, a curation stage is also included in the cycle as, in order for content to be available for use by future students, the created resources should be included in a learning corpus. In this regard, resource repositories with careful indexing and clear licensing can be useful. At this point, the cycle can be complete for a student within a specific class or when an outcome is reached, and the resources of a finished cycle are embedded in the learning of a new cycle. However, in certain complex situations, students can renew the cycle with the adaptation of goals, for example. Importantly, within formal education settings, this cycle does not exclude the lecturer. As such, the lecturer would fulfil specific roles that are associated with SDL (Brockett & Hiemstra, 2019, p. 183–184). On the part of the lecturer, certain pedagogical objectives or activities (Picciano, 2009) can be employed to support a multimodal approach, namely: content; supporting students socially and emotionally; employing dialectics and questioning; having some form of synthesis and evaluation; stimulating collaboration and student-generated content (highly relevant in SDMDL); and creating opportunities for reflection. Therefore, lecturers need to be trained in the needs for SDMDL to facilitate the process effectively.

8.7 Conclusion In this chapter, the concept of self-directed multimodal learning towards supporting demiurgic learning was investigated. The chapter drew from the literature on SDL, which places the student in a central and very responsible position within the learning process. Furthermore, learning takes places multimodally and within multimodal environments. Therefore, the scholarship around multimodality also provides a theoretical background to the concept of SDMDL. As regards multimodal learning, four levels of multimodality were identified: individual, interactional, instructional and institutional multimodality. Within the South African context, the issues of both formal and epistemological access are highly relevant, since just having access to education might not be sufficient as this does not imply access to knowledge. Furthermore, another level of access was proposed, which should be addressed, namely demiurgic access: students being able to contribute to knowledge creation.

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Finally, a framework was provided for SDMDL in which specific SDL variables need to be considered in the light of the situation-specific issues in South Africa. Furthermore, there are SDL and other pedagogical principles that would inform the design of SDMDL environments. Within this context, a learning cycle was proposed which involves specific steps towards supporting SDMDL. Acknowledgments This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant number 109330). Furthermore, this research is part of ongoing research by the UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources.

References Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: A social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25(2), 166–195. Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, learning and communication: A social semiotic frame. London: Routledge. Brockett, R. G., & Hiemstra, R. (2019). Self-direction in adult learning: Perspectives on theory, research, and practice. London: Routledge. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/books/ reader?id=-LF5DwAAQBAJ. Bull, B. D. (2017). Adventures in self-directed learning: A guide for nurturing learner agency and ownership. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Gibbons, M. (2002). The self-directed learning handbook: Challenging adolescent students to excel. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hoadley, U. (2017). Pedagogy in poverty: Lessons from twenty years of curriculum reform in South Africa. New York, NY: Routledge. Holmes, B., Tangney, B., Fitzgibbon, A., Savage, T., & Mehan, S. (2001). Communal constructivism: Students constructing learning for as well as with others. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE 2001). Retrieved from http://www.scss.tcd.ie/publications/tech-reports/reports.01/TCDCS-2001-04.pdf. Accessed 14 November 2019. Ioannou, A., Vasiliou, C., & Zaphiris, P. (2016). Problem-based learning in multimodal learning environments: Learners’ technology adoption experiences. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 54(7), 1022–1040. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1991). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive and individualistic learning (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Knowles, M. S. (1975). Self-directed learning: A guide for learners and teachers. Chicago, IL: Follett. Mackey, T. P. (2019). Empowering metaliterate learners for the post-truth world. In T. P. Mackey & T. E. Jacobson (Eds.), Metaliterate learning for the post-truth world (pp. 1–32). Chicago, IL: Neal-Schuman. Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2014). Metaliteracy: Reinventing information literacy to empower learners. Chicago, IL: Neal-Schuman. Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2014). Adult learning: Linking theory and practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. (2007). Interactive multimodal learning environments. Educational Psychology Review, 19(3), 309–326. Morrow, W. (2007). Learning to teach in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

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Nouri, J. (2019). Students multimodal literacy and design of learning during self-studies in higher education. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 24(4), 683–698. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10758-08-9360-5. Olivier, J. A. K. (2018). Multimodaling and multilanguaging: Charting student (open) access and (communal) success through multiliteracies, Inaugural lecture presented at the North-West University, Potchefstroom. Picciano, A. G. (2009). Blending with purpose: The multimodal model. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 13(1), 7–18. Picciano, A. G. (2019). Online education: Foundations, planning, and pedagogy. New York, NY.: Routledge. Preus, A. (2015). Historical dictionary of ancient Greek Philosophy (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Redman, L. (2018). Knowing with new media: A multimodal approach for learning. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wentzel, A., & Jacobs, G. (2004). How the Internet necessitates a rethink of multimodal education: Research in higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 18(1), 322–335. Wiley, D. (2013). What is open pedagogy? Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/ 2975. Accessed 25 November 2019. Wiley, D. (2019). Defining the “Open” in open content and open educational resources. Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/definition/. Accessed 06 September 2019.

Jako Olivier is a professor in Multimodal Learning at the North-West University (NWU), South Africa. He holds the UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2011 in which he researched the accommodation and promotion of multilingualism in schools by means of blended learning. Before he joined the NWU as lecturer in 2010, he was involved in teaching information technology and languages in schools in the United Kingdom and in South Africa. From 2010 to 2015 he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts of the NWU after being appointed as associate professor in the Faculty of Education in 2015. During 2012 he was a guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. In 2018 he was promoted to full professor at the NWU. He received the Education Association of South Africa (EASA) Emerging Researcher Medal in 2018. Currently he is also a member of the advisory board of SlideWiki and an active member of the South African Creative Commons Chapter. His research, located within the NWU’s Research Unit for Self-directed Learning, is focused on self-directed multimodal learning, open educational resources, multiliteracies, individualized blended learning, e-learning in language classrooms, online multilingualism and macrosociolinguistics.

Chapter 9

Enhancing Practical Work in Physics Using Virtual Javascript Simulation and LMS Platform Khadija El Kharki, Faouzi Bensamka, and Khalid Berrada

Abstract Laboratories are commonly included as part of university courses as a way to relate theoretical lectures with experimental processes. They play an essential role in scientific and technical education. Currently, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) facilitates the development of new learning processes, particularly for university instruction. The use of these tools as part of the laboratories that are included in many of the offered courses as a method of improving teaching is becoming quite common. Virtual laboratories are important components of modern e-learning environments, especially in scientific and technical disciplines. They are based on simulations of real systems or phenomena, and can improve the teaching/learning process based on conceptual understanding. This chapter talks about the virtual laboratory and the difference between traditional and virtual labs. We present also, the virtual laboratory for physics that was implemented at the Moroccan universities. Keywords Virtual laboratories · Physics practical work · JavaScript simulation · Moodle platform · EXPERES project

9.1 Introduction Research has shown that hands-on experiences in the science laboratory play a central role (arguably the central role) in scientific education (Chen, 2010; Clough, 2002; Hofstein & Lunetta, 2004; Ma & Nickerson, 2006; Nersessian, 1989; Satterthwait, 2010; Scanlon, Morris, Di Paolo, & Cooper, 2002; Tobin, 1990). Laboratory experiments have a strong impact on students’ learning outcomes K. El Kharki · F. Bensamka · K. Berrada (B) Trans ERIE - Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University, 2390 Marrakech, BP, Morocco e-mail: [email protected] K. El Kharki e-mail: [email protected] F. Bensamka e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_9

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(Basey, Sacket, & Robinson, 2008; Clough, 2002; Finn, Maxwell, & Calver, 2002), Students learn better when they have to manipulate material in a real situation. Laboratory experiences promote central science education goals including the enhancement of students’ understanding of concepts in science and its applications; scientific-practical skills and problem-solving abilities (Hofstein & Mamlok-Naaman, 2007). During the last two decades, the Internet has invaded our personal and professional daily lives, and through the exponential growth of computers new services have appeared e.g., (e-commerce, e-administration, e-government, and e-health), the Internet has become an everyday working tool (Benmohamed, Leleve, & Prevot, 2006; Guggisberg, Fornaro, Gyalog, & Burkhart, 2003). The educational system was not excluded from this invasion. The emergence of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and their integration into the educational system enabled the arising of e-learning services and made distance learning a reality. The Internet became the keystone for creating and adopting new learning and teaching styles. As traditional face-to-face classrooms are now being possible through the Internet in the form of virtual classrooms, traditional laboratories found their equivalent in electronic laboratories. These new laboratory forms enabled students to be trained using virtual systems. They represent essential components in e-learning environments, especially in scientific and technical disciplines (Coquard, Guillemot, Noterman, Lelevé, & Benmohamed, 2007). For over two decades now, course designers and researchers have implemented different forms of distance labs (Brinson, 2015; Ma & Nickerson, 2006). Labs based on hands-on experiments at home, virtual lab experiments (Pyatt & Sims, 2012; Rowe, Koban, Davidoff, & Thompson, 2018; Waldrop, 2013), computer simulations, video-based experiments, and remote-controlled experiments have been part of online science courses for some time now, and there is growing evidence that students learn at least as much in these formats as well as in traditional handson, face-to-face teaching labs (Brinson, 2015). These technologies can increase the reach of pedagogy by allowing professors to teach large numbers of students who are geographically dispersed. Nowadays, virtual laboratories become an important component of modern elearning environments, especially in scientific and technical disciplines. A virtual lab refers to a computer simulation of an experiment. It is considered to be an interactive environment (based on the Web) in which simulated experiments can be carried out. A laboratory can provide tools that can be used to manipulate objects relevant to a specific scientific domain. Ma and Nickerson (2006) defined virtual labs as “imitations of real experiments. All the infrastructure required for laboratories is not real but simulated on computers”. The development of a virtual laboratory as well as implementing, requires technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. A virtual laboratory is virtual in the sense that its components, partially behave as if they were physical while being simulations based on a model of the actual reality. Furthermore, a virtual laboratory is a learning environment where students can perform learning activities (Wästberg et al., 2019). Standard arguments in favor of using virtual laboratories include accessibility (it is

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available online, and can be reached from anywhere anytime), and resource economy (there is no physical setting and no physical supplies) (Lewis, 2014).

9.2 Virtual Online Labs Versus Traditional Hands-on Face-to-Face Labs 9.2.1 Materials and Equipment Laboratory experimentation plays a critical role in scientific and technical education. Information technologies have radically changed the laboratory education landscape (Scanlon et al., 2002). The nature and practices of laboratories have been also changed. New types of labs have appeared (Brinson, 2015; Ma & Nickerson, 2006). Virtual laboratories are one of these new types. However, some works have raised questions on the educational value of virtual labs. For example, traditional hands-on labs are especially important to acquire haptic skills and instrumentation awareness, which are very difficult to obtain via virtual labs (Abdulwahed & Nagy, 2011). Nevertheless, different empirical studies have shown that virtual labs enable learning results comparable to traditional hands-on labs (Achuthan, Francis, & Diwakar, 2017; Achuthan, Kolil, & Diwakar, 2018; Brinson, 2015; Lindsay & Good, 2005; Ma & Nickerson, 2006; Moosvi, Reinsberg, & Rieger, 2019; Nedic, Machotka, & Nafalski, 2003; Sun, Lin, & Yu, 2008). Furthermore, many authors think that virtual labs provide interesting advantages over traditional hands-on labs. For example, virtual labs are available 24 h a day, 7 days a week. So, students have multiple opportunities to access resources and a greater amount of time to complete specific laboratory activities, thus allowing repetition and modification, thereby fostering deeper learning (Charuk, 2010). In contrast, traditional hands-on labs are often only available for short periods due to logistical and economic reasons (Heradio et al., 2016). Forming and understanding scientific concepts is the result of an iterative learning process that requires experimenting repeatedly with the lab (Hmelo, Holton, & Kolodner, 2000; Kolb, 2014). For that reason, traditional hand-on labs are sometimes insufficient to fulfill the desired impact on students’ learning (Kirschner & Meester, 1988; Roth, 1994). Moreover, Virtual labs are also an ideal tool to enable pre-laboratory preparation (Abdulwahed & Nagy, 2011; Dalgarno, Bishop, Adlong, & Bedgood, 2009), which is essential to improve the lab learning experience of students (Pogacnik & Cigic, 2006; Rollnick, Zwane, Staskun, Lotz, & Green, 2001). Besides, traditional teaching methods are expensive and require complex logistics regarding space, staff, scheduling and safety (Feisel & Rosa, 2005; Magin & Kanapathipillai, 2000; Pankov & Karaminkova, 2004; Selmer, Kraft, Moros, & Colton, 2007). Virtual labs may allow overcoming these limitations by allowing a computerized simulation of the laboratory experiments (Rasteiro et al., 2009). Even though virtual labs cannot fully substitute the hands-on laboratory experiments in scientific and technical curricula, they also provide several advantages as

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a complementary educational tool, the most notorious being the possibility of performing them anytime at any place provided Internet access is available (Rasteiro et al., 2009). Virtual labs have been considered as a support to physical laboratories (Rafael, Bernardo, Ferreira, Rasteiro, & Teixeira, 2007; Shin, Yoon, Lee, & Lee, 2002). Furthermore, they provide additional benefits such as supporting distance learning, improving lab accessibility to students with impairments, and increasing safety for dangerous experimentation as well (Heradio et al., 2016).

9.2.2 Learning Outcomes There is broad consensus among educators that laboratory hands-on experience is an important part of teaching science. This is largely due to both their strong impact on student learning outcomes and performance and their practicality of professional training (Basey, Sacket, & Robinson, 2008; Clough, 2002; Finn, Maxwell, & Calver, 2002; Magin, Churches, & Reizes, 1986; Ottander & Grelsson, 2006). However, Brinson (2015) reported that until recent years, traditional hands-on laboratory experiences were the only experiences available from which these conclusions could be drawn. Hands-on virtual online labs are usually chosen to provide students with an authentic lab or real-world experience (Brewer, Cinel, Harrison, & Mohr, 2013; Cancilla & Albon, 2008; Lyall & Patti, 2010). In cases when students can take a course either face-to-face at university or as an online course, the virtual lab must provide a similar experience as a hands-on traditional lab at university (Lyall & Patti, 2010). Besides, Brewer et al. (2013) list the acceptance of their distance courses for transfer credit by other institutions as one of their main considerations. However, resistance to virtual labs is still prevalent (Moosvi et al., 2019) because, some science teachers discouraged replacing traditional hands-on, face-to-face labs with virtual labs (Brinson, 2015). They argue that traditional face-to-face labs are often seen as an opportunity for students to practice inquiry skills and scientific process skills which may be another reason for choosing a hands-on format. However, in reality, this is rarely the focus of the lab (Holmes & Wieman, 2018). According to Brinson (2015), much research has been conducted regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet and computer technology on laboratory teaching and learning. However, no consensus has emerged regarding the impact these technological advancements might have on student laboratory learning. Some studies present data that virtual labs are educational hindrances (Dewhurst, Macleod, & Norris, 2000; Mistree & Muster, 1988), while others see them as useful supplements to the traditional hands-on learning process (Barnard, 1985; Ertugrul, 1998; Finn et al., 2002; Magin & Kanapathipillai, 2000; Raineri, 2001). Brinson (2015) conducted a literature review to compare learning outcomes in traditional and non-traditional hands-on labs, Overall, the study showed that students’ learning outcome is equal, or higher, in non-traditional laboratories, such as virtual laboratories, compared to traditional laboratory environments.

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Achuthan et al. (2018) said that a thorough understanding of scientific theories is difficult to obtain with traditional teaching methodologies (Achuthan et al., 2018). The learning outcomes were improved when students could use virtual labs before physical ones (Achuthan et al., 2017; Moosvi et al., 2019). Other studies have demonstrated that a combination of computer-simulated and physical experiments can enhance students’ conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena more than the use of simulated or physical experiments alone (Chao, Chiu, DeJaegher, & Pan, 2016). Whitworth et al. (2018) indicated that combining computer simulations with hands-on experimentation was as effective, or even more effective for learning a conceptual understanding of the topic under study, than using physical experimentation only (Whitworth, Leupen, Rakes, & Bustos, 2018). Furthermore, Son (2016) showed that carefully designed computer simulations have the potential to result in more favorable attitudes towards science among students (Son, 2016).

9.2.3 Interactivity Communication with scientific peers is a necessary skill. In almost all instructional science laboratory courses, learning occurs in groups. That interactivity can help students overcome difficulties in perception and comprehension during the learning process. Research has shown that cooperative learning can improve achievement and mastery of content (Slavin, 1990), as well as develop a positive classroom environment (Kagan, 1989). This can be true of online courses as well. It was determined that unlike face-to-face interactions in a traditional laboratory classroom, where less interaction and few questions by students are often observed (Tatli, 2009), asynchronous online interactions provided opportunities for sharing, support, and reflection among all, not just some, participants (Mawn & Emery, 2007). Furthermore, there is a general assumption—often referred to as the interactivity effect—that the higher the interactive level, the greater the degree to which learning should increase when students engage in multimedia technologies (Evans & Gibbons, 2007).

9.3 Design Considerations for Virtual Laboratories The rapid increase of students’ use of online resources over recent decades requires Higher Education institutions to take an expert role and to positively shape students’ exposure to digital technology (Achuthan et al., 2018; Bulfin, Johnson, Nemorin, & Selwyn, 2016; Hu, 2017). In this undertaking, online learning resources should involve a relationship between the technology used and the subject area and/or grade level at which it is applied (Sorensen, 2016). Like all educational tools, digital learning materials involve certain problems, and educational gains from technical innovations cannot be taken for granted. Furthermore, research on instructional technologies

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often produces results that are not readily adopted by the school system and not easily transformed into education (Stahre Wästberg et al., 2019). Reasons for the scarce use of research results for teaching practice could include the fact that several of the findings emanating from short-term interventions or experimental studies, which are problematic to apply in school activities (Arnseth & Ludvigsen, 2006; Schrum et al., 2005). Analyzing students’ scientific reasoning in their work with discovering scientific concepts in the long term, design-based and comparative studies might be a way of unraveling the learning process engendered by digital technologies. On the other hand, virtual laboratories have become increasingly common as a form of teaching aid in different learning situations (Achuthan et al., 2017; Lewis, 2014). The virtual is often characterized as being almost as if something actual (Heim, 1994). A virtual laboratory is a learning environment where students can perform learning activities. Creating a virtual laboratory for teaching and learning is, however, highly complex, incorporating skills in diverse areas such as interaction design, visualization, and pedagogy. It involves the design and production of texts, images, environments, and interactivity, and the production requires programming and animation (Stahre Wästberg et al., 2019). The development of a virtual laboratory as well as implementing it as a laboratory exercise for learning requires knowledge in technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2009; Mishra & Koehler, 2006). A laboratory exercise is here defined as a confined, scripted and conceptualized set of experiment procedures intended to be used for teaching purposes. An exercise is performed by the student itself, while a demonstration is here considered to be performed by the teacher, albeit these two can involve essentially similar laboratory procedures (Stahre Wästberg et al., 2019).

9.4 EXPERES Platform the Innovative Solution for Practical Activities in Moroccan Universities An integral part of scientific and technical disciplines programs are laboratory experiences. While the benefits of hands-on laboratories are in providing environments for students to apply theoretical knowledge presented in the theoretical courses and to acquire new skills. At Moroccan universities, every year, several thousand students participate in practical laboratory activities of science and technology. In 2015, these practical activities have, unfortunately, been interrupted because of the problems of the massification of students in the faculties of science in Morocco. This growing evolution of new students enrolled in scientific and technical training requires to make consideration for alternative means of offering laboratory-based education. It is in this context that EXPERES project, an Erasmus+ CBHE (2016–2018), was set up by Moroccan universities, with the help of European partners (http://www. experesproject.uae.ma).

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9.4.1 Presentation of the EXPERES Project EXPERES (Information and Communication Technologies for Education applied to scientific experiments) is an innovative project supported and funded by the European Union ERASMUS+ program. The project aims at the reintegration of the practical work of physics in first year of the bachelor’s degree. To offer to the students’ free access to practical activities of physics, without any space or time constraints. The main objective of the EXPERES project was the design, development, and implementation of an online virtual laboratory for practical work (e-TP) in physics. This virtual laboratory was integrated via a Moodle platform (LMS) as a new activity to establish a link with other learning activities (courses, tests, quizzes, etc.). To achieve this objective of learning practical instruction, the implementation of simulated practical exercises online allows students to repeat the experiment as many times as they want, at any time and any place. In addition to this flexibility, students also have the advantage of communicating interactively with tutors to answer their questions and the possible needs for formative evaluations. EXPERES was approved and supported by the Moroccan Ministry of National Education, Professional Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research and all the Moroccan public universities which were involved and engaged in the elaboration of the digital contents of dedicated virtual labs in physics. The different partners involved in the project are: • Moroccan Ministry of National Education, Professional Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research; • 12 public Moroccan universities: Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech, Sultan Moulay Sliman University of Béni Mellal, Ibn Zohr University of Agadir, Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Tétouan, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Ibn Tofail University of Kénitra, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University of Fes, Moulay Ismail University of Meknès, Mohammed 1er University of Oujda, Hassan 1st University of Settat, Chouaib Doukkali University of El Jadida and Hassan II University of Casablanca; • 6 Universities and Institutes of the European partner countries: the University of Murcia, the University of Léon and the University of Vigo (Spain), University of Bologna (Italy), Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm (Sweden) and Erasmus Expertise Agency (France). They have been selected for their experience to ensure quality training in e-learning and meet international standards. The coordination of this project was entrusted to the University of Murcia (Spain) in collaboration with the Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Tétouan (Morocco). The project lasted 36 months from 15/10/2015 to 15/10/2018. And the closing conference of the project took place in November 2018 at the Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech.

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9.4.2 Methodology Building a virtual laboratory for teaching and learning is a highly complex process. Because the experiments performed in traditional teaching labs are not easy to transfer to the online environment because they often use scientific instruments and other specialized equipment. Their conception requires technical, pedagogical and computer science competencies. This part describes the methodological approach followed for the development of EXPERES virtual laboratory.

9.4.2.1

The Choice of Practical Work in Physics

The first step of the methodological approach concerns the choice of the list of practical work to develop. For this, a large survey targeting the appropriate experiences in the physics program of the first year of the bachelor’s degree has been launched at the faculty of science of every Moroccan university. Twelve manipulations that are spread over the physics program were chosen: Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electricity, and Optics. These are mainly the same practical activities of physics delivered in face-to-face semesters S1 and S2 in institutions of Higher education in Morocco. The table below shows the twelve manipulations that have been selected.

9.4.2.2

The Conceptualization and the Scripting

The second step of this work involved the preparation of the conceptualization and scripting sheets for the twelve practical activities of physics cited above. This work was distributed among Moroccan universities with the support of the European universities partners of the project. Each Moroccan university has been in charge of the preparation of practical activity in one of the four pre-defined themes. The objectives of the conceptualization and the scripting were: • To define the learning activities that include a set of tasks that are proposed to the students: learning objectives, skills, educational resources, and materials; • To present the learning activities and tasks that should be performed by students; • To develop a simple and effective methodology to evaluate the students’ performance and identify their answers. The Prism practical activity was used as a model of conceptualization proposed by the Cadi Ayyad team concerning the practical activity. To do so, a sheet contained the following sections: title of the manipulation; keywords; introduction and presentation of the content; targeted level; prerequisites; educational objectives; skills; educational resources and materials; context and pedagogical methods; organization of resources; methods and tools for assessing prior learning; limits and new ways of use and general comment, has been designed to be used as a model by all other Universities. Then

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Table 9.1 The list of the twelve manipulations selected Physics program of the first year (Themes)

Practical activities in physics (Manipulations)

Mechanics

• Simple pendulum • Static and dynamic study of springs • Conservation of mechanical energy

Thermodynamics

• Calorimetry • Measurement of the adiabatic coefficient γ of gas • Thermal machines

Electricity

• Resistance measurements • Cathodic oscilloscope • Wheatstone Bridge

Optics

• Prism • Diopter • Focometry

after performing all other practical activities according to the Table 9.1 above, a manual containing the conceptualization and scripting sheets for the twelve practical activities of physics has been published. It is accessible online via this URL: (http:// www.experesproject.uae.ma). Also, the scripting of these twelve practical activities consists in the implementation of a coherent strategy integrating a number of techniques and teaching methods aimed at the exact formulation of the desired concept. Indeed, it was a descriptive work whose objective was to release sequences of learning. It has therefore been necessary for us to plan learning activities in stages, organized according to a certain spatiotemporal course, within a learning environment.

9.4.2.3

Programming and Creating Simulations

The third step is programming and creating simulations for the twelve practical activities. The conceptualization and scripting sheets developed previously were used to facilitate the programming step and for creating the twelve different simulations. The EJS (Easy JavaScript Simulations) was the software tool used for modeling and creating the twelve simulations. This software was suggested and implemented in Moroccan universities with the help of experts from the University of Murcia in Spain. Many training programs have been organized to train others experts at Moroccan universities. Then local experts from Moroccan universities have been able to design their own simulations according to the practical work they are having in charge. The scripts of the simulations programs were written in JavaScript. The JavaScript was chosen as the programming language because it is the language used by the EJS for creating the simulations and it is easy to run it on the web browser. Nevertheless, the final result, which is automatically generated by EJS from the description, can, in

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terms of efficiency and sophistication, be taken as the creation of a professional programmer. In particular, EJS creates Java applications that are platform independent, or applets that can be visualized using any Web browser (and therefore distributed through the Internet), which read data across the net, and which can be controlled using scripts from within Web pages.

9.4.2.4

Uploading Virtual Activities via LMS Platform

Looking for a model that will be used to allow students to practice their online practical work, a Moodle platform has been set-up to host the virtual activities generated by the EJS. The Moodle platform aims to facilitate the use of different online resources. It allows students to access them through a simple Web browser. It also promotes exchange and interaction between students and the tutor on the teaching contents of practical work. After a series of tests of the virtual practical activities performed by both students and teachers, the EXPERES Moodle platforms were officially launched in every university allowing personalized access users from the 12 universities. We would like to mention that even for the work done on the Moodle platform that is commonly used in all Moroccan university many training sessions on LMS technology and pedagogical approaches have been organized so far. Both the University of Léon and the University of Vigo in Spain have coordinated this work.

9.4.3 Results of the EXPERES Project As part of the EXPERES project, twelve virtual practical activities of physics of the first year of the bachelor’s degree (Fig. 9.1), are developed, implemented and accessible via the dedicated educational platform. The results of the twelve virtual online activities are available at the university web sites. The Cadi Ayyad University platform is accessible via the following address: (http://www.tpexperes.uca.ma). In addition to virtual practical activities, the online platform also contains other resources, such as theoretical reminder, theoretical video, QCM, simulation worksheet, explanatory videos on how to use the manipulation, activities of simulations, online evaluation of activities, to offer a very rich complement to students. After months of using the online virtual laboratory of physics and according to the preliminary results obtained among both teachers and students at Moroccan universities, the project had a very important impact. Indeed, it will allow: • Improving the quality of student learning. Because they can repeat the experiment as many times as necessary, at any time and from any place;

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Fig. 9.1 The twelve virtual online activities of physics developed

• The reducing the charges entrusted to teachers: the accompaniment, the supervision of the students in laboratory session and the correction of their reports, to give more time to the scientific research; • Alleviation of constraints related to management and/or safety.

