Supporting the Development of Critical Thinking Skills through Work-Based Learning Activities: A Pilot Experience in the Educational Science Context

Antonella Poce, Maria Rosaria Re, Carlo De Medio and Mara Valente

Nowadays, a debate regarding the role that HE is supposed to cover in the broader society is present at an international level. The debate refers to a dialectical conflict between two different stances: should university prepare students to fulfil the job market needs? Or is the university supposed to transmit the knowledge without considering the professional skill training? An education system that focuses on developing higher-order skills, especially Critical Thinking (CT), could be a way to overcome this conflict. CT skills are more and more defined by educational policy as pivotal for human and social progress in terms of innovation, economic and knowledge growth (World Economic Forum, 2016; Scott, 2015). Also, CT provides students with tools to be autonomous thinkers, active citizens (Davies & Barnett, 2015) and critical users of digital technologies (Poce, 2012). The promotion of CT learning and teaching methods should be considered as an urgent need in all the formal educational context, taking into consideration the different dispositions and cognitive skills to be promoted at university level.

Starting from these assumptions, the CDM research group, coordinated by Antonella Poce, developed in the academic year 2020-2021 a series of HEI learning paths aimed at promoting CT through specific activities carried out within workplace context. Specifically, more than 100 students of two master's degree programs at University Roma Tre participated in 2 different learning paths containing activities of analysis, interpretation, argumentation, and critical evaluation of work-based experiences in the educational fields. Specific online meetings with stakeholders were carried out within the paths, together with experiences based on the following teaching methodologies: problem solving, oral dissertation, digital storytelling, analysis and critical reflection. Formative and summative evaluation activities were carried out in the pilot experience in order to collect and analyse data in relation to the promotion of professional and CT skills.

A Learning Ecosystem to Enable Economic Empowerment through Youth

Somya Munjal

Youthful Savings is an ecosystem of learning products based on the principle of economic empowerment through youth. Currently, about half of the world’s population are under the age of24​ and historically this population is largely left out of the economic system due to schooling. With global poverty expected to rise for the first time in 20 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the time to reimagine education to include youth so the world economic system can be stronger. Our monetary and fiscal policy must include youth as a solution. Real world education is necessary to truly reimagine education and Youthful Savings is the company that is ready for the challenge. Youthful Savings aims to reimagine how we approach modern education by including socioeconomic education into the education system. Just as math, science and reading is taught on a global scale, Youthful Savings aims to bring economics, entrepreneurship, financial education and necessary communication and soft skills into the lives of youth at a young age. By incorporating new modalities of education, we are no longer shielding youth from the real world but having them participate in the global economy thus increasing tax revenues, gross domestic product and overall civic engagement across the globe. With protests occurring across the globe, mostly started by youth, now is the time to give youth another powerful tool - purchasing power. Our education ecosystem allows youth to truly be the change they wish to see - in themselves and the community and world at large.

Our ecosystem of education tools and methodology encompasses on a theory that if given access to the right tools and guidance, youth can change their socioeconomic status at a young age and thus eliminate poverty. Education at its core needs to concentrate on real world tools that youth can use immediately to make their lives better. Our ecosystem includes Youthful Savings curriculum, The Learning Marketplace, Youthful Savings Marketplace and Youthful Savings Foundation. Each part of the ecosystem works together in order to empower youth to take charge of their lives and thrive.

Youthful Savings Curriculum:
Youthful Savings​ provides experiential based education products that teach youth socioeconomic skills. The most popular product is the ​My Own Business Challenge ​which uses a five step process (idea, game plan, investor pitch, goals and measurement) in order to teach youth how to start a business. Other learning products are designed to supplement skills that make entrepreneurs successful such as communication skills, financial wellness and dispute and conflict resolution skills.

