LEARNING

According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, gamification is poised for large-scale adoption in the coming years. The construct of gamification has received considerable interest, especially in the context of learning. Over the past five years, research in the area has grown. The current study looks at consolidating the conducted research and attempts to provide a snapshot of the work carried out in the last five years. The chosen studies have explored the role of gamification in learning activities and have attempted to provide empirical evidence to support gamified learning. The purpose of the study is to review existing literature, in terms of the outcomes, outcome variables, context of the study, and research methodology used. This would not only add to the knowledge in the field but would also guide future research. Additionally, practitioners would benefit from a consolidated view of five years of research into the practice of gamification.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of the Flipped Learning Pattern (FLP) in terms of the Problem-Based Teaching Approach (PBTA) on the participants’ self-management, desire for learning, and self-control in learning English. The research design was quasi-experimental using pre-test and post-test. The participants were selected via cluster sampling from the English learners enrolled in Aladdin center in the 2018-2020 academic year. They were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (n=320). To collect the data, the self-directed learning questionnaire of Fisher, King, and Tague (2001) was used. The questionnaire contains 52 items and three subscales of self-management, desire for learning, and self-control. Findings showed that there was a significant difference in the effect of the method on three subscales of self-directed learning in the experimental and control groups. The results indicated that the value and acceptability of the pattern improve self-directed learning; and choosing the right teaching method with conscious design will have a great impact on learners’ high levels of learning English skills. Therefore, follow-up studies are necessary to investigate further the application of FLP in terms of PBTA in various lessons.

INTRODUCTION: Throughout history, humans have always been prone to diverse experiences with different consequences. Consequently, a wide range of reactions is inevitable due to the different effects of these events on each person despite the same conditions. Therefore, it is indispensable to manage the physical and mental impacts of these events based on their magnitude. The present study aimed to assess the role of learning positive personality traits in the promotion of generational resilience and health. METHODS: This applied research was conducted based on a comparative-causal design. The statistical population included 98 female high school students in Kerman who were selected by purposive sampling. The NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985), the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1997), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience scale (CD-RISC) (2003) were used to collect the needed data. Data analysis was performed using the Mann-Whitney test and regression analysis. FINDINGS: Based on the obtained results, learning exerted a significant effect on the promotion of the studied variables. Awareness and training on these strategies would be of great help in the development and improvement of resilience and health, as well as purposeful management of emotions in emergencies in people of all ages, especially the youth. CONCLUSION: As evidenced by the results of the present study, it can be concluded that learning and developing positive personality traits significantly reinforce them and lead to the enhancement of the resilience and health of the next generation.

Background : The role, duty and responsibility of professional accountants towards the society, capital owners and other interested parties requires that they observe the general principles of good ethics in all aspects and adhere to the coded and consistent professional conduct. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to find a suitable method for meaningful (long-term) learning of ethics concepts in accounting. Method : This research was applied and semi-experimental and was carried out in a quasi-experimental manner. The statistical population was accounting master students, 50 of whom were selected by in access sampling and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. The instrument was accounting ethics questionnaire and finally the data were analyzed by covariance method. Results : In this research, traditional teaching methods were compared with alternative methods (use of conceptual diagrams) by comparing the learning rate of two groups of accounting students. The findings of the research indicated that the average scores of the students of the experimental group (who were trained using conceptual diagrams) were significantly higher than the control group (who were trained using the traditional method). Conclusion : Nowadays, in many cases, traditional teaching methods are not able to understand the complex topics of ethics, and therefore students try to learn these topics like parrots. Conceptualization allows a person to communicate between different aspects of moral issues and to understand the relationship between ideas and constituent parts of thoughts. Therefore, using the conceptual diagram prepared by the lecturer or relevant experts in ethics education can increase the quality and quantity of participation in learning among students. Article number: 10

