Lucia Ferlino

Scopus Publications

DUDA: a digital didactic learning unit based on educational escape rooms and multisensory learning activities for primary school children during COVID-19 lockdown
Walter Setti, Rebecca Tarello, Erica Volta, Lucia Ferlino, Monica Gori, and Gualtiero Volpe
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitization, access to IT resources, and digital inclusion in the Italian school system. This paper presents D-UDA (i.e., “unità didattica di apprendimento digitale”, in Italian), a digital didactic unit for learning mathematics concepts. The presented approach combines teaching methodologies and game-based activities (e.g., the escape room) with a multisensory approach to designing and developing digital and multimodal technologies. D-UDA is divided into two parts: the first part consists of logic puzzles that adhere to the guidelines set by INVALSI (the Italian Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema educativo di Istruzione e di formazione) for mathematics learning, while the second part involves a series of multisensory games designed to promote the development of transversal competencies, such as cooperation and engagement. Moreover, D-UDA encourages children to create their own adventure using the same tools employed by the designers to develop the experience. The children who participated in testing D-UDA in June 2020 were asked to complete usability questionnaires after the experience. Preliminary results indicate the effectiveness of the educational intervention presented, which integrates recent pedagogical theories and teaching methodologies with a multisensory perspective and a technological design.

Burnout among special education teachers: exploring the interplay between individual and contextual factors
V. Benigno, F. Usai, E. Dalla Mutta, L. Ferlino, and M. Passarelli
Informa UK Limited

A Digital-Analogical Intervention Program Following a Play-Based Approach for Preschoolers: The Effects on Executive Functions and ADHD Symptoms in a Pilot Study
Sabrina Panesi, , and Lucia Ferlino
EJournal Publishing
Today, the effective use of technological tools is a fundamental aspect of learning. Nevertheless, in Italy’s education system the integration of digital technologies in a pedagogically meaningful way is still not very widespread, especially in non-compulsory levels, such as preschool. Integration of digital technologies as early as preschool could be useful to support child development, especially for fostering executive functions (EFs). These play an important role in the daily life of all children, whether or not they have special education needs (SEN), such as coping with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. This paper reports a pilot study in which a play-based intervention is adopted that combines interaction with both educational apps and analogical materials. The main aim of the study is to investigate whether application of this intervention promotes the development of EFs and a decrease in ADHD symptoms (inattention and impulsivity/hyperactivity), as perceived by teachers and parents. The results show significant improvements in various EFs components and, in the experimental group, ADHD symptoms seem to decrease, especially in those children considered at risk by their teachers and parents. This suggests that the digital-analogical intervention can be implemented in preschool as an innovative way to improve cognitive abilities and as an early strategy for children with ADHD symptoms.

Case Report: A playful digital-analogical rehabilitative intervention to enhance working memory capacity and executive functions in a pre-school child with autism
Sabrina Panesi, Marina Dotti, and Lucia Ferlino
Frontiers Media SA
BackgroundAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often associated with deficits in Working Memory Capacity (WMC) and Executive Functions (EFs), as early as the first years of life. Research has shown that, even young children with ASD, WMC and EF deficits can be effectively addressed through interventions employing digital and/or analogical tools. Early intervention is important because executive dysfunction can negatively impact on the quality of life, both of children and their families. However, very few studies have been carried out involving intervention with pre-schoolers with ASD. To fill this gap, we developed an intervention that promotes pre-schoolers’ WMC and EFs by employing both digital apps and analogical playful activities. This study reports on the feasibility of this intervention, which was carried out in a rehabilitative context.MethodsA male pre-schooler diagnosed with ASD was engaged in a total of 17 intervention sessions, all held in a clinical context, over a nine-week period. Outcomes were measured using a battery of pre- and post-treatment tasks focusing on WMC, EFs and receptive language. The clinician who administered the intervention made written observations and noted any improvements in the child’s performance emerging from the digital and analogical activities.ResultsThe pre- and post-test scores for the cognitive tasks revealed qualitative improvements in the following cognitive domains: (a) WMC in the language receptive domain; (b) updating in WMC; (c) inhibition, specifically concerning control of motor response; (d) receptive vocabulary. Furthermore, when monitoring the child’s performance, the clinician noted improvement in almost all the playful activities. Particularly notable improvements were observed in interaction with the apps, which the child appeared to find very motivating.ConclusionThis study supports feasibility of a playful digital-analogical intervention conducted by a clinician in a rehabilitation context to promote cognitive abilities in pre-schoolers with ASD. Further studies are needed to establish whether the intervention’s effectiveness can be generalized to a broad sample of children with ASD.