9.5 Synthesis and Perspectives There is no doubt that laboratory experiences play an important role in science education. Nersessian (1989) goes so far as to claim that “hands-on experience is at the heart of science learning” and Clough (2002) declares that laboratory experiences “make science come alive.” Laboratory experiences have a strong impact on students’ learning outcomes (Magin & Kanapathipillai, 2000). It stands to reason that distance education programs need to offer science labs that are suitable for distance students. The virtual labs provide the students a learning platform covering the fundamentals underlying the experiment, its pre-visualization,

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and simulation. The studies have demonstrated that the learning outcome is equal, or higher, in virtual laboratories than traditional laboratories. In this work we have seen a series of harmonized actions that have been organized in the framework of an Erasmus+ CBHE project. During the 3 years of the project a set of activities have been organized to train teachers from twelve Moroccan universities to be able to offer LMS educational platforms to overcome the problem of massification concerning accessibility to practical work in physics at faculty of sciences. This work has been done in perfect harmony between all partners and the results are now encouraging us to try new area of Sciences. After the set up of Moodle platform at Cadi Ayyad University in November 2018 we have launched a new subject of research at Trans ERIE (Research Group on Innovative Technology). It concerns the use of JavaScript simulations and LMS educational platform to develop the practical work on chemistry for the first year of the university as well as we did for physics. The work is now supported by Cadi Ayyad University for all aspects, pedagogical approaches, programming and LMS technology. A young Ph.D. student is now fully dedicated to setup a set of online virtual chemistry lab activities and that should be incorporated in the curricula as well as we did for physics. Acknowledgments Authors would like to thank all our partners for their involvement to EXPERES project. Our thanks also to the European Commission for funding and supporting EXPERES project among Moroccan Universities. A special thanks to the University of Murcia and the University of Abdelmalek Essaadi for offering such as opportunity to work in consortium and for their best coordination of EXPERES. Thanks also to all UCA team members for believing in this idea from the beginning and for their engagement that was the success of the project.

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Khadija El Kharki is a Ph.D. Student at Cadi Ayyad University (UCA). She is a holder of a Master’s Degree in Engineering and Technology of Education and Training. She is developing research on virtual laboratory based on digital simulation with the JavaScript programming language at Trans ERIE group of research of UCA. Faouzi Bensamka is professor of physics at Cadi Ayyad University (UCA). He member of Trans ERIE and was the Director of Material Sciences Laboratory at UCA. He is involved in many aspects of research on pedagogy and training trainers. He was the responsible of the Mathematics and Physics Sciences Curricula at Faculty of Sciences Semlalia. He has participated in

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many programs and projects around pedagogy and has been member of many scientific committees. He is developing research on assessment using LMS platforms, JavaScript simulations and Microcomputer-based laboratory. Khalid Berrada is professor of physics. He is director of the center for pedagogical innovation and UNESCO Chairholder on “Teaching physics by doing” since 2010. He was the founder and president of the Moroccan Society of Applied Physics 2006–2011. He has been Chair of international conferences on physics education. He has authored (or co-authored) many research papers and has been member of many national and international conference and meeting committees. He has organized and facilitated many active learning workshops in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, India, Zambia, Philippines and Cameroon. Currently, he is coordinating the UC@MOOC project created in 2013 at Cadi Ayyad University. He is also coordinating at UCA and contributing to many Erasmus plus projects at Cadi Ayyad University: OpenMed, EXPERES, MericNET, InSIDE, EduBioMed, FORMAREL AUF, MicroLab ExAO, MUN MOOCs, Digital and Soft Skills UCAWallonie project,… He is also leading Trans ERIE Group of research on educative innovation at UCA and the Morocco Declaration on Open Education since 2016.

Chapter 10

Computational Thinking in Primary School Through Block-Based Programming Rosa Bottino, Augusto Chioccariello, and Laura Freina

Abstract Computational Thinking is one of the main topics on the educational policy agenda of many countries throughout the world. Its introduction into compulsory education is on the way, and there is an urgent need to define how it can be integrated into the class activities. This chapter discusses several advantages and some drawbacks of the use of a visual block based programming environment to foster computational thinking skills in primary schools. A longitudinal study in primary schools using Scratch is reported, and some general considerations are outlined. Keywords Block programming · Computational thinking · Primary education

10.1 Introduction Today society is undergoing deep changes that are happening at a great speed and cannot be overlooked when preparing future generations. The formal education system needs to take these changes into account and reflect them both in contents and methods. Knowledge is increasingly dynamic, interdisciplinary, quickly evolving and related to computational approaches. Digital technologies are pervasive and most human activities are adapting to include them. For example, computational modelling and numerical simulations have already changed the scientific approach to problems, and are also entering into the field of humanities, with great impact at all levels: cognitive, social, anthropological and economical. Apart from the traditional educational disciplines, future generations need to acquire those abilities needed to deal with distributed and complex knowledge. R. Bottino (B) · A. Chioccariello · L. Freina ITD-CNR, Via de Marini 6, 16149 Genoa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Chioccariello e-mail: [email protected] L. Freina e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_10

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In the past, digital technology use was largely centered on specific ready-made applications, but today’s scenarios are quickly changing. The creation of digital contents requires several abilities beyond technological skills, and students need to be proficient as both digital users and digital makers, hence the need to activate their logical and computational thinking, their argumentative abilities, as well as semantic and interpretative competences (OECD, 2015). Promoting digital making abilities, however, is not a complete novelty at school. In the late 70s and early 80s, when computers began to enter schools, ready-made applications were still very rare, and computers were used mostly for programming (often using Basic or Pascal language). As a consequence, an important area of research in educational technology was linked to the teaching of basic computing concepts, not only in professional courses but also in compulsory school. The aim was to introduce the basics of computer science, such as programming, modelling, algorithms, problem decomposition, patterns and generalization, etc. These topics were considered important not only as an introduction to computer science, but also for their close correlations with other disciplines, mainly mathematics (Cornu & Ralston, 1992; Bottino, Artigue & Noss, 2009). In some countries, such as Italy, the introduction of computer science focused initially on similarities (and differences) with mathematics (Bottino & Furinghetti, 1996). Starting from Papert’s pioneering research with Logo (Papert, 1980), programming began to acquire a new status, moving from a computer science topic to a useful tool promoting the development of basic transversal skills such as logical reasoning, problem solving, and creativity. The idea was that, through programming introduced in the early school years, students could create projects to explore ‘powerful’ ideas (such as differential geometry with the “Turtle” microworld or feedback with Lego robotic kits). Such exploration was based on the use of objects (called “transitional” by Papert) which were in between the concrete/manipulable and the symbolic/abstract, thus allowing even young students to approach theoretical concepts (Papert, 1980, 1993). While some initiatives introducing programming in schools were promoted by national governments, others tended to be ‘grass-roots’ efforts originated by small groups of highly-motivated researchers or teachers (Johnstone, 2003). In either case, there was a high expectation that programming would have a positive impact on the development of higher order thinking skills. However, researchers found it problematic to demonstrate that problem solving abilities could be transferred from programming contexts to other domains (Palumbo, 1990). This issue, along with the evolution of hardware and software applications that increasingly reduced the need for end users to master a programming language, caused interest to shift from the integration of computing elements into school curricula to approaches aimed at a more transversal use of digital technologies in schools. The mainstream focused on environments for the development of new approaches and methodologies for teaching and learning of curricular disciplines. However, the introduction of basic computing concepts as a way to support learners’ active thinking continued to be studied in some research initiatives, mainly those adopting the constructionist approach.

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After the term Computational Thinking (CT) was proposed by Jeannette Wing in 2006 (Wing, 2006), interest in introducing basic computer science ideas in compulsory school began to grow again. This focused on the need to teach students to think computationally and to help prepare them for a society that is dramatically changing along with technological evolution. Several documents were published calling for a change in the curriculum and making room for CT concepts. In Europe, for example, the UK Royal Society published the report “The Resurgence of Computer Science in UK Schools” (Brown, Sentance, Crick & Humphreys, 2014). The French Académie des Sciences (Berry et al., 2013) intervened on this issue with the report “L’enseignement de l’informatique en France. Il est urgent de ne plus attendre”. Informatics Europe and the ACM Europe Working Group on Informatics Education (Gander et al., 2013) urged Europe “not to miss the boat” on this issue. More recently, specific curricula have been outlined and proposed by national organizations, such as the Spanish Computing Scientific Society, which recommends the adoption of “Informatics” as a mandatory course in primary and secondary education (Velázquez-Iturbide, 2018). Under pressure not only from educational stakeholders but also corporate and world market proponents, the introduction of CT in compulsory school curricula became one of the main topics on the educational policy agenda of many countries throughout the world. As discussed in a comprehensive study funded by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Bocconi, Chioccariello, Dettori, Ferrari & Engelhardt, 2016), the policies followed by different countries for the introduction of CT are diverse. Furthermore, in some EU countries, policies are managed at a regional level: see as an example a recent report from the Spanish Ministry of Education (MEFP, 2018). In some countries CT is considered as a curricular subject in its own right, e.g. in the British national curriculum, where “computing” replaced “digital competencies” in the 2014–2015 school year. Elsewhere (in Italy and France among others), CT is considered as a transversal subject in primary school and positioned within the existing subjects of Mathematics or Technology in lower secondary school. In several policy documents, the introduction of CT in the curriculum is associated with “coding”.1 Coding is the buzzword of several grassroots initiatives (e.g. Hour of Code,2 EU Code Week3 ) lobbying for reform of compulsory curricula to make room for computer science through programming activities, starting from primary school. While not everybody agrees on this push for coding, there is a general consensus that programming is “an especially useful platform for teaching CT since it brings together several of the elements—both concepts and practices—that are central to CT” (Grover & Pea, 2018). Thus, one of the main issues to be considered 1 Coding

and programming are often used interchangeably to indicate the process of ‘writing’ instructions for a computer to execute. However, the etymology of the two words is quite different. Programming refers to the broader activity of analyzing a problem, designing a solution and implementing it. Coding, by contrast, is the stage of implementing solutions in a particular programming language. 2 https://hourofcode.com/. 3 https://codeweek.eu/.

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when introducing CT and coding at school is the choice of the programming environment to be used. Block-based programming environments, a modern instantiation of Papert’s design principle of “low floor and high ceiling” for programming languages accessible even to children, seems to be the appropriate technological solution. In this chapter, Visual Block-based Programming Languages (VBPLs) are introduced, and some advantages and disadvantages of their use in education are outlined, with specific focus on compulsory school. In an effort to illustrate the issues faced when implementing CT and coding in primary schools, this paper reports a project spanning several years that investigated the introduction of programming activities in Italian primary schools, together with some initial observations from the ongoing experience.

10.2 Programming Environments for Education Much has been said and written about introducing CT and programming in schools. Nevertheless, the term “school” refers to an extremely wide range of formal educational environments and it cannot be considered as a homogeneous whole. Children usually start formal education around the age of 5–7, and they often continue on through the school system to tertiary education. Their cognitive skills and abilities deeply change over such a long period of time, and educational objectives differ at the various school levels. Starting from lower secondary school (11-year-old up), the school day is built around lessons devoted to specific subjects while, in in primary school boundaries between subjects are less defined, allowing for a wider flexibility for the introduction of CT as transversal activities. The focus of this paper is on primary school, and for this target population, VBPLs seem to be the best environments to support the gradual development of programming activities for the considered target population.

10.2.1 What Is a Visual Block Programming Language? Visual Block Programming Languages offer the programmer visual elements, each representing a command in the form of a block. Programs are built by dragging these blocks into the program area and snapping them together. VPBLs started a couple of decades ago with programs like LogoBlocks (Begel, 1996) and Alice (Cooper, Dann & Pausch, 2000). In recent years, a new generation of visual tools offering simple and intuitive interfaces has emerged (Duncan, Bell & Tanimoto, 2014), including Scratch (Resnick et al., 2009), Snap! (Harvey & Mönig, 2017), Blockly (Fraser, 2015), and Code.org (2015), just to mention a few. The number of available VBPLs is increasing, and every year several events are held that are devoted to Block Programming. Just as an example, every two

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years the “Blocks & Beyond”4 conference brings together designers, educators and researchers, and its proceedings offer an overview of the new approaches in the sector. The block-based approach of VBPLs offers several advantages in the process of learning to program, as well as some drawbacks. According to Bau, Gray, Kelleher, Sheldon and Turbak (2017), learning to program poses novice learners three main challenges: (a) learning and memorizing programming vocabulary and functions; (b) avoiding coding errors; (c) managing cognitive load. VBPLs offer specific support for meeting these main challenges, thereby lowering the entrance threshold to programming. Learning and memorizing the programming vocabulary and functions of a text-based language can be hard at the beginning, as the fledgling programmer has to remember the new vocabulary and understand the related concepts. Even though many editors provide users with some scaffolding, this is usually limited to syntactic support or local suggestions on the commands available in a specific context. Instead, VBPLs give direct support to the programmer in the following ways (see Fig. 10.1): • The required instructions can be searched in the block palette. The programmer can therefore rely on recognition rather than recall;

Fig. 10.1 The Scratch block Palette and an example of blocks being always active

4 https://cs.wellesley.edu/~blocks-and-beyond/home.html.

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• The block palette is organized into categories based on the meaning of the blocks, simplifying the search for the required instruction. For example, all the blocks related to sound management are grouped together; • All the blocks in a category are represented with the same color, making it easier to read and understand the code; • In some VBPLs, blocks are always active and are executed at any time when clicked. The programmer can thus try out the block to check its effect before inserting it in the program. Avoiding coding errors Programming is an error-prone process. Blocks help coders to avoid common syntactic errors by constraining the possibilities open to them as they shape their program; for example, two incompatible concepts cannot be connected together. In VBPLs, blocks can only fit together in ways that make sense, thus avoiding error messages from the compiler. Furthermore, blocks’ shapes scaffold programming through hints on how a sequence could be built (the shape available in the structure tells the programmer what kind of block can be used next). Some VBPLs are specifically designed to minimize the impact of errors, thus facilitating programmers’ flow of thought of while composing projects. Managing cognitive load is hard for novice programmers. Even simple statements that appear straight forward to an expert may be difficult to decode for novices. Blocks reduce the cognitive load by chunking code into a smaller number of meaningful elements, helping the programmer to concentrate on the meaning of the code rather than the notation used to write it. Furthermore, coding does not need to happen “from left to right” as when writing standard Western text. For example, in a game where apples have to be clicked, and the game level changes every 10 apples, the instructions needed to program the apple can be produced as detailed in Table 10.1. In this way, the programmer’s natural flow of reasoning is facilitated. Beside these, there are other advantages for novice programmers in using VBPLs. The graphic metaphor representing the structure of the program offers a visual clue to understand the flow. Moreover, block labels are in natural language, further facilitating comprehension of their meaning and, therefore, making it easier to read the code. Actually, most programming languages are based on English and are unavailable in other languages, making it more difficult for many beginners, especially young ones, to approach coding. Since blocks are chunks of code, and therefore introduce a further communication layer between the computer language and the human interface, they can be easily labelled using any natural language. VBPLs are usually available in many different languages, allowing most students to code in their mother tongue. Other advantages of VBPLs are not strictly related to code writing, but rather to technical aspects. Most VBPLs can be used online, through a standard web browser, without the need to install or update any specific software. In addition, the programmer’s work is automatically saved and available from anywhere. Last but not least, VBPLs simplify debugging. The process of analysing a program to check and correct it is a complex cognitive process. While in text-based languages this is usually hindered by the need to compile a program before being able to see it working, VBPLs offer the possibility to see the blocks at work immediately. The

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Table 10.1 The flow of actions to write an “if then” statement (from observation of a 5th grader programming) The programmer’s thinking

Actions

I have to check the score

Takes out the block representing the score

It has to be greater than 10

Takes out the logical block with the “greater than” symbol, and inserts the number 10 …

Graphical representation

Then drags the “score” into the “greater than” block … if the score is greater than 10 I need an “if” block

Takes out the “if” block

I put the “greater” block in the “if” block…

Drags the logical block onto the if block

program under development does not need to be completed before it can be executed as blocks have an immediate effect and are enhanced when active. In this way, the programmer can see what happens at each step of the execution, stop and restart the program at any time, see the variable’s content and act on it, all without having to restart the program. This helps programmers understand runtime semantics such as flow of control and changes in state over time. Blocks can be snapped together and taken apart at any time, sequences can be changed, and tinkering is thus promoted. Along with the advantages of VBPLs—see Bau, Gray, Kelleher, Sheldon and Turbak (2017) for a more comprehensive analysis—a few drawbacks are also reported by some authors, especially when referring to teaching programming in higher education and professional courses. Blocks take up a lot of space on the screen; this causes low visibility of the code and makes it difficult to find a specific part of the program. As a consequence, making small changes to an existing program is sometimes hard, especially when a considerable amount of code is involved. Clearly VPBLs, and end-user programming environments generally, are not the best choice for actual software development, nor are they intended for such use. Hence, in the context of a longitudinal computing curriculum including secondary education, the transition to a text-based programming environment should be considered. In a study by Weintrop and Wilensky (2015), a group of high school students reported feeling a lack of authenticity in the use of blocks. They thought that using a VBPL was different from using real programming languages, and showed a preference for learning text-based programming as the basis for a future career in computing. Furthermore, sometimes the VBPL was felt to be more verbose, needing lengthier authoring and, generally, is often perceived as being less powerful than

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Fig. 10.2 Blockly’s blocks translated into JavaScript

text-based languages. Another aspect regards the fact that using a VBPL in the initial introduction to programming can create problems down the track in the transition to a textual language (Grover, Pea, & Cooper, 2015). That said, some VBPLs (e.g. Blockly, see Fig. 10.2) offer the possibility to see the code that was developed with blocks translated into a text-based language, thus facilitating future transition. Nevertheless, several studies have demonstrated that an initial experience with block programming can help beginners, and has a positive effect on the acquisition of more traditional text-based languages. This can apply not only in compulsory education but also at higher educational levels. Weintrop and Wilensky (2017) report that learning to program through the use of visual blocks, rather than via text-based approaches, enhances students’ learning and interest in engaging with computers. They argue that blocks provide learning support for novices in introductory contexts. Armoni, Meerbaum-Salant and Ben-Ari (2015) reach a similar conclusion: using visual blocks before starting to learn more complex text-based languages facilitates learning, increases enrolment in advanced computer studies and raises the level of motivation and self-efficacy. According to Sáez-López, Román-González and Vázquez-Cano (2016), blocks provide an accessible starting point for learners with limited or no programming background, allowing student-centred actives inside and outside the classroom.

10.3 Programming in Primary School At compulsory school level and particularly primary education, the objective is not to raise the students’ interest in programming and push them to engage with computers for a future career. Rather, it is to give them core concepts of a new communication tool with which they can create interactive stories, games, animations, etc. (Resnick et al., 2009).

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Children in primary education are still developing their abstraction skills (Armoni, 2012; Du Boulay, 1986). VBPLs encourage student curiosity, experimentation, and bottom-up tinkering with program pieces. The programming blocks can be dragged and dropped, and seen at work on the computer screen, allowing primary school students to understand better the program by grounding comprehension in a concrete experience. The most widely used VBPL in primary education is Scratch: there are several studies on the introduction of programming in primary schools with Scratch, both across the curriculum (Sáez-López et al., 2016) and as a separate subject (Geldreich, Simon & Hubwieser, 2018). Developed at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch (Maloney et al., 2010) stems from ideas of constructionist learning and the “Logo” project (Papert, 1980). It is a simple and playful tool with several characteristics that make it interesting for primary education. Scratch is very easy to learn, while offering sufficient depth for use in a large number of project types. The user interface is organized into a single bi-dimensional window, and was specifically designed to maximise its usability for young novices. It offers a minimal set of command blocks, colour coded by category, that can only be fitted together in meaningful ways thanks to their particular shape. The minimal set of blocks can be enriched at any time by adding one of the many extensions available. These are sets of blocks specialized for a specific function and, when added to a project, they create a new category to the standard block palette. Programs do not need to be completed before running, and any block can be seen in action at any time, with visual feedback of block functioning given in execution. Variables are represented by blocks that can be directly manipulated by the programmer; furthermore, when a program changes the variable value, this will be automatically updated on the screen. This flexibility encourages tinkering, bottom-up programming and hands-on learning: if programmers wonder what a block will do, they can just click on it to execute it. When something doesn’t work as expected, it is possible to step through the code by executing one block at a time, freeing beginners from the need to “imagine a complex state created in the midst of a complex process” (diSessa, 1997). Scratch provides strong support for the use of different media, allowing programmers both to import and modify existing multimedia data as well as create their own. The online Scratch programming environment allows interaction between users via a social environment in which projects can be seen, shared and remixed. These characteristics are very interesting for many Scratch programmers, who can ask for help, share their creations and ideas, and find inspiration for future projects. By using chunks of code from other programmers, students are exposed to new commands, and at the same time fostering collaboration and cooperation. Finally, Scratch is available in more than 50 different languages, allowing full support for non-English speakers as well. Another VBPL widely used in primary education is Code.org,5 which follows a rather different approach from Scratch. While Scratch embodies a constructionist point of view, in which students learn through the creation of artefacts, Code.org is 5 https://code.org.

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based on an instructionist approach, where students are guided step by step towards the discovery of new concepts. Targeting a large number of schools, and seeking to overcome issues related to the upskilling of teachers, Code.org offers a wide set of ready-made lessons, available in a wide variety of languages, guiding students through pre-defined learning paths. Each lesson is made up of a sequence of small exercises, introducing one concept at a time, with an incremental level of difficulty. Students solve each problem online and get specific support to overcome any difficulty. The teacher’s role is therefore minimized. The available learning paths cover a wide range of learner ages, starting from an early age (there are courses for pre-readers), and continuing beyond high school. Furthermore, the Code.org environment offers several specialized programming environments, called labs. These offer a limited set of blocks that programmers can use to animate characters, create a game, build an app, draw graphics, etc. The ultimate aim is teaching students to code, focusing on the main programming concepts such as iterations, loops, variables, functions, etc. In formal education environments, this approach has proved to work well (Outlier Research & Evaluation, 2015, 2016) and is attracting wide-scale participation from schools. The number of VBPLs available on the market is large and growing, and most are freely available online. In this chapter, only Scratch and Code.org have been considered because there are widely used in compulsory school. Furthermore, they represent two very different approaches. Scratch was specifically designed to support free exploration and tinkering in young students. The aim is, as stressed by Resnick (Resnick & Siegel, 2015), “code to learn”, whereby coding is not an end in itself, but rather a tool with which learning can occur. Code.org, on the other hand, aims at producing future programmers, guiding them in a structured and incremental way to learning to code.

10.4 Programming Experiences in Some Italian Primary Schools The actual introduction of coding activities into formal education through the use of a VBPL entails several key aspects: school organization and timetabling, the training of in-service teachers, available infrastructures, etc. In this section, a specific experience carried out in Italian primary schools is reported to provide a tangible illustration of the concepts covered thus far and to outline some methodological elements for consideration. Primary education in Italy involves students aged from 6 to 11. The curriculum is defined through national guidelines, even though some autonomy is left to individual schools. The Italian plan for digital schools, “Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale”, sets out the Government’s agenda to improve digital provision in education. The current version of the document (MIUR, 2015) explicitly mentions CT: a specific action is devoted to programming as a way of bringing computational and logical thinking to

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all primary school students. The main rationale for introducing CT is to foster 21st century skills and to move students from being passive users to active producers of technologies. While it is still unclear how the Education Ministry intends to reshape current curriculum guidelines to include CT and coding, a recent unanimous vote of parliament has committed the government to finalize the Plan by 2022. Considering this timeline, the current development of specific studies and experiences could be useful for defining good practices, identifying the main obstacles and suggesting possible solutions. At the Institute for Educational Technologies of the Italian National Research Council, several research experiences devoted to the introduction of coding in primary schools for fostering students’ CT skills have been carried out in recent years (e.g. Bottino & Chioccariello, 2015; Chioccariello & Freina, 2019; Freina, Bottino, & Ferlino, 2018). In these experiences, coding has been introduced as a transversal activity spanning the standard curriculum. Tight integration of coding with other class activities has been accomplished. The chosen approach views coding as a tool for self-expression rather than a subject to learn per se. The main objectives of the performed activities are to define a methodology for integrating CT activities in primary school classes within the standard curriculum, and to develop a “school culture” among teachers so that these activities can be carried out autonomously in subsequent school years. In the following, we report findings from a multiyear project currently underway at a primary school in Genoa, Italy. Classes of all grades, from Grade 1 (6-yearolds) to Grade 5 (11-year-olds) are involved. The type of activities undertaken differ according to the age of the students involved. In Grades 1 and 2, programming activities involve the use of two systems: “Cubetto” (Yu & Roque, 2018), a cube shaped vehicle that children control via a tangible programming interface; and Scratch Jr (Strawhacker, Lee, Caine, & Bers, 2015), a tablet-based programming environment based on Scratch whose interface and commands have been adapted to make them more appropriate for children from Kindergarten to Grade 2. Starting from Grade 3, Scratch is being used. The younger students are free to explore the programming environment for the whole school year, while in Grades 4 and 5 activities are divided into two phases: in the first phase, free exploration is encouraged, while in the second phase students work in groups on the development of theme-based projects defined in conjunction with their teachers. In the following, the main features of the above mentioned ongoing experiences are reported, and some observations are made based on the work done so far. The focus is primarily on the activities carried out with children from Grades 3 to 5, where Scratch is being actively used. At the time of writing, the project is in its third year, and several classes have been involved in the project for more than one year.

