Education and Information Technologies (EAIT) is a research journal that covers the complex relationships between Information and Communication Technologies and Education. EAIT is the official journal of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Technical Committee on Education (TC3).

The first article in this issue is from Muhammet Yorulmaz and Yusuf Tansel İç (Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey) and is titled: Development of a decision support system to determine engineering student achievement levels based on individual program output during the accreditation process. Accreditation studies and the number of programs that are accredited in engineering education are increasing. In the auditing process, under the criteria of program outcomes, the level of individual students’ achieving program outcomes is also considered as a sub-criterion. Failure to present a systematic approach to measuring the level of achievement of program outcomes of students who have reached the graduation stage in the evaluations or the use of questionnaires to measure them is considered insufficient evidence. In this study, a decision support system based on a multi-criteria decision-making model has been developed to determine the achievement levels of individual program outcomes of students who have reached the graduation stage of any engineering program.

A review of empirical studies of social media on language learners’ willingness to communicate by Esmat Shamsi and Hossein Bozorgian (University of Mazandaran, Iran) follows. The authors note that many studies have explored educational and pedagogical affordances of social media, but few have investigated their impact on emotional and psychological aspects of language learning, specifically Willingness to Communicate, in second and foreign language learners. In their paper they have reviewed related research published in the last decade.

Eric Sanchez and Elsa Paukovics (University of Geneva, Switzerland), Lilia Cheniti‑Belcadhi (University of Sousse, Tunisia), Ghada El Khayat (Alexandria University, Egypt), Bilal Said (LCPI, Arts, Sciences and Technology University in Lebanon, Beirut, Lebanon) and, Ouajdi Korbaa (University of Sousse, Tunisia) then present: What do you mean by learning lab? Digital and innovation competencies are required for students and faculty members in higher education institutions and so environments that incubate innovative learning scenarios to develop these competencies are needed. A learning lab is defined as a physical, digital and human space for observation, experimentation and evaluation, to rethink and enrich learning and teaching attitudes and practices at university. In this paper, they describe the concept of learning lab and the process of its setting up, based on experiments and observations conducted in the four learning labs in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Switzerland.

Education plays a major role in development of the consciousness of the whole society say Sinem Bozkurt Keser and Sevda Aghalarova (Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Turkey) and it is improved by analysing educational data related to student academic performance. Their paper is titled: HELA: A novel hybrid ensemble learning algorithm for predicting academic performance of students and describes how using data mining techniques and algorithms on data from the educational environment, students’ performances can be predicted. In their study they used a novel Hybrid Ensemble Learning Algorithm (HELA) to predict the academic performance of students.

Automated and interactive game-based assessment of critical thinking by Dang Wang (Beijing Normal University, People’s Republic of China and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, China), Hongyun Liu (Beijing Normal University, People’s Republic of China) and Kit‑Tai Hau (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, China) notes that critical thinking is one of the important higher-order skills very much treasured in education, but hard to be measured using paper-pencil tests. In line with recent recommendation to measure high-order thinking skills with interactive tasks (vs. static one set of questions), this study developed an interactive and automated game-based assessment of critical thinking, using the Toulmin Model. The study suggested the possibility of assessing hard-to-measure important complex higher-order competence with dynamic games.

Virtual reality (VR) technology is playing a crucial role in the changing paradigm of education say Hyoyoung Shim (Induk University, Seoul, Korea) and Hyangeun Lee (Sungshin University, Seoul, Korea) in their paper: The effect of design education using virtual reality‑based coding on student competence and educational satisfaction. They note that in many cases VR technology is not being taught because of the lack of relevant educational content at middle and high school levels. Their study investigates the effect of design education using VR-based coding on students’ competence and educational satisfaction in Korea. Their results found that scientific competence exerts the greatest effect on students’ overall educational satisfaction, followed by common competence, core competence, and information competence.

The next article: K‑12 students’ online learning motivation in China: An integrated model based on community of inquiry and technology acceptance theory was contributed by Mingzhang Zuo, Yue Hu, Heng Luo, Hongjie Ouyang and Yao Zhang (Central China Normal University, Hubei, China). They begin by noting that learning motivation is crucial to online learning success, especially for K-12 students, and their study investigates the effects of K-12 students’ perceived presence and technology acceptance on their online learning motivation. They found that (1) perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, social presence, and perceived ease of use have a larger positive effect on online learning motivation, while cognitive presence has a small positive effect on online learning motivation; (2) teaching presence positively influences online learning motivation through social or cognitive presence; (3) factors, such as school location, previous online learning experience, family social-economic status, and prior academic achievements, may influence technology acceptance.

Digital learning increasingly makes use of realistic visualisations, although realism can be demanding for learners and colour coding is a popular way of helping learners understand visualisations and has been found to aid in learning with detailed visualizations. When color coding backfires: A guidance reversal effect when learning with realistic visualizations, by Alexander Skulmowski (Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany) assessed whether the presence of colour coding in learning tests has an effect after having learned using a detailed visualisation that either featured colour cues or one that did not. The results indicate that colour coding helps learners the most if the learning tests also feature colour coding.

