Adjusting video playback speed during extensive viewing is crucial for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners to enhance their learning experience. Since existing research suggests that abrupt speed changes might negatively impact the viewing experience, several novel speed-adjustment systems have been proposed to provide adaptive and optimal video playback speed for learners. However, empirical evidence is still sparse on whether gradual adjustments truly offer a superior experience compared to immediate changes. To delve into this, we conducted a study with 32 ESL participants, comparing direct and gradual adjustments on flow state, cognitive load, and behavioral measures. Employing both objective metrics, such as pupil diameter, and subjective feedback from surveys, our results strongly favor the gradual method. It not only enhanced flow state and video comprehension but was also less obtrusive to learners. These findings underscore the advantages of gradual speed adjustment for ESL learners, offering insights for the design of next-generation speed-adjustment systems.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642366
Cyberbullying harms teenagers' mental health, and teaching them upstanding intervention is crucial. Wizard-of-Oz studies show chatbots can scale up personalized and interactive cyberbullying education, but implementing such chatbots is a challenging and delicate task. We created a no-code chatbot design tool for K-12 teachers. Using large language models and prompt chaining, our tool allows teachers to prototype bespoke dialogue flows and chatbot utterances. In offering this tool, we explore teachers' distinctive needs when designing chatbots to assist their teaching, and how chatbot design tools might better support them. Our findings reveal that teachers welcome the tool enthusiastically. Moreover, they see themselves as playwrights guiding both the students' and the chatbot's behaviors, while allowing for some improvisation. Their goal is to enable students to rehearse both desirable and undesirable reactions to cyberbullying in a safe environment. We discuss the design opportunities LLM-Chains offer for empowering teachers and the research opportunities this work opens up.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642379
We distilled a set of core practices within ``morphing matter'' research, derived a set of underlying skills and values, and developed these into a weekend workshop for high-school students. Participants in our workshop sampled a variety of research processes, including materials science and contextual design, incorporating curriculum-appropriate learning goals, toward an integrated pneumatic fashion project. We describe our approach, activity plan, and assessment as well as opportunities for research as an educational template to push beyond current ``STEAM''-based educational practices for cross-disciplinary engagement.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641956
Educational technologies have been argued to enhance specific aspects of affect, such as motivation, and through that learner experiences and outcomes. Until recently, affect has been considered separately from cognition. In this study, we investigated how learner affect (valence and activation) was tied to learner cognitive load and behaviours during game-based literacy activities. We employed experience sampling as part of a lab-based case study where 35 English language learners used an adaptive educational game. The results indicated that both positive and negative affect predicted learner cognitive load, with negative affect predicting extraneous (unnecessary) load. These results and the newly identified interaction patterns that accompanied learner affect and cognitive-load trajectories provide insight into the role of affect during learning. They show a need for considering affect when studying cognitive load and have implications for how systems should adapt to learners.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642150
University students engage in a substantial amount of multitasking in online classes despite being aware of its negative impacts on their learning. Depending on the learner’s goals, in-class multitasking can be a positive strategic behavior to increase productivity. In a formative pilot study (N=10), we established the structure and scope for our design by exploring students' motivations, perceptions, and challenges in in-class multitasking and identified several promising design elements. Our design facilitates multitasking in online synchronous classes by providing a novel bichronous (blending of synchronous and asynchronous) learning environment manifested in Time-Turner that enables asynchronous guided accelerated viewing of past content during synchronous classes. A summative evaluation of our prototype showed significant improvement in learning outcomes when multitasking (N=20). Furthermore, 95% of users found Time-Turner helpful and expressed interest in having it in their online classes. Our findings show the great potential of supporting positive multitasking in synchronous online classes.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641985