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10.4.1 Activity Design The activities have been designed to involve the whole class, during regular school hours, in the use of the Scratch programming environment. Each year, the work is organized in two successive phases: a familiarization phase devoted to deepening familiarity with the VBPL, and a second phase focused to the development of a project. In the familiarization phase, students are free to try out their ideas with Scratch, working individually or in pairs. This phase is needed every year: as children grow and gain programming experience, they can understand more complex concepts, deepening their knowledge. The constructionist approach promotes “use” as a road to comprehension: children are introduced to programming via hands-on activities instead of starting with an explanation of the interface and blocks. Scratch embodies this approach in its design. In the second phase, the teacher chooses a theme for the project-based work related to a specific topic addressed in class, e.g., hydro-geological risk, the history and culture of the city, the water cycle, European citizenship, etc. Students work in small groups creating a Scratch project that deals in some way with a specific aspect of the given topic. Every group is free to approach the subject as they wish, by creating stories, explanations, quizzes, games, etc. Working on medium/long term projects allows students to tackle all the phases of an articulated production task: design, implementation, peer review, revision, and presentation. This kind of approach is rarely pursued in Italy’s schools because it is perceived as time-consuming with respect to curriculum coverage. This is a key issue: striking a balance between the degree of agency left to the students and the structure needed to support students’ activities and learning is one of the recurrent problems in formal education. In our experience, we opted to foreground student agency during the hands-on activities in phase one, while structuring long-term projects in the second phase. The first phase of the project is held in the school computer lab, where students attend one hour a week to work online with Scratch. The introduction to programming is supported by printed cards that propose different activities. The suggested activity appears on the front of each card (e.g. animating a character, keeping score in a game, etc.), while hints on how to put together Scratch blocks to program it are on the back. The printed cards are available on demand, and students are free to use the ones they are most interested in. Support can also be found directly in the online environment, where students can explore existing projects, remix them, and exchange comments. Additional scaffolding is provided on demand, or when a specific need or interest arises. For example, during one meeting with a Grade 4 class in which students were creating digital games with scores, cloud variables were presented. Cloud variables keep their values between different game sessions played by different users and can therefore be used to keep track of the highest score attained. After the new concept was introduced to the whole class, the students were free to continue their work. Some students used cloud variables immediately in their current project, while others

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simply continued with their own ideas. In the following meetings, other students went back to the new concept and used cloud variables. In the second phase of the project, children work in small groups to develop a medium/long-term project. Since teachers in Italy can autonomously allocate a portion of their teaching time to project work, 20 h were devoted to the Scratch projects: 10 h in the classroom to design, discuss, and review student project ideas, and the other 10 h in the computer lab to implement them. The process of designing and implementing a Scratch project was organized in a similar way as the planning and writing of a text. Texts, as projects, are always created for a real or imaginary audience, and making the target explicit helps to set the tone, the objective and a deadline for the project. Thus, the teachers define the audience and the date for project presentations in advance. These elements, the audience and a fixed deadline, make the revision process more authentic and focused. An internal peer review is scheduled two weeks before the final presentation. Using the class interactive white board, each group presents the current version of their project and the final expected result; they then discuss it with the rest of the class, collecting suggestions on how to improve it. The final presentations can involve other classes and teachers, families and the head of the school. In one Grade 4 class, the final presentation took the form of a contest: projects were shown to students of another class, who then played the role of the jury and voted for the winners.

10.4.2 Students’ Work: Some Examples During the development of the project, direct observations are made to support and validate the chosen approach. Furthermore, a questionnaire is given to the students at the end of each school year and the students’ work is carefully analysed by the research team. Scratch users can freely decide to share their projects by publishing them, making them available to the whole Scratch community. However, it has to be noted that not all the projects implemented by the students have been shared; moreover, when students work in pairs, they commonly use the Scratch account of only one student. This causes some accounts to be nearly empty, even if their owners have worked on many projects. Nevertheless, till now, the Scratch account of 110 students (from Grade 3 to Grade 5) have been analysed, for a total of 1,322 projects. Most of the students (55%) shared between 6 and 15 projects, while 22% shared 5 or less projects. The remaining 23% shared more than 16 projects (up to a maximum of 79). Most of the programming was done by students during the computer lab hour, resulting in a rather low number of shared projects. Those students who shared a higher number of projects were the ones who used Scratch at home (in the final questionnaire, 16% of the students stated they “often” use Scratch at home, and 43% used it “sometimes”).

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All the Scratch projects mentioned as examples in this chapter are available online in a devoted Scratch Studio.6 With respect to the contents of the projects, observations show that the Scratch community contributed to students’ learning, providing examples and inspiration. In some cases, students were able to reuse ideas and pieces of code from other people’s work in their projects. For example, a Grade 5 student built an interesting animation of the water cycle called “Ciclo dell’acqua” by creatively reusing pieces of code from another project, found by searching for projects on the same topic. A Grade 3 student remixed several projects, tried them out, but seldom wrote his own code. However, when he reached Grade 4, after one year of practice, he started to develop his own projects, sometimes making rather complex games. At the end of the year, he developed a complex game (a maze called “Jerry lo scarafaggio”) with different levels, objects to be collected on the way, and a time limit. Working on projects like mazes involves concepts belonging to bi-dimensional geometry, such as coordinate systems, creating possible synergies with maths learning. One Grade 5 student spent a long time working on a maze called “Boh Game 3”, trying to understand how to control the character’s moves so that it would not cross the maze walls. In the online notes of her shared maze project, she described how she solved the problem: “I studied how to avoid going beyond certain colours, partly by looking at other projects to help me, and I understood everything. For example, if you press the right arrow, Boh (the character) will change x by 3, then just make a script so that, in that particular case, if it touches the red colour it will change x by −3. This must be done for all the arrows, but for the up and down arrows you will need to use y instead of x. And then the minus should be used depending on the direction of the arrow. These are small tricks on the Cartesian plane that, in my opinion, are essential and fun!” (translation by the authors). As previously stated, it is well known that variables pose difficulties to novices, due to their very abstract nature. In most programming environments, variables cannot be seen directly: a command line has to be written and executed to see or change values. However, VBPLs often provide the possibility to see and change the variable and its contents directly on the screen. Since students seldom discover this possibility autonomously, some specific scaffolding is usually preferable. Games are a typical program type that encourages the use of variables, which can have different functions: simple “counters” to keep track of the score, “flags” to allow or disable specific actions, data “input” from the player answering questions, etc. Some of these functions are more straightforward and can be easily understood, while others require some further level of abstraction. In the following we report, as examples, some case studies on the use of variables in Grades 3–5. In two Grade 3 classes in their second year with Scratch, students started to build simple games. During one meeting, a small game in which a fly had to be clicked to increment a “score” variable was presented to the whole class. After that meeting, a considerable number of the students used the “score” concept. The function of having a counter keeping track of an incremental score was used by 9 out of 20 students in 6 https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/25220070/.

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one class and 14 out of 22 in the other. In Grade 4, variables were not used only as counters. For example, the maze called “Il fantasma” kept track of time in order to manage a time limit for completing each level, while cloud variables were introduced and used as previously mentioned. In “Bisa-Quiz”, a game developed by a student in Grade 5, objects were falling and had to be clicked before reaching the ground. When clicked, the objects disappeared and the score did not decrease. However, when they reached the ground, the score decreased (a score of 0 meant losing the game), and could not be clicked any more. A status variable, locally defined for every object in the game, was used to manage the “falling” status. These examples show a clear progression from the simpler counter function, which is at game level, to the cloud variable, which can also be adopted outside a single game session, and to the local variables, which can have different values for different objects in the game. When students have to concentrate on a project for a longer time, as in phase 2 of the work, they cannot just abandon their project if it does not work; they have to try to find a way to fix it. Dealing with errors and developing debugging skills is an important part of learning to program, but more generally helps in developing a positive attitude towards errors, acknowledging that it is seldom the case that something will work perfectly at the first attempt. Many creative works are the result of several iterations. As an example, in the “Jerry lo scarafaggio” project, the student created a maze with a lot of white dots that were placed randomly in the maze. Collecting the white dots incremented the score. In the first version of the game (see Fig. 10.3a), some dots were placed on the walls and could not be collected. After evaluating several alternatives, and with some help from the tutors, the student ended up with a solution (Fig. 10.3b) that he then autonomously reproduced in all the levels of the game.

Fig. 10.3 Placing dots in a maze

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10.4.3 School “Programming Culture” The Italian National Plan for Digital Education promotes programming as a way of bringing computational and logical thinking to all primary school learners. However, the introduction of programming activities in primary education is not easy to achieve since teachers receive no preparation for it. Teachers need to be proficient in the use of programming concepts and with the chosen VBPL in order to provide their students suitable support. Teachers cannot simply be left alone to work in the classroom; a “programming culture” has to be created and nurtured throughout the school, and this requires time. In the context of our research project, teachers’ professional development was not set as a prerequisite for the activities, but rather as a goal to achieve within the project. At the beginning of the project, in each school, researchers and the teacher in charge of the computer lab provided the students with the required support during the lab activities. The class teachers who were involved in the project occasionally attended the computer lab activities, and were mainly involved in the definition and planning of the curricular-based projects. They worked with the class to help define the students’ work and support the class in preliminary research on contents to be presented through Scratch. Later on, class teachers played the role of supervisors, checking the projects from a curricular point of view, and suggesting changes or insights, while the researchers provided the scaffolding for the programming activities. This approach made it possible to extend the overall project to an increasing number of classes and teachers. Our experience reveals that an important element in recruiting teachers was the interest and motivation shown by the students during the programming activities. Another element was the choice of embedding programming in specific activities strictly related to different subjects. In this way, each teacher could find a context for the coding activity and work in synergy with his/her colleagues. Last but not least, the use of VPBLs provided a suitable environment for engaging those teachers who were new to programming. In future, one of the key challenges that the project will face is management of the progressive fading out of the scaffolding provided by the researchers, with the ultimate aim of autonomous management of the coding activities by the schools involved.

10.5 Conclusions We advocate that learners should practice computational thinking in playful contexts where they can develop personal projects, for example building videogames and/or robots, sharing and discussing their construction with others. VBPLs are widely used in education at all levels, from kindergarten to university. In many countries, the introduction of coding into formal education is underway and, especially for

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younger students, proposed activities are widely based on the use of a VBPL. Such environments lower the threshold for end users to become active producers of digital contents: both students and teachers can start programming while actively engaging in creating meaningful projects. Our direct experience is focused on Scratch because, according to our approach, especially in primary education, coding should be considered as a tool for self-expression, and Scratch was developed to support this (Resnick & Siegel, 2015). The push for the introduction of Computational Thinking (CT) and coding in school curricula requires a re-organization of classroom practices to make room for new activities. In many countries, Ministries of Education are updating their policies, and, at the primary school level, the most common approach is to integrate programming activities across subject areas. In our research work, we are developing a longitudinal set of activities whereby primary school students use Scratch as an additional expressive language for creating interactive multimedia stories, animations, simulations, and games. We are testing a two-phase approach to support the learning of programming and its integration in other curricular activities. Our work allows us to make some observations regarding the long-term sustainability of the chosen approach and, more generally, of educational policies involving the introduction of CT in school. To make such creative computer lab activities sustainable, a person in charge of lab management is required. Policy changes which foresee the official inclusion of CT and programming in the curriculum need to take this into consideration; such inclusion cannot be carried out by teachers working exclusively on a voluntary basis and in extracurricular hours. Last but not least, teacher training in itself does not provide sufficient support, especially when it is carried out in a standalone manner, unless it is linked to other school practices. The upskilling of in-service teachers is a complex matter: courses focused on VBPLs and programming are certainly needed, but are not sufficient to trigger the changes required for the sustainable integration of CT and programming in schools. Teachers need to see students actively working on their programming projects in order to acquire first-hand experience of students’ abilities developing across the full five-year time span of primary education in Italy. Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the students and teachers from the “De Scalzi” primary school in Genoa for making the project possible, and Jeffrey Earp for language revision of the original manuscript.

References Armoni, M. (2012). Teaching CS in kindergarten: How early can the pipeline begin? ACM Inroads, 3(4), 18. Armoni, M., Meerbaum-Salant, O., & Ben-Ari, M. (2015). From scratch to “real” programming. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 14(4), 25.

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Grover, S., & Pea, R. (2018). Computational thinking: A competency whose time has come. In S. Sentance, E. Barendsen, & S. Carsten (Eds.), Computer science education: Perspectives on teaching and learning in school (1st ed., pp. 19–38). Bloomsbury. Grover, S., Pea, R., & Cooper, S. (2015). Designing for deeper learning in a blended computer science course for middle school students. Computer Science Education, 25(2), 199–237. Harvey, B., & Mönig, J. (2017). Snap! reference manual. http://snap.berkeley.edu/SnapManual.pdf. Johnstone, R. (2003). Never mind the laptops: Kids, computers, and the transformation of learning. Lincoln: iUniverse. Maloney, J., Resnick, M., Rusk, N., Silverman, B., & Eastmond, E. (2010). The scratch programming language and environment. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 10(4), 16. MEFP (2018). Programación, robótica y pensamiento computacional en el aula. Situación en España y propuesta normativa. Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional. http://code.intef.es/ wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Ponencia-sobre-Pensamiento-Computacional.-Informe-Final.pdf. MIUR. (2015). Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale, http://www.istruzione.it/scuola_digitale/allegati/ Materiali/pnsd-layout-30.10-WEB.pdf. OECD. (2015). Students, computers and learning: making the connection. PISA: OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264239555-en. Outlier Research & Evaluation, The University of Chicago. (2015). EVALUATION OF CODE.ORG COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS Evaluation Year 1: 2014–2015. http:// outlier.uchicago.edu/evaluation_codeorg/. Outlier Research & Evaluation, The University of Chicago. (2016). EVALUATION OF CODE.ORG COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS Evaluation Year 2: 2015–16. https://code. org/files/EvaluationReport2015-16.pdf. Palumbo, D. B. (1990). Programming language/problem-solving research: A review of relevant issues. Review of Educational Research, 60(1), 65–89. https://doi.org/10.3102/ 00346543060001065. Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New York: Basic Book. Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York: Basic Books. Resnick, M., & Siegel, D. (2015). A different approach to coding. International Journal of PeopleOriented Programming, 4(1), 1–4. Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., … & Kafai, Y. B. (2009). Scratch: Programming for all. Communications of the ACM, 52(11), 60–67. Sáez-López, J. M., Román-González, M., & Vázquez-Cano, E. (2016). Visual programming languages integrated across the curriculum in elementary school: A two year case study using “Scratch” in five schools. Computers & Education, 97, 129–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. compedu.2016.03.003. Strawhacker, A., Lee, M., Caine, C., & Bers, M. (2015, June). Scratch Jr. Demo: A coding language for Kindergarten. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 414–417), ACM. Velázquez-Iturbide, J. Á. (2018, October). Report of the Spanish computing scientific society on computing education in pre-university stages. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (pp. 2–7), ACM. Weintrop, D., & Wilensky, U. (2015, June). To block or not to block, that is the question: students’ perceptions of blocks-based programming. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 199–208), ACM. Weintrop, D., & Wilensky, U. (2017). Comparing block-based and text-based programming in high school computer science classrooms. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 18(1), 3. Wing, J. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35. Yu, J., & Roque, R. (2018, June). A survey of computational kits for young children. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 289–299), ACM.

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Rosa Bottino is a senior researcher of the Italian National Research Council and she is currently the Director of CNR Institute for Educational Technology. Her research interests are in the field of educational research and the role of information and communication technologies for improving teaching and learning processes. She is the author of more than 100 scientific publications both in national and international journals, books and conference proceedings. Rosa Bottino promoted and chaired both national and European projects and Networks of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning. She organized and participated in many national and international conferences and is member of international research associations and journal editorial boards. Dr. Bottino received international awards like IFIP Silver Core Award and IFIP Outstanding Services Award, moreover, some of her papers received best paper awards at international conferences. She has acted as expert evaluator of international projects and research institutions. Augusto Chioccariello obtained his Physics degree (magna cum laude) in 1980 at the University of Naples. From 1982 to 1986, he worked in physics education at the Educational Technology Centre, UC Irvine, initially as a CNR research fellow and subsequently as project manager. In 1986, he joined CNR-ITD as a researcher and he worked on exploiting multimedia technology in design and development of learning systems. Dr. Chioccariello has collaborated with Reggio Emilia infant schools, exploring the use of computational play kits as learning tools for early childhood education. More recently he has coordinated CNR-ITD’s participation into the Inspiring Science Education EU project. He’s currently coordinating CNR-ITD Programming to Learn in Primary School project. Laura Freina is a researcher at the Institute for Educational Technologies of the Italian National Research Council, in Genova. After having defined and developed some serious Games aimed at fostering basic skills in support of independent life for people with intellectual disabilities, she implemented an immersive Virtual Reality game to support the development of the Spatial Perspective Taking (SPT) ability. SPT is the capability to imagine what the world looks like from someone else’s point of view, and it is related to academic results in STEM areas (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). She the organized a 6-month training of Spatial reasoning abilities with students from a local primary school. The main objective was to measure the influence of the training on school results in math. In the last years, she has been involved in studies for the introduction of computational thinking in all primary grades, mainly using the Scratch online programming environment. In particular, in grades from 3 to 5 this is done through coding and game making activities, with a specific attention to its integration with curricular objectives.

Chapter 11

Media Coverage of Digital Resources in Audiovisual Format: Evaluation of Six Years of Application and Proposal of Development Paths Said Machwate, Rachid Bendaoud, and Khalid Berrada Abstract Innovations in educational sciences aim to develop and improve tools that enrich teaching and learning experiences. Making available videos pedagogically designed to student audiences is a way to stimulate their learning appetite. To that end, it is pivotal to take into account the behavioral characteristics of users, when developing and implementing such initiatives. After a brief description of the UC@MOOC initiative adopted by Cadi Ayyad University, two critical behavioral characteristics were identified: • The viewing percentage of videos is higher for short ones. • Significant growing tendency for using mobile as a viewing device in developing countries. Keywords OER · Mediatization of educational resources · Video based learning · Blended learning · MOOCs

11.1 Introduction 11.1.1 History of Audiovisual Media and Education, What Relationship? The use of audiovisual media in teaching and/or learning showed very interesting results, since their introduction by the team of Hovland in the training of the military S. Machwate Cadi Ayyad University, PO Box, 511, Av Abdelkrim Khattabi, Marrakesh, Morocco e-mail: [email protected] R. Bendaoud (B) · K. Berrada Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University, PO Box, 2390, Av. Prince Moulay Abdellah, Marrakech, Morocco e-mail: [email protected] K. Berrada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_11

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after the Second World War in film format (Demerath, 1950). Later, media on magnetic or electronic format (Yousef, Chatti, & Schroeder, 2014) showed significant results regarding the improvement of the efficiency, the methods, the design and the reflection all seen from both the teaching and learning sides (Liu, 2016). Dale, in his cone of experience, defines that people generally remember 50% of what they see and hear (Anderson, 2013). Additionally, in the Bloom taxonomy, remembering constitutes the first step to starting the process of understanding (Laduron & Rappe, 2019). Empirical and theoretical studies showed that videos are “new educational tools” that allow better transmission of knowledge. Peraya stated that “the VCR allows to select the best frames of the audiovisual medium, to replay them, or eventually mount on a new band/tape the only needed frames of the film.” (Peraya, 1990). Educational or school television, which is another technological model, appeared in Europe and Canada in the early 1960s in the form of small support programs for students, but later as channels of mediatized content dedicated to education or what has later been called “Edutainment”: Educative Entertainment (Peraya, 2017a). This concept sparked public interest in exploring new forms of education and learning. In early the 1980s, however, educational channels were limited by their transmissive way of teaching, synchronous one-way broadcasting and expensive costs of production and distribution (Mustapha, 2004). In the early 1990s, the emergence of mediated audiovisual content on CD-ROMs and CDIs made it possible to disseminate more focused educational resources, manageable and pedagogically adapted to the different situations of teaching and learning (Duboux, 1996). Today, and with the development of the Internet, educational videos show positive aspects in contemporary teaching methodologies (e.g. MOOCs and Flipped Classroom) (Yousef et al., 2014).

11.1.2 So Where Are We Now? After several debates on educational innovations, and taking into account the current technological advances in terms of production and dissemination, a question emerges: how to reconsider the place of video as a resource medium, in higher education? The answer to this question lies at the crossroads of three axes: • The affordance of the Internet Indeed, nowadays, the technology has experienced a very important development that solves several issues or limitations in terms of production and broadcasting of audiovisual content. Nevertheless, a design of a pedagogical model for which realization is flexible and the cost is reasonably controlled proves to be desirable (Peraya, 2017b) • The growing demand of learners

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Video Based Learning systems, or VBL, have shown increasing interest in responding to new learner’s styles. The video, in its new pedagogical form makes it possible to provide, in addition to the cognitive information, other verbal or non-verbal elements. This makes the mediated support richer than a simple a text content (Ammar, 2019). Put online for teaching purpose, it is a tool that changes the methods of teaching/learning inside classrooms or outside (Kukulska-Hulme, Foster-Jones, Jelfs, Mallett, & Holland, 2004). VBLs consider videos as the main support for courses, or activities, which can be integrated into several teaching schemes. Their interest is reflected in their efficiency, the change of teaching methods, the reinforcement of the course design and the reflection on the performance of teachers and learners (Crook & Schofield, 2017) and (Giannakos, Chorianopoulos, Ronchetti, Szegedi, & Teasley, 2014). • The international outlook The willingness of major universities to stand in force on the Web and the venue of MOOCs make video a strategic resource that makes it possible to differentiate between universities (Peraya, 2017b) and (Yousef, Chatti, Wosnitza, & Schroeder, 2015) Bellow, we tackle the question more specifically in Cadi Ayyad University (UCA). In this chapter, we present at first, the Video Based Learning system (VBL) of UCA called “UC@MOOC”. We describe its implementation, its concept and its progression. Then we give an analysis of some of its parameters in term of usage, customer loyalty and customer behavior.

11.2 UCA@MOOC In this section, we describe the VBL solution of UCA: UC@MOOC. Inspired from the solutions offered by valuable universities and institutes (e.g. MIT or Berkeley University of the USA), and to answer a growing demand from teachers and students showing a preponderant flow of new enrollments, UCA has set up a new device for mediatization of courses in audiovisual format. By the following we describe its start and its evolution.

11.2.1 The Need UCA is a public university that opened in 1978. It compasses 14 higher education institutions (Faculties, Engineering Schools, Business Schools…) spread over 4 cities in Morocco, and covers several disciplinary fields (sciences, humanities, economics, medicine, engineering…).

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Table 11.1 Evolution of students, reception capacities and academic staff Year

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

2019

Number of students

28070

33414

63306

64256

83513

95506

Number of physical seats

29607

31162

36372

38738

40765

42329

Number of Academic staff

1300

1300

1420

1450

1550

1550

Source UCA Activity Reports 2015–2017, 2018–2019

Table 11.1 shows the evolution of the number of students, compared to the evolution of the reception capacity and number of academic staff in UCA from 2010 to 2019. We observe that since 2010, the university enrolls more and more new students. The total number increased 3.4 times. Besides, the number of physical seats has increased only 1.4 times during the same period. Pedagogical supervision has been reduced from a ratio of 1 teacher for 22 students in 2010 to 1 teacher for 62 students in 2019. The number of new registrants grew dramatically, making it difficult to maintain reasonable good teaching and learning experience. In addition, the limited recruitment of faculty and the impossibility of building new premises to accommodate the new students could impact the success rate for both students and teachers (Berrada, Bendaoud, Machwate, Idrissi, & Miraoui, 2017). It is the key to measuring performance and effectiveness of teaching at the university. It has decreased from an average of 28% in 2009 to 22% in 2012. The impact was mostly felt in open-access schools where the number of students represents 82% of the university’s enrollment. It is in these institutions that emerged difficulties in mastering the learning language: 50% of courses are in French, the language of instruction in scientific and technical fields.

11.2.2 UCA Context UCA has been working since 2012 and engaging in a Smart University process as a strategic axis of its development (UCA Development Plan 2011). The University has therefore invested in the IT infrastructure by generalizing Wi-Fi in all its buildings, increasing the bandwidth of the Internet and allocating free access to computer rooms equipped with hundreds of light-clients for the benefit of students. Cadi Ayyad University is a leader in scientific research (Shanghai top 400th, and THE top 50th, ranking of 2017) at the regional level, and aims to assert itself as a socially responsible organization by offering the best training to its students. It therefore relies on pedagogical innovation in its strategic development plan for the years to come (UCA 2013–2016 and later strategic plans 2017–2020). Difficulties started in 2010, as result of the increase in the flow of new students, the limitation of recruiting new teachers and the inability to build new premises. The implementation of a system that can improve teaching and learning, by offering to

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students recorded courses in audiovisual format that they can view before or after class to partially address premises congestion and the mastery of the French language issues. Hence the idea of launching UC@MOOC action while keeping a critical view on its usefulness and its advantages/disadvantages (Wimpenny, Merry, Tombs, & Villar-Onrubia, 2016). In its first year, UC@MOOC was able to respond to some of the effects of massification (Berrada et al., 2017). Later, other solutions based on a hybrid, or blended, educational model were able to further improve teaching and learning practices. LPMCRC, a BS degree which have been set in this blended way, based on UCA@MOOC materiel showed some key improvements in the game by providing teachers with the opportunity to enhance their way of teaching and reduce massification effects (Lebzar, Bendaoud, & Berrada, 2016). As a result, improving UC@MOOC and generalizing its implementation in order to better train students is a project that is gaining momentum.

11.2.3 The Concept UC@MOOC is a complete process of mediatization and broadcasting of educational resources in audiovisual format. It consists of recording courses, scripting them pedagogically, editing them and broadcasting them to students and the general public in a cost effective way. The University federates the production and dissemination of resources. These resources are put on official YouTube channel of the university, and then organized on a website to ensure ease of search. Content is organized by sector, by disciplinary field, and by establishment… in a way that students can easily find their courses. Once the media is selected, it appears in a web page with the necessary menu that highlights a brief description of the course, the teacher of the course… (See the link: www.mooc.uca.ma). During the last six years, this platform has shown encouraging results in improving learning conditions as well as in reducing dropouts (Idrissi, Margoum, Bendaoud, & Berrada, 2018). Audiovisual production and broadcasting are produced in an easy way, inexpensive in time and money, open and federated by the university. It goes through four steps: scripting, recording, editing and broadcasting (see Fig. 11.1). Step 1: Instructional design (Scripting). It is a pedagogical scenario that describes the pedagogical objectives of the resource, its breakdown or granulation in concepts, definitions and activities, and finally the establishment of a script describing the sequence, the contents, the illustrations to embed in the corresponding passages and the speech of each sequence. At this stage, the teacher and the pedagogical adviser collaborate to adapt the classical materiel of the course to its new format. Thus, align objectives of the chapters to those of each course tape (Sequence).

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Fig. 11.1 Steps in creating mediatized Content

Step 2: Recording (Capture): It goes through an introduction of the teacher to the “actor work” (postures, looks), the preparation of teaching and technical materials and views relative to each shot and each posture. The recording scene is using chromakey technique when teacher presence in the video is needed. Four light boxes are used, two to enlighten the green screen and two for the teacher or objects. The voice is taken through HF microphones into the camera’s audio input. A home camera recorder is used for the caption. The solution with all audiovisual equipment costs around 80000 Moroccan Dirhams (approximately 8000 US $). Step 3: Editing or post-production. This step consists of synchronizing video content, images, sound and/or other videos, and grouping them to produce an audiovisual medium of each sequence. Adequate and free editing software is used with video rendering in HD format. A screen-shooting is undertaken at the same time as sequence recording. This makes the synchronization of the contents much easier while editing the video. The postproduction is performed after recording sessions by the integrating all the audiovisual material elements. The amount of time spent in this process depends on the material quantity and the kind of the resource to be produced (Lectures, lab activities…). Step 4: The broadcast. In order to make UC@MOOC open and to reduce costs, the online broadcast is done on YouTube channels. After validating the content by the teacher, the videos are subsequently integrated on the UC@MOOC site. Then, they are categorized, organized and centralized on website of the university. This

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ensures the authenticity character of the videos under Cadi Ayyad University labeling. Sources authenticity has been extensively proven as an input to the receipt of information and subsequently its acquisition (Hovland & Weiss, 1951). These media are broadcasted with a YouTube standard license. They can be integrated into other distant education platforms and into more specific teaching processes. Teachers from the university, or other users, could integrate these productions on several teaching/learning schemes and platforms.