Student alienation at university level: Psychometric properties and relationship with student’s ICT motives describes research by Wahid Ahmad Dar (Government Degree College Shopian, India) and Kounsar Jan (University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India). Their purpose was to develop a context-bound scale on student alienation around core problems experienced by students at the university level. The model fit of the scale and the correlation with ICT use motives indicate this type of study can be of significant importance in educational assessment and research.

Pierre Meinokat and Ingo Wagner (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) point out that digitisation and the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic have accelerated the use of digital tools in teaching. Their article: Causes, prevention, and interventions regarding classroom disruptions in digital teaching: A systematic review offers an overview of international studies with a particular focus on classroom disruptions and their causes, as well as on prevention and intervention strategies in digital settings. Selecting from out of over 700 published articles from the last 20 years, their results show that, although the research on classroom management in general is numerous, the connection between digitisation and classroom disruptions has received little attention so far. The article provides a definition of the term ‘digital teaching’ and critically discusses the classification of new findings, their emplacement in existing research, and their potential to expand existing models.

The next article: Test for assessing coding skills in early childhood describes research to develop a valid and reliable test to determine the coding skill levels of 5–7 years old children in early childhood. It is the work of: Damla Kalyenci (Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon, Bangkok, Thailand), Şermin Metin (Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand) and Mehmet Başaran (King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand). The “Personal Information Form” containing information about children and their parents, and the “Early Childhood Coding Skills Assessment Test” developed by the researcher to evaluate the coding skill levels of 5–7 year old children were used. Their findings show that the “Early Childhood Coding Skills Assessment Test” is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to determine the skill levels of 5–7-year-old children unplugged coding and robotic coding.

Validation of the Delone and McLean information systems success model: a study on student information system from Kamil Çelik (Bartın University, Bartın, Turkey) and Ahmet Ayaz (Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey) aimed to evaluate the success of the Student Information System (SIS) using the updated Information System Success Model (IS success model) proposed by Delone and McLean. According to the empirical results, system quality, information quality, and service quality had a significant effect on use, but not on user satisfaction. System use and user satisfaction have no significant impact on the success of SIS. As a result, it would be beneficial for higher education institutions to evaluate the achievements of existing SISs to increase their use and student satisfaction.

From Thailand, Therdpong Daengsi (Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon, Bangkok, Thailand), Phisit Pornpongtechavanich (Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin (Wang Klai Kangwon Campus), Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand) and Pongpisit Wuttidittachotti (King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand) next offer: Cybersecurity Awareness Enhancement: A Study of the Effects of Age and Gender of Thai Employees Associated with Phishing Attacks. They remark that cybersecurity is crucial at present because cyber threats (e.g., phishing) have become a very common occurrence in everyday life. This research focused on the cybersecurity awareness of approximately 20,000 nationwide employees in a large financial institution in Thailand. The study consisted of three phases, a first phishing attack, knowledge transfer through a mixed-approach and a second phishing attack with different content. It was found that the level of cybersecurity awareness of employees improved significantly. It was found that gender played a significant role in cybersecurity awareness within the Thai cybersecurity ecosystem since Thai female employees were found to have a higher level of cybersecurity awareness than male employees.

A simplified real-time camera-based attention assessment system for classrooms: pilot study by Abdulrahman Renawi (College of Information Technology Al Ain, United Arab Emirates), Fady Alnajjar (College of Information Technology Al Ain, United Arab Emirates and RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Wako, Japan), Medha Parambil, Zouheir Trabelsi, Munkhjargal Gochoo and Sumaya Khalid (College of Information Technology Al Ain, United Arab Emirates) and Omar Mubin (Western Sydney University, Australia) begins by noting that monitoring students’ attention and engagement levels in classrooms is critical in promoting an interactive teaching process. Recent advancements in computer vision techniques have resulted in tools that empower real-time head-pose estimation for multiple people with reasonable accuracy. Their study, employing an ordinary webcam, a standard computer, and simple computer vision algorithms aimed to harness such technology to help instructors determine and evaluate faster and more accurately the level of students’ attention, thus supporting them in managing the session appropriately and more beneficial to the students. Results show that the proposed system can numerically evaluate students’ attention in the classroom, individually and in-group, in real-time.

Jamaiah Yahaya and Sazrol Fadzli (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia), Aziz Deraman and Noor Zaitun Yahaya (Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia), Lilia Halim (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia), Izhar Abadi Ibrahim Rais (Mineral Research Centre, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia), Siti Rohana Ahmad Ibrahim (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia) then offer: PRInK: Environmental virtual interactive based education and learning model for STEM motivation. They note that pollution from quarry activities has a substantial environmental impact on many countries. Environmental data modelling, specifically on quarry activities, has only targeted engineers and professionals, not school children. At the same time, the number of students enrolling in STEM courses is continuously declining. This research aimed to develop the environmental virtual interactive based education and learning model called PRInK to foster STEM education. Five components of the proposed model were identified: (a) Computer-Assisted Learning; (b) Motivation Level; (c) Green Environmental Data; (d) Learning Outcome; and (e) Problem Context. They claim that the PRInK model and the prototype increase society’s awareness about environmental issues starting from school, increase STEM interest and improve the overall quality of life through a shared understanding for future generations.

