Tak-Wai Chan

• Chair Professor at National Central University

Background Study The integration of mind maps as a prewriting activity has shown potential in enhancing students' writing skills, yet there is limited research focusing specifically on third‐grade elementary students' descriptive narrative creative writing within technology‐enhanced learning environments. The use of digital tools, such as writing e...

Under the societal and cultural structure where education systems are heavily driven by examinations (especially in Asia) and the pursuit of excellence reigns supreme, competing for limited educational, environmental/natural, and capital resources is prevalent and appears unavoidable. Although great socioeconomic development and scientific advances...

This study explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) assistant in educational settings, focusing on two key teacher-student interaction activities: Teacher-Student Book Talk and Book Wish Lists. Conducted at an elementary school in northern Taiwan, semi-structured interviews to identify the main challenges and difficulties faced by t...

This pilot study explores the potential of AI book talk companion to enhance students' self-efficacy, a critical factor in learning engagement, persistence, and academic achievement. The AI book talk companion system was designed to facilitate real-time interaction, providing immediate feedback and encouragement following students' reading activiti...

Authentic mathematical problems connect mathematics to real-life scenarios, making mathematics learning more meaningful. However, students often find it challenging to comprehend the complexity and extensive textual descriptions of authentic mathematical problems, resulting in a lack of mathematical confidence. This study aims to investigate whethe...

This paper examines and outlines the future exploration of AI companions, focusing on three main areas. Firstly, it defines AI companions as sophisticated AI entities designed for supporting and enhancing human experiences in daily activities, such as learning, working, and others. They encompass emotional, social, and practical aspects of daily li...

This study examines the impact of long-term extensive book reading activities on students’ writing skills in a distinct context lacking prior research. Employing technology to monitor students’ reading, the research focuses on first language long-term reading activities, a domain unexplored in Taiwan’s education system. Tracking book reading over t...

Extensive reading enhances horizons, deepens understanding, and nurtures critical thinking. This study aims to gamify reading goals, turning teacher-recommended books into engaging game levels. Books are categorized and distributed by genre and depth. And we will design achievement medals, allowing students to earn medals upon meeting specific crit...

Studies suggest that questioning is a potent cognitive tool that can guide students toward a more profound engagement with their learning and comprehension, mainly driven by their innate curiosity. In conventional teaching methods, instructors often assign writing topics directly, causing a lack of enthusiasm and hindering students' ability to gene...

Cognisant that the examination-driven culture in most Asian schools will hinder future educational innovation, a group of concerned Asian researchers started collaboration in 2014 to develop a theory to serve as a guide to design interest- driven learning activities. This endeavour then spawned the development of the Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) T...

We thank the seven scholars who have provided commentaries to our paper on the Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) experimental school in Taiwan. We provide replies to their commentaries in the interest of continuing the productive discussions that we hope to see in the further pursuance and refinement of the IDC theories. We also use the opportunity her...

Abstract Numerous studies have shown that learning is enhanced when students show interest in the subject matter. However, educators continue to grapple with the challenges, or simply do not recognize their potential roles, in the development of students’ academic interest and interest in learning in general. This conceptual paper is written under...

Interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is a design theory that intends to inform the design of future education in Asia. It consists of three anchored concepts, namely, interest, creation, and habit. This paper presents the third anchored concept habit as well as the habit loop. IDC theory assumes that learners, when driven by interest, can be engage...

The teacher-directed approach characteristic of the traditional classroom normally adopted by mathematics teachers provides few opportunities for students to develop their mathematical problem-solving skills and little encouragement for them to engage in conversation. Furthermore, this approach might not be flexible to students’ individual learning...

Abstract Conventional teacher-led instruction remains dominant in most elementary mathematics classrooms in Taiwan. Under such instruction, the teacher can rarely take care of all students. Many students may then continue to fall behind the standard of mathematics achievement and lose their interest in mathematics; they eventually give up on learni...

The interest-driven creator (IDC) theory is being developed as a group endeavor by Asian researchers to articulate a holistic learning design theory for future education in Asia. The theory hypothesizes that students, driven by interest, can be engaged in the creation of knowledge (generating ideas and artifacts). By repeating this creation process...

This study describes the use of a game-based writing environment (GWE) to increase textual cohesion in students’ writing and improve their writing attitude. The participants were 113 third-grade students in Taiwan; the study was conducted over two semesters. A GWE was used for the experimental group (n = 56), and a conventional writing environment...

