Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences

This year at the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE), Cesar Tecson presented his paper which evaluated the intelligent tutoring system, Intelligent Learning System for Automata (ILSA), on users’
achievement goal orientations using analyses based on user experience and feature significance.

TALE is the IEEE Education Society’s flagship Asia-Pacific (IEEE Region 10) conference, catering to researchers and practitioners with an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education – with a particular emphasis on electrical and electronic engineering, telecommunications, computer engineering, computer science and allied disciplines – as well as those interested in the innovative use of digital technologies for learning, teaching and assessment in any discipline. The target audience of the conference is diverse and includes those working in the higher education, vocational education and training (VET), K-12, corporate, government, and healthcare sectors.The conference was hosted by the University of Wollongong Australia and Charles Sturt University from December 4-7, 2018.

On 19 December 2018, ALLS hosted a team from St. Paul’s College Pasig, including Ms. Paola Grajo, and five Grade 12 students, Jenny Lim, Theresa Magsajo, Bea Mallari,Bianca Mallari, and Althea Manansala. They consulted with Dr. Rodrigo about their senior thesis project that aims to develop a  hypermedia learning system that will be used for teaching ratio and proportions to Grade 6 students.

We are pleased to announce that the paper “Portraits of Underprivileged Filipino Second Language Learners: Towards the Development of Computer-based Educational Game” has been accepted as a short paper.

Congratulations to Rex Bringula, Jaclyn Ocumpaugh, and the JOLLY team!

The CSP organized this conference to enable local and neighboring computing educators, researchers, ICT professionals and students to interact and to share their work in computing, computer science, computer engineering, computational science, and information and communications technology (ICT). The conference features special lectures by prominent researchers and educators in the field of information and communications technology (including computing, computer science, computer engineering, computational science, and related disciplines). It also features contributed research papers on computing and ICT.

ICE 2018 is organized by the Computing Society of the Philippines (CSP)– Special Interest Group in Computing Education (CSP SIG-SpICE) and Cebu Institute of Technology University (CITU), Cebu City, Philippines. ICE2018 will be hosted by Cebu Institute of Technology University, Cebu City, Philippines, this coming October 4-6, 2018.

We are pleased to announce that 4 submissions from ALLS have been accepted for the ICE 2018. Below is the complete ALLS lineup:

• Melquizedek Borbon and Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo . A Mobile Augmented Reality Application With User-defined Virtual Elements. [PDF]
• Jonathan Casano, Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo and Eric Cesar Vidal. Using an Alternative Bluetooth Low-Energy Fingerprinting Algorithm to Position Augmented Reality Game Models in a Signal Dense Environment [PDF]
• Rejeenald Flores, Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo and Jenilyn Agapito Wheel-spinning in a Novice Programming Context within a Meaningful Gamification System.
• Jun Rangie Obispo, Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo and Francisco Enrique Vicente Castro. Incidence of Einstellung Effect among Programming Students and its Relationship with Achievement.

The JSET-AECT 2018 Summer International Research Symposium, to be held on September 7–9, 2018 at the Future University Hakodate and Takuboku-Tei,  aims to advance the work of researchers who are actively involved in the field of educational technology. It will bring together experienced and young researchers in this field to exchange and share their research results and engage in a lively discussion on issues related to their research topics.

At this symposium, the keynote speakers will introduce approaches to the design of learning environments in order to describe the factors in building a learning community and in cultivating their community of practice. These approaches can also be applied effectively to schools and local communities in order to identify the current issues and problems. For example, one approach, in particular, emphasizes the pedagogical concepts of “collaborative meta-learning” and “social motivation.”

During the symposium, Eric Cesar E. Vidal, Jr., ALLS Researcher and Ph.D. Student, will be presenting on his project entitled, Mobile Augmented-Reality Game Engine for jumping castle Instructional Support.

MAGIS (Mobile Augmented-Reality Game Engine for Instructional Support) is an engine for producing location-based augmented-reality (AR) educational games using a smartphone or tablet.  Augmented Reality refers to real-time superimposition of virtual objects on the real world (Azuma, 1997), such as through a smartphone camera feed augmented with 3-D graphics on the smartphone’s screen.  Location-Based AR additionally considers the user’s real-world location (Reitmayr & Schmalstieg, 2003), i.e., using the smartphone’s GPS.  Location-Based AR offers a new form of learning environment where learners physically travel to locations relevant to the learning content, such as historical monuments or museum exhibits. MAGIS facilitates the development of location-based AR educational content, using a narrative-based adventure game format (Neitzel, 2005).

MAGIS has been used in two released games, Igpaw: Intramuros (Rodrigo, Caluya, Diy, & Vidal, 2015) and Igpaw: Loyola (Vidal et al., 2018 {to be published}). MAGIS’s technical framework is composed of a game scripting language, a mapping subsystem to facilitate user location tracking, a device-sensor-based AR tracking module, and an analytics subsystem capable of monitoring users’ learning progress (Vidal, Ty, Caluya, & Rodrigo, 2016). These modules are coupled with Vuforia’s vision-based AR library and the Unity game engine.

MAGIS is currently being upgraded to support newer AR technologies such as Google ARCore and Apple ARKit, as well as integrating Hand Gesture Recognition as a novel way of interacting with AR.  Usability studies are being performed on MAGIS-powered games (e.g., Rodrigo, Vidal, Caluya, Agapito, & Diy, 2016) to measure their impact on student learning and engagement.