Ariadna Experiment. The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Education Sciences

The role of AI in shaping and re-shaping scientific content is notable in several scientific areas. Ariadna (Artificial intelligence advancement to nurture social sciences areas) is a longitudinal study initiated in 2022 with the aim to estimate the added value of the artificial intelligence in social sciences area; a certain part of education sciences was chosen, in order to benefit from the large amount of new and freely available source content: digital pedagogy, further narrowed down to a series of 27 theoretical and practical themes.

Ariadna experiment is trying to reveal the contribution of AI to the development of social sciences. (1) An AI chat app was used for a guided conversation, in order to estimate the ability of AI to produce scientific innovative content. (2) A number of 27 texts on education sciences topics were generated using the most advanced freely available AI tools, in December 2022. The same requests will be used in 2023 to re-generate content. A side-by-side comparison of the outputs will be made in the next phases of Ariadna experiment. (3) Some of the generated articles were compared with scientific texts elaborated by researchers on the same theme, in the same period.

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Essay on the Role of Video Games in Teaching Literature

In an era of continuous digitalization, teachers turn to new technology in order to adapt to the universe of their students, to remain relevant in this constant change of interests. Students are motivated by elements of popular culture, being constantly exposed to an environment that is rich in information and textual patterns. And yet, what is the connection between literature and video games? Is there such a connection in the first place?

Students need guidance when it comes to developing their literary skills of analysis and communication, as well as literary thinking. Hours dedicated to integrating video games in our educational environment corresponds to students’ passions, highlighting one of their major interest, represented by entertainment in a virtual environment. We can all see this happening when it comes to our students. They can be easily absorbed by any kind of virtual reality that may encounter, but it is so hard to get the same reaction from them when it comes to a classical way of teaching. Until now, reading competences and literary skills were applied to books. But the same skills can be applied to many other mediums in which storytelling plays out the main role, such as comics, movies, and video games.

Video games have evolved from a simple means of entertainment to a tool of deep quality learning. Often, students feel that they are a more significant part of a story within a video game that in the environment created by books. Let’s face it! Students love to play, but sometimes they hate to read, especially when they feel forced to do so. The need for teachers to examine video games as literature starts from students’ lack of interest in reading, which comes from the way they lived their lives until now, growing up spending more time playing video games than reading books. This is a reality that we do not only need to accept, but also to adapt to it and to make the best out of it.

But how can we use video games to teach literature and develop the analytical skills of our students?

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Digital Pedagogy. Definition and Conceptual Area

Is there a digital pedagogy, as a distinct domain, different from general pedagogy and from any other pedagogy? If so, what are the aims, object of study, specific methods and principles of digital pedagogy? What is digital pedagogy and how does it articulate with education sciences? These are the questions of the beginning stage of an emerging area within the education sciences, where practice challenges us to expand the existing body of knowledge corpus and pedagogical methods.

The article contributes to the contextualization of the set of information, experiences and scientific knowledge, conditions, relationships, meanings orbiting the phrase “digital pedagogy”. The term itself has been used for over 10 years – the first dedicated articles being from 2011, with elements of digital proto-pedagogy in 2004: Latham, apud Fyfe – but absorbing a series of much older concepts and practices, sometimes in a new way.

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