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Fostering students' computer programming skills has become an important educational issue in the globe. However, it remains a challenge for students to understand those abstract concepts when learning computer programming, implying the need to provide instant learning diagnosis and feedback in computer programming activities. In this study, a Two-Tier Test-Based Programming Training (T[superscript 3]PT) approach was proposed. Accordingly, an online learning system was developed to provide students with precision feedback for guiding them to identify misconceptions of computer programming to improve their computer programming learning achievement. In order to examine the effects of the proposed approach, a learning system was developed and a quasi-experiment was conducted. Two classes of 99 eighth-grade students from Taiwan were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The students in the experimental group used the learning system based on the T[superscript 3]PT approach, while the control group used the conventional learning system. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach was significantly superior to the conventional programming learning approach in terms of students' programming logic concepts, problem-solving awareness, technology acceptance, and satisfaction with the learning approach. Accordingly, discussion and suggestions are provided for future research.

The flipped classroom approach has become one of the renowned instructional approaches in recent years. However, without proper educational tools to support students when they participate in classroom learning, their learning performances may not be as good as expected. In this study, a collective problem-solving promotion mechanism is proposed to enhance students' interaction and learning engagement in flipped classrooms using an interactive response system (IRS). A quasi-experimental design was adopted, and university students were recruited as the participants. The students in the experimental group applied the proposed approach, while those in the control group used the conventional flipped learning approach. The results show that the students in the collective problem-solving promotion-based flipped classroom not only had better learning performances and collective efficacy but also had higher level of knowledge construction and deeper interactions. The findings can be a reference for future teaching and research.

In the past decades, collaborative game-based learning has been used to facilitate students' learning in authentic learning contexts. Although several previous studies have reported the potential of this approach for students' learning performance and motivation, unequal participation could negatively influence the learning effectiveness of collaborative learning. To this end, this study developed a mandatory contribution-based collaborative gaming approach (MCCG) to enhance the competencies for conducting practical solutions related to environmental issues during a cross-field learning activity between a school and a museum. MCCG and a conventional collaborative gaming approach (CCG) were implemented to investigate the effects of individual contributions on collaborative learning. Both individual learning achievements and collaborative learning outcomes were assessed. The results showed that game-based collaboration supports can support competency-based education to enhance students' competencies, such as problem-solving and critical thinking competencies. Those students who learned with the mandatory contribution approach had better collaborative learning outcomes.

One main objective of art education is to foster students' art evaluation as well as their creative thinking ability. Engaging students in artwork sharing and peer feedback is a frequently adopted approach in school settings. However, most students have difficulties providing constructive comments during the peer-feedback process. To address this issue, a mobile-based progressive peer feedback approach was proposed to facilitate primary school students' creative thinking performance, metacognitive awareness, and learning attitude. A quasi-experiment was implemented with two intact classes in a primary school in northern Taiwan to investigate the effect of the proposed approach. One class was assigned to be the experimental group (n = 20) which learned with the proposed progressive peer-feedback scaffolding approach, and the other was the control group (n = 20) which learned with the conventional feedback approach. The findings indicated that the proposed progressive peer feedback approach had a positive effect on the primary school students' creative art thinking. The experimental group students' metacognitive awareness was also significantly enhanced. Besides, the students from the experimental group considered that the proposed progressive peer feedback approach was beneficial to helping them critically reflect on their drawings, and facilitated their understanding of how to improve the integrity of their drawings.

Speaking is a challenge for most English learners owing to the lack of practicing environments and partners. The virtual reality (VR) technology has changed this situation by providing learners with rich opportunities for practice. In VR-based practicing environments, peer tutoring is a common strategy for promoting peer assistance. However, in conventional VR-based learning, students may merely follow the guidelines and content provided by the teacher without thinking about the meaning and reasons for the practice in the situated contexts, which generally leads to poor learning outcomes. To solve this problem, a progressive question prompt-based peer-tutoring approach in VR contexts (PQP-PTVR) is proposed to assist students' English-speaking development. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The experimental group used the proposed approach, while the control group learned with the conventional question prompt-based peer-tutoring approach in VR contexts (C-PTVR). The results showed that the experimental group achieved significantly greater improvement in speaking and self-efficacy than the control group. Concerning the participants' learning behaviors, the experimental group had more interactions and made more attempts to improve their speaking. This study contributes to the existing literature by proposing the PQP-PTVR approach to enhancing learners' speaking development, improving their interactions and self-efficacy.

Training nursing students to make correct decisions when facing various nursing cases is an important and challenging objective. In the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) program for nursing students, the educational aim is not only nursing skills, but also critical thinking for making correct decisions and treatments. In this study, a contextual game-based flipped learning approach (GBFL) is implemented to improve nursing students' learning performances and promoting their positive perceptions in an intravenous injection course. Moreover, a quasi-experiment was implemented to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The subjects were 56 students from two classes of a nursing school. One class was assigned to the experimental group learning with the GBFL approach, while the other class was the control group learning with conventional flipped learning. From the experimental results, it was found that the students learning with the proposed approach showed better intravenous injection comprehension as well as higher learning achievement, learning motivation, learning attitudes, flow experience and critical thinking tendency than those learning with conventional flipped learning.