The Learning Marketplace:
The Learning Marketplace​ is an online learning platform that delivers online live learning seminars and self directed online learning. All of the Youthful Savings curriculum is available on the platform as well as third party curriculum. All learning products are based on the following methodology:
Enrichment products that enhance children’s decision making capabilities through unique products that expand their brains and hearts. We want our future world leaders to be sincere humans that lead themselves and their communities well. Our enrichment learning products are all founded on our key values of compassion, collaboration and contribution. All of our learning 2 nytimes.com/2020/08/22/sunday-review/coronavirus-poverty-child-allowance.html

Youthful Savings Marketplace​:
Youthful Savings Marketplace​ is a hub for youth owned businesses. We believe that the youth deserve to partake in the global economy at a young age. Each of our youth business owners has been educated on how to create a business along with immense character development education through our online learning platform, ​The Learning Marketplace​. By combining fiscal responsibility, social justice and entrepreneurship training, we believe we can create a world where businesses create economic opportunity for all.

Youthful Savings Foundation​:
Youthful Savings Foundation is a 501(c3) that is independently funded by sales from The Learning Marketplace and Youthful Savings Marketplace. The foundation provides regular capital investments into youth businesses and helps close the poverty gap by providing direct funds to youth in order to start businesses that can help themselves and their communities.

Lab 21 – A Space for Learning, Sharing and Innovating

Christina Merl

This contribution aims to demonstrate how a contemporary teaching and coaching approach known as 2CG® (content- and context-specific generic competency coaching) and applied in Lab 21, can support modern-day learners in building 21st century skills with a focus on communication skills, creativity, critical thinking, collaborative skills, and empathy. A range of best practice examples from university education, teacher training and organizational training in the public and corporate sector will be shown. Best practice topics will include personal and organisational wellbeing, organisational culture, sustainability and new work.

2CG® as applied in Lab 21 is built around the concept of peer exchange and social collaborative learning in interdisciplinary, cross-hierarchical, cross-cultural communities of practice (CoP). A blended mix of customised content, creativity techniques and artistic impulses from poetry, puppetry, visual art, music and literature help learners to connect with their creative power, leave their knowledge bubbles behind, and explore new ways of thinking and doing. Interactive and introspective face to face and digital activities, collaborative learning tasks, and artistic impulses are used to inspire and empower learners to come up with new ideas, ask relevant questions, take responsibility, and meet the challenges they face in a globalised world.

Lab 21 targets modern learners who continually need to improve their practice and their skills to deal with the complex challenges they face in today’s world. It is based on the idea that leaders, teachers and trainers need to take the role of facilitators and guide the learning journey of their teams, students, and peers. The arts can provide the necessary impulses and inspiration to push deep learning that effects change in the real world.

A Lean Six Sigma Certification MOOC: Balancing Standard Material and Individual Guidance to Help Participants Implement Real Projects

Reiner Hutwelker and Holly Ott

Lean and Six Sigma are management systems for business processes to reduce costs and to increase customer satisfaction. They arrange theory, methods, tools, and statistics into fives phases (DMAIC) to structure improvement projects. Their mastery successively leads to the Yellow and Green Belt certification, which is monetarily rewarded by organizations worldwide. This makes Six Sigma relevant for every employee and attractive even for students.

Our Yellow Belt certification is based on the ASQ* curriculum and the practical project for Green Belt certification follows the recommendations of the ISSSP**. Since 2015 236k participants have enrolled in our Lean Six Sigma Yellow and Green Belt certification programs on the edX eLearning platform.

This presentation is primarily about our Green Belt certification. The challenge was to find the balance between standardizing the teaching material as much as possible proactively covering the wide range of possible project topics. This included, e.g.: Feasibility of technical drawings for deep sea aggregates, Errors, and availability of information in a multilingual online store and Pinholes in pharmaceutical blister packages.

First, we sharpened and formalized the methodological basis. This allowed the 30 tools to be arranged chronologically and seamlessly in a guiding software where the output of one tool is passed as input to the next tool. This procedure was applied to a universal project scenario for our lectures. The challenge for employees is the transfer from this scenario to their own project, which we support in individual online sessions. Students must implement a predefined project on environmental littering which we support in group online sessions. The certification is based on a documentation in an individual project story book template. Reviews after each project phase control the learning success and justify our certification after completion.

