•We provide review and discussion on popular topics in e-learning.•We present interactive learning, the integrated e-learning delivery and face-to-face learning, as the main method for staff training ...in academia and industry.•We explain the learning activities and how to use interactive learning for academia and industry.•We demonstrate five successful examples that have adopted interactive learning.•We describe the future directions and the importance of emerging services.
This paper presents a high level review and discussion about e-learning and proposes the use of interactive learning as a recommended method for staff training in industry and academia. Interactive learning is focused on the integrated e-learning and face-to-face learning to ensure that the process of learning can stimulate learners' interests, report their progress and have tutors to provide their feedback and guide learners to the expected targets. Learning activities and varieties have been illustrated with discussion about how industry and academia can use interactive learning. Five successful examples of interactive learning to demonstrate the effectiveness of interactive learning. Positive impacts have been reported in RBS, SMEs using SAP, University of Cambridge, University of Greenwich and Leeds Beckett University to support the positive outcomes for learners and trainers. Future directions have been discussed, particularly the use of emerging services can enhance the learning experience and satisfaction for learners and trainers.
In Engineering Education, learning by doing is of paramount importance for supplementing the theoretical concepts with technical introduction to maximize the learning outcome. However, in many ...fields, the students are not able to apply their knowledge in practical ways in spite of having theoretical understanding of the fundamentals. This can be mainly attributed to the lack of motivation due to absence of interactive course content required for proper visualization of the concepts through student engagement in the classroom. As a result, deep understanding of the concepts is not possible for those who are unable to grasp the delivered content using traditional ways of learning. If the students are provided with such tools that they are able to visualize and interact with what is taught in the classroom, their motivation towards learning can be enhanced. Augmented Reality, being a visualization technology, can be adopted in classroom settings to fulfill this goal. This paper is focused on the use of Augmented Reality as a tool for interactive learning in various fields of engineering education, and its contribution towards student motivation in classroom scenarios.
The number of immigrants and refugees in the United States is growing, yet many trainees and clinicians feel unprepared to manage the diverse needs of this population. This perspective piece ...describes the development of the Immigrant Partnership and Advocacy Curricular Kit (I-PACK) by the Midwest Consortium of Global Child Health Educators. I-PACK is an adjunct to the Consortium's sugarprep.org global health curricular materials. Using Kern's six-step approach to curriculum development, they developed eight modules in immigrant and refugee health that incorporate interactive learning activities. The I-PACK was launched as an open-access resource in September 2020. As of September 2021, the curriculum has been freely available at sugarprep.org/i-pack and downloaded from educators in 15 countries. The I-PACK curriculum can address a growing need in medical education to empower learners and clinicians to provide competent and compassionate care for immigrants and refugees.
Much of human learning emerges as a result of interaction with others. Yet, this interpersonal process has been poorly characterized from a neurophysiological perspective. This study investigated (i) ...whether Interpersonal Brain Synchronization (IBS) can reliably mark social interactive learning, and specifically (ii) during what kind of interactive behavior. We recorded brain activity from learner-instructor dyads using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) during the acquisition of a music song. We made four fundamental observations. First, during the interactive learning task, brain activity recorded from the bilateral Inferior Frontal Cortex (IFC) synchronized across the learner and the instructor. Second, such IBS was observed in particular when the learner was observing the instructor's vocal behavior and when the learning experience entailed a turn-taking and more active mode of interaction. Third, this specific enhancement of IBS predicted learner's behavioral performance. Fourth, Granger causality analyses further disclosed that the signal recorded from the instructor's brain better predicted that recorded from the learner's brain than vice versa. Together, these results indicate that social interactive learning can be neurophysiologically characterized in terms of IBS. Furthermore, they suggest that the learner's involvement in the learning experience, alongside the instructor's modeling, are key factors driving the alignment of neural processes across learner and instructor. Such alignment impacts upon the real-time acquisition of new information and eventually upon the learning (behavioral) performance. Hence, besides providing a biological characterization of social interactive learning, our results hold relevance for clinical and pedagogical practices.
•fNIRS hyperscanning is performed during social interactive learning.•Interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) of IFC increases during learning.•IBS is affected by the learners' involvement.•IBS correlates with learners' performance.•IBS may function as a neural alignment across learner and instructor.
This study presents a systematic review of the literature on the use of augmented reality technology to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning. It synthesizes a set ...of 28 publications from 2010 to 2017. A qualitative content analysis is used to investigate the general characteristics of augmented reality applications in STEM education, the instructional strategies and techniques deployed in the studies reviewed, and the evaluation approaches followed in the interventions. This review found that most augmented reality applications for STEM learning offered exploration or simulation activities. The applications reviewed offered a number of similar design features based on digital knowledge discovery mechanisms to consume information through the interaction with digital elements. However, few studies provided students with assistance in carrying out learning activities. Most of the studies reviewed evaluated the effects of augmented reality technology in fostering students' conceptual understanding, followed by those that investigated affective learning outcomes. A number of suggestions for future research arose from this review. Researchers need to design features that allow students to acquire basic competences related with STEM disciplines, and future applications need to include metacognitive scaffolding and experimental support for inquiry-based learning activities. Finally, it would be useful to explore how augmented reality learning activities can be part of blended instructional strategies such as the flipped classroom.
