Interactive learning environment as a source of critical thinking skills for college students.

BACKGROUND: The cognitive skills underlying critical thinking include analysis, interpretation, evaluation, explanation, inference, and self-regulation. The study aims to consider the possibility and effectiveness of introducing the mobile game Lumosity: Brain Training into the learning process of first-year Philology students studying at Qiqihar University. METHODS: The sample included 30 volunteers: 15 girls and 15 boys, whose average age was 18.4 years. Before the experiment start, the respondents took a pre-test based on the Critical Thinking Skills Success methodology, which was developed by the American scientist Starkey. It was stated that intensive one-month training with the use of the Lumosity premium application in the classroom would improve critical thinking skills. RESULTS: The pre-test results showed that some respondents had had quite good critical thinking skills before the experiment as the average score was 22.13 out of 30 points. The effectiveness was evaluated using the Student's t-test for paired samples. It is established that there are significant differences between standard and empirical values (p = 0.012). CONCLUSIONS: The research can be of interest to those who study the issue of integrating an interactive learning environment into university and student programs, as well as those who consider critical thinking as a field of scientific knowledge and seek to develop critical thinking skills. The novelty of the study is the fact that students were allowed to use the app only during classes, but the research hypothesis was confirmed. This indicates that an interactive learning environment can be considered as a tool for developing students' critical thinking skills in the context of limited screen time.

Nursing Students' Operating Room Experiences: A Qualitative Metasynthesis.

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to analyze the findings of qualitative studies about nursing students' experiences with operating room (OR) practices. There is a need to conduct metasynthesis studies to highlight the overarching dimensions of nursing students' experiences in the OR learning environment, identify and summarize key elements, draw attention to the professional implications of the experience, and then help define the future research agenda. This original study is the first metasynthesis of qualitative studies focusing on nursing students' OR practice experiences. DESIGN: A qualitative metasynthesis. METHODS: This metasynthesis study was based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement and registered with PROSPERO (International prospective register of systematic reviews) (CRD42021252129). This metasynthesis consists of qualitative studies that included themes, were conducted with nursing students with OR experience, and were published in English between December 2000 and June 2022. Data were analyzed using the two-step metasynthesis procedures proposed by Sandelowski and Barroso. FINDINGS: This metasynthesis study was carried out by analyzing 12 qualitative studies that met the inclusion criteria, reflected the results of a total of 244 nursing students, and were conducted in 7 different countries. As a result of the analysis of the studies, two main themes and seven subthemes were determined about the OR experiences of nursing students. The main themes of the study included (1) the OR environment and (2) professionalism and career choices. CONCLUSIONS: The synthesis of studies in this research revealed nursing students' OR experiences and provided evidence about the association between these experiences and their professionalism and career goals. The research drew attention to the limitations and facilitators of the OR learning environment for nursing students and provided guidance for a positive interactive learning environment.

Comprehensive evaluation of the use of technology in education - validation with a cohort of global open online learners.

Although a large variety of methodologies, contexts and perspectives have been used to examine educational application of technology, there is a paucity of instruments that are designed to comprehensively evaluate the use of technology in education. This paper presents a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) of an instrument that incorporates eight key dimensions: learning, affective, behavioral, technology, design, pedagogy, presence/community, and institutional environment. These dimensions were derived from rigorous systematic literature review and field specialist validation processes. The model was then refined and empirically confirmed in this study by 1,352 participants undertaking a Coursera open online course. The results of applying the instrument, as well as qualitative feedback from participants, are shared to illustrate its breadth and utility. The final 28 item "Comprehensive Evaluation of Use of Technology in Education" instrument is provided in full to support consistent, holistic and robust evaluation and comparison of technology use across educational contexts.

Student nurses' experience using a serious game to learn environmental hazard and safety assessment.

Knowledge acquisition facilitated by computer games, also referred to as digital game-based learning, is growing in popularity as an educational modality for healthcare disciplines. There is a dearth of research specifically focused on students' perception and lived experience of a serious game, which is a game primarily designed for educational purposes. This qualitative study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of using a serious game to teach hazard and safety assessments in community and residential healthcare settings. Using a phenomenological approach semi-structured interviews collected data about students' experience using the game 'Safe Environments'. Eight students from undergraduate healthcare programs participated. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was conducted. Themes and sub-themes identified nuances explaining the impact of prior knowledge, technical ability, and engagement on achievement of learning outcomes. The dynamic interrelationship and influence of themes are illustrated in the KNavEL Model, which explains the complexity of individuals' understanding and perceptions of learning through gaming. This study demonstrates that learning outcomes are directly influenced by the degree of engagement with the game. This in turn is influenced by what the student brings to the game by way of knowledge, experience navigating technology, and the subject matter. The results give voice to students' experiences and provide new insights into understanding the learning processes inherent in using serious games in health education.

Chances and Barriers of Online Problem-Based Learning (ePBL) for Advanced Training in the Healthcare Sector.

An online advanced training for professionals within the healthcare sector was developed including a problem statement to be solved following the steps of problem-based learning (PBL).The findings show that it is feasible to transfer PBL electronically (ePBL) where participants favoured the flexibility and time independency of ePBL. However, the evaluation revealed issues with the learning platform, insufficient technical conditions in the hospitals and a lack of personal exchange. Thus, ePBL offers advantages especially for advanced training in the healthcare sector but requires adaptations and the necessary technical prerequisites.