In response to the needs of an international workforce, English for Specific Purpose courses are being promoted in higher education, and instructors are turning to learning technology to help design the instruction. In this paper, a needs analysis was conducted to guide the design of the system, materials and activities for context-aware ubiquitous language learning (CAULL) and English for Fitness Purposes (EFP) in a fitness center as part of a Design-Based Research project. The data collection methods included on-site observations, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. The participants included 82 undergraduate students, seven physical education (PE) instructors, and six non-PE faculty members who frequently used the fitness center. All data forms were then triangulated and analyzed. The results show that all three groups consistently agreed that they need receptive language skills as well as specific terminology for fitness. Furthermore, it was suggested that the oral communication skills for EFP learners should also be developed for sharing ideas, experience, and suggestions. They pointed out that vocabulary related to diverse topics such as warm-up and cool-down stretches, cardiovascular exercises, and weight training are needed. Furthermore, participants reported that the CAULL system should be hypermedia-based, and contain a portfolio and a user-friendly interface. The findings were used to develop a blue print for a CAULL system based on design principles. The findings are of interest to context-aware language learning researchers, instructional designers, and the field of English for Specific Purposes.

This study explores the trends of chatbots in education studies by conducting a literature review to analyze relevant papers published in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journals by searching the Web of Science (WoS) database. From the analysis results, it was found that the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong are the top three contributing countries or regions. In addition, most studies adopted quantitative methods in their research design, such as ANOVA (Analysis of variance), descriptive statistics, t test, and correlation analysis. ANCOVA (Analysis of covariance) was the most frequently adopted approach for comparing the performances or perceptions of different groups of students. From the analysis results, the greatest proportion of studies adopted guided learning, followed by no learning activities. It was determined that the studies related to chatbots in education are still in an early stage since there are few empirical studies investigating the use of effective learning designs or learning strategies with chatbots. This implies much room for conducting relevant research to drive innovative teaching in terms of improving the learning process and learning outcomes. Finally, we highlight the research gaps and suggest several directions for future research based on the findings in the present study.

Review strategies after learning new knowledge are essential for students to consolidate the key points, understand the subject content, analyze aspects of the learning topics, and summarize the knowledge content of learning while mastering new knowledge. However, educators have found that students generally have difficulties seeking help when they encounter learning problems. This could significantly affect their after-class review performances. To cope with this problem, an after-class review approach with an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based chatbot is proposed in this study to provide students with immediate and quality feedback during the learning process. Moreover, a quasi-experiment was conducted to explore students' learning motivation, attitude, and academic performance when using the AI-based chatbot. Participants were two classes of students from a university in Taiwan. One class with 18 students was the experimental group and the other with 20 students was the control group. The experimental group used the AI-based chatbot in the after-class review, while the control group used the conventional after-class review approach. Research results showed that the application of AI-based chatbots in the review process of public health courses could improve students' academic performance, self-efficacy, learning attitude, and motivation. In other words, chatbots could help students become more active in the learning process. It is noted that after students asked questions, providing them with sufficient feedback during the review process could make them feel recognized and help to establish a relaxing and friendly interaction, thereby improving their academic performance.

Scholars and researchers generally believe that scientific inquiry is an important activity for cultivating students' applied knowledge and high-level thinking ability. The process of scientific inquiry can promote students' learning motivation and trigger their higher-order thinking ability. However, students may not have enough prior knowledge or they may lack inquiry experience, which may influence the effectiveness of their inquiry learning. Besides, in a scientific inquiry environment assisted by technology, students must face abundant and diverse learning resources, and may not effectively organize and carry out advanced cogitation to solve problems. Therefore, this research proposed an integrated concept mapping and image recognition (IR) approach to help students effectively acquire and organize knowledge in the process of scientific inquiry. This study applied a quasi-experimental design to verify the effect of this proposed approach. The experimental group conducted the concept mapping-based IR (CM-IR) learning approach, whilst the control group conducted the conventional IR-based learning approach to evaluate the students' performance in terms of their learning motivation and learning achievements. The participants were two classes of 10th-grade students in northern Taiwan. One was the experimental group with 22 students, whilst the other was the control group with 22 students. The experimental results show that the students learning with the CM-IR learning approach had better learning achievement, attitudes and intrinsic motivation, as well as higher mental load than those learning with the conventional IR-based learning approach. Accordingly, several suggestions are provided for future research in this field.

This review study investigates the appropriation of sensing technology in context-aware ubiquitous learning (CAUL) in the fields of sciences, engineering, and humanities. 40 empirical studies with concrete learning outcomes across mandatory and higher education have been systematically reviewed and thematically analyzed with an outcomes-based teaching and learning approach. Four derived themes have been found to describe the design and implementation of CAUL, including learner-centeredness, technological facilitation, learning ecology, and research evaluation. The learning processes enabled by context-aware sensing technology have been explicated, revealing specific ways to apply new technologies in formal and informal environments. The analysis based on intended learning outcomes suggest that more efforts should be directed to fostering competence in analyzing and creating in mandatory education, and to creating in tertiary settings. Finally, unequal distribution of CAUL implementation across world regions calls for more technological appropriation in Southeast Asia and Africa. Specific suggestions on how to improve CAUL are also provided to better prepare learners in the twenty-first century.

English speaking is a challenging learning objective for EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners owing to the lack of practicing environments. In this study, Interactive Spherical Video-based Virtual Reality (ISVVR) was adopted as the learning mode to provide realistic sociocultural contexts for English speaking. In addition, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of the SVVR approach on the English speaking performances and anxiety of the EFL students with different cognitive styles. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was conducted to investigate the effects of the interaction between cognitive style and multimedia learning mode on students' learning motivation, speaking anxiety, oral presentation, and move analysis. The student sample consisted of two classes of 93 students. All of the students took the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) to identify whether their cognitive style was field dependent or independent. The results showed a significant effect for the interaction between the cognitive styles and the learning modes on the students' oral presentation and speaking anxiety. Their structural moves in oral presentations with the ISVVR learning mode showed more similar spoken genre patterns to those of TED speakers. Findings further support the benefit of incorporating cognitive styles into the ISVVR learning mode for EFL learners.

