Evaluation of Difficulty During Visual Programming Learning Using a Simple Electroencephalograph and Minecraft Educational Edition

Recently, there have been several on-demand learning systems that are not restricted by learning time or place. However, in these systems, learning content is prepared in advance for each learning course, or learning content of different difficulty levels is prepared, and learners select their learning contents. In contrast to these conventional systems, many studies have been conducted on learning systems that can grasp the learning state of individual learners and provide them with most suitable learning content. We experimentally verified a method for estimating the difficulty level of a task by focusing on alpha and beta waves. However, in practice, it is not feasible to have learners wear an electroencephalograph (EEG). This study aims to discover biometric information that can be measured by a nonwearable device as an alternative to EEG for estimating the learning state.

Choosing the right way of programming can prevent learning difficulties, contribute to increasing students’ motivation to learn, and make teaching process more effective. The article is focused on assessing which way of programming, visual or textual, is appropriate for intermediate and advanced learners in the context of creating mobile applications. Three ways of programming were examined during an extracurricular programming course for teenagers aged 12-18 with previous programming experience and positive attitude to programming. The course was aimed at programming mobile applications. MIT App Inventor 2 as a visual programming tool and Android Studio with Java as a textual programming tool were chosen. Due to the gap between two programming tools, the method of transition from visual to textual programming using Java Bridge Code Generator and Java Bridge Library as mediators was implemented. The research results are based on the analysis of data obtained from participatory observations, interviews with students, questionnaires and source codes of applications created by students. The case study shows a difference in students’ performance between visual and textual programming in favour of visual programming. However, the difference in students' attitudes toward visual and textual programming was the opposite in favour of textual programming, regardless of age and learning performance. These results suggest that App Inventor visual programming environment is advantageous at the beginning of learning programming, but may be perceived as too limited and not enough motivating for intermediate and advanced students, even though programming in Android Studio professional text-based environment is too challenging for them.

Instructors' speech and gestures are tightly integrated. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms by which different types of gestures affect learning. We conducted two experiments on the effects of gestures in video lectures that included an instructor and slides, with English vocabulary as the topic. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the instructor's gestures (beat gestures vs. pointing gestures vs. depictive gestures) on neural oscillations and learning performance. The electroencephalogram results showed that students had higher alpha power and higher beta power when the instructor used pointing gestures, suggesting lower sensorimotor involvement in processing. Pointing gestures produced lower learning performance than beat gestures and depictive gestures. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the instructor's pointing gestures and the richness of visual materials in video lectures. The results showed that the effectiveness of pointing gestures was moderated by the richness of the visual materials on the slide. Specifically, pointing gestures were more effective for complex versus simple learning materials. The findings suggest that electroencephalogram oscillations and learning performance vary with the type of gesture the instructor uses and the richness of visual materials in video lectures. This study has applied value for designing effective video lectures in many disciplines: (1) When a video lecture includes simple visual materials, a beat gesture and depictive gesture would be better; (2) when a video lecture includes complex visual materials, the instructor can produce pointing gestures to single out the learning content they are talking about. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Instructors commonly produce gestures while they teach, and their gestures and speech are tightly integrated. Instructors often use three types of gestures: beat gestures, pointing gestures and depictive gestures. Different types of gestures influence learning via different neural mechanisms. What this paper adds Students' alpha power and beta power had lower amplitudes when observing an instructor's beat gestures, compared to pointing and depictive gestures. Students showed higher learning performance after viewing the video lectures with the instructor's beat and depictive gestures. An instructor's pointing gestures facilitated learning performance primarily in video lectures with complex visual materials (CVM) rather than simple visual material (SVM). Implications for practice and/or policy When a video lecture includes SVM, the instructor is encouraged to produce beat gestures and depictive gestures rather than pointing gestures. When a video lecture includes CVM, the instructor is encouraged to produce pointing gestures to single out the learning content they are talking about.

A core challenge in introductory programming courses during the freshmen year is getting students to understand how a static textual representation (source code) maps to a highly dynamic process (program execution). Most students nowadays are visual learners who learn programming concept better through web-based visual and interactive learning instead of learning from traditional black board lecturing styles. This presentation will report our experience with positive learning outcomes in teaching an introductory programming course in Python by using a dynamic visual programming development environment based on flow-charts (RAPTOR) and active learning with an interactive eBook (zyBook). In this study, eleven sections of COSC 111 were included over three semesters as control and experimental groups. Analysis showed a marginally significant difference (F (1,5) = 5.87; p = 0.060) between sections taught via the traditional method and sections taught with the proposed pedagogical innovation. We also found that there are statistically significant positive correlations in between uses of the interactive book (eBook) and performances of students in tests. To add to our understanding of what students were experiencing, we also administered a survey to students at the end of the course. Regarding learning styles and tools, survey result showed that the eBook was helpful in understanding programming concepts (71.5%), that the instant feedback that the online book provided was helpful (82.9%), that the class discussion and interaction were helpful (85.7%). Overall, it seems that the proposed pedagogical approaches have made a positive difference by increasing student motivation and engagement, and reducing failure rates.

