Gamification Meets Mobile Learning

Higher education in the era of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) has given a brand new drive on Malaysian educational transformation. The impact of a numerous technology innovations in ICT towards Malaysian education is noticeable. Some existing jobs will be eliminated in this era, but more new jobs that require digital literacy are going to be created. Therefore, Education 4.0 must be able to produce graduates with excellent communication and collaborative skills. However, Malaysian Digest states that fresh graduates lack soft skills. Several approaches have been proposed by the Ministry of Higher Education for the purpose of enhancing students' soft skills. Therefore, by having technologies to help overcome this problem is sought after. This chapter describes the utilization of mobile learning and gamification in enhancing learner's soft skills. It elaborates the effectiveness of using gamification in mobile learning technique to develop learners' higher order thinking skills to help them succeed in a global economy.

INTEGRATING COLLABORATIVE SKILLS IN 8TH GRADE ENGLISH TEACHING LESSON PLANS AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Collaboration is one of the 21st-century skills needed to survive in this era. The need in society to think and work together on issues of critical concern has increased, shifting the emphasis from individual efforts to group work, from independence to community. Integrating Collaborative skills in the educational field, particularly in assessment, has been broadly employed. However, lesson plans that incorporate collaborative skills are lacking. This study aims to explore the collaborative skill in English teaching lesson plan in junior high school in Indonesia. A content analysis approach is used in this study. The data was analyzed using a systematic content descriptive text methodology based on the ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) Framework, which was used in this study as an instrument to analyze lesson plans to see if they were integrating or not. The expected result of the study is that Collaborative skills are found in lesson plans, indicators, and the learning process.

Collaborative skills in language courses: how to support pupils?

The aim of this study is to examine how collaborative skills can be developed among secondary school pupils using digital tools (Word online, Adobe Spark Video) in the language classroom. Several types of data were collected: semi-structured interviews with teachers and learners, and observation of collaborative activities in the language classroom (video recordings, research log, observation notes, etc.). The case studies show different collaborative activities, which fall into three categories: coordination, articulation, and production. The analysis suggests that many factors can have an impact on collaboration between students, and this paper focuses on one in particular: digital tools. The findings revealed that digital tools can support collaboration if they meet the specific needs of the task (synchronous collaboration, asynchronous collaboration, or no collaboration) and its accessibility for the pupils (one tool for the group, one tool per student). Moreover, the analysis highlights the need to provide techno-pedagogical training (Stockwell & Hubbard, 2013) to the pupils so that they are able to use the tool efficiently in collaborative activities.

Agent-Based Modeling of Collaborative Work

In the modern world, it is no longer enough to simply create a product that performs its function, but it should perform it better than thousands of competitors. However, the problem is that human intellectual abilities are limited and many complex tasks are beyond the capabilities of a single person. The natural way of raising our intellectual level is to build teams to share our experience, knowledge, and worldview to create something beyond the capacity of the individual.Thus it is not surprising that according to a recent ranking, collaborative skills are considered most essential in the 21st century [2]. To cope with all challenges and create high-quality products, there should be a team whose members are experts in communication, discussion, problem-solving, and critical thinking. In addition, it is important to manage the team effectively. To do so, it is necessary to know more about the social processes which take place inside a team. Agent-based modeling can be an effective tool to gain such insights.Agent-based modeling is a powerful instrument for simulating different processes, including social ones. This technology was formed under the influence of many other fields such as artificial intelligence, sociology, game theory, and so on.In this article, a model which simulates human interaction in the framework of «Wilderness Survival: A Consensus-Seeking Task» is used to demonstrate the core principle of agent-based modeling. The group of agents complete a test by themselves and afterwards discuss their answers to reach a consensus and achieve the best score.It will be analyzed which human character traits are more important for successful collaborative work. Situations in which some team members are not interested in the team success will be identified. Also, a user interface is provided to enable running custom experiments to better understand how specific character traits impact the team results.

Integration of an extended, immersive, gamified pharmacy simulation as a capstone event

Introduction: A gamified simulation was integrated as a capstone event for a new Australian undergraduate pharmacy programme. It aimed to consolidate previous learning and deliver an authentic activity aligned with self-determination theory to develop students’ professional identity and enhance their competence, confidence, and collaborative skills. Description: A full-environment immersive simulation was constructed in which teams of final-year pharmacy students competitively managed their own virtual pharmacies over an extended period. Gamification of the simulation aimed to enhance student motivation and engagement while recognising the consequences of clinical and professional decision-making. Evaluation: Four years of gamified simulation encouraged outstanding student attendance and engagement. The quantitative evaluation revealed high student satisfaction (mean 4.7 out of 5) of the host courses, while the qualitative evaluation revealed that intended outcomes were met through the delivery of authentic, consolidated learning and enhancement of student confidence and professional identity. Conclusion: An extended, gamified simulation may provide a transformative learning event.

