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Failure of tissues and organs resulting from degenerative diseases or trauma has caused huge economic and health concerns around the world. Tissue engineering represents the only possibility to revert this scenario owing to its potential to regenerate or replace damaged tissues and organs. In a regeneration strategy, biomaterials play a key role promoting new tissue formation by providing adequate space for cell accommodation and appropriate biochemical and biophysical cues to support cell proliferation and differentiation. Among other physical cues, the architectural features of the biomaterial as a kind of instructive stimuli can influence cellular behaviors and guide cells towards a specific tissue organization. Thus, the optimization of biomaterial micro/nano architecture, through different manufacturing techniques, is a crucial strategy for a successful regenerative therapy. Over the last decades, many micro/nanostructured biomaterials have been developed to mimic the defined structure of ECM of various soft and hard tissues. This review intends to provide an overview of the relevant studies on micro/nanostructured scaffolds created for soft and hard tissue regeneration and highlights their biological effects, with a particular focus on striated muscle, cartilage, and bone tissue engineering applications.

This study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of a blended learning-based scaffolding strategy assisted by Google Classroom to improve students’ learning outcomes and self-efficacy in the Physics Lesson Planning course. This study employed the quasi-experimental method with one group pretest-posttest design. The samples of the study were 77 students of Physics Education, UIN Raden Intan Lampung in the academic year of 2019/2020. The instruments used were a questionnaire to investigate students’ responses toward the learning process, a questionnaire to measure students’ self-efficacy, and a test to measure students’ learning outcomes. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis techniques, n-gain analysis, and effect size analysis. The results showed that the blended learning-based scaffolding strategy assisted by Google Classroom was effective in improving students’ learning outcomes with the n-gain and the effect size in medium category. The percentages of students’ self-efficacy in class A, class B, and class C were 68%, 60%, and 59% respectively. It was concluded based on the indicators of students’ learning outcomes improvement, students’ high self-efficacy, and students’ positive responses (84%). For further research, the researcher suggests to apply blended learning-based scaffolding strategy assisted by Google Classroom in other branches of science.

Several stakeholders, such as community groups, government officials, parents, guardians, and educators have shown concern about the achievement gap between Nova Scotia learners of African descent and their predominantly White peers. Using the African proverb ‘It takes a village’ as a framework, this study involved parents, extended family members and caregivers of children aged 4 to 6 years to explore the scaffolding strategies employed as well as the experiences of participants when supporting children’s emergent writing skills during COVID-19 pandemic. Survey and focus group sessions demonstrated how participants frequently scaffolded emergent writing using highly effective strategies including Africentric approaches. The importance of ‘It takes a village’ proverb in enhancing literacy development has also been established.

The current study examined how scaffolding techniques can affect the writing skills of Thai students who are learning English as a foreign language (EFL). The study utilised purposive sampling to select participants, who were divided into two groups: five experts and five novice learners. The study employed a collection of instructional materials consisting of five lesson plans implemented at different stages of the writing process. In addition, a writing rubric was used to assess the quality of written outputs. It was found that implementing scaffolding strategies during the writing process significantly improved the writing abilities of ten EFL students. The scaffolding technique can create a supportive environment where educators can offer guidance and motivation to students as they write. On the other hand, the writing process can be divided into two parts: collaborative efforts that encourage group participation and individual work that promotes independence by gradually reducing the need for help and guidance. Thus, it can be inferred that offering scaffolding strategies during the writing process leads to more substantial enhancements in the writing skills of EFL learners.