As beginners, many first-year students have difficulty understanding object-oriented programming material. To help students learn algorithmic and object-oriented programming material researchers have developed visual programming (PV). Visual programming is a tool to facilitate learning programming. The concept of learning to use PV visualizes the work processes of algorithms and programming. This research aims to compare three dynamic PV tools for object-oriented learning programming that are the most studied. To determine the PV to be compared, a survey was conducted in an online journal database, such as IEEE explore, ACM, and several well-known online publishers. From the survey results, three dynamic PVs were chosen, most widely discussed, namely Jeliot 3, Ville and Jive. All three tools are installed and studied. Comparison results show that each dynamic PV has advantages on certain characteristics. The instructor can choose visual programming by considering the advantages of each PV.

Retrieval of learning-related neural activity patterns is thought to drive memory stabilization. However, finding reliable, noninvasive, content-specific indicators of memory retrieval remains a central challenge. Here, we attempted to decode the content of retrieved memories in the EEG during sleep. During encoding, male and female human subjects learned to associate spatial locations of visual objects with left- or right-hand movements, and each object was accompanied by an inherently related sound. During subsequent slow-wave sleep within an afternoon nap, we presented half of the sound cues that were associated (during wake) with left- and right-hand movements before bringing subjects back for a final postnap test. We trained a classifier on sleep EEG data (focusing on lateralized EEG features that discriminated left- vs right-sided trials during wake) to predict learning content when we cued the memories during sleep. Discrimination performance was significantly above chance and predicted subsequent memory, supporting the idea that retrieval leads to memory stabilization. Moreover, these lateralized signals increased with postcue sleep spindle power, demonstrating that retrieval has a strong relationship with spindles. These results show that lateralized activity related to individual memories can be decoded from sleep EEG, providing an effective indicator of offline retrieval.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Memories are thought to be retrieved during sleep, leading to their long-term stabilization. However, there has been relatively little work in humans linking neural measures of retrieval of individual memories during sleep to subsequent memory performance. This work leverages the prominent electrophysiological signal triggered by lateralized movements to robustly demonstrate the retrieval of specific cued memories during sleep. Moreover, these signals predict subsequent memory and are correlated with sleep spindles, neural oscillations that have previously been implicated in memory stabilization. Together, these findings link memory retrieval to stabilization and provide a powerful tool for investigating memory in a wide range of learning contexts and human populations.

Easy-to-use audio/video authoring tools play a crucial role in moving multimedia software from research curiosity to mainstream applications. However, research in multimedia authoring systems has rarely been documented in the literature. This paper describes the design and implementation of an interactive video authoring system called Zodiac, which employs an innovative edit history abstraction to support several unique editing features not found in existing commercial and research video editing systems. Zodiac provides users a conceptually clean and semantically powerful branching history model of edit operations to organize the authoring process, and to navigate among versions of authored documents. In addition, by analyzing the edit history, Zodiac is able to reliably detect a composed video stream's shot and scene boundaries, which facilitates interactive video browsing. Zodiac also features a video object annotation capability that allows users to associate annotations to moving objects in a video sequence. The annotations themselves could be text, image, audio, or video. Zodiac is built on top of MMFS, a file system specifically designed for interactive multimedia development environments, and implements an internal buffer manager that supports transparent lossless compression/decompression. Shot/scene detection, video object annotation, and buffer management all exploit the edit history information for performance optimization.

Every learner has their own learning styles, and there are three types of learner; such as visual learner, auditory learner, and kinesthetic learner. This paper will talk about the three types of learners based on their learning styles, the classification of English Language Education Study Program students based on the three types of learners, and what should the teachers do to help them to achieve the greater knowledge while learning new things. The research using the VAK Learning Styles Self-Assessment Questionnaire obtained from Swinburne University of Technology. The result shows that from the total of 153 students, there are 47% visual type learners, 36% auditory type learners and 17% kinesthetic type learners.

Educating Spectators: A Lifelong Learning Program

Difficulty-related changes in inter-regional neural synchrony are dissociated between target and non-target processing

The process of learning a programming language is seen as complicated, especially for those who first start to learn programming language. For this reason, visual programming tools have begun to be used in educational environments. Visual programming tools purpose to concretize abstract programming language concepts. Alice program is one of the visual programming tools. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of the Alice program on programming learning in the education environment. The study group was 18 freshman students enrolled in the Object Based Programming I course at the vocational school computer technology department. The study lasted 8 weeks, with 4 hours each week. The teaching was realized on Gagne’s nine events of instruction model. At the end of the teaching process, two focus group interviews were conducted with the students to determine the obstructing and facilitating factors in using the Alice program. This study was utilized a descriptive case study. The data were analyzed by using the content analysis. When the results were examined; It was seen that the Alice program makes learning the basic code concepts easy and understanding programming logic, and increases the desire to learn programming. However, it was stated that the practicality of writing code could not be improved because code could not be written in the Alice program. It is thought that employing the Alice program is beneficial for enhancing comprehension of programming logic.

