Jaline Gonçalves Mombach’s research while affiliated with Instituto Federal Farroupilha and other places

Traditional paper-based children’s spelling assessments were hampered due to Covid-19 because existing technologies did not provide strategic signals to teachers, such as the child’s handwriting direction and how they read what they write. Our project emerged as a novel method to assess children’s spelling by touchscreens in this context. Hence, this paper aims to extend community knowledge concerning children’s experience and perception of handwriting spelling on tablet devices. The experiment consisted in presenting three handwriting methods (paper and pencil, finger and pen writing) and was conducted with eight Brazilian children between 4.5 and 7 years old. In addition to observation, in our experimental protocol we adopted the Fun Sorter, Again-Again Table, and the Smileyometer as evaluation tools. Our results show children were excited about handwriting using a touch pen on the tablet. Most of them even revealed they prefer the pen tablet mode to the traditional paper and pencil mode. However, the majority of children did not feel comfortable writing by finger, and it required more time than other methods. Furthermore, we observed child’s handwriting using finger looks different when compared to paper and pencil, while the tracing using a touch pen is similar to the registration produced on paper.

A type of spelling test is a regular activity in children's literacy classes. This traditional paper-based test has application details that need in-person administration. However, the pandemic period required several class adjustments to distance learning and did not exist a digital solution to aid professionals in this assessment. Therefore, our goal is to provide a method to perform spelling assessments for children, even remotely. Using the Design Science Research Methodology, we describe the design study to develop an artifact for children's spelling tests in this work. We report as findings expectations of literacy professionals and parents for that, and a usability inspection by experts in the artifact developed. The prototype evaluation indicates approximately 73% adherence to specific children's design recommendations guidelines, more outstanding adhesion than those previously evaluated by the literature using the same guideline. These results indicate our artifact is feasible and can aid children's literacy in remote learning.

Technologies change very rapidly, and universities need to be increasingly connected to the needs of the industry. With the advent of industry 4.0, the transformations in curricula must be continuous. The current scholar must be a professional future who finds new solutions, who knows how to make a decision based on the data, and who can communicate with different areas. The insertion of entrepreneurship practices towards the development of innovative products in computer courses can academically boost the scholars' characteristics necessary to the today's world, such as teamwork, problem-solving, systemic vision, communication, protagonism, and creativity. A new approach that makes it possible to address the needs of the locality to the surroundings of the educational institution, to highlight the strengths of the scholars in terms of solving such demands, and to propose innovative works strongly linked to the local productive arrangement. The design of the approach follows an innovation framework proposed by Steinbeis University-SIBE, which expands and potentiates the phases of Design Thinking in a larger number of more detailed steps that guide well-defined activities. The results presented by the use of the approach shows that most of the work developed has the potential to become an innovation, which will help in local and regional development.

Nowadays, we face a considerable improvement in education technologies , yet children's spelling assessment is still a paper-and-pencil based method. Since it is a regular activity in literacy classrooms and has to be conducted individually with each child, it is a laborious task for a teacher. It is challenging to offer an optimal number of tests because of the number of students in a single class. Moreover, the pandemic period highlighted the need for digital resources to support this activity remotely. In this context, we are developing a method for conducting automated word dictation sessions and support teachers in identifying children spelling development stages. Using DSRM, we believe that we can provide not only offering a more playful writing experience for children through technology, also to reduce teacher overload in the classroom. As preliminary results, the proposal was validated by usability inspection, and the results are promising.

Identifying the phase or stage of children's spelling development is a regular activity in literacy classes. Usually, teachers assume some developmental theory and perform paper-and-pencil based tests. Existing digital tools often do not consider any of these known theories, nor do they capture the child's handwriting. Therefore, some teachers prefer to continue applying the tests manually. Accordingly, this study's research question is how to promote the performance of spelling tests on mobile devices, simulating the interaction between manual tests and the theoretical models already used by teachers. Through the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), we propose a method to apply child spelling tests in an automated way. In this work, we present the results of the child's interface usability evaluation in the developed computer artifact, using guidelines of Touchscreen Interaction Design Recommendations for Children (TIDRC). The results indicate adequacy to the recommendations of 88% of items in visual and audio features (cognitive dimension), 75% in the physical dimension, and 47% in socio-emotional dimension. These results are promising and relevant compared to previous studies that evaluated apps using the TIDRC framework.

Spelling tests for children are a typical activity in primary schools and clinics specialized in child development. Commonly, some child's letters can be mirrored or rotated, and Optical Character Systems (OCRs) do not recognize non-standard letters. Consequently, automatic evaluation approaches are harmed in this context. Furthermore, depending on the child's age, identifying mirrored or rotated letters can support earlier diagnoses of learning disabilities, such as dyslexia or dysgraphia. Therefore, we propose a method for identifying the occurrence of mirrored and rotated letters in children's spellings. The approach uses image processing techniques to extract letters from paper tests and performs transformations so it can be recognized automatically. Preliminary results indicate a promising approach, reaching an accuracy of 96% for mirrored letters recognition and 98% in rotated letters.

Assessment of children’s spelling development stages is an activity frequent in literacy classrooms. Usually, teachers adopt dictation sessions, using a paper-and-pencil based method, which has to be conducted individually with each child. As there are many students in a class, the activity becomes laborious to be offered frequently, pushing teachers to opt to a sub-optimal amount of tests. Moreover, the number of tests to be performed in person is now limited. In this context, we aim to develop a method for conducting automated word dictation sessions for an in-person and remote assessment. Besides, our proposal aims to support teachers, parents, and other literacy professionals in identifying children’s spelling development stages. In this paper, we report the conception of our computational artifact through the Design Science Research Methodology. After reviewing the existing studies, we developed a high fidelity prototype and evaluated the concept during a focus group discussion with literacy teachers. The collected qualitative result indicates the feasibility and utility of our approach, and evident limitations in existing apps to assess children’s spelling, contributing to future research in this area.

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) consist of platforms for maintenance and development of the most diverse courses offered in distance learning modality. These platforms provide the teacher with a set of educational artifacts that allow the mediation and perception of the students' learning. However, many teachers use the artifacts in an arbitrary way regarding the abstractions of learning proposed by genetic epistemology. The use of artifacts in line with this theory can logically link student development. In this way, this article relates each artifact to one of the four proposed abstractions, producing an oracle for the future development of activities.