11.2.4 Evolution Since its commissioning, the UC@MOOC solution was able to broadcast video educational content of the majority of the disciplines (Science, Law, Economics, Engineering, Medicine, Humanities…). In the following table, we show the number of videos produced and uploaded on UCA official YouTube channels since 2013 (Table 11.2). Since its inception, UC@MOOC was able to produce 544 videos (300 h) with an average time budget of 12 man-working hours to produce one hour video. (Source: Center of Pedagogical Innovation of UCA). We noticed that: • The year 2014 saw a significant increase in video production thanks to the temporary assignment of a number of technician staff to boost the launch of the project. • The year 2017 saw an increase thanks to the involvement in projects with external financial contributions (European projects: ERASMUS + and hybrid BS LPMCRC). A quick reading shows a production average of 70 videos per year with justified gaps due to injecting some external resources into the audiovisual production process. In Table 11.3, we can see the interest of users in this solution. As such, the focus is on the evolution of the number of subscribers, the number of views and the duration of viewing. By the end of 2019, UC@MOOC reached 8.8 Million views, over than 83 years of video viewing and a number of 83’500 subscribers. The number of subscribers to a YouTube channel indicates the degree of users’ loyalty and trust. The number of UC@MOOC subscribers is growing very strongly. The trust of the subscribers in this solution is corollary to the pedagogical interest of the videos Table 11.2 Number of new videos produced and uploaded since 2013 Year

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Number of videos produced

61

98

68

60

128

59

70

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Table 11.3 Progression of new views and subscriptions of UC@MOOC channels Year

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Number of views (Thousands)

885

1209.5

1423.7

1617.9

1842.6

1683.5

Number of hours of viewing (Thousands)

80.3

110.8

121.5

129.4

144.1

135.1

Number of subscribers (Thousands)

5.8

8.1

11.1

17.3

14.6

25.7

produced and their quality. Indeed, the institutional nature of the videos validates this: they are produced and verified by the university.

11.3 Users’ Behavior Studying users’ behavior aims to anticipate the trends by offering solutions to respond to users’ query. What are the factors that influence the behavior of users? What would be their objective for choosing this solution? Our research tries to respond to some of these questions referring, in particular, to durations of watch of videos and to the device that users are connecting with. We started by collecting some information about the users’ profiles and then measured their responses to the two parameters mentioned above.

11.3.1 Users Profile Before starting to describe the behavior of UC@MOOC users, we have drawn up a summary of their profiles.

11.3.1.1

Age and Gender

75% of users are between 18 and 25 years old, which is precisely the audience targeted by these VBL. 66% of users are males and 34% are females. To collect information about “age” and “gender” users are supposed to be connected to the navigator with their Gmail accounts. As such, users are in their majority students aged 18–24 years and mainly with a double connection ratio of men compared to women (2/3 vs. 1/3). This had been calculated on the global number of connections from the beginning of the experience till now. As the number of female students at UCA is 51% of the global number of students, we verified the data collection year by year (Table 11.4).

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Table 11.4 Ratio of connection to UC@MOOC by gender Year

2010 (%)

2012 (%)

2014 (%)

2016 (%)

2018 (%)

2019 (%)

Male

80

70

60

55

52

51

Female

20

30

40

45

48

49

Female students are more and more using this solution to access to their educational resources.

11.3.1.2

Geographic Location

As shown in Fig. 11.2, 68% of users are Moroccans, 75% of whom are aged 18– 25 years old. These are most likely students from Moroccan universities. As an assumption, there are more likely users from Arab or French speaking countries. The reason for this assumption is that the majority of the courses available on the platform are in Arabic and/or French (98%), and the similarity of programs in French-speaking countries (LMD system). Other data give that 88% of users are Africans (including Moroccans).

Fig. 11.2 Distribution of UC@MOOC users, by country

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Source of Traffic

Using the YouTube analytics, 33.1% of connections come from within the UCA, 31% come following direct research on Google. 10.5% come from suggestions shared on social networks. In summary, UC@MOOC’s audience consists mainly of Moroccan (68%) students (75%) using direct access to the UC@MOOC interface (31%) or from links shared in social networks to access UC@MOOC (11%) or by direct search on search engines (35%). 88% of the users are Africans. We believe that given language and educational programs content similarities, African students may be keen to connect to this solution. 30 African countries are French speaking and 22 use French as their official language. The solution is also unique across the continent, in Africa for example, pedagogical media distribution platforms are generally MOOCs that require registration for a specific period and very limited access and more generally the course is in English (Oyo & Kalema, 2014). Once substantial usage of this solution has been globally confirmed, we started to examine two parameters to determine trending in users’ behavior. Two parameters are discussed in this section: • The duration of the videos most viewed in terms of overall viewing percentage. • The type the device used to connect for the VBL UC@MOOC.

11.3.2 A Fondness for Videos of Short Duration The videos available on UC@MOOC encompass all disciplines including humanities, economics, social sciences, hard sciences, medicine and engineering. They are produced in various durations. It was therefore intersection to look at statistics on video viewing independently of discipline parameter. A curve is plotted showing the viewing percentage of these videos versus their duration. Figure 11.3 shows that viewers tend to fully watch shorter videos than longer ones. Videos of duration less than 10 min tend to be seen more completely than the others. Users watch till 80% of full duration of these videos at each connection. Those with duration more than 30 min are less than 20% of their duration seen. Longer videos seem to be cognitively heavy. Brame recommends short videos focused on the educational objectives of the sequence (Brame, 2015). According to her, observational studies of millions of users on the web have shown that the duration must be short to ensure a commitment of learners.

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Fig. 11.3 Viewing percentage of videos versus their duration

11.3.3 More Mobile Users of UC@MOOC in Developing Countries Compared to Those in Developed Countries Since Mobile devices are widely used by students; we looked at the proportion of mobile versus computer usage in connecting to the UC@MOOC platform since launch. Figure 11.4 shows a tendency to higher mobile usage to display the videos that accelerated in 2017. The ANRT reports (2017 and 2018), show an increase in mobile bandwidth in Morocco, and the 30% annual growth in number of users (ANRT, 2017). Because of the openness UC@MOOC to any learner in the world, we pushed the study further to compare users’ mobile trends in Africa and in Europe. Figure 11.5 shows that the mobile viewing has exceeded that of computer viewing in Africa in early 2017 and by middle 2018 in Europe. Both trends are exponential shape. However, in Europe it is delayed. The report of the International Telecommunication Union (Union, 2017), indicates that in the Africa/MENA region downloading through mobile is much more frequent than downloads by fixed devices (computers): 85% in Africa versus 50% for Europe. Despite the fact that the ICT index of African countries is from medium to low, and it is from high to very high for the European countries. In the case of UC@MOOC, we can reasonably assume that in Africa, users tend to connect more frequently via mobile to watch videos. They might meet their learning needs through enjoying the benefits of Mobile. In this study, we do not take into account the type of mobile connection (Wi-Fi or 3G or 4G).

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Fig. 11.4 Evolution of the ratio of mobile/computer viewing in Africa and Europe

Fig. 11.5 Ratio of mobile viewing compared to computer display

11.4 Discussion Videos as teaching and learning media have been introduced in higher education since the beginning of the last century and their effectiveness has been measured in many ways. The advent and availability (Affordance) of the internet, new production abilities, and wide broadcasting solutions have allowed greater use of these resources.

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In Morocco, and in Cadi Ayyad University, the UC@MOOC solution was able to provide answers to some of the problems related to massification. UC@MOOC is described as a cost-effective solution, federating the production of educational audio-visual media at the university level, open to all public and validated by a university label. Six years after its introduction, a reading of its performances is necessary. We identify six considerations that may help to understand its use and the possible parameters that may be checked: (i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

Growth of demand: the interest of users of this solution is growing. Visualization and subscriber numbers are increasing. This may be due to the ease of use and the openness of the solution. Another parameter to remember is its official production label, federated, validated and approved by the University. African students are the main users: they are mostly between 18 and 25 years old and mainly connected from Morocco (68% of connections). Africa represents 88% of the users. The age group indicates that this is a student population. The similarity in the programs of study (LMD system) in African countries and the languages of the videos made the success of UC@MOOC in Africa. UC@MOOC is open: only 1/3 of users connect directly to UC@MOOC through its direct link, the rest of users connect following web engines searches or by through links shared on social media (Facebook and Whatsapp). Video access requires no registration. It is easier to access the desired resource, without any need to subscribe on any platform. The most fully watched videos are those with short duration. UC@MOOC users are more interested in viewing short videos. With an average overall viewing rate of 5 min of all media on UC@MOOC, we can assume that this is the duration that can support these users without overloading their cognitive abilities. This, of course, varies from one video to another depending on the discipline, the mode of transmission and the educational objective of each content. Also, the cognitive load of long videos containing several concepts at once may block their commitment and involvement in the rest of the learning process, although they can stop the video and come back to it as needed. A reflection during the setting up of this type of mediatized contents, have to consider production of pedagogically oriented and stimulating videos… Users in Africa prefer the use of mobile devices to view educational media. By analyzing the trend of the use of mobiles over landlines (computer) by UC@MOOC users, an impressive trend has been taking place since 2017. A study of the use of mobile to connect to UC@MOOC regarding the European countries (developed) and the African ones (developing countries), shows that Africans have a tendency to favor the mobile to access to UC@MOOC. Even though that African countries have less ICT indicator than the European.

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11.5 Conclusion and Perspectives VBLs are increasingly present in higher education. They make it possible to circumvent the difficulties encountered in the classroom and to conquer new teaching methodologies. At the base of any learning, memorization activities are the foundation of understanding, analysis and application. Educational videos, as they facilitate memorization, could move forward the learning experience to application and analysis level. Online video can stimulate this process of learning by allowing the adjustment to the pace and disposition of the learner. It is indeed a master piece in a learning process in the form of MOOCs. UC@MOOC, allows to federate the production of audiovisual material of the UCA and to offer in open mode (Wimpenny et al., 2016) possibilities of diverse use of these resources in global situations of teaching or learning such as MOOCs, hybrid learning, flipped classes. UC@MOOC has shown its position as a reliable solution given the ever-increasing numbers of subscribers, number of views and watch times since its inception. After 6 years of its establishment, two major behaviors of users of this solution have been highlighted: • More important interest in visualizing shorter videos. • Significant tendency for using mobile as a viewing device in African countries. Emphasis should be placed on producing shorter pedagogical videos and with content more adapted to mobile devices. In the perspective of this study, and once the tendency towards a mobile learning style has been established, we think it would be interesting to study the mobile/connectivist posture of learners. This posture does not only concern the devices used to connect but also appears in their connectivist and multi-task behavior. And then, study their way of seeking information and learning, through the implementation of teaching and learning based on connectivist pedagogy. Acknowledgments Authors would like to thank the Cadi Ayyad University Center of Pedagogical Innovation for providing data collection. Thanks go also to all professors at UCA who have been volunteers and accepted to record their courses in various fields.

References Ammar, S. (2019). Quelle est la place de la vidéo dans une stratégie de pédagogie active? Questions de Pédagogies dans l’Enseignement Supérieur, ENSTA Bretagne, IMT-A, UBO, Brest, France. hal-02284015. Anderson, H. M. (2013). Dale’s Cone of Experience. 2. Retrieved from http://www.queensu.ca/ teachingandlearning/modules/active/documents/Dales_Cone_of_Experience_summary.pdf.

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ANRT. (2017). ANRT Report. Retrieved from https://www.anrt.ma/sites/default/files/publications/ 2017_t1_tb_internet.pdf. Berrada, K., Bendaoud, R., Machwate, S., Idrissi, A., & Miraoui, A. (2017). UC@MOOC: Pedagogical innovation to challenges of massification at university level in Africa. Latin-American Journal of Physics Education, 11(1). http://www.lajpe.org. Brame, C. J. (2015). Effective Educational Videos. In Vanderbuilt University Center for Teaching (pp. 1–8). http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/effective-educational-videos/. Crook, C., & Schofield, L. (2017). The video lecture. The Internet and Higher Education, 34, 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2017.05.003. Demerath, N. J. (1950). Experiments on mass communication. In Carl I. Hovland, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, Fred D. Sheffield. Studies in social psychology in world war II (Vol. III). Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press;. Social Forces, 28(4), 446–447. https://doi.org/10.2307/2572262. Duboux, R. (1996). De la télévision scolaire à la culture multimédia. Colan, 110(1), 20–34. https:// doi.org/10.3406/colan.1996.2715. Giannakos, M., Chorianopoulos, K., Ronchetti, M., Szegedi, P., & Teasley, S. (2014). Video-based learning and open online courses. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 9(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v9i1.3354. Hovland, C. I., & Weiss, W. (1951). The Influence of source credibility on communication effectiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(4), 635–650. https://doi.org/10.1086/266350. Idrissi, A., Margoum, S., Bendaoud, R., & Berrada, K. (2018). UC@MOOC’s effectiveness by producing open educational resources. IJIMAI, 5(2), 58. https://doi.org/10.9781/ijimai.2018. 02.007. Kukulska-Hulme, A., Foster-Jones, J., Jelfs, A., Mallett, E., & Holland, D. (2004). Investigating digital video applications in distance learning. Journal of Educational Media, 29(2), 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358165042000253294. Laduron, C., & Rappe, J. (2019). Vers une typologie des usages pédagogiques de la vidéo basée sur l’activité de l’apprenant. http://hdl.handle.net/2268/232319. Lebzar, B., Bendaoud, R., & Berrada, K. (2016). Les SPOC, une autre façon de développer la formation initiale et continue. Journées Internationales de l’Innovation Pédagogique dans l’Enseignement Supérieur, Sousse Tunisie, 19–21 décembre 2016, Actes des JIP’2016. Liu, M. (2016). Blending a class video blog to optimize student learning outcomes in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 30, 44–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2016. 03.001. Mustapha, A. (2004). TVI (Télévision Interactive): Formation à distance des éducateurs par les technologies interactives, Une palette technologique pour des fonctions pédagogiques. TICE 2004, Oct2004, Compiègne, France. pp. 523–527. edutice-00000675.https://edutice.archives-ouvertes. fr/edutice-00000675. Oyo, B., & Kalema, B. M. (2014). Massive open online courses for Africa by Africa. IRRODL, 15(6). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v15i6.1889. Peraya, D. (1990). Quelques réflexions à propos de l’usage pédagogique de la télévision. Résonances: Mensuel de l’école Valaisanne, (8), 14–16. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige: 18243. Peraya, D. (2017a). Au centre des Mooc, les capsules vidéo: un renouveau de la télévision éducative? Distances et Médiations Des Savoirs. Distance and Mediation of Knowledge, (17). http://archiveouverte.unige.ch/unige:92953. Peraya, D. (2017b). Mooc, capsules vidéo, attributs des médias. Enjeux et perspectives d’un débat. Distances et Médiations Des Savoirs. Distance and Mediation of Knowledge, 2017(20). http:// archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:101056. Union, I. T. (2017). Report, (Measuring the Information Society 2017). ISBN: 978-92-61-24521-4 (Electronic version). Wimpenny, K., Merry, S.K., Tombs, G. & Villar-Onrubia, D. (2016). Opening Up Education in South Mediterranean Countries: A Compendium of Case Studies and Interviews with Experts

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Said Machwate is a Ph.D. student at Cadi Ayyad University. He is conducting research on pedagogical innovation, Instructional design & Blended Learning at TransERIE group of research at Cadi Ayyad University. Rachid Bendaoud is full professor of physics at Cadi Ayyad University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Toulouse University (France) and the International Master in e-Learning from Kurt Bush Institute (Switzerland). He is the Joint-Director of TransERIE (Transdisciplinary Research group on Educative Innovation) and member of Centre for pedagogical innovation. He is working on MOOCs, blended learning, open education, and one of developers of UC@MOOC initiative at Cadi Ayyad University. He works as an instructor for professors-researchers in e-Learning and is also a consultant in educational techniques and teaching methods with university institutions. He coordinated about fifteen projects funded by IRD, OIF, CNRST and currently by AUF. He is also team member of several Erasmus plus projects. Khalid Berrada is professor of physics at Faculty of Sciences Semlalia. He was the founder the Centre for pedagogical innovation and Unesco Chairholder on “Teaching physics by doing”. He was the president of the Moroccan Society of Applied Physics 2006–2011. He has been Chair of international conferences on physics education. He has authored (or co-authored) many research papers and has been member of many national and international conference and meeting committees. Currently, he is coordinating the UC@MOOC project created at Cadi Ayyad University. He is also leading Trans ERIE Group of research on educative innovation at UCA and the Morocco Declaration on Open Education since 2016.

Chapter 12

Immersive Virtual Reality for Learning Experiences Leticia Irene Gomez

Abstract The emergence of immersive virtual reality systems, which offer virtual environments of high interactivity for the user, become attractive to be incorporated into the classroom because they generate motivation in the students and facilitate the tasks that lead to a better representation of spatial knowledge. Virtual worlds are an excellent means of experimental learning, especially to replace real contexts that are impossible to use due to time or space restrictions, or that are unsafe for a student to address. Neuroeducation experts believe that virtual reality technology is promising for its ability to create 3D scenes that allow students to generate vivid and emotional experiences. Keywords Virtual reality · Virtual world · Immersion · Presence · Learning

12.1 Introduction Although the term “virtual reality” began to be used in the late 1980s and most of people think that is a very new technology, its origins date back to 1960, when Philco Corporation created the first head-mounted display (HDM) named “Headsight” which had a screen and tracking system and was linked to a closed-circuit TV. In 1968, Ivan Sutherland implemented The Sword of Damocles, the first virtual reality system, by wearing an HMD on which wireframe graphics were displayed giving to the user the feeling of talking up the same space as virtual objects (Pausch, Proffitt, & Williams, 1997; Robertson, Czerwinski, & van Dantzich, 1997). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) defines virtual reality (VR) as “the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world, in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence”. We discover the world through our senses and perception systems. Our best known main senses are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, but we have many others, such as our delicate balance system, located in the inner ear. L. I. Gomez (B) Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires, Lavarden 315, 1437 Buenos Aires, CP, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_12

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In this way, all our experience of reality is a combination of sensory information with a special processing of our brain. Therefore, if a system stimulates our senses with information that would be perceived as real from our sensory perspective, then we would believe it as real. Thus, virtual reality systems recreate a three-dimensional environment through hardware and software with which a user can explore and interact. The importance of this technology is that it creates the effect of interacting with things, not with pictures of things (Bryson, 1996).

12.2 How to Generate Immersive Virtual Reality? In order to immerse a user in an interactive computer-generated virtual environment (VE), VR systems integrate real-time computer graphics, computer vision, motion capture, all these with processing power (Wiederhold & Rizzo, 2005). The HDMs have a variety of internal sensors to track the user’s position and offer a 3D field of vision for both eyes similar to the visual field of the human eye which spans between 100° and 120° of arc. Among the best-known commercial models, we find Oculus Rift and Vive Pro (with connection to a computer), Playstation VR (proprietary system), Gear VR (designed to insert a smartphone with the application) and Cardboard (the cheaper version of the last one). In Fig. 12.1 we depict different devices for VR systems. The most advanced HMDs are sold accompanied by external sensors or cameras that track the position of the HMD on the user’s face with respect to the surrounding physical room, giving the user the possibility to move freely in the virtual space (Boos, Chu, & Cuervo, 2016). For instance, this set of sensors and cameras receives the name of Constellation for Oculus Rift and Lighthouse in the case of HTC Vive. In

Fig. 12.1 Different devices for VR. On the left, the Oculus Rift and its Constellation; On the right, the Gear VR with a mobile phone in it; In the middle, a Glove controller

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Fig. 12.2 Preliminar setting of a CAVE with only one wall projection and infrared cameras for tracking glove movements

addition, so that the user can actively interact with the environment, control devices are incorporated, such as the Oculus Touch System, the HTC Vive controllers, or more sophisticated devices with sensory feedback, which allow the user to receive the feeling of touch (including cold, heat, cold, roughness), as is the case with Gloveone or PowerClaw gloves. Another alternative is the CAVE system (Cruz-Neira, Sandin, DeFanti, Kenyon, & Hart, 1992), a virtual reality environment created in a room, through the projection of multiple large images onto all walls, ceiling and floor. The user, located inside the room, wears special glasses that give her 3D vision. It also has a sound system through speakers located in different parts of the room, giving the user a very enveloping feeling. The CAVE is a simpler solution although the immersive sensation it offers may not be so complete (Cabral, Morimoto, & Zuffo, 2005). See Fig. 12.2 for details. We must take into account that, the design of specific VEs for education must contemplate many levels, namely the multisensory representation of the information, the multiple interaction methods, the physiologically appropriate virtual contexts and the structure of the content to be explored. Expanding the current limitations in the design of these environments is an important requirement to build complex environments that can be imagined for education (Bricken, 1991).

12.2.1 Immersion and Presence Film criticism usually use the term “Suspension of Disbelief” to define the ability to give into a simulation or to ignore its medium (Cruz-Neira et al., 1992). Colloquially, when a person forgets the real environment by being absorbed or feeling deeply involved by an activity, the term is that he is “immersed” in that activity. In this aspect, Robertson et al. (1997) remark that immersion may be experimented not only with the use of HMDs or a CAVE, since mental and emotional immersion may

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also take place while we are watching a movie or playing video games. In fact, sometimes, immersion occurs by engaging the user in a complex, real-time task, not necessarily with a VR. However, in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) a stronger concept than immersion appears, and is related to the user’s vivid sensation of being part of the virtually recreated environment, that is, to feel strongly “present” in that environment. For this reason, for immersive virtual reality we differentiate between “immersion” and “presence”. Following Slater, Linakis, Usoh, and Kooper (1996), the term “immersion” refers to the objective level of sensory fidelity a VR system provides in order to accurately portray a reality, while the term “presence” refers to the subjective measure of a user experience and it concerns the extent to which the user feels herself to “be there”, i.e. within the reality represented by the VR (Knibbe, Schjerlund, Petraeus, & Hornbæk, 2018). The former depends only on the system’s rendering software and display technology (including all types of sensory displays) and it can be measured without any user input, by focusing on frame rate, resolution, tracking, and so on (Bowman & McMahan, 2007; Knibbe et al., 2018). The latter is context dependant and draws on the individual’s subjective psychological response to VR (Dalgarno & Lee, 2009). The extent of realism that a user experiences depends on several technical aspects of the VR system. A VE should provide fidelity in visual representations (realistic perspective and occlusion, as well as realistic texture and lighting) and consistency of object behaviors, including appropriate responses in real-time as the person explores their surroundings. For example, the delay in system response time with respect to the user’s actions disrupts her/his vivid experience (Dalgarno & Lee, 2009; Slater, Usoh, & Steed, 1995). The subjective nature of the presence aspect makes that different users can experience different levels of presence with the same VR system, and a single user might experience different levels of presence with the same system at different times, depending on the state of mind, recent history, and other factors (Bowman & McMahan, 2007; Slater et al., 1995). Creating an immersive experience with a strong feeling of presence relies on many design elements. Head-tracked camera control provides a stronger sense of “being there,” compare with a desktop display usage. Another element that aids in the support of feeling of presence in an immersive VE is the way in which the interaction and exploration techniques of the surrounding objects are solved (Kelling et al., 2018; Pausch et al., 1997). It is important to note that, presence also has a primary effect on the learning outcome. It increases the enjoyment and intrinsic motivation of students thus improving the perceived learning quality and satisfaction (Oberdörfer, Heidrich, & Latoschik, 2019). In this aspect, full immersion is crucial to any type of learning activity that involves body coordination and manual skills, such as medical training for surgery or learning physical therapy exercises (Patel, Bailenson, Hack-Jung, Diankov, & Bajcsy, 2006). One of the main problems with virtual reality is motion sickness. Some people are affected by this effect after spending half an hour in a VE, while others may spend

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several hours without noticing any negative effects. These problems arise because the information obtained by the eyes disagrees with the information obtained from other sensory systems (what happens to some people on ships). Undoubtedly, this effect eliminates all feelings of immersion and presence. Finally, we want to mention a lack that could prevent users from reaching optimal presence states, the usability of IVR interfaces. The existing usability guidelines are oriented to standard user interfaces with information in a two-dimensional space, but for the 3D virtual reality environment, there are still no standardized definitions that guarantee ease of use, effectiveness and efficiency. Many control devices, designed for user interaction with VE objects, define specific actions using buttons or keys. While this type of interface is unequivocal, having to hold the controls on the hands that are moving through space can cause muscle fatigue, beyond providing an arbitrary method for indicating commands. The glove device allows somewhat more intuitive gestures, although with more impression, and does not solve the problem of fatigue. Undoubtedly, much research is still needed on the subject to be able to define a standard gestural vocabulary for IVR. Ideally, in order to ensure a completely immersive experience, it would be to recognize user gestures through computer vision, without requiring the use of any device (Bryson, 1996; Cabral et al., 2005; Kelling et al., 2018).

12.3 Immersive Virtual Reality and Learning Different attempts have been made to use virtual reality in education since the early 1990s. The research results suggest that IVR, if it is properly designed and used, can provide added value on 2D technologies (desktops, tablets, cell phones) for learning. However, the costs associated with virtual reality equipment represent a limitation for educational institutions, which can reduce the practical impact of the theoretical research obtained (Dalgarno & Lee, 2009). Today, Neuroscience helps us to understand many aspects of the learning process, something that obviously has a direct application in the classroom. Although we still need to understand the complex interactions of learning in virtual worlds to take advantage of this powerful technology, there are several aspects of IVR that are in tune with the recommended practices based on the discoveries of Neuroscience.

12.3.1 Engagement and Emotionality An impressive finding of Neuroscience is that the emotional state strongly conditions the how the brain works. Mood can modulate brain functions by determining the acquisition of new knowledge. According to this, learning is more likely to occur

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with a state of positive emotion since, if we enjoy doing something, we will do it with more interest and better. In this sense, virtual reality offers a degree of motivation in young students that promises effective learning. In addition, we must not neglect that the new generations are born and grow in a digital age and love all kinds of technologies, especially those that provide an environment close to games. When students are engaged in learning experiences of which they valuate as relevant for their expectation, they increase the motivation to learn and produce a more significant result than a grade. In addition, if students interact with welldesigned immersive environments, they will feel deeply involved and spend more time focusing on tasks. Pioneering research in IVR has documented emotional reactions such as enjoyment and sense of play (Harrington, 2011). Reinforcing this, Dede, Salzman and Lofdtin (1996) indicate that the virtual reality experience is more motivating for students than a comparable 2-D virtual world.

12.3.2 Multisensory and Whole Body Experiences Two other important findings of Neuroscience are that learning is obtained with the whole body (the body and the brain learn together) and that multisensory experiences favor learning. This implies that the exercises and movement are closely linked with learning and the experiences that allow us to perceive the world through all our senses allow learning to be much more meaningful. The VR learning environment includes the multiple nature of human intelligence: spatial, kinesthetic, auditory, verbal, logical/mathematical, interpersonal and intrapersonal (Bricken, 1991). The ability to capture the movement of the whole body is a distinctive feature of IVR settings and allows people to use their full range of physical movement to interact with objects and with the avatars of the virtual world (Patel et al., 2006). Additionally, when students interact with virtual reality environments, they use their senses more than in a typical computer application. Punctually, with the high-end VR interfaces, they receive multisensory stimulation, since they can interpret visual, auditory and tactile screens to collect information while using their proprioceptive system to navigate and control objects in the synthetic environment, which deepens learning and memory (Dede et al.,. 1996). In addition, when students use a virtual reality environment, they, have the ability to observe the environment from many perspectives (Bricken, 1991).