* American Society for Quality; ** International Society of Six Sigma Professionals

An Approach for Continuous Supervision of Bachelor’s and Master’s Theses in Engineering Studies

Igor Miladinovic and Sigrid Schefer-Wenzl

Bachelor’s and Master’s theses are an excellent opportunity for students to deep dive into a research question and to gain well-founded knowledge about a research topic. At the end of a curriculum, theses act as a kind of bridge between the education level and the work or further studies. The supervision of theses is a resource-intensive task and often a crucial factor for the quality of a thesis.

After several decades of experience with different methods, we have developed a concept for continuous theses supervision and applied it on two concrete study programs at our University, the Bachelor study program Computer Science and Digital Communications and the Master study program Software Design and Engineering. This concept has led to a higher on-schedule success rate and to higher quality of theses, compared to traditional supervision methods.

Last year has forced us to change radically the way of teaching at our University. Almost all courses were held online instead of on-site, which resulted in several challenges. However, we have also experienced some improvements through these changes and in this paper and presentation we introduce our concept and the associated positive effects in the context of Bachelor’s and Master’s theses supervision.

We will provide a set of recommendations for supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s theses for both modes, online as well as on-site. They should help to inspire other supervisors to select the methods which are optimally suitable for them.

Syntegrative Education: The bedrock of XJTLU 2.0 and the university response to industry 4.0

Stuart Perrin

Education is facing enormous global challenges, not just as a result of the recent C-19 pandemic. There is a need to better align universities with the business landscape that our students can expect to encounter when they graduate, both in terms of subject knowledge and the skills needed to be future (industry) leaders.

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) has taken up that challenge through its innovative Syntegrative Education model. This is an innovative educational model aimed at producing international high-end applied talents combining both disciplinary knowledge as well as industry attainments, leadership training and the development of management and entrepreneurship skills and mindset. The outcome is to enhance competitiveness and enhance employability.

The concept of Syntegrative Education is best highlighted through two major initiatives within the university; the development of the Entrepreneur College (Taicang), and the development of the Learning Mall. This talk focuses on the development of Syntegrative Education and how this is reflected in the XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang). The college has created a number of unique industry-themed schools through equal partnership with leading businesses, providing innovative business orientated degree programmes in forward-looking disciplines. Taking two schools as examples, the paper highlights the genesis of each, the different roles that industry has played, and makes suggestions for future school developments beyond XJTLU using the Syntegrative Education philosophy.

Development of our Entrepreneur College demonstrates the importance of having a flexible infrastructure today. The focus on entrepreneur education, flexible skills, and a global mindset is going to lead how the world emerges from the pandemic. Even more so than before degrees need to be relevant, skills up to date, to lead countries and economies forward from where we are at the moment.

The XJTLU Learning Mall: An Ever-Changing Holistic, Virtual, Physical, and Cultural Learning and Teaching Environment

Xin Bi

What is the best way to engage upskilling professionals and lifelong learners in the future? The Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) Learning Mall is the future vision of upskilling and lifelong learning education of Executive President Youmin Xi, starting its development in early 2020. This groundbreaking initiative involves an online platform and onsite location at Entrepreneur College (Taicang) outside Shanghai. It will integrate XJTLU’s premium learning resources along with those of top national and global partners, including (but not limited to) AliCloud, McGraw-Hill, Skillshare, Seentao, CiWei, Hujiang, Center for Creative Leadership, GAMI (KIT), Open Learning, LabXchange, The Intern Group, and over 20 others. The XJTLU Learning Mall’s Online platform soft-launched November 30, 2020, with a marketed and promoted external launch set for May 2021, hosting premium content from around the world. The onsite XJTLU-LM facility, which is currently under construction, will be one kilometer in length and occupy space in the core circle, which unites the XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang) campus and schools. XJTLU Learning Mall partners can host individual community spaces, leveraging their resources and contributing to a symbiotic ecosystem of learning - online and onsite, campus to community. By fostering an inviting space and leveraging stakeholders’ strengths, the XJTLU-LM will forge a 21st century alliance of like-minded entrepreneurs to serve the wider China community as well as all of XJTLU.