Recently, there has been tremendous development in education contents for foreign language learning. Based on these trends, IT has provided educational contents development using e-learning and broadcast media. But conventional educational contents are non-interactive presents an impediment to provide user's specific service. To develop a user friendly language education tool, we propose an intelligent learning tool based on user's eye movement and brain waves. By analyzing these features, the proposed system detects if the given word is known or unknown to the user while learning a foreign language. Then it searches its meaning and provides a vocabulary list of unknown words to users in real time. The proposed model provides a tool which enables self-directed learning. We assume that the proposed system can improve users' learning achievements and satisfaction.

Visuospatial processing deficits are commonly observed in individuals with cerebral visual impairment, even in cases where visual acuity and visual field functions are intact. Cerebral visual impairment is a brain-based visual disorder associated with the maldevelopment of central visual pathways and structures. However, the neurophysiological basis underlying higher-order perceptual impairments in this condition has not been clearly identified, which in turn poses limits on developing rehabilitative interventions. Using combined eye tracking and EEG recordings, we assessed the profile and performance of visual search on a naturalistic virtual reality-based task. Participants with cerebral visual impairment and controls with neurotypical development were instructed to search, locate and fixate on a specific target placed among surrounding distractors at two levels of task difficulty. We analysed evoked (phase-locked) and induced (non-phase-locked) components of broadband (4-55 Hz) neural oscillations to uncover the neurophysiological basis of visuospatial processing. We found that visual search performance in cerebral visual impairment was impaired compared to controls (as indexed by outcomes of success rate, reaction time and gaze error). Analysis of neural oscillations revealed markedly reduced early-onset evoked theta [4-6 Hz] activity (within 0.5 s) regardless of task difficulty. Moreover, while induced alpha activity increased with task difficulty in controls, this modulation was absent in the cerebral visual impairment group identifying a potential neural correlate related to deficits with visual search and distractor suppression. Finally, cerebral visual impairment participants also showed a sustained induced gamma response [30-45 Hz]. We conclude that impaired visual search performance in cerebral visual impairment is associated with substantial alterations across a wide range of neural oscillation frequencies. This includes both evoked and induced components suggesting the involvement of feedforward and feedback processing as well as local and distributed levels of neural processing.

Computational Thinking (CT) can be defined as the thought processes involved in formulating problems so that their solutions can be represented as sequential steps and algorithms. It is a key skill for children in the 21st century. However, it is unclear how CT can be developed most effectively in children. Several pedagogical methodologies have been proposed and are being investigated. The main aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis which states that using three‐dimensional (3D) simulated robots helps in the learning of programming and CT concepts, such as directions, loops, conditionals, and functions. The research questions are: Does this hypothesis hold true? Are some concepts easier or better learned than others and to what extent? The goal is to measure and evaluate the effect of using as a learning tool a platform with 3D simulated robots and realistic physics, and compare it with the standard Scratch learning tool which does not use robotics but a two‐dimensional (2D) cartoon avatar they are already familiar with. For practical reasons, a quasiexperimental design with nonequivalent groups and 85 second‐year Secondary Education students (ages 12–13) was performed. They were separated into control and experimental groups and followed a seven‐session intervention with the baseline 2D Scratch and the 3D simulated robots platform, respectively. Both used a visual block programming language and the same activities. To have quantitative and reliable results, a widely accepted CT test has been used, pre‐ and postintervention. Also qualitative feedback is presented. The obtained results show that using the platform with simulated 3D robots significantly helps when developing students' CT. With it, the students do learn basic programming concepts and reach higher scores in the CT test. This improvement applies to all CT‐analyzed concepts except in functions where the grades are maintained. Furthermore, students manage to master the activities on the 3D simulated robots platform, which reflects on the empowerment the platform has got in them.

This study aims to describe the fulfillment of children's rights to get educational services during the Covid-19 emergency, describe appropriate character education to shape children's potential, and describe the concept of good and appropriate learning known as online mode during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research was conducted qualitatively using data collection techniques through observation. To analyze the data, the analysis was applied in the form of an interactive model through data collection, reduction, presentation and drawing conclusions. To test its validity, it uses triangulation of sources and methods. The results of this study conclude that the importance of character education in developing children's potential to think and have a good heart, and to behave in accordance with Pancasila philosophy. This character education has three main functions. First, the function of forming and developing potential. Second, the function of repair and strengthening. And third, the filter function. Teachers as infrastructure are preparing learning strategies and learning content and providing learning management systems during the Covid-19 pandemic. The main role in developing children's potential is of course relying on parents and the home environment.