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12.3.3 Active Learning and Contextualized Skills It has been scientifically proven that deep knowledge is not achieved by repeating from memory, but by doing and experimenting. Thus, new educational methodologies lead the student towards an active role, making her the center of the learning process. Those things that are experienced are usually remembered for a longer time and with greater clarity than those which are only heard or read, that is, experiencing and acting generates more stable and lasting knowledge over time. IVR is a better educational tool with respect to 2D applications because it offers the opportunity to visualize, explore, create, modify, manipulate and interact with objects in much the same way we do physical objects (Lee, Wong, & Fung, 2009). Due to this characteristic, one of the areas where virtual reality could be most effective is experimental learning, that is, learning that helps students apply their knowledge and conceptual understanding to real-world problems or authentic situations with the professor as a facilitator. IVR systems not only allow users to see in three complete dimensions but also allow her to control how to view the environment by allowing her to change aspects such as the position and orientation of the camera, which is impossible in desktop applications or traditional videos (Patel et al., 2006). It is very important to note that, all theoretical models on acquisition and learning processes recognize the importance of context. Teaching a topic in the context of real-world situations makes the activities to be authentic. In addition, the acquisition of real-life skills may be achieved with greater accuracy if the practices are carried out in the right environment where they will be applied in the future. The advantage of VR is that allows us to contextualize safe learning in environments that present dangerous locations or processes, such as rescue in a fire or manipulation of radioisotopes in a nuclear reactor. Also, it allows to recreate places that are simply very difficult to visit, for example, the Moon, planet Mars, an archaeological excavation or the depths of the ocean (Cliburn, 2004; Dalgarno & Lee, 2009; Getchell, Miller, Nicoll, Sweetman, & Allison, 2010; Kuan & San, 2003). Another interesting benefit offered by IVR is the possibility of breaking the time constraint by allowing students to travel in time and experience the past in first person. For instance, professors can prepare memorable experiences by virtually transporting students to the daily life of ancient Greece or the Stone Age. The disruptive step that virtual reality presents with respect to other computer systems is that, the skills necessary to function within the virtual world are practically the same skills that we need in the physical world (Bricken, 1991). A student can develop experiences in VEs of great realism and thus be better prepared for when such experiences occur in the real world. The more students participate in a real commitment, the better they apply and retain knowledge since they feel a connection with the material of the subject. Based on Neuroscience recommendations, it is important to try to provide students with a positive and safe climate, avoiding stressful situations. Stress, among

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many other consequences, decreases cognitive ability and emotional state. Thus, virtual reality becomes a very powerful tool by offering students the possibility to practice and improve skills without fear of failure, creating confidence in new areas of learning. With all the perspectives mentioned, virtual reality can revolutionize learning not only about how people learn but how they interact with real-world applications based on what they have been taught.

12.3.4 Challenges in IVR Experiences The challenge is to design and build realistic virtual experiences that turn out to be motivating for the student and find variables that allow determining the best devices for each specific task, and even for each individual. Going further, by participating in the development of virtual reality experiences, educators can guide the growth of technology and perhaps influence the course of educational change. Participating in the refinement of this new technology could help to find the right point where it contributes to make teaching more effective and efficient (Bricken, 1991). The role of the professor is fundamental, since she is responsible for aligning the use of VR with learning outcomes and determines the level of skills and knowledge that the students need to succeed in the most independent stages of experimental learning. It is clear that encouraging to incorporate this new technology in class will imply that the professor must be open to take risks. On the other hand, the human being needs communication and interpersonal connections. If the virtual reality experience is surprising for a student but is always isolated, this could damage the relationships between students and general human communication. Consequently, it is very important to balance this type of experiences with other real interpersonal experiences or incorporate the group aspect into the virtual reality environment. For instance, the CAVE system opens interesting possibilities for collaborative work. Sometimes, educators are concerned about the technology that breaks into their classrooms and for which they are not properly trained. Moreover, there is anxiety about the misuse of virtual reality and fear that this technology may produce negative results. As a remedial measure to reduce virtual reality technophobia, Bricken (1991) suggests providing accurate information to separate virtual reality from the fear that science fiction introduces about it, and share experiences and establish a dialogue between developers and the educational community to determine its appropriate use in education. Finally, we highlight a not minor aspect. High-end IVR technologies have a somewhat high cost to be faced by institutions with low budgets. Keep in mind that, although today, a single HMD is not a very expensive equipment, to purchase the number of devices for a whole group of students could be unaffordable. However, with the advancement of basic hardware, a CAVE system can be designed at a more reasonable cost (Cliburn, 2004).

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12.4 Developed IVR Applications for Learning One of the first applications of immersive VR was military training. In these virtual environments the military can train infantry in urban combat tactics by moving them through a virtual city filled with enemy avatars and friendly troops and pilots can train about the terrain they would encounter over some specific geography, among many others missions (Bowman & McMahan, 2007; Cliburn, 2004; Patel et al., 2006). Nowadays, the increasing development of VR technologies has matured enough to expand itself from the military and scientific visualization realm into more multidisciplinary areas, such as education, art and entertainment. Next, we will give a very brief list of the possible uses that are being made nowadays. In Table 12.1 you can consult a non-taxative list of other possible applications. The objective of the rest of this section is to present several virtual reality implementations, some carried out in the classroom and others in research contexts, to highlight the potential of this technology. We show real experiences from different areas, to give a broad overview of the possible use in educational environments and to encourage the reader to generate their own experiences for their classes.

12.4.1 Science and Engineering George Mason University has worked in the ScienceSpace project since 1994 (Dede et al., 1996) and developed a collection of virtual worlds designed to explore the Table 12.1 Possible applications of immersive virtual reality Area

Application of IVR

Science and engineering

Medicine and Health: surgery training, physical rehabilitation treatments, etc. Engineering: training on nuclear power plant tasks, device implementation, equipment design, equipment manipulation and calibration, prototype experimentation, training nuclear power plant tasks, etc. Scientific visualization, wind tunnel virtualization, visualization and control of scanning tunnel microscope, exploration of data from storms and severe tornadoes, architecture, astronaut navigation training, etc.

Social sciences and arts

Archeology: recreation of lost worlds Paleontology: training in fossil manipulation, recreation of prehistoric organic beings History: recreation of historical events, recreation of ancient architecture, etc. Art and Tourism: virtual explorations of sites

Sports

Reflex and action training in complex situations

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potential utility of physical immersion and multisensory perception to improve scientific education. ScienceSpace consists of three worlds with fully immersive and multisensory interfaces, namely NewtonWorld, which provides an environment to investigate kinematics and dynamics, MaxwellWorld, for electrostatic exploration, and PaulingWorld, which allows the study of molecular structures through a variety of representations, including quantum level phenomena. For the lack of space, we detail only the first one. The purpose of MaxwellWorld is for students to explore electrostatic fields and forces, in a personalized way and with multiple perspectives of referential frames, to experimentally discover the concept of electric potential and the nature of the electric flow. The system allows students to change world parameters and observe the effects, and has simultaneous visual, auditory and tactile feedback. In addition, “super powers” were incorporated, which allow flying and seeing through objects. The method used consists of a premise given by the professor and a prediction made by the student about what is going to happen. Then, the student executes the action with the VR environment and compares the result with his/her prediction. Results show that the students in the immersive condition were better at describing the 3D nature of electric fields (Dede et al., 1996). Another example of an immersive environment for the teaching of Physics is the iHABS (Hot Air Balloon Simulation) project of the National University of Singapore (Kuan & San, 2003). Hot air balloons are ideal for demonstrating fundamental scientific principles, such as the Archimedes buoyancy principle and the law of thermodynamics. However, due to the danger involved in offering a student to fly a real hot air balloon, they are not used for teaching. The goal of iHABS is to use IVR technology and the advantages of active learning to create a virtual, attractive and fun hot air balloon environment for students to learn the principles of physics in a constructive way. In iHABS, students can enjoy flying a hot air balloon personally, controlling all parameters to discover how these affect the vertical and horizontal velocity of the balloon. In addition, iHABS also allows students to virtually experience changes in weather conditions as the balloon rises. To complete the VE, each student is represented as an avatar that can be preselected by oneself before the start of the simulation system (Kuan & San, 2003). Taking into account that the study of related transformations in mathematics is a complex, not very intuitive and difficult to visualize topic, at the University of Würzburg, an intuitive IVR application was developed: GEtiT (Oberdörfer et al., 2019). The refined transformations (translation, rotation, scaling and refection) are crucial knowledge for many engineering areas, such as robotics and 3D computer graphics, hence the importance of achieving a deep learning of them. The GEtiT application was designed to achieve effective learning of the subject. It uses game mechanics, with levels of progress that moderate the level of content abstraction and feedback, both on the effects of the applied mathematical operations, as well as their learning progress (Oberdörfer et al., 2019). At the University of the Armed Forces-ESPE of Ecuador, the researchers have developed an IVR application focused on the teaching-learning process in the area of Automotive Engineering (Ortiz et al., 2017). In general, the applications of virtual

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reality in automotive engineering allows to strengthen learning due to the flexibility it offers to develop VEs of design, prototyping, manufacturing and assembly processes. This application allows students to submerge and interact bilaterally in a virtual 3D controlled learning environment, in order to perform the assembly and maintenance of engines, optimizing resources, materials, infrastructure and time. The system makes use of virtual reality devices such as HMDs and haptic input controls that allow the complete interaction of the students with the environment. In addition, the system allows students to select the work environment and the level of difficulty during the teaching-learning process. The results showed that the students who used the IVR application obtained better results at the time of handling the materials when performing the actual practical work with respect to those who used traditional learning (Ortiz et al., 2017).

12.4.2 Social Sciences and Arts As an example of the possible applications in the teaching of History, we detail below the work of The Hellenic World Foundation (FHW), a non-profit institution, based in Greece, whose objective is to preserve and spread the culture Hellenic, through the creative use of multimedia and cutting-edge technology (Gaitatzes, Christopoulos, & Roussou, 2001). Its virtual reality department, established in 1998, uses virtual reality technology to create interactive immersive experiences for research, understanding and dissemination of Hellenic culture. The project includes different applications, such as “Temple of Zeus in Olympia”, “The magical world of the Byzantine costume” and “Olympic ceramic puzzle”. As an example, we detail the first one. In this VR application, visitors not only have the opportunity to admire the splendid temple, but also the famous statue of Zeus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, of which today there’s nothing left. Participants can walk or fly over the precise three-dimensional reconstruction, explore the city and experience habits and customs of life in those days. In addition, by walking through the back of the temple, users can enjoy the battle between the people of Lapithes and the Centaurs (Gaitatzes et al., 2001). Laconia Acropolis Virtual Archeology (LAVA) is a project of the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom) (Getchell et al., 2010) that consists of a cooperative exploratory learning environment for students to participate in the complex excavation practice, because of excavation scenarios are generally inaccessible due to travel, time and cost barriers. Students are at the center of an immersive, interactive and collaborative environment that provides learning scenarios that foster the exploration, application and evaluation of knowledge and reflection on performance. Each excavation is divided into several global levels, where each of them is defined as an activity that is central to the excavation process and must be completed by the team before it is possible to advance to the next level. To add realism to the relationship between resources and the number of findings discovered, there is a certain degree

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of non-determinism to ensure that the findings returned to each team are different, even if the same resources are allocated to each stage of the process of excavation. The results of the evaluation process have been positive, especially due to the high degree of commitment that the students have demonstrated (Getchell et al., 2010). Following the same lines, in the Brown University (Providence, USA), researchers have developed the ARCHAVE application which was implemented with a CAVE (Acevedo, Vote, Laidlaw, & Joukowsky, 2001). The reported use case consisted of the archaeological analysis of the findings of lamps and coins in the current ruins of the Great Temple of Petra in Jordan, with a real-size representation. To do this, the developers built a geometric model of the site and of the trenches used to excavate the site and populated that model with visual representations of the artifacts that had been unearthed. The user interface allowed navigation using models at different scales and of different types. The archaeologists who used the system were able to synthesize findings, test hypotheses and detect anomalies. They reported that ARCHAVE allowed them to understand the findings in situ, explore excavated areas with which they were not previously familiar, and make discoveries that opened new lines of research on excavation. Undoubtedly, the most surprising thing was that a group of expert archaeologists were able to formulate new hypotheses based on the connections they could make and which would have been practically impossible to achieve using traditional analysis methodologies. This supports the belief that access to site data in its 3D context can greatly facilitate archaeological analysis and that IVR is a natural way to provide that context (Acevedo et al., 2001). Beyond the immersive systems that have begun to introduce the museums, to present their collections in a more attractive and exciting way, even allowing visitors to interact with virtual objects (since many times it is not possible to do so with real objects) (Wojciechowski, Walczak, White, & Cellary, 2004), a joint work between the Technological University of Tampere (Finland) and the University of Tampere (Finland), has allowed the development of a new prototype for a cultural and journalistic experience, which uses virtual reality to tell the story of an artist known through his art (Kelling et al., 2018). It combines elements of storytelling and journalism, and “transports” the user to the National Gallery of Finland to discover works by artist Hugo Simberg. At the University of Cadiz (Spain), the “Let’s Get Out!” application was developed (Berns, Mota, Ruiz-Rube, & Dodero, 2018), using virtual reality technology, to create immersive environments in which language students can foster their language skills through real situations. The application recreates a dating agency that gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a real emulated world and interact with an agency employee. Once the students have installed the application on their mobile devices, several 360º video clips are shown that allow students to immerse themselves in a VE that requires them to interact with an appointment agency employee. It was developed using 360° videos and chatbots that respond to the language to practice. A chatbot is a software program that interacts with the users of a system using natural language and simulating a human conversation. The interaction is facilitated by the use of VR headsets that allow students to visualize and interact using voice commands with the virtual world. In terms of learning, the benefits of this virtual

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reality application is not only that students have the opportunity to experience the target language in real-world situations, but also that their actions receive comments in real-time, so that students can review and eventually correct their actions and responses (Berns et al., 2018). Finally, we cannot fail to mention a low-cost resource for VR experiences, which can be useful in the classroom: Google Expedition. This virtual reality tool allows you to lead or join immersive virtual trips around the world. This makes it possible for professors to apply virtual reality trips to places they deem necessary, from geographical landscapes to museums, or whatever they choose. You only need to download the Google Expedition application and use low-cost mobile devices and virtual reality viewers, such as Cardboard.

12.4.3 Sports and Entertainment The Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center has presented a virtual reality wireless system and a prototype full-body Tai Chi training application (Chua et al., 2003). This highly IVR system tracks the entire body in a working volume of 20 m2 of base by 2.3 m in height to produce an animated representation of the user with 42° of freedom. This, combined with a lightweight video receiver and an HMD, provides a broad and untethered VE that allows exploration of new application areas, especially for training for a full-body motor task. The entire system is wireless, which frees the student from the burden of trailing wires. Using this system, an application was generated to mimic traditional Tai Chi instruction, where a virtual teacher is provided directly in front of the student. The student learns by imitating expert movements, similar to real-world Tai Chi instruction. In particular, Tai Chi was chosen because of the slow nature of the movements and the range of movement fit well with the properties of the virtual reality system. In addition, it offers evaluation and comments to the student during the training. Tai Chi is a challenging training application because the sequence of movements, called the “shape” (for example, the crane), is complicated and performance standards are demanding. Because the emphasis is on balance and body shape during slow movements, students can adjust their movement according to teacher comments during the sequence. The conclusion is that virtual reality has great potential to improve physical training, with the ability to record a movement once and then reproduce and practice it unlimitedly, allowing self-guided training and evaluation.

12.5 Discussion and Conclusion The growing development of IVR technologies has matured enough to expand from the field of military training and scientific visualization to a wide range of other areas, including education.

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The results of current research foresee great potential in the use of IVR, if it is properly designed and used. Among the advantages that it presents, we find the possibility of observing events at both atomic and planetary scales, and offer the possibility of interacting with environments that, due to space or time constraints or security factors, would be impossible to access. We know that technology alone does not improve education and it is essential to apply it properly to be effective. While there is still no deep applied research to clarify the relationships between the unique characteristics offered by IVR systems and their possible benefits for learning, we detect several aspects that respond to recommended practices based on the findings of the Neuroscience, namely, achieve motivation and emotionality, carry out multisensory experiences that use the whole body, apply active learning and tend to contextualize the practice for the achievement of skills. In this sense, the challenge for the teaching staff is to design and build realistic virtual experiences that are motivating for the student and effective for learning. Ideally, it would also help to detect the variables that allow determining the best devices for each specific task, and even for each individual. From the technical point of view, in order to make learning totally enjoyable through this technology, improvements are still required in the aspects of humandevice interaction and in the definition of a standard gestural vocabulary for IVR, to guarantee completely immersive experiences, with high degree of presence and without distractions. It is also necessary to improve multi-user applications, in order to use them in collaborative learning environments. Finally, we recognize that the application of this technology still represents high costs, which not all educational institutions can afford. If having an updated and successful education system is a priority for society, the resources to offer financing lines from government organizations and the private sector must be established.

References Acevedo, D., Vote, E., Laidlaw, D. H., & Joukowsky, M. S. (2001). Archaeological data visualization in VR: Analysis of lamp finds at the great temple of Petra, a case study. In T. Ertl, K. I. Joy, & A. Varshney (Eds.), IEEE visualization, VIS’01 (pp. 493–496). California: IEEE Computer Society. Berns, A., Mota, J. M., Ruiz-Rube, I., & Dodero, J. M. (2018). Exploring the potential of a 360° video application for foreign language learning. In F. J. García-Peñalvo (Ed.), International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality, TEEM’18 (pp. 776– 780). Salamanca: ACM. Boos, K., Chu, D., & Cuervo, E. (2016). FlashBack: Immersive virtual reality on mobile devices via rendering memoization. In R. K. Balan, A. Misra, S. Agarwal, & C. Mascolo (Eds.), International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, MobiSys’16 (pp. 291–304). Singapore: ACM. Bowman, D., & McMahan, R. (2007). Virtual reality: How much immersion is enough? EEE Computer, 40(7), 36–43. Bricken, M. (1991). Virtual reality learning environments: Potentials and challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 25(3), 178–184.

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Bryson, S. (1996). Virtual reality in scientific visualization. Communications of the ACM, 39(5), 62–71. Cabral, M., Morimoto, C., & Zuffo, M. (2005). On the usability of gesture interfaces in virtual reality environments. In M. C. C. Baranauskas & O. Mayora-Ibarra (Eds.), Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, CLIHC’05 (pp. 100–108). Mexico: ACM. Cliburn, D. (2004). Virtual reality for small colleges. The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 19(4), 28–38. Chua, P. T., Crivella, R., Daly, B., Ning Hu, Schaaf, R., Ventura, D., … Pausch, R. (2003). Training for physical tasks in virtual environments: Tai Chi. In Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality, IEEEVR’03 (pp. 87–95). California: IEEE Computer Society. Cruz-Neira, C., Sandin, D. J., DeFanti, T. A., Kenyon, R. V., & Hart, J. C. (1992). The CAVE: Audio visual experience automatic virtual environment. Communications of the ACM, 35(6), 64–72. Dalgarno, B., & Lee, M. (2009). What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments? British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 10–32. Dede, C., Salzman, M. C., & Loftin, R. (1996). ScienceSpace: Virtual realities for learning complex and abstract scientific concepts. In Proceedings of the Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium (pp. 246–253). California: IEEE Computer Society. Gaitatzes, A., Christopoulos, D., & Roussou, M. (2001). Reviving the past: cultural heritage meets virtual reality. In D. B. Arnold, A. Chalmers, & D. W. Fellner (Eds.), Virtual Reality, Archeology, and Cultural Heritage, VAST’01 (pp. 103–110). Greece: ACM. Getchell, K., Miller, A., Nicoll, R., Sweetman, R., & Allison, C. (2010). Games methodologies and immersive environments for virtual fieldwork. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 3(4), 281–293. Harrington, M. (2011). Empirical evidence of priming, transfer, reinforcement, and learning in the real and virtual trillium trails. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 4(2), 175–186. Kelling, C., Kauhanen, O., Väätäjä, H., Karhu, J., Turunen, M., & Lindqvist, V. (2018). Implications of audio and narration in the user experience design of virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek Conference, MindTrek’18 (pp. 258–261). Finland: ACM. Knibbe, J., Schjerlund, J., Petraeus, M., & Hornbæk, K. (2018). The Dream is Collapsing. In R. L. Mandryk, M. Hancock, M. Perry, & A. L. Cox (Eds.), Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI’18 (pp. 483–495). Canada: ACM. Kuan, W., & San, C. (2003). Constructivist physics learning in an immersive, multi-user hot air balloon simulation program (iHABS). In A. P. Rockwood (Ed.), Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, SIGGRAPH Educators Program. California: ACM. Lee, E., Wong, K., & Fung, C. (2009). Learning effectiveness in a desktop virtual reality-based learning environment. In S. Kong (Ed.), International Conference on Computers in Education, ICCE´09 (pp. 832–839). Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Society for Computers. in Education. Oberdörfer, S., Heidrich, D., & Latoschik, M. E. (2019). Usability of gamified knowledge learning in VR and desktop-3D. In S. A. Brewster, G. Fitzpatrick, A. L. Cox, & V. Kostakos (Eds.), Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI’19 (pp. 175–188). Glasgow: ACM. Ortiz, J., Sánchez, J., Velasco, P., Sánchez, C., Quevedo, W., … Andaluz, V. (2017). TeachingLearning process through VR applied to automotive engineering. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers, ICETC’17 (pp. 36–40). Barcelona: ACM. Patel, K., Bailenson, J. N., Hack-Jung, S., Diankov, R., & Bajcsy, R. (2006). The effects of fully immersive virtual reality on the learning of physical tasks. In C. Campanella & M. Lombard (Eds.), International Workshop on Presence, PRESENCE 2006 (pp. 129–138). Cleveland: Cleveland State University. Pausch, R., Proffitt, D., & Williams, G. (1997). Quantifying immersion in virtual reality. In G. S. Owen, T. Whitted, & B. Mones-Hattal (Eds.), Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, SIGGRAPH’97 (pp. 13–18). California: ACM.

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Robertson, G., Czerwinski, M., & van Dantzich, M. (1997). Immersion in desktop virtual reality. In G. G. Robertson & C. Schmandt (Eds.), Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST’97 (pp. 11–19). Canadá: ACM. Slater, M., Linakis, V., Usoh, M., & Kooper, R. (1996). Immersion, presence and performance in virtual environments: An experiment with tri-dimensional chess. In M. Green, K. M. Fairchild, & M. Zyda (Eds.), Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST’96 (pp. 163–172). Hong Kong: ACM. Slater, M., Usoh, M., & Steed, A. (1995). Taking steps: The influence of a walking technique on presence in virtual reality. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2(3), 201–219. Wiederhold, B. K., & Rizzo, A. (2005). Virtual reality and applied psychophysiology. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 30(3), 183–185. Wojciechowski, R., Walczak, K., White, M., & Cellary, W. (2004). Building virtual and augmented reality museum exhibitions. In D. P. Brutzman, L. Chittaro & R. Puk (Eds.), International Conference on 3D Web Technology, Web3D’04 (pp. 135–144). California:ACM.

Leticia Irene Gomez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has received a bachelor degree in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires. She obtained her Ph.D. at the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. She is currently Director of the Human-Device Interaction and Usability Center at Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires and also teaches several topics at the same university. She is a board member for the Spanish speaking part of the User Experience Quality Certification Center (UXQCC). Her research interests are in the field of graph databases, OLAP and data mining, and human-device interaction. She has several publications in referred international conferences and journals.

Chapter 13

App Design and Implementation for Learning Human Anatomy Through Virtual and Augmented Reality Santiago González Izard, J. Antonio Juanes Méndez, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, and Cristina Moreno Belloso Abstract The influence on the teaching of Augmented Reality (RA) and Virtual Reality (RV) techniques is analyzed in the process of teaching-learning of the Human Anatomy subject, in health science students. For this purpose, two own applications have been designed, for mobile devices and Virtual Reality glasses, with the purpose of incorporate these techniques in teaching, for the study of human anatomy, that facilitate the students a better learning of anatomical body contents through these technological procedures. In this way it is intended to achieve a better transmission of knowledge to students in an effective, visual, interactive and close the main contents related to human anatomy. We believe that these technological tools constitute an excellent complementary medium to the traditional atlases, facilitating the learning of the anatomical structures. Keywords App · Human anatomy · Virtual and augmented reality · Stereoscopic vision · Teaching S. González Izard (B) University of Salamanca, Ctra Fregeneda 26, Portal 2, 1D, 37008 Salamanca, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] URL: https://www.arsoft-company.com; https://santiagogonzalezizard.wordpress.com/ J. A. Juanes Méndez (B) IUCE Salamanca University Institute of Educational Science, University of Salamanca, Paseo Canalejas, 169, Salamanca 37008, Spain e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://visualmed.usal.es/ F. J. García-Peñalvo (B) Grupo de Investigación en Interacción y eLearning, Facultad de Ciencias, Plaza de los Caídos s/n, 37008 Salamanca, Spain e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://grial.usal.es/fgarcia C. Moreno Belloso Junta Castilla y León, Avenida de Burgos 7-21, Portal 1, Atico B, 37900 Santa Marta de Tormes (Salamanca), Spain e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://cepaginerdelosrios.centros.educa.jcyl.es/ © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_13

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13.1 Introduction The great advance of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is one of the relevant factors for understanding and being able to explain the changes produced at the level of teaching systems in recent years in our current society (Carneiro, Toscano, & Díaz, 2009). The role of these new technologies is present in the processes of social and cultural change, gaining great importance in the field of medical training (Castells, 2004). Within this field, different reforms of the educational system are beginning to be conceived with respect to the introduction of these new technologies as a means of improving the teaching-learning processes of students and teachers in the area of health sciences (Junta de Extremadura, 2001; Litwin, 1998). This incorporation of ICT leads to a transformation both in the way in which teachers develop their academic sessions with their students, and in the learning processes of students (Carneiro, Toscano, & Díaz, 2009; Juanes, 2013). These technologies give us the possibility to develop cognitively, sensorially, etc. (Marquès Graells, 2005), although it should be noted that these advances sometimes diminish the demands of work and effort of the person who uses them, because they allow us to perform certain actions reducing mental and physical work (Moreira, 2004). ICTs do not alter the structures of society by themselves, but are integrated into them (Carneiro, Toscano, & Díaz, 2009). New technologies modify the tasks of the individuals who use them, but they do not change roles (Castells, 2004), therefore, a teacher who uses new technologies in his classroom does not cease to be a teacher, but it is true that the way in which he carries out his tasks with his students is modified, assuming a change in his teaching methodology (Junta de Extremadura, 2001). On the other hand, educational centres must prepare the new generations for their future incorporation into the world of work in which they will move, where the use of devices and technological means will undoubtedly play a leading role in their future professional task (Litwin, 1998; Carneiro, Toscano, & Díaz, 2009). It is evident that the progress that the Communication and Information Technologies have suffered in the last years, has impacted on teaching and raised new requirements in the study plans in general and in the teaching processes in particular (Coll, 2008; Moreira, 2004; Briz Ponce, & Juanes Méndez, 2015; Briz Ponce, Juanes Méndez, & García-Peñalvo, 2015). Taking into account the above-mentioned considerations, and given that the use of technologies in the classroom is a great tool to promote motivation, learning and participation of students, we present two applications, own generation, through two innovative technologies such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality allows teaching professionals to introduce into the classroom the visualization of concepts that would be impossible to visualize in this way with any other technique, such as the visualization of the internal functioning of an atom or place on the student’s table a brain with all its tracts and even animations representing the result of a brain tractography. On the other hand, Virtual Reality allows the teacher to transport students anywhere, such as the inside of a human skull or even a cell, thanks to its full virtual immersion capability (González Izard et al., 2017, 2018;

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Rodríguez Illera 2004; Levis 1997). However, the potential of these technologies for medical application goes far beyond their use in teaching. In fact, the authors of this article are already working on a project that aims to bring these technologies to the work of medical professionals, taking advantage of their capacity for better spatial perception and understanding for the visualization of results in the field of radiology (González Izard et al., 2019).

