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In this study, a peer assessment-based mobile learning approach was implemented and evaluated in a vocational design certification course. A quasi-experiment was conducted to explore the impact of the proposed approach on the learning achievements and motivations of the students with active and reflective styles. It was found that the students using the peer assessment-based mobile learning approach generally learned better than those using the conventional mobile learning approach. It was also found that there were interactive effects between learning approaches and learning styles on intrinsic motivation. The students with an active learning style outperformed those with a reflective style in intrinsic motivation when conducting the peer assessment-based mobile learning. Active learning style students also had higher extrinsic motivation than those with a reflective learning style when conducting mobile learning.

Technology-mediated learning has become a valuable tool, especially in the English language classroom. Nowadays, mobile learning is considered a significant educational tool for promoting education among learners. Several recent studies have attempted to examine different aspects of mobile learning. The size of the experimental group, and the duration and suitability of the assessment methods are important aspects in designing experimental studies in the context of mobile English language learning. Yet, very few studies have paid attention to these aspects. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the utilisation of state-of-the-art mobile technology in English language learning, especially in terms of the size of the experimental groups, and the duration and suitability of the assessment methods. Following a systematic review protocol, 151 articles published between 2010 and 2017 were selected for analysis. Furthermore, this study considered, separately, three factors addressed in the reviewed studies: language acquisition problems, types of participants, and targeted English skills. The findings showed that the "group size" and "study duration" significantly differed among the studies based on the above factors. Questionnaires and tests were found to be the most common methods of "assessment" for each factor, whether used separately or in combination. The results of this review can assist in the formulation of experimental designs to mitigate the challenges and facilitate the effective use of mobile learning in English language learning.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely explored across the world over the past decades. A particularly emerging topic is the application of AI in e-learning (AIeL) to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning in precision education. This study aims to systematically review publication patterns for AIeL research with a focus on leading journals, countries, disciplines, and applications. In addition, a co-citation network analysis was conducted to explore the invisible relationships among the core papers of AIeL to reveal directions for future research. The analysis is based on a total of 86 core AIeL papers accompanied by 1149 citations in follow-up studies obtained from the Web of Science. It was found that a majority of AIeL studies focused on the development and applications of intelligent tutoring systems, followed by using AI to facilitate assessment and evaluation in e-learning contexts. For field researchers, the visualized network diagram serves as a map to explore the invisible relationships among the core AIeL research, providing a structural understanding of AI-supported research in e-learning contexts. A further investigation of the follow-up studies behind the highly co-cited links revealed the extended research directions from the AIeL mainstreams, such as adaptive learning-based evaluation environments. Implications are discussed.

This study aims to identify the bibliometric outcomes of articles and research trends in specific areas. This study revealed research on the use of e-books for EFL education published in selected journals of the Web of Science from 2011 to 2020, and discusses the trends of the top-cited countries, journals, the most used keywords, and the popular subjects, learning strategies, target skills, and the research outcomes. A total of 53 selected articles were manually and systematically analyzed. The results revealed that the most productive country was Taiwan, and the most cited journal was Computers & Education. The most used keywords were "engagement." The bibliometric analysis can be reflected in the content analysis as preschoolers and elementary school students were the most common participants, guided learning were the most frequently used strategy, and the main target skill was reading. This review study provides an overview of the research agenda for the last 10 years, and highlights the trends in the field by analyzing relevant past research. When the use of e-books in EFL education studies was examined, reading comprehension, teaching/learning strategies, and learning engagement were found to be crucial in the studies. Therefore, there is a need to develop more useful features of e-books to support EFL teaching practices. It is therefore suggested that future research focus more on pedagogical aspects and e-book feature development.

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.

Pottery making in technology education aims to foster students' practical and creative ability. In a typical pottery making class, students receive the teacher's instruction on the fundamental techniques used in pottery making and have opportunities to practice. It is meaningful to construct an observation-doing-reflection process for students in a pottery making class to promote their learning experience and performance. Therefore, in this study, a Virtual Reality (VR)-based pottery making approach was applied to technology education in a junior high school to examine its effects on students' creativity and learning engagement. A total of 97 seventh graders from three classes participated in pottery making in class. One class of 34 students was assigned to be the experimental group learning with the VR-based approach, while the other two classes were assigned to be the control groups, with 30 students learning with the paper-and-pencil approach and 33 students with the clay-based approach. The results showed that the students learning with the VR-based approach were not only more creative in terms of their products, but also had higher cognitive engagement than those in the control groups. Moreover, the VR-based approach improved the students' behavioral, emotional and social engagement compared to the paper-and-pencil approach.

