Search Results (129)

The accelerating digitalization of education has heightened the need for instructional approaches that are developmentally appropriate for young learners and capable of supporting both linguistic growth and creative speech production. This study investigates the pedagogical potential of integrating adapted English-language podcasts and media-based tasks into primary English instruction to foster originality, contextual coherence, expressive flexibility, and emotional richness in learners’ productive speech. The research employed a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design implemented in intact classroom groups and involved 233 third- and fourth-grade students (experimental group, n = 116; control group, n = 117). Over one academic semester (January–May 2025), the experimental group participated in a structured programme embedded within regular lessons that combined short podcast episodes with dialogic and narrative tasks, while the control group followed the standard curriculum without podcast integration or comparable multimedia enrichment. Data analysis combined quantitative comparison of pre- and post-intervention speech outcomes with qualitative evaluation of learners’ oral and written products, supplemented by student and teacher feedback. The results showed statistically significant improvements in the experimental group across key indicators of creative speech performance. Qualitative evidence further indicated a shift toward more independent, personally meaningful language use, with learners demonstrating greater willingness to experiment with narrative transformation, evaluative retelling, and expressive variation. Taken together, the findings suggest that adapted podcasts, when systematically integrated into routine classroom practice, can serve as an effective and feasible tool for strengthening creative speech development in primary English language education and for enriching contemporary media pedagogy in digitally evolving learning environments. Full article

The world is constantly challenged by complex crises—from the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions to economic uncertainty and severe environmental disasters. During these critical times, individuals need to reflect on ethical values and demonstrate responsible decision-making, integrity, and preparedness to mitigate the impact of future crises. Education can play an instrumental role in these endeavours. This study presents the user experience and usability evaluation of PREPARED App—an educational mobile application developed to raise users’ awareness on the ethical dimensions of global challenges through real-life case studies. The captivating narratives, clear structure, ease-of-use, and multimedia content were reported as key strengths of the mobile app by both users (n = 54) and experts (n = 4). Suggestions were also captured for enriching the learning experience through enhanced customisation options, personalised feedback mechanisms, and accessibility features. A set of pedagogical guidelines is extracted to enable instructional designers, educators, and mobile application developers to create accessible and engaging mobile learning experiences. Full article

Recommender systems represent an essential infrastructure for digital platforms. To understand their evolution, we analyze 15,944 Web of Science publications (1980–2025) using bibliometric techniques, generative and transformer models for sentiment analysis and latent topic modeling. Our analysis yields three major findings. First, e-commerce recommendation research exhibits rapid growth in advanced representation techniques, with compound annual growth rates for contrastive learning (187%), graph neural networks (89%) and federated learning (72%). Second, algorithmic fairness and privacy preservation have emerged as critical research directions. Third, collaborative networks indicate a geographical shift, with Asia–Pacific regions becoming influential research hubs. The methodology integrates CAGR analysis with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA, coherence score = 0.687) and BERTopic for thematic mapping and network analysis. Additionally, we employ sentiment analysis (VADER, TextBlob and a sentiment analysis pipeline from Hugging Face Transformers) and temporal heatmaps to capture research narratives. Topic modeling with LDA identifies five core themes: (1) Collaborative Filtering; (2) Machine Learning and Educational Systems; (3) Web Services and Business Applications; (4) Content and Multimedia Recommendations; (5) Graph Neural Networks and Advanced Models. BERTopic provides eight more nuanced themes based on semantics. Citation patterns follow the Pareto principle, where the top 1% of articles account for 29.1% of all citations, confirming a highly skewed impact distribution. Notably, established keywords show declining trajectories, indicating a methodological evolution toward newer, deep learning and generative AI-based paradigms. Full article

Medical education requires learners to integrate complex basic science knowledge with clinical reasoning, with endocrinology posing particular challenges due to nonlinear feedback and system-level interactions. Although serious games may enhance learning, many implementations are individual/solitary, and evidence for analog serious trading card games is limited. This study evaluated a mnemonic-driven Medimon Learning Card Game (LCG) designed to support systems-based endocrine education. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with first-year medical students during an endocrine course block. All students received identical instruction, while a subset participated in a guided, competitive Medimon LCG session. Achievement was assessed using a pretest and a delayed posttest administered two weeks after the intervention, along with course examination performance. Engagement was measured using the Situational Interest Survey for Multimedia (SIS-M) and open-ended responses. Students who participated in the Medimon LCG demonstrated significantly greater delayed learning gains than controls, while course examination performance did not differ between groups. SIS-M results indicated high levels of interest and perceived value, and qualitative findings highlighted affective engagement, cognitive reinforcement, and social interaction. These findings suggest that an analog serious trading card game can enhance engagement and support longer-term retention of complex endocrine concepts, offering a transferable framework for socially mediated game-based learning in medical education. Full article