The Analects of Confucius has been identified as an important and influential philosophy around the globe. However, in traditional instruction, it is difficult to express the spirit of this philosophy. Therefore, many students consider it as a big challenge to study the Analects of Confucius. To cope with this problem, in this study, an interactive e-book system has been developed based on the contextual learning model to interpret the Analects of Confucius in an interactive way. A quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The participants were 38 fifth graders from 2 classes in an elementary school located in northern Taiwan, who were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group used an interactive e-book learning mode to learn the Analects of Confucius course while the control group used a conventional technology enhanced teaching mode. The results showed that adopting the interactive e-book teaching mode to study the Analects of Confucius in the elementary school course can promote students' learning achievement and motive. It was also found that the interactive e-book learning mode can trigger learners' deep motive, and hence promote their learning achievement.

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) refers to the cross-disciplinary learning design for engaging students in applying integrated knowledge to complete a project or solve a complex problem. It has been recognized by many scholars for its educational significance. However, STEM tasks are generally complex and challenging to students. Without proper supports, not only will students' participation decrease, but their knowledge level and internal capabilities will also hardly improve. To help students understand teachers' rating standards, increase the opportunity to observe and receive feedback on peers' work, and improve their cognitive level and higher order thinking such as critical thinking, this study proposes a peer assessment-facilitated STEM (PA-STEM) approach. At the same time, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a junior high school in Taiwan to verify the effectiveness of this approach. A total of four classes of 112 students participated in the experiment. The experimental group (two classes with 53 students) learning with the PA-STEM approach, and the control group (two classes with 59 students) used the conventional STEM approach. The experimental results showed that the students in the experimental group had higher learning achievement. Their collaboration tendency, critical thinking awareness, problem-solving tendency, and meta-cognition tendency were all significantly better than those of the students in the control group. Besides, peer assessment scores were highly correlated with teacher assessment scores, indicating that students were able to fully understand teachers' rating standards and provide accurate ratings of their peers' STEM work.

Due to the rapid changes in global economic environments, enterprises have to continually enhance their business competitiveness. To improve business, planning educational training has been regarded as a channel to educate outstanding employees. Recently, most of the companies in the securities industry in Taiwan have adopted web-based educational training as a form of employee training. However, low e-learning acceptance on the part of employees is the essential obstacle when enterprises attempt to promote web-based continuing learning. Previous studies have shown that hardiness and Internet self-efficacy may be important factors that influence whether an individual will continue with web-based learning when facing pressure. Securities practitioners are required to deal with high pressure and persist in enhancing their professional knowledge in their working environment; therefore, continuing learning is crucial to maintaining the quality of professional service. The present study recruited securities practitioners as the research participants, and examined the effects of hardiness and Internet self-efficacy on their attitudes towards web-based learning when they were participating in web-based learning. The findings revealed that securities practitioners' hardiness and Internet self-efficacy both had direct positive effects on their attitudes towards web-based continuing learning. Meanwhile, their Internet self-efficacy had a mediating effect on the relationships between hardiness and attitudes towards web-based continuing learning.

Precision medicine has become an essential issue in the medical community as the quality of medical care is being emphasized nowadays. The technological data analysis and predictions made by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have assisted medical staff in designing personalized medicine for patients, making AI technologies an important path to precision medicine. During the implementation of the new emerging technology, medical staff's learning intentions will have a great influence on its effectiveness. With reference to the Technology Acceptance Model, this study explored medical staff's attitudes, intentions, and relevant influencing factors in relation to AI application learning. A total of 285 valid questionnaires were collected. Five major factors, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), subjective norms (SN), attitude towards AI use (ATU), and behavioral intention (BI), were used for analyzing the AI learning of medical staff in a hospital. Based on the SEM analytical results and the research model, the four endogenous constructs of PU, PEU, SN, and ATU explained 37.4% of the changes in BI. In this model, SN and PEU were the determining factors of BI. The total effects of SN and PEU were 0.448 and 0.408 respectively, followed by PU, with a total effect of 0.244. As a result, the intentions of medical staff to learn to use AI applications to support precision medicine can be predicted by SN, PEU, PU, and ATU. Among them, subjective norms considering the influences of both supervisors and peers, such as encouragement, communication, and sharing, may assist precision education in supporting the learning attitudes and behavior regarding precision medicine. The research results can provide recommendations for examining medical staff's intention to use AI applications.

In various case-based training courses, such as engineering, science and medical courses, students need to learn not only the skills to deal with problems, but also the knowledge to identify problems and make correct decisions. Such educational objectives have been recognized by educators as being important but challenging. In this study, an RSI (Recognize, Summarize, Inquire)-based flipped classroom is proposed to achieve this aim. Moreover, an explorative study was designed to probe the effectiveness of the proposed approach in a nursing case-based training course. The case-handling performances of the students trained with the RSI-based flipped classroom and those trained with the conventional flipped classroom were compared. The findings reveal that the RSI-based flipped classroom promoted the students' learning achievement, self-efficacy, critical thinking, and satisfaction more than the conventional case-based training did.

The present study aims to incorporate a group leadership promotion approach into collaborative learning tasks in the hope of developing students' creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we recruited 59 cross-professional students from a university in northern Taiwan, and divided them into an experimental group (6 sub-groups) and a control group (6 sub-groups). The experimental group students learned with the group leadership promotion approach, while the control group learned with conventional blended learning approach. The results show that the students could better develop their creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, and learning achievement via the group leadership promotion approach. Lastly, sequential analysis of their behaviors indicated that students' interaction with group leadership in online collaborative learning can promote many more creative ideas and comments, enhance reaching a consensus and making conclusions, and finally, facilitate completion of the group learning tasks.

