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This study examines the research landscape of smart learning environments by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the field over the years. The study focused on the research trends, scholar’s productivity, and thematic focus of scientific publications in the field of smart learning environments. A total of 1081 data consisting of peer-reviewed articles were retrieved from the Scopus database. A bibliometric approach was applied to analyse the data for a comprehensive overview of the trend, thematic focus, and scientific production in the field of smart learning environments. The result from this bibliometric analysis indicates that the first paper on smart learning environments was published in 2002; implying the beginning of the field. Among other sources, “Computers & Education,” “Smart Learning Environments,” and “Computers in Human Behaviour” are the most relevant outlets publishing articles associated with smart learning environments. The work of Kinshuk et al., published in 2016, stands out as the most cited work among the analysed documents. The United States has the highest number of scientific productions and remained the most relevant country in the smart learning environment field. Besides, the results also showed names of prolific scholars and most relevant institutions in the field. Keywords such as “learning analytics,” “adaptive learning,” “personalized learning,” “blockchain,” and “deep learning” remain the trending keywords. Furthermore, thematic analysis shows that “digital storytelling” and its associated components such as “virtual reality,” “critical thinking,” and “serious games” are the emerging themes of the smart learning environments but need to be further developed to establish more ties with “smart learning”. The study provides useful contribution to the field by clearly presenting a comprehensive overview and research hotspots, thematic focus, and future direction of the field. These findings can guide scholars, especially the young ones in field of smart learning environments in defining their research focus and what aspect of smart leaning can be explored.

In human culture, storytelling is a long-established tradition. The reasons people tell stories are manifold: to entertain, to transfer knowledge between generations, to maintain cultural heritage, or to warn others of dangers. With the emergence of the digitisation of media, many new possibilities to tell stories in serious and non-entertainment contexts emerged. A very simple example is the idea of serious gaming, as in, digital games without the primary purpose of entertainment. In this paper, we introduce the term serious storytelling as a new potential media genre – defining serious storytelling as storytelling with a purpose beyond entertainment. We also put forward a review of existing potential application areas, and develop a framework for serious storytelling. We foresee several application areas for this fundamental concept, including wellbeing and health, medicine, psychology, education, ethical problem solving, e-leadership and management, qualitative journalism, serious digital games, simulations and virtual training, user experience studies, and online communication.

This study investigated the role of virtual reality (VR) in computer science (CS) education over the last 10 years by conducting a bibliometric and content analysis of articles related to the use of VR in CS education. A total of 971 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences were collected from Web of Science and Scopus databases to conduct the bibliometric analysis. Furthermore, content analysis was conducted on 39 articles that met the inclusion criteria. This study demonstrates that VR research for CS education was faring well around 2011 but witnessed low production output between the years 2013 and 2016. However, scholars have increased their contribution in this field recently, starting from the year 2017. This study also revealed prolific scholars contributing to the field. It provides insightful information regarding research hotspots in VR that have emerged recently, which can be further explored to enhance CS education. In addition, the quantitative method remains the most preferred research method, while the questionnaire was the most used data collection technique. Moreover, descriptive analysis was primarily used in studies on VR in CS education. The study concludes that even though scholars are leveraging VR to advance CS education, more effort needs to be made by stakeholders across countries and institutions. In addition, a more rigorous methodological approach needs to be employed in future studies to provide more evidence-based research output. Our future study would investigate the pedagogy, content, and context of studies on VR in CS education.

Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study is to understand student’s opinions and perceptions about e-assessment when the assessment process was changed from the traditional computer assisted method to a multiple-choice Moodle based method. Background: In order to implement continuous assessment to a large number of students, several shifts are necessary, which implies as many different tests as the number of shifts required. Consequently, it is difficult to ensure homogeneity through the different tests and a huge amount of grading time is needed. These problems related to the traditional assessment based on computer assisted tests, lead to a re-design of the assessment resulting in the use of multiple-choice Moodle tests. Methodology: A longitudinal, concurrent, mixed method study was implemented over a five-year period. A survey was developed and carried out by 815 undergraduate students who experienced the electronic multiple-choice questions (eMCQ) assessment in the courses of the IS department. Qualitative analyses included open-ended survey responses and interviews with repeating students in the first year. Contribution: This study provides a reflection tool on how to incorporate frequent moments of assessment in courses with a high number of students without overloading teachers with a huge workload. The research analysed the efficiency of assessing non-theoretical topics using eMCQ, while ensuring the homogeneity of assessment tests, which needs to be complemented with other assessment methods in order to assure that students develop and acquire the expected skills and competencies. Findings: The students involved in the study appreciate the online multiple-choice quiz assessment method and perceive it as fair but have a contradictory opinion regarding the preference of the assessment method, throughout the years. These changes in perception may be related to the improvement of the question bank and categorisation of questions according to difficulty level, which lead to the nullification of the ‘luck factor’. Other major findings are that although the online multiple-choice quizzes are used with success in the assessment of theoretical topics, the same is not in evidence regarding practical topics. Therefore, this assessment needs to be complemented with other methods in order to achieve the expected learning outcomes. Recommendations for Practitioners: In order to be able to evaluate the same expected learning outcomes in practical topics, particularly in technology and information systems subjects, the evaluator should complement the online multiple-choice quiz assessment with other approaches, such as a PBL method, homework assignments, and/or other tasks performed during the semester. Recommendation for Researchers: This study explores e-assessment with online multiple-choice quizzes in higher education. It provides a survey that can be applied in other institutions that are also using online multiple-choice quizzes to assess non-theorical topics. In order to better understand the students’ opinions on the development of skills and competencies with online multiple-choice quizzes and on the other hand with classical computer assisted assessment, it would be necessary to add questions concerning these aspects. It would then be interesting to compare the findings of this study with the results from other institutions. Impact on Society: The increasing number of students in higher education has led to a raised use of e-assessment activities, since it can provide a fast and efficient manner to assess a high number of students. Therefore, this research provides meaningful insight of the stakeholders’ perceptions of online multiple-choice quizzes about practical topics. Future Research: An interesting study, in the future, would be to obtain the opinions of a particular set of students on two tests, one of the tests using online multiple-choice quizzes and the other through a classical computer assisted assessment method. A natural extension of the present study is a comparative analysis regarding the grades obtained by students who performed one or another type of assessment (online multiple-choice quizzes vs. classical computer assisted assessment).

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient methodology that can assist the evaluators in assessing a variable number of individuals that are working in groups and guarantee that the assessment is dependent on the group members’ performance and contribution to the work developed. Background: Collaborative work has been gaining more popularity in academic settings. However, group assessment needs to be performed according to each individual’s performance. The problem rests on the need to distinguish each member of the group in order to provide fair and unbiased assessments. Methodology: Design Science Research methodology supported the design of a framework able to provide the evaluator with the means to distinguish individuals in a workgroup and deliver fair results. Hevner’s DSR guidelines were fulfilled in order to describe WebAVALIA. To evaluate the framework, a quantitative study was performed and the first results are presented. Contribution: This paper provides a methodological solution regarding a fair evaluation of collaborative work through a tool that allows its users to perform their own assessment and peer assessment. These are made accordingly to the user’s perspectives on the performance of each group member throughout the work development. Findings: The first analysis of the results indicates that the developed method provides fairness in the assessment of group members, delivering a distinction amongst individuals. Therefore, each group member obtains a mark that corresponds to their specific contribution to the workgroup. Recommendations for Practitioners: For those who intend to apply this workgroup assessment method, it is relevant to raise student awareness about the methodology that is going to be used. That is, all the functionalities and steps in WebAVALIA have to be thoroughly explained before beginning of the project. Then, the evaluators have to decide about the students’ intermediate voting, namely if the evaluator chooses or not to publish student results throughout the project’s development. If there is the decision to display these intermediate results, the evaluator must try to encourage collaboration among workgroup members, instead of competition. Recommendation for Researchers: This study explores the design and development of an e-assessment tool – WebAVALIA. In order to assess its feasibility, its use in other institutions or contexts is recommended. The gathering of user opinions is suggested as well. It would then be interesting to compare the findings of this study with the results from other experimentations Impact on Society: Sometimes, people develop a rejection of collaborative work because they feel exploited due to the biased evaluation results. However, the group members assessment distinction, according to each one’s performance, may give each individual a sense of fairness and reward, leading to an openness/willingness towards collaborative work. Future Research: As future work, there are plans to implement the method in other group assessment contexts – such as sports and business environments, other higher education institutions, technical training students – in other cultures and countries. From this myriad of contexts, satisfaction results would be compared. Other future plans are to further explore the mathematical formulations and the respective WebAVALIA supporting algorithms.

A critical aspect of designing and running online study programs is the identification of factors and elements that could potentially threaten the continuation of studies. In this study, we first identified a set of critical events that occurred in the running of a Finnish online doctoral study program over 16 years. Next, we analyzed the events using a four-pillar sustainability model, which consisted of the economic, social, environmental, and ethical pillars. We detected several contextually relevant and dynamic pivotal factors related to each of the pillars, which had effects on the sustainability of the program at the time of the critical events. The analysis revealed that positive pivotal factors in one sustainability pillar can be used to compensate for negative pivotal factors in the other pillars. Two aspects that were crucial for the sustainability of the online doctoral study program were the resilience and shared commitment of the community involved in its activities, which helped in overcoming any challenges encountered. Based on this study, we recommended that future research should design novel solutions that help online study programs to proactively identify potential critical events and related pivotal factors. Furthermore, studies should find creative approaches for constructively coping with critical events that have been identified.

