K12 Students Research Articles

Effects of solo vs. collaborative play in a digital learning game on geometry: Results from a K12 experiment

Digital games for learning are one of the most prominent examples of the use of technologies in the classroom, where numerous studies have presented promising results among children and adolescents. However, scarce evidence exists regarding different ways of implementing games within the classroom and how those affect students' learning and behaviors. In this study we explore the effect that collaboration can have in digital gameplay in a K12 context. More specifically, we have designed a 2 × 2 experimental study in which high school first year students participated in solo or collaborative gameplay in pairs, solving puzzles of diverse difficulty, using Shadowspect, a digital game on geometry. Our main results, computed by applying learning analytics on the trace data results, suggest that students playing solo had higher in-game engagement and solved more puzzles, while students collaborating were less linear in their pathways, skipping more tutorial levels and were more exploratory with Shadowspect features. These significant differences that we observe in solo and collaborative gameplay call for more experimentation around the effect of having K12 students collaborate on digital tasks, so that teachers can take better decisions about how to implement these practices in the classrooms of the future.

The effects of competition in digital game-based learning (DGBL): a meta-analysis

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) is known to be widely used for improving learning in various fields. Among the elements of DGBL, competition has been very controversial. This meta-analysis, which included 25 articles written between 2008 and 2019, revealed that DGBL has produced improvements for learning outcomes with an overall effect size of .386. In addition, we explored multiple moderators to understand how competition in DGBL influenced student learning for different learners, contexts, game types, and learning outcomes. We found that competition in DGBL was effective for math, science and language, but not for social science and other subjects. It was effective for K12 students and college students. It was effective for puzzle, strategy, role-playing, and simulation, but not for action games. Finally, competition in DGBL was equally effective for cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. Through the results of this study, we fill a critical gap in the research left by recent reviews, which do not examine the role of competition; a key gaming element. In addition, we offer a number of suggestions for future studies.

Following the Pathways of Plastic Litter – An international Citizen Science project for promoting K12 students’ scientific literacy

AbstractIn dem Citizen‐Science‐Projekt „Dem Plastikmüll auf der Spur“ wurden Schülerinnen und Schüler gemeinsam mit ihren Lehrkräften in eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung zur Erhebung von Mülldaten an deutschen und chilenischen Stränden eingebunden. Durch das Projekt wurden zum einen wissenschaftliche Daten erhoben, zum anderen wurde bei den Teilnehmenden das Verständnis des naturwissenschaftlichen Prozesses gefördert sowie ein Umdenken im eigenen Handeln antizipiert. Angeleitet durch ein Begleitbuch setzten sich die Schülerinnen und Schüler mit wichtigen fachwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen zum Meeresmüll auseinander, das bei der anschließenden Probennahme am Strand und der Auswertung der Daten benötigt wurde. Da das Projekt zeitgleich in Deutschland und Chile durchgeführt wurde, konnten sich die Teilnehmenden auf einer Projektwebseite über ihre Untersuchung austauschen und so einen Einblick in die Gegebenheiten des Partnerlandes bekommen.

Aligning experiences: comparing and contrasting K12 and post-secondary space, resources, and services to smooth the college transition

In this study, researchers used basic qualitative research to understand the spaces, resources, and services available to K12 students in their school libraries. Using observation and semi-structured interviews with K12 teacher librarians, this research allowed for a comparison of the K12 and post-secondary environments through which the authors were able to identify similarities and differences in function and service. In this article, the authors explore strategies to ease the transition of K12 students to the college environment, including collaboration between post-secondary and K12 libraries, robust orientation programs, and alignment of information literacy initiatives. This article adds to the body of college readiness literature and suggests avenues for future research.

What drives students’ intention to use tablet computers: An extended technology acceptance model

This study proposed an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine students’ intention to use tablet computers in K12 settings. The participants were 347 middle school students who were engaged in a tablet-based instructional initiative. We used the partial least squares (PLS) approach to test the relationships between perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), attitude, intention to use, self-efficacy, technology anxiety, and family support. The results suggested that the extended TAM offered a good explanation of tablet computers acceptance of K12 students. Findings from this research not only inform the successful practice of educational technology initiatives but also lay the foundation for future research.