Beyond providing the space required for the teaching philosophy of the campus to germinate and flourish, the expected outcomes of the Learning Mall are:

• The creation of a new concept of lifelong learning within China, through syntegration and symbiosis of disruptive technologies;
• Innovative academic learning and teaching resources;
• External global providers using the XJTLU Learning Mall for educational purposes;
• Leadership in the development of innovative online education for industry 4.0.

Technology Enhanced Learning in Chinese Universities: A Comparative Case Study

Roland Sherwood and Na Li

The global pandemic disruption has increased the societal awareness of the importance of success online learning experiences in higher education, which has the potential to shake up the world university reputational hierarchy. For many international universities, the virtual exchange might be a new normal as well. The university digital competence plays a growing critical role. Various learning technologies are expected to support online or blended learning, but very little attention has been given in the area of Educational Technology facilitating conditions, such as technological solution selection, implementation, development, user training and support, which will affect the quality and effectiveness of online learning and teaching.

As a response to the situation triggered by the outbreak of Covid-19, online learning and teaching rapidly became the only choice for Chinese universities in early February of 2020. However, extant studies showed that Chinese students have had very limited opportunities to use internet-based technology with a learning focus. Additionally, most of the Chinese traditional public universities don’t have centralized Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Xi’an-Jiaotong Liverpool University (XJTLU), a Sino-British University located in Suzhou, China, was one of the earliest adopters of this approach, beginning the transition of its delivery in January, 2020. One of the most critical factors related to how XJTLU was able to undertake this transition effectively and rapidly involved the 13+ years’ experience of using Moodle as the University’s centralized VLE.

This case study will share XJTLU stories and lessons learned from the past years in comparison with the traditional public universities in China, including those relating to the technological development of our Moodle instance, rapid implementation of support and training processes, institutional changes in relation to learning and teaching policy, regulations and guidelines for online instructional design and delivery, approaches to online assessments and quality assurance practices.

“Escapeling”: A Gamified, AI-supported Chatbot for Collaborative Language Practice

Christian Johnson

We present ‘Escapeling,’ a gamified Telegram chatbot for groups of intermediate English learners. Escapeling is designed to support and enhance classroom study by motivating students to collaboratively practice language outside of the classroom. Developed by a group of Cognitive Science students at Osnabrück University, the application matches users into groups where they can practice important language skills in an achievement-driven 'escape-room' scenario. Our chatbot currently supports two main language learning tasks: a) learners’ grammar skills are reinforced through a sentence correction task; b) users’ vocabulary is strengthened and expanded through an explanation task. Through the use of AI-supported models, the chatbot tracks individual users’ performance on these tasks and scales difficulty accordingly. This adaptation allows learners to maintain their skill through review, while helping to build higher language proficiency over time. Initial user acceptance tests support the efficacy of AI-assisted adaptive language learning as an aid to traditional learning approaches. Furthermore, the remote aspect of the chatbot promotes accessibility for language learners outside of the traditional classroom. As Cognitive Science students at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and psychology, we have approached the project's development and evaluation from an interdisciplinary perspective since day-one. Work on the chatbot is ongoing and we aim to introduce a new discussion task and enhanced adaptivity in the near future.

Dynamic Planning and Digital Storyboarding for Professional Training of Accident Prevention with Time Travel Games

Klaus Jantke, Oksana Arnold, Ronny Franke and Hans-Holger Wache

The authors‘ principal area of application is training for the prevention of accidents in the process technology industries. They run a professional training center with own 3D virtual environments.