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.

In conventional digital game-based learning, geographic maps are generally used to provide students with the whole picture of the gaming contexts, while the concepts to be learned are separately presented as individual gaming objects. Scholars have indicated the problems of such a gaming content design, in which students could encounter difficulties making effective connections between spatial and conceptual knowledge during the learning process, which may influence their learning effectiveness. As a result, it is a crucial and challenging issue to assist students in organizing spatial and conceptual knowledge in contextual learning environments, such as digital games. To solve this problem, an integrated concept map and geographic map-based digital gaming (CM-GMDG) approach is proposed to demonstrate how spatial and conceptual knowledge can be connected in the development of digital games. To investigate the effectiveness of the approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a social science course. Two classes of seventh graders in a high school participated in this study. The experimental group (N = 39) adopted the CM-GMDG approach while the control group (N = 23) adopted the conventional geographic map-based digital gaming (GMDG) approach. The results showed that the students using the CM-GMDG approach significantly outperformed those using the GMDG approach on learning achievement. Moreover, the learning behavioral pattern analysis results showed that compared with the control group, students in the experimental group more frequently engaged in knowledge-acquiring behaviors, such as reading learning materials and completing learning tasks. On the other hand, the control group gave up on the learning tasks more frequently by switching the gaming scenes and stopping answering questions. This indicated that the CM-GMDG approach was more helpful for guiding students to focus on their learning tasks than the GMDG approach.

How to improve students' problem-solving skills and creativity and adapt them to the new situation of the twenty-first century is a rather important educational objective at present, and is expected to be for a long time to come. Project-based learning (PBL) is considered to be an approach that can develop students' higher-order thinking skills, while peer assessment is a strategy that helps students to interact and reflect. To improve the quality of peer assessment in PBL and to further promote learning by using the feedback of peer assessment, this study proposes an online progressive peer assessment (OPPA)-based PBL approach using constructivism as the theoretical framework for instructional design. The aim of the proposed approach is to organise progressive peer-assessment activities for students as they complete the project, thereby promoting high-quality peer evaluations and continuous reflective improvement of the project. To test the effect of the OPPA-based PBL approach, a quasi-experiment was carried out in an educational game development course with 49 university students from two classes. Students in the experimental group used the OPPA-based PBL approach to develop their game projects, while students in the control group used the conventional PBL approach to develop their game projects. The findings show that the OPPA-based PBL approach significantly improved students' learning achievement, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, problem-solving, and creativity awareness, while also reducing their anxiety levels compared to the conventional PBL approach. The results of this study provide a reference for improving project-based learning, and further demonstrate the importance and validity of constructivist learning theory.

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.

The widespread availability of mobile phones has facilitated mobile learning and ubiquitous learning in language education. Although numerous benefits have been documented, the evidence for speaking fluency enhancement is relatively scant. Firmly grounded in humans' cognitive structure and learners' prior knowledge, this study proposes a ubiquitous photography strategy as a form of generative learning strategy. Specifically, besides the photos in English textbooks, foreign language (FL) learners at the college level were encouraged to use their mobile phones to capture photos to practice visual prompted oral tasks. Their learning experience was measured by a self-report questionnaire, triggering their perceptions of mental effort, task complexity, and learning preferences. Their learning outcome was measured by speech analysis of their oral performance, targeting fluency, and vocabulary diversity. Data analysis revealed that ubiquitous photography induced a better learning experience and enhanced their speaking outcomes to various extents. Results contribute to the potential of integrating ubiquitous learning and generative learning strategies in FL classrooms.

Concept maps have been verified as an effective learning tool in technology-supported learning environments, in particular, in K-12 education. To enable educational technology researchers and school teachers to thoroughly know the research foci and applications of concept maps in technology-supported learning environments for K-12 education (CM-K12), the present study conducted a systematic review of studies published in seven SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) journals of educational technology by referring to the technology-based learning model. The review results showed that concept maps mostly played the role of a personal Mindtool and a collaborative Mindtool, and were mainly applied in elementary schools. The majority of elementary school teachers employed concept maps as a collaborative Mindtool (for a learning group), a personal Mindtool (for individual students), and a learning design tool. As for secondary school teachers, concept maps were mostly adopted as an assessment and evaluation tool, personal Mindtools, and collaborative Mindtools. In terms of application issues, the most adopted medium was desk-top computers, and the most adopted application domains were science, engineering, and language. The research focus explored the most in CM-K12 research was cognition, followed by affect and learning behavior. Based on the findings, several recommendations are proposed.

