The three-iterative design and implementation of a student-facing social learning analytics tool

The design of social learning analytics (SLA) tools has become a practical means to make available learning information with a goal to improve students’ regulation, reflection, and engagement in online learning. This design-based research uses the multi-method analytics to iteratively design, implement, and modify the SLA tool that makes available social, topic, and cognitive information to students in online discussions. This tool demonstrates students’ online discussions from social, sematic, and cognitive aspects. This research further uses online questionnaire and interview methods to investigate students’ perceptions about the tool’s usefulness and usability. After experiencing this tool, students proposed critical feedback for tool improvement from the network visualization, peer reference, and explanation support perspectives. Overall, the SLA tool is a beneficial tool to foster students’ awareness of their own learning and peer learning process, to improve students’ regulation and reflection of learning, and eventually improve student engagement in online discussions.

Approach to Writing from Readers’ Perspectives: Incorporating Self-Evaluation, Peer Feedback, and Self-Reflection into Academic Writing

In teaching academic writing, it is important that teachers encourage students to consider the expectations of readers, which vary depending on the genre and context of writing. Peer feedback, a collaborative learning method, provides students with opportunities to read peers’ writing and give and receive feedback. This study investigated the perceptions of first-year university students’ writing and revising academic essays through self-evaluation, peer feedback, and self-reflection. A total of 122 students wrote and evaluated the first drafts of their essays, read their peers’ essays to evaluate good and problematic areas, revised the drafts, and reflected on the peer feedback. The results indicated that self-evaluation enhanced students’ attention to readers’ expectations and that peer feedback was considered useful by the majority of them. While their essay scores and views on peer feedback did not correlate, the high-graded essay group appreciated peers’ comments on the essay organization. In contrast, the medium-graded group valued comments on the content, whereas the low-graded group viewed citation-related comments as useful. The results suggest that clear, specific, and critical feedback comments were received positively. Self-evaluation and peer feedback enhance students’ collaborative learning, analytical skills, and awareness of readers and their own writing.

Cryptocurrencies and Finance Theories

Cryptocurrency (CCY) as a new key player in the currency system that has drawn the attention of scholars to examine its influence, relations and the opportunities that it may provide. However, a financial theoretical framework to connect CCY with financial theory is missing. This paper fills this gap by providing a review for the theoretical framework introduced in the literature to position CCY in investment and finance theories. This is done by studying the CCY literature and providing a critical feedback on the overall contributions in the area and possible venues for improvement. We report a need for a long-term analysis for CCY as this asset class is fairly new and sufficient data may not be available. Moreover, a better connection and linking with finance theories is required as it is significantly deficient. The promising potential of blockchain/ CCY stresses the need for interdisciplinary research including business, legal and information technology disciplines. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic opens the door for further research to investigate the role of CCY as a hedge in the times of crises. Keywords: digital ledger technology, cryptocurrency bitcoin, finance theory, investment, fintech

Student’s Perspective and Teachers’ Metacognition: Applications of Eye-Tracking in Education and Scientific Research in Schools

This Perspective article discusses the possible contributions of eye-tracking (ET) to the field of Educational Neuroscience based on an application of this tool at schools. We sought to explore the teachers’ view of ET videos recorded while students solved mathematical problems. More than 90% of the teachers could predict with great accuracy whether the students had answered the questions correctly or not based solely on the information provided by the ET videos. Almost all participants tried to translate the students’ thoughts to understand the strategy used by the children. Our results highlight the relevance of qualitative analysis to identify the gaze strategies used by students. We propose that ET allows teachers to gain critical feedback about students’ behavior during problem-solving. Most previous studies tend to emphasize the benefits of ET applications to explore learners’ cognition. Our findings point that this system can also be useful to investigate teachers’ cognition by providing metacognitive experiences.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION – AUTOMATING CURRICULUM ASSESSMENT

The perpetual need for developing a sustainable economic environment places the education policies at the foundation of social adaptability. Creating and maintaining curriculum content that meets the demands of a continuously changing society, and the challenges that such a rapid evolution put on the labour market, is one of the top priorities for any education system and institution involved in education at any level. This paper proposes a cognitive computing solution for assessing, in a programmatic manner, large corpora of curriculum content created by teachers from lower secondary education environment for Informatics instruction in Romanian schools. The result of this initiative at the national level is corpora of curricular content that must be evaluated to verify the degree to which the material meets the requirements of the national curriculum. We addressed this crucial yet tedious process by designing and implementing a solution for automating curriculum assessment through cognitive computing. The paper outlines a sustainable framework to evaluate curriculum content in an automated fashion, and for providing critical feedback timely to both content creators, and to policy makers responsible for creating economically viable and future adaptable education strategies.

