Chapter 2

The paper begins with a summary of the experimental research on distance

education (DE) and online learning (OL), encapsulated in meta-analyses that have been

conducted since 1990. Then it introduces the Bernard et al. (Rev Educ Res 74(3):379–

439, 2009) meta-analysis, which attempted to alter the DE research culture of always

comparing DE/OL with CI by examining three forms of interaction treatments (i.e.,

student–student, student–teacher, student–content) within DE, using the theoretical

framework of Moore (Am J Distance Educ 3(2):1–6, 1989) and Anderson (Rev Res

Open Distance Learn 4(2):9–14, 2003).

The rest of the paper revolves around the general steps and procedures

(Cooper in Research synthesis and meta-analysis: a step-by-step approach, 4th edn,

SAGE, Los Angeles, CA, 2010) involved in conducting a meta-analysis.

This section is included to provide researchers with an overview of precisely how

meta-analyses can be used to respond to more nuanced questions that speak to

underlying theory and inform practice—in other words, not just answers to the “big

questions.”

In this instance, we know that technology has an overall positive impact on

learning (g + = +0.35, p < .01, Tamim et al. in Rev Educ Res 81(3):4–28, 2011), but the

sub-questions addressed here concern BL interacting with technology in higher

education. The results indicate that, in terms of achievement outcomes, BL conditions

exceed CI conditions by about one-third of a standard deviation (g + = 0.334, k = 117, p

< .001) and that the kind of computer support used (i.e., cognitive support vs.
content/presentational support) and the presence of one or more interaction treatments

(e.g., student–student/–teacher/–content interaction) serve to enhance student

achievement. We examine the empirical studies that yielded these outcomes, work

through the methodology that enables evidence-based decision-making, and explore

how this line of research can improve pedagogy and student achievement.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of higher education research

Higher education research, while a specialist and late developing field, has

reached a level of maturity such that researchers have recently been endeavouring to

summarize and synthesize what has been learnt. This article identifies and analyses

many of the systematic reviews and meta-analyses of areas or aspects of higher

education research that have been carried out. It demonstrates the breadth and depth

of higher education research, charting how much we have learnt, what the particular foci

of attention have been, and suggests – by the absence of analysis – which areas may

need more attention.

Meta-Analysis: The preferred method of choice for the assessment of distance

learning quality factors

By Mickey Shachar

Current comparative research literature, although abundant in scope, is inconclusive in

its findings, as to the quality and effectiveness of distance education versus face-to-face

methods of delivery. Educational research produces contradictory results due to

differences among studies in treatments, settings, measurement instruments, and

research methods. The purpose of this paper is to advocate the use of a meta-analytic

approach by researchers, in which they synthesize the singular results of these

comparative studies, by introducing the reader to the concept, procedures, and issues

underlying this method. This meta-analytic approach may be the best method

appropriate for our ever-expanding and globalizing educational systems – in general,

crossing over geographical boundaries with their multiple languages, and educational

systems in particular. Furthermore, researchers are called to contribute to a common

database of distance learning factors and variables, from which future researchers can

share, glean, and extract data for their respective studies.

Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

According to Greely (2001) of reading milestone, a toddler at the aged four or five

years old he or she must been able to identify objects. Shapes are the most obvious

characteristic we used to identify objects. A child can easily recognize or identify objects

when he/ she based on the shapes, colors, and size of an object. Learning the names of

geometric shapes is at the intersection of early spatial, mathematical, and language

skills, all important for preschool readiness and predictors of later abilities in science,

technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Too often shape recognition, is

taught through examples, by showing children picture of certain shapes until they learn

to associate the name with a figure. This approach may work for shapes that do not

have any variations, such as square and circle, but can lead to problems with shapes
that can vary a great deal in form such as rectangles and triangles (Clements and

Sarama, 2000).

According to Brown (2003), states that early childhood environment should

provide opportunities for children to explore materials, engage activities, and work in

collaboration with peers and teachers to construct their own knowledge of the world

around them. Teachers can also organize the environment to encourage children to

explore shapes and their characteristic by providing pictures of various typical shapes in

different size/ orientation throughout the classroom. In preschool, children can learn to

identify and name different shapes like circle, triangle, square, rectangle, oval and also

the three dimensional shapes like cone, sphere and cube, (Beidermann, 2001).

Teaching shapes to children is an important educational activity the ability to recognize

and describe shapes is a fundamental skill that provides a foundation for more

advanced skills. Preschoolers experience with shapes are more important because

geometry is foundation to aspects of mathematics and its now part of common core for

school-readiness. Investigating shapes or exploring geometry with your pupils can be

very rewarding. Using a practical approach and objects from pupils’ environment can

help to raise pupils’ motivation and interest. In today’s world, even the youngest children

are engaged in some type of electronic entertainment for a great deal of time each day.

Educators must seek an innovative ways to gain a child’s attention and keep them

engaged in active learning. According to (BBC news 2008 online), the use of computer

system or web-based preschool system can be used to provide some interactive

educational games to the kids which will allow them to identifying or differentiating

shapes and giving them a score at the same time or the end.