Asian education is known for its examination-driven orientation, with the downsides of distorting the processes of learning and teaching, diminishing students’ interest in learning, and failing to nurture twenty-first century competencies among students. As a group of Asian researchers, we have been developing Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) Theory,...

Competition has been recently come to be recognized as a significant factor in the design of strategies for classroom-based learning. However, although the influences of cognitive factors (e.g., ability) and interpersonal factors (i.e., anonymity) on surrogate competitive learning have been investigated, there have been few studies emphasizing the...

We have observed that many computer‐supported writing environments based on pedagogical strategies have only been designed to incorporate the cognitive aspects, but motivational aspects should also be included. Hence, we theorize that integrating game‐based learning into the writing environment may be a practical approach that can facilitate studen...

This study developed a platform, entitled Parent–Teacher-Ark, to support parental engagement in their children’s education, and investigated parents’ online behaviors and perceptions in the platform. This platform consisted of the home–school communication bulletin, the parent–teacher forum, the online parental learning courses (OPC), and the multi...

Previously, the research team designed a game-based writing environment to support students’ writing development. However, students are not good at peer response. It decreased the effect of talking for revising strategy. Therefore, the purpose of this study designed writing mini-lesson and enhanced students’ skill of giving peer response and revisi...

In this study, we investigated the effect of game-based writing environment for improving students’ participation, performance and interest of writing. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of two conditions in language art courses at an elementary school. Total of 245 third graders students participated in the experiment during...

Teaching professionals are crucial for the successful realization of e-Learning in school education. Major Asian cities/regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing continuously invest in teacher development on e-Learning to empower frontline teachers and school leaders to advance school education in the digital era. This article aims...

Existing peer response approaches majorly take place in traditional educational contexts, where students may not be highly motivated. On the other hand, game-based learning takes a joyful way to enhance students’ motivation. Accordingly, we proposed a joyful peer response (JPR), where game-based learning and peer response were integrated together....

Reciprocal tutoring, as reported in “Exploring the design of computer supports for reciprocal tutoring” (Chan and Chou 1997), has extended the meaning and scope of intelligent tutoring originally implemented in standalone computers. This research is a follow-up to our studies on a learning companion system in the late 1980s and its network version,...

Research indicates that learning from erroneous examples (EE) is superior to correct examples because errors may provide students with a stimulus to spontaneously produce more self-explanations, leading to better learning outcomes. However, because most studies were conducted in individual settings, it remains an open question whether the advantage...

Because previous research has indicated a highly positive relationship between problem solving and posing, the process of problem solving can be adopted to design materials for problem posing. In this vein, the purpose of this study is to design a learning system for problem posing by annotated expressions through adoption-based research, in partic...

The acceleration of e-Learning around the world has driven the major cities/regions in the Asia-Pacific region such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing to plan and implement official policies on e-Learning for enhancing the quality of school education. This article aims to review experiences and then draw lessons of these four major Asian...

The study proposed a mix-mode peer response, the E-Peer Response (EPR), to overcome the bias of a single mode, and examined how students with different levels of ability react to the EPR. Two classes participated in this study. One was the experimental group (EG) with the EPR; the other was the control group (CG) with a teacher-centered writing app...

Scaffolding referred to adults helping a child in a process of tutorial interactions. However, when the novice who is scaffolded becomes capable, the scaffolds should be faded in order to return controls back to the students. In terms of Vygotsky’s theory (1978), capable people as a form of scaffolding can help students develop their potentials tha...

One of the curriculum goals of e-learning in school education is to develop learners for 21st century skills through their daily learning activities. This paper aims to discuss the research issues and policy implications critical for achieving such a curriculum goal. A review of literature in the related fields indicates that K-12 schools should ta...

In this paper, we propose d a practical model of language learning which combined 3 kinds of activities: reading, creating, and sharing. Students need to read some books, create their own products, and share them. In particularly, this model incorporates voluminous reading and sustained creating into substantial sharing in order to develop the stud...

The research of peer response has been majorly focused on older age students. However, we argue that young age students obtain the possibility of doing peer response under the context of writing revision. In this paper, we develop a peer response experiment in the classroom for second-grade students in order to facilita te their story revision. The...

For elementary students, mathematical communication ability is a fundamental learning objective. Previous studies have showed that self-explanation could allow students to inspect what they have learned in the learning process, while peer tutoring could facilitate students to reorganize their learning knowledge as well as to express their idea. As...

