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The switch to online learning required a creative solution to allow for the experiential learning outcomes of the program to be satisfied when access to physical spaces and equipment was restricted. This paper describes a collaborative process between technical and support staff as well as research and teaching faculty that led to the creation of meaningful experiential learning opportunities for over one thousand stakeholders. The implemented solutions included the development of hardware and software, the creation of documentation and training procedures for teaching assistants and designing a support system for the students. [Articles in this journal were presented at the University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching.]

We are in the midst of a technological revolution that has the potential to transform management education. The author proposes Virtual Reality (VR) as a pedagogical tool to teach students about workplace harassment. Specifically, this article describes the development and application of two open access VR simulations that are designed to increase students' awareness of sexism and racism at work. These simulations replicate a complex organizational environment and teach students the skills necessary to intervene when they experience or observe workplace harassment. In addition, they provide students with an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a safe and controlled environment. Data from 25 pilot study participants indicate that the VR simulations are impactful, engaging, immersive, and realistic and are able to evoke students' emotions during the decision-making process. Finally, this article elaborates on how to use VR in the classroom and discuses its implications for teaching and research.

Second language (L2) learning research suggests that virtual reality (VR) has the potential to enhance the development of language skills due to its immersive nature and its situated learning opportunities. This quantitative, between-subjects study compared the effectiveness of three learning conditions. University students (N = 63) studied vocabulary annotated on: (1) 360° pictures viewed using a VR headset, (2) 360° pictures viewed on a desktop monitor, and (3) standard two-dimensional (2D) pictures viewed on a desktop monitor (control condition). After the experiment, the students completed productive and receptive posttests measuring vocabulary recall. Through multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA), the study revealed that learning new vocabulary with annotated 360° pictures viewed on a desktop monitor is associated with significantly higher posttests scores, compared with learning using a VR headset or standard 2D pictures. Kruskal-Wallis H tests showed vocabulary learning with 360° to be engaging, but effective only when studied on the 2D monitor. This study has practical implications for VR-assisted language learning and for the design of teaching materials to enhance L2 vocabulary learning.

AI-based simulations for educational and assessment purposes are gaining global recognition. Informed by cultural comparison research, this study investigates cross-country variations in users' utilization and perceptions of a simulation-based assessment. Specifically, we conducted a comparative analysis between a sample of South African and Canadian students to uncover potential differences in assessment scores, communication patterns, and reactions vis-a-vis a simulation assessment for evaluating teamwork skills. Data were collected from over 500 undergraduate students in South Africa and Canada who completed a simulation assessment and reported their reactions and perceptions. The findings yielded several noteworthy observations. First, South African students attained higher assessment scores than Canadian students; although, the difference did not quite reach statistical significance at p < 0.05. Second, significant variations were observed in the quantity and style of communication. South African students used fewer words and more polite language, while Canadian students tended to use more decisive language and provided more explanations and help to their virtual teammates. Third, South African students were more likely to perceive their virtual teammates as "human" and were less concerned whether they were real people or virtual. Lastly, compared with their Canadian counterparts, South African students reported more positive reactions and perceived the assessment to be more accurate. These findings warrant further investigation.

During COVID-19, sudden field placement cancellations impelled schools of social work to find immediate means to support students in the completion of practicums remotely, whilst accreditation standards had yet to be re-articulated and permitted adaptations were unclear. Early "panic-gogy" moved to strategic development of new field pedagogies that build institutional resilience during times of crisis. The social work practicum learning portal (PLP) is one such pedagogy. Designed by Canadian field education faculty and created by community social workers, this series of online modules engages students in experiential learning by simulating the ways students learn in practice. During periods of disruption, the PLP expands access to field placement hours using digital technology and helps equip students for remote practice.

