Education technology -training course
M. Norollahi; H. Zangeneh; M. PourJamshidi
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The central objective of the educational system is to cultivate student success, promote academic progress, and foster meaningful and enjoyable learning experiences. Achieving these aims hinges significantly on student engagement in the learning process, as its absence may ...
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Background and Objectives: The central objective of the educational system is to cultivate student success, promote academic progress, and foster meaningful and enjoyable learning experiences. Achieving these aims hinges significantly on student engagement in the learning process, as its absence may lead to academic failure and suboptimal outcomes. Numerous factors influence students' academic engagement quantity and quality, warranting thorough investigation. This need has been accentuated by the widespread implementation of virtual education during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been associated with declining academic performance and reduced interest in learning among students. In response to this challenge, examining the factors that impact academic engagement, including the support provided by teachers, parents, and classmates, and integrating new technologies that have become integral to the educational landscape is essential. However, utilizing these new technologies also brings unique challenges, notably technology anxiety, wherein students may experience fear and apprehension when confronted with technology-related tasks. The present research explores the relationship between the type of social support and learners' level of academic engagement, considering the mediating and moderating role of technology anxiety. By elucidating such relationships, this study aims to propose innovative and contemporary solutions that effectively harness social support, ultimately ensuring educational success and fostering positive learning experiences amidst the complexities of modern education.Materials and Methods: The research adopted a quantitative and survey-correlation methodology. The statistical population comprises 528 eighth-grade high school students (264 girls and 264 boys) from Famnin City during the academic year 2021-2022. Initially determined as 225 individuals using Karajesi and Morgan's table and selected through random cluster sampling, the sample size was later increased to 402 participants (221 girls and 181 boys) to enhance generalizability. The research instruments consist of Reeve's 2013 Academic Engagement Questionnaire, Dimrai and Maleki's 2002 Social Support Questionnaire, and Bandalos and Benson's 1990 Computer Anxiety Questionnaire. Convergent and divergent validity assessed the items' validity, while Cronbach's alpha, combined reliability, and Spearman's tests measured item reliability. The presented model and results were analyzed using structural equations and Spearman's correlation test.Findings: The findings from the structural equations analysis indicate a significant relationship between social support and the extent of student academic engagement mediated by technology anxiety. The social support provided by parents, teachers, and classmates exhibits both direct and indirect effects on students' academic engagement. This support, comprising instrumental, informational, emotional, and evaluative aspects, positively influences students' engagement in various technological aspects, including communication, work success, confidence, and intimacy. Consequently, technology anxiety is reduced, increasing academic engagement across behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and causal dimensions. Furthermore, this positive effect remains evident even when not considering technology anxiety as a mediating factor.Conclusions: The research findings highlight the crucial and fundamental role of parents, teachers, and classmates in addressing students' challenges, particularly in the realm of technology and its application in education. These key stakeholders can provide essential support to students, facilitating the resolution of technological issues. Recognizing their significant impact, policymakers and educational authorities should harness these valuable resources to enhance the quality of online education. Implementing targeted programs and plans to encourage parents, teachers, and classmates to offer increased social support will ultimately improve the overall learning experience and academic engagement.
Educational Technology - Augmented Reality
M. Yousefei; H. Zangeneh
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Students' negative attitude toward teaching and learning, especially in elementary school, is a fundamental problem for parents and teachers, affecting the future of the individuals and society. One of the reasons for this attitude is the use of conventional methods. These ...
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Background and Objectives: Students' negative attitude toward teaching and learning, especially in elementary school, is a fundamental problem for parents and teachers, affecting the future of the individuals and society. One of the reasons for this attitude is the use of conventional methods. These types of classes hinder students' dynamism and make them tired and unmotivated. But today, technology can be used to enrich our classrooms. Virtual reality is a technology that has helped to change students' attitudes and made classroom environments more dynamic. In fact, it can be defined as the simulation of a situation, and the attitude consists of a person's beliefs, feelings, and behavior. In the early period, the first attitudes are achieved in a person, and this attitude plays an important role in the motivation and behavior of a person. On the other hand, technologies play an essential role in human life today, and it is necessary to use them in different areas of life with correct and purposeful planning. One of these critical fields is education. Regarding education and training, the choice of media is a fundamental issue. The selection of media should be made according to factors such as the characteristics of the learner in order to be effective. If the media are not selected and designed correctly, they will cause financial losses and waste of time. So how to design the media, which is the virtual reality here, is very important in influencing the attitude. On the other hand, according to Howland's message learning theory, the three factors of source, message, and audience characteristics are among the factors that should be taken into account to change the attitude. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to review the studies conducted in the field of using virtual reality in terms of attitude in the elementary course was in line with the answers to these questions: a) What factors play a role in choosing virtual reality technology for use in elementary classes in terms of students' attitudes? b) How is the design of virtual reality content to improve the attitude of elementary school students? And c) How are the educational activities in the classes based on virtual reality to improve the attitude of elementary school students?Methods: The study was conducted in a systematic review from August to November 2022. The search was carried out in the Wiley, Scopus, Springer link, and Web of Science databases with the keywords Virtual reality, Attitude, and Primary students, along with the relevant word groups. The criteria for the entry and acceptance of the research included these items: related to virtual reality and the use of this technology in teaching and learning, in relation to primary school students, in relation to attitude, research in English or Farsi, and field articles. Finally, according to the inclusion criteria, the data from 12 cases were extracted, described, analyzed, and