Previous study indicated that self-generated drawings strategy possible will play a key role on students’ learning to speak and write from emergent literacy to conventional phase. Hence, this study developed a self-generated drawings environment to support young children writing and storytelling. We implemented an activity integrated of drawing, wr...

Learning companion applications in the educational field make learning activity more diverse. Many researchers have indicated that virtual animal companions¡¦ can cause learner emotional transfer, and enhance their motivation to learn. In this paper, we develop a quest-driven learning system which with an animal companion to helps learner learning....

In schooling, high-ability students in a classroom always perform better, whereas low-ability students often perform worse. The stability of performance may hurt students¡¦ affects. However, students are engaged in games that they are playing. In most cases, they sometimes win and sometimes lose. This study terms such a property of games as ¡§the f...

As a medium for learning, digital games provide promising possibilities to motivate and engage students in subject learning. In this study, a game-based learning system, My-Pet-My-Quest, is developed to support pupils' math learning. This is due to the fact that most students in Taiwan have relatively lower positive attitude towards math learning,...

While addition and subtraction is a key mathematical skill for young children, a typical activity for them in classrooms involves doing repetitive arithmetic calculation exercises. In this study, we explore a collaborative way for students to learn these skills in a technology-enabled way with wireless computers. Two classes, comprising a total of...

Previous study developed a game-based learning environment, entitled My-Pet-My-Quest (MPMQ), for arithmetic practices. The purpose of this study is to understand the learning process of game-based learning in long-term real world. The study considered to define how the behavioral patterns be implemented and which coding scheme be used in the behavi...

Modeled Sustained Silent Reading (MSSR) is one of significant approaches for pupils to developing early literacy. This study proposes a game-based follow-up activity to support the MSSR activity: My-Bookstore. My-Bookstore includes two phases, reading recording and book recommendation. Students note down their reading status and recommend the books...

Although a set of competitive learning models have been proposed to benefit students' learning, they are limited in some aspects. Thus, there is a need to investigate other models. In this paper, we propose a self-competition model, in which students use avatars to represent their learning status. In addition, the current statuses of their avatars...

This study proposes a prototype design of an online writing system. In this system, it consists of five different activities, including two key elements: peer feedback and "feedback of feedback". Through the online writing system, we hope the interaction between reader and writer can improve their writing quality and motivation in writing. Two key...

Although competition is regarded as a powerful motivator in game-based learning, it might have a negative influence, such as damage to confidence, on students who lose the competition. In this paper, we propose an indirect approach, substitutive competition, to alleviate such negative influences. The approach is used to develop a My-Pet v3 system,...

Virtual character is a significant application in the research field of technology-enhanced learning. In this study, the concept of animal companions, ‘non-smart’ virtual characters, is proposed as a way to encourage students to promote effort-making learning behaviours. The two underpinning design rationales are first discussed followed by the des...

Researchers have started to apply games to education recently. Teachers can use computers to understand and manage students' learning statuses. However, games are seldom designed and used for teachers, who play important roles in the learning process. This study therefore applies the concept of a management game for teachers using students' learnin...

Peer Response is an approach to help each other in revision. However, such a collaboration approach usually has to face a challenge of higher time cost for information sharing, in particular, in a paper-and-pencil based environment. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate how to implement a computer supported peer response approach at el...

Competitive learning attracts increasingly attention in digital game-based learning. However, since the limitation of social competition in application, there is a need to investigate other competitive models. In this paper, a self-competition model is emphasized, and a My-Avatar system with self-competition model is developed to further investigat...

Homework has been considered an effective strategy in order to help students. However, previous studies indicated many contradictions for this because the effectiveness of homework should be discussed with teachers, parents and students. Hence, this study developed and applied a game-based network homework platform, entitled My-Pet-My-Quest (MPMQ),...

The objective of this paper is to develop a PDA-based learning game for mental computation, entitled EduTetris. As mental computation skills are used in everyday life, many researchers have indicated that mental computation skills facilitate students' arithmetic computation. It is important to teach students about the skills and strategies of menta...

In this paper, we describe a simulation-based game environment, My-Investment, which is developed to foster primary students' financial management learning. Before introducing the detailed functions of the My-Investment system, we elaborate two design guidelines to underpin the system development, including fostering participation cycle as well as...

Recently, many researchers are interested in the game-based learning environment. However, few empirical studies investigated the issues of surrounding influence between real classroom context and virtual environment context. Hence, this study examines the interactions among students in the situation of competitive games. We implemented a game-base...