13.2 Methodology Two different systems have been implemented that share functionality. On the one hand an Augmented Reality system and on the other a Virtual Reality platform. In both cases, the Unity3D tool has been used (Fig. 13.1), which provides programmers with an ideal programming environment for the creation of 3D systems, allowing the integration of both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality libraries. These libraries provide a higher level of abstraction for programming specific Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality functionalities. Unity3D is currently one of the most widely used graphic engines for the design of both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality systems, but also for the design of videogames. This is because it provides an intuitive and powerful interface for programming animated 3D scenarios, using a behavioral programming philosophy that provides an abstraction to programmers while generating systems that run efficiently. In the case of the Augmented Reality system, the Vuforia library was used, which facilitates on the one hand the creation of the markers, which are visual patterns that are recognized in an image that is used as a reference point to show the virtual content, in this case the 3D model of the human body; and on the other hand, Vuforia performs the tracking task, which consists of obtaining in each frame the perspective of the camera with respect to the marker, in

Fig. 13.1 Unity3D interface programming

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order to be able to show the virtual content correctly. This is what allows the user to move around the marker and have the feeling that the virtual content is on the image as if it were a real world object. As for the Virtual Reality system, it has been implemented using Cardboard’s SDK (Software Development Kit), currently called “Google VR”. In this case, thanks to the use of these libraries, when the user moves his head from one side to the other with his glasses on, we can transfer that movement efficiently to the virtual world. So, when you look to the right, the camera turns to the right imitating movement in the real world. This is done by interpreting the data transmitted by a series of sensors that must be available in the mobile device we incorporate in the glasses: the gyroscope and the accelerometer. In addition, the Google VR SDK, as well as the other Virtual Reality SDKs, such as Oculus, allows you to create a stereoscopic view of the virtual world on the mobile screen by incorporating two slightly different perspectives of the virtual world on the device screen. Thanks to these two perspectives and the lenses incorporated by the glasses, we achieve the effect of stereoscopy and the sensation of depth in the virtual images. In terms of content generation, it has been necessary to identify each of the anatomical structures of the 3D model of the human body, separated into a different mesh. Once all the structures have been identified, they have been categorized into large groups so that they can be shown and “hidden” by activating or deactivating a layer of the human body. Therefore, what happens when the user activates a layer is that we show all the meshes of the 3D model that have been identified as anatomical structures that belong to that layer, and on the contrary when the layer is deactivated these meshes and the textures associated with them are hidden. In order to properly enjoy Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality systems, we will need devices with a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and high-powered processing capacity. We must take into account that, in the case of Augmented Reality, the device must recognize in each of the frames that it receives from the camera the image, code or object that must be traced at all times to show the virtual content according to the position of that element. Therefore, for this tracking process to be carried out as efficiently as possible, it is also convenient to have a high-resolution camera (although not necessarily too much). On the other hand, in order to run a Virtual Reality system and get a good user experience, it is also necessary to have a powerful GPU capable of rendering 3D models that must be displayed in a very short time. For the application “Human Layers AR” of Augmented Reality of the human body, a marker has been designed (Fig. 13.2) that, with the help of Vuforia, the mobile device must recognize and then trace. The process that the mobile device follows is to detect the image and, depending on its print size and the distance from the camera, it will position the virtual content with the correct position, rotation and scale according to the perspective and calculated distance of the camera with respect to the marker. The Vuforia SDK detects and tracks the features found in the image, comparing these features with a file that has previously been calculated for that image and

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Fig. 13.2 Marker designed for augmented reality application

contains information about those features. Once the characteristics of that image have been recognized, the SDK will track the image whenever it is in the camera’s field of view. For satisfactory recognition, the image surface must be evenly illuminated, as poor or excessive illumination may cause some features not to be recognized. In Fig. 13.2 we can see the marker that has been created for the Human Layers RA application. This is a good marker for the fact that the Vuforia algorithm is able to find a large number of features in the image, since there are many areas in which we find obvious color changes. For the programming of our technological procedure, dozens of C# scripts have been developed using the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern. This well-known pattern allows the separation of the different scripts into three large groups: Model, View and Controller. In the first one we will place all the scripts in charge of encapsulating the data or the methods of access to them. In this case, we do not work with any database, but nevertheless we have a set of audio files (in the case of the Virtual Reality system) that are considered as data in this case. Even the methods of access to the human body’s own 3D model and its different structures can also be considered part of the model. Speaking of this 3D model, it is worth noting that it is a very complete model that reflects a large number of anatomical structures of the human body. However, these structures, although they were separated into different meshes, were not labeled or correctly named, which has forced us to review all of them (hundreds), identifying which structure was each, naming it and assigning a

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tag. These tags are a method provided by Unity3D to categorize elements or, using its own terminology, Game Objects. In this way the authors have grouped each of them into six large groups: veins, arteries, nerves, bones, organs and muscles. Thus, when the user activates or deactivates the button associated to one of these groups, we only have to tell Unity (we speak of Unity or Unity3D indistinctly) to activate or deactivate all the Game Objects that it finds with the corresponding label. Another large group in which scripts are divided at the software engineering level is Vista. In this case they are scripts that are in charge of showing the interface that the user sees: buttons, lists, dialog boxes… In this case they are interfaces with a low level of complexity, so we have basically scripts that respond to the pressing of certain buttons. These scripts in turn will call the Controller to indicate what event has happened, and it will act consequently. Therefore, all scripts found in the Controller encapsulate what is commonly referred to as the application’s business logic. In this case, the scripts are in charge of activating and deactivating the animations (and defining how each one of them should be), making the 3D model behave as it has to behave and managing its visualization with the corresponding technologies: Vuforia in the case of Augmented Reality and Google VR in the case of the Virtual Reality application.

13.3 Results We designed our own system of Augmented Reality (“Human Layers AR”), and another similar system of Virtual Reality (“Human Layers VR”), with the aim of showing students the main parts of the human body: bones, ligaments, muscles, organs, arteries and veins, nerves, glands, ducts and lymphatic system. Both systems make up two different applications to deal with the contents of the Human Anatomy. The Augmented Reality (RA) application, which has been called “Human Layers AR”, allows users to enjoy a 3D experience in which students, thanks to an Augmented Reality marker that has been designed, can instantly visualize, differentiate and locate different body anatomical structures (Fig. 13.3). In addition, within the application we have a drop-down menu located at the top right of the screen, which allows us to add or remove layers freely (Fig. 13.4). In this way, for example, we can highlight the skeletal system, and in the lower part of the screen a tab is opened with the most important bones of the human body, the selected bone being illuminated in green. In addition, we can increase, reduce and rotate the human body freely in order to visualize the anatomy from different angles, distances and perspectives. On the other hand, the Virtual Reality application called “Human Layers VR” has the same content as the Augmented Reality application, but in this case it will be developed in a virtual environment that we will be able to access using stereoscopic vision glasses. Unlike the other application, Virtual Reality has a main menu with three different scenes. In the scene called “the body in layers”, (Fig. 13.5) the user can go seeing the

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Fig. 13.3 Testing Human Layers AR with students

Fig. 13.4 Augmented reality view

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different layers that compose the human body with a brief explanation of each one of them. In the scene called “Show and hide layers”, we can add or remove layers freely (Fig. 13.6). That is to say, we will be able to value and analyze different organs and corporal apparatuses. Also, we have a scene called “Bones” in which the most important bones are progressively illuminated in green (Fig. 13.7). In addition, we place the user in a classroom so that they feel, in an immersive way, closer to a learning environment. Likewise, as a support to the image and learning of the students, a voice explains what we are seeing during the virtual simulation of the Human Anatomy. At the bottom of the screen, we have a tab called “Back” that will redirect us to the main menu of the application. Both, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality apps, offer the same functionalities, allowing us to compare traditional educational resources with other more innovative technological techniques.

Fig. 13.5 Stereoscopic vision showing human layers with virtual relity

Fig. 13.6 Selecting what anatomical structures must be shown

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Fig. 13.7 User can select different bones that will be highlighted for better understanding

Thanks to these two systems, it is possible to transmit to the students in an effective, visual, interactive and close way the main contents related to human anatomy. This technological tools constitutes an excellent complementary medium to the traditional atlases, facilitating the learning of the anatomical structures. The use of these digital technologies, and more specifically of mobile devices associated with immersive vision systems, constitute a fundamental piece in the development of educational programs and strategies in the field of health sciences in general, and human anatomy in particular, these media being innovative and integrating learning. These technological methods prove to be very effective in enabling students to manage their learning process in a way that is complementary to traditional resources.

13.4 Discussion and Conclusion A Virtual Reality (VR) system is an immersive digital space capable of involving all our senses (Escartín, 2000). The resemblance to the real world of a virtual simulation is given by: the resolution of the image, the resemblance of objects and their properties to the real world, the ability of objects to interact naturally when manipulated by the user, and the ability to move (Basogain, Olabe, Espinosa, Rouèche, & Olabe, 2010; Corvetto et al., 2013; de Pedro, 2011; Espinosa, 2015; Torres, 2011; Tovar, Bohórquez, & Puello, 2014). Also, according to Mejía Luna (2012) “it is an evolving technology, the current definitions of it must be considered transitory […] it covers areas such as: computer simulation, three-dimensional environment, graphics,

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sounds and touch; with which the user can interact, which makes it a very large and promising area”. On the other hand, Augmented Reality (AR) is the one that allows us to see reality at all times, while we visualize virtual objects that somehow increase the reality that we are able to perceive naturally (de Pedro Carracedo & Méndez, 2012; Torres, 2011). It has also meant a revolution for education, as it allows us to combine the real world with the virtual so that we can generate a more complete learning space due mainly to the interaction with the information provided by the 3D environment (Orozco, Esteban, & Trefftz, 2006). It should also be borne in mind that it allows us to introduce elements into the classroom that would be impossible to see in any other way (Espinosa, 2015). In addition, it is a motivating component for students, since they are a generation that is closely linked to information and communication technologies (Carrillo, Fernández, Ayensa, & Bernal, 2003). Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality allow us to introduce virtual objects in real spaces, develop simple interfaces, know and explore new places without the need to move, feel, see and hear experiencing immersive environments, even being able to modify them, and interact freely (Carrillo et al., 2003; Duart, Sangrá, & Sangrà, 2004). In addition, it is a motivating learning for the students, which moves away from the traditional, is very entertaining and achieves the primary purpose, which is to educate (Tiffin & Rajasingham, 1997). In this context of educational playful pedagogy, the Anglo-Saxon term “Edutainment” appears, that is, learning by playing together. This teaching-learning model tries to introduce innovative resources into the classroom as a resource for teachers with the aim of learning through video games in social networks and emerging technologies and including them in the students’ educational process. As tools intended for entertainment, these must be reviewed from the pedagogy, they must be subject to evaluation according to the purpose and they must bring new perspectives to teachers (Allen & Demchak, 2011; Parra, Muller, & Guevara, 2009). Therefore, given that these technologies are very effective in fields such as medicine, architecture, industry, robotics, military and aerospace applications, culture, leisure, etc., it seems obvious that we should consider applying them in the educational field. This will promote the achievement of the set learning objectives and make the training process more bearable and motivating. Likewise, VR and RA are two technologies that are currently in constant growth and evolution due to the possibilities they offer and the continuous advancement of both hardware and software, so this is a subject of great relevance (Basogain et al., 2010; Espinosa, 2015; Torres, 2011). We cannot leave training in any area of health sciences, regardless of the possibilities offered by the new virtual spaces. We must remain at the vanguard of these new technologies now more than ever because of their infinite possibilities. We must place technology at the point where it really needs to be in the educational field, as it is now the most effective means of ensuring proper communication, interaction and learning (Escartín, 2000; Briz-Ponce, Juanes-Méndez, & García-Peñalvo, 2015). Education cannot be apart from the potential that new spaces of virtual relationship bring. Faced with rapid technological change, now more than ever, education must

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manifest itself clearly and place technology where it belongs: that of an effective means of ensuring communication, interaction, information and also learning. Allen and Demchak (2011) states that these 3D virtual environments can be used for the following purposes: virtual presence of institutions, educational processes, training, activity planning, testing, experience analysis, experimentation, testing and evaluation, and awareness-raising activities. Through Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality we can modify the traditional routine teaching for a more attractive and dynamic digital teaching, where students learn in a more participative or active way, thus promoting a teaching-learning experience based on motivation, with the aim of promoting the desire to learn in an experiential way in which students can interact freely with the parts of the human body. In addition, with this VR resource we will be promoting learning with great benefits for students, which is a flexible resource and the development of positive attitudes in the users who practice it. Through this VR methodology, students will better understand the contents of the subject matter to be studied, also increasing their desire to learn significantly, capturing their attention to a large extent during the development of the different sessions in the classroom. There are several Human Anatomy Apps that could be compared to our application. The application called “Anatomyou VR” allows you to learn in an immersive way the human anatomy thanks to Virtual Reality, so we will need some Virtual Reality glasses to be able to use it. Likewise, in Anatomyou VR you can navigate through the interior of the human body as if it were a virtual endoscope. In addition, it has a navigation control and dynamic signaling of the main anatomical structures present inside our body. This application classifies the different parts of the human anatomy in a series of categories and subcategories in order to organize them in a differentiated way. During the virtual tour through the interior of the human body, descriptions of the area we are visiting appear, providing an additional photo for a better understanding of the anatomical content, being able to move forward or backward freely during the tour and showing us in the part of the body in which we are at that moment if we look to our left. This is a quite real application that represents very well the internal anatomical content of the human body, being one of the most complete applications of Anatomy within the field of Virtual Reality and giving us the possibility of changing the language (Spanish/English). The application “Anatomy VR” is completely free and is intended for teachers and university students, for the study of anatomical contents. By means of this novel learning method based on Virtual Reality, it is possible to learn in a more representative way the human anatomy, thanks to a 360º vision in which the muscles and bones that make up the human body are shown. In addition, within the navigation panel we can rotate the virtual body to visualize and access all areas of the human anatomy. The users of this app will be able to point their Virtual Reality glasses to any part of the body and know their names and where they are located. It is a dynamic and pragmatic way of learning anatomy, which better captures the attention and interest of students in the contents and greatly encourage motivation. It is, therefore, a very intuitive application and easy to use for all audiences. In addition, the application is available for IOS (Apple Store) and Android (Play Store).

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Another application for free mobile devices is the so-called “Humanoid 4D+”, which is designed to provide colorful and interactive representations of the various systems and their functioning of the human anatomy. However, this app is more aimed at primary school students. With this visual and representative app, you can not only learn about all the main organs and bones of your body, but it will also help you discover the different actions and movements of your body. In addition, it has a 3D library in which we can interact and observe all the details of these organs. Regarding the Augmented Reality (AR) section, using cards containing AR markers, we can interact with the body system, explore the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, muscular, skeletal, nervous, urinary, endocrine and immune systems, showing us the different parts of these by arrows with their corresponding names. It is very easy to use, because no training is needed for its use, because it is a very intuitive app. Also, by selecting a specific body system and touching the screen, you can see step-by-step and deeper how the particular body system works. In addition, it has a Virtual Reality section in which we can perform the same actions as in RA, but we will need Virtual Reality glasses for this, where we can select with the viewer the different parts and areas of the human anatomy. The default language is English and in order to have full access to all functions of the application with their corresponding cards, additional payments will be required. Application available for IOS (Apple Store) and Android (Play Store). Another free Augmented Reality (AR) application is the so-called “4D Anatomy”, intended for teachers, professionals, physicians and students of all levels in an interactive 4D experience of human anatomy. It provides a large amount of content with which to learn about the human body through a series of printable templates, in this case the “The Human Body” template, having a higher level of complexity than the applications previously seen. Likewise, we can make visible or not different systems of the human anatomy, being able to combine these as we see convenient. In addition, this application is entirely in English, so it does not give the possibility of accessing other languages limiting the learning and use of this application in certain geographical areas. This application is only available for Android (Play Store). Another application in this same line is “Human AR”, which consists of an educational app of Augmented Reality (RA) on basic aspects of anatomy seen in 3D. This application is mainly aimed at biology students, students interested in knowing the human body and professionals in a set of five topics such as: bones, muscles, internal organs, main body systems and brain structure. It is in Spanish, but not in other languages, and gives us concise explanations about each of the body parts we have selected. In addition, we can separate each of the body systems into layers, rotate it, enlarge it, select both genders (male and female), etc. and all this from the main panel. This application is only available for Android (Play Store). The use of both mobile devices and Virtual Reality glasses, through stereoscopic vision, and specific anatomy software, facilitates an approach to the internal body anatomy in a way closer to reality, which leads to a better understanding of the morphological structures of the human body.

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These technological tools, with their proper use and appropriate precautions, can undoubtedly contribute to an improvement in medical training processes. The use of these technological means of stereoscopic vision in medical training facilitates and helps to improve training in practical skills and the acquisition of anatomical knowledge. Acknowledgments The authors would like to specifically thank the members of the company specialized in virtual and augmented reality systems ARSOFT, located in the Science Park of the University of Salamanca.

References Allen, P. D. Y., & Demchak, C. C. (2011). Applied virtual environments: Applications of virtual environments to government, military and businessorganizations. Journal of Virtual WorldsResearch, 4(1). Basogain, X., Olabe, M., Espinosa, K., Rouèche, C., & Olabe, J. C. (2010). Realidad Aumentada en la Educación: Una tecnología emergente. España: Bilbao. Briz Ponce, L., & Juanes Méndez, J. A. (2015). Mobile devices and apps, characteristics, and current potential on learning. Journal of Information Technology Research (JITR), 8(4), 26–37. Briz Ponce, L., Juanes Méndez, J. A., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2015). Dispositivos móviles y apps: Características y uso actual en educación médica. Novática. Revista de la Asociación de Técnicos en Informática, 231, 86–91. Briz-Ponce, L., Juanes-Méndez, J. A., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2015). Synopsis of discussion session on defining a new quality protocol for medical apps. Proceedings TEEM’15 (pp. 7–12). New York: Publication rights licensed to Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), ACM, 978-1-4503-3442-6. Carneiro, R., Toscano, J. C., & Díaz, T. (2009). Los desafíos de las TIC para el cambio educativo. Carrillo, L. B., Fernández, F. F., Ayensa, F. G., & Bernal, F. V. (2003). Docencia virtual de anatomía patológica. Patología. Actualizaciones en Telepatología, 36(2), 139–148. Castells, M. (2004). La era de la información: Economía, sociedad y cultura (Vol. 3). Siglo XXI. Coll, C. (Ed.). (2008). Psicología de la educación virtual: Aprender y enseñar con las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, Ediciones Morata. Corvetto, M., Bravo, M. P., Montaña, R., Utili, F., Escudero, E., Boza, C., … & Dagnino, J. (2013). Simulación en educación médica: Una sinopsis. Revista Médica de Chile, 141(1), 70–79. De Pedro Carracedo, J., & Méndez, C. L. M. (2012). Realidad Aumentada: Una alternativa Metodológica en la Educación Primaria Nicaragüense. IEEE-RITA, 7(2), 102–108. De Pedro, J. (2011). Realidad Aumentada: Un nuevo paradigma en la educación superior. In Actas del Congreso Iberoamericano Educación y Sociedad (pp. 300–307), Universidad La Serena (Chile). Duart, J. M., Sangrá, A., & Sangrà, A. (2004). Aprender en la virtualidad. Ciencia, Docencia y Tecnología, 28, 263–266. Escartín, E. R. (2000). La realidad virtual, una tecnología educativa a nuestro alcance. Píxel-Bit. Revista de Medios y Educación, 15, 5–21. Espinosa, C. P. (2015). Realidad aumentada y educación: análisis de experiencias prácticas. PixelBit. Revista de Medios y Educación, 46, 187–203. González Izard, S., Juanes Méndez, J. A., Ruisoto Palomera, P., et al. (2019). Applications of virtual and augmented reality in biomedical imaging. Journal of Medical Systems, 43, 102. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10916-019-1239-z.

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González Izard, S., Juanes Méndez, J. A., & Palomera, P. R. (2017). Virtual reality educational tool for human anatomy. Journal of Medical System, 41, 76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-0170723-6. González Izard, S., Juanes, J. A., García Peñalvo, F. J., et al. (2018). Virtual reality as an educational and training tool for medicine. Journal of Medical System, 42, 50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916018-0900-2. Juanes, J. A. (2013). Using Smartphones as tools for teaching innovation and training support. 2ª Ed. JID. Universidad de Salamanca (pp. 111–116). ISBN: 10-84-695-8722-6. Junta de Extremadura, J. (2001). Sociedad de la Información y Educación. Levis, D. (1997). Realidad virtual y educación. http://www.diegolevis.com.ar/secciones/Articulos/ master_eduvirtual.pdf. Litwin, E. (1998). Tecnología educativa. Paidc”s. Marquès Graells, P. (2005). La integración de las TIC en la escuela: las claves del éxito. Primeras Noticias: Comunicación y Pedagogía, 204, 37–45. Mejía Luna, J. N. (2012). Realidad Virtual, Estado del arte y análisis crítico (Master’s thesis, Universidad de Granada/2012). Moreira, M. A. (2004). Los medios y las tecnologías en la educación. Pirámide Ediciones S.A. Orozco, C, Esteban, P., & Trefftz, H. (2006) Collaborative and distributed augmented reality in teaching multi-variate calculus. In WBE’06 Proceedings of the 5th IASTED International Conference on Webbased Education. USA: ACTA Press Anaheim, CA. Parra, A. I. R., Muller, E. Á., & Guevara, Ó. (2009). La simulación clínica y el aprendizaje virtual. Tecnologías complementarias para la educación médica. Revista de la Facultad de Medicina, 57(1). Rodríguez Illera, J. L. (2004). El aprendizaje virtual. Enseñar y aprender en la era digital. ISBN: 9789508084040. Tiffin, J., & Rajasingham, L. (1997). En busca de la clase virtual: la educación en la sociedad de la información (Vol. 43). Grupo Planeta (GBS). Torres, D. R. (2011). Realidad Aumentada, educación y museos. Revista ICONO14 Revista científica de Comunicación y Tecnologías Emergentes, 9(2), 212–226. Tovar, L. C., Bohórquez, J. A., & Puello, P. (2014). Propuesta metodológica para la construcción de objetos virtuales de aprendizaje basados en realidad aumentada. Formación universitaria, 7(2), 11–20.

Santiago González Izard studied Computer Engineering diploma, Computer Engineering degree, Master in E-Commerce and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Salamanca, where he has attended all of his studies. In 2013 he founded the company ARSOFT, specialized in the design of advanced software for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, with offices in Salamanca and Madrid and national and international awards for the level of innovation and quality of the products designed with these two technologies. Santiago has led development teams for different projects where the principal core has always been one of these technologies, including projects where artificial vision (Computer Vision) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have great relevance. Currently Santiago combines his doctoral program with his position in ARSOFT as CEO y CTO, collaborating with the University of Salamanca in different projects. He is one of the biggest experts in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, with a special focus in its applications in projects related with medicine and industry 4.0. J. Antonio Juanes Méndez is a permanent lecturer at the University of Salamanca, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Medicine and Surgery, and a Software Technician by the Pontificia University of Salamanca. He is professor of Human Anatomy and teaches at the Medicine, Psychology and Pharmacy Faculties. He coordinates the official research group Advanced Medical Visualization Systems, at the University of Salamanca; and collaborated with the research group: Grup

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d’Anatomia Virtual i de Simulació, del Centre de Recursos per a l’Aprenentatge i la Investigació, at the University of Barcelona. He has participated as director and collaborator in more than 50 funded research and innovation projects. He has been awarded with 14 research and teaching awards from Royal Medicine Academies and other national institutions. He is a co-author of 19 books of teaching kind. He has collaborated in different projects involving diverse medical and university centers of Spain and published more than 200 articles in international and national academic journals. Francisco José García-Peñalvo received his bachelor’s degree in computing from the University of Valladolid (Spain), and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Salamanca, where he is currently the Head of the Research Group in Interaction and e-Learning (GRIAL). His main research interests focus on eLearning, computers and education and digital ecosystems. He is the Editor in Chief of the Education in the Knowledge Society journal and the Journal of Information Technology Research. He coordinates the Doctoral Program in Education in the Knowledge Society. Cristina Moreno Belloso got a bachelor’s degree in Education (Early Childhood Education and Primary Education) and bachelor’s degree in Educational Psycology, with more than eight years of experience as a school teacher and more than five years preparing other teachers to pass their public examination. Cristina is now investigating new technological tools to be applied as teaching tools in schools.

Chapter 14

A Framework for a Semiautomatic Competence Valuation Aída Lopez, Silvia Alicia Gómez, Débora Martín, and Daniel Burgos

Abstract This paper’s aim is to show a method to semi-automatically evaluate the competence level reached by students through their university training. The Bolonia Plan’s evaluation has led to a review of university teaching programs, with the aim to set the terms for “learning outcomes” and competence development. Thus, competences become learning achievements that influence the students’ knowhow, their goals, the teachers’ role, and the evaluation and development tasks. This new conception is leading us to design programs for students in order to achieve competences and the need to evaluate them (European Commission in The Bologna process and the European higher education area, 2015). Given the fact that you cannot achieve competence out of the blue, it involves knowledge, and it is necessary to break it down into domain levels, as defined by the education institutional and the stablished deadline. This model is firstly based on competences and identifying indicators to prove them. Subsequently, we make a template for the study and level plans and for the competence indicators so we can assess their development. Finally, the subject program’s design must include evaluation and instruments to achieve this goal. The template will allow the professor to achieve competences belonging to his/her subject, and it will be globally tested. At the final stage and given that competence levels are broken down into the full plan subjects, we are searching for a global view so that we can certify the competence scope.