Encouraging students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) has become an ultimate objective for several education programmes. Being a significant domain of scaffolding strategies, HOTs has been considered as a concern that should persistently be at the vanguard of reform agenda of science. The present research aims to examine the effect of scaffolding strategies on HOTs of middle school science students in the context of Saudi Arabia. To carry out the research aim, quasi-experimental design has been applied based on multiple-choice questions comprising 20 questions all distributed on four skills, namely, application, analysis, evaluation and creation. The total population of the research was 84 grade 9 students who all sat for both pre-test and post-test. Convenient sampling was chosen as a sampling method that typically suits both the experimental group (42 students) and the control group (42 students). After collection, data were analysed using both descriptive analysis, mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics including t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate ANOVA. The effect of scaffolding strategies on the four skills was found to be significant (p <.01). The present research can contribute to the enhancement of students’ HOTs, provided that scaffolding strategies are applied in science classes and, from a research perspective, will be a reference for researchers who are interested in scaffolding strategies in the context of either Saudi Arabia or other countries.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational mobile games may play a significant role to facilitate students’ learning. Several studies have indicated that these games using mobile phones may improve students’ learning motivation and effectiveness when they are equipped with appropriate learning strategies. However, investigating the impact of learning strategies in students’ utilization of educational mobile games has received little scholarly attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this research proposed two learning games scenarios to fill this gap. In the first scenario, students were offered an educational mobile game with a learning strategy called ‘scaffolding strategy’; while in the second scenario, the same game was offered without the strategy. To achieve this objective, an experimental design with a research model was developed to examine the role of scaffolding learning strategy in students’ use of educational mobile games. In this experimental study, 43 students from two classes participated in the two learning scenarios. The results indicate that educational mobile gaming with the scaffolding learning strategy significantly influenced students’ utilization of the mobile game. In addition, the adoption of the learning strategy significantly affected students’ perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioural intention to use, compared with the same game without the learning strategy. The results also indicate that the introduction of the scaffolding learning strategy into the educational mobile game will increase students’ learning effectiveness and motivation.

In language learning, several strategies help learners acquire and develop their language skills, but not much attention has been given to understand the role of scaffolding in acquisition of language skills, particularly writing skills in EFL situation. This study attempted to identify such proactive steps that should be taken and strategies to be developed to meet the challenges faced by students in English Writing Course of Preparatory year program at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The objective of the study was to examine how scaffolding strategies can enhance the descriptive writing skills of EFL students and help them achieve the desired learning outcomes. In this explanatory sequential mixed-methods research study, a quasi-experimental approach was used to determine the effect of scaffolding strategies on learner’s writing performance. The data for the qualitative phase was collected through classroom observation, while the quantitative phase used a pretest and a posttest. The sample, identified through convenience sampling technique, comprised 40 participants, divided equally into two groups of 20 students each, control and experimental. The findings suggested that the scaffolding strategies are helpful in improving the writing performance of all students, but these strategies specifically generate better results for under achievers. Further studies in different classroom and social contexts are required to provide more evidence of the efficacy and practicality of such scaffolding strategies.

Vocabulary is the foundation for students who learn a foreign language. Nevertheless, students may be bored by the painstaking process of rote learning. To this end, this study designed a handheld sensor-based vocabulary game based on a scaffolding strategy for improving students' motivation and achievement in vocabulary learning. On the one hand, such mobile technologies not only help students learn vocabulary anytime and anywhere, but also create embodied learning experiences by allowing students to control the avatar in the game with their hands. On the other hand, the scaffolding strategy adopted in this study serves as a complementary mechanism to help students learn vocabulary. To evaluate the effectiveness of the game, this study conducted a quasi-experiment by dividing the participating students into an experimental group and a control group. The former played the handheld sensor-based vocabulary game based on the scaffolding strategy, while the latter played the same game without the assistance of the scaffolding strategy. The research findings of this study showed that the handheld sensor-based vocabulary game significantly improved the low-achieving students' motivation and performance in vocabulary learning, but seemed to be less effective in helping them retain the vocabulary they learned through the game.

The article reported a case study investigating the scaffolding strategies of twelve Asian EFL learners in four small groups’ scaffolding strategies during two online collaborative writing (OCW) tasks in a composition course using Google Docs as a writing platform. Of interest was how EFL learners with different L1 scaffold each other while co-constructing OCW tasks, and also if scaffolding strategies used       during OCW tasks influence writing performance. Data collection included pre-test and post-test writing, two OCW tasks on descriptive and argumentative essays, learners’ use of scaffolding and non-scaffolding negotiations during OCW tasks observed through Google Docs revision history, and student reflection. The findings showed that learners in small groups employed both scaffolding and non-scaffolding dialogues to jointly construct their OCW tasks by giving advice, providing suggestions, responding to questions or requests, asking questions, or clarifying ideas. Learners who contributed more texts directed their team and initiated both scaffolding negotiations and non-negotiations while performing group work. The study results also revealed that members who employed more scaffolding negotiations during their OCW processes likely produced a better quality of writing in their post-test. Nevertheless, these findings indicated that members in small groups benefited from both scaffolding and non-scaffolding negotiations as they helped in task revisions. The findings contributed to research that has investigated online scaffolding strategies in EFL learners’ collaborative writing tasks.