Language planning and policy (LPP), as a field of research, emerged to solve the "problem" of multilingualism in newly independent nation-states. LPP's principal emphasis was the reproduction of one-state, one-language policies. Indigenous languages were systematically erased through top-down, colonial medium-of-instruction policies, such as in Canadian residential schools. To this day, ideologies and policies still privilege dominant classes and languages at the expense of Indigenous and minoritized groups and languages. To prevent further erasure and marginalization, work is required at multiple levels. There is growing consensus that top-down, government-led LPP must occur alongside community-led, bottom-up LPP. One shared and common goal for Indigenous language reclamation and revitalization initiatives across the globe is to promote intergenerational language transmission in the home, the community, and beyond. The affordances of digital and online technologies are also being explored to foster more self-determined virtual communities of practice. Following an Indigenous research paradigm, this paper introduces the "TEK-nology" (Traditional Ecological Knowledge [TEK] and technology) pilot project in the Canadian context. "TEK-nology" is an immersive, community-led, and technology-enabled Indigenous language acquisition approach to support Anishinaabemowin language revitalization and reclamation. The "TEK-nology" pilot project is an example of bottom-up, community-based language planning (CBLP) where Indigenous community members are the language-related decision-makers. This paper demonstrates that Indigenous-led, praxis-driven CBLP, using "TEK-nology," can support Anishinaabemowin language revitalization and reclamation and more equitable, self-determined LPP. The CBLP "TEK-nology" project has implications for status and acquisition language planning; culturally responsive LPP methodologies; and federal, provincial, territorial, and family language policy.

Digital education refers to in-person, blended, and fully online learning efforts, as well as attempts to capture a wide range of teaching and learning contexts which make use of digital technology. While digital education is pervasive in Canada, pan-Canadian data on digital education are relatively scarce. The Canadian Digital Learning Research Association/Association Canadienne de Recherche sur la Formation en Ligne conducted pan-Canadian surveys of higher education institutions (2017-2019), collecting data on the digital education landscape and publishing annual reports of its results. Previous analyses of the data have used quantitative approaches. However, the surveys also collected responses to open-ended questions. In this study, we report a systematic analysis of qualitative data exploring the digital education landscape in Canada and its changes over time. Findings shed light on the growth of digital education, the situated and multidimensional nature of digital education, the adoption of openness, quality, and rigour, and the development of alternative credentials.

Today, earth sciences engineering education programs face with serious problems. It is often not possible to provide experience on different geographical environments or materials. Considering these problems of earth science related engineering education programs, virtual reality environment potentially can provide technology enhanced training alternatives. However, in the literature there are not many studies showing how virtual reality can enhance the earth science related engineering education programs. Accordingly, the aim of this mapping of the literature and systematic review study is to explore studies dealing with virtual reality in the earth sciences engineering education programs. Through a rigorous screening process, the first search in the Scopus database provided 150 studies, where 19 of them were selected in the course of this study and the mapping of the literature report was drawn with all these articles. Additionally, with seven of these articles a systematic review is conducted. The mapping of the literature report shows that studies on this topic have increased in recent years and have been published in a variety of journals. The number of China and USA origins studies are remarkable among the examined studies, which are predominantly in the fields of mining engineering and geological engineering. As a result of the in-depth analyses, the systematic review report indicates that virtual reality applications in the earth sciences engineering education positively contribute to the learning outcomes and experiences of students/trainees from different perspectives.

We investigated the effects of just-in-time guidance at various stages of inquiry learning by novice learners. Thirteen participants, randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 8) or control (n = 5) group, were observed as they learned about DC electric circuits using a web-based simulation. Just-in-time instructional prompts to observe, predict, explain, systematically test, collect evidence, and generate rules were strongly associated with diagnosing and correcting misconceptions, and constructing correct scientific concepts. Students' repeated use of predictions, systematic testing, and evidence-coordinated reasoning often led to formulating new principles, generalizing from observed patterns, verifying comprehension, and experiencing "Aha!" moments. Justin-time prompts helped learners manage embedded cognitive challenges in inquiry tasks, achieve a comprehensive understanding of the model represented in the simulation, and show significantly higher knowledge gain. Just-in-time prompts also promoted rejection of incorrect models of inquiry and construction of robust scientific mental models. The results suggest ways of customizing guidance to promote scientific learning within simulation environments.

