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To understand how information communication technology (ICT) educational policies have been put into practice in educational settings, we used the acceptance model to analyze the role of teacher characteristics in their acceptance of educational policies. By reframing the present technology acceptance model for the context of ICT educational policy, we employed two external factors to explore the correlates of perceived ease of understanding policy (ease of understanding) and perceived ease of incorporating policy (ease of incorporating) into teaching settings to predict the perceived value of the students' learning (value to students). Questionnaires were delivered by email to those participants who attended in-service professional development programs in Taiwan, and data of 372 teachers were collected for confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The results showed that personal traits (self-efficacy and innovativeness in information technology) were positively related to ease of understanding and ease of incorporating; both ease of understanding and ease of incorporating were positively related to value to students; and value to students was positively related to attitude toward implementing future ICT educational policies. The findings of this study may be particularly useful to policy-makers in those countries which often change their ICT educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of gamification can be advantageous to enhancing students' learning. In contrast to the extant gamification literature focusing on designing reward systems and/or facilitating teachers' gamification of learning contents, this study focuses on the gamifying of learning content by students. To verify the efficacy of gamification as a learning activity, the effects of students posing and gamifying questions in relation to second language grammar learning are explored. A gamification platform called TipOn was designed to allow students to pose and gamify questions according to different game modes to facilitate their classmates' practicing English grammar. To examine the emotional regulation effects of posing and gamifying questions on learning performance, this study explored the effectiveness of gamifying content by examining how participants' two types of epistemic curiosity (i.e., interest-type epistemic curiosity (IEC) and deprivation-type epistemic curiosity (DEC)) related to posing questions affected their attitude towards gamification (ATG) and their learning progress. In this experiment, participants had to pose English grammar questions related to verb tense, and gamify the questions using TipOn. They then played games using other students' content. Data were collected from 96 ninth-grade students, and the correlations between constructs were evaluated using the path-analytical technique. The research results indicated that, first, English learning anxiety is negatively related to the two aforementioned types of epistemic curiosity. Second, IEC had no significant impact on ATG; however, DEC was positively associated with ATG. Third, ATG could positively predict students' learning progress. The results imply that teachers could use this gamifying system in a flipped classroom to motivate students to tap into their epistemic curiosity to increase their content learning and enhance the effects of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insect phobia may last for a lifetime and needs to be overcome. This study aimed to design an application, Insect Garden, for students to learn about and experience how to raise four types of insect: Giant Asian Mantis, Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle, Formosan Stag Beetle, and Seven-Spotted Ladybug. It also investigated how the players' self-confidence in interacting with insects could be enhanced. Additionally, to understand the affective factors related to gameplay, this study explored the correlates between personality, insect phobia before gameplay, gameplay interest and self-confidence enhancement in interacting with insects. Data were collected from 211 eighth-grade students, from whom 175 useful data were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results revealed that Extraversion is positively related to gameplay interest but not to Insect phobia, whereas Neuroticism is positively related to Insect phobia and gameplay interest. Insect phobia is negatively related to self-confidence enhancement in interacting with insects, but gameplay is positively related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote association requires players to use their mental transformation to identify objects' relationships by activating knowledge application. A Chinese Remote Association game was designed (example question: □樂□信□車, where the answer is快) to explore learners' cognitive and affective effects, and then eighth grade students were invited to play using their smartphones. Data were collected for confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation modeling. The results revealed that intrinsic cognitive load was negatively related to flow experience, while gameplay interest was positively related to flow experience, and flow experience was positively related to performance progress in Chinese association. The implication of this study is that using remote Chinese association as an application game can enhance players' flow experience and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate older adults' daily activities (e.g., learning activities and companionship) and the relations of these activities with the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). We propose a multilevel model to delineate the effects of daily experiences on the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. The current research was conducted by sending reminder messages and collecting daily responses via the Line@ application on mobile phones. A total of 838 valid records were collected (the average number of records per person was 24.65). In total, 838 daily experiences nested 34 older adults' completed diary records for