The learning ideas advocated are (i) planning of human training experiences as dynamically as managing a heavily disturbed technical system back into a normal operation – such as, e.g., an out of control chemical reactor – and (ii) enabling trainees who failed to complete a task – thereby possibly ruining a (fortunately only virtual) technical installation – to virtually travel back in time to make good the damage. This requires (iii) concepts of Artificial Intelligence to plan and execute time travel adaptively according to a trainee’s training history, to a trainee’s strengths and weaknesses, and to changing environmental conditions.

The second author’s original approach to dynamic planning is carried over to a technique of digitally storyboarding anticipated human trainees’ experiences. The first author’s original concept of Time Travel Prevention Games, first introduced for the purpose of crime prevention, is carried over to prevent accidents.

Digital storyboards do not provide complete plans of human-system interaction at planning time. Instead, they unfold adaptively at execution time, i.e. training resp. play time. Consequently, experiences of time travel are highly personalized. Adaptive time travel makes 3D VR environments more flexible appearing varyingly at the same point of virtual time in dependence on interaction history. Even repeated time travel appears always different from the prior journeys. This is done to avoid frustration and to guide trainees to an ultimate success. Trainees experience their individual success as a result of their own efforts, i.e. as a gratification for clever game play.

All concepts and their respective representations are illustrated through intuitive examples. This includes the way in which they are used and the impact they have on affective and effective training.

Improving Teaching and Learning Workflows for a Synchronous Online Introductory Course on Data Science at a Business School

Marcus Birkenkrahe

Data science (DS) is an interdisciplinary field of applied study that investigates the use of algorithms to extract insights from structured and unstructured data. It is considered essential for the development of digital business and the transformation of traditional business into digitally enabled enterprises. Due to the nature of typical DS problems and the tools involved to tackle these problems, the skills for successful data science work are highly interdisciplinary and technical. They include: programming, databases, mathematics and statistics. When big data are involved, the required skill stack also includes knowledge of cloud computing and high performance (concurrent, or parallel) computing methods. In addition, an accurate, value-adding interpretation of data-centered analyses requires significant domain knowledge.

The interdisciplinary and technical nature of the data science skill stack poses special challenges when introducing this discipline to students. Additional tools to enhance learning performance and productivity can be crucial to a successful data science learning experience.

For this educational project, several such tools were selected: the GitHub global repository, the Emacs editor Org-mode Markdown, Kahoot! games, screencasting and video tutorial tools, the Big Blue Button webinar software, and the Moodle platform to pull all of these together, creating an engaging, absorbing student experience.

Using a real teaching experience, an introductory course on data science using R, we investigate if teaching and learning workflows can be improved when systematically deploying modern, digital open-source tools in an online classroom employing both synchronous and asynchronous teaching modes.

The paper will outline the approach, the underlying concepts, explain the tools, the approach to this investigation, and present first results from teaching such a course in the extracurricular program of the Berlin School of Economics and Law between October 2020 and February 2021, including findings related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital Autobiographical Reflexivity: A Collaborative and Social Learning Design Strategy in UK Higher Education

Stella Micheong Cheong and Adam Peter Lang

As technology in higher education continues to advance, a whole range of personal stories is now being told in public forums through a range of digital media platforms including Blog, Instagram and Facebook. These personal stories contribute to enabling us to interpret the real meaning of hidden history and the distinctive societal phenomenon. In this sense, the research has tried to interpret the pandemic phenomenon by using the digital autobiographical writing method. At the start of London's first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, our eclectic and international group of education researchers linked to the Research Training Program at University College London (UCL) launched a research group around the theme of citizenship, called "Citizenship Amid the COVID-19 Turmoil". The innovative use of Google Docs' as a collective autobiographic writing platform enabled us to collect a rich, personal description of lived experience and emotions of citizenship scholars and peace activist to reimagine the education for active and compassionate citizenship as a means of challenging populist discourse and socio-political polarization that has worsened during the global health crisis.