Supporting learning of practitioners and early career scholars in physical education and sports pedagogy

ABSTRACT Improving school physical education (PE) practices in the future mainly depends on supporting the professional capital of practitioners’ and early career scholars’. In this paper, I aim to present effective strategies to support the human, social and decisional capital of those PE and sports professionals in Turkey. To this end, first, the complex social-ecology of the country-specific PE setting was discussed by using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social-ecological model. Then, six strategies’ that were effective in supporting the professional development of teachers, coaches and early career scholars in this specific context, including identifying the learner subsets, understanding the local social, physical, and policy setting, connecting PE stakeholders toward the same aims, creating learning communities, being future-oriented, and being data-driven in practice were presented with the evidence to support them. Social-ecological examination of the setting indicated the poor outcome of PE for the learning of K12 students in developing movement and lifelong physical activity skills and knowledge. There were weaknesses identified in PE teachers’, coaches’, and scholars’ professional knowledge and skills. The social setting was not supportive especially for girls’ physical activity participation in rural areas. Physical Education-related community, organizational and the physical setting had inequalities for the population living in different regions of the country due to fast urbanization, family income level, geography, and climate variations, rapidly growing school-age population and migration. At the macro level, the influence of a centralized education system and the policies of institutions with interest in youth education, health, and sport over the PE practices was critical. Application of the six strategies by considering the social-ecological characteristics of the Turkish PE setting was successful in general. Based on the evidence, I strongly recommend a comprehensive examination of the social-ecology in each cultural setting during structuring the professional development programmes for teachers, coaches, and early career scholars.

Examining K-12 Students’ Preferences and Attitudes on Mobile Learning

The aim of this study is to examine K12 students’ preferences and attitudes on mobile learning. In this study, causal-comparative method was used. The sample of the study were 236 students (127 females, 109 males) at K12 level. The students are enrolled in primary (n=104), secondary (n=77), and high school (n=55) levels. The data in the study were collected through a questionnaire. According to the results, watching videos, playing music, playing games, taking a picture, accessing the Internet are the most common uses of mobile devices for the students. The students’ attitudes towards mobile learning is highly positive. The male students’ perceived ease of use towards mobile learning is higher than females. The secondary and high school students’ perceived ease of use is higher than primary school students. Moreover, the high school students’ desire for learning is higher than the others. Implications were discussed in terms of practices for mobile learning in K12, and directions for further research.

Promoting Motivated Writers: Suggestions for Teaching and Conducting Research With Students With Learning Disabilities and Struggling Learners

This article considers the topic of motivation for writing, and explores connections between writing interventions and motivation. We review the extant literature with K12 students who participated in writing interventions and examine the motivation outcomes in those studies to determine whether improvements in writing ability also led to increased motivation. We wished to study motivation outcomes for students with learning disabilities; however, due to the limited number of available studies, we included studies with low achieving writers or English learners. In addition, one study focused on participants identified as emotionally disturbed, and two studies included average and/or gifted writers. Most studies were conducted in the United States, although others were were done in Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, and China. Most studies included fifth and sixth graders, and the full range was from second through 12th grade. The majority of the writing interventions included some form of explicit instruction, often SRSD—and participants routinely improved their writing ability as a result of the specific instruction under investigation. Unfortunately, outcomes regarding students’ motivation were not as clear as their writing outcomes. We turn to Wigfield and Eccles’ (2000; 2001) expectancy-value theory as a promising lens both to understand the results in the literature review, and for teaching writing to students with learning disabilities and end with suggestions for researchers who study writing and struggling or heterogeneous learners. Subscribe to LDMJ

Engaging Preservice Teachers in Professional Development about iPads

The iEducate mini-conference was a professional development approach used in a college of education that has a one to one iPad initiative. Students were strongly encouraged to attend workshops on effective iPad integration strategies for the classroom during a one-week period. A total of 87 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members participated and two-thirds indicated they would participate in similar events in the future. Participants indicated that opportunities to share their knowledge and collaborate with peers to explore new applications and integration strategies, connect new knowledge and skills to K12 classroom practice, and talk to K12 students about their vision for technology integration were beneficial outcomes of the experience. Discussion of the structure and management of the event, student feedback and plans for future implementations are provided.

The Poverty Pimpin’ Project: how whiteness profits from black and brown bodies in community service programs

Tutoring programs that link colleges to public schools are seen as a way to improve the academic performance of K12 students while providing a practicum site for college-age students. Prior research on college-K12 partnerships focuses on how the academic achievement of both K12 and college students are enhanced by these relationships. This article challenges the stock story that such outreach programs are unproblematic and entirely altruistic endeavors and offers insight into the bumpy terrain of town–gown relationships complicated by race, class and academic divides. Using critical race methodology, this research tells a counter-story that highlights the white savior and poverty pimpin’ projects of outreach work.

