David C. Gibson

Curtin University · Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence Centre

October 06, 2014 This collaboratively written document is a product of the Badge Alliance , a network of organizations working to grow and evolve a self­sustaining open badges ecosystem. This document aims to provide a framework for open badges in higher educational institutions. A new, editable, 2015 version of this document can be found here. Our...

Digital badges provide new affordances for online educational activities and experiences. When used with points and leaderboards, a badge can become a gamification element allowing learners to compete with themselves or others, and to know how close they are to accomplishing a goal and acquiring its accompanying reputation. In this role, badges mot...

Assessment, for both the improvement of performance and evaluating learners, is most effective when it reflects learning as "multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time" (Walvoord & Anderson, 1998). With that in mind, what do networks and new media have to offer that can assist and improve educational assessment? This paper...

A rationale for using a simulated teaching environment to train pre-service teacher candidates is presented, followed by the key components of the simSchool dynamic simulator created to accomplish this task. Results of analyses of two sets of data, for the areas of pedagogical practices and teaching skills, are used to illustrate that changes in pr...

In this section, we collected articles that discuss the data needed to unobtrusively observe student learning. While a wide range of data can be utilized for this purpose, the proliferation of digital learning technologies provided many opportunities to collect data from students’ interactions with digital learning tools and platforms. Typically re...

In this section, we have gathered articles that deal with the unobtrusive observation of learning processes. By ‘unobtrusive observations’, we mean a process of detecting and analysing features of learning that can be found in digital traces of someone’s interaction with a designed digital experience. The experience might have been designed as an e...

This paper discusses a three‐level model that synthesizes and unifies existing learning theories to model the roles of artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting learning processes. The model, drawn from developmental psychology, computational biology, instructional design, cognitive science, complexity and sociocultural theory, includes a causal le...

Effective communication and coordination supported by well-established patterns of interactions are vital to collaborative learning. The quality of social relationships among group members can affect group dynamics and communication, as well as further influence students’ learning experiences and perceived learning outcomes. In this study, we use a...

This article evaluates some of the underlying assumptions of a data analytics initiative being undertaken at an Australian university, which provide student support staff with lists of students who have enrolled in program components (classes) different from the plan prescribed in the curriculum (e.g., out of sequence, not on the plan). This study...

This article describes data analytics action research initiatives that have gained traction at a university in Western Australia, with a focus on the return on investment of improving retention. In this report we focus on how actionable data can be provided and insights supported to the right stakeholders at various levels of the organization. The...

This article reports on a trace‐based assessment of approaches to learning used by middle school aged children who interacted with NASA Mars Mission science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) games in Whyville, an online game environment with 8 million registered young learners. The learning objectives of two games included awareness a...

Empathy (a caring concern for the thoughts and feelings of others) has been a focus of studies at the national and international level since the late 1980s when Japan delayed introduction of microcomputers into elementary schools in part due to concerns that technology would turn young children into “non-thinking machines.” (Children & Computers in...

Student-facing visualisations have attracted increased attention with recent developments in data-driven tools to support individual and group work. Learning analytics dashboards (LADs), a data-enhanced feedback tool that allows students to make sense of their learning by providing insights into their learning behaviours represents one of the promi...

A tide of changes with technological advances at its center has allowed more efficient and productive synchronous and asynchronous collaborations among dispersed individuals across the globe in recent years. Working effectively in virtual teams of individuals with diverse backgrounds is thus critical for students to succeed in the 21st century. How...

Problem-solving and collaboration are regarded as an essential part of twenty-first century skills. This study describes a task-focused approach to network analysis of trace data from collaborative problem-solving in a digital learning environment. The analysis framework builds and expands upon previous analyses of social ties as well as discourse...

This paper is in response to the manuscript entitled “Designing and integrating purposeful learning in game play: a systematic review” (Ke, Educ Technol Res Dev, 64(2):219–244, 2016) The author discusses five design elements of purposeful digital learning: Knowledge Activation and Acquisition Actions, Integration of Learning Modes, New Learning Spa...

This paper is based on (a) a literature review focussing on the impact of learning analytics on supporting learning and teaching, (b) a Delphi study involving international expert discussion on current opportunities and challenges of learning analytics as well as (c) outlining a research agenda for closing identified research gaps. Issues and chall...