Blockchain‑based online education content ranking comes from Anuj Garg (IBM India Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore, India), Sharmila A and Pramod Kumar (Krishna Engineering College, Uttar Pradesh, India), Mani Madhukar (IBM India Pvt Ltd., Bangalore, India), Octavio Loyola‑González (Altair Management Consultants, Madrid, Spain) and Manoj Kumar (University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India). Due to COVID19, dependence on the Internet is necessary for many things including learning and getting daily needs. Online learning is made possible by the Internet, and today most students, educators and researchers are leveraging online learning platforms to enhance their knowledge at their own pace. In this paper, the Blockchain-based Online Education Content Ranking system is proposed for an online review and ranking system that offers a decentralised trustworthy system, ensuring the integrity of the rating and the independence and integrity of content reviews by Subject Matter Experts.

Covid-19 has affected the everyday educational lives of students, teachers, administrators, and parents and those who are living in low-income and disadvantaged communities are probably more likely than others to have been affected by the pandemic in relation to their children’s distance learning. Hibah Khalid Aladsani (King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia) discuss this in: The perceptions of female breadwinner parents regarding their children’s distance learning during the Covid‑19 pandemic. Their study focused on the perceptions, predictions, and suggestions of female breadwinner parents from low-income families regarding their children’s distance learning. Data from focus group discussions was thematically analysed into three categories: (1) financial issues, (2) social and cultural issues, and (3) educational issues. The findings present the breadwinners’ general and technological reasons for their predictions for enhancing education in the future if schools return to face-to-face learning or pursue a blended learning approach.

Crosschecking teachers’ perspectives on learning in a one-to-one environment with their actual classroom behavior – a longitudinal study comes from Yehuda Peled (Western Galilee College, Israel), Ina Blau (The Open University of Israel, Israel) and Ronen Grinberg (Eilon, Israel). They note that one-to-one laptop initiatives have become prevalent in schools aiming to enhance active learning and assist students in developing twenty-first-century skills. This paper reports on a qualitative investigation of teachers in a junior high school in Northern Israel, who were gradually implementing one-to-one computing. It aimed to map teachers’ perspectives on changes in teaching in one-to-one computing settings, and the pedagogical strategies that they use in one-to-one classrooms. Findings pointed to several benefits of using a laptop for teaching, as well as classroom management problems and technological problems while teaching.

In today’s society technology plays a fundamental role say Gonzalo Lorenzo Lledó, Asunción Lledó, Alba Gilabert‑Cerdá and Alejandro Lorenzo‑Lledó (University of Alicante, Spain) in their article: The use of augmented reality to improve the development of activities of daily living in students with ASD. One of the emerging technologies in recent years is augmented reality (AR) which generates great benefits for people with disability. These visual technologies provide safe and controlled environments in learning to solve social situations for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The objective of their research was to analyse the effect of AR as a tool for learning the handwashing process. An experimental group was composed of six students diagnosed with ASD (Level I, II, III) who developed activities with the AR application while the control group was composed of students diagnosed with ASD who performed similar activities in the handwashing process with traditional methodologies. The results show that there have been improvements in the post-test caused by working with augmented reality in several areas, such as, for example, in eye contact. The possibility of designing an application adapted in real time to the children’s needs is considered as a future line of research.

Teacher observations of programming affordances for K‑12 mathematics and technology by Niklas Humble (Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden) points out that with future shortage of professionals with programming and computing skills, many countries have made programming part of the kindergarten – grade 12 curriculum (K-12). A possible approach is to make programming part of an already existing subject and Sweden has chosen this approach where, in 2017, programming was integrated in the subject content of K-12 mathematics and technology. Integrating programming creates extra workload on teachers, who will face new challenges in their teaching and learning activities. The aim of the reported study was to examine K-12 teachers’ use and perceived affordances of programming as a tool for teaching and learning activities in mathematics and technology. Results show that teachers use a variety of programming tools in their teaching and learning activities. The use of programming in mathematics and technology can be understood in five main perceived affordances: (1) Play, (2) Discovery, (3) Adaptation, (4) Control, and (5) Freedom; which relate to both student motivation and subject content.

Facebook has been widely used among students, not only for socialising, but also for educational purposes, but it is much less clear whether educational usage of Facebook would be beneficial for student academic achievement, especially in distance education. Sittipan Yotyodying, Kathrin Jonkmann, Swantje Dettmers and Kerstin Erdal (FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany) examine this in their paper: Educational usage of Facebook and academic achievement in distance university students: Mediated by basic needs satisfaction. Their paper examined whether different types of educational usage of Facebook would be differentially connected with academic achievement of distance university students. Unlike previous studies, they distinguished between the quantity and the quality of educational usage of Facebook: the former concerned with time spent, while the latter includes three types of educational utilities offered by Facebook (communication, collaboration, and resource sharing).