Writing is a recording process involving complex dynamic behaviours, which is closely connected with authentic contexts. A free authentic context can form a link with students' life experience and their prior knowledge, so that students' deep writing skills can be stimulated. However, in traditional writing activities, the lack of authentic experience is an important reason for students' poor writing achievements and low behavioural engagement. To address this problem, the current study used a spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR)-supported Chinese composition writing approach, which can provide authentic contexts to support students' deep writing. An SVVR experiential learning model was developed and a quasi-experiment was conducted in a primary school to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A total of 59 fourth-grade students from China were recruited and were randomly divided into the experimental group, which adopted the SVVR-supported learning approach, and the control group, which adopted the non-SVVR-supported learning approach. The results show that the proposed approach can promote students' transition of learning behavioural engagement from medium to high, as well as the development of deep writing skills. It was found that students learning with the SVVR approach who acquired better deep writing skills tended to demonstrate better writing performance in relation to linguistic expressiveness and creative thinking than the students learning with the non-SVVR approach.

Educators have indicated the need to foster students' ability to solve problems by acquiring up-to-date knowledge as well as promoting their competences for making decisions from diverse perspectives based on the acquired knowledge. Traditional courses mainly use lecture-based instruction without providing sufficient opportunities for students to practice and interact with the teacher; therefore, it is difficult to deliver such up-to-date knowledge via traditional instruction, not to mention fostering students' critical thinking. In this study, the Mobile technology-supported Decision, Reflection and Exercise (MDRE) model is proposed to address this problem. Moreover, a learning system is developed based on the proposed approach. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a university with a two-group pretest posttest design to assess participants' learning achievement, critical thinking and learning satisfaction. The participants were two classes of undergraduate students. One class with 37 students was the experimental group learning with the MDRE learning approach, whereas the other class with 37 students was the control group learning with the conventional technology-based learning approach. Analysis of covariance was performed to evaluate the effect of the intervention on the target outcomes. It was found that the experimental group showed better learning achievement, critical thinking and learning satisfaction than the control group. This implies that the MDRE approach has good potential in helping learners think from diverse perspectives and promoting their learning performance and engagement, which is important in higher education aimed at fostering students' competence of acquiring up-to-date knowledge for solving problems.

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.

Mobile learning strategies have been employed for social learning activities, including library- and museum-supported learning. Previous studies have reviewed the literature from the technological aspect. However, a retrospective study from the perspective of bibliometric and network structure has not yet been provided. The aim of this study was therefore to systematically review journal papers on library-supported mobile learning (LibML). A coding framework including library types, mobile learning strategies, and research issues was adopted based on the literature and was used to screen and categorize the research papers. A co-citation network analysis was then adopted to analyze and visualize the structural relationships among the papers. A total of 53 eligible articles with 1370 citations in follow-up studies were collected from the Scopus database. The results showed that two main research streams of LibML were identified from the overall network structure, including library- and museum-supported mobile learning. In terms of the mobile learning strategy, library-supported research mainly focused on self-directed learning, whereas museum-supported research emphasized inquiry-based learning. In terms of research issues, most library-supported research focused on patrons' affective engagement, whereas museum-supported research emphasized learning performance. This study provides a citation-based approach to reveal the research trends and mainstream LibML research. The main contribution of combining co-citation and social network analysis is to provide a visualized network diagram of LibML research. Limitations of the methodological approach are noted. Discussion and future directions from the follow-up study are provided.

Scholars believe that computational thinking is one of the essential competencies of the 21st century and computer programming courses have been recognized as a potential means of fostering students' computational thinking. In tradition instruction, PFCT (problem identification, flow definition, coding, and testing) is a commonly adopted procedure to guide students to learn and practice computer programming. However, without further guidance, students might focus on learning the syntax of computer programming language rather than the concept of solving problems. This study proposes a peer-assessment-supported PFCT (PA-PFCT) approach for boosting students' computer programming knowledge and computational thinking awareness. A quasi-experiment was conducted on a computer programming course in a high school to evaluate its influence on students' learning achievement, computational thinking awareness, learning motivation, and self-efficacy. An experimental group of 51 students learned with the proposed approach, while a control group of 49 students learned with the traditional PFCT (T-PFCT) approach. The experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly enhanced the students' computational thinking awareness, learning motivation, and self-efficacy, while not having significant impacts on their computer programming knowledge test scores.

