NOVIX is an early‑stage extended reality (XR) prototype designed to explore how children understand interactions in non‑visual XR environments. For the initial co‑design phase, we developed the GhostXR activity, where children engage with a playful, invisible ‘ghost’ through movement, touch, proximity, and haptic/auditory cues. The system combines spatial audio, controller-based light and sound, and vibration cues. Our demo showcases a playable XR experience highlighting how children interpret non-visual agents in XR, how they express possible action–reaction loops, and how multisensory feedback supports their meaning‑making.

Children regularly engage with online information access systems, yet much of our understanding of how they search has not been revisited in recent years. Further, the reasons children avoid certain search practices remain largely unexamined. To address these gaps, we introduce a tangible card‑based activity designed to elicit and make visible children’s reasoning during search. Building on prior literature, we examine whether previously documented practices remain relevant for the current generation of young searchers. We, then, investigate children’s explanations for avoiding particular practices, revealing insights into their understanding of the information-seeking process. Overall, this work contributes to a better understanding of children’s decision‑making processes when conducting online searches in school contexts, shedding light on both rationally adopted and discarded online search practices in the classroom setting.

The interest in computing learning activities is continuously increasing, keeping pace with the evolution of educational technologies. This rise in engagement is evident within approaches grounded in constructivism and constructionism, which provide an ideal setting for the spectrum of skills, literacies, and competencies that global initiatives capitalise on in K–12 education. Due to recent advancements in technology and societal changes, we are addressing the need for an updated perspective focussed on designing and implementing computational activities. To achieve this, we have analysed forty-six peer-reviewed empirical studies from the last decade to summarise technology-supported learning strategies' current direction and future potential. The main findings describe programming software and IoT as the preferred digital tools, often presented in novel combinations, extensions, and contextualisations. Implementation primarily occurs within the domain of computer science but exhibits a high degree of interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, there is an increase in activities referring to real-life scenarios, encouraging learners to develop computational skills beyond the classroom and expand their digital awareness through interaction with emerging technologies. We leverage these trends and significant patterns by proposing a summary of focal points for future research and practice, with a focus on activity design.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a growing role in K-12 education.However, curricula often lack structure and proper assessment when paired with collaborative approaches like Design Thinking (DT).Here, behavioral and affective dynamics are overlooked, even though they are indicators of both performance and quality of the learning experience, warranting a more in-depth exploration through Multi-Modal Learning Analytics.Therefore, we engaged 63 students, divided into 29 groups (aged 11 to 15) in a DT workshop on AI, analyzing their performance across each stage of their experience, including their behavioral and affective (i.e., emotional) states, using data collected from physiological sensors, audio, and video recordings.Our results show that certain conditions (e.g., joint visual attention, boredom, and high stress) consistently predicted positive or negative performance across all stages of the workshop, while affective states such as confusion, frustration, high engagement, and low stress fluctuate with implications on the learning experience.

Design thinking (DT) is an approach used to address complex societal issues by engaging learners in hands-on problem-solving. Current educational guidelines seek to leverage the synergies between DT, digital literacy, and computational skills to enhance students' understanding and application in real-world matters, such as cyber-security and online awareness. However, tackling such learning experiences requires a shift in teaching approaches and the endorsement of educational technologies to foster digital agency. This empowers students to become proactive, informed participants in the digital future, starting from the classroom. To explore the feasibility of this approach from the students' perspectives, our study carried out a DT project with a block-based programming platform to emphasize the importance of cyber-security. Our study involved 113 students aged 10 to 12 across three K-12 schools. Of these, 52 agreed to participate in data collection via a semi-structured interview at the end of the project to share their experiences. We gained insights into students' perceptions regarding collaboration, technology interaction, and knowledge gained through thematic analysis of the interview data, considering both challenges and potential. For instance, we shed light on roadblocks arising from mismatched tool affordances and students' familiarity, as well as topic differentiation in elaboration based on participants' skills. At the same time, DT potential, when paired with digital tools, emerged to ease into everyday wicked problems in an engaging way and foster solution-oriented thinking.

Design thinking (DT) and computational activities foster children’s knowledge capital for 21st-century literacies. The analysis of these activities often overlooks affective and behavioural states despite their significance in providing insights into children’s learning processes. Typically, these states and their changes are self-reported, lacking real-time capturing. Moreover, inquiries via Multi-Modal Data (MMD) for more comprehensive views are underrepresented in the current literature. We, therefore, conducted a DT activity focusing on coding engaging 33 children (aged 10 to 12) and analysed measurements including learning gain (from knowledge tests) and behavioural and affective states (from physiological sensors, video and voice recordings). Our results show that engagement and confusion exhibit positive correlations between MMD measurements and learning gain, while stress, frustration and anger stand out as detrimental for it. By mapping transitions in states experienced by the children, we unravelled negative learning scenarios that should be limited, along with positive indicators of increased performance.

