Journal of Educational Computing Research

Utilizing qualitative data gleaned from focus groups with adolescent girls participating in a cybersecurity summer program (N = 38, mean age = 16.3), this study examines the following research questions: (a) How do adolescent girls perceive the cybersecurity field? (b) What are the promising practices that engage girls in cybersecurity education? Guided by ecological and social role theories, findings reveal that single-sex collaborative settings with encouraging and supportive teachers and female mentors are practices that contribute to girls’ increased interest in the field of cybersecurity. Findings also suggest that an emphasis on creative and collaborative problem-solving processes and the real-world application inherent to cybersecurity are likely to increase girls’ engagement in the field. Results have implications for educators, researchers, and policy makers aiming to close gender gaps in the field of computer science and build interest in cybersecurity, an area of critical national need.

Writing essays and receiving feedback can be useful for fostering students’ learning and motivation. When faced with large class sizes, it is desirable to identify students who might particularly benefit from feedback. In this article, we tested the potential of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) for identifying poor essays. A total of 14 teaching assistants evaluated a sample of N = 60 German essays. Using the human graders’ evaluations as the standard of comparison, more of the poor essays were correctly identified by LSA than by random sampling (i.e., selecting essays by chance). By contrast, selection by text length did not perform better than random sampling. When three different teaching assistants evaluated another sample of N = 94 essays, the results largely replicated those found in the first sample. We conclude that LSA can help university teachers to identify poorly performing students. Additional analyses were computed to investigate the potential of combining the methods in different ways.

This study used a between-subjects experimental design to examine the effects of three different computer-based instructional strategies (concept map, refutation text, and expository scientific text) on science learning. Concept maps are node-link diagrams that show concepts as nodes and relationships among the concepts as labeled links. Refutational texts are designed specifically to elicit common misconceptions that learners typically hold about a particular topic, directly refute the misconceptions, and present scientific explanations as compelling alternatives. Expository scientific texts consist of texts that are written specifically to present correct scientific information. Sixty-seven participants were randomly assigned to study one of three computer-based presentations on climate change. The dependent measures were tests of free recall and transfer. The concept map group significantly outperformed the refutational and scientific text groups on both free recall and transfer tests. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, one of the frameworks proposed in order to popularize the use of technology in a classroom environment, has been customized and has taken the form of Web Pedagogical Content Knowledge. The Relational Screening Model was used in this study. It aims to determine whether a profile of preservice teachers based on their “individual innovativeness” can be used as a significant predictor in also categorizing them according to their knowledge of web technology, pedagogy, and content. A total of 170 preservice teachers studying at various departments of the Faculty of Education at a public university in Ankara, Turkey participated in the study. This study, in which Discriminant Analysis was used to determine whether this predictor is significant or not, found that teachers in the Early Majority category had high scores in terms of pedagogical web content and general web knowledge, and that “individual innovativeness” was effective in predicting the general web and communicative web categories to which they belonged. Certain conclusion can be made regarding Web Pedagogical Content Knowledge and future studies on this subject, based on results of the study.

The aim of the present study is to reveal the impact of the interactive environment and metacognitive support (MS) in online learning on academic achievement and transactional distance (TD). The study is designed as 2 × 2 factorial design, and both qualitative and quantitative research techniques are used. The study was carried out on 127 students, and this research design was implemented in an online learning environment and evaluated based on an achievement test, TD scale, and semistructured interviews. The results of the study revealed that synschronous environments had a significant impact in reducing TD perception. In asynschronous environments, on the other hand, providing students with MS was efficient in reducing TD. In terms of academic success, compared with synschronous environments, MS provided in asynschronous environments caused to a significant difference in achievement test scores of the students. Explanations about findings and implications for instructional design are discussed in Conclusion section.

Previous research has shown the effectiveness of peer reviewing on the improvement of writing quality. However, the fact that students themselves, arguably novices, judged the improvement leads to concerns about the validity of peer reviewing. We measured writing quality before and after peer reviewing using Coh-Metrix, which computationally evaluates the linguistic properties of writings. Participants also evaluated the quality of their peer writings using the SWoRD system. Both measurements, particularly the computational measurement, confirmed the effectiveness of peer reviewing. In addition, the computational measures found that awareness of cohesion, including the clarity, explicitness, and concreteness of writing, improved over the course of peer reviewing. The results are discussed, along with their possible implications for the complementary roles of peer reviewing and computational writing measurements.