Glenda A. Gunter

Serious Game-Based and Nongame-Based Online Courses: Learning Experiences and Outcomes.

When combining the increasing use of online educational environments, the push to use serious video games and the lack of research on the effectiveness of online learning environments and video games, there is a clear need for further investigation into the use of serious video games in an online format. A mix methods model was used to triangulate statistical and qualitative findings on student performance, completion time, student intrinsic motivation, as well as desirable, undesirable, helpful and hindering aspects of serious game-based and nongame-based courses. Students in the game-based course were found to have performed significantly better and to have taken significantly longer. Students and teachers in the game-based course provided more reasons for student motivation along with more desirable, more helpful and less hindering aspects compared to students and teachers in the non-game-based course. In addition, students and teachers in both courses provided an equal number of undesirable aspects. The results from this study inform instructional designers, teachers, education stakeholders and educational game designers by providing research-based evidence related to the learning experiences and outcomes of the serious game-based online course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivering Effective Instruction Via the Web

Abstract In view of the phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web, web‐based instruction has gained a great deal of popularity in many educational discussions. Creating effective instruction via the web requires that faculty spend a great deal of time planning and developing strategies to address this new environment with new instructional techniques. Web‐based instruction is comprised of three stages: design, development and delivery. The purpose of this article is to describe the steps necessary successfully to take a traditionally taught graduate course to an effectively taught web‐based course. This article describes the web‐based experiences of faculty that learned first hand the opportunities and challenges associated with web‐based instruction.

Technology Integration: The Importance of Administrative Support

Abstract The role of administrators is critical to the successful acceptance, adoption, integration and implementation of technology by teachers. Technology leadership that models, supports and expects computer technology use results in more effective curriculum integration of the technology by teachers. In order to foster teacher productivity with computer technology, administrators must apply essential leadership characteristics to the technology component of the schooling process just as they apply these critical leadership characteristics to other elements of instruction. The purpose of this study was to measure and report the amount of administrative support teachers believed they received in regard to the use of technology for instructional purposes. Additionally, the study surveyed principals to gather information about how they support teacher use of computer technology. Finally, the survey results from the teachers and the principals were compared.

Digital Booktalk: Creating a Community of Avid Readers, One Video at a Time

In this article the author presents a meta-analysis of the findings from several studies conducted over multiple years with various types of learners that investigated exemplar/signature pedagogical practices incorporating video to motivate otherwise reluctant and struggling learners. Noting that newer technologies are making todays learners less dependent on text-based media to express themselves and to acquire knowledge, this author discovered that selecting appropriate video-based deliverables can play a significant role in affecting student motivation and outcomes. Assessing learning in this way is, in this authors opinion, at the core of signature pedagogy.

UB the director: Utilizing digital book trailers to engage gifted and twice-exceptional students in reading

Attempts to increase motivation in reluctant readers have been the focus of many local, state and federal reading research initiatives. Only recently have researchers and educators come to understand that many of these same issues also face teachers of gifted and talented learners. Frequently, students who are bright and talented but do not perform to their academic ability are categorized as being underachievers or unmotivated. In this article, the authors explore some reasons why gifted students struggle with reading and why they, like those in regular classrooms, are reluctant to read and write. This study uses a computerized version of the Matching Familiar Figures Test as an identifier and predictor of student performance. An instructional intervention (UB the Director Model) is also utilized to determine if these instructional practices help to overcome these students’ reluctance and lack of motivation.

Building a Competency-Based STEM Curriculum in Non-STEM Disciplines: A sySTEMic Approach

Educational research strongly suggests that the creativity and problem-solving abilities in young children in the United States have decreased dramatically over the past 50 years. There exists a vast difference in opinion regarding the definition of what it means to be creative and its related measurement in the fields of science technology math and engineering. We suggest that the real problems we face are founded on an overarching creativity loss on the part of the general population of students. In this chapter we describe what we believe are appropriate instructional strategies and design experiences to facilitate instruction on how to be more creative and think more critically that reach out to students majoring not only in the STEM disciplines but also all students regardless of career choice. We further describe ways to design effective, research-based curriculum that extend the traditional, problem-based instructional practices present in the individual science, technology, and, math disciplines into non-STEM subject areas. We refer to our initiative as an “engineer-think” curricular approach to indicate that our goal is to demonstrate to all students, regardless of discipline, how apply systematically steps that support their learning how to solve ill-defined problems using the same skill methods that are taught in the engineering courses. We also delve into the overarching principles behind our engineer-think curriculum framework and present a path (via educational design research) to ensure that the goals and outcomes are appropriately integrated.

Southeast Alabama Network: Improving Education, School Management and Teacher Training through Telecommunications

Abstract In the United States, numerous areas are experiencing a critical shortage of skilled workers. Unfortunately, many schools are not graduating sufficient students with the necessary basic and technology skills needed by businesses and industry. As a result, a number of rural regions in the United States are at risk of becoming economic ghost towns of the twenty‐first century. A group of economic developers from a rural region in the Southern United States believed that a new approach was needed to solve the regions educational problems. A solution was a telecommunications initiative called the Southeast Alabama Network. The design, funding and implementation of the project involved the efforts of economic developers, business leaders, local government officials and educators from 16 school districts and seven institutions of higher education from a seven‐county region. This educational improvement initiative is about networking students, school administrators, and teachers; not buildings. Abstract...

The Narrative Imperative: Creating a Storytelling Culture in the Classroom

One who studies the history of learning recognizes that story is the one of the oldest and most elemental forms of knowing. Story and storytelling precede the art of writing, with the earliest forms of story consisting of the combination oral speech, gestures, and facial expressions. For thousands of years, storying has “…evolutionarily rewired the human brain to be predisposed to think in terms of story and to use story structure to create meaning and to make sense of events and other’s actions” (Haven K (2007) Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Greenwood Publishing, Westport, p.27). Unfortunately, the use of story as a knowledge acquisition tool has declined significantly in many Western cultures during what had become known as the “modern period” and has given rise to a shifting away from story and replacing it with a focus on scientific inquiry Boa-Ventura et al. (2012). Many attribute this transformation to Gutenberg’s printing press when story (especially oral story) as a way of becoming “learned” was perceived to be inferior or backward and a primitive form of entertainment fit only for children, the illiterate, and the uneducated (Bradt KM (1997) Story as a way of knowing. Sheed & Ward, Kansas City; Ong W (1982) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Methuen, London).

Entrepreneur-Think Meets Academia: Formative Decision-Making for Instructional Designers and Administrators

As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, educational institutions and especially colleges of education have been under a lot of pressure to update, change, and relook at the way they deliver teacher educational practices. In the process, state departments of education (DOEs) are perceived to be micromanaging these organizations through excessive regulatory burdens disguised as attempts to increase accountability. To many, the outlook for higher education and colleges of education, in particular, appears to be uncertain. As educators, we could opt to ignore the impact of these changes and simply try to cope long enough in the hope that these impositions are merely fads and, like many previous attempts to intercede in the educational system, will eventually dissipate and fail.