This paper describes experiments with a game device that was used for early detection of delays in motor skill development in primary school children. Children play a game by bi-manual manipulation of the device which continuously collects ac- celerometer data and game state data. Features of the data are used to discriminate between normal children and children with delays. This study focused on the feature selection. Three features were compared: mean squared jerk (time domain); power spectral entropy (fourier domain) and cosine similarity measure (quality of game play). The discriminatory power of the features was tested in an experiment where 28 children played games of different levels of difficulty. The results show that jerk and cosine similarity have reasonable discriminatory power to detect fine-grained motor skill development delays especially when taking the game level into account. Duration of a game level needs to be at least 30 seconds in order to achieve good classification results.
DOCUMENT
BackgroundThe closing of schools and sports clubs during the COVID-19 lockdown raised questions about the possible impact on children’s motor skill development. Therefore, we compared motor skill development over a one-year period among four different cohorts of primary school children of which two experienced no lockdowns during the study period (control cohorts) and two cohorts experienced one or two lockdowns during the study period (lockdown cohorts).MethodsA total of 992 children from 9 primary schools in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) participated in this study (age 5 – 7; 47.5% boys, 52.5% girls). Their motor skill competence was assessed twice, first in grade 3 (T1) and thereafter in grade 4 (T2). Children in control group 1 and lockdown group 1 were assessed a third time after two years (T3). Motor skill competence was assessed using the 4-Skills Test, which includes 4 components of motor skill: jumping force (locomotion), jumping coordination (coordination), bouncing ball (object control) and standing still (stability). Mixed factorial ANOVA’s were used to analyse our data.ResultsNo significant differences in motor skill development over the study period between the lockdown groups and control groups (p > 0.05) were found, but a difference was found between the two lockdown groups: lockdown group 2 developed significantly better than lockdown group 1 (p = 0.008). While socioeconomic status was an effect modifier, sex and motor ability did not modify the effects of the lockdowns.ConclusionsThe COVID-19 lockdowns in the Netherlands did not negatively affect motor skill development of young children in our study. Due to the complexity of the factors related to the pandemic lockdowns and the dynamic systems involved in motor skill development of children, caution must be taken with drawing general conclusions. Therefore, children’s motor skill development should be closely monitored in the upcoming years and attention should be paid to individual differences.
MULTIFILE
Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. In this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating youth on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. The Master Energy for Society, and particularly the course “Society in Transition”, aims at providing a first overview on the urgency and complexities of the energy transition. However, educating on the energy transition brings challenges: it is a complex topic to understand for students, especially when they have diverse backgrounds. In the last years we have seen a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches in higher institutions. While most practices have been related to digital gaming approaches, there is a new trend: escape rooms. The intended output and proposed innovation is therefore the development and application of an escape room on energy transition to increase knowledge and raise motivation among our students by addressing both hard and soft skills in an innovative and original way. This project is interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary due to the complexity of the topic; it consists of three different stages, including evaluation, and requires the involvement of students and colleagues from the master program. We are confident that this proposed innovation can lead to an improvement, based on relevant literature and previous experiences in other institutions, and has the potential to be successfully implemented in other higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
Students in Higher Music Education (HME) are not facilitated to develop both their artistic and academic musical competences. Conservatoires (professional education, or ‘HBO’) traditionally foster the development of musical craftsmanship, while university musicology departments (academic education, or ‘WO’) promote broader perspectives on music’s place in society. All the while, music professionals are increasingly required to combine musical and scholarly knowledge. Indeed, musicianship is more than performance, and musicology more than reflection—a robust musical practice requires people who are versed in both domains. It’s time our education mirrors this blended profession. This proposal entails collaborative projects between a conservatory and a university in two cities where musical performance and musicology equally thrive: Amsterdam (Conservatory and University of Amsterdam) and Utrecht (HKU Utrechts Conservatorium and Utrecht University). Each project will pilot a joint program of study, combining existing modules with newly developed ones. The feasibility of joint degrees will be explored: a combined bachelor’s degree in Amsterdam; and a combined master’s degree in Utrecht. The full innovation process will be translated to a transferable infrastructural model. For 125 students it will fuse praxis-based musical knowledge and skills, practice-led research and academic training. Beyond this, the partners will also use the Comenius funds as a springboard for collaboration between the two cities to enrich their respective BA and MA programs. In the end, the programme will diversify the educational possibilities for students of music in the Netherlands, and thereby increase their professional opportunities in today’s job market.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