By looking at the use of the autobiographical writing approach we had chosen, firstly, this session aims to explore the benefits and challenges of autobiographical reflexivity as a collaborative and social learning design strategy in higher education. Secondly, the session will shed new light on the practical strategy when applying the method, demonstrating how we share our reflections, interacting with multiple texts, and negotiating different perspectives within the multiple autobiographical narratives through semi-structured online discussion. Lastly, we will invite attendees to participate in the virtual break-out group' discussion to discuss further the implementation of the digital autobiographical writing method to capture the learners' multifaceted experiences, feelings and reflections as a means of the learning experience design method in their own contexts.

Flexible, AI-Based Infrastructure for Reskilling

Maury Shenk

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to deliver major benefits for education. LearnerShape has a long-term vision to use AI to create a portable representation of every learner to inform their lifelong learning choices. Taking early steps towards realizing that vision, LearnerShape has built the first AI-based infrastructure for reskilling, delivering flexibility to recommend any content, using any skills framework, on any platform. This approach allows efficient delivery of reskilling solutions that fit the precise needs of organizations and learners, including enabling collaboration among learners with matching needs. Such flexibility is essential as online learning continues to expand, drive by the long-term growth of digital content and the immediate demands of the global pandemic. LearnerShape delivers its AI-based reskilling infrastructure as an internet-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, as well as through the lsgraph open source project on Github. This session explains the LearnerShape technology, and the many opportunities for its future development.

Lessons Learned from Scaling Online Learning

Kara Monroe and Matthew Pittman

Ivy Tech Community College is one of the largest providers of community college online learning in the country. Beginning in 2018, Ivy Tech transitioned from a decentralized to centralized model of online learning to meet five key metrics:
1. Student Success
2. Faculty Satisfaction
3. Efficiency of Operations
4. Alignment to Community & Industry Needs
5. Improving Institutional Service to Online Learners

In this session, we'll review the process used to design the centralized model - now known as IvyOnline, gain buy in from 18 campuses, and develop standing operating procedures for IvyOnline. We will discuss the many lessons learned, metrics, and our next steps as well as give you a look inside at our continuous improvement processes that ensure we continue to remain accountable to our varied stakeholder needs.

Learning in a Rapidly Changing World: Our Journey from Once and Done to Continuous Learning

Bridget McDermid

Before COVID began we had already started our journey to transform the way our colleagues learn. Moving from classroom based, synchronous learning to a independent self-paced learning that mirrored the way we learn at home. Anchored in the 70-20-10 Model of development, we transitioned from a once and done people leader 5 day classroom based learning to a self-directed, multi-modal, blended learning program with 80 unique lessons, 500+ moments of learning, 17 modalities, 80+ hours of structured learning, 60+ on the job assignments, spread over 180 days to progressively build skill.

We were ahead of the curve and there was resistance in what we were trying to achieve around every corner… We persevered to break down barriers, influence resistant leaders, found ways to manipulate resources, time and technology in incredible new ways. We were agile and always stayed focus on the end goal… To unite our leaders to common goals and connect the dots in our culture driving forward an unexpectedly human style of leadership that continuously inspired colleagues to push beyond expectation.

Come and learn about our transformational journey. How we imagined, designed, developed and delivered a best in class leadership program anchored in our culture that transformed the way our leaders operate. How we ensure the right measurements and outcome assurance were in place to sustain our program and keep it alive long after the project team moved on. How we created a legacy that not only transformed our business but our organization.

Creating Training that Connects C-Suite Experts to Business Needs

Sher Downing

Today’s pandemic has resulted in c-suite experts leaving traditional roles and promoting their expertise in launching new initiatives. From live and recorded webinars to keynote speaking, many are now looking to develop online courses. The opportunity provides companies with unparalleled access to top minds who have led major initiatives in the business world. The balance is presenting quality online instruction and capturing the best of the expert.

