Evaluation of an Advanced Topics Workshop in Geropsychology: The Value of Depth in Training

The Geriatric Scholars Program- Psychology Track (GSP-P) was implemented to address the dire shortage of mental health providers with geriatrics expertise within the VA, a large integrated healthcare system. One hundred and five psychologists participated in the GSP-P introductory geropsychology competencies course. Though they exhibited significant improvements in confidence, knowledge, and skills across geropsychology domains, increased depth (in addition to breadth) of training is needed. In 2019, GSP-P implemented an advanced workshop for graduates of the introductory course. Twenty-one psychologists participated in the workshop, which included 3.5 days of expert-led seminars followed by completion of an individualized learning plan over six months. Results from our evaluation indicated significant improvements in four of five geropsychology domains on the Pikes Peak Geropsychology Knowledge and Skill Assessment Tool. Our findings demonstrate continued enhancement of geropsychology competencies through advanced coursework is feasible and improves depth of training, particularly when combined with individualized learning plans.

Creating Tactile Educational Materials for the Visually Impaired and Blind Students Using AI Cloud Computing

There are 24.5 million visually impaired and blind (VIB) students who have limited access to educational materials due to cost or availability. Although advancement in technology is prevalent, providing individualized learning using technology remains a challenge without the proper tools or experience. The TacPic system was developed as an online platform to create tactile educational materials (TEM) based on the image inputs of users who do not have prior experience in tactile photo development or 3D printing. The TacPic system allows the users to simply upload images to a website and uses AI cloud computing on the Amazon Web Services platform. First, it segments and labels the images. Then, the text label is converted into braille words. Subsequently, surface rendering and consolidation of the image and text is performed, before it is converted into a single file that is ready for 3D printing. Currently, the types of TEM that can be created are tactile flashcards, tactile maps, and tactile peg puzzles, which can be developed within a few hours. This is in contrast to a development period of weeks using traditional methods. Furthermore, the tactile educational materials were tested by two VIB teachers and six VIB students. It was found that those who are congenitally blind need more time to identify the object and rely more on the braille labels compared to students who became blind at a later age. Teachers also suggested producing TEM that use simpler images, and TEM that are suitable for both sighted and VIB students. In conclusion, the researchers successfully developed a platform that allows more educators or parents to develop personalized and individualized TEM. In the future, further optimization of the algorithms to improve segmentation and the inclusion of other features, such as color, could be undertaken. Finally, new printing materials and methods are needed to improve printing efficiency.

An Interpretable Pipeline for Identifying At-Risk Students

This paper introduces a novel approach to identify at-risk students with a focus on output interpretability through analyzing learning activities at a finer granularity on a weekly basis. Specifically, this approach converts the predicted output from the former weeks into meaningful probabilities to infer the predictions in the current week for maintaining the consecutiveness among learning activities. To demonstrate the efficacy of our model in identifying at-risk students, we compare the weekly AUCs and averaged performance (i.e., accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score) over each course with the baseline models (i.e., Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Decision Tree), respectively. Furthermore, we adopt a Top- K metric to examine the number of at-risk students that the model is able to identify with high precision during each week. Finally, the model output is interpreted through a model-agnostic interpretation approach to support instructors to make informed recommendations for students’ learning. The experimental results demonstrate the capability and interpretability of our model in identifying at-risk students in online learning settings. In addition to that our work also provides significant implications in building accountable machine learning pipelines that can be used to automatically generated individualized learning interventions while considering fairness between different learning groups.

Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of Individual Educational Route Planning as a Pedagogical Issue

