voyeurism

papers on AI-augmented coding and on environmental education to be read at AERA 2025

will you be attending AERA 2025?

our team is very happy and grateful to have the opportunity to share two projects during next year's annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

In the Special Interest Group on Environmental Education, we will share 'Approaching Environmental Education with Campus-wide Environmental Sensors in Schools: a Case Study from Singapore'. its abstract reads:

This study investigates the impact of integrating low-cost, open-source environmental sensors into geography education for academically lower-performing students in Singapore secondary schools. Using mixed methods from 2020-2024, we examine how technology-enhanced, hands-on learning affects students' critical thinking, inventive reasoning, and self-efficacy. Findings reveal significant improvements in learning approaches, engagement, and self-efficacy. Using everyday environments as learning canvases enabled students to connect their intuitive understandings of their school campus with geographical concepts and improve their data literacy. The paper discusses implications for curriculum design and educational policy, emphasizing strategies to promote equity through technology integration. Recommendations aim to enhance learning outcomes and address achievement gaps, contributing to broader goals of social justice in education.

In the section on Learning and Instruction: Engineering and Computer Science, we will share 'Enhancing Novice Programming Education with an AI-Augmented Learning Tool'; its abstract reads:

This study explores the development and implementation of an AI-augmented coding assistance tool designed for novice programmers. The tool’s impact on learning, problem-solving, and motivation in introductory programming courses was investigated using a mixed-methods approach. The study, grounded in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development theory, cognitive load theory, and self-efficacy theory, was piloted with post-secondary and tertiary students from diverse educational contexts. Findings indicate that the AI tool effectively addressed common programming challenges, reduced cognitive load, and enhanced students' self-efficacy. The tool showed potential for promoting equity in computer science education. This research contributes to understanding how AI can enhance computer science education, particularly for beginners, and has implications for educational practice and policy.

we thank God for this opportunity.

Disciplinary Intuitions / Maker Motes: using IoT for authentic inquiry-based learning

We are happy to embed slides from the presentation representing the closure of the preceding funding cycle of our work which dates from 2013.

This recent funding cycle (the work reported here) was from 2020 - 2024.

We work with schools as we help teachers design curriculum to surface learner intuition from phenomenological perspectives.

Through God’s Grace, our work continues with a new tranche of funding through 2027.

Disciplinary Intuitions / Maker Motes: using IoT for authentic inquiry-based learning from Kenneth Lim

Disciplinary Intuitions: welcoming college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) AY 2024 / 2025

further to my post two months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome six college students (from a total of twenty applicants) to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2024 / 2025.

our students hail from our university's School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from the National Institute of Education, and from the the College of Computing and Data Science.

the opportunity to participate in URECA is extended through invitation only to select second- and third-year undergraduates, who will subsequently be conferred as NTU President Research Scholars.

the projects we have offered are:

NIE24172 – Exploring the use of games for learning Graph Theory

NIE24220 – Designing for the use of wearables to investigate the role that school microclimate has on student engagement and thermal comfort – Data Analysis and Machine Learning

NIE24221 – Designing for the use of wearables to investigate the role that school microclimate has on student engagement and thermal comfort – Hardware engineering

NIE24228 – Exploring the effectiveness of game-based environments in developing relationship management amongst Singapore students

NIE24230 – Exploring the relationship between interactive story games and students’ creative writing skills

NIE24234 – Using Data Analysis and Machine Learning to investigate the role that school microclimate has on student engagement and thermal comfort

our work at the intersection of generative AI and values education available as a pre-print

in October 2023 we shared our ideas on the potential complementarities between generative AI and values education.

my students and i have been working hard over the past ten months, and we are happy and excited to share that we have translated our ideas in to research that we report as a pre-print. 

please do feel free to browse our intervention Exploring the potential of AI in nurturing learner empathy, prosocial values and environmental stewardship.

our thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro featured on the blog of the Geography Education Research Collective of the UK IGU-CGE

we are very grateful to the Geography Education Research Collective of the UK Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union for affording us the opportunity to share our early thoughts on the affordances for geographical education of the Apple Vision Pro on their blog!

in particular, we express our appreciation to David Lambert for his mentorship and patience.

the blog entry is particularly timely given the wider roll-out of the Vision Pro (28 June for Singapore and 12 July for the UK)

thanks be to God for this opportunity!