Educating inpatients and their family members regarding patient safety and protection is an important and challenging task for nursing staff. However, the effects of the conventional patient instruction with printed materials are usually not as good as expected owing to the learners' low learning engagement. In this study, a learning engagement-promoting model is proposed for developing interactive e-book systems for patient education. To evaluate the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted to explore the effects of the system on the learning outcomes and perceptions of inpatients' family members. The results show that the proposed approach significantly improved their learning performance as well as their learning attitudes, motivation, and satisfaction when compared to the conventional paper-based instruction. On the other hand, it was found that their state anxiety was not significantly affected by the approach. It is concluded that the interactive e-book-based learning approach can facilitate the inpatients' family members to well prepare for taking care of the patients without affecting their state anxiety.

Flipped classrooms have been recognized as a potential approach that enables students to have flexible time to learn before the class as well as more opportunities to apply knowledge and to interact with peers and the teacher in the class. On the other hand, researchers have pointed out the challenge of engaging students in self-regulated learning and active participation in flipped classrooms. In this study, an Instant Response System (IRS)-facilitated collective issue-quest strategy is proposed for engaging students in active and self-regulated flipped learning. Moreover, a quasi-experimental design was conducted with undergraduate students in an internet marketing course in northern Taiwan to investigate the impacts of the proposed approach on the students' learning achievement, self-regulation, learning satisfaction and collective efficacy. The experimental results revealed that the learning achievement, collective efficacy and satisfaction of the students who learned with the proposed approach were significantly better than those of the students learning with the conventional flipped classroom approach. Moreover, in the "environment," "task strategies" and "help seeking" dimensions of self-regulation, the former had significantly higher ratings than the latter. This study contributes analysis results that highlight the benefits of implementing the IRS-facilitated collective issue-quest approach in the flipped classroom. The results of this research may provide a valuable reference for future studies and practice in the field.

The main objective of this study was to examine the factors of individual characteristics (e.g., self-regulation in terms of metacognition and motivation) and learning environmental expectancy (e.g., performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence) that influence students' behavioural intention to continue online courses. The questionnaire data collected from 312 college students were analyzed using the structural equation modelling approach to examine the relationship between self-regulation and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model. The experimental results revealed that self-regulation in terms of metacognition and motivation directly related to performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence. In addition, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and motivation significantly and directly influenced students' intention to use online courses. However, this study found that metacognition and social influence did not positively directly relate to behavioural intention. The discussion of the present findings and practical implications for possible future research have also been analyzed and concluded.

Owing to the popularity of tablet computers and smart phones, e-books have become an important medium for both formal and informal learning. However, conventional e-books are mainly designed to provide information in the form of multimedia, implying that students spend most of their time memorizing and comprehending what they read from e-books, while seldom engaging in higher order thinking. In this study, a problem-posing framework is proposed for developing an interactive e-book for guiding students to observe and pose questions. An experiment on an elementary school natural science course was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The participants were 46 fourth-grade students. From the experimental results, it was found that the problem-posing-guiding interactive e-book can significantly improve the students' learning achievements, critical thinking tendency, and deep motive. It was also found that the proposed approach did not increase the students' cognitive load owing to the provision of proper supports during the problem-posing process, which has generally been identified as a challenging task.

Observation competence plays a fundamental role in outdoor scientific investigation. The computerized concept mapping technique as a Mindtool has shown the potential for enhancing meaningful learning in science education. The purposes of the present study are to develop a concept map integrated mobile learning design for ecology observation and to examine the implementation effect for elementary school children. Also, the difference in growth slopes between gifted and average students is investigated. Eighteen gifted students and thirty average students were included in this study. A computerized dynamic assessment system which combines a Computerized Ecology Observation Competence Assessment (CEOCA) and a concept map integrated ecology observation learning design were implemented. The results of the hierarchical linear model (HLM) analysis reveal that the overall growth slope is significant ([mu] = 0.27, p less than 0.01). The effect size is 0.53. The growth slope of the gifted students is a little higher than that of the average students. However, the slope difference between ability groups is not significant. The results suggest that a well designed concept map integrated learning system demonstrates very promising potential for enhancing both the gifted and average students' mobile observation competence. The system developed in this study could be a useful resource for elementary school outdoor learning design. (Contains 4 figures and 7 tables.)

The aim of this study was to explore the influence of applying a game-based learning approach to nutrition education. The quasi-experimental nonequivalent-control group design was adopted in a four-week learning activity. The participants included sixty-six third graders in two classes of an elementary school. One of the classes was assigned to be the experimental group and the other was the control group. The experimental group learned with computer games, while the control group learned with the traditional teaching approach. The result showed that the learning achievement of the students in the experimental group was significantly better than that of the students in the control group. Similar results were obtained in terms of the learning interest of the students. Moreover, most of the students revealed quite positive attitudes toward the use of the game-based learning approach in nutrition education. An in-depth analysis showed that there was no significant difference between genders in terms of nutrition knowledge and learning attitudes. (Contains 6 tables and 5 figures.)

In this study, a one-year program was conducted to investigate the relationships between students' perceptions of mobile learning and their tendencies of peer interaction and higher-order thinking in issue-based mobile learning activities. To achieve the research objective, a survey consisting of eight scales, namely, usability, continuity, adaptive content, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity, was developed. A total of 658 students from 38 high schools in Taiwan filled in the questionnaire after experiencing issue-based mobile learning activities. From the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, it was found that the questionnaire had high reliability and validity. The structural equation model further revealed that the provision of adaptive content in the mobile learning had positive impacts on the students' tendency to interact with peers (i.e., collaboration and communication), which further affected their tendency to engage in higher-order thinking (i.e., problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity). The findings of this study provide a good reference for researchers and school teachers who intend to promote mobile learning in school settings.