•A review of the literature on AR technology to support STEM education is shown.•Most AR applications use trigger mechanisms to aid the consumption of information.•Some AR applications allow the exploration of digital assets to build knowledge.•AR STEM education research should focus on science skill-based outcomes.•AR STEM applications should offer metacognitive and experimental support.
Millimeter wave communications, equipped with large-scale antenna arrays, are able to provide Gbps data rates by exploring abundant spectrum resources. However, the use of a large number of antennas ...along with narrow beams causes a large overhead in obtaining channel state information (CSI) via beam training, especially for fast-changing channels. To reduce beam training overhead, in this paper we develop an interactive learning design paradigm (ILDP) that makes full use of domain knowledge of wireless communications (WCs) and adaptive learning ability of machine learning (ML). Specifically, the ILDP is fulfilled via deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which yields DRL-ILDP, and consists of communication model (CM) module and adaptive learning (AL) module, which work in an interactive manner. Then, we exploit the DRL-ILDP to design efficient beam training algorithms for both multi-user and user-centric cooperative communications. The proposed DRL-ILDP based algorithms enjoy three folds of advantages. Firstly, ILDP takes full advantages of the existing WC models and methods. Secondly, ILDP integrates powerful ML elements, which facilitates extracting interested statistical and probabilistic information from environments. Thirdly, via the interaction between the CM and AL modules, the algorithms are able to collect samples and extract information in real-time and sufficiently adapt to the ever-changing environments. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the designed algorithms.
The neural mechanisms that support naturalistic learning via effective pedagogical approaches remain elusive. Here we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure brain activity from ...instructor-learner dyads simultaneously during dynamic conceptual learning. Results revealed that brain-to-brain coupling was correlated with learning outcomes, and, crucially, appeared to be driven by specific scaffolding behaviors on the part of the instructors (e.g., asking guiding questions or providing hints). Brain-to-brain coupling enhancement was absent when instructors used an explanation approach (e.g., providing definitions or clarifications). Finally, we found that machine-learning techniques were more successful when decoding instructional approaches (scaffolding vs. explanation) from brain-to-brain coupling data than when using a single-brain method. These findings suggest that brain-to-brain coupling as a pedagogically relevant measure tracks the naturalistic instructional process during instructor-learner interaction throughout constructive engagement, but not information clarification.
•We investigated instruction-based naturalistic learning using fNIRS hyperscanning.•Instructor-learner brain coupling was driven by specific scaffolding behaviors.•Instructor-learner brain coupling predicted learning outcomes.•Instructor-learner brain coupling was successfully used to decode instructional approaches.
The current study evaluated the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms, developed within the scope of the SKILLS Integrated Project, for industrial maintenance and assembly ...(IMA) tasks training. VR and AR systems are now widely regarded as promising training platforms for complex and highly demanding IMA tasks. However, there is a need to empirically evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness compared to traditional training methods. Forty expert technicians were randomly assigned to four training groups in an electronic actuator assembly task: VR (training with the VR platform twice), Control-VR (watching a filmed demonstration twice), AR (training with the AR platform once), and Control-AR (training with the real actuator and the aid of a filmed demonstration once). A post-training test evaluated performance in the real task. Results demonstrate that, in general, the VR and AR training groups required longer training time compared to the Control-VR and Control-AR groups, respectively. There were fewer unsolved errors in the AR group compared to the Control-AR group, and no significant differences in final performance between the VR and Control-VR groups, probably due to a ceiling effect created by the use of two training trials in the selected task for participants who were expert technicians. The results suggest that use of the AR platform for training IMA tasks should be encouraged and use of the VR platform for that purpose should be further evaluated.
With the spread of new educational technology such as the interactive whiteboard (IWB) teachers, as potential users, need to adapt their teaching in order to successfully utilize it. Despite ...considerable efforts in motivating teachers to use new educational technology, there are mixed feelings about whether to accept and use this technology in the classroom or not. In this study we propose to extend the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with a new moderator variable user type in order to investigate differences in the UTAUT determinants between pre- and post-adopters of IWBs. The results of the study showed significant differences in causal effect sizes between pre- and post-adopters for several paths of the proposed research model. When compared to post-adopters, we can see that for pre-adopters: 1) social influence has a bigger impact on behavioral intentions, 2) performance expectancy more strongly affects attitudes toward using IWBs, and 3) there is a difference in attitudes towards using IWB on users' potential use of IWBs. For post-adopters: 4) the facilitating conditions have a bigger impact on the actual use of IWBs, and 5) behavioral intention is a stronger predictor of the actual use of IWBs when compared with pre-adopters.
•The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model was extended.•New moderator variables user types and teaching experiences were proposed.•The extended UTAUT model was validated in the case of interactive whiteboards.•Significant differences in determinants between pre- and post-adopters were shown.•The biggest difference was in the path between behavioral intentions and use.
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