How Reducing Discomfort Impacts Peer Assessments of Preservice Teachers

This study examined the effects of a feedback model called Peer Review of Teaching (PRT) on preservice teachers’ learning. In this model, preservice teachers (n = 81) participated in critical feedback on teaching demonstrations in the absence of presenters. Presented are four themes of the experience of teaching and sharing feedback including how the absence of a peer presenter impacted feedback process. Our findings suggest that teacher educators create intellectually safe and sensitive learning opportunities with critical feedback for preservice teachers to engage in a professional practice of peer assessments.

Cantilever self-excited with a higher mode by a piezoelectric actuator

The sensitivity of vibration-type sensors can be improved using a higher resonating frequency of a cantilever resonator. Resonance in such systems can be achieved using a self-excited oscillation, which overcomes the difficulty of using an external excitation in viscous environments. To enhance the sensitivity of cantilever resonators, several groups have proposed ways to increase the natural frequency of the first mode by changing the cantilever geometry. However, the sensitivity can be further improved by using a self-excited oscillation with a higher mode in addition to the geometry-changing technique. In this study, we present a method to realize this goal. We perform a nonlinear analysis of the governing equation of a cantilever excited by a piezoelectric actuator. For each mode, we also clarify the dependence of the critical feedback gain on the location of a displacement sensor, the output of which is used for feedback control. With the aid of filters, we then devise a way to generate a self-excited oscillation with a higher mode associated with a desired higher natural frequency. Finally, we carry out experiments using a macrocantilever and report the observation of a self-excited oscillation with the second natural frequency, which is higher than the first natural frequency.

How do we learn music? Collecting feedback from Kastamonu University music students

The study studied how students studying music at Kastamonu University learn about music and whether they receive additional help in 2020. The first study detailed in this article focused on identifying student perceptions and how they learned music, and aimed to come up with suggestions on how to better meet the needs of music students. To do this, we conducted two focus group interviews with music graduate (N = 6) and undergraduate (N = 4) students. Participants said that the timing of the study should better reflect their work and that the studies should be more disciplinary and better designed for graduate students. They also felt that they did not get enough critical feedback and there was a lack of standardization in the training and concert work. However, the participants also felt that the teachers were helpful, the programming contributed well to their work and the support increased their confidence. Two unexpected findings were that students generally access some form of programming offered by the school rather than take advantage of the diverse offerings, and students have misconceptions about the possibilities the school offers and how to use them. It is hoped that this study will help inform other student academic support services about focus group research for the purpose of collecting music program evaluation and student feedback.

Reinforcement of Grammatical Structures through Explicit Instruction in Palenquero Creole: A Pilot Study

The Afro-Hispanic creole, Palenquero, has been spoken (together with Spanish) in the village of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, for centuries. Until recently, Palenquero was endangered due to prejudice, but language revitalization efforts are underway, and younger speakers are learning Palenquero, but with little reinforcement out of school. The school instruction involves no grammatical explanations, almost no student production, or critical feedback. Adult speakers usually do not address younger speakers in Palenquero, thus leaving school-acquired forms suspended without reinforcement. This represents a unique scenario of heritage acquisition of a language with no bidirectional communication between younger and adult speakers. The present study focuses on the use of preverbal particles and prenominal plural marker by heritage speakers of Palenquero before and after explicit instruction. Communication activities explicitly presented the prenominal plural ma and preverbal particles, such as zero morpheme (simple present), asé (habitual), ta (progressive), a (perfective/simple past) and tan (future). Participants performed better at the post-test and results suggest that explicit explanation of grammatical rules, practice, repetition, and corrective feedback improved the usage of ma and tan. This result lines up with previous studies that posit the amount of time and exposure that learners need in order to acquire complex morphology.