Simulation educational technologies provide a convenient way to augment classroom learning in higher education. The University of Colorado Boulder has created many Physics Education Technology (PhET) computer simulations relevant to concepts in Sciences and Mathematics. There is a notable gap in the literature of simulation-based technologies, learning theories, and Physics pedagogy in higher education. This action research study addresses that gap by exploring the role of the intentional inclusion of PhETs in the teaching practice of an undergraduate Physics class in a Canadian university. The professor of PHYS 105 taught a class of 80 students (primarily non-Physics majors) and integrated PhETs throughout his lesson plans during the semester to see if they supported students' learning of the Physics concepts. Findings indicate that PhETs have value as a "more capable peer" in Vygotsky's (1978) zone of proximal development. Findings indicate that PhETs are a valuable bridge between classroom learning and the laboratory learning experiences in a Physics higher education course.

The purpose of the study is to determine the effect of augmented reality applications on the learning of engineering students in their professional courses. The objective of the study is to ensure that augmented reality technologies, which are among the most important technologies of today, are used in educational settings. The other important objective of the study is to ensure that the augmented reality technologies used in professional training in countries such as the USA, Canada and the Netherlands are also used in our country and to provide a world-class education opportunity. Also, contributing to the economy of our country with the successful studies to be carried out in this regard is among the objectives of the study because of the increasing interest in augmented reality software throughout the world and the formation of an important economy related to the development of these kinds of software. In the study, an augmented reality application developed by the researcher was used in the learning process of a subject included in the faculty of engineering education curriculum. The study was performed using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design in which both qualitative and quantitative data were used simultaneously. The result of the study showed that there were no significant difference between the average attitude towards AR applications of the students participating in the study and the gender, class, and father education level; however, it is seen that there was a significant difference between maternal education status. It was also determined that the difference between the students' average attitude towards AR applications before and after the study was significant. Similarly, it was observed that the difference between the AR attitude averages before and after the study and the AG attitude average 4 weeks after the study was also observed to be significant. It was also found that the students who participated in the study found the AR applications remarkable, entertaining, understandable and useful for the instructor. Moreover, they stated that using AR applications in lessons would contribute to fast and active learning and increase success.

Central to restorative justice is a commitment to sharing and listening to first voice. This is required for the work of transitioning to just relations. The Restorative Inquiry for the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (The Home), and its Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project, offers a significant example of the power of restorative justice for transitional justice through the performance of oral histories. DOHR has created a curriculum centred on a virtual reality experience of former residents' oral histories. This paper examines how this curriculum supports restorative justice through a pedagogy of listening and relational scenography. [This report was written in collaboration with Gerry Morrison, Tony Smith, Tracy Dorrington-Skinner, and the DOHR team.]

Gender-based violence (GBV) is global issue, requiring specialized knowledge, attitudes, and skills. The most effective responses are interdisciplinary, involving social work, healthcare, and the justice system. While GBV was exacerbated during the pandemic, many students faced a reduced availability of practice opportunities to learn how to respond to GBV. The authors describe a teaching and learning project which expanded access to experiential, interdisciplinary learning across three faculties (social work, nursing, law) by using virtual gaming simulation-based learning (VGSBL). Processes of development and implementation are discussed, along with recommendations for further integration of VGSBL in addressing grand challenges of social work education such as interdisciplinary collaboration in responding to GBV.

Technological advances have posed a challenge in university learning ecosystems in terms of the application of immersive technologies that offer an educational and innovative framework to the student. The evolution of global research on this topic during the period 1980 to 2019 was studied. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis of 1296 articles was applied, obtaining results of the scientific productivity of the journals, authors, institutions, and countries that contribute to this research. The evidence shows a growing interest, especially in the last three years, in the study of the application of virtual reality in higher education. The main subject area is Social Science. The most productive research institution is the Complutense University of Madrid. The United States is the country with the most publications and citations. In addition, The United States, Spain and the United Kingdom are the countries with the most international collaborations in their publications. The study detected five new directions for future research. The growing worldwide trend of scientific production demonstrates the interest in developing aspects of the use of virtual reality in arts education in the context of higher education. This study contributes to the academic, scientific and institutional discussion around the improvement of decision making based on the available information.