Apps for intervention in executive functions in young children: A pilot study
Sabrina Panesi, Laura Freina, and Lucia Ferlino
IGI Global
Recently, researchers have increasingly shown interest in studying executive functions (EFs) starting from a young age, in particular focusing on interventions in both educational and clinical contexts. Today's children's interest in digital tools is very high allowing for the introduction of new methods of assessment and training. However, there are only a few studies focused on technology-based interventions promoting or assessing EFs in young children. For this reason, a kit of four games for the assessment and training of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and updating in pre-schoolers was developed in the form of apps. The developed prototypes underwent a first test involving some teachers and clinicians who filled an online questionnaire. Data analysis showed that both teachers and clinicians gave a positive and homogeneous evaluation, showing that the apps can be considered useful for the assessment and training of EFs in both educational and clinical contexts.

Distance Learning During the First Lockdown: Impact on the Family and Its Effect on Students' Engagement
Antonella Chifari, Mario Allegra, Vincenza Benigno, Giovanni Caruso, Giovanni Fulantelli, Manuel Gentile, and Lucia Ferlino
Frontiers Media SA
This contribute investigates how Emergency Remote Education (ERE) impacted families during the spring 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and in particular, the extent to which the impact of ERE on families, measured in terms of space and equipment sharing, moderates the effect of student and family characteristics on students' engagement. The study derived from the administration of an online survey to 19,527 families with children attending schools, from nursery to upper secondary grade. The total number of student records collected amounted to 31,805, since parents had to provide data for each school-age child in the family. The survey contains 58 questions, divided into three sections, with the first two sections designed to get a reading at family level and the third section to gather data for each school-age child in the family. After verifying the validity of the engagement construct through confirmatory factor analysis, two structural equation models were used to analyze the students' engagement. The main findings reveal how the impact of the ERE on the families has had a significant role in predicting students' level of engagement observed by parents with respect to different predictor variables. Finally, we argue that it is necessary to follow a holistic approach to observe the challenges imposed by the switch of the process of deferring teaching from presence to distance, imposed by the pandemic emergency on families. In fact, a holistic approach can promote student engagement and prevent the onset of cognitive-behavioral and affective problems linked to disengagement in ERE.

ENHANCING EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN PRESCHOOLERS: TECHNOLOGIES YES OR NOT?

Online learning in kindergarten during Covid-19: Teachers’ experience and perception in Italy
Sabrina Panesi, Chiara Fante, and Lucia Ferlino
Progedit - Progetti Editoriali srl
Before pandemic, online learning was not widespread in the Italian educational context with preschoolers. This study investigates how a sample of 143 Italian kindergarten teachers describe their experiences and perception in conducting online learning during Covid-19 lockdown. Findings revealed that collaboration among teachers seems to be one of the most important elements to guarantee quality online learning, as well as the emotional and relational dimensions that involve kindergarten teachers and children with their families as “mediator”, especially with children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Although this study was conducted in an emergency period, these findings may have important implications in online learning with preschoolers also during the post pandemic period.

Italian parents’ perception about learning practices and educational effectiveness of remote schooling during the first lockdown
Manuel Gentile, Vincenza Benigno, Giovanni Caruso, Antonella Chifari, Lucia Ferlino, Giovanni Fulantelli, and Mario Allegra
Progedit - Progetti Editoriali srl
The abrupt interruption of face-to-face educational activities imposed by the Italian Government in response to the Covid-19 emergency required a rapid switch to remote schooling to guarantee continuity in education. This paper explores the family’s perception about the organization of remote schooling and its impact on learning. In particular, the authors investigated the technology used and the strategies adopted by the teachers to face the challenges posed by this rapid change in the educational paradigm through an online survey carried out between May and June 2020. More than 19,000 families answered the survey for a total of 32,000 children, highlighting a favorable evaluation from the parents. The analyses confirm that several factors linked to the technology used and instructional learning design signif icantly impacted the parents’ evaluation.

The App Magic House: Assessing Updating in Young Children
Sabrina Panesi, Laura Freina, and Lucia Ferlino
Springer International Publishing

