• Energy Research
• 4. Education close
• KR close
• GH close

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational mobile games may play a significant role to facilitate students’ learning. Several studies have indicated that these games using mobile phones may improve students’ learning motivation and effectiveness when they are equipped with appropriate learning strategies. However, investigating the impact of learning strategies in students’ utilization of educational mobile games has received little scholarly attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this research proposed two learning games scenarios to fill this gap. In the first scenario, students were offered an educational mobile game with a learning strategy called ‘scaffolding strategy’; while in the second scenario, the same game was offered without the strategy. To achieve this objective, an experimental design with a research model was developed to examine the role of scaffolding learning strategy in students’ use of educational mobile games. In this experimental study, 43 students from two classes participated in the two learning scenarios. The results indicate that educational mobile gaming with the scaffolding learning strategy significantly influenced students’ utilization of the mobile game. In addition, the adoption of the learning strategy significantly affected students’ perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioural intention to use, compared with the same game without the learning strategy. The results also indicate that the introduction of the scaffolding learning strategy into the educational mobile game will increase students’ learning effectiveness and motivation.

Abstract The South Korean government has been actively promoting an educational-facility improvement program as part of its energy-saving efforts. This research seeks to develop a decision support model for selecting the facility expected to be effective in generating energy savings and making the facility improvement program more effective. In this research, project characteristics and electric-energy consumption data for the year 2009 were collected from 6282 elementary schools located in seven metropolitan cities in South Korea. In this research, the following were carried out: (i) a group of educational facilities was established based on electric-energy consumption, using a decision tree; (ii) a number of similar projects were retrieved from the same group of facilities, using case-based reasoning; and (iii) the accuracy of prediction was improved, using the combination of genetic algorithms, the artificial neural network, and multiple regression analysis. The results of this research can be useful for the following purposes: (i) preliminary research on the systematic and continuous management of educational facilities’ electric-energy consumption; (ii) basic research on electric-energy consumption prediction based on the project characteristics; and (iii) practical research for selecting an optimum facility that can more effectively apply an educational-facility improvement program as a decision support model.

(1) The amount of plastic discharges in the environment has drastically increased in the last decades negatively affecting aquatic ecosystems, societies, and the world economy. The policies initiated to deal with this problem are insufficient and there is an urgency to initiate local actions based on a deep understanding of the factors involved. (2) This paper investigates the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to spread environmental education. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from the implementation of a MOOC to combat the problem of marine litter in the world are presented. (3) This work describes the activity of 3632 participants from 64 countries taking an active role presenting useful tools, connecting them with the main world associations, and defining applied action plans in their local area. Pre- and post-questionnaires explore behavioral changes regarding the actions of participants to combat marine litter. The role of MOOCs is contrasted with social media, formal education, and informal education. (4) Findings suggest that MOOCs are useful instruments to promote environmental activism, and to develop local solutions to global problems, for example, clean beaches, supplanting plastic bottles, educational initiatives, and prohibition of single-use plastic.

This study aims to investigate the mediating roles of students’ self-efficacy and problem-solving in the relationships between independent variables with the Blackboard System (BS) and performance impact in order to better understand how they relate to one another. This is carried out to fully appreciate the potential benefits of using BS in education and to provide detailed explanations of how BS usage may improve academic attainment. The purpose of this study was to discover the essential factors that determine how college students use BS. This study examined the effects of a number of parameters discovered in the literature about using Blackboard as sustainable education in higher education using the students’ self-efficacy and problem-solving abilities. In total, 396 King Saud university students completed a written questionnaire that served as the source of the data. Structural equation modeling with squares was used to examine the data (Amos-SEM). The results showed that control variables are the main factors influencing learners’ adoption of 21st century skills by using Blackboard as a sustainable education model and, consequently, the effectiveness of organizing training system integration. While students were not entirely in agreement with the rational reflection for problem-solving skills, the results of students’ self-efficacy and issue skills show a good impact on their academic performance in colleges and universities. To foster students’ self-efficacy and problem-solving skills, as well as their use of BS in higher education teaching processes, the study’s findings provide essential information on how colleges and universities may improve students’ acceptance of 21st century skills by using Blackboard Systems as a sustainable education model.