The instructors of four biology-related courses at a Canadian university integrated Labster virtual labs in their courses as a pre-lab activity, lecture substitute, or to provide lab experience in courses with no on-site labs. The instructors used a backward design approach to align the labs with the learning objectives of their courses and to connect the labs with their course assessments. A study was conducted to examine students' perceptions of the usefulness of the virtual labs in terms of content knowledge and lab skills. At the end of each course, the instructors administered an anonymous survey in their classes. In total, 370 students participated. Across all four courses, survey results showed that at least 77% of the students found that virtual lab simulations helped them understand course concepts. At least 74% of the students navigated the virtual labs with no issues and 58% of the students found the simulations to be of high quality.

This study investigated to what extent people can develop global spatial representations of a multiroom environment through one-shot physical walking between rooms. In Experiment 1, the participants learned objects' locations in one room of an immersive virtual environment. They were blindfolded and led to walk to a testing position either within the same room (within-boundary) or in an adjacent novel room (across-boundary). They conducted judgments of relative direction (JRD) based on the remembered locations of objects. The participants' actual perspectives and imagined perspectives of JRD trials were manipulated to be aligned or misaligned (i.e., faced the same or opposite cardinal directions). The results showed better JRD performances for the aligned perspectives than the misaligned perspectives in the across-boundary condition; this global sensorimotor alignment effect was comparable with the effect in the within-boundary condition. Experiments 2-6 further examined global sensorimotor alignment effects after across-boundary walking. Experiments 2-3 manipulated factors related to encoding global relations (i.e., explicit instructions to attend to walking and keep track of spatial relations, and visual cues for navigational affordance to another space). Experiments 4-6 manipulated factors related to retrieving global relations in JRD (i.e., learning orientation as one imagined perspective, learning position and orientation as the imagined viewpoint, and the number of imagined perspectives). The results showed robust global sensorimotor alignment effects in all experiments, indicating that the participants updated actual headings relative to remembered objects in the other room. Global spatial updating might be the primary mechanism for developing global spatial representations of a multiscale environment.

This interactive, cross-disciplinary research explores face-to-face and online strategies for faculty to deploy in the classroom that encourage connections beyond forced engagement methodologies commonly used. Concentration is on methods of connecting that are "out of the mainstream" and benefit both students and faculty. Findings indicate that the more students feel as a valued participant of the learning community, the more they engage in the class activities.

Leveraging digital technology for practice innovation is a compelling challenge. Limited education and training prevent human service practitioners from incorporating technology into practice. Progress in this area will be achieved when significant changes to pedagogy support technology integration with teaching/learning partnerships in higher education. With the recent attention to relational Child and Youth Care (CYC) practice in cyberspace (Martin & Stuart, 2011), this paper aims to highlight student/teacher explorations in this emerging area of clinical practice using student-driven simulated online counselling sessions supervised by the course instructor. Beyond critical learning within the roleplay activities, students engaged in solving disruptions to simulations, which can enhance their future agility in real practice situations (Rooney, Hopwood, Boud, & Kelly, 2015). Foundations in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), experiential learning theory, and learner-led approaches guided student engagement with technology and reflexive practice in this graduate level classroom.

Educational systems can benefit from Virtual Reality's (VR) ability to support experiential learning. In particular, VR based games, especially role-playing serious games (RPGs), can promote learning through the simulation of various educational scenarios. This study proposes an immersive VR-RPG to educate players about the behavior of honeybees. The player adopts the role of a honeybee and experiences a virtual world mimicking the real one from the honeybee's perspective. Unlike most studies in educational VR, we assess the impact of immersion on knowledge gain by testing the players' knowledge on the subject before, immediately after, and one week following the use of the system. We also compare the proposed system with both a conventional and a desktop VR-RPG approach. The results indicate that students significantly gained knowledge in all methods compared to the pre-test. We found that the immersion level for both tested VR-RPGs did not have a significant effect on learning. However, the study showed an improvement in knowledge retention for the desktop VR-RPG users compared to those of the conventional method. Moreover, the results revealed that users of the immersive and desktop VR-RPGs were more motivated and engaged compared to those of the conventional method.