So how do new solopreneurs and entrepreneurs ensure the product meets the demand? Utilizing trained design professionals to support content is a valid value and provides the best user experience. The importance of using instructional design staff with knowledge in best practices regarding content layout, accessibility, and intellectual property/copyright ensures training is customized to meet the client’s needs and utilizes the best experience of the expert. The presentation will look at how experts in their field may create engagement opportunities and think about ways to develop their own product for launch. We’ll also discuss what businesses should consider when identifying potential training for their employees.

Best Practices for Assessing Digital Literacy and Strengthening Online Teaching Pedagogy of Digitally Immigrant Stakeholders in Higher Education

Elisabeth Counselman-Carpenter and Jemel Aguilar

Levels of digital literacy correlate with technological self-efficacy in ways that suggest foundational levels of understanding that then can be built upon to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create new teaching and learning opportunities. Participants in this session will learn how to accurately assess and measure faculty members disparate comfort levels with technology, varying abilities to determine what forms of technology that can best meet course objectives and degree goals, and heterogeneous skills and knowledge about integrating technology into teaching and learning. Based on a recent mixed methods study at a Northeastern public university that explored the digital literacy of digitally immigrant faculty and how this correlated with their level of technology self-efficacy will be discussed. Framed by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), findings of this mixed method study included themes such as personal beliefs about technology can have a negative influence on the adoption of technology in the classroom, that technology training often happens inconsistently and informally, and digitally immigrant faculty have significantly lower levels of investment or see the benefits of teaching with technology. Group discussion points will focus on developing faculty training that includes understanding the role of faculty decision-making related to adopting and using technology to enhance courses and how their perceptions shape course development and implementation of continuous evaluation models to improve course and program outcomes. and include implications for institutions, IT departments, course designers and faculty development professionals. Participants will be able to identify potential paradigm shifts within their departments related to online teaching pedagogy and strengthen their knowledge related to best practices to support digitally immigrant stakeholders with low levels of technology efficacy. These practices include not only improving technologically based skills but also a vision for teaching online pedagogy that includes skills related to graphics and visual cues, the use of multimedia, virtually based communication skills and the need to develop continuous improvement models for course design and program success.

ICBCI: A Dynamic Integration Model of Group and Individual Behavior in the Classroom, and How to Focus and Align Towards Learning

Josh Friedman

Learning happens socially, through agents present in the environment or the objects left behind by agents previously in the environment. How we communicate socially is how we educate, learn from one another. This presentation proposes a model for thinking about social interaction in the classroom based on integrating Tuckman's classic stages of group development with Siegel's clinical development work and the KOLB experiential learning cycle into a dynamic process model that provides an analytical tool for thinking about social dynamics in the classroom from teachers' perspectives. The model boils down to establishing and maintaining four pillars in the classroom in collaboration with the class itself: Norms, Goals, Meaning, and Purpose. By paying attention to these 4 key elements of group and individual development, and tools to weave them into the classroom content, researchers and practitioners will leave this session more acutely able to diagnose, analyze, predict, and facilitate social geometries in the classroom.

AppEduMobile: A Learning Object for the Creation of Educational Applications Focused on the M-Student Profile

Laura Krimberg

This paper aims to present the planning, development (method), implementation (used technologies) and evaluation of the learning object AppEduMobile. The learning object was developed as a mobile application for smartphones and tablets, with the objective of contributing to the creation of educational resources focused on the Mobile Subject, a profile related to the characteristics of the contemporary students in M-Learning, such as their agile use of mobile devices, connectivity, multitasking and social media immersion. The app was developed based on pedagogical, technical and usability parameters, using the ConstruMED methodology that indicates some stages for the construction, evaluation and validation of learning objects. Thus, AppEduMobile was based on problem solving situations activities applied in courses of educational applications construction, offered in a University, located in Brazil. Therefore, the app was evaluated by specialists in the digital technologies in education area, through a questionnaire that presented qualitative and quantitative approach, with closed-ended, open-ended and Likert scale questions. The data analysis which enabled the improvement of the app and indicated that the application can contribute to the development of educational applications, addressing both usability and pedagogical parameters, contributing to the definition, development and characterization of the Mobile Subject.