14. Issue

Editorial

After the end of many COVID19 implied restrictions we see a shift back to presence teaching. However, online and blended learning settings as well as online exams are not fading away as educational institutions learned to appreciate their value in times of crisis. The ongoing digital transformation in the educational sector affects digitally enhanced forms of learning and scientific interaction, such as the use of virtual reality, gamification and adaptive learning techniques, as well as infrastructures for digital learning and teaching and support for academic help-seeking and group development.

Digitally enhanced forms of scientific interaction and learning

Several contributions in this issue examine the use of virtual reality, gamification and adaptive learning techniques to support scientific interaction and learning.

Virtual reality and gamification

Raphael Zender and Miriam Mulders present in their article “Wissenschaftliche Konferenzen in Social Virtual Reality“ a case study on the use of social virtual reality for a scientific conference. They examine the suitability of the immersive medium as an educational technology for the conference setting, describe the conception and implementation of the conference with regard to the special characteristics of SocialVR, and present its strengths and weaknesses for academic conferences.

Annabell Brocker, Sven Judel and Ulrik Schroeder present in their project report “Integration of Gamification and Learning Analytics in Jupyter” an approach for supporting the learning of programming that integrates game elements and mechanics into Jupyter to increase motivation. Their approach enables the application of learning analytics and gamification analytics to monitor and evaluate measures and their impact.

David Baberowski et al. discuss in their project report “Inside the router” a first person virtual reality learning game designed to deepen procedural knowledge about IP-Routing and Network Address Translation. This approach supplements existing school learning settings regarding networks and shows how virtual reality can be combined with gaming to support acquisition of procedural knowledge.

In their project description “Die intoMINT-App” Korinna Bade et al. present an app that aims at encouraging girls grade 8 or higher to engage with science, technology, engineering and mathematics through entertaining activities and digital incentives. They show how motivation of the target group can be achieved through age and gender appropriate preparation of content and elements of gamification as well as through providing information on relevant job profiles.

Adaptive learning

Sebastian Linden and Michael Justus present in their project report “Hanser eCampus Mathematik“ an adaptive online mathematics course on differential and integral calculus, focusing on course structure, its didactic construction and its adaptivity. An interactive demo version let the reader experience the approach.

Mathias Bauer examines in his dissertation “Untersuchung des Einflusses von adaptivem E-Learning auf die Lernmotivation von Studierenden“ to what extent adaptive e-learning could foster learning motivation in self-regulated learning settings. While it could be shown that adaptive e-learning for the student-target group led to overall high levels of approval and acceptance and a consistently high learning motivation while learning with the different versions of the learning platform, a significant improvement of the learning motivation and user experience compared to the non-adaptive version of the platform could not be shown.

Infrastructures

In their article “Models for Content Management in a Next Generation Learning Management Ecosystem” Gerd Kortemeyer et al. propose either tool-interoperability or self-sovereignty as key technologies for establishing near-universal content repositories of shareable learning objects. Self-sovereignty technology seems especially relevant for constructing future open and data privacy respecting ubiquotuous learning infrastructures.

In his dissertation “Scalable and secure virtual laboratory for cybersecurity learning” Johannes Harungguan Sianipar combines the replacement of virtual machines by containers with providing additional resources by load sharing with the user on-premise machine or by employing cloud services. The result is an infrastructure for virtual laboratories that is practical and provides enhanced security.

Academic help-seeking and group development

Lisa Ollesch et al. present in their article “uniMatchUp!”: An application for promoting academic help-seeking and group development” the conception, development, and evaluation of a peer support web application for university students. They found that active engagement with the application led to increased student satisfaction. Cognitive group awareness information was considered more relevant than behavioral and emotional group awareness information about other students.

Digital transformation

In her book recension, Anne Martin discusses the book “Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten im Studium der Erziehungs- und Bildungswissenschaften” of Thorsten Bohl, which explains principles of scientific work to students of pedagocical and educational science.

The book “#Online-Lehre meets #Online-Coaching” by Thomas Hanstein and Andreas Ken Lanig introduces the concept of collegial coaching, which is based on the inductive approach to educational change processes. They present the concepts created through an interview study with teachers as an institutional training concept and as an integral part of both, continued teacher education and school development.

V. Frederking and R. Romeike present in their book “Fachliche Bildung in der digitalen Welt” an overview of research on discipline specific education in a digital world. They draw conclusions for discipline specific educational research in times of digitization, big data and artificial intelligence, and present a model for empirical research of discipline specific educational research in a digital world.

Joerg M. Haake
Editor-in-Chief, eleed