This article explores the nature of ethnographic collaboration during the harrowing and unpredictable times of a global pandemic. Documenting Year Two of a five-year, multi-sited ethnographic study, which necessitated virtual fieldwork in global drama classrooms (in Canada, India, Colombia, Taiwan, England, Greece), we offer a theoretical picture and practical illustrations of the 'metho-pedagogical' adaptations and observations made by the Toronto site team. For our study of youth and the climate emergency, we use an arts-led and youth-driven research process to provoke 'listening bodies' and the co-emergence of youth, artists, researchers, and research projects towards a more relational climate consciousness, a future created in the now. The prominence of 'presence' in our project took on an urgent and surprisingly intimate quality owing to the global pandemic in which we all suddenly found ourselves.

Purpose: This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the present state and trends of smart education research. It addresses the need to have a systematic review of smart education to depict its research landscape in view of the growing volume of related publications. Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric analysis of publications on smart education published in 2011 to 2020 was conducted, covering their patterns and trends in terms of collaboration, key publications, major topics and trends. A total of 1,317 publications with 29,317 cited references were collected from the Web of Science and Scopus for the bibliometric analysis. Findings: Research on smart education has been widely published in various sources. The most frequently cited references are all theoretical or discussion articles. Researchers in the USA, China, South Korea, India and Russia have been most active in research collaborations. However, international collaborations have remained infrequent except for those involving the USA. The research on smart education broadly covered smart technologies as well as teaching and learning. The emerging topics have addressed areas such as the Internet of Things, big data, flipped learning and gamification. Originality/value: This study depicts the intellectual landscape of smart education research, and illustrated the evolution and emerging trends in the field. The results highlight its latest developments and research needs, and suggest future work related to research collaborations on a larger scale and more studies on smart pedagogies.

This paper presents a three-year participatory action research project focusing on the graduate level course entitled Visual Learning in 3D Animated Virtual Worlds. The purpose of this research was to understand "How the virtual world processes of observing and creating can best help students learn visual theories". The first cycle of this research revealed that hands-on virtual world experiences do help students perceive the real world environment and learn visual theories. The second cycle of the research showed that a teacher-free learning environment was well perceived by students. The third cycle of the research showed that the intensive course did not allow students to have time to reflect or form the deeper understanding necessary for making connections between theory and practice. Therefore, this research suggests that the best way to help students learn visual theories is through creating a teacher-free visual learning environment within the span of a regular course.

In this article, we share an ethnographic case study of how we worked with a small group of marginalized grades 6, 7, and 8 students to both explore and create augmented reality (AR) to produce a class cookbook. We discuss how using AR helped students develop digital literacies skills and 21st century competencies, while at the same time, integrating AR into the students' life skills component of their programming helped them also develop cooking skills and basic nutrition awareness. The findings suggest that AR has great potential in educational contexts and can be used in cross-disciplinary ways that go beyond STEM-focused programming.

The present study examines the role that multimodality and translanguaging play in scaffolding oral interactions during language-related episodes (LREs) involving meaning negotiation. The oral tasks carried out using synchronous video-based computer-mediated communication were part of a tandem virtual exchange (Spain, Canada). The participants, 18 dyads of English and Spanish college-level learners, conducted three oral interaction tasks in pairs online. LREs were identified and transcribed and data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, including all instances of translanguaging and uses of multiple modes of meaning-making. Quantitative data revealed that translanguaging involved not only English and Spanish, but also other shared languages and occurred mostly during meaning negotiation. Additionally, the use of multimodal elements, including gestures, postures, gaze, multiple digital and physical devices (mobile devices, computers, props, notes) was examined. Qualitative data analyses revealed the interplay between multimodality and learners' multilingual repertoires which reinforced and complemented meaning-making during these episodes.