In traditional teacher-centered mathematics instruction, students might show low learning motivation owing to the lack of applied contexts. Game-based learning has been recognized as a potential approach to addressing this issue; however, without proper alignment between the gaming and math-applied contexts, the benefits of game-based learning could be limited. Therefore, this study aims to develop a microworld-based educational game, which provides simulated contexts encouraging students to explore, discover, and solve practical problems using the mathematics knowledge gained in the class. A quasi-experimental design was implemented in the learning activity of the "Speedy World" unit in an elementary school mathematics course to examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A total of 107 sixth graders participated in the experiment. The experimental results showed that the students who learned with the microworld-based gaming approach had better learning achievement and motivation in the mathematics course than those who learned with the conventional technology-enhanced learning approach. In addition, the students also showed that they highly accepted the microworld-based game for learning mathematics. The findings of this study provide good evidence for the importance and necessity of associating authentic applied contexts with gaming contexts in developing computer educational games for mathematics.

Augmented reality (AR) offers potential advantages for intensifying environmental context awareness and augmenting students' experiences in real-world environments by dynamically overlapping digital materials with a real-world environment. However, some challenges to AR learning environments have been described, such as participants' cognitive overload and the ways to provide assistance in constructing the presented learning materials. In this study, a mindtool-based AR learning system was developed, based on the repertory grid method and the contiguity principle of multimedia learning, for assisting students in constructing their knowledge in a natural science course. Furthermore, an experiment was carried out on an elementary school natural science course to compare the influences of this method with those of the conventional AR learning system on students' learning effectiveness. The experimental results show that the designated approach effectively promoted the students' learning achievements, and no significant difference existed between the mindtool-based AR learning system and the conventional AR learning system in terms of students' cognition load and satisfaction degree; moreover, both the experimental group and the control group perceived low cognition load during the learning activity and rated their own AR learning systems as being highly satisfactory.

English business writing is an important and challenging course for English as Foreign Language (EFL) students since it is not only related to English writing skills, but also to business knowledge. Context-game based learning seems to be a good approach to situating students in a meaningful and interesting practicing environment, which could improve their learning motivation and interest. However, without interacting with the teacher and peers, the effectiveness of game-based learning could be limited. In this study, a flipped contextual game-based learning approach was proposed to cope with this problem; moreover, a mixed methods research approach was used to analyze the writing performance, writing errors, and reflective content of the students who learned with the proposed approach and those learning with conventional contextual game-based learning. The experimental results revealed that the flipped contextual game-based instruction was able to enhance the students' English writing performance. It was also found that those students with the flipped learning approach had fewer writing errors than those learning with the conventional approach. Moreover, by analyzing the students' reflective content, the benefits and challenges of flipping the classroom are reported. These findings could be valuable references for those who intend to conduct effective flipped contextual game-based learning with learning management systems to motivate students' game-based learning and to improve their language learning performance.

Flipped classrooms have been widely adopted and discussed by school teachers and researchers in the past decade. However, few studies have been conducted to formally evaluate the effectiveness of flipped classrooms in terms of improving EFL students' English oral presentation, not to mention investigating factors affecting their flipped learning outcomes. In this study, an online community-based flipped learning approach was proposed for an EFL oral presentation course; moreover, a learning analytics approach was used to analyze factors affecting the students' oral presentation outcomes. An 18-week research design was implemented with the online community-based flipped classroom using Facebook as the platform for facilitating and recording peer-to-peer interactions during the flipped learning process. In addition, the students' learning performance and perceptions were collected in 3 learning stages during the 18 weeks. The experimental results reveal positive effects of the online community-based flipped instruction over the conventional video-based instruction. That is, first, the online community-based flipped instruction using mobile devices can enhance students' English oral performance. Moreover, it was found that the high improvers had a significantly higher frequency of online participation, as well as more interactive behaviors and greater satisfaction with the flipped classroom than the low improvers. These results imply that the online community flipped classroom could not only provide learning materials and out-of-class learning for students, but could also help them become more responsible and autonomous in their learning and communication. These findings could be valuable references for those who intend to conduct effective flipped classrooms with an online community to facilitate students' before-class learning participation and to improve their in-class learning performance.

Facilitating students' deep-strategy behaviors and positive learning performances of science inquiry is an important and challenging educational issue. In this study, a contextual science inquiry approach is proposed for developing a 3D experiential game to cope with this problem. To evaluate the impacts of the game on students' science learning approaches, learning achievements and problem-solving awareness as well as the learning behavioral patterns of the students with different learning achievements, a quasi-experiment was conducted in an elementary school geoscience course. The participants were two classes of sixth graders. One class was the experimental group who learned with the 3D experiential game, and the other was the control group who learned with the conventional technology-enhanced learning approach. The experimental results showed that the students learning with the 3D experiential gaming system showed better learning achievements, problem-solving tendency, deep learning strategies, and deep learning motive than those who learned with the conventional technology-enhanced learning approach. Moreover, the higher-achievement students showed more behavioral patterns of deep learning strategies than the lower-achievement students. The findings of this study provide a good reference for helping lower-achievement students improve their learning performance.

