Luke K Fryer

The University of Hong Kong | HKU · Faculty of Education

Introduction Honor of Kings (HoK) is one of the most popular mobile games worldwide. To understand why players actively engage with digital games, it is essential to focus on their gaming motivations. However, no previous studies were found to have investigated the kinds and depth of players’ motivations in this game. Moreover, the empirical resear...

Foreign language was recently added to Japan's national primary school curriculum. Phoneme-Grapheme Recognition (PGR) skills are a critical step in both L1 and L2 development. Due to its simplistic approach and the lack of new investment in teacher training, research regarding the impact on PGR skills are important. This study tested the relative d...

While higher education has been led by the West for hundreds of years, the coming century has long been forecasted as belonging to Pacific Asia. The presented edited volume is a first step toward building bridges between Pacific Asian universities that are destined to be part of this future. The overarching aim is to support the region's universiti...

50 FREE copies--> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KUBPGURQBIVMQ5SWXPX8/full?target=10.1080/01443410.2024.2387549 The broad relationship between students' self-efficacy and interest has been highlighted for decades. This, along with the inherently developmental nature of learning, calls for a more thorough examination of the way fluctuations i...

How do task experiences support proximal and longer‐term desires to reengage? Central to this question is the interplay between perceptions of task difficulty and the situational interest. This interplay is increasingly researched but not yet well understood. Micro‐analytic, latent studies are important tools for replicating past findings and exten...

Esports (electronic sports) or competitive video gaming has taken its place as a leading form of entertainment for young people worldwide. However, esports were generally studied as a popular form of entertainment, and rarely have studies examined esports from an educational perspective. This study aimed to investigate the perceived impact of vario...

Background Leaderboards are among the most popular gamification elements in education. Some studies have implemented leaderboards and reported their individual effects on students' learning. Despite the emergence of relevant empirical studies, most of the existing reviews have only investigated the holistic impact of gamification. No previous syste...

The number of Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs) participants has been increasing over the years but its completion rate is extremely low. Social support/social interaction is one of the key factors that has a huge impact on students’ learning motivation in both online and offline environments, but difficult to maintain in MOOCs due to its asynch...

Self-related information processing has been pointed out in recent years to be a crucial component in interest development. However, the role of self-relatedness/personal relevance in interest development has seldom been validated empirically. The current study examined the role of three types of personal relevance (i.e., personal association, pers...

Effectiveness of 4Cs Skills Transfer from Sandbox Gaming Environment to Near and Far Contexts

This study aims to investigate how badges and leaderboards influenced secondary students’ interest, self-efficacy, and academic achievement in an ELL course when they were implemented individually versus together.

Motivation to learn is central to explaining students' learning experiences and learning outcomes during formal education (Skinner et al., 2020). While many researchers interface with this research space, Brophy`s conceptualisation is perhaps the most enduring: i.e., student motivation that is rooted in their "...their willingness to engage in less...

Towards a theoretical framework for the future of education • The psychological factors underlying a considerable proportion of students' motivation and behaviour • Researchers from different framework have described different arrangements and interrelationships (Deci & Ryan 1985; Dweck, 2017) Psychology Needs • Two psychological needs that are wid...

Chatbots have emerged as a powerful educational tool in recent years. Much of the research on chatbots has focused on how they can improve students’ learning experience. However, the potential of chatbots to support student motivation remains largely unexplored in the current literature. Motivation is crucial to almost every aspect of students’ lea...

The number of Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs) participants has been increasing over the years but its completion rate is extremely low. Social support/social interaction is one of the key factors that has a huge impact on students’ learning motivation in both online and offline environments, but difficult to maintain in MOOCs due to its asynch...

Present research investigates the impact of extended reality (XR) tools on students' interest, self-efficacy, and performance in learning architecture through two longitudinal, mixed-methods studies. Study 1 was undertaken in a 10-day workshop that used augmented reality (AR) to assist in constructing bamboo structures. Study 2 was conducted in an...

Phonological instruction, comprising phonemic awareness and phonics training, has been demonstrated to be effective in improving the reading ability of English L1 speakers. In terms of the EFL context, although phonological instruction is receiving attention, most studies have focused on European EFL learners, leaving their Eastern counterparts an...

Dear Colleagues, You are cordially invited to join the hybrid Symposium co-organized by the Teaching and Learning Innovation Centre (TALIC) and the Consortium for Higher Education Research in Asia (CHERA): Student Engagement across Pacific Asia: Steps toward a shared framework. This symposium offers opportunities to meet speakers from institutions...