Motivation is an essential element for successful learning, the process of goal setting can be an important source of motivation. On the other hand, video games can also motivate students' learning motivation. Thus, this study designed a negotiation mechanism in a game-based learning environment to increase students' learning motivation. Game was u...

In this study, we design a blog-based peer assessment composition model for the elementary school students and try to identify the specific benefits of the blog-based assessment. This study spent effort to explain the characteristics of blog-based peer assessment through designing a composition model. In addition, the preliminary evaluation to unde...

Motivation is an essential element for successful learning, the process of goal setting can be an important source of motivation. On the other hand, video games can also motivate students’ learning motivation. Thus, this study designed a negotiation mechanism in a game-based learning environment to increase students’ learning motivation. Game was u...

Scaffolding can develop a student’s ability to internalize new information on the basis of prior knowledge. However, it assumes that all students are novices and likely limits students’ way of thinking. Therefore, this paper incorporates the concept of help seeking in the usage of scaffolds, so that students can think as a whole before using scaffo...

Competition is a powerful motivator in game-based learning but direct competition might bring negative influences on students when they lose the competition, such as damage to confidence. In this paper, we propose an approach to alleviate such negative influences-learning by pet-training competition, which provides an indirect competition environme...

Although game-based learning recently draws an increasing number of researchers' attention, few studies, on one hand, emphasize the usage of game quests for educational purposes. One the other hand, current work still lacks enough successful cases to demonstrate how we can relate digital games with school curriculums well. In this paper, we design...

Mental calculation is an important and fundamental skill. The performance of mental calculation can gain considerable improvement through extensive practice. However, extensive practice usually makes students bored. Digital game was suggested as a good element to enhance students' motivation to learn. Therefore, turning extensive mental calculation...

Mastering the skills in solving word problems is one of the important goals in elementary mathematics education; however, word problems are sometimes difficult for students, resulting in frustration. In this study, the authors design a small game, called Down! Down! Irised Boxes. When students make their effort to solve word problems, they can also...

Although competitive games have multi-fold benefits to students’ learning, such as motivation, satisfaction, and effectiveness, inappropriate competitive learning activities may have some negative impacts on students. From the literature, the authors have identified three main strategies which may reduce the negative impacts in competition game. Ho...

Researchers has pointed out that educational game frameworks are still required more investigations to facilitate the harmony of game and learning, as well as its practical use in educational settings. In this paper, we propose a quest-driven learning model (1) to address the design issue how to blend learning tasks with game quests. (2) to explore...

In this paper, we present a simulation game about financial management for children to help them learn significant concepts in the finance education. Different from traditional delivery of paper-based knowledge, simulation games can provide a number of opportunities to control and manipulate something in the virtual game environment. Thus, students...

Learning companion applications in the educational field make learning activity more diverse. Studies of animal companion have suggested that the different elements would affect learners in better quality of effort-making. This study enlarges the competition element in the existing animal companion system. With this competitive game to help low-cap...

Competition, despite its potential drawbacks, is an easily adopted and frequently used motivator in classrooms. Individual abilities, in the years of schooling, are inevitably different, and performance in competition is heavily ability dependent, resulting that more-able students always win while less-able students always lose. Students easily per...

The successful adoption of technologies in classrooms, we argue, relies on a greater emphasis on content-related pedagogical models for technology enhanced learning design. We propose the content-first design, an approach to creating content sample in the one-to-one classroom—classrooms with a wireless enabled computing device available for each st...

Mental computation is broadly used in daily life. Past researches have demonstrated that mental computation skills facilitate other skills, such as problem solving and numerical computing. On that basis, how can students’ mental computation abilities be enhanced? As an old saying goes: practice makes perfect. It has been suggested that to achieve m...

Digital game-based learning attracts increasingly attention due to its positive influences on learning. Different games promote different aspects of learning. This paper attempts to propose a performance-based learning (PeBL) approach to create stage contexts in game-based learning environments. A My-Pet-and-Our-Stage system is developed according...

This paper proposes an emotional responsibility strategy to design educational virtual characters, named animal companions. Different from the cognitive responsibility strategy, animal companions attempt to apply emotional attachment to deepen human-computer-interaction. Meanwhile, game strategies are also adopted to engage students in the interact...

The effort-making behavior is significant for learning, since it involves beliefs students hold within. In this paper, an animal companion approach is proposed to foster students' such learning behaviors through nurturing virtual pets, in which learning tasks are regarded as “work” and the value of effort is cultivated. In addition, inspecting open...