Tuba Koc (ICT Teacher in Ministry of National Education, Ankara, Turkey) and Fatma Burcu Topu (Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey) then offer: Using three-dimensional geospatial technology in primary school: students’ achievements, spatial thinking skills, cognitive load levels, experiences and teachers’ opinions. Their study was to reveal students’ experiences in relation to learning process and to obtain teachers’ opinions on using Google Earth in social science education. Their results found that using Google Earth has significantly effects on students’ achievements and mental rotation skills positively, whereas it has no effect on their spatial visualization skills. The positive opinions of teachers about Google Earth will encourage primary school teachers to use three-dimensional geospatial technologies in social science education.

DIAMOND: A tool for monitoring the participation of students in online lectures. Khaleel Mershad (Modern University for Business and Science, Beirut, Lebanon) and Bilal Said (Research Unit, Softeam Docaposte, Paris, France) suggest that the principle of traditional education has transformed fundamentally within the last few years with growth of computer and communication technologies providing learners with access to a variety of quality online education. Many educational institutions have shifted partially or completely to distance learning and online lectures as their major instruction methods, but educational administrators find it difficult to ensure that students are participating and actively engaging during online lectures. In their paper they present a framework to monitor online lectures and deduce important information, such as the degree of students’ involvement, the percentage of students who are participating, and the amount of engagement of each student during each lecture.

Assessment of negotiation styles in higher education through a game-based assessment tool. The purpose of this research, by Özgür Yaşar Akyar and Gıyasettin Demirhan (Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey), was to examine the negotiation styles of candidate sports coaches in higher education by using a game-based assessment tool called ENACT game. Results indicate that there is a positive significant relationship between conflict-handling styles and negotiations style only among integrating style and avoiding style, but no significant relationship between the dominating, compromising, obliging styles of conflict handling and the dominating, compromising, and obliging styles of negotiation. Interviews with students revealed that negotiations in ENACT game-based assessment are very close to their real-life experience.

New realities for Polish primary school informatics education affected by COVID-19 by Taras Panskyi and Ewa Korzeniewska (Lodz University of Technology, Poland), Małgorzata Serwach (University of Lodz, Poland) and Krzysztof Grudzień (Lodz University of Technology, Poland) discusses the first research effort to explore the transition from traditional teaching into distance teaching in Polish primary schools enforced by COVID-19. Results showed that almost all Polish students during the pandemic had a technical opportunity to participate in distance learning and to use digital devices to develop their digital competences. Their results showed the significant importance of out-of-school informatics education in pandemic time, but that in the first wave of the pandemic, distance informatics education had the same or similar effect as if students learned informatics by themselves, without school lessons and teachers’ support.

The next article is from China, by Xuebin Wang, Aitao Lu, Tao Lin, Siyi Liu, Tianhua Song, Xin Huang and Lilan Jiang (Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China and South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China). Perceived usefulness predicts second language learners’ continuance intention toward language learning applications: a serial multiple mediation model of integrative motivation and flow notes that mobile language learning has attracted much attention in recent years, and that research has demonstrated a relationship between perceived usefulness and continuance intention to use technology. This study looked at this, and the possible association between perceived usefulness and continuance intention in the context of language learning and the mediating effects of integrative motivation and flow. Results showed that integrative motivation and flow played multiple mediation roles in the relationship between perceived usefulness and continuance intention: (1) perceived usefulness was positively related to continuance intention toward language learning apps, (2) both integrative motivation and flow played partial and parallel mediating roles between perceived usefulness and intention to use language learning apps, and (3) integrative motivation and flow mediated the relationship between perceived usefulness and continuance intention toward language learning apps sequentially.

Computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering technologies (CAD/CAM/CAE) are a mainstay in today’s industry and therefore they should be an important part of the current training plan of graduate engineers. Teaching CAD/CAM/CAE tools with project-based learning in virtual distance education by Rafael R. Sola‑Guirado, Guillermo Guerrero‑Vacas and Óscar Rodríguez‑Alabanda (University of Cordoba, Spain) addresses this topic. Implementation in the university environment, however, presents certain barriers that make this difficult. In this work, they look at the feasibility of teaching the management of this type of tools through a Project-Based Learning method in a distance learning environment.

How to improve the design of experimental studies in computing education: Evidence from the international assessments is by Mustafa Yildiz (Amasya University, Turkey), Ran Shi (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA) and Mehmet Kara (Amasya University, Turkey and Vocational School of Design, Şeyhcui Mah. Kemal Nehrozoğlu Cad, Turkey). They point out that cluster randomized trials are frequently used in educational research for methodological reasons. Their study aimed to improve the efficiency of these on computer/information literacy and computational thinking. Findings showed that the most precise effect could be measured when student and teacher/school covariates are both adopted.