Learning management systems (LMSs) have facilitated access to courses beyond conventional classroom environments via distance and asynchronous education. Although numerous studies have examined LMS usage in higher education institutions, review of scales measuring the LMS experience of both students and teachers remains scarce. This scoping review...

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are underutilized in universities despite them being standard components of higher education. Given this, there is a need to gather the perspectives of students and teachers to examine how these key end-users engage with LMS and utilize its various features and functions. Such an endeavor could aid in addressing t...

Learning management systems (LMS) have emerged as a standard component of higher education institutions for the web-based delivery and management of courses. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the value of LMS in facilitating online teaching and learning. However, the significance of examining the factors that impact LMS use success during the pande...

Phonological processing of written characters has been recognized as a crucial element in acquiring literacy in any language, both native and foreign. This study aimed to assess Japanese primary school students' phoneme-grapheme recognition skills using both paper-based and touch-interface tests. Differences between the two test formats and the rel...

In this chapter we will set an example of using the combined instrument of SLEQ and CCSS as the quality assurance tools, using data from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), for the following chapters in different contexts. Specifically, we will briefly summarize the first chapter at the beginning, and explain how the results are going to be connecte...

Since its rapid expansion in the 1980s, the higher education sector in Hong Kong has received increasing public concerns and demands on its governance and accountability of the proper use of public funds (Mok, K. H., & Chan, S. J. (2016). After massification and response to internationalization: Quality assurance of higher education in Taiwan and H...

Present research investigates the impact of extended reality (XR) tools on students’ interest, self-efficacy, and performance in learning architecture through two longitudinal, mixed-methods studies. We applied model of interest development to explain the change of interest in learning architecture that integrates XR tools. The research highlights...

A few researchers have implemented solely badges in education to examine their specific impact on students' learning. This systematic review aimed to synthesize and evaluate current empirical studies to provide insights into badge designs and their effectiveness. The current review drew on 32 articles (i.e., 42 interventions) published between 2013...

A few researchers have implemented solely badges in education to examine their specific impact on students' learning. This systematic review aimed to synthesize and evaluate current empirical studies to provide insights into badge designs and their effectiveness. The current review drew on 32 articles (i.e., 42 interventions) published between 2013...

This special issue was motivated by the realization that student motivation is inherently complex and no single framework can capture it in its full richness. How- ever, the current zeitgeist in educational psychology seems to explicitly discourage attempts at integration as researchers are incentivized to stay within their own theoretical camps. I...

Large-enrolment gateway courses are commonplace in higher education, leading to students’ motivation and performance declines. Self-efficacy is strongly linked to short-term performance. However, interest and specifically its development, are long-term indicators of motivation related to performance. The current study concurrently tested connection...

This special issue was motivated by the realization that student motivation is inherently complex and no single framework can capture it in its full richness. However, the current zeitgeist in educational psychology seems to explicitly discourage attempts at integration as researchers are incentivized to stay within their own theoretical camps. In...

This systematic review examined the factors that impact student engagement in adaptive learning platforms, and identified which types of student engagement are the most and least discussed in adaptive learning literature. Six databases were systematically searched. Forty-four studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed thematically. Two st...

Learning occurs best when students are given opportunities to be active participants in the learning process. As assessment strategies are being forced to change in the era of Generative AI, and as digital technologies continue to integrate with education, it becomes imperative to gather information on current approaches to evaluating student parti...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted education, necessitating alternative methods to traditional face-to-face teaching. This dramatic change, in tandem with increasing awareness of the metaverse—a virtual reality (VR) world wherein humanity might learn, work and socialise–has made a clear need for a better understanding of the pot...

Motivating students to persist in learning they did not choose is one of the most challenging parts of being an educator. Psychological, classroom-based interventions have been popularised, but less research has explored online support outside the classroom. An experimental test of the efficacy of a programme of informational nudge videos for the s...

Students entering higher education experience significant declines in both performance and motivation. Compulsory foundational gateway courses are an obvious source of difficulty. Low cost at-scale support is much needed during this critical period, but when and how remain open questions. Grade goals and self-efficacy provide short-term motivation,...

The linkages between students' self-efficacy and interest necessitates a deeper look at how changes in students' self-efficacy impact their interest in learning across a course and in the longer-term. The longitudinal contribution of students' self-efficacy beliefs' latent growth for their interest in studying in a specific domain in the shorter- (...

Understanding how task experiences support proximal and longer-term desires to reengage is central to understanding learners' individual differences. At the heart of this issue, is the interplay between an individual's perceptions of task difficulty and the situational interest they experience. This interplay is increasingly researched but not yet...