As a way to support teachers’ professional development activities and build communities of practice for teachers, education researchers and practitioners have put considerable effort into building an online learning community for K–12 teachers to create a venue to facilitate teachers’ joint knowledge construction. However, a substantial number of such online communities have failed due to lack of participation of members. Therefore, it is critical to understand how to design a sustainable community that fulfills members’ needs and elicits active participation of members. In this literature review, we adopted a sociological framework to investigate how to create a sustainable online community. This framework suggests that the sustainability of a community comes from individual members’ three types of commitments: instrumental, affective, and moral commitments. Such commitments are results of members’ cognitive, cathectic, and evaluative processes and lead to membership retainment, cohesive relationships, and socially regulated participation. Using this framework, we conducted a systematic literature review on online teacher community articles published from 1990 to 2018. Our findings provide insights on factors associated with teacher members’ instrumental, affective, and moral commitment to an online community. Based on these findings, we further provide design suggestions to build a sustainable community for teachers.

Response scales in auditory perception assessment are critical for capturing the true responses of listeners. Despite its impact on data, response scales have received the least attention in auditory perception assessment. In this study, the usability of visual analogue scales for auditory perception assessment was investigated. Five response scales (a unipolar visual analogue scale–negated to regular, a unipolar visual analogue scale—regular to negated, a bipolar visual analogue scale–positive to negative, a bipolar visual analogue scale—negative to positive, and a unipolar 11-point scale (ISO/TS 15666:2021)) for auditory perception assessment are presented. Music and traffic noise were presented to 60 university students at two different levels, i.e., 45 and 65 dBA, respectively. A web-based experimental design was implemented, and tablet pads were provided to the respondents to record their responses. The unipolar 11-point scale required the longest response time, followed by the two unipolar visual analogue scales and two bipolar visual analogue scales with statistical significance. All response scales used in this study achieved statistical reliability and sensitivity for the auditory perception assessment. Among the five response scales, the bipolar visual analogue scale (negative to positive) ranked first in reliability over repeated measures, exhibited sensitivity in differentiating sound sources, and was preferred by the respondents under the conditions of the present study. None of the respondents preferred the unipolar 11-point scale. The visual analogue scale was favoured over the traditional unipolar 11-point scale by young educated adults in a mobile-based testing environment. Moreover, the bipolar visual analogue scale demonstrated the highest reliability and sensitivity, and it was preferred the most by the respondents. The semantic labelling direction from negated to regular, or from negative to positive, is preferred over its opposite counterpart. Further research is necessary to investigate the use of response scales for the general public including children and the elderly, as well as that of semantic adjectives and their counterparts for auditory perception assessment.

Understanding teachers’ attitudes and perceptions of STEM teaching is a key pathway to enhance effective STEM teaching. Inarguably, teachers are the cornerstone of educational quality and play a central role in students’ academic performance. Specifically, the pedagogical strategies teachers employ and their effective use in the classroom are strong determinants of students’ enrollment or retention in STEM fields of study and eventual careers. This study sought to explore the experiences of high school STEM teachers in Qatar, focusing on the pedagogical approaches they utilize and the challenges they encounter, with the aim of delving into how these approaches and barriers affect the teaching of STEM in the country’s high schools. The study’s design is observational, with data collected using a survey of 299 secondary high school STEM teachers (11th and 12th grades). To attain the goal of this study, we examined the barriers perceived to impede engagement in effective STEM teaching from high school teachers’ perspective. The study’s findings pointed to the influence of student- and school-related factors in shaping STEM teaching. Significant differences were detected based on teachers’ gender, grade level of teaching, age group, and university education. Logistic regressions revealed that teachers’ demographic attributes, including age group and university education, affect their likelihood to use STEM pedagogies in class. This likelihood was significantly affected by student-related barriers and the learning resources/materials employed in classrooms. These findings postulate critical evidence in directing the development of successful STEM learning practices within Qatar’s high schools.