There is a distinct lack of authentic and relevant learning opportunities for Indigenous learners in formalized educational settings. This is due to multiple factors including the lack of incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into educational curriculum. A significant portion of Indigenous knowledge is in relation to the land and is experientially grounded. Therefore, any knowledge system used by Indigenous learners must take into account that learning is contextual to a place and should include a significant experiential learning component within the curriculum. Digital storytelling has emerged as a methodology for incorporating Indigenous knowledge into learning and with the literature identifying the lack of a formal curriculum design process, a framework is presented for incorporating digital storytelling into learning curriculum, allowing for authentic and relevant learning opportunities for Indigenous learners. To test the efficacy of our framework approach, prototype tools have been created to generate learning objects to be used in a case study course. Experts in the field of education and Indigenous knowledge were then asked to provide feedback on the efficacy of the framework. Strengths identified include the inclusion of knowledge holders and community members in the design process as well as providing a visual and oral alternative to the standard written method of expression. Weaknesses identified include possible lack of knowledge and support from educators as well as a lack of protocol to determining valid, relevant knowledge. Additional benefits identified include using this approach beyond the physical boundaries of a community, to allow, for remote community members to contribute to the knowledgebase.

Computational thinking (CT) has become an essential skill nowadays. For young students, CT competency is required to prepare them for future jobs. This competency can facilitate students’ understanding of programming knowledge which has been a challenge for many novices pursuing a computer science degree. This study focuses on designing and implementing a virtual reality (VR) game-based application (iThinkSmart) to support CT knowledge. The study followed the design science research methodology to design, implement, and evaluate the first prototype of the VR application. An initial evaluation of the prototype was conducted with 47 computer science students from a Nigerian university who voluntarily participated in an experimental process. To determine what works and what needs to be improved in the iThinkSmart VR game-based application, two groups were randomly formed, consisting of the experimental (n = 21) and the control (n = 26) groups respectively. Our findings suggest that VR increases motivation and therefore increase students’ CT skills, which contribute to knowledge regarding the affordances of VR in education and particularly provide evidence on the use of visualization of CT concepts to facilitate programming education. Furthermore, the study revealed that immersion, interaction, and engagement in a VR educational application can promote students’ CT competency in higher education institutions (HEI). In addition, it was shown that students who played the iThinkSmart VR game-based application gained higher cognitive benefits, increased interest and attitude to learning CT concepts. Although further investigation is required in order to gain more insights into students learning process, this study made significant contributions in positioning CT in the HEI context and provides empirical evidence regarding the use of educational VR mini games to support students learning achievements.

\"The increasing attention to Machine Learning (ML) in K-12 levels and studies exploring a different aspect of research on K-12 ML has necessitated the need to synthesize this existing research. This study systematically reviewed how research on ML teaching and learning in K-12 has fared, including the current area of focus, and the gaps that need to be addressed in the literature in future studies. We reviewed 43 conference and journal articles to analyze specific focus areas of ML learning and teaching in K-12 from four perspectives as derived from the data: curriculum development, technology development, pedagogical development, and teacher training/professional development. The findings of our study reveal that (a) additional ML resources are needed for kindergarten to middle school and informal settings, (b) further studies need to be conducted on how ML can be integrated into subject domains other than computing, (c) most of the studies focus on pedagogical development with a dearth of teacher professional development programs, and (d) more evidence of societal and ethical implications of ML should be considered in future research. While this study recognizes the present gaps and direction for future research, these findings provide insight for educators, practitioners, instructional designers, and researchers into K-12 ML research trends to advance the quality of the emerging field.\" [Abstract: Author's information].

Many Indigenous learners worldwide find the learning materials presented in current educational settings culturally irrelevant. A lack of relevant learning materials within formal education settings subscribing to Western Euro-centric curriculum standards is a key factor. Learning materials provided through modelling, practice, and apprenticeship, are desired. With the literature identifying the lack of a formal curriculum design process, a framework is presented for standardized creation of learning objects for Indigenous learners. To determine the efficacy of the framework, two case study examples and prototype tools were presented to Indigenous knowledge expert interviewees to identify strengths, weaknesses and additional benefits to the proposed framework. Incorporating learners in the design process from the beginning was highlighted as being a very positive approach. The benefits of this research include that it provides an interface, in the form of a prototype, to allow educators to create relevant and authentic learning for Indigenous learners. Additional work is needed on simplifying the process of knowledge creation for educators and on ensuring that any knowledge used maintains cultural and contextual meaning to the communities in which it was generated.