A few researchers have utilised leaderboards, a prevalent gamified element, in education to facilitate students' learning. Nevertheless, no existing review was identified to provide a comprehensive overview regarding the use of leaderboards within education. To address this gap, this systematic review examined the design, implementation, and effect...

Research investigating the use of processing and regulation strategies across different cultures can shed light on the internationalisation of teaching and learning. Previous cross-cultural studies investigated limited representative samples and relied on geographical stereotypes. Published and unpublished ILS (Inventory of Learning patterns of Stu...

Chatbots will have a growing role within formal education. What should that role be? How might we treat chatbots as an opportunity to enhance and reenergise teaching and learning? This position paper suggests that answers to these questions should start with our foundational psychological theories about what students need to function and develop we...

Along with the development of systems for natural language understanding and generation, dialog systems have been widely adopted for language learning and practicing. Many current educational dialog systems perform chitchat, where the generated content and vocabulary are not constrained. However, for learners in a school setting, practice through d...

The meta-analytic evidence aligning aspects of instruction and critical individual differences with student achievement continues to mount. Scant research effort has, however, been invested in connecting these findings to and through substantive theory which might drive both further research and enhance classroom practice. The current theoretically...

Studies on learning strategies across cultures in higher education inform the internationalisation of teaching and learning. Previous comparisons relied on geographical generalisations (e.g., “Asian”, “Western”, “Latin-American”) or only variable-centred methods, which can overgeneralise the contexts they represent. Eight learning strategy datasets...

The literature on cognitive processing and strategic processing is murky with regard to how these types of processing influence learning. One reason for this is that the frameworks used to investigate these relations have separately focused on different aspects related to cognitive processing with little integration between them. To address these i...

Self-efficacy is the belief that an individual has the ability to be successful in a specific task (Bandura, 1993). Bandura clarified that self-efficacy was also relevant to longer engagements across a series of self-regulated tasks (Bandura, 2012). Bandura and his co-researchers also devoted considerable attention to what he referred to as Academi...

Interest is linked to long-term domain engagement, and achievement. However, practical connections between formal education and (situational and individual) interest development can be difficult to implement. The study investigates the effects of student experience components at the task and course levels on domain interest development in a first-y...

Along with the development of systems for natural language understanding and generation, dialog systems have been widely adopted for language learning and practicing. Many current educational dialog systems perform chitchat, where the generated content and vocabulary are not constrained. However, for learners in a school setting, practice through d...

The huge impact of COVID-19 on education, in tandem with increasing awareness of the metaverse, has made a clear need for a better understanding of the potential contribution of virtual reality-based simulation environments for students’ learning outcomes. The present scoping review is an examination of the effects of VR experiences on students’ mo...

This is a protocol for a study that aims to develop a questionnaire in both Chinese and English version that measures students' learning experience in the use of LMS. Three specific research questions that relevant to measuring the LMS experience of students using multiple constructs will be addressed: (1) Do the selected constructs have sufficient...

Critical thinking and strategic processing have become ubiquitous both in the educational research literature as well as practice. However, neither of these constructs has had commonly agreed upon definitions or common agreement on how they relate to each other. This review first lays the conceptual stage for how these constructs have been defined...

Interest is a critical fuel for and outcome of learning. Building on and refocusing the Four-Phase Model of interest development, this study provides a window into the ecology of the learning experience and interest it generates. This research uses a novel mobile assessment platform to test learning experiences in three university courses (Organic...

Background Considerable evidence suggests that students' achievement emotions are important contributors to their learning and success online. It is, therefore, essential to understand and support students' emotional experiences to enhance online education, especially under the COVID‐19 context. However, to date, very few studies have investigated...

As research questions in the rapidly growing field of Open, Distance, and Digital Education shift from if to how these forums should be approached, a paramount and complementary area of research is the accompanying motivation students’ exhibit to learn in ODDE environments. This chapter critically examines the existing literature on student motivat...

As research questions in the rapidly growing field of Open, Distance, and Digital Education shift from if to how these forums should be approached, a paramount and complementary area of research is the accompanying motivation students’ exhibit to learn in ODDE environments. This chapter critically examines the existing literature on student motivat...

Gamified formative assessment has been increasingly popular within English language education due to its potential to promote learning processes. However, no existing review was identified to synthesise the effectiveness of gamified formative assessment for English language learning, especially for school-aged learners. This scoping review contribu...

