Listening to music is a common behavior when people study or work. However, effects of music listening on studying are still disputed in previous studies. To explore the associations between music characteristics and learning performance and engagement and to develop a music recommender for studying in naturalistic settings, we conducted a two-month field experiment with 51 undergraduate and graduate students. A mobile application based on the experience sampling method was designed and implemented to ubiquitously collect participants' learning status and music listening traces. Statistical tests and machine learning were adopted respectively for uncovering the associations between music listening on learning and constructing a music recommendation model. Results first indicated that learners' music preferences and several musical features were positively correlated with self-reported learning performance and concentration. Furthermore, machine learning modeling demonstrated promising results for developing a music recommender for studying in naturalistic settings. Findings are expected to contribute to research on learning with background music and learning-oriented music recommendation.

Online video courses allow large-scale distribution of educational resources and thus provide a feasible platform for cross-regional teacher professional development (TPD). However, with most studies focusing on TPD using online video courses in developed countries, less attention was paid to factors influencing the online learning experience of teachers from less developed areas. Therefore, this pilot study aims at exploring predictors of 3471 college teachers' online learning engagement. First, the results of a multivariate linear regression (MLR) revealed that at the individual level, there was a significant positive relationship between teachers' age and learning duration. At the institutional level, participants from the partner institutions had longer learning durations. At the country level, there was a significant positive relationship between country literacy rates and learning durations. Then, another MLR on relationships between self-reported learning perceptions after taking the course and learning durations was conducted. Results showed that learners' prior knowledge was negatively associated with learning durations. There was a significantly positive relationship between “recommend this platform to others” and learning duration. The findings can inform us of the factors that may have been overlooked when supporting college teachers' online professional learning in developing countries.

Affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the way adolescents receive their education has changed drastically from offline classrooms to online digital space. Despite the benefits of digital devices, we must also be cautious of the possible negative impacts of using digital devices excessively. In this study, we proposed a smart planning course to support adolescents in managing daily digital device usage. Meanwhile, we examined the effects of this course through a novel multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) approach. Although results of the quasi-experiment indicated few significant effects of the intervention, possibly due to its timing, the proposed MMLA approach was shown to provide more comprehensive and refined data compared to traditional methods. Future studies can use this approach for further activity-based analysis of students’ digital well-being.