Abstract: The major concerns of adaptive testing studies have concentrated on effectiveness and efficiency of the system built for the research experiments. It has been criticised that such general information has fallen short of providing qualitative descriptions regarding learning performance. Takahiro Sato of Japan proposed an analytical diagram called Student‑Problem Chart (S‑P Chart) in the 1970. The S‑P Chart is able to establish a learning diagnostic table which comments student learning performance in a verbal form. The advancement of computer technology has made the S‑P analytical process more applicable for school teachers. This study examined how online comments provided by the S‑P diagnostic table could affect the students’ learning attitude. One hundred sixth grade students were selected to be the subjects of the study. An online embedded test was given to the subjects and an S‑P diagnostic table was drawn by the computer to display instant comments on each student’s learning performance. A Questionnaire survey and in‑depth interviews were performed after the experiment. Results indicated that students liked the online qualitative comments. This is because students were able to instantly understand why they performed well/poor in the test, which is much beyond the numerical scores can explain. The results also showed that the online S‑P diagnostic table made students more circumspect on answering the test questions in order to reduce careless mistakes. Students would also be more likely to review what missed on the test. However, the S‑P comment table seemed to have no effect on improving their learning performance. An online iterative drilling platform was consequently built to incorporate with the S‑P diagnostic process to assist poorly performed students. It may effectively work with the S‑P diagnostic process to provide constructive remediation for the students who exhibited a poor performance on the S‑P chart.

The mission of today’s universities is to prepare the students properly to live and work in the 21st century. International research demonstrates the positive impact of using iPads in teaching. Successful deploying of mobile learning (m‑learning) is not a matter of accident, but depends on users’ acceptance of the technology. The purpose of this article is to create a mobile learning adoption pre‑model tailored to the needs of a private university. To achieve this goal, valued adoption models were analyzed and, on their basis, the new model was created. The pre‑model has been tested with a questionnaire. A paper‑based survey was conducted among 640 students representing 25 countries. The questionnaire was grouped into sections: specifications of mobile devices owned by students and mobile internet access, expectation from mobile education application and attitudes towards current and future use of mobile devices in education. We computed all data with The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences – IBM SPSS Statistics version 25. The results of the research showed that the students from a central‑eastern European University are technologically ready for mobile learning. Moreover, there appears to be no cause for concern regarding students from post‑Soviet countries with respect to their competency to meet the demands of modern teaching in the form of mobile learning. Students have shown that they have clearly defined expectations for educational materials for mobile devices, which will be a challenge for the university when creating m‑learning materials. Furthermore, students must feel the university's support in using mobile applications. That is why the teachers face a serious task: teachers must be prepared to show students the benefits of mobile learning, so they not only need to be trained but also convinced that it is worth using mobile learning.

We describe a study on the motivation of trainees in e‑learning‑based professional training and on the effect of their motivation upon the perceptions they build about the quality of the courses. We propose the concepts of perceived motivational gap and real motivational gap as indicators of e‑learning quality, which reflect changes in both perceived and real students' motivation. These indicators help evaluate the changes in the trainees' motivation, as well as the bias that occurs in the perceptions about initial motivation. In the sample analyzed, the real motivational gap was more negative when the perceived motivational gap was negative and not so positive when the perceived motivational gap was positive. We found that there is a perceptual bias on initial motivation when the perceived motivational gap is not null. This means that, for the sample analyzed, the trainees may have “adjusted” their perception regarding the initial motivation as a function of their final motivation, bringing it closer to the latter and supporting their final status. We also show that these gaps help explain how the trainees' perception of quality is affected: the gaps were minimized at higher levels of perceptions of quality and when they were positive, the perception of quality was higher than average. The two proposed conceptual gaps are useful to measure quality in e‑learning and implement specific actions to improve it. The results of our study are useful as they create insights on perceptions of quality in an indirect way, i.e., without asking the trainees to think about what they believe quality is, so that they can quantify it. They also enable training companies to create additional and complementary indicators of quality of e‑learning courses that can help explain changes in perceptions of quality.

MALL (Mobile assisted language learning) affords new opportunities for EFL (English as a foreign language) learners and teachers. Research on MALL is still in its infancy in Slovakia, and this paper attempts to fill in this gap by examining students’ perception and attitudes towards the use of smartphones for the purposes of learning and practicing English. The target population of this study constituted of the Slovak university EFL learners whose major was Teacher Training of English Language and Literature (n = 77) at a Slovak university. The research method employed to achieve the objectives of this study was a 5‑point Likert scale questionnaire, comprising of two sets of statements: general and out‑of‑the‑classroom statements with a total of 29 items. The research results for both sets of statements imply that the participants display moderately positive attitudes towards smartphones in the context of EFL learning. However, the findings also reveal some issues surrounding the perception and potential use of smartphones such as the inability to plan students’ language learning appropriately and effectively, general underuse of smartphone apps, or problems related to practicing speaking skills. The results further suggest the immediate need to develop and enhance the awareness of smartphones and their potential in the process of teaching and learning English so that the EFL learners can utilize considerable opportunities these smart devices offer. Finally, the limitations of this study are recognized, and it is emphasized that conducting further research in this area is urgently needed.