Students arrive to university with varying readiness to navigate high-stakes large-enrolment courses. Declines in students' ability beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy beliefs), motivations (e.g., interest) and achievement are well known. A bespoke mobile testing platform is used to moderate declines through automated large-scale feedback comparing goals...

Background: In 2018, the national decision was made for foreign languages (generally English) to become a formal school subject in Japanese elementary schools. There is considerable evidence to suggest that many elementary school teachers remain poorly equipped to satisfy these curricular requirements. As part of Japan’s response to covid-19, chrom...

The learning styles hypothesis—and particularly the meshing hypothesis—state that learners’ preferences about their preferred modality of learning (i.e., visual, aural, or kinesthetic) predict learning gains on academic tasks. Despite the fact that this hypothesis is not borne out by the scientific evidence available to us, it still remains in wide...

Developing the fundamentals of a foreign language is a major focus of most elementary school language programs (Butler, 2015). One of the established key fundamentals for all later language studies comes in the form of awareness and understanding of the sounds commonly used in the new language, commonly known as phonological awareness (PA). Finding...

This is a registration of a protocol for a scoping review which aims to provide a comprehensive overview regarding how built-in social tools in MOOCs affects students' belongingness, interest and completion rate, and identify relevant research gaps.

Background: Self-efficacy beliefs have well established theoretical and empirical linkages to persistence and achievement. Budding theoretical and recent empirical research has worked to connect self-efficacy to interest. Building on research in these areas, burgeoning research has begun to examine the relative role of intercept and slope of self-...

How students experience educational environments and the interconnections between their readiness, task experiences and their long-term desire to reengage with course content are critical questions for educators. Research postgraduate students (n=310) at a research- intensive university in Hong Kong, engaging in a 24-hour introductory teaching cour...

How students experience educational environments and the interconnections between their readiness, task experiences and their long-term desire to reengage with course content are critical questions for educators. Research postgraduate students (n = 310) at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong, engaging in a 24-h introductory teaching course...

Effective assessment of university experiences is critical for quality assurance/enhancement but fragmented across the Pacific-Asian universities. A shared conceptual and measurement foundation for understanding student experiences is a necessary first step for inter-institutional communication across the region. The current study is a first step t...

en Higher education's rapid expansion is paired with growing social expectations of its benefits and concern on its teaching quality. In response to these, institutional/national surveys based on an array of theories are widely used in universities for quality assurance, enhancement, and benchmarking. This paper reviews three major types of instrum...

Background: Self-efficacy has well established theoretical and empirical linkages to persistence and achievement. Budding theoretical and recent empirical research has worked to connect self-efficacy to students' interest. Building on research in these areas, burgeoning research has begun to examine the relative role of intercept and slope of self-...

Much of formal higher education research on learning experiences has focused on processing strategies and outcomes, however, less attention has been paid to their precursors. This study employed Biggs’ 3P model to examine the contributions of learning conceptions (as part of learning patterns (LPs) research; construction of knowledge, intake of kno...

Higher education’s rapid expansion is paired with growing social expectations of its benefits and concern on its teaching quality. In response to these, institutional/national surveys based on an array of theories are widely used in universities for quality assurance, enhancement, and benchmarking. This paper reviews three major types of instrument...

The paired development of an individual’s knowledge and interest in an object/topic has well-established theoretical and empirical support. Their shared role within learning experiences has similar support but has less often been researched intensively in formal contexts such as classrooms. To address this gap, four studies in four foundation unive...

Motivations-beliefs for learning and their relationship to instructional experiences are a poorly understood aspect of higher education. Notably, interest is an individual difference that both researchers and educators alike believe should be supported. However, this support is too often relegated to the craft of instruction. To be enhanced broadly...

Background: The use of chatbots as learning assistants is receiving increasing attention in language learning due to their ability to converse with students using natural language. Previous reviews mainly focused on only one or two narrow aspects of chatbot use in language learning. This review goes beyond merely reporting the specific types of cha...

Young learners require developmental benchmarks to improve awareness of the phonemes in a new language. This study aimed to extend our understanding of Japanese elementary school students’ general and specific phonemic awareness across four years of English instruction. A public elementary school 3rd-6th year students in Japan (n=261, ages=8–12) pa...

How do students become interested in a new domain of study? How does students' readiness (prior interest, self-efficacy and prior knowledge) play a role in this process? How do specific learning experiences play a role in this process?

Interest is a critical fuel for and outcome of learning. Building on and refocusing the Four-Phase Model of interest development, this study provides a window into the ecology of the learning experience and interest it generates. This research tests a task interest model for understanding learning experiences in three university courses (mathematic...