Also from Turkey, Melike Özüdoğru (Manisa Celal Bayar University, Turkey) offers: A structural equation modelling in distance education teacher training classroom environments. The purpose was to investigate the perceptions of teacher candidates about distance education teacher training classroom environments and to display the relationships among distance education classroom environment variables and course achievement. Results of the study revealed that instructor support predicted the achievement, perceived authentic learning and autonomy significantly. Finally, active learning perceived by teacher candidates had a significant but weak effect on student interaction and collaboration.

The next paper: The Intersection of Social Justice and Educational Technology: The Educational Technology Social Justice by Matrix David M. Marcovitz (Loyola University Maryland, Batlimore, USA) examines a review of thirty-eight recent papers from a search for the terms “educational technology” and “social justice”. The papers were reviewed using the SJPACK Model for social justice in education, and educational technology themes were generated from the reviewed papers. This provides a powerful lens for educational technology researchers to explore and expand their use of social justice to promote activism and anti-racist education.

Game-based learning platform to enhance cybersecurity education describes work by Manzoor Ahmed Khan, Hesham El Sayed, Adel Merabet and ShammaAlkaabi (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE) on encouraging students to understand cybersecurity and the cybersecurity education system. The level of difficulty of computer security tasks could be intimidating for most students and learners, one reason there has been a shortage of cybersecurity professionals and to a lack of technical training and materials. To address these issues, they propose a game-based learning platform to enhance cybersecurity education. The platform applies an adapted ARCS motivational model to design and evaluate different challenges. It includes a virtual lab for students with the necessary tools for practice and a web portal where all challenges and learning materials are hosted.

Gökhan Dağhan (Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey) and Abdullah Yasin Gündüz (Uşak University, Turkey) report on: Research trends in educational technology journals between 2000 and 2018: a web scraping study. An analysis was performed on the keywords of articles published between 2000 and 2018 in 14 educational technology journals screened within the scope of Social Sciences Citation Index. These keywords were ranked according to their frequency of usage, and the top 100 keywords were reported.

Sheng‑Lun Cheng (Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, USA), Jen‑Chia Chang (National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei City, Taiwan) and Kayleigh Romero (Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, USA) next offer: Are Pedagogical Beliefs an Internal Barrier for Technology Integration? The Interdependent Nature of Teacher Beliefs. The purpose of their study was to examine how pre-service teachers’ competence beliefs, value beliefs, pedagogical beliefs, and their intention to integrate technology were related to one another. The study found that there was an interaction between competence and pedagogical beliefs and that the relations between pedagogical beliefs and teachers’ intention to integrate technology were only significant when competence beliefs were low.

The educational e-portfolio: preliminary evidence of its relationship with student’s self-efficacy and engagement by Ginesa López‑Crespo, M. Carmen Blanco‑Gandía, Sonsoles Valdivia‑Salas, Camino Fidalgo and Noelia Sánchez‑Pérez (University of Zaragoza, Teruel, Spain) notes that the educational use of portfolios has been increasing in the last few years, especially as technology has also developed electronic versions of portfolios. Their study aimed to provide initial evidence about the use of the portfolio in higher education. Results showed that performance on the portfolio correlated with the score obtained on multiple choice tests. There was an increase in self-efficacy after one semester of e-portfolio implementation, and engagement proved to be an important predictor of the final course grade through the mediation of individual reflections.

Informational video blogs are a popular method of communication among students that may be fruitful educational tools, but their potential benefits and risks remain unclear, say P. Delgado (University of Valencia, Spain), Ø. Anmarkrud (University of Oslo, Norway), V. Avila, L. Altamura and S. M. Chireac (University of Valencia, Spain), A. Pérez (University of Granada, Spain) and L. Salmerón (University of Valencia, Spain) in their paper: Learning from text and video blogs: comprehension effects on secondary school students. Streaming videos created by YouTubers are often consumed for entertainment, which may lead students to develop habits that hinder in-depth information processing and the researchers aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing students’ perceived attention to task, metacognitive calibration of their level of comprehension, and comprehension outcomes between reading text blogs and watching video blogs.

Collaborative activities are a method used in higher education to develop the higher order skills that students need to succeed in today’s workforce say Karen L. Valaitis, Holly Ellis, Nancy B. Hastings and Byron Havard (University of West Florida, USA). Their article is: The influence of personal attitude on instructor intent to integrate online collaborative activities. Their results determined that participant behavioural beliefs determining personal attitude had a negative influence on instructor intent. The primary areas of influence were lack of real value, the increased difficulty with managing the activity, instructor challenges, and online student expectations.

Dynamics of GeoGebra ecosystem in mathematics education is from Semirhan Gökçe (Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University, Turkey) and Pınar Güner (İstanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Turkey). Their purpose was to investigate the trends of GeoGebra related studies, focusing on articles published between 2009 and 2021 from Web of Science database. A four-clustered structure, according to the degree of relationships among terms that reflect the articles, was found. These were learner anatomy (the use of GeoGebra to improve students’ mathematics learning), teaching analytics (the role of GeoGebra in mathematics teaching), technological focus (the technological and procedural issues), and conceptual extension (the attempts considering the features of GeoGebra, mathematics topics and skills).