Background: Dental caries and poor oral hygiene remain major public health problems among school-aged children, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Teachers play a strategic role in delivering sustainable school-based oral health education; however, their effectiveness depends on appropriate pedagogical training. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a multimedia-assisted microteaching intervention for elementary school teachers in improving students’ oral health knowledge, attitudes, practices, and oral hygiene status. Methods: A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was employed. Quantitative data were collected from 582 students and their teachers across three groups: multimedia-enhanced microteaching, multimedia-only training, and a control group. Outcomes were assessed using Knowledge–Attitude–Practice (KAP) questionnaires, the Oral Hygiene Index–Simplified (OHI-S), and the Decayed, Missing, and Filled Teeth (DMFT) index before and after a two-month implementation period. Non-parametric statistical tests were applied. Qualitative data were obtained through focus group discussions with teachers and were analyzed thematically. Results: Students in the multimedia-enhanced microteaching group demonstrated greater improvements in KAP scores and OHI-S values compared with the multimedia-only and control groups (p < 0.05). Qualitative findings indicated increased teacher confidence, improved classroom engagement, and better integration of oral health education into daily lessons. Changes in DMFT values were interpreted descriptively due to the short follow-up period. Conclusions: Multimedia-assisted microteaching appears to be a promising approach for strengthening teacher-led oral health education and improving short-term behavioral and hygiene outcomes among elementary school children. Further longitudinal studies are needed to assess long-term clinical effects. Full article

Anticoagulant pharmacology is a cognitively demanding domain in undergraduate medical education, with persistent challenges in learner engagement, retention, and safe clinical application. Cinematic Clinical Narratives (CCNs) offer a theory-informed multimedia approach designed to support learning through narrative structure, visual mnemonics, and affective engagement. We conducted a multi-site quasi-experimental study within a six-week Cancer, Hormones, and Blood course across a distributed medical education program. First-year medical students received either a traditional case-based lecture or an animated CCN (Twilight: Breaking Clots) during a one-hour anticoagulant pharmacology session. Learning outcomes were assessed using pre- and posttests, learner engagement was measured with the Situational Interest Survey for Multimedia (SIS-M), and exploratory eye tracking with second-year medical students was used to assess visual attention to embedded mnemonics. Both instructional groups demonstrated significant learning gains, with fold-change analyses indicating greater relative improvement among students exposed to the CCN. The animated CCN elicited significantly higher triggered situational interest compared with non-animated cases (p = 0.019), while also being preferred by the majority of participants. Qualitative analysis revealed that learners perceived CCNs as particularly effective for initial encoding and memorization, while non-animated cases supported subsequent clinical application. Eye-tracking data demonstrated high visual uptake and sustained attention to key mnemonic elements. Together, these findings support expert-designed, genAI-assisted CCNs as a validated and complementary instructional approach in medical education. Full article

Digital storytelling (DST) is an innovative pedagogical approach that integrates multimedia creation, personal narrative, and autonomy in L2 education. Yet, its influence on learner engagement remains underexplored in asynchronous delivery modes and non-conventional language learning settings, common in post-pandemic instructional practice. This study thus examines the engagement patterns of 34 student-teachers of English in an afterschool asynchronous DST task about teacher identity. The study further scrutinises their emotional engagement, given its impact on other engagement domains, and its relevance for online instructional design. Data were collected through a background information questionnaire, a validated student engagement questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews that focused on emotional engagement. Questionnaire data were analysed quantitatively using descriptive statistics and repeated measures ANOVA, and interview data were examined qualitatively using thematic analysis and specific emotional engagement-related frameworks. Results indicated participants’ higher cognitive and behavioural engagement, and lower emotional engagement. Their emotional engagement comprised positive emotions and anxiety, which emerged from specific subjective task values, autonomy, and task affordances in interaction with self-imposed personal standards and perceived digital skills. These findings challenge the common conceptualisation of emotional engagement merely as positive affect in L2 tasks and signal the importance of task- and learner-related factors in an engagement-driven online L2 pedagogy. Full article

Informal learning in institutional settings plays a vital role in lifelong education by fostering self-directed knowledge acquisition. With the increasing integration of digital media into these environments, augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a particularly promising technology due to its ability to overlay virtual content in real-time and across multiple sensory modalities. This systematic literature review investigates the use of AR in institutional informal learning places (IILPs) from 2018 to 2025, aiming to synthesize findings across the following overall research questions: (1) In which IILP contexts has AR been implemented, and what are the characteristics of the technology? (2) What learning-relevant functions and (3) outcomes are associated with AR in these settings? (4) Which learning theories underpin the design of AR interventions? Following the PRISMA guidelines, empirical studies were identified through comprehensive database searches (Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, FIS Bildung) and cross-referencing. Forty-four studies were analyzed via qualitative content analysis. The goal is to provide a descriptive overview of findings, patterns, and relationships. Findings indicate that AR is widely adopted across diverse domains and institutional contexts, primarily through mobile-based AR applications for K–12 learning. Native app development signals growing technological maturity. AR enhances both cognitive and emotional-motivational outcomes, though its potential to support social interaction remains insufficiently investigated. The predominant function of AR is the provision of information. Most of the examined studies are grounded in constructivist or cognitivist learning theories, particularly the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. Only limited references to emotional-motivational frameworks and minimal references to behaviorist frameworks were found. Full article

Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) have emerged as an alternative to Traditional Field Trips (TFTs), addressing logistical, financial, and accessibility constraints in geoscience education. This study presents a comparative analysis of the educational impact of a VFT and a TFT implemented with the same 10th-grade class in a Portuguese secondary school. The VFT, focused on volcanism and its socioeconomic impacts, used Google Earth to explore the island of São Miguel in the Azores. The TFT, centred on the rock cycle, was conducted at the Lavadores Beach geological site. Both interventions followed the field-based learning model by Orion and were structured around three phases: preparation, field trip (virtual or traditional), and post-activity synthesis. Data was collected through diagnostic tests, schematization, observation grids, student reports (snapshot), group projects, and written responses to a fieldwork guide recorded on Padlet during the VFT and TFT. The results showed that both VFTs and TFTs enhance conceptual understanding and student engagement, though they foster different skills: VFTs strengthen digital literacy, improve accessibility and inclusion for students with mobility or geographic constraints, allow for content revisitation, foster collaboration among students, integrate multimedia resources, and enable virtual exploration of remote locations that would otherwise be inaccessible. They also offer reduced costs, greater scheduling flexibility, and allow for individualised pacing of student learning. In contrast, TFTs provide richer sensory and practical experiences that are essential for hands-on scientific inquiry and foster stronger connections with the natural environment. The study concludes that a complementary use of both strategies offers the most inclusive and effective approach to teaching geosciences. Full article

Cross-modal and immersive technologies offer new opportunities for experiential learning in early childhood, yet few studies examine integrated systems that combine multimedia, mini-games, 3D exploration, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) within a unified environment. This article presents the design and implementation of the Solar System Experience (SSE), a cross-modal extended reality (XR) learning suite developed for preschool education and deployable on low-cost hardware. A dual-perspective evaluation captured both preschool teachers’ adoption intentions and preschool learners’ experiential responses. Fifty-four teachers completed an adapted Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) questionnaire, while seventy-two students participated in structured sessions with all SSE components and responded to a 32-item experiential questionnaire. Results show that teachers held positive perceptions of cross-modal XR learning, with Subjective Norm emerging as the strongest predictor of Behavioral Intention. Students reported uniformly high engagement, with AR and the interactive eBook receiving the highest ratings and VR perceived as highly engaging yet accompanied by usability challenges. The findings demonstrate how cross-modal design can support experiential learning in preschool contexts and highlight technological, organizational, and pedagogical factors influencing educator adoption and children’s in situ experience. Implications for designing accessible XR systems for early childhood and directions for future research are discussed. Full article

Background: Digitalisation is transforming medical education, but its integration into ultrasound training remains limited. This study evaluates the needs of students and physicians regarding digitally supported ultrasound education. Materials and Methods: A multi-year cross-sectional study (2017–2022) employed two standardised questionnaires. The first assessed the perceived relevance of ultrasound in medical education, the desirability of compulsory teaching, and the integration of digital media and case-based learning. The second explored user-centred requirements for e-learning formats, including functionality, multimedia design, usability, interactivity, and financing, as well as current use of digital devices and reference materials. Data were collected using dichotomous and 7-point Likert scales (1 = high need/strong agreement, 7 = low need/weak agreement). Results: A total of 3479 responses were analysed (2821 students; 658 physicians). Both groups showed strong support for integrating ultrasound into curricula (1.3 ± 0.7) and mandatory education (1.4 ± 0.9), with students expressing significantly greater support (p < 0.001). There was broad agreement on the integration and development of digital media (1.7 ± 1.0), as well as the use of case studies (1.4 ± 0.8), with no significant differences between groups (p > 0.05). Case-based learning as a stand-alone format was less favoured (3.4 ± 1.9). In the user-centred needs analysis, both groups rated features like search functions (1.4 ± 0.8), usability (1.5 ± 0.9), and learning objective checks (2.7 ± 1.6) as important. High-quality media (1.5 ± 0.9) and pathology explanations (1.6 ± 1.1) were also highly valued. Students primarily relied on digital platforms, while physicians used a more varied mix of digital platforms, guidelines, and textbooks. Conclusions: The study highlights the need for more extensive, digitally supported ultrasound training, with a focus on functionality and usability. Standardisation through structured certification processes should be considered for future implementation. Full article

