Hands on activities in emergency remote teaching – form and subject content in science and technology education in the primary teacher program during covid-19

Teacher education has a dual mission;to teach specific subject content to student teachers but also to provide them with examples of how this subject content can be taught in a school context. This dual task is particularly important and difficult in relation to technology and science education, where construction activities, laboratory work and excursions are central practices. As covid-19 struck, Swedish universities had to adapt to emergency remote teaching, ERT. In this study, we explore three university teachers' experiences of adapting laboratory work, excursions, and construction tasks to ERT. The analysis shows that both form and subject content were affected by this adaptation in that students' opportunity to practice science and technological practices and procedures decreased, as well as teachers' possibility to gain feedback from their students. In turn, new ways of communicating and supporting students were developed. © 2022 Johanna Frejd & Jonas Hallström.

Opinions of Parents on the Use of Technology for Their Children During the Covid-19

This study aimed to examine the views of parents of young children on their children's use of technology during COVID-19. The participants of this research, in which a case study was used, consisted of 10 mothers and 10 fathers living in a province in the inner Aegean region of Turkey. The interview form prepared by the researcher was used as a data collection tool. The data obtained from this research were analysed using content analysis. The research data were gathered under the following four themes: family guidance, technology use in the family, effects on the development of the child, and technology education. The findings showed that parents had positive opinions about the use of technological tools and technology education during COVID-19. In addition, it was concluded that parents needed support on how to guide their children in this process. It was determined that while some parents tried to be positive models for their children, they showed different approaches with their spouses. To them, technolog) affected their children's behavior and attention/interest levels negatively.

Lessons learned through crisis: the effect of Covid-19 on pre-service Technology Education teacher development.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced post-secondary institutions to shift their technical offerings to blended and/or remote delivery. The Pandemic was a catalyst for pre-service Technology Education programs, traditionally designed for face-to-face learning, to explore innovative pedagogical arrangements. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences and perceptions of pre-service teachers as they navigated their way through their Pandemic-impacted Technology Education Diploma program. In particular, pre-service teachers were asked about the challenges, benefits, and lessons learned through their lived experiences dealing with the re-organization for remote and blended learning in response to the various waves of the Covid-19 Pandemic. An exploration of the learner experience within pre-service Technology Education programs contributes to a growing body of literature that continues to offer meaningful insight on the institutional arrangements to cope with the limitations brought on by the Pandemic. Interviews from a purposeful sample of nine (N = 9) pre-service teachers was the primary data source within this qualitative study that sought to understand the following research question: How have institutional responses to Covid-19 impacted the experiences and perceptions of pre-service teachers enrolled in a re-organized Technology Education Diploma program? Thematic analysis was used to identify and explore recurring nodes within the data. The findings of this study suggest that the shift in instructional modality had significant impacts on how pre-service teachers experienced their Technology Education program. The reorganization delayed the development of peer relationships within the program cohorts and disrupted lines of communication.

Learning Complex Technology Online: Effect of Challenge and Hindrance Techno-stressors on Student Satisfaction and Retention

Despite increasing attention to online learning worldwide, learning complex technologies online has always been challenging and even hindersome to students, who are subjected to elevated levels of technostress. In contrast to most previous studies that focused on the negative side of technostress, this study investigated both the negative and positive sides of technostress. Based on the challenge hindrance framework (CHF), the holistic stress model (HSM), and the person-environment fit (P-E Fit) model, we examined how challenge and hindrance techno-stressors caused distress and eustress in online students and lead to associated outcomes. We empirically validated the research model by analyzing survey data collected from 565 online graduate business students enrolled at a university in the United States. The results revealed that some hindrance and challenge techno-stressors were associated with techno-distress and techno-eustress, which further impacted student satisfaction and student retention. We discussed the contributions and implications and provided future research directions.

