Anthi Karatrantou

Visual representations of the internet in greek school textbooks and students' experiences

Our research is concerned with the visual representations found in textbooks used for the teaching of the Internet in Greek secondary schools. Visualization, as both the product and the process of creation, interpretation and reflection upon pictures and images, is considered here to be very important, as it is the only way students gain insight into the nature and function of the Internet, its size, complexity and invisibility. Initially, we attempted to analyze and reflect upon school textbooks’ visual interpretations of the Internet. A scheme of categories of visual representations has been identified and reveals the characteristics of the textbooks’ representations as well as their limitations. Sketch-comics and computer snap-shots are the more popular types of Vrep, although a considerable number of them cannot be characterized as accurate and few of them have an explanatory or complementary function in terms of the content presented in the text. We have also explored the impact on students’ readings of two visual representations in one of the textbooks, used without any caption or textual information. The phenomenological aspects of the VRep seem to attract students’ attention and create obstacles in conceptualizing the main idea conveyed in both representations, but when the field of ICT is implied and not clearly portrayed in the VRep, students face serious problems in recognizing the phenomenon. It seems that it is difficult for an image on its own to paint a thousand words.

PASS: An Expert System with Certainty Factors for Predicting Student Success

In this paper, we present an expert system, called PASS (Predicting Ability of Students to Succeed), which is used to predict how certain is that a student of a specific type of high school in Greece will pass the national exams for entering a higher education institute. Prediction is made at two points. An initial prediction is made after the second year of studies and the final after the end of the first semester of the third (last) year of studies. Predictions are based on various types of student’s data. The aim is to use the predictions to provide suitable support to the students during their studies towards the national exams. PASS is a rule-based system that uses a type of certainty factors. We introduce a generalized parametric formula for combining the certainty factors of two rules with the same conclusion. The values of the parameters (weights) are determined via training, before the system is used. Experimental results show that PASS is comparable to Logistic Regression, a well-known statistical method.

A Learning Analytics Methodology for Detecting Sentiment in Student Fora: A Case Study in Distance Education.

Abstract Online fora have become not only one of the most popular communication tools in e-learning environments, but also one of the key factors of the learning process, especially in distance learning, as they can provide to the students involved, motivation for collaboration in order to achieve a common goal. The purpose of this study is to analyse data related to the participation of postgraduate students in the online forum of their course at the Hellenic Open University. The content of the messages posted is analysed by using text mining techniques, while the network through which the students interact is processed through social network analysis techniques. Furthermore, sentiment analysis and opinion mining is applied on the same dataset. Our aim is to study students’ attitude towards the course and its features, as well as to model their sentiment behaviour over time, and finally to detect if and how this affected their overall performance. The combined knowledge attained from the aforementioned techniques can provide tutors with practical and valuable information for the structure and the content of the students’ exchanged messages, the patterns of interaction among them, the trend of sentiment polarity during the course, so as to improve the educational process.

Educational Robotics and Teaching Introductory Programming Within an Interdisciplinary Framework

For more than two decades, robotics in education has received a great deal of attention from teachers and researchers, and a significant number of methodologies, courses, projects, initiatives and competitions have been developed. Research has shown that Lego Mindstorms (LMs) is a powerful educational kit, suitable for teaching introductory science, technology and programming within an interdisciplinary framework. On the other hand, computer programming is a difficult process, as beyond the knowledge of the syntax of a programming language, this cognitive work requires several skills. In this paper, three pilot case studies of small groups of junior high school students, students in vocational secondary education and prospective primary teachers are briefly described and the results are discussed. The findings of all three case studies are very promising with regard to the use of LMs in forming an understanding of the basic principles of programming.

Integrating Free and Open-Source Software in the Classroom: Imprinting Trainee Teachers’ Attitudes

It is a common fact that free and open-source software wide usage is a great challenge not only for computer science and software technology but also for all aspects of modern life, such as e-government, health, and entertainment. Education field is not an exception; the increasing permeation of information and communications technology in the classroom is of intense interest, and educational software has significantly been involved into the educational process design. Free software and open-source software, among various available educational software, has a great perspective respecting zero school budget and improvement of laboratories’ software infrastructure and occupancy. Besides, we have to undoubtedly take into consideration that the possibility of installing the educational software at both teachers’ and students’ personal computers at home enables them to better facilitate and support their teaching and learning, respectively.

Producing Educational Videos: A Field-Based Implementation with PBL Methodology

Problem-based learning (PBL) as a student-oriented methodology is based on the collaborative solving process of authentic problems providing loose guidance from the teacher and strong self-acting and initiative from the students during the implementation phases. In this paper, the results of an experiential type workshop aiming at introducing the PBL methodology to teachers are discussed. Teachers with various vocational specialties were participated in the workshop gaining experience with the method, focusing on educational video production, and successively invited to implement acquired skills in their school settings. Results indicate the significant positive correlations between instructors’ skills and methodology effectiveness. Both teachers and students report willing to utilize PBL to future work. Finally, the skills acquired in the workshop are attributed to both the PBL effectiveness and instructors’ skills.

Educational Robotics and STEM Education in Primary Education: A Pilot Study Using the H&S Electronic Systems Platform

In this paper an attempt is made to utilize educational robotics applications in Primary Education in order to teach basic principles of Automatic Control Systems and Programming. For this purpose, the robotic package H&S Electronic Systems was used in the frame of the STEM education approach. According to the latter, emphasis is given to the connection of the four subjects, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Educational robotics can be proven to be an important tool to achieve these goals, but also to develop students’ motivation to participate in an active way in learning. Within this work the students are asked to work in groups to design, develop and implement their programs to control the behavior of their robotic constructions, following specially designed worksheets. This work, finally, aims to investigate and highlight educational benefits emerging from the data analysis of students’ work.

Theories of Learning in Math and Science Educational Software

World-scale research has confirmed that the increasing exploitation of ICTs constitutes a challenge to the teaching of Science and Maths and the teachers’ and learners’ practice models. In this work, an attempt is made to study in-service teachers’ perceptions about specific educational applications for supporting teaching and learning of Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in Secondary Education, in terms of the Learning Theories which are incorporated in their design and development. The research has been conducted with quantitative and qualitative data received from 50 in-service teachers and 3 teacher trainers, using questionnaire and interviews respectively. Findings showed that all learning theories are incorporated in the specific educational applications during their development, with an increasing tendency towards the utilization of the Theories of Construction of knowledge, which is in agreement with the aim of Science and Maths education. The perceptions of the in-service teachers are in agreement with the aims of the developers of the applications; therefore the applications can be considered successful. The chapter argues that it is important for teachers to be able to recognize specific characteristics of an educational application concerning the embedded learning theories in order to utilize the application in the most effective way.