A. Lopez (B) · D. Burgos Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] D. Burgos e-mail: [email protected] S. A. Gómez Independent Consultant in Education, Vidal 2470 3B, C1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] D. Martín Pedagogía para el éxito, Guadalajara, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_14

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Keywords Competences · Evaluating · Indicators · Criteria · Skill achievement levels · Quality

14.1 Introduction Competence learning spreads over all education levels, including the university level. However, competence is currently a confusing term. Today, we are working with an idea of the education system that includes the education environment. On the one hand, we can point out that attitudes are natural gifts for each person. They can be involved in skill development, but they are necessary for skill management. On the other hand, skills are a person’s powers to perform certain tasks. They can either be natural gifts or be developed through education. Per the above, skills represent the mastery of learning. Competences are the outcome of performing a learning process. They are a combination of knowledge, knowhow, knowing how to behave and knowing who you are. Frequently, competence study results are wrong, when what you mean is to evaluate knowledge. As per Ossandón and Castillo (2006), competence comes from moving from knowledge to action. Competence is the performance of activities within a given context. Per Tardif (2006), we can say that competence is a “complex savoir faire supported by efficient combination within some internal resources”. Alles (2010) supplements this definition: “Competences are the knowledge, the skills and the general motivations that comprise the previous requirements for the efficient action in different contexts graduates meet, so as they have the same meaning in all contexts.” In brief, we agree that “competence is the well doing in different contexts based on the knowledge, techniques, procedures, skills and mastering attitudes and values” (Pérez, 2011). Since the 1990s, the education competence model has been settled as a frame for planning the direction of learning and for evaluating different points of view. As per the Centro de Investigación en Formación y Evaluación (Tobón, Pimienta Prieto, & García Fraile, 2010), there are four competence learning approaches: functional, behavioural, constructive, and civic education. These approaches arose in different times and different contexts. The 80s’ behavioural focus emphasizes organization as a clue while the function focus, one of the top trends today, is based on the outwards learning and evaluation of activities and tasks. There are other views, such us competence build-up, which focus on labour, its dynamics and relationships, and the civic education system complex, emphasising competence education as a human being’s whole education as part of the ethical project of everyone’s life within education and socioeconomic, political, cultural, and artistic skills (Tobón et al., 2010). Thus, competences are interactions

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between activities and contexts, including “knowhow”, “knowledge”, and “knowing how to behave “and “knowing who you are”. Knowledge comes from knowing processes. Knowhow refers to practices based on processes involving technical and procedural skills. Knowing how to behave looks at the emotional and attitudinal processes. This trilogy is a high-quality framework for learning critical, reflecting, analytical, and creative skills. They enable us to face everyday situations. Therefore, within the university’s scope, the professors must cover the development of skills (transversal), and the students must perform within the labour and professional context (specific). This means turning the traditional model, organising programs based on matters transmitted by teachers to receptive students, and where the aim is the final mark, into a model of competences, where programs are classified by difficult situations and the teacher’s role is to facilitate students’ active and constructive learning, where there is a holistic evaluation on the basis of evidence. Within a competence learning model, the process’s main point is not that the students learn contents but that they develop competences to get by in life. This is a challenge for professors, who must change the traditional teaching paradigm about contents in order to focus learning and training processes on competences (Tobón et al., 2010). We find here a competence classification within the university—basic competences, general competences and specific competences—defined as follows: • Basic competences are those necessary to live and to get by in society and are usually linked to issues relating to living with others, communication, and information processing. • Generic competences are those common to several professions, such as resource management, teamwork, information management, problem solving, or planning. • Specific competences are those of a certain profession. We can find within them those compulsory, unavoidable skills needed in order to get a qualification. However, the Spanish university system, in the Agencia Nacional de Acreditación (ANECA) guide for the design of memories and approval of university degrees, classifies competences by their specification level: • Transversal competences for all the students at the same university regardless of their degree. • Basic or general competences for most of the degrees but adjusted to each specific context. The study features will determine the depth of their development. There might be personal competences, interpersonal competences, etc. Specific competences for a certain scope or degree and aimed at achieving a specific graduate profile. They must be limited to educational aspects and skills related to the degree, and they are usually maintained throughout the degree. In Spain, basic competences provided by Annex I, Sect. 13.2 of Royal Decree 861/2010 of July 8 will be guaranteed for the degree and by Sect. 13.3 for the master’s degree amending Royal Decree 1393/2007 of October 29 and those provided by the Marco Español de Cualificaciones para la Educación Superior (MECES).

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14.2 Competence Assessment As per the above, you do not acquire a competence instantly. Rather, it comes through a gradual, complex, and time-consuming process during which the professor’s guiding role becomes critical. Furthermore, those in charge of training must reflect on the development level that must be achieved for each of the competences at the end of the training process so that future professionals can practise autonomously, reflexively, and ethically. It is a complex and time-consuming process (Fernández, 2011). This involves correctly drafting the competence in order to propose situations enabling its development and evaluation of the acquisition level. According to Tobón (2008), the principles for drafting competences are the following: 1. Competences are determined based on current or future social, professional, and discipline problems. 2. Problems are considered challenges, which in turn are the grounds for training. 3. Each competence is described as a development in terms of “what for”. 4. Each competence provides criteria in order to guide both training and evaluation, as well as certification. 5. Criteria aim to address the competences’ different knowhow. This creates a challenge when evaluating. The acquired knowledge is not the main core anymore, so the competence development level is determined through a holistic evaluation. Competences must be broken down in order to understand them, but mainly to evaluate them. The breakdown outcome is a set of desired learning outcomes, which are foreseen and can at least be partly achieved, that is, specific goals (Tourón, 2017). This challenge means that although learning by competences is critical for education, evaluation methods are still an issue. Ruiz (2011) noted that training by competences turns evaluation into a learning experience and improves the students’ learning, actions, and feelings. The above evaluation model must be based on the recollection and analysis of the set of evidence supporting the competence’s development. Evaluation is the core of the training process, enabling learning quality to be judged. Thus, evaluation activities can in turn be training activities and must be in line with learning outcomes far from current university practice (Fernández, 2011). Thus, developing an instruction design that aligns competences, learning results, and teaching techniques is crucial for the development of evaluation criteria. Often, the teacher gets a list of high standard competences that students must have to pass the course. However, it is not easy to evaluate said competences. The main problem is that without a device that feasibly guarantees a certain level of competence, the simple fact of checking the course contents or an eventual activity can be taken for granted. Without a precise measuring device, the skills achievement level can be subjectively biased by the teacher, making the global competence evaluation process less reliable.

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Therefore, developing evaluation devices for each competence and defining development indicators are crucial. The latter describe learning outcomes and guide the choice of evaluation means to evidence the achieved competence, resulting in the professor´s agreement on judgment and consistency, who must understand the mark categories and the execution levels. Meanwhile, Fernández (2011) noted that indicators are usually qualifying, and therefore, in order to ensure the evaluation’s quality, it will be necessary to find teaching criteria that enable a valid and reliable evaluation. So, it is necessary to use evaluation devices to help interpret each student’s competence progress. Since competence evaluation is so complex, it is necessary to ground learning evaluation on criteria about the ability to combine the resource trilogy (knowhow, knowledge, and knowing how to behave) in order to solve difficult situations. These criteria must be developed on the basis of the student’s development of holistic understanding. Otherwise, an activity can be broken down too far, and the global view can be lost (Fernández, 2011). Jaques Tardif has addressed the need to define a general framework for competence evaluation that prioritizes development trails and competence evaluation with a video, not photographic, focus. He considered each competence as complex knowhow gradually integrated along the training period with a combination of external and internal resources (Tardif, 2006). In this sense, a judgement of progress must be made in competence evaluation, bearing in mind the used and combined resources, using different interpretation criteria and considering the individual differences among students.

14.3 Related Work Regardless of the focus, there are two features inherent to competence: system and sequence. The former refers to a global conception, as it is used independently. The latter requires progressive development through progressive complexity throughout the stages of life (López, 2011). Furthermore, based on task complexity, the student often uses a parallel set of competences. Although there are some proposals for competence global evaluation at primary and secondary education levels, for the university level, whether a degree or a postdegree, we have not found formal publications but only found some experiences linked to the proposal of this method. Firstly, a work by Martínez Martínez (2013) is an approach to Tardif’s concept of the career path when developing a competence. The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya performed this study between 2011 and 2012, in the subjects Project 1 and Project 2 of the engineering degree. The purpose was for the students to fully acquire the project’s general competences, efficient communication (both written and spoken), teamwork, and self-learning at the first and second competence levels. A common evaluation system was used for the project, with evidence collected and evaluation criteria based on rubrics using the web tool EvalCOMIX.

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At the end of the project, both each group member and the coordinator were asked for a self-evaluation in order to check their contribution to the teamwork and self-learning competences, which resulted in 20% of individuals being evaluated. The Universidad de Alicante (Reverte et al., 2007) performed another study on a competence system, the aim of which was to connect, put in context, and integrate the contents included or overlapping in different disciplines. A team of IT engineering professors dealt with the different subjects in the production of a videogame. The system was grounded on project-based learning to develop a videogame through four subjects: Computer-Supported Manufacturing Models, Reasoning, Advanced Graphics and Animation, and Games and Virtual Reality. Coordination between subjects was accomplished by each of them contributing something to the global project and getting something from the others. There were no lectures, and professors had a guiding role. There were no tests but measurements of the students’ progress and contribution to the project. Each team was in charge of planning and setting intermediate milestones and deadlines. Each group had an initial budget to approach the real business context, which was the maximum mark for the project, and he/she was to distribute it among the settled milestones. Care and Griffin’s (2014) work describes the process of going from defining a set of competences to the evaluation of the same. The evidence-building process includes several stages—drafting task ideas, having panels with professors, task monitoring, and testing them with students so that their thinking processes could be collected, coded, marked, and interpreted. Care and Griffin (2014) explained that evaluation tasks must provide evidence for the development of progress. In this case, interest-building was a general competence. Measurement must be done in a different context than the tasks. Therefore, they developed tasks that included skills in different content areas and in variable areas based on the amount of knowledge required. An individual’s ability to perform his or her skills with different contents and contexts showed the extent to which he or she could generalize those skills. Throughout the process, the focus was validated through in-person validation exercises with professors and students, and through statistical analysis of coded information. In the future, Care and Griffin (2014) proposed designing templates or models in order to simplify the measurement development process and to achieve more efficient evaluations. Finally, as an integral model with a social and educational focus on competence, Tobón et al. (2010) described how the Instituto CIFE developed the GesFOC model (Systematic Management of Training by Competences), whose goal is that the curriculum leads to daily practices that foster integral training and contribute to solving daily life problems, as well as family, community, and societal problems. The model enables planning, execution, evaluation, and management of the curriculum’s quality in any academic program and at all training levels. It is focused on 10 academic processes, including registration and initial evaluation, intermediate training (training model, teaching practices, and academic management policies), the exit, evaluating competences, and graduate follow-up. Each academic process as regards competence required orientation (criteria), planning, action (execution),

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and evaluation. This guarantees the students that the training, means, and resources offered, as well as the professor and management mediation, continuously improve. Although the submitted works include features of careers focused on competence development, we cannot find a full model for an institutional integral follow-up.

14.4 Proposed Methodology According to Tardif, we are submitting a framework enabling semiautomatic competence evaluation at the university level, although the model could also be applied to other areas. In this sense, we must think about the development of each student in every chosen competence for the training stage, whether it is basic, general, or specific, as a progress follow-up through the passed subjects. Each competence is broken down into domain or development levels, such that the first level is the first step when developing competence and the last level refers to the maximum expertise level that can be achieved within the institutional training framework on the basis of the degree’s duration. It also requires a clear drafting dealing with a knowledge action and dimension specific to the university project. In some cases, this dimension will be factual, and in others it will be conceptual, procedural, or even metacognitive, to work with different cognition processes (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Should these domain levels not be previously settled, we might find situations difficult to understand. For example, let us think about a study plan where the same competence C has been appointed for evaluation in two related subjects, M1 and M2, and each chair has received the same high-level competence statement. Then think about a situation where course M1 shows that a student has successfully developed the competence, and a year later, course M2 shows otherwise. In view of the above, the issue would be whether there was a basis for setting competence development, or if learning by competences is so weak that when students get to the next level, they realize they forgot level M1 achievements. Most likely, each course has evaluated different development aspects of said competence, because the appropriate criteria have not been previously stablished. Based on Tobón et al. (2010) proposed training, we will start by defining the components of the competences: • Establishing the competences and their core procedure Indicator or criteria building. • Evidence planning. Establishing the competence must be done through a performance verb for seeking a goal. It is useful to break it down into a core procedure (CP) representing the competence performance and its structure as a systematic process. These will enable organizing the different competence criteria. Although for Tobón they are optional,

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they are compulsory in our methodology, as they judge the evaluation of the target process. As developing a competence requires certain in-depth knowledge, a certain selfperformance level, and a certain efficiency level in different and complex contexts (Pérez, 2011), during training, it is essential to break down competence into domain levels (DL). These levels must show the gradual domain progress for each CP. Indicators (I) or criteria are the evaluation rules that must be followed when assessing the competence and which must cover the competence aspects, i.e., knowing how to be, knowhow, and knowing how to learn. In our model, we have called them attitude, skill, and knowledge indicators, reflecting the trilogy of “being”. In fact, balance in this trilogy has been considered so as not to make the mistake of only evaluating knowledge, as abovementioned. We can point out that we must be careful at this stage, as attitudes and skills may be more general than knowledge and appear transversally and not always linked to the latter. Evidence (E) is precise and tangible proof of competence that is necessary to evaluate the criteria. They include knowing the action to be performed and the procedures to carry it out, doing activities, or developing products. In order to plan evidence, it is useful to establish the evaluation means and devices for said evaluation. As an example, Fig. 14.1 shows a table with the DL indicators for three identified CPs for the competence “efficient performance within teamwork”.

Fig. 14.1 Example of CP and indicators by level for a competence

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In our proposal, we think that Tobon’s approach to competence must be completed with Fernández’s (2011) view, proposing three stages to approach a competence development evaluation as a result of learning. The former should establish a model of the development of each of the competences included in a program. The second seeks to identify development levels and their features, and the third must establish the main training in each of the levels, from the beginner level to the expert or top level. This last stage must start by stating the competence and its breakdown into its different components, which may be conceptual, procedural, and skill related.

14.4.1 Steps of the Methodology According to the above, the proposed methodology involves the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Identifying and establishing the relevant competences. Competence breakdown into a competency core Identifying domain levels for each CP with their indicators. Designing competence levels’ macro-template (MT). Description of evaluation means and devices to be used for each given indicator related to the different competences 6. Designing the semiautomatic follow-up central board (CB) 7. Central board follow-up to evaluate competence development per student. For step 1, identifying competences during the training stage, Tobón et al. (2010) advised to first set the specific competences and then the basic and general (transversal) ones. For step 2, each competence must be broken down into CPs, defining the main aspects to be approached through the career path. Then, for step 3, the domain levels showing the development of each CP must be identified, together with the relevant indicators’ definitions necessary to measure evidence. These level indicators must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and limited in time (SMART). Every level must include the previous ones to ensure that the achievement involves an advance in the development of the competence core. We can point out that not all CPs needs have the same number of levels, as these must be adjusted to the complexity of each competence. Using the competence “efficiently performing in work teams” as an example to show the first three steps’ outcomes, level 1 will show respect to teammates and commitment to the appointed tasks, while advanced levels must work on leadership and team management. For step 4 (designing competence levels template), a template must be designed crossing the study plan subjects with the competence levels and indicators identified above. This template, the so-called macro-template (MT), must show the scale of competences over the whole training.

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The MT must clearly establish the study plan subjects affecting the efficient evaluation of each domain level for the relevant competences. Generally speaking, every compulsory specific competence core for a certain profession that is necessary to get the qualification can be reduced to a few subjects (maybe just one) in which competences will be developed. On the other hand, basic and general competences will tend to be distributed along different subjects in the degree. There may even be a competence core shared among many of them. Figure 14.2 shows a possible definition of specific and general competences with their corresponding competences and indicators, and Fig. 14.3 shows a conceptual scheme of the macro-template for these competences. In general, beginner levels are applied during the first semesters, while during the last semesters, there is progress toward more complex levels in competence development. It is crucial that the MT be built by people with a global view of the degree, as these levels’ distribution should not only consequently show the gradual progress of each competence’s acquisition but also show the features of every plan subject. However, this does not mean you do not work together with the professors involved in the learning process, as correct teamwork will lead to better results. On the other

Fig. 14.2 Scheme of definition of specific and general competences with their corresponding competences and indicators

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Fig. 14.3 Conceptual scheme of the macro-template for the competences of Fig. 14.2

hand, it is also plausible that the same subject does not approach an excessive amount of competence indicators (whether basic or general) in order to ensure that the student has enough time to develop the relevant task aspects and the professor can reasonably handle the evaluation of the indicators. Once the MT is consolidated, each chair professor must work in the instruction design of the subject, which should include the evaluation means and devices to be used for each relevant indicator. For that purpose, evidence and tools for competence evaluation must be designed. This finishes step 5 (describing evaluation means and devices to be used for each given indicator). Following Hamodi, López Pastor, and López Pastor’s (2015) unified term proposal, we agree that evaluation means are each and every one of the students’ productions (written, spoken or practical) that professors may collect, see, and/or hear that show what the students have learnt along a process. In turn, evaluation devices are the tools that both professors and students use to show in an organized way the information obtained by means of a certain evaluation technique. This information must be systematically and precisely registered in order to ensure that the evaluation process is accurate. It is desirable to use different means to get evidence from the indicators. We find report drafting (whether as an individual or as a group), diagram display, cooperative learning, and project performance, among others. Each of them must properly define the initial measurements’ indicators.

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Fig. 14.4 Central board scheme

Control listings and rubrics are very useful to clarify the expected criteria of measurement tools for the relevant means. On the other hand, self-evaluation and evaluation in pairs are related instruments that can empower students to reflect on their own work quality (Biggs & Tang, 2007). In step 6 (central board design), a table crossing all the competences with the student list will be produced. This table, called the central board (CB) will be affected by the partial results reported by the professors of each subject, and semiautomatic follow-up of students’ achievements will be centralized as they pass the subjects. A conceptual scheme of the central board can be seen in Fig. 14.4. It is crucial for this methodology that every subject’s professor be trained to correctly evaluate the students. Working in the MT and performing all the relevant steps would be useless if the professors considered the subjects as passed only by checking the students’ content knowledge or the development of some basic skill. As regards evaluation, it is necessary for this model to differentiate between the evaluation seeking to quantify learning at a given time and the evaluation seeking to document a whole career path (Tardif, 2006), making the difference between training and continuous evaluation, and adding or final. Training evaluation (also known as continuous evaluation) must go with the model of learning by competence. In it, professors make a systematic and continuous followup of their students’ progress, and results are used for feedback during learning. Training feedback is a tool considered as a relevant variable in Hattie’s (2012) metaanalysis and acknowledged by neuroscience using mistake detection as a basis for correction. In order to apply it, students must feel comfortable taking part, even if they make mistakes, and admit their mistakes for correction. Self-evaluation and evaluation by pairs are useful tools for this purpose. Adding evaluation is done once the teaching episodes are finished. The purpose is to evaluate how much the student has achieved, and it is generally used to mark at the end of a term. That is because it identifies the achievement of the competences defined at the beginning of the training program in order to assess the degree of domain reached by a student, whether at the end of a subject or the end of the degree. For this purpose, activities must be planned in which students prove their performance of achieved competences.

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The difference between adding and training reminds us that continuous evaluation is difficult when used for both adding and training purposes. However, when the student is aware of the immediate purpose, the same task may act as a training activity or as an evaluation task when making an adding evaluation. As Biggs and Tang (2007, p. 164) said, “When the chef tries the sauce is training evaluation; when the customer does it, it is adding evaluation.” Given that each competence domain level has been broken down along the subjects, the final integration stage seeks to ensure that students have reached the expected competence development level. In this sense, we may think that if one or more levels of a certain competence C are never reached by a student throughout the learned subjects, at the integration stage to determine competence development, this competence C will not be identified as duly developed yet. But given that each student’s personal features may lead to determining the domain level over certain competences, the question is how to construe partial results reported by each chair and how to determine the achieved development in a final integration stage. It is here where our proposal makes a difference between compulsory specific competences and basic or general competences. Compulsory specific competences, necessary for the degree, will be deemed to be achieved when a student reaches total development of their top levels, while for general competences, influenced by each individual’s personality and learned in multiple subjects, the purpose will be to identify the highest level reached at the integration stage. As an example, a student with speech problems will hardly achieve the relevant top level for the competence “effective communication” within the competence core “speech expression”, although he/she can achieve top potential in “written expression”. This leads us to propose that, for our model: • A specific competence (SC) is deemed to be developed when the top level is reached in each of its competence cores. • A basic or general competence (GC) is deemed to be developed if any development level has been achieved in each of its competence cores, the top level not being required. In this context, in order to pass a subject, the student must have achieved all levels in specific competence cores relevant to that subject. On the basis of the above, and to produce the automatic impact in the CB, we propose in our model that at the end of a subject dealt with, the professor states for each student, together with the course marks (relating to the indicators of specific competence levels, depending on the achievement), an independent nominal evaluation (e.g., “achieved” or “not achieved yet”) of the stated non-specific competence levels for the subject in the MT, or of the subject’s contribution to these competences’ global development.

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It is important that professors apply training evaluation and that the final adding evaluation show that indicators have been reached. If marks only show the extent of acquired knowledge, the whole model will be biased, and competence follow-up will be meaningless. Thus, it is important to check indicators and base level marks on them. The student’s competence acquisition process is dynamic and complex. In our model, we understand that it is possible for a student who did not pass a certain level of a competence core, within a general competence at a given time, may in later semesters achieve the maturity to directly pass higher levels of it. Provided that in the initial design, each level of a certain competence core involves what is relevant in the previous level, there will be no problems with this. Finally, at step 7 (competence development evaluation), and in terms of the CB dynamic evolution, the levels achieved by each pupil over time may be checked. The CB’s proper follow-up in top-level monitoring (not by each chair professor) shows students’ progress or lack thereof. It would be ideal to focus on Tardif’s competence evaluation proposal and not to issue a valuation at the end of the path, but to follow up on the competence development progress with optional mechanisms to acquire the competences. Having a centralized follow-up, a distinctive item could be badge delivery, where the student would get achievements that showed his/her progress and would motivate him/her. These acknowledgements could be gradual and integrated as each competence core´s intermediate levels were achieved, to end up with a bigger badge when achieving the top level. However, not only is it possible to tell when a student reaches a top competence level, in order to award it, but it is also possible and very relevant to detect indicators on which a student has frequent failures so as to think about personal help in these matters. It is up to the institution to monitor this board in order to simply detect when students are achieving competence levels, or to carry out deeper centralized followup tasks. One of them could be detecting incomplete levels of a given competence and devising improving actions leading to the students’ further development. We can mention that when talking about “CB monitoring”, we do not refer to a permanent watcher, but to providing automatic alarms warning of the desired aspects. But why are we talking about semiautomatic evaluation? Because, although following up on the CB can automatically detect when a certain student manages to achieve each competence level, the institution may want to establish a certain integrating evaluation. In fact, and notwithstanding quality, this action could be carried out through some integrating project subject within the degree’s term, which may even be evaluated by a jury.

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14.5 Integral Example In this section, we will detail an example of the implementation of the methodology presented, based on two specific competences and two general competences for the degree in computer engineering, which would constitute a subset of all the competences that should be identified in Step 1. According to steps 2 and 3 of the model, the four competences were broken down into competence core, and for each CP, domain levels were identified. Also, indicators were chosen for evidence in assessment. The result of these steps can be seen schematically in Fig. 14.2. It should be noted that this task is very particular to the group of teachers working at this stage. After the identification of levels and indicators, Step 4 is completed with the generation of the MT, distributing the indicators among the relevant subjects. A schematic fragment of the MT obtained is shown in Fig. 14.3. For the MT defined in our example, when a student passes subject S1, he/she will have completely reached Level 1 of competence C1. Similarly, by passing course S2, he/she will have reached Level 2, thus ensuring that C1 competence was achieved at its higher level of development. According to the list of subjects that each indicator impacts, we would work with all their professors to carry out the instructional design, completing the means of evaluation and instruments chosen for the evaluation (Step 5). Finally, the CB of step 6 is constructed using the student list (as shown in Fig. 14.4). Next, we will detail a possible evolution of the CB over time, for a particular student A1. Let us assume that during the first semester of 2018, A1 studies the subjects S1, S2, and S3. At the end of the semester, S1’s professor reports a final mark of 7 (1 being the worst and 10 being the best) (and nothing else, as in MT, there are no general competence indicators for each subject), S2’s reports a mark of 2 and an “achieved” for the relevant GC level 1 (CP 1 of competence C3 indicators), and S3’s reports a mark of 9 and a “not achieved” for the relevant GC level 1 (CP 1 of competence C4 indicators). Table 14.1 shows the automatic update of the CB. Now, let us assume that during the second semester of 2018, student A1 studies subject S2 again and S4 for the first time. At the end of the semester, S2’s professor reports a mark of 6 and an “achieved” for the relevant GC level 1 (competence C3, CP 1 indicators), and S4’s professor reports an 8 and “achieved” for the relevant GC level 1 (competence C3, CP 2 indicators). Table 14.2 shows the new state of the CB at this moment. At this stage, if so desired, student A1 could already receive a badge for having reached competence C1’s top level. Then, let us assume that during the first semester of 2019, student A1 studies subjects S5 and S6. At the end of the semester, both subjects are passed, and general competence levels are reported as “achieved”. Table 14.3 shows the automatic update of the CB. Likewise, student A1 could receive a new badge for competence C2.

C1 E1

N3

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A2

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2018-Q1

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N1

C1 E2

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C2 E3

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N1

C3 E1

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C3 E2

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C3 E3

Table 14.1 CB snapshot with the levels reached by each student in the competences core at the end of T1 2018

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2018-Q2

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C2 E1

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C2 E2

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C2 E3

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C3 E1

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N1

C3 E2

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Table 14.2 CB snapshot with the levels reached by each student in the competence core at the end of Q2 2018

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2019-Q1

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C2 E3

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Table 14.3 CB snapshot with the levels reached by each student in the competence core at the end of Q1 of 2019

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Finally, let us imagine that student A1 presents in the CB the integration shown in Table 14.4. In this case, student A1 has managed to develop competence C4 to its full potential, while he/she has managed to achieve competence C1 up to intermediate level 2. The relevant authorities are in charge of performing a global evaluation in order to determine whether level 2 is really the top level he/she could achieve in general competence C3, or if he/she has managed to advance further after being evaluated in said competence levels. Maybe this competence was distributed among subjects that were not taken in the last semester, but that the student kept improving the development of said aspect before graduating. It could also happen that the institution decides to offer extracurricular activities to improve the development levels of students not achieving top levels during the terms. This is why we show this model as semiautomatic. This final example shows the significance of the macro-template design, as having basic competence levels in the end-of-degree subjects or having them distributed across levels (advanced levels in initial subjects and basic ones in final masters), would go against the natural growth in competence issues.

14.6 Discussion and Conclusion Although competence learning is widespread among all educational levels, including the university level, its correct evaluation is still a developing issue. Since competence is not achieved instantaneously, it is essential to break it down into levels of domain or development, which are defined in the institutional training framework and in an established timeframe. His model is initially based on the correct formulation of competences with their procedural core and the identification of indicators and evidence for each of them. This breakdown into indicators ensures that each teacher can focus on evaluating only the scope of the indicators of the levels assigned to his/her subject, understanding that their evaluation is part of a global context. The correct definition of the levels, so that each one involves the previous ones, and the adequate balance of distribution of indicators between the subjects of a curriculum, will be the basis for being able to monitor the progress that a student makes through the different subjects. This model, which can be fully automated or maintained in a semiautomatic state with specific interventions in the cases that deserve it, allows for a personalized follow-up of the level of competence reached by students throughout their university educations.