A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) using Ocean Plastic Microbes as a Framework that Is Impactful for Both In-Person and Online Course Modalities

A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) is described, both in its original, field-based and in-person design, as well as its adaptation to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CURE experience was centered around the topic of microbes attaching to ocean plastic debris, and included connecting nontraditional undergraduate students attending a primarily teaching institution to personnel of a research-intensive institution. The CURE was implemented in nonmajors and majors' general biology laboratory courses, as well as in an introductory microbiology lab course for health majors. Student perception of the CURE was assessed quantitatively through self-administered retrospective surveys, and qualitatively using open-ended survey questions and focus group interviews. Survey questions were grouped into four themes: (1) research at the research institution, (2) research at the teaching institution, (3) laboratory skills, and (4) interest in science. To assess impact of the CURE by modality, major and course level, theme scores were analyzed using ANOVAs (α = 0.05). Changes in student perception of learning were measured by comparing the "before” and "after” survey scores in each theme. The main source of variation in the model was time, followed by theme and major, while modality had a negligible effect. Overall, there were increases in student perception of learning across all themes across modality, major, and course level;however, not all were statistically significant. Highest gains were observed among nonmajors, while those of the majors' upper division courses were the lowest. On the other hand, majors' overall scores were the highest. Health majors' survey gains were mostly between those of nonmajors and majors. Qualitative data contextualized the quantitative results. The online adaptation was a valuable alternative, especially for nonmajors, as it expanded the range of students reached, with results similar to the in-person alternative. Preliminary data show a positive effect of the CURE in student success majoring in biology.

University Teachers' Experiences of Teaching Hands-On Components in Science and Technology in Primary Teacher Education during COVID-19

Teacher education programs have the dual task of teaching specific subject content while also providing examples of how this content can be taught in schools. This task is especially important, and also problematic, when it comes to technology and science education, where hands-on components such as design/construction exercises, laboratory exercises, and excursions are central epistemic practices. When COVID-19 hit, Swedish universities were forced to change from campus-based teaching to online distance education, termed "emergency remote teaching (ERT).” The present study aims to investigate university teachers' experiences of how hands-on components in science and technology education worked in the ERT mode that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was performed with a social semiotics and community of inquiry framework, and shows that both the type of instruction and the subject content were impacted. In particular, the reduced opportunities for students to apply scientific and technical methods and the reduced ability of teachers to determine whether the students had understood their instruction generated new ways of communicating and supporting the students' learning. Therefore, analysis of meaning making in science and technology online-learning contexts needs to address the topics of the nature of science (NOS) and the nature of technology (NOT). An extended, three-dimensional model of meaning making is suggested. © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Drifts of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Towards Pedagogical Innovation: A Foretelling Bibliometric Analysis

In the current global world, and also due to the CoVID-19 pandemic and the evolving digital technologies, education is changing faster and more dramatically now than at any time in history. In this context, education is drifting away from the traditional approaches and into the integration of international, intercultural and global dimensions in higher education, vocational education and training, as well as in secondary education. Thus, the purpose of this exploratory study is to unveil current trends and future needs of research and practice focused on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), to set conceptual foundations for further pedagogical innovation. Following the PRISMA 2020 statement, the corpus of the study integrates a final set of research studies (n = 135), published between 2019–2022. Considering the main key-terms of recent literature in the area, the collected data were analyzed by means of a bibliometric analysis, using VOSviewer's network and overlay visualization of most frequent terms. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Examining pre-service teachers regulation in distance and traditional preschool design and technology education.

The significance of adapting to a rapidly changing world is quite evident in the current day; thus, the awareness of how to teach students so that they can be ready to face challenges in the future is very important. Early education has a huge impact on the further development of children, so preschool teachers must be competent and use appropriate teaching and educational methods. In this study, the development of self-directed learning (SDL) of future preschool teachers is investigated by considering two variables, namely the type of study (full-time and part-time students) and the learning modalities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (pre-, during and post-COVID-19 confinement). We collected data from 418 participants and analysed them using descriptive statistics, 2 × 3 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a two-step cluster analysis. The results show the status of pre-service preschool teachers' perceptions of their SDL development and how the variables influenced it. There were significant differences in the students' self-reported SDL skills, depending on the learning environment and the type of study. The status indicator helps educators identify and change the curriculum and how they work with students. It allows the faculty to highlight the positive aspects of the different educational modalities encountered, as well as the characteristics of the study types and their impact on the learning process to improve students' SDL skills. The results of the study may help in the design of tailored metacognitive scaffolds that take into account different modalities. Further studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of digital open learning environments that address both SDL and preschool educational practices.