Increasing learners' sense of presence is important in professional training, in particular, when aiming to foster their competences of making judgements and solving problems when facing real cases. However, in conventional training programmes, sometimes it is difficult to situate learners in real cases owing to several considerations, such as cost and potential danger. Scholars have indicated that the lack of opportunities to experience real contexts could seriously affect the training outcomes. To cope with this problem, the present study proposes a spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR)-based professional training (SVVR-PT) approach based on the attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (ARCS) model to situate learners in an authentic training environment to experience the process of solving practical cases before facing real cases. To evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, a true experiment was conducted in a hospital by randomly assigning 70 nurses to an experimental group learning with the SVVR-PT approach and a control group learning with the conventional training approach. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperformed the conventional approach in terms of promoting the learners' sense of presence and learning achievement as well as their problem-solving tendency and critical-thinking awareness. Moreover, the SVVR-PT learners also showed higher technology acceptance than the conventional training group.

Previous research has illustrated the potential of flipped learning for assisting teachers in designing meaningful activities to promote students' higher order thinking skills; however, several previous studies have challenged the effects of flipped learning on students' learning. One of the key problems is the lack of an effective learning approach or tools to engage students in the flipped learning activity. In this study, a concept mapping-based Prediction-Observation-Explanation (POE) approach was incorporated into flipped learning (called CPOE-FL) to enhance students' scientific learning. Furthermore, a three-group experiment was conducted to assess the effects of the three flipped learning models, comprising the CPOE-FL approach, the POE-FL (incorporating POE into flipped learning) approach, and the C-FL (conventional flipped learning) approach. The experimental results displayed that the CPOE-FL approach can benefit the learning achievements and self-efficacy of the students with respectively lower prior knowledge and lower initial self-efficacy, in comparison with the POE-FL and C-FL approaches. Both the CPOE-FL and POE-FL approaches promoted the students' inner learning motivation, while the CPOE-FL approach enhanced the students' critical thinking. This proposed approach could provide a good reference for researchers or school teachers intending to implement POE-based flipped learning in the future.

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.

Digital games have become increasingly popular. However, many teachers may not have relevant knowledge and experience of designing and implementing digital game-based teaching in formal classrooms. This study proposed a collaborative design approach to facilitate pre-service teachers' abilities of designing for learning with a digital game. To evaluate the effects of the proposed approach, a quasi-experiment was carried out at a teachers' university in Eastern China. This study was implemented in a Fall 2019 educational development course, a total of 100 pre-service teachers from two intact classes participated in it. It is found that the approach is effective in helping the students design digital games-based learning activities. Additionally, the experimental group students developed more constructivist views of game-based teaching practices. It is concluded that engaging pre-service teachers in design, implementation and reflection of innovative technologies-enhanced learning practices is imaginable for our mission of bring children to a cheerful and harvesting journey in classroom.

Intracultural learning emphasises the importance of understanding one's own culture and that of foreign countries; furthermore, it involves sharing relevant opinions with people from around the world and developing an understanding and acceptance of differences. In order to immerse students in foreign countries to experience the cultures and environment, this study used spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR) to present authentic contexts. By referring to previous research and the constructivism learning theory, this study proposed the question, observation, and organisation (QOO)-based SVVR approach. The aim of the proposed approach was to strengthen students' presentation performance, enrich their discussion, and increase their engagement. To investigate the effects of the QOO-based SVVR approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a cultural course, with a total of 60 high school students from two classes. The experimental group students used the QOO-based SVVR approach to learn knowledge of world cultures, while the control group students learned with the conventional SVVR approach by observing in the SVVR environment, and then having team discussions and completing worksheets. The findings showed that the QOO-based SVVR approach significantly enhanced the students' world cultures presentation performance in terms of accuracy, organisation, and relevance. The results showed a significant difference between the different learning approaches regarding acceptance of the use of SVVR. The interview results further indicated that the students learning with the QOO-based SVVR approach had a greater tendency to learn to make more accurate, organised, and relevant presentations due to the benefits of the graphical learning methods, and to express their thoughts freely. On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the two groups' classroom engagement. Accordingly, discussion of the findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Issues relevant to smartphone-supported mobile learning have been extensively discussed and investigated over the past years. Unlike general mobile devices, the advantages of smartphones, such as recording learning and portability, can cross formal and informal education. Smartphones can promote communication between health professionals; however, there is still a lack of systematic analysis of the application and development trends of smartphone use in medical education. The present study systematically reviewed research articles published in international academic journals from 2007 to 2016, analyzed the application domains, subjects, and adopted learning strategies, and investigated the research issues of smartphone-supported medical education. The findings revealed that the application of smartphones in medical education and training has not gained much popularity over the past years. In addition to the changes in the software technology in smartphones and the rising number of studies on mobile learning in medical education, research issues have become increasingly diverse in recent years. Smartphone-supported learning has mainly been implemented to develop basic concepts of biomedical information and in information technology environments; moreover, applying smartphones in medical education did not extensively adopt such learning strategies as inquiry-based learning, contextual mobile learning, mindtools, game-based learning, or synchronous sharing. This indicates that most of the studies adopting smartphones focused on skills training and basic knowledge acquisition rather than on the development of learners' higher-order thinking, for example, problem solving or critical thinking. On the other hand, it was found that the number of experimental studies related to smartphones has increased recently. The majority of research adopted questionnaire surveys and reported learners' cognitive performances and concepts, while learning behaviors were seldom analyzed. Therefore, this study indicates the research trends and potential research issues of integrating smartphones into medical education, and provides suggestions and references for researchers, medical teachers, and decision-makers.