The increased availability of vast and highly varied amounts of data from learners, teachers, learning environments, and administrative systems within educational settings is overwhelming. The focus of this chapter is on how data with a large number of records, of widely differing datatypes, and arriving rapidly from multiple sources can be harness...

This study is part of a research programme investigating the dynamics and impacts of learning engagement in a challenge-based digital learning environment. Learning engagement is a multidimensional concept which includes an individual’s ability to behaviourally, cognitively, emotionally and motivationally engage in an on-going learning process. Cha...

Research on adoption of innovations has emerged in the 1960s through focusing on six key characteristics, namely, relative advantage compared to current tools or procedures, compatibility with the pre-existing system, complexity or difficulty to learn, trialability or testability, potential for reinvention and use for unintended purposes and observ...

EDUsummIT (International Summit on ICT in Education) is a global knowledge building community of researchers, educational practitioners, and policy makers committed to supporting the effective integration of research and practice in the field of ICT in education. In 2019, more than 100 researchers, practitioners and policy makers from across the wo...

EDUsummIT (International Summit on ICT in Education) is a global knowledge building community of researchers, educational practitioners, and policy makers committed to supporting the effective integration of research and practice in the field of ICT in education. In 2019, more than 100 researchers, practitioners and policy makers from across the wo...

This E-book is a collection of outcome reports by the thematic working groups (TWGs) of EDUsummIT2019. EDUsummIT (International Summit on IT in Education) is a global knowledge building community of researchers, educational practitioners, and policy-makers committed to supporting the effective integration of research and practice in the field of IT...

The book aims to advance global knowledge and practice in applying data science to transform higher education learning and teaching to improve personalization, access and effectiveness of education for all. Currently, higher education institutions and involved stakeholders can derive multiple benefits from educational data mining and learning analy...

In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for sustainable development and a sustainable future. However, the global challenge has been to engage, connect, and empower communities, particularly young people, to both understand and deliver the 17 SDGs. In this study, we show the benefit of a...

This study is part of a research programme investigating the dynamics and impacts of learning engagement in a challenge-based digital learning environment. Learning engagement is a multidimensional concept which includes an individual’s ability to behaviourally, cognitively, emotionally, and motivationally engage in an on-going learning process. Ch...

Global issues such as poverty, hunger, and environmental problems are inextricable and cannot be solved comprehensively by homogeneous groups. With the advance of technology, collaborations with peoples at different geographical locations can be achieved effectively. Higher education in the 21st Century must therefore facilitate students to learn h...

This chapter discusses four measurement challenges of data science in educational assessments that are enabled by technology: (1) Dealing with change over time. (2) How a digital performance space’s relationships interact with learner actions, communications and products. (3) How layers of interpretation are formed from translations of atomistic da...

This study extends the understanding of the process of teachers’ technology adoption by investigating the dynamic nature of the adoption process. We propose a nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model that reveals the dynamics of teachers’ adoption over time and examines the impact of internal and external factors, including experiences, interventions, an...

Assessing personal learning in online collaborative problem solving entails observing the actions, communications and products created by group members in a designed task space as they engage in coordinated activity to construct and maintain a shared conception of an open-ended problem and achieve some goal in relation to the problem. Because of th...

This paper analyses parts of speech in a training corpus with 13,189 learning outcomes in which Bloom's Taxonomy levels were previously classified by human experts for 3,496 subjects offered at an Australian university. This paper explores the automatic identification of verbs and other parts of speech impacting the semantic meaning and Bloom's cla...

With the increasing relevance of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the global transition towards the knowledge society, school systems and higher education now face increasing challenges involved in preparing students for successful participation in the knowledge society. In many countries, this is leading to manifold efforts and...

With the increasing relevance of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the global transition towards the knowledge society, school systems and higher education now face increasing challenges involved in preparing students for successful participation in the knowledge society. In many countries, this is leading to manifold efforts and...

As educators we seek to set up meaningful graduate attributes to encourage creativity and a drive for innovation among our graduates in order to produce professionals not content with learning how to do more of the same, but who have the courage to push the boundaries of their profession and innovate. Referring to preparatory research on work in pr...

This article presents a new framework for unobtrusive observation analytics of knowledge and skills-in-action through continuous collection of data from individuals while they interact with digital assets either as individuals or on problem-solving teams. The framework includes measures of the skill and knowledge areas of collaboration, creativity,...