"What about special ed?": Barriers and enablers for teaching with technology in special education

Technology integration in school is an increasingly important equity issue, but little is known about how technology is used for teaching the 7 million K-12 special education students in the US (NCES, 2019). Though special education is often overlooked in technology integration research, what does exist suggests that technology use in schools often exacerbates opportunity gaps for students with disabilities (Ciampa, 2017;Dolan, 2016;Shaheen & Watulak, 2019). The rapid shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to better explore enablers and barriers to technology-enabled learning for special education (SPED) because of the widespread reliance on technology for teaching and learning. Using in-depth interviews (N = 20) with special educators during remote learning, the present study seeks to (1) describe important enablers and barriers for SPED teacher use of technology in K-12 before and during remote learning, (2) understand how structural, teacher, and student-level factors influence SPED teachers' opportunities for teaching with technology, and (3) highlight emerging problems for SPED populations in technology-enabled learning. Results suggest that the most prominent enablers and barriers for technology use in special education are structural (e.g., decision-making around teacher training and technology resources, structures for student digital literacy training), but manifest at the teacher and student levels. SPED teachers described significant barriers to providing accessible technology-enabled instruction, largely due to school-based structures for resource allocation, student digital literacy training, teacher training, decision-making for technology, SPED job roles, and home-school communication. Recommendations are made for providing high-quality digital learning for all students, especially students with diverse learning needs. • Special education technology integration is limited by district and school structures. • SPED students lacked access to devices, internet, software and digital literacy skills. • SPED teachers need more technology training and time to use technology. • Special education is often left out of school decision making about technology. • Home-school communication practices should be inclusive of language and device access. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccine education to the rescue of students in the COVID-19 revolution

The COVID-19 has been observed as the Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR) which has naturally advanced education five/ten years ahead of digitalisation. The COVID-19 revolution has obliged everyone to be a student needing to be educated about national lockdowns, personal hygiene practices, digital technologies, and vaccines. This study intended to explore lessons learned by higher education institution (HEI) students in Eswatini, Lesotho, the Republic of South Africa, and Zimbabwe during the COVID-19/5IR which helped them to complete their PhD studies. Using purposive with convenience sampling, this study selected twenty most accessible PhD students. The pragmatic paradigm, participatory action research (PAR), and natural identity were used to frame this study in order to guide reflective activities, Zoom focus-group discussions, and semi-structured interview data-generation methods. Findings indicated that students achieved good education on personal hygiene practices and digital technologies that assisted them to effectively deal/continue with their studies. However, education on vaccines remained a major concern because participants believed that the world was treating symptoms of COVID-19 by vaccinating humans more than dealing with the source/s of the virus before it affected humans. Consequently, this study recommends a good education that balances personal, societal, and professional needs in order to understand natural identities.

Only When It Is Raining: Technology in Physical Education

The preparation of teachers' technological competencies for teaching and learning has become important and evident, now more than any moment in history because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical educators are generally technologically literate;however, they tend to have skeptical attitudes toward integrating technology and require additional training. This mixed-methods study explored teacher educator and preservice expectations for and implementation of technology in physical education. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework was used as a lens in this study to conceptualize teacher thinking and practice related to technology. Results indicate that teacher educators and preservice teachers value technology, generally feel unprepared, acknowledge that physical educators have contextual barriers, and believe technology can be a valuable partner in achieving learning outcomes. Teacher educators and professional development programs need to train future and current teachers adequately on integrating technology in meaningful ways. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying Effective Re-entry Pathways for Returning Women to Transition into Computing and Tech Education and Workforce

The disparity of women in computing and technology field is quite evident. There have been many national initiatives over the past decade that tried to enhance diversity in these fields. However, one group of population, returning women, have received little to no attention. Covid-19 pandemic has made this situation even worse by sharpening the inequality in America's economy, where nearly eight times the number of women left the workforce compared to men last year. Yet, returning women, remain to be one of the largest untapped talent pools in the nation. The field of computing and Emerging Technology (EmTech) can use the untapped potential of returning women to fill the gap in workforce, which is growing at a rapid rate. Hence, to broaden participation and to understand the barriers and challenges faced by returning women to (re-)enter EmTech, a national virtual conference, RESET, was organized in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we present results from a mixed method study to investigate if the attendance at the RESET conference is a predictor of returning women's elevated knowledge in (re-)entering EmTech education and/or workforce, and if the conference was successful in identifying resources that would facilitate transition of returning women in computing and tech discipline. In our quest to answer the questions we also report on - 1) challenges and barriers returning women face when pursuing computing degree, after a break, 2) challenges and barriers returning women face to transition to computing jobs, after a career break, 3) strategies and technical preparations that can be adopted to ease this transition, 4) level of satisfaction with the resources offered by the conference;5) knowledge benefit from various technical sessions;6) compliance with effectiveness of the resources offered;and 7) preparedness in pursuing EmTech education and workforce. © 2022 IEEE.

