The apparent dichotomy between information-processing and dynamical approaches to complexity science forces researchers to choose between two diverging sets of tools and explanations, creating conflict and often hindering scientific progress. Nonetheless, given the shared theoretical goals between both approaches, it is reasonable to conjecture the existence of underlying common signatures that capture interesting behavior in both dynamical and information-processing systems. Here, we argue that a pragmatic use of integrated information theory (IIT), originally conceived in theoretical neuroscience, can provide a potential unifying framework to study complexity in general multivariate systems. By leveraging metrics put forward by the integrated information decomposition framework, our results reveal that integrated information can effectively capture surprisingly heterogeneous signatures of complexity—including metastability and criticality in networks of coupled oscillators as well as distributed computation and emergent stable particles in cellular automata—without relying on idiosyncratic, ad hoc criteria. These results show how an agnostic use of IIT can provide important steps toward bridging the gap between informational and dynamical approaches to complex systems.

The need to ensure privacy and data protection in educational contexts is driving a shift towards new ways of securing and managing learning records. Although there are platforms available to store educational activity traces outside of a central repository, no solution currently guarantees that these traces are authentic when they are retrieved for review. This paper presents a blueprint for an architecture that employs blockchain technology to sign and validate learning traces, allowing them to be stored in a distributed network of repositories without diminishing their authenticity. Our proposal puts participants in online learning activities at the center of the design process, granting them the option to store learning traces in a location of their choice. Using smart contracts, stakeholders can retrieve the data, securely share it with third parties and ensure it has not been tampered with, providing a more transparent and reliable source for learning analytics. Nonetheless, a preliminary evaluation found that only 56% of teachers surveyed considered tamper-evident storage a useful feature of a learning trace repository. These results motivate further examination with other end users, such as learning analytics researchers, who may have stricter expectations of authenticity for data used in their practice.

Gamification aims to enhance the educational experience by enabling students to have fun with technology. Although research in the field has previously looked into the effectiveness of gamification, reviews of existing studies show that in the context of education, gamification has been largely applied at the university level, with diverse pedagogical approaches and outcomes. Furthermore, reports often refer to interactions with gamification elements in contexts outside STEM education. To bridge these research gaps, this paper reports on an empirical study involving 199 students from two secondary schools. Students had the opportunity to receive a digital reward (in the form of points, badges, or rankings) for their participation in an online physics lesson. Although no significant differences were found regarding student motivation, results confirm an impact-depending on the gamification element being introduced in the software-on three other important aspects: (i) perceived usability, (ii) student engagement, and (iii) learning performance.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.

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The trend towards generalized blended and active learning approaches in engineering education is redefining the requirements and the deployment schemes for digital education platforms. This paper presents a quadriptych technopedagogical model highlighting the features and the services an effective digital education platform should provide to accompany educators in their journey towards the creation of rich-and possibly open-educational resources, as well as their integration into blended and active learning scenarios. An implementation of this model for a novel digital education platform called Graasp is discussed and three use cases are detailed. These use cases show that a large variety of active pedagogical scenarios can be implemented, if easily accessible and comprehensive digital education platforms are available.

Chatbots have long been advocated for computer-assisted language learning systems to support learners with conversational practice. A particular challenge in such systems is explaining mistakes stemming from ambiguous grammatical constructs. Misplaced modifiers, for instance, do not make sentences ungrammatical, but introduce ambiguity through the misplacement of an adverb or prepositional phrase. In certain cases, the ambiguity gives rise to humor, which can serve to illustrate the mistake itself. We conducted an online experiment with 400 native English speakers to explore the use of a chatbot to harness such humor. In an interaction resembling an advanced grammar exercise, the chatbot presented participants with a phrase containing a misplaced modifier, explained the ambiguity in the phrase, acknowledged (or ignored) the humor that the ambiguity gave rise to, and suggested a correction. Participants then completed a questionnaire, rating the chatbot with respect to ten traits. A quantitative analysis showed a significant increase in how participants rated the chatbot's personality, humor, and friendliness when it acknowledged the humor arising from the misplaced modifier. This effect was observed whether the acknowledgment was conveyed using verbal, nonverbal (emoji), or mixed cues.

Peer code review has proven to be a valuable tool in software engineering. However, integrating code reviews into educational contexts is particularly challenging due to the complexity of both the process and popular code review tools. We propose to address this challenge by designing a code review application (CRA) aimed at teaching the code review process directly within existing online learning platforms. Using the CRA, instructors can scaffold online lessons that introduce the code review process to students through code snippets, following a format resembling computational notebooks. We refer to this online lesson format as the code review notebook format. Through a case study comprising an online lesson on code quality standards completed by 23 university students, we evaluated the usability of the CRA and the code review notebook format, obtaining positive results for both. These results are a first step toward integrating code review notebooks into software engineering education.

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