Di Wu, Chi Zhou, Xingfang Liang, Yating Li and Min Chen (Central China Normal University, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China) point out that the importance of rural teachers’ innovative behaviour of integrating technology into teaching (ITT) has been well recognised, in their article: Integrating technology into teaching: Factors influencing rural teachers’ innovative behavior. They argue that rural teachers’ innovative behaviour of ITT is far from satisfactory and look at what factors are related to it making use of social cognitive theory (SCT). Their results indicated that organisational environment, peer support, and information literacy contributed to rural teachers’ innovative behaviour of ITT, while technostress hindered this.

It is well known that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational institutions deeply and globally, and Çağdaş Ümit Yazgan (Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University, Turkey) discusses an aspect of this in: Attitudes and interaction practices towards distance education during the pandemic. The study aimed to evaluate the possibilities and limitations of emergency distance education conducted during the pandemic period, based on university students’ approach-avoidance attitudes towards distance education and their distance education experiences. It was shown that interactions between both student-student and student-lecturer weakened with distance education during the pandemic period, but these interactions gained some new qualities. It was concluded that the interest towards the lessons conducted only through lecture notes weakened, the contents became functional at the point of clarifying the boundaries of the lessons and increased the education load at the point of concentration.

The purpose of the next reported research was to determine the quality of the digital stories developed by the primary school teacher candidates (PSTC) for primary school mathematics teaching and their experiences in the digital storytelling (DST) production processes. Digital storytelling for primary school Mathematics Teaching: Product and process evaluation is from Ayşegül BÜYÜKKARCI (Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey and Doğu kampüs, Isparta, Turkey) and Merve MÜLDÜR (Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey). It was determined that negative qualities were more than positive ones in the digital stories, also that these candidates carried out some preparatory work before creating a digital story, paying attention to certain criteria while creating a digital story, and reviewing their stories after production.

Pre-service teachers’ views about the use of digital educational games for collaborative learning was contributed by Polyxeni Kaimara (Ionian University, Greece), Emmanuel Fokides (University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece), Ioannis Deliyannis (Ionian University, Greece) and Andreas Oikonomou (School of Pedagogical, and Technological Education, Heraklion, Greece). They argue that digital educational games constitute an effective teaching approach, particularly when used in combination with collaborative learning scenarios, but that when changes are made in the teaching and learning process, teachers are responsible to apply and realize them in practice. This makes it vital to understand their views and attitudes on the matter, regardless of whether they are pre- or in-service teachers.

Jaroslav Hofierka, Michal Gallay and Jozef Šupinský (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovak Republic) and Gabriela Gallayová (Republic Elementary School, Veľká Ida, Slovak Republic) – A tangible landscape modeling system for geography education. They point out that geography education requires a combination of knowledge, skills, and geospatial relational thinking, and to improve learning efficiency and durability of knowledge, a new inquiry-based instruction system using tangible user interfaces has been developed. The tangible landscape modelling system comprises four components including a malleable physical model, 3D scanner, projector, and standard computer with software. They found that there was an improved understanding of the concept of contours and basic landforms, indicating that this system provides an easy-to-understand concept and teaching tool that improves the geospatial relational thinking of students.

Advising students through their study plans is one of the essential steps towards academic success, point out Samer Y. Al‑Imamy and Sotirios Zygiaris (Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Saudi Arabia) in their article: Innovative students’ academic advising for optimum courses’ selection and scheduling assistant: A Blockchain based use case. They point out that matching of students’ needs and courses offered at a university requires comprehensive planning and scheduling, and to avoid mismatch, which usually leads to cancellation of courses with low enrolment, a decisive advising process is deemed necessary. Their proposed system adopts a hybrid approach integrating the client-server legacy centralised methodology with the blockchain decentralized approach. (Blockchain is a new technology proposed to create an effective advising system based on a decisive preregistration process.) The results are promising and provide a proof of concept.

Effect of Computer Simulation on Secondary School Students’ Interest in Algebra from Felix O. Egara (University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria), Chiedu Eseadi (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) and Augustina C. Nzeadibe (University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria) examined this effect. The Algebra Interest Inventory was the instrument utilized for data collection for the study. Analysis of the results showed that the mean interest scores of students taught algebra with computer simulation was significantly higher than those taught with the conventional method. Also, there was no significant difference between the mean interest scores of male and female students taught algebra with computer simulation.