Promoting Students’ Well-Being and Inclusion in Schools Through Digital Technologies: Perceptions of Students, Teachers, and School Leaders in Italy Expressed Through SELFIE Piloting Activities
Sabrina Panesi, Stefania Bocconi, and Lucia Ferlino
Frontiers Media SA
Digital technology in its various forms is a significant component of our working environment and lifestyles. However, there is a broad difference between using digital technologies in everyday life and employing them in formal education. Digital technologies have largely untapped potential for improving education and fostering students’ well-being and inclusion at school. To bring this to fruition, systemic and coordinated actions involving the whole school community are called for. To help schools exploit the full range of opportunities digital technologies offer for learning, the European Commission has designed and implemented a self-reflection tool called SELFIE (Self-reflection on Effective Learning by Fostering Innovation through Educational Technology). Based on the DigCompOrg conceptual framework, SELFIE encompasses key aspects for effectively integrating digital technologies in school policies and practices. The present study investigates how SELFIE can also support the school community to self-reflect about students’ well-being and inclusion. In Italy, the SELFIE online questionnaire has been completed by 24,715 students, 5,690 teachers, and 1,507 school leaders, for a total of 31,912 users from 201 schools (at primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary levels) located in 10 different regions. The complementary data we have collected regarding student well-being and inclusion highlight significant differences in the perceptions on this issue reported by students, teachers, and school leaders. These findings have important implications for facilitating successful practices within the whole school community in order to promote students’ well-being and inclusion using educational technologies, as well as for planning future actions following a systemic approach.

A kit of apps to improve and assess executive functions andworking memory capacity in preschoolers

Visually impaired children and apps: Sharing formal and informal information to guide choice
Sabrina Panesi, G. Caruso, Lucia Ferlino and Silvia Dini

Digital technologies play an important role in the development of visually-impaired children, who require early intervention to help sustain and improve their visual capacity throughout childhood, and also to stimulate their other senses so as to prevent any global development deficit. To this end, therapists, parents and teachers must be able to choose from a wide range of suitable, up-to-date resources that have been field tested and are well organized so that they can be located easily and rapidly as required. To respond to these needs, the authors have been involved in a research project, which has defined the key features of apps that make them suitable for use by and with visually-impaired children. Subsequently, the project developed an online environment that combines structured information from experts with the practical know-how of the user community in a joint effort to support the choice of the most suitable resources to use in different contexts and with different users.

Fostering Computational Thinking skills in the Last Years of Primary School
Laura Freina, Rosa Bottino, and Lucia Ferlino
Serious Games Society
The introduction of Computational Thinking (CT) in Italian compulsory schools is on the way, and there is a general need for new methodologies to support teachers’ work. A one-year long learning path supporting the development of CT skills in primary school students through game making activities was defined and tested in a case study with one grade 5 class. All students in the class were actively involved regardless of their personal interest, their participation was generally high, their skills increased along the project, and the main objectives were reached. Nevertheless, results suggest that a longer time span is needed for students to master deeply the new concepts and tools, class organization proved to be crucial and this confirms the need for an adequate teachers’ training before introducing CT in classroom activities. Students demonstrated to be on the right path to approach CT through game making, but they still need to be guided in taking the player’s perspective and making their games easy to be understood and played. At the end of the case study, the learning path was revised and is now in use in a three-year long project in a primary school.

Game making in italian primary schools: The neglected actor
ACPI

A learning path in support of computational thinking in the last years of primary school
Laura Freina, Rosa Bottino, and Lucia Ferlino
Springer International Publishing

Game programming in primary schools: Guidelines for a project-based learning path

Training of spatial abilities with digital games: Impact on mathematics performance of primary school students
Laura Freina, Rosa Bottino, Lucia Ferlino, and Mauro Tavella
Springer International Publishing

Dyads versus groups: Using different social structures in peer review to enhance online collaborative learning processes
Francesca Pozzi, Andrea Ceregini, Lucia Ferlino, and Donatella Persico
Athabasca University Press
<p>The Peer Review (PR) is a very popular technique to support socio-constructivist and connectivist learning processes, online or face-to-face, at all educational levels, in both formal and informal contexts. The idea behind this technique is that sharing views and opinions with others by discussing with peers and receiving and providing formative feedback enriches the quality of learning. In this study, a class of trainee teachers conducts an online PR. The resulting interactions are analyzed and evaluated by the researchers through the application of an evaluation model based on both quantitative and qualitative data. In particular, two conditions are studied, namely the PR in groups versus the PR in dyads. Results show that students who carried out the PR in groups were less active from the cognitive point of view, while they devoted more effort to deal with organizational matters and discourse facilitation.</p>

Essediquadro, the online service for the documentation and orientation on the educational software and other digital learning resources

The sustainable lightness of low cost technologies

Accessibility of educational software: A problem still to be solved
Giovanni Paolo Caruso and Lucia Ferlino
Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Accessibility of educational software: from evaluation to design guidelines
Serenella Besio, Elena Laudanna, Francesca Potenza, Lucia Ferlino, and Federico Occhionero
Springer Berlin Heidelberg

ZoomLinux: A research result providing a tangible response to the needs of low vision students
Giovanni Paolo Caruso, Silvia Dini, and Lucia Ferlino
Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Lucia Ferlino

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Scopus Publications