The purpose of this study was to investigate: (a) the characteristics of online students’ cognitive presence in a peer-facilitated discussion environment, and (b) the peer facilitation techniques that enhance cognitive presence development. In this study, we examined 738 discussion messages. Analytic methods included both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The findings revealed that although cognitive presence was detected in most discussion messages, they aggregated at a lower level. The involvement of peer facilitators was found to correlate with students’ higher-level cognitive presence. In addition, we found that types of initiating questions asked by peer facilitators positively affected the level of cognitive presence. We also explored the facilitation techniques used by peer facilitators that aim to promote students’ cognitive presence.

A call for educational reform motivated this school system to devise an enhanced version of STEM in their middle school. This case provides rich descriptions of how eighth grade middle school teachers, from multiple disciplines, enacted a STEAM team model that integrated Language Arts into STEM. These STEAM team teachers were systematically studied during field observations of 100+ class sessions using what they referred to as transdisciplinary co-teaching, flexible scheduling, and multiple types of physical spaces to further engage students. Different dimensions of co-teaching were observed. The most frequently observed was reconstructed, followed by predisciplinary, correlated, and shared. Types of instruction other than reconstructed, did not fit the school’s proposed definitions of transdisciplinary co-teaching. Thoughts are shared on lessons learned.

This study explored two different ways for K‐12 school teachers to access educational makerspace through virtual fieldtrips. K‐12 school teachers from rural areas of the Southeast USA were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n = 48) drove telepresence robots to take their fieldtrip, while the comparison group (n = 23) watched the same fieldtrip through a recorded video. Analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data, collected through surveys and written reflections, showed that the experimental group reported significantly higher scores in embodiment, social presence and engagement (ie, behaviour, emotion and cognition) than the comparison group, and that actual driving the robots for the virtual fieldtrips was highlighted as a favored experience. Educational significance and implications are discussed. What is currently known about this topic With makerspaces gaining increasing attention in K‐12 education, professional development (PD) opportunities are needed to help teachers understand makerspaces and related technologies. Teachers in rural areas are faced with the challenges of accessing makerspace resources and opportunities, especially during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Little research has explored teacher makerspace PD in rural areas. Maker resource deficiency in rural areas and the COVID‐19 pandemic call for an alternative approach to the makerspace PD, particularly for teachers in rural areas. What this paper adds Explored the use of telepresence robots for rural teachers to access an authentic makerspace through virtual fieldtrips. Examined the effects of virtual fieldtrip to access makerspaces on K‐12 teachers' embodiment, social presence and engagement. Examined the aspects of the telepresence fieldtrip that were most valuable to K‐12 teachers. Investigated the factors that contribute to teachers' engagement in a virtual fieldtrip. Implications for practitioners Telepresence robot was an effective tool that enabled teachers in rural areas to explore authentic makerspaces through a virtual trip over distance. To help teachers conceptualize the idea of makerspace, it is important to allow teachers to move in the physical makerspace and interact with the environment. To design an engaging fieldtrip that triggers active learning, more attention should be given to how to develop the emotional aspect of a fieldtrip experience. Embodiment plays an important role in virtual fieldtrips. When teachers have a higher level of embodiment, they are more likely to be emotionally and cognitively engaged in a fieldtrip experience.

Speech enhancement (SE) algorithms based on deep neural networks (DNNs) often encounter challenges of limited hardware resources or strict latency requirements when deployed in realworld scenarios. However, a strong enhancement effect typically requires a large DNN. In this paper, a knowledge distillation framework for SE is proposed to compress the DNN model. We study the strategy of cross-layer connection paths, which fuses multi-level information from the teacher and transfers it to the student. To adapt to the SE task, we propose a frame-level similarity distillation loss. We apply this method to the deep complex convolution recurrent network (DCCRN) and make targeted adjustments. Experimental results show that the proposed method considerably improves the enhancement effect of the compressed DNN and outperforms other distillation methods.

Student-student interaction can benefit learning as well as provide a sense of community in online courses. Blogging is a common approach to provide opportunities for students to communicate with each other. This study used Social Network Analysis to depict commenting behaviour between students in an online graduate-level course. By examining the weekly interaction data, the results revealed how students’ commenting behaviours changed during the semester. Student participation and interaction in the blogging activity was influenced by the various pedagogical elements that were either directly or indirectly related to the blogging activity.