Purpose: Since the prevalence of Covid-19 increased the use of e-learning and its dual importance in teaching methods, this study aimed to compare the effect of two teaching methods of brainstorming and group discussion by e-learning on learning level and interest in teamwork in social studies course. Methodology: This was an applied study in terms of purpose and semi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design in terms of implementation method. The study population was the third-grade elementary school students in district 20 of Tehran in the academic year of 2020-2021. The sample size was 60 students in two classes with 30 ones who were selected by available sampling method. One of the classes was considered as a teaching group with brainstorming method in a random way and the other class was considered as a teaching group with group discussion method. The teacher-made test of learning level in the social studies course and the teamwork interest questionnaire (Evans & Jarvis, 1986) were used to collect the data. Findings: The results of paired t-test showed that both methods of teaching brainstorming and group discussion by e-learning enhanced the level of learning and interest in teamwork in social studies course (P <0.001). The results of univariate analysis of covariance showed that the group discussion teaching method in comparison with the brainstorming teaching method enhanced the learning level and interest in teamwork in the social studies course (P <0.001). Conclusion: The results showed the effectiveness of both methods and the greater impact of group discussion teaching method compared to the brainstorming teaching method in both variables of learning level and interest in teamwork. Therefore, the use of group discussion teaching method should be prioritized to improve academic performance in social studies course.

In early 2020, the coronavirus outbreak compelled higher education institutions worldwide to cancel campus-based teaching and conduct a variety of electronic learning which led to assessment of the quality of e-learning and its results, such as learning and self-efficacy. Thus, this study aimed to determine the effect of problem-based e-learning (PBe-L) on the learning and academic efficacy of students during the COVID-19 pandemic in ‘An Introduction of Educational Technology Course’. The research method was quasi-experimental with pre-test/ post-test design with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of this study consisted of undergraduate students in the field of educational sciences studying in the University of Tehran. 38 students were selected as the research sample using the available sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. PBe-L was conducted for the experimental group and the control group experienced the direct learning approach. A researcher-made learning test and Morgan-Jinks Student Efficacy Scale (1999) were used. The results showed that the mean of learning and self-efficacy of the experimental group increased from 7.92 and 57.00 in the pre-test to 18.51 and 76.57 in the post-test respectively. The results of covariance showed that the mean scores of the post-test of the two groups were statistically significant (p≥0.005). The results of this study showed that the use of PBe-L during the COVID-19 pandemic can be effective in increasing the students’ learning and academic efficacy.

Inventing and applying motivational, highly efficient, and engaging strategies for teaching elementary school students is a concern that has always occupied the minds of teachers and experts in this field. Meanwhile, using music as an easy and accessible, low-cost, and popular solution in creating and promoting creativity, self-confidence, motivation, and cognitive skills and students' self-directed learning has been considered an important and effective strategy. To this end, the present research investigated the music and melodic teaching impact on the math learning progress of the third-grade elementary school students in Tehran. The research adopted a quasi-experimental design with the experimental and control group. The statistical population included about 20,000 third-grade students in region 1 of Tehran that were selected as available sampling from two Rastar and Meysam Tamar schools, from which 30 students were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (15 in each group) as the study sample. Both groups learned the same and the specified concepts. However, the experimental group learned these concepts using music and melodic teaching while the control group learned these concepts using the lecture-based teaching method and the final math scores of the students were used in the analyses. As the instrument, a demographic information questionnaire, the mathematic motivation questionnaire, a progress test and an achievement test were used in this study. The results of covariance analysis showed that teaching math using music and melodic method has a significant positive impact on elementary school students’ math learning (70.8%) and more motivated learning (86%). Therefore, it can be concluded that by using melodic teaching in teaching math concepts can be more effective than traditional teaching methods.

The objective of this study was to validate a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) considering its potential use as a discriminator between learners in terms of language competence. This version was designed based on the two forms available on one of the creators’ websites as well as considering practices recommended regarding the elimination of cognates and loans. A one-way ANOVA test was used to confirm the test’s capacity to discriminate among learners of different linguistic competence. Additionally, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was conducted to revise the existence of only one underlying variable. As a result of this study, a VST version for Spanish speakers consisting of 9 vocabulary frequency levels is shared. This version is in line with validation standards put forward in previous research. It is expected that this instrument will help future studies that seek to measure Spanish speakers’ competence in English as a foreign or second language without having to deal with the interference of other intervening factors.