the study. The average age was 63.44 years (SDage = 5.90, range from 52 to 75), and 82.4% were female (i.e., 28 women and 6 men). Each participant needed to complete their record each day throughout the 10-day period. The results of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed that learning for the elderly, as compared with doing all other activities, is positively related with the satisfaction of the autonomy need but negatively associated with the satisfaction of the competence need. Furthermore, eating as compared with learning for older adults is more likely to satisfy the competence and relatedness needs; however, learning as compared with watching TV may foster satisfaction of the autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. In addition, as long as they are accompanied, regardless of who their companions are, compared with being alone, the older adults perceived greater satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers’ professional development (PD) receives a great deal of attention in current educational settings. However, research has shown that many teachers hesitate to attend PD programs. In this study, data were collected from 270 elementary school teachers and were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to examine their intention to attend the weekly PD programs on Wednesday afternoons (PDWAP). The results revealed that the participants value the acquisition of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) more than they value pedagogical knowledge (PK) and content knowledge (CK) because of the expected usefulness of each for teaching. Moreover, the results of this study have implications for PD program design, and call for a stronger focus on PCK. AbbreviationAdjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI); Analysis of Moment Structures(AMOS); average variance (AVE); Chi-square(); content knowledge (CK); continuing professional development (CPD); Comparative Fit Index (CFI); degree of freedom (df); expectancy-value theory (EVT); Goodness of Fit Index (GFI); Incremental Fit Index (IFI); Mean(M); Parsimonious Goodness of Fit Index (PGFI); Parsimonious Normed Fit Index (PNFI); Parsimonious comparative-fit-index (PCFI); pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); pedagogical knowledge (PK); professional development (PD); professional development programs on Wednesday afternoons (PDWAP); Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA); standard deviation (SD); structural equation modeling (SEM); square of multiple correlation coefficients (R2); Teaching Beliefs Survey (TBS); theory of planned behavior (TPB); Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI); United Kingdom (UK) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of Southeast Asian Heritage Learning Chinese (SSAHLC) in Taiwan have frequently demonstrated difficulty with traditional Chinese (a graphical character) radical recognition due to their limited exposure to the written language form since childhood. In this study, we designed a Chinese radical learning game (CRLG), which adopted a drill and practice mode, for SSAHLC to practice recognizing Chinese radicals. To facilitate Chinese writing, non-native learners need to use aspects of the radical knowledge as cues to encode characters, from which the contents of the game were built up for SSAHLC to master the Chinese written forms by playing the CRLG with gesture-based interactions. In addition, the game was used to explore the students’ intrinsic motivation relevant to online learning self-efficacy, as well as the experience of flow, to predict the degree of learning progress. Data were collected from 78 SSAHLC participating in the study, and 73 valid questionnaires were returned. After applying confirmatory factor analysis as well as structural equation modeling to the valid data, it was found that four constructs, namely intrinsic motivation, online learning self-efficacy, flow experience, and learning progress, were all positively correlated. Our results indicated that intrinsic motivation of Chinese learning predicted online learning self-efficacy, and that flow experience was relevant to the students’ learning progress. Moreover, the degree of learning progress could be predicted by the mediating factors. These findings imply that heritage language teachers may utilize the CRLG to enhance learners’ Chinese radical recognition ability, and eventually improve their Chinese character recognition ability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Consequential reasoning relevant to moral development has not been effectively practised in elementary schools in Taiwan. The present study designed a “To Do or Not To Do” website for students to explore moral dilemma situations and exercise consequence-based moral reasoning. Effective data from 160 fifth-grade students were collected for a confirmatory factor analysis and subjected to structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that with a higher perceived level of parental monitoring; the participants had a higher level of pro-social tendency and a lower level of impulsivity. In addition, a lower level of impulsivity was significantly associated with a greater interest in blended learning to practice moral consequential reasoning. The results suggest that teachers could use the To Do or Not To Do website as part of a flipped classroom for students to practice moral consequential reasoning to maximize the moral development of less impulsive students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new approach to moral education using blended learning has been developed. This approach involves 10 scenarios that are designed as a web-based game and serves as a basis for group moral-consequence-based reasoning, which is developed based on a hypothetical-deductive model. The aim of the study was to examine the changes in students' blended learning interest and reasoning ability in a time series experimental design. After playing the game with the 10 initial scenarios during the first week of the study, participants were subjected to five blended learning sessions that required them to