With the growing number of research articles published on flipped learning, many aspects of this instructional approach have been well researched and thoughtfully discussed. At this point, how can future research advance our understanding of flipped learning? This article sheds light on three possible directions for future studies of this instructional approach, including (1) longitudinal studies, (2) examining its effects on different learning objectives, and (3) incorporating gamification into flipped courses. A descriptive framework for flipped classroom interventions is then proposed, comprising of four dimensions: (1) research background, (2) course design, (3) course activities, and (4) outcome of interventions. By applying this descriptive framework, the knowledge created in future research can be well-documented, disseminated, used, and evaluated by other practitioners and researchers. The present work can provide a foundation for further efforts to research flipped learning.

E-books have been introduced to educational institutions in many countries. The use of e-books in traditional classrooms enables the recording of learning logs. Recently, researchers have begun to carry out learning analytics on the learning logs of e-books. However, there has been limited attention devoted to understanding the types of learning strategies that students employ when they read e-books. In this paper, using e-book learning logs, we examine the learning strategies that students employed when reading e-books. In this paper, we will introduce how to identify learning strategies from e-book learning logs with two case studies. One is "Identifying Learning Strategies Using Clustering" and the other is "Examining Learning Strategies Using Sequential Analysis."

With reference to the Technology-based Learning model for flipped classrooms, a literature review on Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) papers published in the Web of Science (WOS) database was conducted, with the application of flipped learning in science education as the research topic. The study analyzed the existing research on author nationalities, application domains, research methods, participants, learning strategies, and research issues. Based on the analysis data, starting from 2015, there have been a large number of flipped classroom studies in science education. The studies were mainly from the United States; the application domains were mostly chemistry, physics, biology, and natural science and ecology. Over half of the studies adopted quantitative methods, and participants were mainly college students. In the before-class stage, the flipped classroom studies in science education mainly adopted instructional videos as the learning materials and used online learning systems as the medium for materials and online discussion. In the in-class stage, the major learning strategy was problem-based learning, while over half of the studies did not employ educational technology. In the after-class stage, most studies administered examinations to explore the learning outcomes. Accordingly, Potential research issues are proposed as a reference for future studies.

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.

Based on the Technology-Based Learning Model, the present study reviewed open online language learning research published in the Scopus database from 2009 to 2018, with a focus on research design, sample size, learning devices, target languages, language skills, the learners' education level, the learners' language proficiency level, learning methods, and the foci of investigation. In terms of research design, quantitative empirical studies accounted for the most, followed by mixed method studies. As for the target languages, English was investigated the most, with few studies focused on other languages. In terms of language skills, the number of studies related to vocabulary and speaking was less than those concerning reading and writing. With regard to learning methods, self-directed learning, blended learning, and peer review were the most commonly adopted. There was little research on collaborative learning, flipped classrooms, adaptive learning, or thematic-oriented learning. As for the foci of investigation, motivation, interest, and satisfaction were the focus of the majority of the studies. On the other hand, little research was found to examine self-efficacy or confidence. A discussion based on the analytic results is presented along with proposed suggestions for future research directions.

The present study investigates the effect of online learning vs. blended learning (BL) in developing English language skills by nursing student. The participants of the study included sixty students of Asadabad Nursing Faculty. They were randomly divided into three groups. The control group received general English instruction through the communicative approach and did exercises based on the tasks for developing general English skills. The online group received general English instruction through LMS instructional model. The BL experimental group received general English instruction through blended learning instructional model. Students then took a posttest of standard general English (TOFEL). The results showed that the blended learning group performed better than the other groups in developing general English skills. These results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, developers of training programs for future nurses, material producers, and all who are involved in nursing education.