Promotion focus, but not prevention focus of teachers and students matters when shifting towards technology-based instruction in schools.

Implementing technology-enhanced learning and teaching in schools causes major changes for both teachers and students. Research in other fields shows that individuals' regulatory orientation (i.e., promotion and prevention focus) predicts how people deal with such fundamental changes. Our research ties in with a school trial where classes were equipped with tablets, yielding a shift from predominantly analog to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. In this context, we investigated whether the regulatory orientation of teachers (N = 109) and students (N = 1,127) related to how they dealt with this change. As expected, teachers with a stronger promotion focus were more likely to perceive the changing teaching situation as a (positively connotated) challenge and to intend to use the tablets in class. Further, students with a strong promotion focus when tablet-based teaching was introduced showed higher technology-related self-efficacy and higher motivation to use digital devices after a few months of using tablets in class. Prevention focus was unrelated to teachers' and students' attitudes, behavioral intentions, or motivation. Thus, the concept of regulatory orientation helps explain how teachers and students respond to changes in school, whereby particularly promotion focus appears to be relevant for change processes due to digital transformation in education.

High-quality digital distance teaching during COVID-19 school closures: Does familiarity with technology matter?

During the COVID-19-related school closures teachers and students were challenged to suddenly switch to digital teaching at a distance. In particular, the challenge was to organize high-quality teaching in which students stay on task. Familiarity with technology may have helped to master the situation. However, only few studies so far have examined the quality of digital distance teaching (e.g., cognitive activation) during school closures and its relation to students' learning (e.g., effort investment). Moreover, systematic research concerning the role of familiarity with technology-enhanced teaching and learning acquired during face-to-face teaching is yet lacking. In our study, we used data from 729 ninth graders to investigate how student-observed learning activities when using technology at a distance were related to students' effort in learning in two subjects (mathematics, German). In addition, we examined whether student-perceived cognitive activation mediated this relation. Finally, the sample provides the unique opportunity to examine the role of familiarity, as some of the classes had been randomly equipped with tablet computers one year before the school closures and thus had the opportunity to gain familiarity with using technology in the classroom. Results from structural equation models showed that student-observed learning activities were associated with students' learning effort in both subjects. Student-perceived cognitive activation mediated this association. Familiarity with face-to-face technology-enhanced teaching gained before the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be less important for high-quality digital distance teaching. Thus, infrastructural measures, such as equipping schools with digital devices so that teachers and students can familiarize themselves with technology, do not seem to be decisive for high-quality digital (distance) teaching-at least in the case of short-term change from face-to-face to digital distance teaching, as was necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to support learning with multimedia instruction: Implementation intentions help even when load is high.

There is ample evidence that multimedia learning is challenging, and learners often underutilize appropriate cognitive processes. Previous research has applied prompts to promote the use of helpful cognitive processing. However, prompts still require learners to regulate their learning, which may interfere with learning, especially in situations where cognitive demands are already high. As an alternative, implementation intentions (i.e. if-then plans) are expected to help regulate behaviour automatically due to their specific wording, thereby offloading demands. Accordingly, this study aimed at investigating whether implementation intentions compared with prompts improve learning performance, especially under high cognitive load. Students (N = 120) learned either in a control condition without instructional support, with prompts, or with implementation intentions. Within each condition, half of the participants studied the multimedia instruction under conditions of either high or low cognitive load, which was experimentally manipulated by instructing them to perform one of two secondary tasks. In line with our hypotheses, the results showed that under low cognitive load, both prompts and implementation intentions led to better learning than the control condition. By contrast, under high cognitive load, only implementation intentions promoted learning. Thus, implementation intentions are an efficient means to promote learning even under challenging circumstances.

[Concerns of teachers during school closings: analyzing communication in the twitter-lehrerzimmer regarding opportunities and challenges of digital teaching]. / Was bewegt Lehrpersonen während der Schulschließungen? ­ Eine Analyse der Kommunikation im Twitter-Lehrerzimmer über Chancen und Herausforderungen digitalen Unterrichts.

Many schools introduced distance learning as a result of the school closings due to the Corona pandemic in March 2020. Such instruction was often organized digitally without much prior preparation. As a result, an increased exchange between teachers in online communities was to be expected. Analyzing the communication of the online community Twitter-Lehrerzimmer provided insight into topics and allowed to compare topics that were discussed before and during school closings. To identify topics, we applied computational linguistic analysis methods on 128,422 tweets and qualitative content analysis of 270 tweets. The results indicated that topics such as (a)synchronous digital teaching had already been discussed previously but was addressed more often and in more breadth during school closings. The Twitter-Lehrerzimmer was used for mutual support and exchange on urgent challenges such as the availability of high-quality software (compliant with data protection). The results reveal deficits in the German digitalization process from the perspective of teachers using Twitter and show the potential of online communities for information exchange and networking.

The intention was good: How promoting strategy use does not improve multimedia learning for secondary students.

BACKGROUND: It is well established that successful learning with multimedia is challenging, especially for younger learners. AIMS: It was investigated whether students would profit from instructional support regarding the use of multimedia learning strategies. SAMPLE: Participants were high school students in 8th , 9th , and 10th grade (N = 168). METHODS: Participants were assigned to a no-support control group or one of four experimental groups. In the experimental groups, students received either only a multimedia strategy training before learning (training group) or the training was enriched by prompts (prompts before or during learning) or if-then plans (implementation intentions). In the training, multimedia learning strategies were introduced (e.g., linking information from text and picture). The prompts and implementation intentions were aimed at enhancing the application of the multimedia strategies conveyed through the training. Students learned about the process of mitosis by studying multimedia instructions and were tested regarding the acquired knowledge. It was expected that solely training students to use adequate multimedia learning strategies would not promote learning compared with the control group, rather, that additional support like prompts or implementation intentions would be necessary to enhance learning. RESULTS: Although in the experimental groups, multimedia learning strategies were used more frequently especially in the beginning of the instructional unit, there were no effects on learning outcome. CONCLUSIONS: Promoting multimedia strategy use did not improve learning. The quality of the different instructional support measures and their suitability for the target groups are discussed as possible explanations for these findings.

Implementation Intentions Related to Self-Regulatory Processes Do Not Enhance Learning in a Multimedia Environment.

Learners face various obstacles during learning from illustrated texts that can be conceptualized against the backdrop of frameworks of self-regulated learning. According to these frameworks, for learning to be successful, students must use appropriate cognitive strategies, hold adequate self-efficacy beliefs, and invest sufficient effort in learning. We investigated whether implementation intentions (if-then-plans) relating to these self-regulatory processes improve learning in a multimedia environment and whether they differ in their effectiveness depending on the self-regulatory process that they address. Learners were either asked to internalize an implementation intention relating to cognitive strategies, self-efficacy beliefs, or effort, or they did not receive any instructional support (control condition). Then, they learned about a mechanical system from a multimedia message and finally were tested on the learned contents. Contrary to expectations, none of the implementation intentions increased learning outcome, compared with the control condition, nor did the conditions differ from each other. However, implementation intentions interacted with the self-efficacy beliefs that learners already held. Higher self-efficacy beliefs were associated with better learning outcome, unless learners received an implementation intention telling them to use a multimedia-specific cognitive strategy. Interfering cognitive processes are discussed as a possible explanation for this interaction. In summary, implementation intentions should be further investigated and optimized before they can be implemented in real-life learning contexts.