discuss the consequences of one of the 10 scenarios using hypothetical-deductive reasoning. After six weeks, the data from the 110 participants were analyzed using time series statistics. The results indicated that players were highly interested in the game, although their interest had a tendency to decrease slightly over time. Repetitive game play (i.e. practice) was positively associated with the players' moral reasoning performance. The study results may lend support to the design of a game with additional or more highly complex content for players to further develop students' consequential reasoning ability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Educational games can be viewed in two ways, “learning to play” or “playing to learn.” The Chinese Idiom String Up Game was specifically designed to examine the effect of “learning to play” on the interrelatedness of players' gameplay interest, competitive anxiety, and perceived utility of pre-game learning (PUPGL). Data from 288 subjects were validated and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results indicated that players' pre-game learning attitude (PGLA) served positively to predict participants' gameplay interest and reflected a higher level of PUPGL of learning gameplay. PGLA was negatively correlated to competitive anxiety but was not significantly associated with players' PUPGL of learning gameplay. These results implied that by enhancing players' willingness to learn before engaging in a competitive game can contribute to increased gameplay interest and reduced competitive anxiety, thereby reinforcing the benefits of educational games. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The venerable aphorism “an old dog cannot learn new tricks” implies that the elderly rarely learn anything new—in particular, scientific knowledge. On the basis of “learning by doing,” the present study emphasized knowledge application (KA) as elderly subjects collaborated on the design of a toy flying saucer (UFO). Three types of KA were identified by questioning the work: Type 1—knowing neither how nor why; Type 2—knowing how, but not why; and, Type 3—knowing how and why. The results indicated that female elderly subjects more often exhibited Type 1 of KA compared with male elderly. The evidence supported a KA of Type 3 for those who had a science background, as they performed better than those without a science background. However, even those without a science background were able to produce science toys if they worked cooperatively, particularly when they could learn from others who had a science background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We developed an embodied interactive video game (EIVG) that is both educational and entertaining with the hope of using such a system to compare blended and pure digital learning with respect to differences in learning effectiveness. In addition to conducting experiments wherein the children learned using the EIVG, we also involved teachers as part of the study to allow observation of the emotional aspects of the children. The results of the study can be summarized by the following three points: (1) the effectiveness of blended learning was superior to that of pure digital learning; (2) the effectiveness of EIVG learning was better for boys than it was for girls, although the differences between them were not significant; and (3) the EIVG was highly entertaining, which resulted in students remaining highly interested and focused throughout the study. It is worth noting that both types of learning can be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Daily physical activities may slow down the deterioration of cognitive aging. This study intended to develop embodiment interactive video games with friendly human-machine interface to break through the elder's literacy, cognitive aging, and psychomotor hindrances toward technology. Another objective was to understand, through field experiments the perceived usability of the video games as well as their dependability and flow experiences on this platform.. Thirty elders constituted the sample for this study. Based on interviews and observations, this study found that the usability and dependability of this platform were high. Flow experiences occurred depending on the prior knowledge and interactive modules of the games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Playfulness steering is an emerging approach in educational game design and play. The integration of arithmetical computation, game strategy, and teamwork into one game allows players to interactively “steer” the playfulness and enhance learning. In this paper an evolutionary contest game was designed and implemented to examine the influencial factors. Using action research, focus groups and hermeneutic methods, this study suggest that the playfulness design of an evolutionary game is influenced by the degree of uncertainty and flexibility in decision-making, the level of challenge, equal conditions for fair play, opportunities to compete/cooperate, and the level of interactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Taiwan there is a declining birth rate and a dramatic increase in the elderly population. There is also the trend of using school space that would otherwise be left unused. The experimental project “Toy Clinic Shop in Elementary School” offers an innovative management model for elementary schools to address these developments. The following are included in the project goals: lifelong learning, service learning, and intergenerational interaction. The Toy Clinic Shop is not only a place offering the opportunity for intergenerational contact, but also for sharing and learning from each other. When the elderly contribute to the shop, they enjoy being with children, and they can experience the so called Ta Tung world of utopia where they enjoy being with young people. Furthermore, schools can benefit from the project because it promotes a school's many functions, collects more resources, creates social value among retired people, and develops the human resource of the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]