Field instruction is a crucial component of natural sciences education. The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many university courses to an online format, significantly impacting field instruction. FRST 350, "Foundational Field School," is an 8-day University of British Columbia Forestry field course taught to incoming transfer students from partner universities in China. In August 2020, I taught this course online to students studying remotely. In re-developing the course, I spent 9 days in the field filming high definition (HD) video, 360° video, and 360° photography to best recreate the course in a short time-frame. A 360° video records omnidirectionally, allowing viewers to "look around" in all directions, resulting in a highly immersive experience. Students expressed favorable opinions of the course, especially traditional HD and 360° video. Students generally preferred HD videos over 360°, though this was due mostly to the high bandwidth needed for 360° video and the fact that core course content was primarily conveyed as HD videos (in recognition of bandwidth challenges), with supplementary 360° videos. Students favorably noted the interactivity and immersive feel of 360° videos and photographs. This technology is financially and logistically feasible for use in a natural sciences course. Instructors engaged in online field instruction should weigh the strengths and weaknesses of various technologies, including 360° video, when determining how to best meet their learning objectives.

Despite the rapid growth in development of technology, such as software or hardware devices, its implementation among stakeholders working with individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is slow. This suggests that there might be a number of challenges that hinder technology adoption or its continued usage. The current project aimed to investigate stakeholders' perceptions on potential barriers in adopting technology. We involved 17 stakeholders, including parents of children with ASD, service providers, and administrators of ASD organizations, in interviews. Thematic analysis yielded three themes: (a) making the right choice, (b) apprehension and concern about uptake, and (c) external obstacles to implementation. This project was the first study to involve key stakeholders to determine components that take place in utilization and adoption of technologies in the field of ASD.

A word's exterior letters, particularly its initial letter, appear to have a special status when reading. Therefore, most orthographic coding models incorporate assumptions giving initial letters and, in some cases, final letters, enhanced importance during the orthographic coding process. In the present article, 3 masked priming experiments were carried out, using the conventional lexical-decision task, the sandwich priming lexical-decision task and the masked priming same-different task, in an attempt to examine a number of those models with a specific focus on the implications of the models' assumptions concerning the different letter positions. The related primes and targets were 6-letter strings that differed in 2 letter positions, initial (e.g., "jnckey-HOCKEY"), middle (e.g., "hojney-HOCKEY"), or final ("hockjn-HOCKEY"), with the middle-letters different primes being the primes that maintained both end letters. To the extent possible, the predictions of the models were derived by using easyNet, the simulation program recently developed by Adelman, Gubian, and Davis (2017). In all experiments, the final-letters different primes were the most effective primes with there being no clear distinction between the other 2 prime types, a pattern that none of the models predicted. The lack of an advantage for the middle-letters different primes suggests that the orthographic code driving masked priming is not one that places a special emphasis on the identities of the exterior letters.

In this Insights essay, we propose a new concept of "offlineness" that builds on current language around digital practices, yet addresses an element of young people's experience that is not adequately represented in current research or educational discourse. This work is informed by a recent cross-national arts-based research project that highlighted the limitations of the discourse ascribed to the nature of young people's engagement with digital literacies. We propose a (re)theorization, which builds on a critical review of current conceptual research and digital commentaries. Theorizing offlineness as a continuum between online and offline practices is tantamount to a paradigm shift toward more nuanced understandings of young people's digital practices. It offers researchers and educators a more precise way to speak to young people's digital experiences, providing a productive tool to (re)construct learning and inquiry spaces in literacy research and education.