Nowadays, learning activities have become more interactive and collaborative than ever before. However, it remains unclear what makes the group perform differently in such a learning context. With the empowerment of multimodal data (MMD), we conducted a field study involving 12 groups of children who collaborated during two-day-long classroom activities. This paper reports on a quantitative analysis and temporal explanation concerning the relation between children's performance and their group-level MMD measurements during a collaborative coding session in a design thinking activity. We computed each group's performance based on the created artefacts and compared the groups with better performance than the others. The results demonstrate that high-performing groups show more joint engagement, joint visual attention, and joint emotional intensity of delight, while low-performing groups show significantly more joint emotional intensity of frustration. In addition, the evolution over the four temporal phases showed different patterns between high and low-performing groups. Finally, this paper discusses design and theoretical implications for educators, researchers and practitioners.

In the last decade, educational reforms introduced technologies and digital tools to a higher degree, serving as powerful catalysts in educational innovation for creating, managing, and delivering content in STEM education with a focus on computational and engineering subjects. However, in the small reality of the classroom, some discrepancies arise between policy objectives and everyday practice. The research community emphasises the importance of providing technology infusions based on educators' pedagogical beliefs as well as needs rooted in the authentic scholarly environment. Considering this perspective when orchestrating in-classroom technology can support educators in their daily experiences and enhance their digital competencies. To contribute to this aim, we propose a case study carried out via interviews with fellow primary and secondary teachers, tackling challenges in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), including Computer Science (CS) and Computational thinking (CT) education delivery. Along with the teachers' perspectives, our study aims to obtain a detailed account of the classroom's internal dynamics as perceived by the teachers. The most prominent findings concern the disparity among educators' proficiency in technology endorsement, impacting the consistency in content delivery, the complexity of the assessment of students' learning process if it is digital-based, and the inclusivity and trustworthiness of online content. Finally, we suggest guidance for a further mindful in-school uptake of technology to support teachers in orchestrating content delivery with educational technologies and enhance their confidence in this aspect.

Design Thinking (DT) paired with Emerging Technologies (ET) holds exciting potential as a pedagogical innovation for creatively approaching STEAM subjects, especially Computer Science (CS). By leveraging these tools and techniques, educators can develop engaging and effective learning experiences that help foster 21st Century Skills, digital literacy in particular. To tackle the overall research statement, “How can we design DT-based K–12 learning activities for CS education that are supported by ET?”, a first Systematic Literature Review is conducted to gain a solid understanding of the current role of DT and ET in CS learning venues. Subsequently, Design-Based Research methodology with both qualitative and quantitative data gathering is proposed, along with the use of Learning Analytics and multi-modal data to trace knowledge experience and improve its personalization. The research process involves close collaboration with target users, K–12 students and teachers, as participants in the studies. A qualitative data collection effort involving semi-structured interviews with teachers is reported as a first step. On-site DT sessions engaging K–12 students, and teachers will follow. Such sessions employ a game-based approach to coding and encourage the building of educational activities. The resulting insights will be used to inform the further refinement of activities, based on the expectations and demands of stakeholders. The final aim of the PhD research is to deliver guidelines for developing ET-supported, future-proof solutions for CS learning activities. By leveraging these activities’ potential impact on interdisciplinary pedagogical reforms and 21st Century Skills knowledge, the research wants to promote innovation and advancement in the CCI field for young learners and their educators.

Conversational agents are emerging as channels for a natural and accessible interaction with digital services. Their benefits span across a wide range of usage scenarios and address visual impairments and any situational impairments that may take advantage of voice-based interactions. A few works highlighted the potential and the feasibility of adopting conversational agents for making the Web truly accessible for everyone. Yet, there is still a lack of concrete guidance in designing conversational experiences for browsing the Web. This paper illustrates a human-centered process that involved 26 blind and visually impaired people to investigate their difficulties when using assistive technology for accessing the Web, and their attitudes and preferences on adopting conversational agents. In response to the identified challenges, the paper introduces patterns for conversational Web browsing. It also discusses design implications that can promote Conversational AI as a technology to enhance Web accessibility.