The spatial and temporal properties of

eLearning: an exploratory study regarding the

students' perspective

Student: Popescu Alexandru

Cuprins

1. Introduction: Cognitive factors in eLearning vs. traditional learning

............................................................................................................ 3
2. Spatial thinking & spatial learning ................................................... 5
3. Time models & learning process ..................................................... 7
4. Associative processes in spatial-temporal cognition ............... 9
5. The spatial and temporal properties of eLearning: a student's
perspective to enhance the acquisition of skills ................................ 10
6. Conclusions ................................................................................... 12
7. References .................................................................................... 13
 Abstract: Nowadays, the Internet and new technologies have completely
changed people's way of life. People can access the internet anywhere, whether
they are on a train, on an airplane, on their home, and so on, so, people can
communicate in real time from anywhere at any time. In this way, the internet has
also entered in the academic environment, given that people spend a lot of time
on web. The Internet has led to the development of new learning methods such
as e-learnig.

1. Introduction: Cognitive factors in eLearning vs. traditional

learning
The process of learning is particularly extensive and complex. Most
classical methods consider learning to be accomplished by extracting knowledge
from experts. People start learning from very young ages.
However, learning is also accomplished by increasing self-knowledge,
changing behavior, and by acquiring new competences that are engaged in the
learning process. In most cases, learning is actually done through action or
experience. The learner assimilates information in a "personal bank of
experience" that will be used to compare or relate to new concepts from the
following experiences. Learning is effective or long-lasting only if developed
concepts can be applied in different life situations.

The e-learning concept gradually gains ground as practice and research in

the field provides new success stories and milestones for an appropriate
theoretical and methodological construction.

E-learning is a planned teaching-learning experience organized by an

institution that provides material mediation in a sequential and logical order to be
assimilated by students in their own way. Mediation is achieved through new
information and communication technologies - especially through the Internet.
The Internet is both the material distribution environment and, in most cases, the
communication channel between the actors involved. In other words, e-learning
represents the totality of educational situations in which information and
communication technology is used [1].

E-learning is nothing more than a social response to the growing demand

for education, the need to diversify offerings and training institutions on multiple
levels:

• the actors involved (competent trainers, mixed learning communities, etc.)

• the contents and various didactic materials, the multitude of didactic

elements developed only on electronic support, modular programs, a
variety of adjacent, complementary, alternative, new disciplines)

• evaluation procedures (adaptive tests, automated standardized tests with

immediate feedback)

• management procedures (student management, online enrollment, student

selection and certification based on activity portfolios, etc.)

• extra-curricular activities (online resources, collaborative activities,

participation

Both, the traditional learning process and e-learning are based on a number
of key cognitive factors, such as:

1. Exposure to new information

2. Attention span (the length of time for which a person is able to concentrate
mentally on a particular activity)

3. The long-term memory ability

4. Spatial thinking and spatial learning

5. Emotional factors (stress, anxiety, and a variety of other emotions can have
a significant impact on the limitations of student learners)
 6. Self-paced learning

Despite traditional learning, e-learning have some advantages, it offers

didactic software and tools to support the educational process: animations, video
demonstrations, dictionaries, encyclopedias, presentations in various digital
formats, tests, tutorials, simulations, and didactic games. In e-learning computing
and multimedia materials are used as support in teaching, learning, evaluation
and and in this way students learn, understand and assimilate information much
more quickly and easily than in traditional learning.

2. Spatial thinking & spatial learning

Spatial thinking refers to how people use spatial landmarks to think

(thinking with space aids) and how how they think about space.

In another approach, spatial thinking is the ability to identify, analyze, and

understand position, location, scale, patterns, distances, spatial relationships and
time between objects, phenomena, and also to interpret data related to them. This
type thinking generates a spatial, geographic perspective on how the world works,
including how systems work, how and why certain relationships, and also how
we can address and solve certain problems. Spatial thinking is an important factor
in the learning process because students use certain spatial analogies to learn new
things. In figure 1 is an overview of spatial thinking according to cognitive
psychology [2].
 Figure 1. Spatial thinking according to cognitive psychology [2]
Spatial learning is is an effective learning method that is based on spatial
thinking. Students who use spatial learning prefer to use images, presentations in
various digital formats, colors, maps / schemes, video demonstrations, to organize
their information and communicate better with others. They can visualize objects,
plans, and results with their minds. They also have a good spatial sense, which
gives them a good sense of directions in space. They can easily navigate to new
places using maps and are rarely lost. For these students e-learning is much more
suitable than traditional learning to learn quickly. Students who study
engineering, architecture, and medicine have especially much more developed
spatial thinking and they can learn spatial easily.
Figure 2 shows graphical illustration of the effects of using e-learning in
preparing a group of 120 medical students. It can be seen that 65.4% of men and
53.8% of women considered a good improvement in knowledge, and 15.5 of men
and 43.6% of women considered a very good improvement.
 Figure 2. Medicine students ratings for e-learning [3]