This work investigated a networked learning system for deliberate vocabulary study, including: multimedia learning content; and activities and games to scaffold learning and engage learners. Students who used the system were engaged and scores on productive and receptive tests increased significantly by 28% and 33%, respectively.

In traditional computerized classroom, such as computer laboratory, each kid is equipped with one desktop (or laptop) for learning. This kind of computerized classroom, one kid one desktop, has some disadvantages. For example, the cost of establishing the classroom, like the computer laboratory, is high and the kids are constrained in their seats w...

In this study, we report a work of using one-to-one technologies to motivate a class of elementary students in extensive practice of mental calculation. Specifically, each student in the classroom uses a notebook computer to practice mental calculation. The goal ofextensive practice is to increase procedural fluency in mental calculation. Generally...

This study investigates the impact of anonymous, computerized, synchronized team competition on students' motivation, satisfaction, and interpersonal relationships. Sixty-eight fourth-graders participated in this study. A synchronous gaming learning system was developed to have dyads compete against each other in answering multiple-choice questions...

Most of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) were used to be developed by researchers or professionals with knowledge engineering background, due to knowledge model development. As a result, most of teachers, who are the best candidates of ITS developers in terms of their knowledge and motivation, are hindered from developing relevant systems. This...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of mobile technology on an outdoor experiential learning. We developed a mobile learning system with a learning flow to support an outdoor activity and then analyzed how PDA devices were incorporated and implemented in two classes of primary school students. The results indicate that knowledge creati...

One-to-one technology is getting more and more attention, and it will start to make changes to education. However, it is not easy to change the traditional classroom, most teachers don't want to alter their teaching habits, if we put computer into classroom but no appropriate pedagogy and subject matter accompanied, computers in classroom will lost...

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is essential to career development for teachers. Teachers can develop their own PCK by research-based activities such as action research and lesson study, with a particular emphasis on the employment of classroom practice, information technology, and collaborative learning. However, in recent studies, most of the...

During schooling, individual ability differences are inevitable. Low-ability students, when always performing worse, may feel discouraged and frustrated during learning; high-ability and hence better-performance students may not find learning interesting as well when facing easy challenges all the time. This study proposes an equal opportunity tact...

Mobile learning brings us more learning opportunities due to the characteristics of learning devices and wireless computing. Recently, game-based learning also provides promising benefits in childrenpsilas leaning. Therefore, how to design a game-based learning environment in handheld devices by combining an existing game with different learning ac...

Game competition has promising potential to be a powerful pedagogical strategy. To maximize the benefits and alleviate its possible negative effects, a substitutive competition design is proposed in this paper. The substitutive competition is a kind of mirror competition, a competition of pet-styled virtual characters that represent learnerspsila o...

Virtual character is a significant application on the research field of technology enhanced learning. In this study, a nurturing My-Pet system was proposed to promote learners' effort-making behavior. For performing better in the competition, learners would be evoked to learn for improving the status of their My-Pets. A preliminary experiment was c...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a light-version pet-nurturing game, named My-Mini-Pet, in the handheld device. Two aspects of hand-held games (stimulative and sustainable aspects) are identified, and the sustainable aspect is emphasized in this paper. The My-Mini-Pet system is designed to maximum the effect of the sustainabl...

In this paper, the relationship of learning and game activities is emphasized. The sugar design perspective is identified from the literature, and then we propose another salt design perspective. Based on the salt perspective, a pet-nurturing game, named My-Pet, is developed and applied to both Internet and one-to-one classroom. The results of thes...

This paper will discuss an administration model for learning communities, which are organized as the system of education just like the schools, classes or college departments. When learners join in a community of this classified structure, they will be provided with some communication tools and personal services to encour age them to interact with...

Experiential learning is the process of creating knowledge through the transformation of expe- rience and has been adopted in an increasing number of areas. This paper investigates the pos- sibility of technological support for experiential learning. A learning activity flow (or script) and a mobile technology system were designed to facilitate stu...

We investigate the differences of the influences between robot and virtual learning companions on students? engagement. From the analysis of our experimental result and interview, we found that virtual learning companion and robot learning companion both rose up students? motivation and engagement. The differences between these two types of learnin...

Virtual characters simulated by computers have been a subject for research and development in both artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and video game design. Between AIED and video games there is an emerging enterprise, that is, virtual characters in video learning game design. This paper proposes a profile-driven-interaction (PDI) framewor...