According to the purpose of the research, this article analyzes educational systems based on open education: challenges and opportunities in the field of learning. This method of teaching and learning is one of the new educational methods used in open university. Due to the use of electronic tools, higher education is moving away from its traditional form and moving towards distance learning and education. This research was descriptive and qualitative method was used to collect information. In this research, the researcher introduces educational systems based on open education, and the search and collection of information was done by studying documents, libraries, and searching for various written and digital sources. It was analyzed by software. The obtained results show that this education started under the name of correspondence education in the first decade of 1700 AD and has passed through five generations until today. In addition to its advantages, open education has many challenges. These challenges were summarized in eight and 80 features. Undoubtedly, in order to achieve an open and favorable higher education system, one should try to examine the challenges in this field and then by removing the limitations and turning them into opportunities, he took a big step in the direction of the higher development of open education.

Paralinguistic features are indispensable and crucial aspects of communication without which any utterance would lose its identity. On the other hand, confusion in cross-cultural communication is most often assigned to paralinguistic features. Despite the significant importance of paralinguistic clues in humans’ communication, only limited studies have tackled this issue. More specifically, despite the fact that paralinguistic features are culturally different, no study has investigated the possible relationship between these features and speaking performance of Persian-speaking learners of English. Hence, with this existing gap in the literature, in this study, we tried to scrutinize the impact of paralinguistic cues upon EFL learners’ speaking fluency in the Persian setting. To this objective, we recruited 40 first-year undergraduate female students of Linguistics at the University of Gonabad, utilizing non-random sampling method. Their English proficiency level was determined as lower-intermediate via the administration of Quick Oxford Placement Test. In our pre-test post-test experimental research, we allocated a five-week span of instruction for the purpose of teaching paralinguistic clues to the experimental group to see whether it could have a significant positive impact upon their speaking performance. The instrument we utilized to evaluate speaking capability of our participants was Researcher-Made Speaking Test. The results of our study demonstrated that utilizing paralinguistic features boosted students’ speaking capability. On the light of our finding, it could be concluded that paralinguistic features could be employed for the first-year undergraduate students to enhance their communicative performance. Future studies in diverse EFL settings, could shed light on this conclusion.

The purpose of this study was to provide additional research to investigate the effects of mnemonic techniques and digital game-based task on teaching vocabulary to Iranian EFL students through distance education. To that end, a quasi-experimental research method with a pretest posttest non-equivalent control group design was used . The participants of the study were 75 pre-intermediate EFL learners and were chosen from among female learners. After homogenizing the participants through the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), the vocabulary knowledge test (VKS), developed by Wesche and Paribakht (1996), was used as the pretest and the posttest. For measuring the reliability of the test, it was piloted with thirty students who were similar to main sample of the study, which was found to be acceptable in terms of Cronbach’s alpha. The only difference between the pretest and posttest was the order of the items to diminish the practice effect. Then the participants were randomly divided into three equal groups of 25 (two experimental groups and one control group). During a 30-day teaching period, students in the experimental groups were taught English vocabulary using mnemonic and digital game while students in the control group were taught lessons using the traditional methods. After 7 sessions, a posttest of vocabulary was administered. Results of data analysis showed that mnemonic and digital game-based task techniques had a significant effect on teaching vocabulary to Iranian EFL students through distance education. However, no statistically significant difference was found between the effects of the two techniques. The findings of this research may have implications for EFL learners, teachers and curriculum designers.

There are two approaches for simulating memory as well as learning in artificial intelligence; the functionalistic approach and the cognitive approach. The necessary condition to put the second approach into account is to provide a model of brain activity that contains a quite good congruence with observational facts such as mistakes and forgotten experiences. Given that human memory has a solid core that includes the components of our identity, our family and our hometown, the major and determinative events of our lives, and the countless repeated and accepted facts of our culture, the more we go to the peripheral spots the data becomes flimsier and more easily exposed to oblivion. It was essential to propose a model in which the topographical differences are quite distinguishable. In our proposed model, we have translated this topographical situation into quantities, which are attributed to the nodes. The result is an edge-weighted graph with mass-based values on the nodes which demonstrates the importance of each atomic proposition, as a truth, for an intelligent being. Furthermore, it dynamically develops and modifies, and in successive phases, it changes the mass of the nodes and weight of the edges depending on gathered inputs from the environment.