Supporting Future Teachers to Promote Computational Thinking Skills in Teaching STEM—A Case Study

In recent years, teachers in various fields, such as science, mathematics, linguistics and others, have been interested in alternative learning strategies as opposed to traditional activities, in order to help students to examine their learning progress. The integration of computational thinking in teaching activities, after returning to face-to-face activities, can meet the needs of students during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, two samples of students in their first year of study were recruited for the teacher training program validation for computational skills in STEM education. The training model offers an explanation for the differences between the following two sets of data: the CT modules used in a substantial number of teacher workshops, and the results obtained, which are closely related to the argument that teachers can support students’ lifelong learning by developing computational thinking activities. The results related to the students’ scores may have contributed to their improvement in computational thinking skills and it could be one of the best examples of how to change the ways of learning about 21st century skills and sustainable education.

Traffic Lights Engineering Academy: A Remote Online Education Solution for Creating K-12 STEM Projects Featuring Microcontrollers

Microcontroller programming is an essential part of K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Experience with microcontroller programming is a gateway to many topics in this discipline, such as electrical engineering and programming. Hands-on experiences using microcontrollers are critical for student engagement and deeper understanding. However, as classes and field trips transitioned online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators encountered many difficulties adapting the microcontroller experiments to remote online education. One challenge is that traditional computer software for microcontroller experiments is not easy to set up. In remote education, students cannot be expected to install the software and do the configurations on their own computers at home. The second problem is that it is hard to monitor the students' progress and give feedback in real-time. Even though there are many online collaborative coding platforms, none of them support microcontrollers. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive solution for remote education featuring microcontrollers. An online education platform was developed that allows the students to program the microcontroller using CircuitPython with no software installation or configuration. It also allows instructors to monitor students' work remotely in real-time. In addition, a microcontroller development board for experiments in which students apply programming knowledge to the function of traffic lights was designed. A CircuitPython module for the development board was also developed, which allowed the students to focus more on the logic of the traffic lights and less on potential hardware issues. This online education solution can also be adapted to meet different needs by designing different development boards for different scenarios, including breadboard experiments to focus on circuits, adopting more powerful microcontrollers for advanced programming, and a variety of other applications for use in differentiated instruction. The proposed traffic lights engineering academy was provided to a local school district and got positive feedback. The experiences and best practices are also discussed in this paper. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

The Impact of Online STEM Teaching and Learning During COVID-19 on Underrepresented Students' Self-Eff icacy and Motivation

Female students, students of color, first-generation students, and low-income students face considerable barriers in access to STEM education, leading to their underrepresentation in STEM fields. Ensuring that these students develop strong self-efficacy and motivation in STEM during the college years is key to addressing the "leaky" STEM pipeline. To determine whether the rapid shift to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated or mitigated inequities for college-level STEM students, we examined correlations between demographic and sociocultural factors and students' self-assessments on indicators of self-efficacy and motivation. Our findings suggest that students from underrepresented groups were differentially negatively impacted by the shift to online teaching and learning, particularly with regard to access to study spaces, the internet, and peers. However, we found that the loss of traditional laboratories was not particularly impactful on any students' motivation or self-efficacy, regardless of a course's levels of dependence on such labs, as students were generally more impacted by concerns about family members' health and loss of social and structural supports than academic experiences. We discuss these results in light of psychosocial theory and suggest pedagogical and structural changes that can support more equitable outcomes in online and in-person college-level STEM education.

Is a Framework of Support Enough?: Undergraduate Research for Online STEM Students

While undergraduate research is known as a high-impact practice, little research has been conducted for the online educational setting. Early research suggests that online students and faculty have similar interest in undergraduate research as their residential (face-to-face) counterparts. This point of view presents the framework of support developed for fully online students distributed globally and shares some of the challenges faced in online undergraduate research, including the issue of low recruitment (despite stated interest) that could be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online tools for the development of the Digital Competence of university students

The objective of this work is to address the acquisition of digital skills by university students, which have been subjected to profound social changes in recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, making this process a necessity vital about your personal learning environment. For this, a bibliographic analysis of the different publications that occurred in the last year on Dialnet has been carried out, searching, through some reference words, to understand what the offer of digital tools is usually used by students and see how they affect the development and progress of your skills. In this sense, firstly, the context and conceptualization of digital competences in the university environment and, what are the possible digital learning scenarios for higher students are exposed. Finally, after finding 143 articles, a content review is prepared in which 42 are chosen, linked to our object of study. Thanks to this, four follow-up lines are established that answer the questions of this research. It is concluded that the most common digital tools used in their day-to-day by students are their main source in the acquisition of skills and these should be introduced in university teaching to express their didactic potential.