This study investigated the extent to which people can develop a global representation of local environments through across-boundary navigation. Participants learned objects' locations in two misaligned rectangular rooms in an immersive virtual environment. After learning, they adopted a local view in one room and judged directions of objects within the room; the views in two consecutive trials were from different rooms and locally or globally consistent (priming task). In some experiments, participants learned locations of five buildings before learning the objects in the rooms. In testing, after the priming task, they pointed to the buildings while adopting local views inside the rooms (across-boundary pointing task). Participants' estimated global headings were calculated from their pointing responses. The results showed that the priming effect from the globally consistent views occurred when participants learned the buildings and then locomoted between the rooms through a simple path. Consistent with the global priming effect, the means of participants' estimated global headings were accurate. In contrast, there was only the priming effect from the locally consistent views when participants did not learn the buildings before learning the objects inside the rooms or when participants were teleported between the rooms after learning the buildings. These results suggest that people can develop global representations of local environments through across-boundary navigation while traveling a simple path, provided that there are prior global representations.

This design case describes the work involved in developing a digital game-based learning environment, work that was part of a PhD research project. The designer was involved in all aspects of the project: conducting research into content that was included in the game, exploring the gaming platform (Second Life), adapting scientific literature for use in the game, consulting with science instructors, building the gaming environment, and writing scripts for objects in the environment. The gaming environment was a fictional town site called Budworm. The game was designed to promote scientific literacy in first and second year science undergraduate students through collaborative work on an open-ended problem related to the management of water resources in a region of western Canada subject to extremes in water availability. One of the design goals was to model the kind of environment that scientists encounter while they formulate research questions, a complex environment that involves collaboration with colleagues, creativity and a willingness to explore. Instructional experts in three scientific fields (biology, chemistry, and geosciences) were consulted during the course of this design, as was an expert in instructional design. The final product was the game and a set of game design principles that were informed by the literature on educational gaming and consultations with the instructional experts.

The flipped classroom is an instructional model that leverages technology-enhanced instruction outside of class time in order to maximize student engagement and learning during class time. As part of an action research study, the authors synthesize reflections about how the flipped classroom model can support teaching, learning and assessment through the implementation of three inquiry-based learning designs: (1) guided collaborative discussion, (2) tabletop white boarding and (3) the development of augmented reality auras. Principles for teaching effectiveness are used as a lens to guide the reflection on the benefits and challenges with each of the learning designs. Findings suggest that flipped classroom models that emphasize collaborative learning, group work and accessibility can enable and support inquiry-based learning. Recommendations are provided for educators interested in designing learning using a flipped classroom instructional model, as well as suggestions for future action research agendas.

This article has a dual purpose: it describes the development of First Year Dental Anatomy (FYDA), a web-based 3D interactive application used in the dental curriculum at a major Canadian university, and it reports on the results of a research study conducted to assess the perception of learning benefits students experienced through the use of FYDA in a dental anatomy course. Questionnaires administered upon the completion of three semesters during which FYDA was used reveal some benefits for learning, but also a few deterrents for use, primarily related to some aspects of design. Generally, the students received the application with interest and viewed it as a useful aiding tool in learning dental anatomy. The results suggest the overall 3D m odels met the students learning objectives and expectations and, in their view, were conducive to their understanding of internal and external dental anatomy. Issues related to the over-sensitive controls, navigational flaws and manipulation difficulties caused some learners a certain level of frustration, but these were not severe enough to hinder the students learning.

Instructional support is fundamental to successful implementation of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) in various educational settings. Although research indicates that instructional support can lead to learning gain and achievement of inquiry strategies, it does not explain why the same level of guidance for students with relatively the same level of domain knowledge can lead to major differences in their performance and learning gain. To investigate this issue, we performed a descriptive observational study on a group of undergraduate students (N = 10) during their inquiry learning process in a physics simulation. Our results indicated that employing strategies such as setting goals, confronting misconceptions, testing prior knowledge, collecting evidence, reasoning, and inferring by examining various conditions contributed to high learning gain in students. Additionally, instructional support was found beneficial by all individuals -- with both high and low learning gains. However, low gainers tended to benefit more from explicit explanations and direct modeling. The results imply that some specific cognitive and metacognitive strategies are required as prerequisite inquiry competency for successful use of simulation tools and tutor guidance in a simulation based inquiry learning. These strategies can probably be developed through training workshops, instruction, and appropriate scaffolding during various phases of inquiry learning.