In this study, we examined the relation between interindividual differences in neural

mirroring in young children and their social interaction with peers in a cooperation and an

entrainment task. We found that young children who showed more motor system involvement

when observing others’ actions (as indicated by a relative reduction in beta power), showed

better cooperation skills with peers. The explained variance was high, suggesting that

interindividual differences in mirroring are relevant for interpersonal coordination with peers in

early childhood.The relation between motor system involvement during action observation and

children’s peer coordination is consistent with previous findings that mirroring is related to more

reliable imitation (Bernier et al., 2007, Filippi et al., 2016, Warreyn et al., 2013), better

interpersonal coordination of finger movements (Naeem et al., 2012), and fewer turn-taking

errors (Meyer et al., 2011). However, these previous studies measured neural mirroring and

behavioral performance during the same instance of social interaction (i.e. one laboratory task)

and thus did not address whether this relation is task-specific or reflects interindividual

differences that generalize to social interactions outside the specific task.

This finding of large individual differences in the Shape-Bias and ShapeCaricature

tasks in this age range in noteworthy in and of itself. Because preschool children differ widely in

how much formal and informal training with the alphabet, it is perhaps not surprising that

performance in the letter recognition task – which was made more challenging by embedding

target letters among other letters with similar shapes – ranged from perfect to quite poor.

However, performance in the Shape Caricature and Shape Bias tasks also reflected marked

individual differences despite the fact that a majority of children score well on these tasks when

they are 1 to 2 years younger than those in the present sample (e.g., Smith, 2003; Smith,

Jones, Gershkoff-Stowe & Samuelson, 2002). If these early skills involving object shape provide
a foundation for later skills in other domains, then the individual differences observed here could

have broad implications for cognitive development, a point we consider in the in the general

discussion.

The present study was motivated by prior findings concerning the development of a shape bias in

novel noun learning and the recognition of instances of basic level categories from sparse shape

information. Past work showed that both developments occur between 18 and 24 months: both are

related `to early noun vocabulary size, and both are about object shape – but different aspects of

attending to object shape. As a first step to understanding these developmental relations, the two

experiments tested two hypotheses about the order of development of the two abilities in individual

children. The results from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal samples support the hypothesis

positing shape caricature recognition before the shape bias: children can recognize basic level categories

from sparse shape information before they reliably extend an object name to objects that are identical in

shape but differ in color and texture. These findings do not determine or identify the causal relation, if any,

between the two developmental trends. However, they constrain potential hypotheses. There are four

hypotheses about these causal relations in light of the results: (1) the two abilities are unrelated; (2) the

shape bias – the ability to selectively attend to shape ignoring color and texture – contributes and is

prerequisite to the development of shape caricature recognition; (3) shape caricature recognition is

prerequisite to and supports the development of the shape bias; and (4) the two abilities co-develop, such

that new partial knowledge in each fosters incremental development in the other. We consider each of

these in turn.

The present results, which show a consistent developmental ordering as well as

correlations between shape caricature recognition and shape bias scores, argue against the first

hypothesis that the two achievements are unrelated. The extant literature, which shows in

addition that both achievements are lacking in late talkers (Jones, 2003; Jones and Smith,

2005), and that both are correlated with vocabulary size (Smith, 2003; Smith et al., 2010) also

strongly suggests some developmental relation. The present results also contradict the most

straightforward prediction from the second hypothesis, that the shape bias is prerequisite to
shape caricature recognition. As noted in the introduction, such a developmental ordering

seemed mechanistically plausible in that children might have to preferentially attend to shape

over other dimensions such as color and texture in order to discover the common geometric

shape properties of members of the same basic level categories. This hypothesis is not strictly

ruled out: as we discuss below, some components of a shape bias too weak to show in the

present task might contribute to shape caricature recognition. However, the level of selective

attention to shape needed to yield a shape bias in the standard novel noun generalization, task

does not appear to be necessary to a robust ability to recognize basic level categories from

sparse representations of object shape. Thus, the present evidence is more consistent with the

final two hypotheses – that shape caricature recognition is prerequisite to the shape bias or that

the two skills co-develop incrementally.

This paper presents the data obtained in a sample of healthy school children who underwent

a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests for the assessment of visual object

recognition based on Marr’s model of the visuocognitive processes. The results document an

age-dependent development of visual object recognition abilities during childhood. The

development of these skills was not found to match the processing stages set out in Marr’s

theory. Our statistical analysis did not support the grouping of the tests according to this theory,

casting some doubt on the clinical usefulness of extending this paradigm to pediatric

populations. As expected and as confirmed by the normal results obtained on the Warrington

Figure-Ground and Efron Tests in the whole sample, visual abilities subtended by the primary

visual cortex, like simple shape discrimination, are already mature atthe age of 6 years. Higher

visual abilities develop later in childhood as documented by the significant relationship between

age and performance on our protocol of visual tests.

We documented an age-dependent improvement in performances between the ages of 6 and

11 years, even though the performance trend on some of the tasks (like recognition of degraded
images in the SCT) seemed to indicate that these maturation processes also continue at later

ages. Our observations are confirmed by the literature. Other studies provide evidence of

developing visual recognition skills during childhood, with regard to the human face (Carey &

Diamond 1994; Gathers et al., 2004), animals (Davidoff & Roberson, 2002), and objects

(Gathers et al., 2004; Rentschler et al., 2004). Functional imaging and neurophysiological

studies confirm neuropsychological observations documenting the progressive organization and

maturation of the ventral processing stream, the functional pathway in the primate brain that

supports visual recognition (Gathers et al., 2004; Gunn et al., 2002; Kovacs, 2000).