Learning design has traditionally been thought of as an activity occurring prior to the presentation of a learning experience or a description of that activity. With the advent of near real-time data and new opportunities of representing the decisions and actions of learners in digital learning environments, learning designers can now apply dynamic...

Higher education institutions are developing the capacity for learning analytics. However, the technical development of learning analytics has far exceeded the consideration of ethical issues around learning analytics. We examined higher education academics’ knowledge, attitudes, and concerns about the use of learning analytics though four focus gr...

When components of authentic learning are enabled by technology and the event-level interactions of learners are recorded as a historical stream of items, a voluminous and varied data record of the performance in the scenario rapidly accumulates into a transcript. This transcript, the context in which it was created, and based on it, the purposes,...

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has been measuring ICT in education since 2009, but with such rapid change in technology and its use in education, it is important now to revise the collection mechanisms to focus on how technology is being used to enhance learning and teaching. Sustainable development goal (SDG) 4, for example, moves beyon...

With the wide use of the Internet and digital data sources, there has been a recent emergence of easy access to student data within learning management systems (LMS), grade data through student information systems (SIS) and broader sector data through benchmarking metrics and standards. Learning analytics on top of this data has introduced greater...

Research in social science, education, psychology, and humanities is still dominated by research methodologies that primarily divide the world into either qualitative or quantitative approaches. This relatively small toolkit for understanding complex phenomena in the world limits the next generation of education researchers when they are faced with...

The rapid adoption of learning analytics in the higher education sector has not been matched by ethical considerations surrounding their use, with ethical issues now slated as one of the major concerns facing learning analytics. Further, adoption of learning analytics within universities has typically involved small-scale projects rather than unive...

The rapid advancement of technologies and their ubiquitous use in our daily lives have dramatically changed the way knowledge is created and disseminated. As a technology-enhanced pedagogical approach, blended learning – the deliberate combination of online learning with face-to-face classroom-based learning – provides higher education institutions...

Increasingly, higher education institutions are exploring the potential of learning analytics to predict student retention, understand learning behaviors, and improve student learning through providing personalized feedback and support. The technical development of learning analytics has outpaced consideration of ethical issues surrounding their us...

This symposium is based on a recently published edited volume 'Foundations of Digital Badges and Micro-Credentials' which aims to provide insight into how digital badges may enhance formal and informal education by focusing on technical design issues including organizational requirements, instructional design, and deployment. All panel members are...

Educators worldwide are witnessing a change in thinking concerning digital learning, teaching and assessment resources as well as the theories and practices connected to making claims about learning based on digital evidence. These shifts are occurring as three elements have combined to form new digital pathways for learning: (1) self-organizing le...

Curtin University has embarked on a major planning project to modernise its information technology base around key business goals of improving teaching, learning and research. Key to the transformation is an infrastructure for advanced analytics capable of finding patterns and making inferences from big data, aiming to: • attract more learners with...

This paper is based on the deliberations of the Assessment Working Group at EDUsummIT 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand. All of the members of Thematic Working Group 5 (TWG5) have contributed to this synthesis of potentials, concerns and issues with regard to the role of technology in assessment as, for and of learning in the 21 st century. The group decid...

The International Summit on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education (EDUsummIT) is a global knowledge building community of researchers, educational practitioners, and policy makers aiming to create and disseminate ideas and knowledge to promote the integration of ICT in education. Four EDUsummITs have been convened in The Hague...

This article is the second of two articles in this special issue that were developed following discussions of the Assessment Working Group at EDUsummIT 2013. The article extends the analysis of assessments of collaborative problem solving (CPS) to examine the significance of the data concerning this complex assessment problem and then for education...

Building upon discussions by the Assessment Working Group at EDUsummIT 2013, this article reviews recent developments in technology enabled assessments of collaborative problem solving in order to point out where computerised assessments are particularly useful (and where non-computerised assessments need to be retained or developed) while assuring...

Educators worldwide are witnessing a change in thinking concerning digital learning, teaching and assessment resources as well as the theories and practices connected to making claims about learning based on digital evidence. These shifts are occurring as three elements have combined to form new digital pathways for learning. This chapter outlines...

simSchool, an online simulator that has been used to enhance teacher preparation since 2003, models different types of students and provides virtual practice sessions for teachers to assign tasks and interact with students. In this article the authors (a) examine changes in preservice teacher perceptions of teaching confidence and teaching experien...