sharing early thoughts on the affordances for learning of the Apple Vision Pro at the annual symposium of the Digital Geographies research group, Royal Geographical Society

one of the most happening communities within the geography fraternity is the Digital Geographies research group of the Royal Geographical Society. 

this year, their annual symposium will be held on the 21st of June at the University of Birmingham, themed on Mobilities and the Digital. The conference will provide a space to explore a wide range of topics and contexts where mobilities and the digital intersect as well as the broader societal, cultural and political contexts in which these changes occur.

given this, i am so thrilled and thankful to God to be afforded the opportunity to present our team's early thoughts on the affordances for learning of the Apple Vision Pro.

our paper is titled Exploring the affordances of mixed reality in the design of contexts of learning through embodied cognition; its abstract reads:

In the course of a typical day, we traverse our respective campuses several times, sometimes being exposed directly to the elements, while at other times in the shade. The paths we take reflect our tacit responses to such exposure. Through our own bodily experience, we therefore develop over time a textured map of our respective campuses which - in turn - influences our decision-making in subconscious ways.

While the cost of high-end headsets such as that released by Apple in 2024 remain high and therefore mitigate against widespread adoption in contexts of learning, the fact that the company has used the headset to advance a new paradigm of computing – which it calls ‘spatial computing’ – merits examination by the community of geographers. This paper represents an early attempt to do so, in terms of their affordances in the design of contexts of learning through embodied cognition.

Be they considered a spatial computer or a mixed reality headset, the devices lend themselves naturally to the notion of embodiment, in that our auditory and visual sensory inputs are augmented by the affordances of whatever apps we are using, but also that the apps can be designed to have a certain degree of geospatial permanence within the augmented world.

We have termed this approach Learner-Generated Augmentation (Lim et al., 2018), because it describes activities in which the learners are given opportunities to augment their local environments – such as through annotating in Augmented Reality – thereby giving teachers insight in to which aspects of their local environments students find significant and meaningful. The elements in their environments which novices might choose to annotate would be different from those which the teacher (as domain expert) might choose. In the hands of a skilled teacher, such differences represent rich opportunities for discussion and mutual learning.

reading papers at the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society

the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society has been a highlight of my academic calendar for many years, and this year is no different.

i am happy to share that i will be attending the conference, during which i will be reading a paper on behalf of my students, as well as being able to share updates on our work on the affordances for learning of generative artificial intelligence (as it pertains to geography and geography education).

i hope to see you in London in the summer!

recognition on national broadcast television for our stance on the affordances for learning of the Apple Vision Pro

our team is excited and grateful that our early work on the affordances for learning of the paradigm of spatial computing as advanced by the Apple Vision Pro has received recognition through being featured on national broadcast television earlier today.

we give thanks to God, for this blessing.

we are also grateful to all at MediaCorp for the hours invested in bringing the photoshoot to broadcast.

we are especially thrilled that the broadcast takes place during Tim Cook's visit to Singapore!

welcome to Singapore, Tim!

as an added blessing, i crossed the 1000-citation threshold in Google Scholar today.

student projects on AI and mathematics education, and on environmental modelling, at the 14th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

today our team received news that we have been invited to share our students' work on AI and mathematics education, and on environmental modelling, during the 14th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance in the track on AI and STEM Education and Other Emerging Technologies.

we thank God for His continued grace and provision.

this year, the symposium is being conducted as an in-person event between the 1st to the 3rd of October, with the overarching theme of STEMtastic adventures!

The mEducation Alliance was formed by USAID in 2010. It is an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, and academic researchers. The collective agenda of the alliance is to: highlight and catalyze promising information and communications technology for education (ICT4E) practices and initiatives, particularly in low-resource and developing country context; to reduce duplicative efforts; to promote collective knowledge-sharing, and to identify and support efforts to evaluate and scale promising ICT4E interventions.

:-)

sharing on the Digital Humanities with teachers from E5 cluster schools

our team was very excited today to be afforded the opportunity to share our work in the Digital Humanities with teachers from the East 5 (E5) cluster schools. the invitation was extended to us by the cluster members and the event was hosted by the staff and senior leadership of Broadrick Secondary School. it was such a privilege to share with teachers from History, Social Studies, and Geography during their first networking and sharing session of 2024.