Complexity‑based attentive interactive student performance prediction for personalized course study planning is by Peipei Wang and Lin Li (Wuhan University of Technology, China), Ru Wang (Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China), Yifan Xie (Wuhan University of Technology, China) and Jianwei Zhang (Iwate University, Morioka, Japan). They note that planning course study is critical to facilitate strategic intervention in education. As a significant basis of planning course study, student performance prediction aims to utilize students existing relevant information to predict their future learning performance including course grades, course failure and grade point average are a basis. They propose a novel Complexity-based Attentive Interactive Student Performance prediction model (CAISP) for personalized course study planning. In CAISP, the individual differences among students can be considered by assigning dynamically different importance using attention network to facilitate personalized planning.

Design of an e-diploma system based on consortium blockchain and facial recognition describes research by Ching‑Sheng Hsu (Ming Chuan University, Taoyuan, Taiwan), Shu‑Fen Tu (Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan) and Pei‑Chia Chiu (Ming Chuan University, Taoyuan, Taiwan). Paper certificates are difficult to carry, easy to lose, easy to forge and with other security issues which were not solved until the emergence of blockchain technology. This uses one-way hash functions, asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, consensus mechanisms and smart contracts to achieve decentralisation, non-tampering, and non-repudiation. In their study, cryptography and biometrics are used to strengthen the connection between the diploma and the recipient, and a blockchain deployment framework composed of educational authority and institutions is proposed to make the identity of the diploma issuer credible.

Existing research studying MOOC learner diversity has mainly taken uni-dimensional approaches, which have led to partial or inconsistent findings say Ling Li (East China Normal University, Shanghai, China) and Jun Xiao (Shanghai Open University, China) in their paper: Persona profiling: a multi‑dimensional model to study learner subgroups in Massive Open Online Courses. This paper proposes a multi-dimensional model that helps to identify and build the personas of key learner subgroups in any given MOOC course. By linking learners’ behavioural patterns to their characteristics, and situating them in wider context of learning environments, this multi-dimensional model intends to generate more complicated and dynamic understandings of how different factors interweave, together forging learners experience with MOOCs. The evidence suggests that compared to unidimensional approaches, the multi-dimensional model, with different perspectives complementing and explaining one another, puts together a more comprehensive picture of learners that reflects their preferences and learning habits, dedication and efforts, as well as underlying constraints and difficulties associated with MOOC learning.

Information governance (IG) embraces underlying necessities to organise information using consistent methods for meeting organisational needs, and Jika Saidu Muhammad (Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor, Malaysia), Shah J. Miah (The University of Newcastle, Australia), Azman Mat Isa and Ahmad Zam Hariro Samsudin (Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor, Malaysia) elaborate on this in: Investigating importance and key factors for information governance implementation in Nigerian Universities. Due to the poor nature of information management systems in Nigerian universities, there is a significant need to explore the possibilities of IG implementation. The objective of this study was to identify key factors necessary for IG implementation in universities. Research findings embraced key factors including user expertise, funding, technology; organisational facilities, and security, which are the necessities of leading to successful IG implementation.

Similarity measures in automated essay scoring systems: A ten‑year review is by Vidasha Ramnarain‑Seetohul and Vandana Bassoo (University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius) and Yasmine Rosunally (University of the West of England, London, UK). In automated essay scoring (AES) systems, similarity techniques are used to compute the score for student answers, and several such methods have emerged over the years. This work shows the findings of a ten-year review on similarity techniques applied in AES systems and discusses the efficiency and limitations of current methods. This review has identified two types of similarity techniques used in AES systems. In addition, several methods were used to compute the score for student answers in the AES systems.

For new higher education students and especially for individuals with visual impairment (VI), becoming digitally literate is a necessity in order to be able to fully participate in society and to overcome certain educational barriers say Tugba Kamali Arslantas (Aksaray University, Turkey) and Abdulmenaf Gul (Hakkari University, Turkey) in their paper: Digital literacy skills of university students with visual impairment: A mixed-methods analysis. This study explores the digital literacy (DL) skills of university students with VI in Turkey, along with the factors that can affect DL levels. They found quite high levels for several self-reported technical and cognitive sub-factors of DL skills, and lower levels for the social sub-factor, and no significant difference between gender, level of VI, and type of school. The results showed that daily use of the Internet had a significant positive effect on DL scores, and that there was a negative correlation between DL and age of starting to use technology.

Impact of digital boards on hand and neck muscle activity during online teaching process come from S. Shankar, R. Naveenkumar, R. Nithyaprakash, S. Narmatha, R. Rithic Sai and M. Nandhakumar (Kongu Engineering College, Erode, Tamil Nadu, India). The objective of this study was to find the impact of different sizes of digital boards, used for online teaching, on muscle activity and muscle fatigue and compare this with conventional writing. Experimental analysis was conducted using electromyography sensor (sEMG) among ten college professors and their muscle activity on the dominant hand and neck while writing on two commercially available digital boards. They found that Sternocleidomastoid muscle has more muscle activation compared to other selected muscles followed by flexor carpi radialis.