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of metacognitive learning strategies in working memory among university students. This quasi-experimental research adopted a pretest-posttest control group design with follow-up. The statistical population included 268 students at Applied Sciences and Technology University in Tehran in 2022. The convenience sampling method was employed to select 30 students randomly assigned to two groups with 15 participants, i.e., the metacognitive training (experimental) and the control groups. The experimental group received 10 sessions of metacognitive strategy training based on the protocol of Wells (2011). Daneman and Carpenter's (1980) working memory test was conducted to collect data which were then analyzed using the repeated measures analysis of variance in SPSS. According to the findings, the pretest mean scores of the experimental group for storage and processing differed significantly from those of the posttest and follow-up stages (p<0.01). Furthermore, in terms of information storage and processing, there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group (p<0.05). Thus, it can be stated that metacognitive learning strategies had a positive effect on improving the working memory of university students. University instructors can enhance students’ learning by creating conducive conditions for acquiring metacognitive strategies and fostering an engaging and appropriate educational environment.

Abstract According to the importance of cooperative learning based on constructivism in better learning of the material, which has been demonstrated in many types of research, these techniques make students exchange information and opinions, help each other and get help. Cooperative learning and the conduction of constructivism in learning, increase group cohesion and enable students to interact with others and examine learning from all aspects. To conduct this research, 30 senior students with the age range of 16 to 18 and based on the English level proficiency test to ensure the same language level of them, were selected. Then the target students were divided into two experimental and control groups and the pre-test was taken from them. After grouping, English language teaching was done to the students of the experimental group based on constructivism and cooperative learning, and after a certain period (five weeks), a post-test was taken from them, and Stephen's cooperative learning questionnaire (2007) was given to the students, and then the data was collected and analyzed and T-Test, ANOVA, paired sample test were conducted. The most important findings, in the present research in the first stage, were the impact of constructivism and cooperative learning on English learning of the students who were trained and achieved the most effective cooperative learning techniques, and in the second stage recognized that students use the technique of group dynamics and then feedback and doing project work respectively based on Stephen's cooperative learning questionnaire (2007).

Quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG) quantitatively records brain wave oscillation changes in any brain activity. Beta waves are produced during brain consciousness when an external stimulus induces computation, reasoning, attention, and logical thinking. Accordingly, the present study tried to measure beta wave changes during writing to analyze the changes of beta oscillatory changes while performing a writing task at the intermediate level. The study followed a quantitative method with the quasi-experimental design. To meet the purpose, thirty foreign language learners (15 males and 15 females) participated in this study voluntarily. They were doing writing tasks while their brain waves were recorded in the F3, F4, and Fz brain regions by applying the QEEG technique. The results reported positive significant differences on beta oscillatory activities in these brain areas, indicating the effectiveness of writing task activities in enhancing attention. The study has implications for language teachers to manipulate creative writing tasks as compositions to enhance attention as a prerequisite of learning and, as a result, beta waves and for the TEFL scholars to apply interdisciplinary approaches to uncover the effects of different tasks on brain oscillatory activities.

Pronunciation is one of the sub-skills which has significant effect on improving the communication competency and linguistic performance. Moreover, Pronunciation is one of the most difficult parts of teaching a foreign language to adults. It seems that the sub-skill of pronunciation is not taught in the form of a well-rounded program in communicative approaches and interactive conversations in Persian language classes, and that learners pronounce Persian under the influence of the phonemes of their mother tongue. This study is an attempt to provide an answer for the question of what strategies foreign learners use in their learning process by examining pronunciation learning strategies. The current research is the application and collection of research data using the field research approach and the descriptive method is used for the data analysis. The research instrument in data collection is a questionnaire composed of 43 items, each question containing a pronunciation strategy. After verifying validity and reliability, it was randomly distributed among foreign Persian learners. Based on the findings, they make significant use of cognitive, social, metacognitive and compensatory strategies. Commonly, mother tongue does not have a significant effect on the use of these strategies, but Chinese speakers use the group of cognitive strategies significantly more than Arabic speakers do.