3. Time models & learning process

Time is the continual and indefinite advance of existence and events that
occur in a succession from the past to the future, in other words, time is seen as
measuring the distance between events. It is composed of past, present and future.
These three moments of time point to the so-called arrow of time: it flows in one
sense, irreversible, from the past to the future [4].
From physical point of view, but also from human perception, time can be
classified as:
• objective (physical time)
• subjective (the time seen from every person's perspective)
Time is an crucial element in humans cognitive processes. Time is
subjective for each person according to their own preceptions.
Learning process can be defined as a multitude of operations and mental or
cognitive strategies in order to make a change in a person's knowledge,
personality and behavior.
Whether it's e-learning or traditional learning, the learning process is
composed of the following processes :
1. Creating study material
 2. Understanding it
3. Acquiring knowledge
4. Fixing in memory
5. Applying knowledge
6. Updating knowledge
7. Transfer of knowledge
The learning process involves the following:
➢ On the one hand, most cognitive, volitional, affective processes, then
attention, language, motivations, skills, interests, each having a well-
defined role.
➢ On the other hand, biological and psychological factors that determine
its efficiency or inefficiency are also involved.
The main factors in the learning process are :
• Perceptions - important role in learning because it provides the material
necessary for representations, memory and thinking, differentiates one
object from another by reflecting the structure and significance. Thus, in
the process of learning, the teacher has to consider the development of the
different types of perception, especially the visual one (about 90% of the
information comes in this way). Based on the perception, the observation
spirit also develops. Thus the active perception of objects and phenomena
will be accompanied by the teacher's verbal explanations, to supplement
the students' images with them through additional information. [5]
• Representations - provide the necessary material for generalizations in the
form of notions, laws, rules, principles, and memory. to be used later by
updating
• Thinking plays an essential role in learning; process of concepts and
operational structures, understanding of reality and problem-solving
adaptation
• Imagination - is the process of building new images or ideas by combining
the previous experience; has a special role in developing new, original
products.Creating new images takes place through processes such as
reorganizing knowledge, combining and recombining them, dissociating
and merging into new forms, metaphorizing, schematizing, etc.
 • Memory - is the foundation of learning (psychic process of storing and
storing information, updating, by recognizing or reproducing it in a
selective form). To increase learning efficiency, there are two situations:
1) when learning material is reduced in volume and easy to understand
-> concentrated reps / reproductions through the association mechanism
2) when the material is bulky -> it is recommended to fragment it and
rescheduling the repeats.
• Attention - through attention is achieved the selective orientation and
concentration of psychic processes in order to know the material to be
learned, which is selected and filtered according to interests and
motivations. Learning process efficiency depends largely on the focus and
stability of attention, its distributivity and flexibility.
The learning process is done over time and regular repetition is required
until the student masters the new notions learned

4. Associative processes in spatial-temporal cognition

Associative processes in spatial-temporal cognition represents the
structural and representative platform on which cognitive processes work [7].
In fact, associative processes in spatial-temporal cognition represent
the most important factors in the process of learning, especially for young
children. That is why the process of learning children includes spatio-temporal
orientation and organization exercises like [6] :
-locations of position of an object in relation to other objects;
- games for positioning objects in the near environment;
- rendering of the position in the imaging plane (drawing of figures
according to requirements)
-games for memorizing the days of the week
-games of association of the moments of the day with the activities
corresponding to
In general, people organize their behavior and chronologically memorize
the information associating spatially and temporally the events, as is the case in
the learning process.
5. The spatial and temporal properties of eLearning: a student's
perspective to enhance the acquisition of skills
In the following, it will be presented the spatio-temporal analysis of e-
learning carried out on a number of 93 students.
The response scale is: 5 = Very high; 4 = High; 3 = Medium; 2 = Low; 1 =
Very low; 0 = Not important.
In terms of learning process and curricular area using e-learning, the
average of student responses is presented in figure 3.

Figure 3. Learning process analysis

It can be noted a satisfactory response from the students, the average of
responses being between medium and high,s o e-learning provides students with
resources and materials suited to the learning process.
In terms of spatial properties of e-learning, the average of student response
to the questions asked on this topic is presented in figure 4 :

Figure 4. Analysis of the spatial properties of e-learning

 It can be noted a very good response of the students on this topic, students
agree that visual materials improve the learning process in e-learning. The
average of responses being between medium and high and one is above high.
For the set of questions asked for temporal properties, the results are more
different than those for spatial properties (figure 5 ). For some questions, average
responses were close to " very high ", and for questions " Interaction with the
teacher should be reduced in the eLearning environment " the average response
was close to "low". Hence, the students want to learn at any time, but to be
coordinated by a teacher.

Figure 5. Analysis of the temporal properties of e-learning

Figure 6 shows students' negative and positive ratings of spatial temporal and
analysis. It is noticeable that positive ratings dominate, especially visual analysis.
 Figure 6.Negative and positive ratings of spatial temporal and
analysis
In terms of social opportunities, students do not see e-learning as an
environment where they can change ideas, interact with other students, socialize
or solve problems together (figure ).

Figure 7. Asnalysis of social opportunities

6. Conclusions

E-learning is much more suitable than traditional learning to learn quickly

for students who have especially much more developed spatial thinking and
temporal sense, so they can learn easily using this method. So E-learning is much
more suitable for students who study engineering, architecture, and medicine, for
exemple.
Electronic learning or "e-learning" is today an influential way of learning
and the main advantage of e-learning is that it allows learning in any place and
time. eLearning proves to be an effective learning method adapted to ectual nets.
Using elerning, the students can acquire knowledge very easily, especially those
who self-learn.

7. References
1. Fei Li, Jingyao Qi, Guiwei Wang and Xiaofeng Wang. Traditional
Classroom VS E-learning in Higher Education.
http://journals.sfu.ca/onlinejour/index.php/i-jet/article/viewFile/3268/3045

2. Mary Hegarty, Margaret R. Tarampi. Teaching Spatial Thinking:

Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-
1557/paper8.pdf
3. Warnecke E, Pearson S. Medical students’ perceptions of using e-
learning to enhance the acquisition of consulting skills.
4. Michail Maniadakis , Panos Trahanias. Time models and cognitive
processes: a review.
5. Michail Maniadakis, Panos Trahanias. Temporal cognition: a key
ingredient of intelligent systems.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2011.00002/full .
6. Aaron P. Blaisdell. The Role of Associative Processes in Spatial,
Temporal, and Causal Cognition.
7. V.D. Chamizo. Spatial Learning: Conditions and Basic Effects