Digital games have become increasingly popular, but many teachers may not have relevant knowledge and experience of designing and implementing digital game-based teaching in formal classrooms is discussed in this research paper by Qing‑Ke Fu (Huzhou University, People’s Republic of China), Di Zou (The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Haoran Xie (Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Gary Cheng (The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong, Hong) and Gwo‑Jen Hwang (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan): Effects of a collaborative design approach on pre‑service teachers’ ability of designing for learning with a digital game. This study proposed a collaborative design approach to facilitate pre-service teachers’ abilities of designing a digital learning game and found this approach to be effective in helping the students design digital games-based learning activities.

Linnea Stenliden and Jörgen Nissen (Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden) next write on: Students’ multimodal knowledge sharing in school: Spatial repertoires and semiotic assemblages. They say that in a world ‘flooded’ with data, school students need adequate tools as Visual Analytics (VA), that easily process mass data, give support in drawing advanced conclusions, and help to make informed predictions in relation to societal circumstances. The aim of this study was to analyse elementary school students’ practices of communicating visual discoveries and their insights, as the final stage in the knowledge building process with an VA-application for interactive data visualisation. A design-based intervention study is conducted in one social science classroom to explore modes for students’ presentation of insights, constructed from the interactive data visualizations.

Thai undergraduate science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) creative thinking and innovation skill development: a conceptual model using a digital virtual classroom learning environment was contributed by: Naphong Wannapiroon and Paitoon Pimdee (King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand) who examined and developed a digitally based virtual classroom learning environment (VCLE) for Thai undergraduate students’ creative thinking and innovation enhancement in science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths (STEM/STEAM) disciplines. They found that the VCLE design should begin with a face-to-face, classroom learning environment in which the ‘gamification’ mechanisms were introduced and examined, then moving the gamification process online outside of the classroom.

Maria Osipenko (Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany) proposes a linear combination of certain stylised learning patterns scaled by learners’ affinities to study learning behaviour, in: Inferring learners’ affinities from course interaction data. The absorption of stylized behaviour through the affinities constitutes “building blocks” in the mode, and non-negative matrix factorisation is employed to extract common learning patterns and their affinities from online learning data ensuring meaningful non-negativity of the result.

Checking essays written by students is a very time-consuming task as besides spelling and grammar, they also need to be evaluated on their semantic content such as cohesion and coherence. Areeba Shahzad and Aamir Wali (FAST-NUCES, Faisal Town, Lahore, Pakistan) examine this in: Computerization of Off‑Topic Essay Detection: A possibility? In this study they focus on one such aspect of semantic content which is the topic of the essay. The study aimed to address the problem of predicting whether an essay is off-topic or not using machine learning techniques. Their research question was: given a prompt and an essay written in Pakistani English, can the process of detecting whether the essay is off-topic or not be reliably and completely autonomized with zero human intervention using currently available tools and techniques?

Effect of GeoGebra Software on Secondary School Students’ Achievement in 3‑D Geometry. Marie Sagesse Uwurukundo, Michael Tusiime Rwibasira and Jean François Maniraho (University of Rwanda, Kayonza, Rwanda) implemented GeoGebra software in Rwandan secondary schools to check its effectiveness during teaching and learning geometry concepts. They found that students who learned with GeoGebra outperformed those who learned without GeoGebra, and that the number of students who were able to perform each of 15 questions increased drastically due to the potential of GeoGebra. The study recommends the use of GeoGebra in all teaching and learning activities of mathematics.

The landscape of self-directed learning in mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) is changing from mechanical and repetitive to communicative and meaningful learning due to the development and integration of conversational agents into mobile devices, notes Jaeho Jeon (Seoul National University of Education, Republic of Korea) in the article: Exploring a self-directed interactive app for informal EFL learning: a self-determination theory perspective. Students can learn a language via a self-directed interactive app (SIA) where they can experience oral and textual two-way interaction with a conversational agent through their mobile devices anywhere and at any time using the target language. This study investigated students’ usage patterns of an SIA in an informal setting and how the app supported students’ basic psychological needs by drawing on the lens of self-determination theory.

To conclude this issue, Ali Abarkan and Majid BenYakhlef (Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University of Fez, Taza, Morocco) write on: Learning game development: Java shooter. They point out that learning to code is far from easy, and that students are often discouraged by the amount of information to remember and the complex and constraining syntaxes. This article proposes a tool – a learning game called Java Shooter, which aims to help learners gain a high motivation rate in learning java programming. This promising approach uses video game culture to motivate students to invest their time in the practice of programming. This game motivation learners to understand the lessons learned. Overall, the teachers greatly appreciated the design of the Java Shooter.

Articles in this issue come from researchers in: Australia, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates and USA.

Dedicated, professional reviewers are an essential part of any research journal and EAIT is fortunate to have some excellent reviewers. We do, however, have a problem. We do not have enough high-quality reviewers! In 2021 we had 2,583 submissions to the journal (352 articles were published). This means a huge effort for our present number of reviewers. We need more people to register as reviewers and we encourage readers to consider registering and inviting their colleagues also to register. To do this, go to the EAIT Editorial Manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/eait/default.aspx) and click on Register Now.

Arthur Tatnall.

Editor-in-Chief.