skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Instructional Design, Situational Interest, and User Experience: Applications of Learning Experience Design to Promote Children’s Online Engagement. In de Vries, E., Hod, Y., & Ahn, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2021. (pp. 521-524). Bochum, Germany: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Historically, learning for young students has occurred in formal, in-person classroom environments. But in just a matter of weeks, children were mandated to transition to a completely new mode of learning, facing new learning challenges with heightened anxieties. To this end, we aim to better understand how our learning experience design (LXD) efforts support or hinder children’s engagement while participating in an online, video-based math course. This study operationalized LXD through the integration of e-learning instructional design (ID) as a lever for promoting students’ situational interest (SI), emphasis on human-centered design to support students’ user experience (UX), and the combination of SI and UX to foster student engagement in an online environment. Results provide practical implications for how we can intentionally iterate our designs to sustain children’s online engagement as we prepare for future instances of traditional, online and even hybrid models of instruction.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2027447
PAR ID:
10328498
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Editor(s):
de Vries, E.
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2021.
Page Range / eLocation ID:
521-524
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. We conducted User Experience (UX) Bootcamps with teens (ages 13-17) to teach them important UX design skills and industry standard tools for co-designing effective online safety interventions or “nudges”. In the process, we asked teens to storyboard about their risky or uncomfortable experiences and design high-fidelity prototypes for online safety interventions that would help mitigate these negative experiences. 
    more » « less
  2. This study reported the process of developing and evaluating a student-facing learning analytics dashboard (LAD) for an online STEM skill practice system from a user experience approach. A usability survey was administered to 19 LAD users to gather information on what the learners believed were the most important features and what needed to be done to further improve the design of the LAD. Our findings showed that the most important LAD feature to students was showing the accuracy level of their practice and providing the option to redo the practice. These findings informed the revisions of the preliminary design of the LAD and provided insights into future development of student-facing LADs in online learning environments. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract: We used design-based research to investigate an extended professional learning experience to prepare teachers to embed computational thinking in elementary science. Opportunities to interact synchronously in a community of practice - including through in person engagement in embodied challenges, discussion, and resource sharing, appeared to productively support teacher preparedness to embed CT in their science teaching. However, asynchronous collaboration via an online platform was less effective. We describe planned adjustments for future iterations of the program. 
    more » « less
  4. There have been many questions and concerns raised by educators about how advanced technology students will adapt to remote learning during the COVID era. What will technician students’ academic engagement and persistence be like, and how will online learning affect their educational outcomes? What do technician students like about remote learning and what do they find challenging? What does online learning mean for hands-on applied and experiential learning, which are hallmarks of technical education programs? This paper explores pilot survey data collected in Florida from advanced technology students at two-year colleges. Five primary areas covered in the survey include enrollment status, access to technology, experience using a Learning Management System and learning online, impact on applied and experiential learning, and students’ background information. Key findings include decreased interaction between peers, increased reliance on instructors, and a significant decline in experiential learning such as labs, group projects, demonstrations, problem-based learning, and service-learning. The majority of students report feeling worried about making progress toward their degree, and about half worried about completing the semester. Two benefits students identified as having access to course materials all the time through the LMS and the flexibility of remote learning. Findings also show that technician students are quite diverse by way of age, partner status, having a family, race-ethnicity, employment status, and educational background. About one-third of students who responded are women. This paper concludes with several recommendations about the application of these research findings to address challenges technician students face learning online, including specific actions that instructors and programs can pursue to help retain students and provide support through the completion of degree programs. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic forced educators to teach in an online environment. This was particularly challenging for those teaching courses that are intended to support bench science research. This practitioner article tells the story of how an instructor transformed their Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) using the Backwards Design Method into a synchronous online course. Research objectives in this transformed course included: conducting a literature review, identifying research questions and hypotheses based on literature, and developing practical and appropriate research methodologies to test these hypotheses. We provide details on how assignments were created to walk students through the process of research study design and conclude with recommendations for the implementation of an online CURE. Recommendations made by the instructor include scaffolding the design, building opportunities for collaboration, and allowing students to fail in order to teach the value of iteration. The Backwards Design framework naturally lends itself to a scaffolded instructional approach. By identifying the learning objectives and final assessment, the learning activities can be designed to help students overcome difficult concepts by filling in the gaps with purposeful instruction and collaborative opportunities. This present course also practiced iteration through the extensive feedback offered by the instructor and opportunities for students to revise their work as their understanding deepened. Anecdotally, based on end of course reviews, students overall had a positive experience with this course. Future work will examine the efficacy of student learning in this online environment and is forthcoming. 
    more » « less