IT Education in Clouds and Clouds in IT Education

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) and growing participation of students in work life has already in several decades moved ICT education into 'clouds', using sources of knowledge on Internet from all around the world. The COVID pandemic has increased this process, forcing universities to restrict classroom teaching and rapidly increased student's self-study.At the same time, increase of amounts of data to be processed is constantly introducing new high-level software technologies, layers and layers of packages and libraries, deeper and more complex. This has created a new 'top-down' programming style: a new project is started with importing mass of libraries which have been used in earlier projects and only then is considered how to use them in order to solve the programming task. The self-studying ICT students see only tips of modern software icebergs and it is difficult for them to understand their working without face-to-face classroom communication where details of the 'depths' are explained. © 2022 Croatian Society MIPRO.

University degrees adapted to new social frameworks

For years, many studies has been stressing the importance of incorporating new technologies and tele-education in universities across the globe. However, the implementation of new methodologies that take advantage of educational innovation supported by new technological tools has been slow and gradual. The new reality to which we have been exposed due to the health emergency caused by COVID-19 has hastened the incorporation of these methodologies hastily and has highlighted the lack of resources or training that universities suffer from to face the changes that have occurred. There is a clear need to modernize educational methodologies in higher education to bring it closer to the new generations and their needs, implementing more flexible models that provide transversal competencies. This work proposes a methodology based on social networks as a tool for support and connection between teachers and students. In addition, we explored different combinations of accessible software that allowing us to conclude the steps to follow for the successful implementation of social networks in the classroom. Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

A Disorienting Dilemma: Teaching and Learning in Technology Education During a Time of Crisis

The way individuals interpret and reinterpret their experience is central to meaning-making and impacts teaching and learning. Grounded in Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, this research explores whether pandemic-related emergency remote teaching manifested as a “disorienting dilemma” for technology educators. Teachers negotiated curricular outcomes between physical aspects of making and doing, as well as creative problem solving through design, resulting in a pandemic transformed pedagogy. Thematic analysis revealed that making and doing was severely challenged due to decreased communication, student motivation, and engagement. However, most concerning to educators was the heightened disparity in equity and access in their most vulnerable and at-risk students. In conditions of fear and trauma, little is known about the impact a chaotic way of being has on learners and educators. While we cannot predict what the “new normal” will look like for schools, and what the long-term effects of emergency remote teaching will be, our research demonstrates that the disorienting dilemma COVID-19 presents will continue to shape the pandemic transformed pedagogy of technology educators.Alternate :La manière dont les individus interprètent et renouvellent le sens de leur expérience est fondamentale au processus de recherche de significations et cela a des incidences sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage. Ancrée dans la théorie de l’apprentissage transformationnel de Mezirow, cette étude vise à déterminer si l’enseignement à distance en tant que mesure d’urgence liée à la pandémie a causé un « dilemme déstabilisant» pour les formateurs en technologie. Les enseignants ont négocié des résultats d’apprentissage situés entre certains aspects physiques du « faire et mettre en pratique» et ont adopté une approche créative dans la résolution de problèmes par réflexion conceptuelle, ce qui a donné lieu à une pédagogie transformée par la pandémie. L’analyse thématique a démontré que le « faire et mettre en pratique» a été grandement éprouvé par la diminution dans les communications, la baisse de motivation des étudiants ainsi que de leur engagement. Toutefois, le plus inquiétant pour les enseignants, c’est la disparité grandissante en ce qui a trait aux questions d’équité et d’accès qui touchent leurs étudiants les plus vulnérables et les plus à risque. L’on connait bien peu de choses sur les conséquences d’une façon d’être qui est chaotique sur les apprenants et les enseignants évoluant dans des conditions qui favorisent la peur et le traumatisme. Bien que nous ne puissions pas prédire en quoi consistera la « nouvelle normalité» dans les écoles ni quels seront les effets à long terme de l’enseignement à distance comme mesure d’urgence, notre étude montre que le dilemme déstabilisant que la COVID-19 nous apporte continuera de façonner la pédagogie transformée par la pandémie pour les formateurs en technologie.