Проблема проектирования индивидуальных образовательных маршрутов учащихся в настоящее время активно обсуждается в связи с выявлением и учетом новых факторов и возможностей, влияющих на результативность и экономичность образования. Наибольшее количество таких исследований до настоящего времени посвящено разработке индивидуальных образовательных маршрутов учащихся с ограниченными возможностями здоровья. Вместе с тем индивидуализация образования не сводится к построению образовательных маршрутов лишь данной категории учащихся, а выступает универсальным принципом организации любого эффективного образования. Возникающее противоречие между необходимостью разработки индивидуальных образовательных маршрутов обучающихся и недостатком современных теоретико-методологических оснований их проектирования еще более обостряется в условиях дистанционного обучения. Соединение идей индивидуализации с цифровизацией и информационными технологиями в контексте решения педагогических задач выступает новым направлением развития теории и практики образования, отдельные стороны которого ранее изучались преимущественно изолированно друг от друга. В процессе содержательного и историко-педагогического анализа и обобщения педагогической литературы авторами дано уточнение понятия «индивидуальный образовательный маршрут». Его можно определить как целенаправленно проектируемую образовательную программу, которая построена на основе когнитивного и деятельностного подходов и обеспечивает обучающемуся возможность самоопределения и самореализации в процессе образования. Обоснован когнитивный подход к индивидуализации образования как соответствующий актуальным взглядам на познавательные процессы. Показано, что сущность понятия «индивидуализация обучения» развивается и содержательно наполняется в зависимости от доминирующих на определенном историческом этапе психолого-педагогических взглядов на процессы усвоения и переработки информации, а понятие «индивидуальный образовательный маршрут» выступает современным способом индивидуализации в условиях информационного общества, расширяющего доступность и возможности получения образования. Представления о факторах, положенных в основу индивидуализации обучения, развиваются от общих и внешних (возраст обучаемых, социальная принадлежность, особенности изучаемого материала) к внутренним когнитивным особенностям и активности каждого обучающегося (зона ближайшего развития, интересы, задатки, склонности, способы восприятия и т. д.). Теоретическое обоснование и концептуальное описание трансформации понятия «индивидуальный образовательный маршрут» составляют научную новизну, а обогащение представлений об индивидуализации и индивидуальном образовательном маршруте на основе когнитивного подхода — теоретическую значимость представленного исследования, результаты которого могут быть использованы при проектировании индивидуальных образовательных маршрутов обучающихся, в том числе в условиях дистанционного образования. The issue of planning learners’ individual educational routes is widely discussed in modern research which takes into account new factors, possibilities and other aspects that influence the effectiveness and the economical character of education. The majority of modern authors have focused on the issue of individual educational route planning for learners with health impairments. However, the issue of individual educational route planning should not be thus limited. It is essential that researchers should develop effective educational routes for all learners. The contradiction between the necessity to develop individual educational routes for learners and the lack of modern theoretical and methodological foundations to substantiate it has become highly relevant in the conditions of distance learning. The integration of individualization, digitalization and informatization (which have previously been investigated separately) for the solution of pedagogical tasks is a novel trend in the development of theory and practice of education. The content, historical-pedagogical analysis and the analysis of pedagogical literature enable the authors to define the concept of individual educational route. It can be defined as an educational program developed on the basis of cognitive approach and activity approach and enables learners to individually and independently identify and fulfill their educational goals. The article maintains that the cognitive approach felly meets the requirement of education individualization. The article shows that the development of the notion of individualization of education is related to psychological and pedagogical views on the processes of information assimilation and processing. It maintains that the notion of individual educational route is a contemporary means of individualization in the context of modern information society which is characterized by better availability of education. The article takes into consideration both external factors of individualized learning (such as learners’ age, their social identity, information they learn) and internal factors of individualized learning (immediate development, interests, abilities, ways of perception, etc.). The theoretical foundation and the conceptual description of the transformation undergone by the notion of individual educational route constitutes the novelty of the research. The investigation of the notions of individualization and individual educational route through the prism of the cognitive approach accounts for the theoretical significance of the research whose results can be used to plan learners’ individual educational routes in the conditions of online and offline education.

Problems of digitalization of higher education in Russia

Researched is the process of undergoing great changes, caused by the transition of all universities in the country to online education in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The article deals with specific problems, risks and challenges related to the digitalization of higher education: digital inequality, closely related to digital literacy, the lack of a unified way of communication between students and teachers, the lack of generally accepted platform solutions for conducting classes online; the actual growth of the teacher’s workload in the conditions of digitalization of education, which is not yet taken into account in the system of rationing of remuneration, professional burnout in a sufficiently large number of teachers, lack of motivation and self-discipline of students, increased bureaucratization of the higher education system. The experience of implementing digitalization into education during the pandemic dispelled myths about the benefits of an immersive education model and individualized learning based on online technologies. Digitalized learning is focuses primarily at memorization and reproduction, and not at comprehension and critical perception. A comprehensive solution to these problems is the introduction of new models of educational programs.