Impact of satisfaction, personality and learning style on educational outcomes in a blended learning environment

Several factors influencing the educational outcomes in a blended learning environment have been explored in an attempt to predict student's academic performance and transferable skills. This research explores personality traits, learning style, satisfaction and their correlation to educational outcomes in a blended learning scenario that involved game-based learning strategies, flip teaching techniques and video conferencing sessions. At the end of the semester teachers evaluated the grades and skills of 142 K12 students that participated in the study in order to construct a prediction model and analyze the impact of the personality, learning style and satisfaction on educational outcomes. We constructed two ANFIS models to predict the grades and skills in the given learning setup, and two linear regression models to compare the results with ANFIS models. The ANFIS models explaining about 94% and 92% of variances in grades and skills outperformed the linear regression models explaining 81% and 69% of variances.

Using distance leaning tools as a mechanism to create a STEM mentoring opportunity

There is no doubt that the United States needs a larger pool of STEM‐literate citizens. The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) has developed a program in which graduate students from New York City universities are trained to act as mentors for K12 students from under‐performing schools. This program served 2,100 students over the past year in the form of 25,000 hours of instruction. The graduate students receive ongoing face‐to‐face (F2F) training at NYAS in proper pedagogy and also the materials necessary for delivering workshops in topics such as genetics and robotics. To allow this program to expand to the entirety of New York State, NYAS and the State University of New York (SUNY) are forming a partnership in which SUNY graduate students will be trained and supported as mentors. To achieve this goal we are developing a series of courses that will be delivered via distance learning tools. These courses will allow the graduate students and their site supervisors to learn the same material and skills as those who attend F2F sessions, as well as create ‘learning communities of scholars’ in which the students can share their experiences and insights.

Initial Study of Pre-Service Teachers' Comments on a Reality-Based, Urban-Student Video Streamed within an Online Course

The Master of Arts in Teaching program at Empire State College, an alternative teacher certification program focused on bringing career-changing adults to high-needs schools, has an important need in its initial pre-service year. These adult students must be prepared to move into complex, high-needs schools without student teaching and often with little direct exposure to best practices in an urban environment. In an attempt to bring more positive and productive “reality” into this pre-service year, urban K12 students were videotaped during a science workshop, then segments of this tape were streamed into the online segment of a pre-service course. Initial findings suggest that these 31 pre-service teachers benefitted from watching these videos that provided a rich, complex, realistic yet visionary scenario for analysis. These soon-to-be teachers then developed their own perspective on high-quality instruction. With minimal instructional prompts, these students were able to dig deeply into the activities presented, specifying engagement attributes, evaluating K12-student interactions, and drawing pedagogical conclusions. This article explains the video and its creation, the prompts that were used with the assignments, the resulting student commentary, lessons that can be learned from approach, and extended areas where these videos might be useful.

Designing for privacy in personal learning spaces

We present the results of a study of information sharing behaviour of the users of a personal learning space. Our study uses grounded theory methodology and involves 12 K12 students who have used a personal learning space for over a year. The resulting grounded theory suggests that users’ preferences regarding privacy of their artefacts in such an environment depends on a number of factors, including the current stage in the artefact's life cycle, the nature of trust between the owner and the receiver of information, and the dynamics of the group or community within which the information is being shared. Based on our findings, we propose a framework for understanding and designing privacy control mechanisms for personal learning spaces that reflect users’ mental model of information privacy. To illustrate these principles in practice, we describe the privacy management mechanisms of OpnTag, an application we have designed as a test bed for social information management.

Developing games and simulations for today and tomorrow’s tech savvy youth

c onstructively promoting the educational development of today's young tech savvy students and fostering the productive technological facility of tomorrow's youth requires harnessing new technological tools creatively. The MIT Teacher Education Program (TEP) focuses on the research and development of educational computer-based simulations and games for K12 students and teachers. This field grows out of the social constructivist basis of much of science and mathematics educational research where students are encouraged to learn through collaboration, conducting experiments and testing hypotheses. These new technologies engage students at a deeply meaningful level, and provide them with the tools and techniques that scientists, engineers and technology workers across a diversity of fields use every day. Also at the core of this program is the belief that we must build a bridge between students' experiences in and out of school by incorporating into school curricula the tools, technologies and experiences that students acquire outside of the classroom. The specific technologies that the TEP has created range from StarLogo TNG, a simulation environment that allows students and teachers to build their own 3D immersive simulations, to handheld Augmented Reality (AR) simulations that combine real surroundings with virtual simulated information to convey authenticity in large scale scientific investigations. This comprehensive program works with scientists and engineers to ensure that the tools accurately convey scientific practices. It involves multiple levels of teachers in a variety of subject domains as design and implementation partners, and engages researchers to better understand what and how students learn from these technologies. Our goal is to provide important links between school curricula and the tools and technologies students are either already experiencing or are likely to experience in real world events, with the notion that they will acquire the skills, knowledge and habits of mind to be successful participants in our increasingly technology-infused society, thereby "bridging" experiences between the classroom and the outside world.