Researchers have recognized the potential of educational computer games in improving students' learning engagement and outcomes; however, facilitating effective learning behaviors during the gaming process remains an important and challenging issue. In this paper, a collaborative knowledge construction strategy was incorporated into an educational computer game to facilitate students' knowledge sharing and organizing during the game-based learning process. An experiment was conducted to examine the students' learning behavioral patterns, group efficacy, and problem-solving awareness. The experimental results revealed that the proposed approach improved the students' learning achievements and awareness of problem-solving. Moreover, from the analysis of the students' behavior sequences, it was found that, with the collaborative knowledge construction mechanism, the students revealed significantly more aggressive learning behavioral patterns, such as "comparing and observing the learning targets" and "seeking clues and answers" during the gaming process. This implies that integrating the collaborative knowledge construction mechanism into the gaming process has great potential for helping students effectively learn and organize knowledge as well as fostering their awareness of applying the acquired knowledge to dealing with problems.

With the rapid progress of technology, the popularity of tablet computers and the development of e-book applications have brought the use of e-books as a learning tool under the spotlight. In the meantime, the aim of school education lies not only in providing students with knowledge but also in encouraging them to construct knowledge actively. Consequently, in this study, an approach of integrating the guided peerfeedback strategy into e-book design was proposed. An experiment was conducted on an elementary school natural science course to explore its effectiveness in comparison with the conventional e-book development activity. It was expected that the guided peer-feedback approach could engage students in knowledge organizing and in-depth thinking while stimulating more innovative ideas. To assess the impacts of this approach, a quasi-experimental design method was adopted. The students were divided into two groups: the experimental group, in which the students learned with the guided peer-feedback strategy together with the e-book development approach, and the control group, in which the students learned with the conventional ebook development approach. The experimental results indicated that the integrated guided peer-feedback and e-book development strategy had significant impacts on the students' learning achievements and ebook project outcomes while reducing their cognitive load and increasing their innovative thinking tendency in the design process.

Researchers have pointed out that interactive e-books have rich content and interactive features which can promote students' learning interest. However, researchers have also indicated the need to integrate effective learning supports or tools to help students organize what they have learned so as to increase their learning performance, in particular, for abstract and complex learning content such as that in law courses. In this study, a concept-mapping-based interactive e-book learning mode was proposed. To understand the learning effects, a quasi-experimental design was used to compare the learning achievement and motivation of the students learning with the proposed approach (experimental group) and those learning with conventional interactive e-books (control group) in a junior high school fundamental law course. Meanwhile, the learning achievement and motivation of the students with different learning styles were also explored. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach significantly improved the students' learning achievement, especially for the active-style students; moreover, it was found that the lead-in of concept mapping did not affect the students' learning motivation. Factors that might affect the students' learning achievement and motivation with the concept-mapping-based interactive e-book approach are discussed accordingly.

It has become an important and challenging issue to foster students' concepts and skills of computer programming. Scholars believe that programming training could promote students' higher order thinking performance; however, many school teachers have reported the difficulty of teaching programming courses. Although several previous studies have attempted to develop friendly user interfaces to ease students' loads, teaching programming courses remains a big challenge for most school teachers. In this study, an online peer assessment-based system was developed to cope with this problem. The students could use the peer-assessment function to provide comments to peers, and review the feedback and scores from peers during the learning activity. A quasi experiment was conducted on four classes of 166 ninth graders of a junior high school located in southern Taiwan to examine the impacts of the developed system. Two classes of students were assigned to the experimental group, learning with an online peer assessment-based teaching strategy, while the other two classes were the control group, learning with the conventional teaching strategy. The experimental results showed that the students in the experimental group had better programming knowledge and skills as well as more positive learning attitudes and critical thinking awareness than those in the control group, revealing the benefits of the proposed approach.

Previous research has illustrated the importance of acquiring knowledge from authentic contexts; however, without full engagement, students' learning performance might not be as good as expected. In this study, a Team Competition-based Ubiquitous Gaming approach was proposed for improving students' learning effectiveness in authentic learning activities. An experiment on a natural science course was carried out in an elementary school to evaluate the effects of the approach on students' awareness of collaboration, communication and collective efficacy. Moreover, the students' learning behavioral patterns were explored by analyzing their interactive logs in the discussion forum. The experimental results indicated that, in addition to learning achievements, the proposed approach significantly enhanced the students' collective efficacy as well as their awareness of collaboration and communication; moreover, the students who learned with the proposed approach showed more effective behavioral patterns than those who learned with conventional team-based ubiquitous learning.

Programming concepts are important and challenging to novices who are beginning to study computer programming skills. In addition to the textbook content, students usually learn the concepts of programming from the web; however, it could be difficult for novice learners to effectively derive helpful information from such non-structured open resources. Few studies have addressed this issue by proposing different web issue-quest approaches and investigating the effects of learning with different web resources on students' learning performances in computer programming courses, not to mention the use of statistical methods for analyzing the factors affecting students' learning outcomes. Therefore, in this study, a structured-resource issue-quest approach is proposed to support structured programming learning activities. An issue-quest learning environment was developed, and an experiment was conducted to compare the learning achievement of the students who learned with the proposed approach (experimental group) with that of the students who learned with the conventional open-resource-based issue quest approach (control group). The participants were 418 tenth graders (214 in the experimental group and 204 in the control group) who were 16 years old on average. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to investigate and compare the effects of the Web Issue-Quest approaches (i.e., open resource-based issue quest and structured resource-based issue quest) on the students' learning perceptions based on an extended technology acceptance model (ETAM). The experimental results showed that the structured resource-based issue quest approach benefited the novices more in terms of their learning achievements related to the computer programming concepts. Meanwhile, the SEM analysis showed that the two groups of students had equivalent perceptions of the usefulness, ease-of-use and enjoyment of learning with the two issue quest modes. This implies that the structured resource-based issue quest approach was helpful to the students in terms of improving their learning performance, while the limitation of access to open resources did not affect their learning perceptions.