High School Students’ Performance Indicators in Distance Learning in Chemistry during the COVID-19 Pandemic

All private and public schools in the UAE had to run online classes as they closed their face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2021. In this context, the purpose of this study was to investigate the indicators of high school students’ performance in online chemistry classes in a private school in Al Ain, UAE. A quantitative study with an online survey questionnaire was carried out with 101 participants. The data were analyzed using One-Sample Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test, Independent Sample Mann Whitney U, Independent Sample Kruskal Wallis H, and Spearman’s Rank Correlation in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 26). The findings revealed that there was a statistically significant positive impact on critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, technology application, class participation, and overall achievement during online and distance learning of chemistry. There was a statistically significant difference in students’ critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, class participation, and achievement by gender and nationality. These skills were not statistically significantly different across students of grades 10, 11, and 12, except for creativity and innovation, which were significantly different between students of grades 11 and 12. All the six indicators of students’ performance had a significant correlation between each other, with the highest correlation between collaborative skills and participation level. These findings indicated that students’ performance in online chemistry classes during the COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities to develop creativity and collaborative skills, together with better learning achievement as perceived by the students.

Building off creativity to move from gifted to gifting

What is the aim of giftedness? Is the goal to narrow in on the gifts of a select few or to nurture everyone’s gifts such that they may be exchanged with each other? Drawing from creativity theory, we emphasize the possible interactive element of giftedness. Current paradigms risk ignoring hidden creativities and for potential to remain in the shadows. Is the promise of one possible eminent creator worth thousands of everyday creators? Do we need to make such a choice? By fostering perspective-taking and other collaborative skills, we may try to have it all.

Promoting Mathematical Knowledge and Skills in a Mathematical Classroom Using a Gallery Walk

The aim of this paper is to share part of an ongoing study in which we are interested in introducing a Gallery Walk (GW) as an instructional strategy to contemplate in the classroom, in the context of preservice teacher training for elementary education (6-12 years old), to promote students' mathematical knowledge and skills, through problem solving abilities. In this study we intend, in particular, to identify the strategies used by students when solving challenging tasks with multiple approaches, using a GW, as well as characterize their reaction during their engagement in the GW as a teaching and learning strategy. A qualitative and interpretive study, with an exploratory approach, was adopted and the collected data included classroom observations and written productions. The results allowed to identify the strategies used by the participants and to verify the potential of the GW in the quality of the written productions and discussions, which proved to be more effective than in more traditional discussions, allowing to increase the repertoire of solving strategies of each student and communication and collaborative skills; it had a positive effect on the participants’ achievements and it was an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all of them.

Hybrid learning environments: a significant contribution to the development of technological and collaborative skills in university teachers

This document intends to show the impact of training in b-learning through MOODLE in the development of technological and collaborative skills in higher education teachers, based on the evident lack of teacher training in the use and appropriation of ICT at the Universidad Popular del Cesar (UPC). In order to do this, a research with a quantitative approach of a pre-experimental type with a pre-test-post-test design with a group was necessary, at a descriptive study level, using two surveys as data collection instruments, one to identify the level of knowledge of the educators on the use of technologies and collaborative skills in higher education and the other one to determine the teacher's perception about the use of technologies and collaborative skills in higher education. In the study, teachers of the pedagogy department intervened with hours of direct classes. The results and conclusions established that there was little use of the technological space, and integration of ICT in the teaching practice. Also, that the influence of training under Moodle in the development of technological skills and collaborative skills was positive. El presente documento pretende mostrar el impacto de la formación en b-learning a través de MOODLE en el desarrollo de competencias tecnológicas y colaborativas en docentes de educación superior, a partir de la evidente falta de formación docente en el uso y apropiación de las TIC en la Universidad Popular del Cesar (UPC). Para ello, fue necesario realizar una investigación con enfoque cuantitativo de tipo preexperimental con un diseño pre-test-post-test con un grupo, a nivel de estudio descriptivo, utilizando como instrumentos de recolección de datos dos encuestas, una para identificar el nivel de conocimiento de los educadores sobre el uso de las tecnologías y las habilidades colaborativas en la educación superior y otra para determinar la percepción del docente sobre el uso de las tecnologías y las habilidades colaborativas en la educación superior. En el estudio intervinieron profesores del departamento de pedagogía con horas de clases directas. Los resultados y conclusiones establecieron que había poco uso del espacio tecnológico, y la integración de las TIC en la práctica docente. También, que la influencia de la formación bajo Moodle en el desarrollo de las competencias tecnológicas y de las competencias colaborativas fue positiva.