This article discusses the integration of student-generated GeoGebra applets and Jing screencast videos to create a YouTube-like medium for sharing in mathematics. The value of combining dynamic mathematics software and screencast videos for facilitating communication and representations in a digital era is demonstrated herein. We share our experience with using these tools to facilitate mathematical collaboration, focusing specifically on the power of GeoGebra for student expression and creativity.

This study explored the potential of digital games as learning environments to develop mindsets capable of dealing with complexity in the domain of sustainability. Building sustainable futures requires the ability to deal with the complex dynamics that characterize the world in which we live. As central elements in this system, we must develop the ability of constantly assessing the environment that surrounds us, operating in it and adapting to it through a continuous and iterative individual and interpersonal process of revision of our frames of reference. We must focus on our world as a whole, considering both immediate problems and long-term consequences that decision making processes could generate. Educating for sustainability demands learning approaches and environments that require the development of systems thinking and problem-solving, rather than solely the acquisition of factual knowledge. When designed with complexity in mind, digital games present a high potential to facilitate sustainability learning. Digital games can be modelled as complexified systems, engaging players in cognitively demanding tasks requiring problem-solving and decision-making skills to deal with ill-structured problems, unpredictable circumstances, emerging system properties and behaviours, and non-linear development of events. Furthermore, games can require players to collectively engage in the pursuit of common goals, promoting remote interactions across large numbers of players. To understand how games are currently used for "learning for sustainability", we analysed 20 games. In spite of the potential offered by digital games and concrete examples of good practice, we found that sustainability thematic contextualisation and complex system dynamics are not leveraged as much as could be expected. Hence, there seems to be space for improvements oriented at creating game systems requiring players to address sustainability issues from multiple perspectives through: contextualisation integrating the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability; gameplay dynamics integrating non-linearity, emergence, uncertainty, ill-defined problems and social interactions. (Contains 5 figures.)

A unique approach was planned and implemented for undergraduate dental students that would reinforce the principles of removable partial denture (RPD) design. 162 students were grouped according to their year of dental studies (66 second-year students and 96 third-year students) within the Discipline of Prosthodontics at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto. Previous training for the students consisted of the traditional Socratic approach, including lectures, seminars, and laboratory pre-clinical hands-on exercises. During the testing session, all the students were given the case history of a particular patient. One half of each of the classes was instructed to design an RPD using the traditional, clinically-related approach, with a dental model that could be touched and seen, dental surveyors, and writing instruments. When finished, various treatment options were discussed. The other half of the classes was given the same instructions but saw the dental model only in animated form via a computer-based e-learning scenario. The RPD was virtually fabricated with student choices of drop-down design features made in a particular orderly sequence as the students worked step-by-step through the computer simulation. A pre-test questionnaire was given to all students concerning their design choices, the order in which they chose the denture components, and their learning experiences. All students were then asked to design an RPD for a different but similar case using dental models in the traditional clinical manner. Post-test questionnaires were given to assess the effectiveness of the method of their pre-test technique, in addition to their enjoyment of the approach. A cross-over situation followed one week later, whereby each group of students went through the alternate approach from the previous session. The results from the third-year student data and implications of this blended approach for teaching and learning RPD design are analyzed and discussed. (Contains 4 tables and 4 figures.)

In this study, we follow students' modeling and covariational reasoning in the context of learning about big data. A three-week unit was designed to allow 12th grade students in a mathematics course to explore big and mid-size data using concepts such as trend and scatter to describe the relationships between variables in multivariate settings. Students' emergent ideas were followed along a varied learning trajectory that included computer-supported collaborative and inquiry-based approaches, using visualization tools and statistical software to explore data and fit a suitable trend, and student presentations of investigations. Findings show progress in some components of students' reasoning and modeling of covariation, and indicate which features of the unit design might contribute to it.