Building Primary-School Children's Resilience through a Web-Based Interactive Learning Environment: Quasi-Experimental Pre-Post Study.

BACKGROUND: Resilience is a person's mental ability to deal with challenging situations adaptively and is a crucial stress management skill. Psychological resilience and finding ways to cope in crises is a highly relevant topic considering the COVID-19 pandemic, which enforced quarantine, social distancing measures, and school closures worldwide. Parents and children are currently living with increased stress due to COVID-19. We need to respond with immediate ways to strengthen children's resilience. Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy interventions for children's stress management overcome accessibility issues such as the inability to visit mental health experts owing to COVID-19 movement restrictions. An interactive learning environment was created, based on the preventive program "Friends," to overcome accessibility issues associated with delivering cognitive behavioral therapy-based interventions in formal and informal education settings. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a web-based learning environment on resilience in (1) reducing anxiety symptoms and (2) increasing emotion recognition and recognition of stress management techniques among 9-10-year-old children. We also aimed to evaluate the learning environment's usability. METHODS: A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. In total, 20 fourth graders in the experimental group interacted with the learning environment over 6 weekly 80-minute sessions. Further, 21 fourth graders constituted the control group. The main data sources were (1) a psychometric tool to measure children's anxiety symptoms, namely the Greek translation of the original Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, (2) 3 open-ended questions assessing emotion recognition and recognition of stress management techniques, and (3) the System Usability Scale to measure the usability of the learning environment. RESULTS: In both groups, there was a small but nonsignificant postintervention reduction in reported anxiety symptoms, except for obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms in the experimental group. A paired samples t test revealed that students' reported symptom scores of obsessive-compulsive disorder significantly decreased from 1.06 (SD 0.68) to 0.76 (SD 0.61) (t19= 5.16; P=.01). The experimental group revealed a significant increase in emotion recognition (t19=-6.99; P<.001), identification of somatic symptoms of stress (t19=-7.31; P<.001), and identification of stress management techniques (t19=-6.85; P<.001). The learning environment received a satisfactory usability score. The raw average system usability score was 76.75 (SD 8.28), which is in the 80th percentile rank and corresponds to grade B. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that interactive learning environments might deliver resilience interventions in an accessible and cost-effective manner in formal education, potentially even in distance-learning conditions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interactive learning environments on resilience are also valuable tools for parents who can use them with their children at home, for informal learning, using mobile devices. As such, they could be a promising first-step, low-intensity intervention that children and the youth can easily access.

Designing Reciprocative Dynamic Linking to improve learners' Representational Competence in interactive learning environments.

Learning from interactive learning environments enriched with multiple external representations (MERs) is often beneficial. The learning benefits of MERs highly rely on the development of Representational Competence. Representational Competence refers to an ability to translate and see relations between MERs. The relevant research findings have consistently reported learners' difficulty in relating and translating in MERs due to insufficient development of Representational Competence. Although dynamic linking is one of the strategies recommended to address this issue, it offers mixed results. This paper reports design of a new interaction feature that overcomes some of the limitations of traditional dynamically linked representations. We designed an additional interaction in dynamically linked MERs to support learners' cognitive demands; we refer to this as Reciprocative Dynamic Linking. The goal of this additional affordance was to strengthen learners' cross-representation cognitive linkage by promoting Representational Competence. The paper reports the study conducted to investigate effects of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking on students' Representational Competence. The said study was conducted in a course on Signals and Systems from Electrical Engineering program (N = 24). The subjects were assigned to two conditions: a Simulation and a Simulation with Reciprocative Dynamic Linking. The representation competence was assessed with an instrument for measuring Representational Competence within Signals and Systems domain. The effect of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking on learners' cognitive load was also investigated. The results confirmed that Reciprocative Dynamic Linking could lead to improvement in Representational Competence and thus, higher learning for "Apply and Analyze Procedural knowledge" categories of tasks. Reciprocative Dynamic Linking also promoted germane cognitive load of learners, as it could offer the required cognitive support to improve learners' Representational Competence. The findings from semi-structured interviews and screen capture analysis corroborated the results. This paper provides details of how to design Reciprocative Dynamic Linking in interactive learning environments and its effect on learners' Representational Competence. Apart from establishing learning effectiveness of Reciprocative Dynamic Linking, the study further contributes by confirming the role of cognitive processing of learners while learning from interactive learning environments. The findings from the study suggest designing strategies not for just creating highly interactive learning environments but equipping a given learning environment with conducive interaction features that foster learning.

Design and evaluation of the computer-based training program Calcularis for enhancing numerical cognition.

This article presents the design and a first pilot evaluation of the computer-based training program Calcularis for children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) or difficulties in learning mathematics. The program has been designed according to insights on the typical and atypical development of mathematical abilities. The learning process is supported through multimodal cues, which encode different properties of numbers. To offer optimal learning conditions, a user model completes the program and allows flexible adaptation to a child's individual learning and knowledge profile. Thirty-two children with difficulties in learning mathematics completed the 6-12-weeks computer training. The children played the game for 20 min per day for 5 days a week. The training effects were evaluated using neuropsychological tests. Generally, children benefited significantly from the training regarding number representation and arithmetic operations. Furthermore, children liked to play with the program and reported that the training improved their mathematical abilities.