Gamifying Online News in a Senior Online Community: Insights from Designing and Assessing the Readers’ Experience

Aging audiences and the shift of news consumption to an online paradigm have led to the need of finding strategies to engage aging readers with online news by assessing their news consumption habits and identifying the potential for digital platforms to assist the reader’s journey, i.e., the activities performed from access to the information to the relatedness and shareability of the news content. It is well established that the use of game elements and game thinking within the context of a community can capture the user’s attention and lead to behavioral engagement toward repetitive tasks. However, information about the design implications of socially gamified news to the aging reader’s experience is still lacking. Using a development research approach, we implemented a prototype that socially gamifies news to support the aging reader experience based on a pre-assessment survey with 248 participants about their news consumption habits and motivations. We then validated the prototype with six market-oriented representatives of Portuguese newspapers and eleven adults aged 50 and over. A model for onboarding a reader’s 6-step journey (read, react, discuss, share, relate and experience) within the context of a Senior Online Community using gamification is proposed. The game elements used can inform the design of a much more personalized experience of consuming news and news behavioral engagement.

Disruptiveness of COVID-19: Differences in Course Engagement, Self-appraisal, and Learning

We investigated how the transition to remote instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ engagement, self-appraisals, and learning in advanced placement (AP) Statistics courses. Participants included 681 (Mage=16.7 years, SDage=.90; %female=55.4) students enrolled in the course during 2017-2018 (N=266), 2018-2019 (N=200), and the pandemic-affected 2019-2020 (N=215) year. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater improvement in affective engagement but a decrease in cognitive engagement in the spring semester relative to a previous year. Females enrolled in the pandemic-affected year experienced a greater negative change in affective and behavioral engagement. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater decrease in their anticipated AP exam scores and received lower scores on a practice exam aligned with the AP exam compared to a prior year. Though resilient in some respects, students’ self-appraisal and learning appeared negatively affected by pandemic circumstances.

The Dynamic Effects of a Summer Learning Program on Behavioral Engagement in School

Evidence that student learning declines or stagnates during summers has motivated an interest in programs providing intensive summer instruction. However, existing literature suggests that such programs have modest effects on achievement and no impact on measures of engagement in school. In this quasi-experimental study, we present evidence on the impact of a comprehensive and mature summer learning program that serves low-income middle school students and features unusual academic breadth, including a robust and well-designed social-emotional learning curriculum. Our results indicate that this program led to substantial reductions in unexcused absences, chronic absenteeism and suspensions and a modest gain in ELA test scores. We find evidence that the gains in behavioral engagement are dynamic, growing over time and with additional summers of participation.

Effects of a Sport Education Model-Based Teaching Intervention on Students’ Behavioral and Motivational Outcomes within the Physical Education Setting in the COVID-19 Scenario

The sport education model (SEM) has been suggested to have a positive impact on students’ motivational processes within the physical education setting. However, there is no evidence about how this methodology can affect such processes in the unconventional scenario provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the present study was to analyze the effect of a SEM-based teaching intervention on students’ basic psychological needs (BPN), intrinsic motivation, and behavioral engagement in physical education. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental study was carried out in which two groups of secondary students (Mage= 14.61, SD= 0.5) were taught a basketball unit following either the SEM or traditional teaching. Previously validated questionnaires were administered both before and after the intervention. The results showed that students following the SEM methodology significantly improved their autonomy satisfaction (MPre = 3.09 vs. Mpost = 3.63), competence satisfaction (Mpre = 3.48 vs. Mpost = 4.17), and relatedness satisfaction (MPre = 3.79 vs. MPost = 4.43), as well as their behavioral engagement (MPre = 4.05 vs. MPost = 4.48), while students in the control group reported lower relatedness satisfaction after (M = 3.54) than before (M = 4.13) the intervention. This study thus contributes to the understanding of how teaching in a COVID-19 scenario has affected students’ motivational responses, and interesting implications for the current situation are provided.

Sustainable Development of University EFL Learners’ Engagement, Satisfaction, and Self-Efficacy in Online Learning Environments: Chinese Experiences

This study investigated the sustainable development of university EFL learners regarding their engagement, satisfaction, and self-efficacy in online learning environments during the outbreak of COVID-19. In a questionnaire survey with a sample of 428 Chinese undergraduate EFL learners, the students reported a favorable view of online learning environments and subjective learning outcomes. Behavioral engagement was positively related to involvement. Emotional engagement was positively related to student cohesiveness and negatively related to teacher support. Satisfaction was not related to any of the learning environment factors. Self-efficacy mediated the effect of student cohesiveness and student involvement on behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and satisfaction. These results of the study have implications for creating a sustainable online learning environment and promoting EFL learners’ sustainable development.

A Moderated Mediation Model of Expectancy-Value Interactions, Engagement, and Foreign Language Performance

Based on the Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT), this study examined the interactive relation between expectancy of success and attainment value, and how they predicate students’ Foreign Language (FL) performance via behavioral engagement. Self-report data were collected from 522 Chinese non-English majors aged 18 to 22 years in their sophomore year. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that expectancy of success and attainment value interacted in predicting Chinese sophomores’ FL performance. The expectancy of success had both direct and indirect effects on FL performance when investigating the mediating role of behavioral engagement. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Student's Learning Strategies and Academic Emotions: Their Influence on Learning Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Based on the control-value theory (CVT), learning strategies and academic emotions are closely related to learning achievement, and have been considered as important factors influencing student's learning satisfaction and learning performance in the online learning context. However, only a few studies have focused on the influence of learning strategies on academic emotions and the interaction of learning strategies with behavioral engagement and social interaction on learning satisfaction.Methods: The participants were 363 pre-service teachers in China, and we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the mediating and moderating effects of the data.Results: The main findings of the current study showed that learning strategies influence students' online learning satisfaction through academic emotions. The interaction between learning strategies and behavioral engagement was also an important factor influencing online learning satisfaction.Conclusions: We explored the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of how learning strategies influenced learning satisfaction to provide intellectual guarantee and theoretical support for the online teaching design and online learning platform. This study provides theoretical contributions to the CVT and practical value for massive open online courses (MOOCs), flipped classrooms and blended learning in the future.