Mathematical skills have been recognised as a core competence for engineering and science students. However, learning mathematics has been recognised as a difficult and challenging task for most students, in particular, calculus for first-year students in university. Consequently, the development of effective learning strategies and environments for mathematics courses has become an important issue. To this end, a mathematics learning system based on an instant diagnostic and guiding strategy is proposed to enhance students' calculus learning outcomes. Moreover, an experiment has been conducted in a university calculus course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only improved the students' learning performance, but also improved their confidence in learning calculus. Further findings are also discussed.

Mobile technology has been increasingly applied to educational settings in the past decade. Although researchers have attempted to investigate both students' and teachers' preferences regarding mobile learning, few studies have investigated the differences between the two, an understanding of which is important for developing effective mobile learning environments. To address this issue, a mobile learning environmental preference survey (MLEPS) consisting of eight factors, "ease of use," "continuity," "relevance," "adaptive content," "multiple sources," "timely guidance," "student negotiation" and "inquiry learning," was developed in this study. A total of 1,239 students (609 males and 630 females) and 429 teachers (208 males and 221 females) who employed mobile technology to learn and teach in schools completed the questionnaire. From the structural equation models, it was found that the major difference between the preferences of teachers and students in learning with mobile technologies was that the teachers tended to focus more on the technical issues, while the students cared more about the richness and usefulness of the learning content. In addition, both the students and teachers considered that the "anytime" and "anywhere" support provided via the mobile technology played an important role during the learning activities, engaging them in searching for information, collecting data, interpreting data and summarizing findings. It is therefore suggested that learning environments which conform to both students' and teachers' preferences be developed in the future.

Concept mapping has been widely used in various fields to facilitate students' organization of knowledge. Previous studies have, however, pointed out that it is difficult for students to construct concept maps from the abundant searched data without appropriate scaffolding. Thus, researchers have suggested that students could produce high quality concept maps when they construct them with appropriate guidance. Accordingly, this study proposes a question prompt-based concept mapping approach, which was conducted in a computer course with a duration of 14 weeks on the research issue of global warming. There were 176 senior high school students from four classes who participated in the experiment. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design for the investigation of the effectiveness of the proposed approach; two classes were randomly assigned to be the experimental group, learning with the question prompt-based concept mapping approach, while the other two groups were the control group, who used the conventional concept mapping approach. The results indicated that the students in the experimental group had better performance than those in the control group in terms of their learning achievement, 5C competences, and learning attitudes. In addition, the results also showed that students with a reflective style had better learning achievement than those with an active style. Thus, it is worth investigating, for such an issue, how to propose more effective learning models for diverse student learning styles in the future. This can provide useful guidance for educators, practitioners and researchers in the areas of science education and computer-assisted education.

Augmented reality (AR) has been recognized as a potential technology to help students link what they are observing in the real world to their prior knowledge. One of the most challenging issues of AR-based learning is the provision of effective strategy to help students focus on what they need to observe in the field. In this study, a competitive gaming approach is proposed to support AR-based learning activities conducted in real-world contexts. An experiment has been conducted on an elementary school ecology course to explore the effectiveness of the proposed approach in comparison with the conventional AR-based mobile learning approach in field trips. The experimental results show that the AR-based gaming approach can improve not only students' learning attitudes, but also their learning performance on the field trip. Accordingly, discussions and some suggestions for future work are provided.

In this study, a problem-posing strategy is proposed for supporting collaborative mobile learning activities. Accordingly, a mobile learning environment has been developed, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Three classes of an elementary school in southern Taiwan participated in the experiment. One class was the experimental group who learned with the problem-posing-based mobile learning approach, while the other two classes were the control groups who learned with the conventional mobile learning approach and the traditional problem-posing approach, respectively. The experimental results show that the new approach not only improved the students' learning achievement, but also promoted their local culture identity and group learning self-efficacy.

Computer programming is an important skill for engineering and computer science students. However, teaching and learning programming concepts and skills has been recognized as a great challenge to both teachers and students. Therefore, the development of effective learning strategies and environments for programming courses has become an important issue. To address this issue, this study proposes a two-tier test-based learning system to enhance students' learning outcomes in computer-programming courses. We conducted an experiment on a college computer-programming course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method not only improves the students' attitude toward learning the programming language, but also enhances their programming skills.

In this study, a spreadsheet-based visualized Mindtool was developed for improving students' learning performance when finding relationships between numerical variables by engaging them in reasoning and decision-making activities. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted on the "phenomena of climate on earth" unit of an elementary school geography course. The experimental results showed that the spreadsheet-based visualized Mindtool significantly benefited the students in terms of improving their learning achievement and promoting their learning attitudes and satisfaction. Moreover, the cognitive load of the students was significantly decreased, indicating the effectiveness of this approach in helping students comprehend, learn content and organize their knowledge. To further investigate the learning behaviors of high-achievement and low-achievement students in using the spreadsheet-based Mindtool, a learning pattern analysis was conducted by coding the students' behaviors recorded on video.

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is an effective approach for promoting active learning. When inquiry-based learning is incorporated into instruction, teachers provide guiding questions for students to actively explore the required knowledge in order to solve the problems. Although the World Wide Web (WWW) is a rich knowledge resource for students to explore using search engines, it is hard for students to filter out required knowledge from the unorganized web pages and the huge number of search results. In this paper, an inquiry-based learning support system with two advanced knowledge exploration modules, namely the Q&A module and the Segmented Supplemental Material (SSM) module, is proposed and developed to assist students' inquiry-based learning. This study also evaluates the effects of the proposed system on students' learning achievement and learning efficiency with the various supports provided by the proposed system. Experiments were undertaken on a "Computer Science" course for first year undergraduate students. The experimental results show that with the support of the two advanced modules, both the students' learning achievement and their learning efficiency were enhanced.

