One promising way to cope with changing requirements from the labor market in the domain of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), but also to keep the field up to date, to start innovations and to advance the STEM domain as such is the use of student labs. In these labs, students work together in small groups imitating professional practice of design and technology workers. More insights are needed in what competences student labs in the STEM domain address and what the implications would be for the design of student labs. A review of empirical studies on student labs and additional literature indicate that five generic competences are addressed in most student labs: Collaboration, communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity. In order to effectively enhanced these competences, student labs should be designed as authentic productive learning environments based on three design principles: 1) Realistic, complex task situations, 2) Multidisciplinarity, and 3) Social interaction. IoT Rapid Proto Labs are examples of such a student labs, in which cross-border multidisciplinary teams of students, teachers (coaches), and practitioners jointly develop solutions to challenging IoT applications (Internet-connected objects), add value for enterprises, and strengthen the employability, creativity and career prospects of students.@en

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) require students’ motivation either intrinsically or extrinsically to complete any of its courses. Even though MOOCs enjoy great popularity and bring many benefits to the educational community, some concerns arise with MOOC advancement. In fact, MOOCs are affected by low completion rate and face issues with respect to interactivity and student engagement along MOOC duration, which may convert student excitement to boredom and then drop out at any stage. A key result of research in the past couple of years has proved that students’ engagement in MOOCs is strongly related to their activities online. These activities are related to the interaction between student and logging in the MOOC, reading and writing in the MOOC discussion forum, watching videos and doing quizzes. In this research paper, we present our research in deploying a gamification mechanic in MOOCs to increase student engagement. The gamification approach relies on weekly feedback to drive student intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Following learning analytics on students’ data from a MOOC offered in 2014, 2015, and 2016, the outcome of this approach showed an obvious increase in students’ activity and engagement in discussion forums, login frequency and quiz trials. The active students’ cohort allotment has increased in comparison with previous versions of the same MOOC as well as the completion rate has incremented up to 26% of the total number of participants. @en

Group learning activities (GLAs) are commonly used curriculum activities in teacher education. The aim of this study was to determine which components of GLAs students perceive as significant for their learning. Student teachers from six Dutch universities of applied sciences completed a survey about GLAs they participated in. Findings show that students’ evaluations of task characteristics and group constellation are related to their perceived increase in domain knowledge. Furthermore task characteristics and guidance are related to students’ perceived development as primary school teachers. Verbal interaction and engagement partially and fully mediate several relationships between GLA components and learning outcomes.

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The aim of this study was to describe how teacher educators design and implement group learning activities (GLAs). We used the Group Learning Activities Instructional Design (GLAID) framework to analyse their descriptions. The GLAID framework includes eight components: (1) interaction, (2) learning objectives and outcomes, (3) assessment, (4) task characteristics, (5) structuring, (6) guidance, (7) group constellation and (8) facilities. Interviews with 23 teacher educators were analysed to acquire an in-depth understanding of how they design and implement GLAs. We conclude that teacher educators use all the components of the framework, but they report difficulties with structuring GLAs. The facilities component was mentioned by only nine teacher educators. We discuss these findings and comment on the usefulness of the GLAID framework for teacher education.

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Group Learning Activities (GLAs) are a key ingredient of course designs in higher education. Various approaches for designing GLAs have been developed, featuring different design components. However, this has not yet resulted in clear guidelines for teachers on how to design GLAs. The purpose of this thematic review is to synthesize insights from various approaches for designing GLAs into one comprehensive framework. This comprehensive framework, the Group Learning Activities Instructional Design (GLAID) framework, includes eight components: (1) interaction, (2) learning objectives and outcomes, (3) assessment, (4) task characteristics, (5) structuring, (6) guidance, (7) group constellation, and (8) facilities. Each component, associated design decisions, and the corresponding design process are described. The GLAID framework aims to guide teachers in higher education in designing, implementing, and evaluating GLAs in their courses.

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