inferred from 233 studies.Findings: According to the research questions, data were extracted, such as research countries, subjects, educational level, explanations of virtual reality, and activities from the cases (articles) that have been chosen for analysis. After analyzing and combining their findings, more studies have been taken in countries like Taiwan, China, and Korea and in fifth and sixth grades. Subjects have worked on science, social studies, English language, and physical education. In fact, according to these findings, the use of virtual reality in the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school and subjects such as sciences had the most significant impact on the students' attitudes. Also, after combining and putting together the data related to virtual reality content and features such as sense of presence, content, repetition, practice, problem-solving, animation mode, use of real images, and educational factor. These findings show that these elements in virtual reality may play a role in students' attitudes. The activities performed in the classes included viewing the content, examining and exploring the content, doing homework, working in groups, listening to the teacher's instructions, and questioning and answering. These characteristics and elements were gathered from putting together the information of previous research, but only mean the existence of all these factors in some of the studies.Conclusion: From the explanation and conclusion of the findings, it can be said that: 1) an important criterion in the use, selection, and application of technologies, including virtual reality, is to pay attention to the characteristics of learners, including their age and 2) the characteristics of the subject that must be paid attention to. When the learner is in the abstract stage, this technology can improve learning and attitude. In fact, from their findings and analysis, it was concluded that age is an important factor in paying attention to attitude, and the use of virtual reality when the learners are in the abstract stage is effective. Also, the use of virtual reality in subjects such as sciences, which has features such as spatial and temporal limitations and abstract content, can be effective. Designers of virtual reality content should design it in such a way that is possible to check and explore the content, interact, repeat the content, and practice and solve the problem. Based on the finding related to inferences of classroom activities, it can be concluded that teachers must group students before viewing virtual reality and add additional explanations after viewing it. In fact, the group is an essential factor that affects learners' attitudes. Also, they must provide tasks and assignments per the objectives and content and allow them to ask questions and answers. Finally, according to these factors, virtual reality technology can be used to create, change or improve the attitude of elementary school students.
Educational computer games
A. Salimei; H. Zangeneh
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Teaching English as a second language has grown exponentially in the world over the last two decades with mobile or computer-assisted approaches. New learning technologies have increased their popularity through interactive language learning content in listening, speaking, ...
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Background and Objectives: Teaching English as a second language has grown exponentially in the world over the last two decades with mobile or computer-assisted approaches. New learning technologies have increased their popularity through interactive language learning content in listening, speaking, writing, and comprehension skills and paved the way to increase the learner's control over the learning process, the time and place of learning, or even choosing instructional media and learning activities so that the learner should have the freedom to act, which has led to more personalization of instruction to welcome learning through more technologies. This type of learning may be among their preferences in which the basics of language learning skills are vocabulary learning which can be of significant consideration. In contrast, word-learning in language learning is a dull, boring, and monotonous activity that learners face constantly. At the same time, it is essential and fundamental because other language skills highly depend on vocabulary learning. New learning technologies have also been effective in this area by gamification of the vocabulary learning process and adding elements such as competition, leaderboard, reinforcement and reward programs, feedback, challenges, and the like. They have made learning vocabulary an engaging and enjoyable activity through the instructional design of the learning environment. Vocabulary learning, is a repetitive and tedious activity, the learner must pronounce the word well, understand the explicit and implicit meaning of the word, recognize its usage and function well, write the word correctly, discriminate the root of the word to form different words for the intended functions. All of these add to the complexity and difficulty of vocabulary learning because the number of variables involved is high, and they are interrelated. Vocabulary learning is crucial because its traces in learning other language skills are well recognizable. On the other hand, as the circle of linguistic vocabulary expands, it sometimes becomes difficult for an individual to understand the semantic subtleties of words required to internalize the words; otherwise, they are forgotten. Therefore, based on understanding such problems and difficulties in learners' language learning, educational technology has been considered a helpful solution in this field. Most studies have shown that educational technology is also valuable in terms of emotional and motivational dimensions for cognitive effectiveness and can play an irreplaceable role in gamifying vocabulary learning. With this in mind, this study aimed to investigate the effect of gamification on English vocabulary learning among the fifth-grade Iranian students.Methods: The method in this study was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and an experimental and a control group. The study population included all fifth-grade elementary school students in Hamadan in the academic year of 2020-2021 (N=8431), of whom a sample size of 40 people was chosen. Convenience sampling method was used and the participants were chosen from the schools whose students had access to a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or personal computer to run the gamification (games developed for vocabulary learning). They were assigned randomly to the experiment group (20) and control (20) one. The data collection tool in this study was the teacher-developed academic test for both pretest and posttest (including 30 four-point questions) and was the same in both groups. The experts` views were used to determine their validity, and also their reliability was calculated based on Cronbach's alpha as 0.78. Descriptive and inferential statistics (covariance test) were used to analyze the data using SPSS software version 22.0.Findings: Based on the analysis of the data, the ratio of f for the independent variable was equal to 5.956, the significance level was 0.02; for the covariate, the f ratio was equal to 0.687, and the significance level was 0.41. It can be said that the effect of intervention in the experimental group was significant, but the impact of covariate was insignificant.Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, the pretest scores as covariates had no significant effect on posttest scores, but the impact of the intervention on posttest scores was significant. So, it can be concluded that gamification improved English vocabulary learning (as a second language) among the fifth-grade Iranian students.
