Category: IICTCHawaii2016
Strategies and Methods for Creating an Educational Computer Game that Teaches Idioms
This paper will explain a number of strategies and evidence-based methods which were used to ensure the effective teaching of idioms to English as a Second Language students. Idioms are low-frequency vocabulary which require explicit instruction. In such a situation, it is often difficult to engage students and promote long-term learning. One method of addressing …
Enhancing Vocabulary Learning through Pictures by E-Mails
This paper reports on the study of students’ vocabulary learning through pictures by e-mail and their attitude towards their learning. Seventy- two fourth year students of English for International Communication major studied in a five week vocabulary learning enhancement activity. Each student had two jobs to do in the process of learning vocabulary. One, the student …
‘Digital Natives’ Require Basic Digital Literacy Skills
This paper discusses a Digital Academic Literacy (DAL) Programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). It highlights the Programme__s response to and alignment with emerging South African Higher Education (HE) national policy imperatives and discourses which include, the effective integration of ICTs for teaching-and-learning; and the need to increase and continue large-scale targeted …
Individual Differences, Multi-Tasking and Learning in Virtual Environments
Virtual environments are inherently social spaces where user productivity and collaborative learning can take place. As part of a thesis dissertation, this study investigated the importance of structuring learning environments within virtual worlds to maximize learning and minimize different types of distractions, accounting for individual differences between learners. Using an OpenSim virtual environment, the researchers …
A Method of Estimating Cooperative Activities in Collaborative Learning Based on Participants’ Spatial Relationships
Collaborative learning has become more and more important in education area. In most collaborative works, students are separated into groups, where the possible scope of teachers might be strongly limited. Therefore, automatic feedback based on sensing the state of students during collaborative work is helpful for effective educational guidance. In this work, we focus on …
Rethinking the Promise of Scratch in the Applied Linguistics Classroom: Students’ Perspectives, Instructor’s Observations
For the past five fall semesters (2010-2014), undergraduate and graduate students taking applied linguistics (LN400, LN500) at the University of Guam were required to explore the promise of SCRATCH by designing projects relevant to their individual fields of specialization, from language teaching and literature, to pragmatics and sociolinguistics. SCRATCH, a free downloadable program from MIT …
Designing Science Simulations in Accordance with Research-Based Guidelines: A Case Study Approach
Educational researchers have shown experimentally that student learning through animations and videos can be made more effective through the consideration of a number of cognitive based design principles. The applicability of these evidence based guidelines in the design of complex science simulations for a popular online course regarding life on other planets is documented in …