Web-based problem-solving, a compound ability of critical thinking, creative thinking, reasoning thinking and information-searching abilities, has been recognised as an important competence for elementary school students. Some researchers have reported the possible correlations between problem-solving competence and information searching ability; however, few studies have proposed what factors might affect students' web-based problem-solving performance. In this study, a five-phase web-based learning approach is proposed; moreover, a web-based problem-solving model was developed to investigate the factors that might affect students' web-based problem-solving performance. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted by engaging 201 fifth- and sixth-graders from three elementary schools in a series of web-based problem-solving activities. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the antecedents affecting the students' web-based problem-solving performance. From the analysis results, it was found that task-technology fit could be the major factor affecting the students' intention to learn on the Web, as it highly affected their web-based problem-solving performance.

Fostering the listening comprehension of English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners has been recognized as an important and challenging issue. Videos have been used as one of the English listening learning resources; however, without effective learning supports, EFL students are likely to encounter difficulties in comprehending the video content, leading to frustration and reducing learning interest. In this study, a learning system with an automatic caption filtering and partial hiding mechanism was developed to improve the English listening comprehension of EFL students. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of the proposed approach on students' learning achievements and perceptions. The participants were 76 freshmen from two classes of a non-language-related department of a university. Each class contained 38 students. The two classes of students were situated in the proposed learning context and the conventional technology-enhanced learning context with a counterbalanced experimental design. The experimental results verified that the proposed caption filtering approach effectively improved the listening comprehension of the students in comparison with the conventional approach which provides full captions and an e-dictionary. Moreover, from the data collected by the eye movement tracking device, it was found that more than 76% of the students relied on the captions during the learning activity, reflecting the importance of developing effective caption filtering mechanisms for supporting EFL learners.

Scholars have identified that learning in an authentic environment with quality contextual and procedural supports can engage students in thorough observations and knowledge construction. Moreover, the target is that students are able to experience and make sense of all of the learning activities in the real-world environment with meaningful supports, such that their learning motivation can be promoted, knowledge can be sensibly constructed, and skills can be fully developed. To develop potential tutoring strategies and learning activity models using mobile, wireless, and sensing information and communication technologies (ICT) in a real-world learning environment, a four-year national e-learning research project entitled "Mindtool-Assisted In-field Learning (MAIL)" has been funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan since 2008 in an effort to lead the development and innovation of Learning Technology. The integrated project aimed to develop Mindtool-assisted knowledge construction models, assessment models, guidance models, and reflection strategies for cutting-edge context-aware ubiquitous learning. Moreover, a series of learning activities has been conducted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed learning strategies and models. Each year, more than 1,500 students have participated in the in-field learning activities with the designed approaches. Based on the results of a series of experiments, it was found that the students' learning performance as well as their in-field inquiry ability was significantly improved, showing the effectiveness of the Mindtool-assisted ubiquitous learning approach and the success of the MAIL project. In this paper, the background, objectives, theoretical foundations, systems, research issues, applications, and findings of the MAIL project are presented. Finally, the scaling-up plan for applying these research-proven learning models to all levels of educational settings in Taiwan is also addressed.

In this study, an augmented reality-based mobile learning system is proposed for conducting inquiry-based learning activities. An experiment has been conducted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of learning achievements and motivations. The subjects were 57 fourth graders from two classes taught by the same teacher in an elementary school in northern Taiwan. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach is able to improve the students' learning achievements. Moreover, it was found that the students who learned with the augmented reality-based mobile learning approach showed significantly higher motivations in the attention, confidence, and relevance dimensions than those who learned with the conventional inquiry-based mobile learning approach.

Although research has identified the importance of interaction behaviors in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), very few attempts have been made to carry out in-depth analysis of interaction behaviors. This study thus applies both qualitative (e.g., content analyses, interviews) and quantitative methods in an attempt to investigate the role of interaction behaviors (i.e., cooperative processes, cognitive involvement) in group motivation (i.e., collective efficacy) and group performance in CSCL. A total of 35 college students generated 387 cooperative processes and 421 cognitive ideas during the collaborative process over six weeks. The results indicated that the quality of interaction behaviors was positively related to CSCL performance. High performance groups were more involved in complex cooperative processes, and expressed more cognitive ideas at both high and low cognitive levels than low performance groups. For the role of interaction in collective efficacy, the quantity rather than quality of interaction behaviors played a more critical role in constructing collective efficacy. High efficacy groups had more cooperative processes and cognitive ideas than low collective efficacy groups. The interviews also revealed that group interaction played a mediating role in constructing collective efficacy. For the role of collective efficacy in group performance, the results also show that the high efficacy groups performed better than the low efficacy groups. Implications and suggestions for future research are also provided.

Researchers have found that students might get lost or feel frustrated while searching for information on the Internet to deal with complex problems without real-time guidance or supports. To address this issue, a web-based collaborative learning system, Collab-Analyzer, is proposed in this paper. It is not only equipped with a collaborative mechanism for helping group members solve problems on the web, but also facilitates teachers and researchers in analyzing students' collaborative information-searching behaviors and performance by providing eighteen quantitative indices. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed learning system, a total of 224 university students and 16 teachers participated in an experiment, in which a web-based problem-solving activity for a social studies course was conducted. The experimental results show that the teachers gave positive evaluations of Collab-Analyzer in terms of promoting students' web-based problem-solving ability and information searching skills. Moreover, the students showed high agreement with both the usefulness and ease of use of the system. The research findings also show that high interactive type students have more significant learning performance than moderate and low interactive students. Finally, implications and suggestions for how to accommodate the needs of students after adopting the proposed Collab-Analyzer system are given.