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- All Subjects: Education
- Creators: Computer Science and Engineering Program
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Education has been at the forefront of many issues in Arizona over the past several years with concerns over lack of funding sparking the Red for Ed movement. However, despite the push for educational change, there remain many barriers to education including a lack of visibility for how Arizona schools are performing at a legislative district level. While there are sources of information released at a school district level, many of these are limited and can become obscure to legislators when such school districts lie on the boundary between 2 different legislative districts. Moreover, much of this information is in the form of raw spreadsheets and is often fragmented between government websites and educational organizations. As such, a visualization dashboard that clearly identifies schools and their relative performance within each legislative district would be an extremely valuable tool to legislative bodies and the Arizona public. Although this dashboard and research are rough drafts of a larger concept, they would ideally increase transparency regarding public information about these districts and allow legislators to utilize the dashboard as a tool for greater understanding and more effective policymaking.
The purpose of this research thesis paper is to provide further insight into the development of extended reality (XR), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) technologies within the educational space and survey how well they are received as well as whether or not they can provide additional learning benefit in regards to other learning mediums such as reading textbooks, watching videos on the subject matter, and other such more traditional mediums. The research conducted consisted of a collaborative effort alongside the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering (SBHSE) personnel and using their provided resources in order to generate a framework with the aforementioned technology, to aid in the development of a web-based XR system which will serve primarily as a means for SBHSE students at Arizona State University (ASU) to enhance their learning experience when it comes to topics such as anatomy and physiology of the human body, with the potential of extending this technology towards other subject matters as well, such as other STEM-related fields. Information about the initial research which included an analysis of the pertinent readings that support a benefit to using XR technology as a means to deliver course content is what is first focused on throughout this document. Then, the process that went into the design and development of the base framework that was in joint collaboration with the SBHSE will be covered. And, to conclude, a case study to generate applicable data to support the argument is covered as well as the results from it, which presented a potential for a future development plan and next steps plan once the developed materials and research are handed off.
This research study investigates the design principles and best practices for incorporating gamification in EduMobile apps for teaching about mosquito breeding grounds. With limited research investigating the effectiveness of EduMobile apps in engaging and educating students on complex topics, this study aims to uncover best practices for designing EduMobile apps for early learners (elementary and middle schoolers). A convenience sample of adults who were not part of the target demographic were recruited to test the app. The System Usability Scale was used to measure user satisfaction, and question-wise t-tests were conducted to analyze the effectiveness of specific design changes. Results show a significant difference in user satisfaction between the original and revised designs, with question 5 of the System Usability Scale driving the overall difference in score. Inconsistent design was found to increase extraneous cognitive load and split attention, while consistency within different views was shown to increase user perception of system integration. These findings suggest that incorporating gamification and following best practices in designing EduMobile apps can increase student engagement and motivation in learning about mosquito breeding grounds.
Not enough students are earning bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science, which is shocking as computing jobs are growing by the thousands (Zampa, 2016). These jobs have high-paying salaries and are not going to fade from the future any time soon, that is why the falling rates of computer science graduates are alarming. The working hypothesis on why so few college students major in computer science is that most think that it is too hard to learn (Wang, 2017). But I believe the real reason lies in that computer science is not an educational subject that is taught before university, which is too late for most students because by ages 12 to 13 (about seventh to eighth grade) they have decided that computer science concepts are “too difficult” for them to learn (Learning, 2022). Implementing a computer science-based education at an earlier age can possibly circumvent this seen development where students begin to lose confidence and doubt their abilities to learn computer science. This can be done easily by integrating computer science into academic subjects that are already taught in elementary schools such as science, math, and language arts as computer science uses logic, syntax, and other skills that are broadly applicable. Thus, I have created a introductory lesson plan for an elementary school class that incorporates learning how to code with robotics to promote learning computer science principles and destigmatize that it is “too hard” to learn in university.
Not enough students are earning bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science, which is shocking as computing jobs are growing by the thousands (Zampa, 2016). These jobs have high-paying salaries and are not going to fade from the future any time soon, that is why the falling rates of computer science graduates are alarming. The working hypothesis on why so few college students major in computer science is that most think that it is too hard to learn (Wang, 2017). But I believe the real reason lies in that computer science is not an educational subject that is taught before university, which is too late for most students because by ages 12 to 13 (about seventh to eighth grade) they have decided that computer science concepts are “too difficult” for them to learn (Learning, 2022). Implementing a computer science-based education at an earlier age can possibly circumvent this seen development where students begin to lose confidence and doubt their abilities to learn computer science. This can be done easily by integrating computer science into academic subjects that are already taught in elementary schools such as science, math, and language arts as computer science uses logic, syntax, and other skills that are broadly applicable. Thus, I have created a introductory lesson plan for an elementary school class that incorporates learning how to code with robotics to promote learning computer science principles and destigmatize that it is “too hard” to learn in university.