The study aims to establish a comprehensive framework aligning institutional governance, pedagogical theories, and teaching practice for the sustainable adoption of AI-facilitated digital representatives of human instructors in higher education videos within universities. The study employs a systemic qualitative approach and grounded theory principles to analyze administrative/legal documents and academic publications. The methodology includes source searching and screening, automated text analysis using the Lexalytics tool, clustering and thematic interpretation of the findings, and a subsequent discussion of the emerging perspectives. Following the analysis of international/supranational/national regulations, the findings reveal a significant regulatory gap for humans’ digital representatives in educational videos and suggest a governance baseline for tailored institutional guidelines that address data protection, copyright, and ethical compliance. Theoretically, the study synthesizes evidence-informed educational theories and concepts to form a robust theoretical foundation for using humans’ digital representatives in higher education instructional videos and identifies constructivism, student-centered personalized learning, multimodal multimedia-based learning principles, smart and flipped classrooms, and post-digital relations pedagogy as crucial foundational concepts. The findings suggest a thematic taxonomy that outlines diverse digital representative types, their varying efficiency based on knowledge and course type, and university community attitudes highlighting benefits and challenges. The overall contribution of this research lies in an integrated interdisciplinary framework—including the legal context, pedagogical theory, and promising practices—that guides the responsible use of digital human representatives in higher education videos. Full article

This study examines how higher education students use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for academic tasks and identifies the types of tasks in which these tools are employed. Our research was conducted in a large multidisciplinary university in Israel. Data from 825 eligible responses to an open-ended item underwent a conventional content analysis using a bottom-up coding approach; data were coded inductively in an iterative process, achieving substantial inter-rater reliability. The findings produced the SOI-MARSMeLLAW framework, which maps eight themes of GenAI use (by frequency, from higher to lowest)—Writing, Learning, Reading, Searching, Meta-learning, Multimedia, Analysis, and Learning Aids—across three information channels: Self, Output, and Input. Overall, we find that students rely on GenAI primarily to support rather than replace their learning, suggesting a flexible and strategic approach that balances efficiency with agency. Two follow-up analyses using the broad data looked at domain-specificity and Task-Centered GenAI Literacy. We found that STEM students emphasizing Learning tasks and non-STEM students highlighting Reading, Meta-learning, and Searching; and that literacy was higher for Writing-related tasks than for Learning-related tasks. These findings have implications for GenAI policy in higher education institutions, and for the redesign of pedagogy and assessment in higher education. Full article

Designing laboratory experiences that support both skill development and conceptual understanding is a persistent challenge in introductory chemistry education—especially within accelerated or compressed course formats. To address this need, we developed and implemented a systems-thinking-based laboratory module on error analysis for a large introductory chemistry course at Brown University, composed primarily of first-year students (approximately 150–200 students in the spring semesters). Unlike traditional labs that isolate single techniques or concepts, this module integrates calorimetry, precipitation reactions, vacuum filtration, and quantitative uncertainty analysis into a unified experiment. Students explore how procedural variables interact to affect experimental outcomes, promoting a holistic understanding of accuracy, precision, and uncertainty. The module is supported by multimedia pre-lab materials, including faculty-recorded lectures and interactive videos developed through Brown’s Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA) program. These resources prepare students for hands-on work while reinforcing key theoretical concepts. A mixed-methods assessment across four semesters (n > 600) demonstrated significant learning gains, particularly in students’ ability to analyze uncertainty and distinguish between accuracy and precision. Although confidence in applying significant figures slightly declined post-lab, this may reflect increased awareness of complexity rather than decreased understanding. This study highlights the educational value of integrating systems thinking into early-semester laboratory instruction. The module is accessible, cost-effective, and adaptable for a variety of institutional settings. Its design advances chemistry education by aligning foundational skill development with interdisciplinary thinking and real-world application. Full article

This study explores the pedagogical impact of a student-led teaching strategy in veterinary education, centered on the implementation of a monitored question-and-answer (Q&A) game integrated with multimedia content. Conducted in a classroom setting, the intervention encouraged students to actively formulate and pose questions to their peers—questions that could potentially appear on future assessments. The sessions were recorded and transformed into multimedia resources, enabling content review beyond the classroom. Results indicate a high student participation during practical activities (89.33%), as well as enhanced engagement with course material outside scheduled sessions. Students’ perceptions were collected in a survey (Cronbach’s alpha 0.920), revealing that more than sixty percent of answers fostered collaborative learning and anatomy assessments preparation. Moreover, fifty percent of students affirmed that the activity enhanced their participation and motivation and stimulated peer-to-peer interaction. These results could suggest that gamified student-led questioning combined with digital content creation can effectively support active learning and deeper understanding in veterinary anatomy education. Full article