Teacher education is in the grip of change. Due to the new Australian Curriculum, no longer is it possible to plan and implement lessons without considering the inclusion of Information and Communication Technologies. Simply knowing about the latest technology gadgets is not enough. Information literacy is essential in today’s information-rich lear...

In an interactive digital game or gamified e-learning experience, mapping a learner’s progress, problem-solving attempts, self-expressions and social communications can entail highly detailed and time-sensitive computer-based traces that capture the context, actions, processes and products. New educational measurement and analysis considerations ar...

This article examines the use of simSchool as a training tool for educators working with students with special needs in rural districts. SimSchool is a game that emulates a classroom utilizing a virtual environment. The theory supporting simSchool is explored and current research associated with simSchool is reviewed. The issues surrounding retaini...

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been the subject of much polarised debate around their potential to transform higher education in terms of opening access. Although MOOCs have been attracting large learner cohorts, concerns have emerged from the early evidence base centring upon issues of quality in learning and teaching provision, and ther...

This article summarizes the methods, observations, challenges and implications for exploratory analysis drawn from two learning analytics research projects. The cases include an analysis of a games-based virtual performance assessment and an analysis of data from 52,000 students over a 5-year period at a large Australian university. The complex dat...

SITE is proud to present the 2015 Research Highlights in Technology and Teacher Education. This compilation represents some of the finest research presented at the 2015 SITE conference in Las Vegas, NV. Each article underwent two rounds of rigorous peer-review so the scholars featured in this book should be as proud of their accomplishments as we a...

The practical problems of designing and coding a web-based flight simulator for teachers has led to a ‘three-tier plus environment’ model (COVE model) for a software agent’s cognition (C), psychological (O), physical (V) processes and responses to tasks and interpersonal relationships within a learning environment (E). The purpose of this article i...

With digitisation and the rise of e-learning have come a range of computational tools and approaches that have allowed educators to better support the learners' experience in schools, colleges and universities. The move away from traditional paper-based course materials, registration, admissions and support services to the mobile, always-on and alw...

EDUSummIT (Education Summit on ICT in Education) is a global community of researchers, policy-makers, and educators committed to support the effective integration of ICT in education by promoting active dissemination and use of research. Supported by SITE, ISTE, Kennisnet, IFIP, ATE, and UNESCO, EDUSummIT has been held three times in the past, in T...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the changes found to occur pre- to post intervention in students' cognitive structures continued to persist two years later. Major findings were: 1) higher-order STEM-related constructs established during the treatment year tended to persist two years later, even as component dispositions varied, a...

This article examines the scope for IT‐enabled assessments to serve simultaneously both learners and the enterprise of education. The article proposes ways of combining frameworks that come from two different perspectives: 1) a conceptual approach to assessment design for computerized assessment based on evidence‐centred design (ECD) and 2) a frame...

Virtual worlds enable users' interactions through avatars. Avatars embody individual characteristics from their owners and exhibit those characteristics outward to the community. Motivated by the role of avatars in interpersonal communication, we integrated a generic real-time multimodal affect recognition hub as an input within an online virtual w...

Because mobile technologies are overtaking personal computers as the primary tools of Internet access, and cloud-based resources are fundamentally transforming the world’s knowledge, new forms of teaching and assessment are required to foster 21st century literacies, including those needed by K–12 teachers. A key feature of mobile technology applic...

The ability of a learning system to infer a student’s affects has become highly relevant to be able to adjust its pedagogical strategies. Several methods have been used to infer affects. One of the most recognized for its reliability is face- based affect recognition. Another emerging one involves the use of brain-computer interfaces. In this paper...

This paper presents the final report of progress of the EDUCAUSE-funded SITE simSchool Modules Project from April 2011 to July 2012. The goals of the simulation-based project were to (1) facilitate initial adoption of simSchool in teacher education programs worldwide, (2) create a sustainable ecosystem to promote deeper learning in teacher educatio...

Among the unique affordances of digital simulations are changes in the possibilities for targets as well as the methods of assessment, most significantly, toward integration of thinking with action, embedding of tasks-as-performance of knowledge-in-action, and unobtrusive observational methods. This paper raises and briefly defines key data challen...