C1 E1

N3

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A1

A2

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YYYY

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N3

C1 E2

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N3

C2 E1

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N2

C2 E2

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N2

C2 E3

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N2

C3 E1

Table 14.4 CB snapshot with the levels reached by student a while obtaining his/her degree

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References Alles, M. A. (2010). Desempeño por competencias: Evaluación de 360°. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Granica. Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. (2001). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. A. W. Longman, (Ed.). New York: Longman. Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2007). Teaching for quality learning at University (3rd ed.). USA, New York: Society for Research into Higher Education. McGraw-Hill Education. Care, E., & Griffin, P. (2014). An approach to assessment of collaborative problem solving. Special Issue: Assessment in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 9, 367–388. European Commission. (2015). The Bologna process and the European higher education area. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/higher-education/bologna-process-andeuropean-higher-education-area_en. Fernández, A. (2011). La evaluación orientada al aprendizaje en un modelo de formación por competencias en la educación universitaria. Revista de Docencia Universitaria, 8(1), 11–34. Hamodi, C., López Pastor, V., & López Pastor, A. (2015). Técnicas e Instrumentos de evaluación formativa y compartida del aprendizaje en educación superior. Perfiles Educativos, 37(147), 146–161. Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. The Main Idea, 2, 8–12. López Ruiz, J. I. (2011). Un Giro Copernicano en la enseñanza Universitaria: Formación por Competencias. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, España. Revista de Educación, 356, 279–301. Martínez Martínez, M. A. (2013). Una propuesta de evaluación de competencias genéricas en grados de ingeniería. REDU, Revista de Docencia Universitaria, 11, 113–139. Ossandón, Y., & Castillo, P. (2006). Propuesta para el diseño de objetos de aprendizaje. Revista Facultad de Ingeniería—Universidad de Tarapacá (pp. 36–48). Arica, Chile: Universidad de Tarapacá. Reverte, J., et al. (2007). El aprendizaje basado en proyectos como modelo docente. Experiencia interdisciplinar y herramientas groupware. XIII Jornadas de Enseñanza Universitaria de la Informática, JENUI’07, Teruel, Julio 2007. ISBN 978-84-9732-620-9. Pérez, H. S. (2011). Seminario taller sobre planificación y diseño de la docencia desde el enfoque competencial. Granada: Universidad de Granada. Ruíz, J. I. (2011). Un giro copernicano en la enseñanza universitaria: Formación por competencias. Revista de Educación, 356, 279–301. Tardif, J. (2006). L’évaluation des compétences: Documenter le parcours de développement. Montreal: Chenelière Éducation. Tobón, S. (2008). La formación basada en competencias en la educación superior: El enfoque complejo. Guadalajara, México: Grupo Cife. Tobón, S., Pimienta Prieto, J., & García Fraile, J. (2010). Secuencias didácticas: Aprendizaje y evaluación de competencias. (G. C. Veyra, Ed.). México: Pearson Education. Tourón, J. (2017, July 3). ¿Por qué el talento que no se cultiva, se pierde? Retrieved from: https://diariodeunafuturamaestrablog.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/el-talentoque-no-se-cultiva-se-pierde-touron-j/ a (Unir, Editor).

Aída Lopez Senior researcher in several projects at the Vice-Rectorate for Transfer and Technology of the International University of La Rioja, UNIR. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology “Research methodology in Sociology, Communication and Culture”, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her lines of research are: social integration, immigration, youth, women, as well

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as designs and evaluation of policies, plans and projects, digital competences and, competence frameworks. Silvia Alicia Gómez Ph.D., is an Independent Consultant in Education with focus in active learning methods and skill evaluation strategies. She is a former Head of Innovation in Education Department and she was Head of Computer Department at Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA). Dr. Gomez received a Bachelor’s in Mathematics Teaching (High Honors) and Physics Teaching (High Honors) from Instituto Superior Roque Saenz Peña. She received a Bachelor’s of Computer Science degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She got her Ph.D. from Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires. Her thesis studied spatio-temporal databases. She taught programming and databases courses to college students, Big Data courses to graduate students, and imparted methodology workshops for university professors. Her training allows her to incorporate data analytics techniques to address education issues. Débora Martín received a Ph.D. degree in education “The versatile educational organization and the development of competences from the Complutense University of Madrid. Also, her master’s degree was in innovation and educational research. Phorensic Psychology and Crimonology. Dr. Martin R is a senior researcher in several projects about active learning methods and skills. She is also co-founder of Pedagogia para el Exito, a consultancy company for educational organizations and teachers as well to assist them to use active methodologies and competency assessment in their teaching-learning process. Daniel Burgos Daniel Burgos works as Vice-rector for International Research (UNIR Research, http://research.unir.net), at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, http://www.unir.net). In addition, he holds the UNESCO Chair on eLearning ( http://research.unir.net/unesco), and the ICDE Chair on Open Educational Resources (http://www.icde.org). He also leads the Research Institute on Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED, http://ited.unir.net). He holds degrees in Communication (PhD), Computer Science (Dr. Ing), Education (Ph.D.), Anthropology (Ph.D.), Business Administration (DBA), and holds a postgraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Chapter 15

Quality Research Through Peer Assessment Mmabaledi Seeletso and Moeketsi Letseka

Abstract The chapter explores the notions of quality and/or quality assurance in scholarship through peer assessment or peer review. It takes peer assessment or peer review as critical components of quality control in scholarly publishing. While there is tacit knowledge that philosophically ‘quality’ is a notoriously elusive and valueladen term, there is a consensus that quality presupposes other related notions such as exceptionality, perfection or consistency, ‘fitness-for-purpose’ or ‘value-for-money’. In scholarship peer assessment or peer review is regarded as a dependable anchor for assuring, supporting and maintaining the quality and integrity of the research that gets published. Thus the chapter’s stance is that the peer review or peer-assessment process is critical scholastic pillar in that it acts as a quality control mechanism that ensures that the validity, reliability, veracity and integrity of published research are maintained and assured. Keywords Peer assessment · Peer review · Quality · Quality assurance · Review guidelines

15.1 Introduction In this chapter we explore matters of quality control and quality assurance in research in open distance learning (ODL) through peer review. We underscore the importance of vigorous peer assessment processes in research, and how such processes might contribute to the improved quality of research in ODL. We want to state from the outset that in this chapter we shall use peer assessment interchangeably with scholarly peer review. Different scholarly journals rely on different approaches for assessing and or reviewing the research submitted to be considered for publication, whether is ‘blind peer review’, ‘double blind peer review’, or through the editor’s discretion. However, most scholarly journals have one thing in common, namely, the scholarly impact of the research (Moed & Halevi, 2015). M. Seeletso (B) · M. Letseka UNESCO Chair on Open Distance (ODL), University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 D. Burgos (ed.), Radical Solutions and eLearning, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4952-6_15

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The following research questions were used as guidelines for this chapter: • What are the purposes and objectives of peer assessment of research publications? • What quality assurance criteria are used in peer assessment of research manuscripts? This chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section we define the key concepts used in the chapter, namely, peer assessment or peer review, as well as quality and quality assurance. We undertake to clarify the way we understand them, and use them in the chapter. It is our view that in scholarly publishing peer assessment and or peer review are taken to encompass three major practices for vetting the veracity of research, namely, ‘blind peer review’, ‘double blind peer review’, and editorial discretion, in instances where the journal’s editor (s) make decisions on which manuscripts are publishable, based on the journal’s established traditions and clearly defied criteria for publication. In the second section we draw on the literature to briefly outline of the aims and purposes of peer assessment or peer review of a scholarly manuscripts. We shall argue that centrally, the aim and purpose of peer assessment or peer review is to maintain the integrity of scholarship by ensuring that the quality of the manuscripts that are submitted to be considered for publication is improved before the manuscripts are published. In the third section we tease out some of the pertinent issues to ensuring the quality of research papers submitted to be considered for publication. These include the professional and scholarly presentation of manuscripts, among others, a lucidly written abstract that provides an unambiguous roadmap of the manuscript; relevance and originality of the research material, as well as clarity in description of the research methodology and discussion of the research findings. The chapter shall be informed by the lived experiences of the two authors. The first author is an emerging scholar who has been involved in review of abstracts and conference papers. While the second author is not only Editor-in-Chief of a premier education scholarly journal who also serves in editorial boards of numerous scholarly journal, but is also a highly published scholar and leader in ODL in South Africa. In the fourth and final section we offer some concluding remarks. We now turn to the definition of key concepts.

15.1.1 Defining the Key Concepts • Peer assessment or peer review There is no single all-encompassing or one-size-fits-all definition of peer assessment or peer review. That said, scholars like Ward, Graber, and Mars (2015, p. 701) contend that peer assessment “remains the essential mechanism for ensuring the quality of published research and advancing knowledge in a particular field.” By the same token, the international Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) views peerreview as critical assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals. Kelly, Sadeghieh, and Adeli (2014, p. 227) regard peer review as “… a process of subjecting an author’s

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scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field.” Furthermore, Allen (2013, p. 916) corroborates these views by contending that peer-review involves “assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals by experts who are not part of the editorial staff.” It is for this reason that most journal editors have made peer review a critical part of validating papers submitted in their journals before they can be published. Kelly et al. (2014) have credited peer review for encouraging “authors to meet the accepted high standards of their discipline and to control the dissemination of research data to ensure that unwarranted claims, unacceptable interpretations or personal views are not published without prior expert review.” The same authors further point out that peer review “acts as a filter to ensure that only high quality research is published, especially in reputable journals, by addressing the validity, significance and originality of the study,” (Kelly et al 2014, p. 228) and “intended to improve the quality of manuscripts that are deemed suitable for publication.” Peer reviewers provide suggestions to authors on how to improve the quality of their manuscripts, and also identify any errors that need correcting before publishing.” In essence, peer assessment/review is viewed as an activity that supports and maintains integrity of research and scholarship. The next section will consider different views on how peer assessment/review remains an important aspect of quality control in developing research articles. The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF) (2017, p. 1) is clear the peer review: Is an essential part of the publishing process for scholarly publishers …to meet the objective of advancing and disseminating scholarship and cutting-edge research. It is a managed process in which the selection and review-commissioning of a small number of independently working peers (persons who have achieved a level of distinction and/or special expertise at least equal to that of the author(s) of the work) is carried out by an experienced, scholarly and independent ‘editor’ in such a way that a decision on publication, appropriate revision or refusal can fairly be made.

In the same vein, Taylor and Francis (2015, p. 11) not only recognises that peer review allows research to be evaluated and commented upon by independent experts who work within the same academic field. Instead, it goes further to demarcate multiple levels at which rigorous peer review can be undertaken. Theses level include (a) single-blind peer review, (b) double-blind peer review, (c) open review, and (d) post-publication review: • Single-blind: where the reviewer’s name is hidden from the author. • Double-blind: where the identity of the reviewers and the authors are hidden from each other. • Open review: where no identities are concealed, and • Post-publication review: where the reviewers’ comments can be made by readers and reviewers after the article has been published. Taylor and Francis (2015, p. 11) conveys the assurance that peer review is of importance to scholarly publishing in that it helps to alert authors to any errors or

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gaps in literature they might have overlooked; it helps to make the work more applicable to the journal’s readership; it creates discussion between the author, reviewers, and editor around a research field or topic, and affords the authors the opportunity to receive detailed and constructive feedback on their work from experts in their respective fields. • Quality and quality assurance Worldwide there a deafening chorus about the notion of quality in the multifaceted ways in which it is conceived. It is no coincidence that phrases like ‘quality service’, ‘quality education’, ‘quality programs’, ‘quality tuition’, ‘quality environment’, ‘quality qualifications’, ‘quality faculty’, ‘quality research’, seem to convey a whole array of imagined or real perceptions of the notion of quality. However, at a conceptual level, where common understandings might be established there is really no consensus or common understanding of what quality actually consists in. In the 1980s, frustrated by this seeming conundrum around the notion of ‘quality, British researcher and policy advisor Sir Christopher Ball (1985) asked what has remained the most pertinent question to date: “What the hell is quality?” In a subsequent publication Ball (1990, p. 327) would argue a case for the re-interpretation of “goals of quality and excellence, not in the old selective and exclusive way, but as the value added by the process and experience of higher education to achieve fitness for purpose”. He argued that “if quality and excellence are still seen as the exclusive characteristics of the ‘best’ people then higher education will continue to pursue its high objectives by means of exclusion and rejection—which will make expansion difficult, if not impossible” (Ball, 1990, p. 328). In her book titled, What is Quality in Higher Education, Diana Green (1994, pp. 12–13) argues “like ‘freedom’ or ‘justice’, quality is an elusive concept”. For Harvey and Green (1993, p. 11) quality “is notoriously elusive of prescription, and no easier even to describe and discuss than deliver in practice”. They argue that quality is a value-laden term that is subjectively associated with that which is good and worthwhile (Harvey & Green, 1993, p. 3). Notwithstanding these conceptual contestations, it is Harvey and Green’s (1993, p. 11) contention that “quality can be viewed as exceptional, as perfection (or consistency), as fitness for purpose, as value for money and as transformative”. While we support the view of quality as “fitness for purpose”, we acutely aware that such a conception of quality might not shed light on philosophically contested concerns such as “whose fitness is at issue here?”, and “how quality might be assessed?” (Aluko, Letseka, & Pitsoe, 2016). In the next section we draw on the literature to outline the purposes and aims of peer assessment or peer review of research manuscripts that are submitted to be considered for publication.

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15.2 Literature Insights on the Purposes and Aims of Peer Assessment/Peer Review Tarkang and Bain (2019, p. 2) posit that “peer-review aims to improve the quality of the manuscript before publication and to check against plagiarism and unethical considerations.” They further confirm that “the main functions of the peer-review process are to help maintain standards and ensure that the reporting of research work is as empirical and accurate as possible,” (Tarkang & Bain 2019, p. 2). Peer-assessment is usually conducted by “peers of the authors … normally of equal standing with another” (Allen, 2013, p. 917). The assessors are expected to understand the authors’ standpoint and to demonstrate expertise in the field (Kelly, Sadeghieh, & Adeli, 2014). Tarkang and Bain (2019, p. 2) observe that “scholarly publications remain the vehicles for disseminating research findings, with research publication in peerreviewed journals being at the peak of dissemination.” As such, it is imperative that journals are peer assessed or reviewed to disseminate information of repute. These days some software and other artificial intelligence techniques are used to detect plagiarism. However, little is known about what peer assessors use, nor the criteria they use to assess research manuscripts. Criteria for manuscript review have not been well disseminated (DeMaria, 2003; Sizo, Lino, Reis, & Rocha, 2019). This gap leaves room for assessors to present different opinions even when assessing the same article. Peer-review remains critical in scholarly publication processes as the quality control mechanism to ensure that only high quality manuscripts are sent out for publishing. DeMaria (2003, p. 1314) contends that during the assessment of an article, assessors need to establish whether the article conforms to particular journal’s standard and guidelines. He opines that reviewers need to establish if the article is original, relevant and accurate. DeMaria (2003) further assets that reviewers need to indicate to the authors references and citations from literature to support statements they made during the assessment exercise. It is his contention that authors need to comply with the stated submission guidelines by including references and citations in their research works. Inclusion of such references and citations goes a long way in assisting reviewers to assess the originality of manuscripts and to ascertain that they are not merely expressions of untested views and opinions. Papers that are published in scientific journals “answer meaningful research questions and draw accurate conclusions based on professionally executed experimentation” Kelly et al. (2014, p. 227). Tarkang and Bain (2019) contend that the peer review or peer-assessment process is essential because it acts as a quality control mechanism to ensure that valid and reliable research is published. Thus peer review or peer-assessment remains a critical quality assurance and quality control exercise that calls for excellence in execution. As such, reviewers need to be conversant with the guidelines for journals for which they are reviewing manuscript. This is of critical importance for compliance (Allen, 2013; Kelly et al., 2014; Van Rooyen, Black, & Godlee 1999).

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DeMaria (2003, p. 1314) posits that the function to review manuscripts is regarded as a contribution to the academic pool and as reciprocation for having someone else undertake to review one’s own articles. Some scholars emphasize two types of peerassessment of journal articles (Allen, 2003; Kelly et al., 2014). These are single-blind and double-blind peer-assessment. In single-review assessment the identity of the reviewer is concealed, and as such remains unknown to authors while the identity of the author is known. Information from available literature is that the single-blind assessor is most likely to provide the honest feedback as he or she makes independent decisions without any pressure. In the double-blind review identities for both the author and reviewer are concealed. This type of review has been upheld for reducing reviewer bias as they do not know whose work they are reviewing. The journal editor, on the advice and recommendations of reviewers decides on whether to accept a manuscript for publication, with or without revisions - which can either be minor or major, or to out-rightly rejection of the manuscript (Allen, 2003; Kelly et al., 2014; Ward et al., 2015). Peer assessors need to guide journal editors on the status of the article regarding publication. Tarkang and Bain (2019, p. 2) suggest that good review “fills gaps, improves the manuscript and stretches the authors. It consists of constructive criticism and occasionally praises,” The same authors further observed that peer-review process helps refine and improve the quality of the published article by addressing the thoughtful comments raised by reviewers and editors.

15.3 Pertinent Issues to Ensuring the Quality of Research Papers A manuscript that is submitted to be considered for publication is expected to be well written. It should be grounded on good command and flow of the journal’s preferred language(s) of submission. Therefore for such a manuscript to be considered suitable for assessment it should be professionally presented. It should indicate that the author(s) have read and understood the journal’s submission guidelines, and that they complied with the publishing house’s formal style and text formatting protocols. The manuscript should not have mundane or elementary errors such as typographical, spelling, or unfinished and ambiguous sentences. Such errors have not only have serious implications for the manuscript’s soundness of the intended arguments and inferences, but they also send a message that the author(s) disregard or take the journal’s reputation and integrity for granted. Citing the United States National Academy of Sciences, Francisco, Hahn, and Schwarz (2017, p. 4010) argue that academic research integrity can be defined as “the observance of ethical principles and professional standards for the responsible research practice. This also includes: the use of honest and verifiable methods in proposing, performing, and evaluating research”. They further regard academic research integrity as “an aspect of moral

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character and experience. It involves above all a commitment to intellectual honesty and personal responsibility for ones actions and to a range of practices that characterize responsible research conduct”. Reviewers are expected to treat authors as colleagues. They are further expected to conform by the provided guidelines to avoid bias and should offer constructive criticism that will help authors grow in their scholarship. They need to nurture authors so that they can always look forward to having their manuscripts submitted for peer-assessment, and to motivate them submit even more articles. Peer assessors are further expected to support authors. One cannot just state negative statements without providing an alternative to improve what has been presented. A reviewer, for instance, cannot accuse an author for providing outdated references. He or she has to point this out but also direct the author to more recent sources as they are also expected to be authorities in the field they are reviewing.

15.3.1 Quality of Content Peer assessment in research needs to establish the relevance of manuscripts under review. Peer assessors therefore, have an inundating task as gate keepers to ensure that only quality manuscripts are accepted for publication. Content of the manuscript remain important for the manuscript to be accepted and published by a journal. The rejection or acceptance of a manuscript is determined based on a number of factors that assessors need to prioritise. There are many factors to determine this, and a few are discussed in the next part of the chapter. For assessors to accept the manuscript it has to serve the research process and agenda. The research should be original and there should be evidence of this. This can be shown by the author’s interaction with literature through citations and referencing. The manuscript needs to add value and bring innovation to the body of knowledge and literature. The content of the article should be relevant to the journal’s audience for it to be relevant enough to impact on increased scholarship. When reviewing a research manuscript, the assessor needs to establish if research questions are important to scholarship. Assessors further need to establish the importance and significance of the research questions, and satisfy themselves that they contribute to research and scholarship, as well as add new knowledge to the field. The rationale and objectives of the study need to be clear and free from ambiguity. Above all, reviewers need to pay attention to the methods used. These have to be appropriate and accurate. The results have to be appropriately analysed and conclusions drawn from the study justified. The findings need to be significant and relevant.

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15.3.2 Quality of Presentation Beyond the content of manuscripts, assessors also consider quality of presentation of the manuscript as a quality control issue. Quality research assessment critically look at a number of factors, including the ones discussed below. These are not exhaustive but very important for quality research articles. Tarkang and Bain (2019) contend that typesetting deals with the appearance of the article layout, fonts and headings. Articles submitted for review should generally be easy to understand and be clearly organised with smooth transitions in between the different sections. It is essential for a scholarly manuscript to have a relevant abstract. The abstract should have all necessary components such as context, objectives, methods, results and conclusions. It should adequately summarise the main points of the article and the information, data and terminology used should match the content of the manuscript. The abstract needs to be catchy to grab the readers’ attention. In short, the abstract should be a complete summary of the entire article. The reason for this is that the abstract serves as a ‘road map’ that guides the reader on the gist of the manuscript – what its purpose does it serve? What its central argument is? Which research design and methodologies were employed to gather the data on which the manuscript’s inferences, conclusions and recommendations are based? What added value does the manuscript purport to make to the existing body of knowledge? The introduction of the manuscript should provide sufficient content for the topic and justify why it is necessary, important and timely. Quality introductions for academic research articles need to clearly state the purpose and research questions or hypothesis. Peer assessors need to see all these written explicitly in the manuscript. Methods have to establish if the research design is strong enough and whether methods are adequately described to allow for the replica of the study if necessary. Methods are pivotal and for research articles to be accepted for publishing they have to be explicit. The manuscript should articulate the results well and fully clarify all the outcomes measures described in the methods. If there is raw data on which the manuscript’s central arguments are based, such raw data should be provided for assessors to enable them to make informed vetting of the manuscript’s scholarly veracity. The discussions section of the manuscript should not only provide summaries with unjustified numbers. Instead, it should provide reviewers with the relevant findings in the context in which the study was conducted. It is equally important for authors to provide a healthy balance of their argumentation by demarcating possible strengths and/or weaknesses and limitations of their research. This enables reviewers to see the manuscript in its totality. Where there are tables and figures are used to add value to the manuscript, these should be accounted for through detailed descriptions, narratives and analysis. This avoids a situation where such tables and figures are mere decorations and embellishments. As saying goes in the social sciences, the tables should “speak” to the text and still be able to stand on their own. Information conveyed by the figures

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and tables should be articulated to the reviewers and readers in user-friendly language that ensures clarity of understanding and interpretation by the reviewers and readers. All manuscripts should have recent references that are properly cited to support the arguments the manuscript intends to make. The references should be original and there must be evidence of their actual use in the text. Manuscripts should also have a clear and succinct conclusion that is justified by data. For purposes of consistency, the reviewers should not expect new ideas to spring up if these were not previously raised and discussed in the manuscript.

15.3.3 Review Report that Ensures Quality Manuscripts Assessors are expected to account and justify their decisions regarding the outcome of manuscripts. They need to provide a detailed summary for assessment and explain why they had accepted or rejected the manuscripts. Assessors also need to provide conditions for acceptance. In other words, quality assessors need to provide ways on how the manuscripts can be improved to be accepted for publishing. As discussed above, assessors need to include both positive and negative statements and observations to inform their decisions. This quality measure will help authors improve their writing skills. Authors need to look forward to peer-assessment of their manuscripts as a way of improving their article writing and publishing skills. This is further supported by literature, DeMaria (2003), Ward et al. (2015), that virtually almost all manuscripts are improved after the peer-assessment exercise. Authors’ assessment reports need to ensure compliance to quality assurance issues raised in this chapter. They should be presented in a positive tone, professional and respectful to encourage the author to submit the corrected manuscript. Offensive views that may offend the author need to be avoided at all costs (Sizo et al., 2019; Ward et al., 2015). When compiling the peer assessment feedback report it should be well presented and organised for the author to easily identify the points raised. This will enable authors to address the reviewers’ concerns raised with ease. The concerns raised or issues to be addressed need to be written separately, and in a point-by-point format to ensure and facilitate compliance from authors. Assessors also need to be precise on what they want to see addressed.

15.3.4 Feedback and Guidance from Assessors Feedback from assessors should provide guidance to authors and not be intimidating. Tarkang and Bain (2019, p. 1) are of the view that “authors need to take the comments from reviewers and editors, even in cases of rejection seriously and in the positive sense, in order to improve upon the quality of their work.” As already discussed earlier in the chapter, quality assessors guide journal editors on status of the manuscripts though it can be a long and tedious exercise, resulting in anxiety on the part of authors.

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However, “most recognise that the final product is significantly improved as a result of the review process” (Ward et al., 2015, p. 701). Some reviewers often submit reports without justification and this cannot help much since authors need to know what they did was not accepted. Reviewers will go a long way in improving quality of manuscripts as well as providing authors with knowledge to do what is right the next time they write an article for publication.

15.3.5 Communication to Researchers Quality is not just about identifying weaknesses of a manuscript. It is important for peer assessors to also recognise and appreciate strong elements of the manuscript. This will motivate the researchers and encourage them to submit more manuscripts without fear of intimidation. In some of the literature we have consulted, for instance, Kelly et al. (2014) and Ward et al. (2015) have written about how reviewers should address and communicate to, and with the researchers whose work they peer assess. This literature encourages assessors to be professional since they are part of the academic community, as such need to encourage others. In addition to being professional assessors are expected to be pleasant and helpful, so should provide suggestions to authors on how they can improve their work. They are also expected to be friendly, writing their reviews in a friendly tone and should avoid bias at all costs. Above all peer-assessors are expected to “converse” with authors through their feedback so that they can feel comfortable when dealing with them. Their review feedback is expected to be empathetic, sensitive and respectful as they deal with their peers.

15.4 Conclusion In this chapter we explored the notions of peer assessment and peer review and argued that they are dependable mechanism for assuring the quality and credibility of scholarly manuscripts. We used the terms peer assessment and peer review interchangeably to underscore the importance of quality control for vetting submitted research manuscripts. We recognised that conceptually, in the similar way to ‘liberty’, ‘equality’, ‘freedom’ or ‘justice’, the notion of quality is slippery, notoriously elusive and value-laden term. However, there seems to be a general consensus that presumed in the notion of quality are related notions such as exceptionality, perfection or consistency, ‘fitness-for-purpose’ or ‘value-for-money’. We suggested that with respect to scholarship, the notion of peer assessment or peer review is regarded as a reliable barometer for assuring, supporting and maintaining the quality and integrity of the research that is submitted to be considered for publication. Thus in this chapter our stance is that the peer review or peer-assessment process is a critical quality mechanism for ensuring that the validity, reliability, veracity and integrity of published research are maintained and assured.

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We teased out the pertinent issues that peer assessors or peer reviewers ought to address when reviewing research manuscripts. From the ensuing discussions it can be argued that the manuscripts that are subjected to a rigorous scholarly scrutiny have the potential to have their overall quality improved. We recognise that peer assessment or peer review might not be as perfect or full proof as might be expected. There is therefore a need for journal editors and their respective publishing houses to develop training programmes for new cohorts of peer assessors or peer reviewers to ensure there is a readily available capacity for quality assuring research.

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