This paper describes an embedded case study of “blended” teaching integrated with traditional lessons in a Student-Centered Active Learning Environment and social activities on the platform. The didactic phenomena were designed by creating learning environments, artifacts, and teaching/learning sequences in authentic educational contexts. We aim at improving the task design of a mathematics lesson with an impact on students’ performance in mathematics. Quantitative results show considerable benefits in the evolution of the use and coordination of several systems of semiotic representation. As a result, a better predisposition to the study of the subject seems to appear; moreover, the satisfaction test shows the achievement of alternative teaching methodologies for most of the students.

This work focuses on Distance Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve students’ motivation, participation, and engagement, trying to contain the drop-out phenomenon. Distance Learning at the time of COVID-19 is an educational methodology and it can be considered the only occasion to keep an educational connection between students and teachers. Experimentation in a Mathematics STEM class was carried out evaluating the impact of Distance Learning on students’ levels of motivation, participation, and engagement, computed through a Fuzzy Cognitive Map. Specifically, it was performed on some affective and interaction parameters derived from using an adaptive e-learning platform and from the answers of a semi-structured questionnaire. The results, which have been analysed through Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Instrumental Genesis theories, show on one hand that Distance Learning is valid as an additional and support methodology but, on the other hand, they highlight the ineffectiveness of completely remote teaching. Therefore, a teaching method that integrates moments of distance teaching with activities carried out in the presence, in the classroom, or in other university environments, is hoped to be used as soon as the emergency is over: a mix of styles, a fluid flow of knowledge between the physical classroom and the virtual classroom. We will call this Integrated Digital Learning.

In this article, we will describe the embedded case study of the European project “E-Magic” carried out within the Erasmus+ project and which involved 12-16 years old students and teachers from three nations: “Acharnes Special Education Vocational School” in Athens (Greece), IIS “L. Da Vinci-Nitti”, a high school in Potenza (Italy), and from Gabinete de Modernizao das Tecnologias Educativas (G.M.T.E.) in Madeira Islands (Portugal). The project is finalized to enhance Mathematical Competencies by Serious Games learning. We carried out both empirical qualitative and quantitative methods to highlight Serious Games’ effectiveness, as a teaching methodology, in motivating students to learn mathematics. We also hypothesize that prompting a strategic way of thinking within a didactical intervention by game-approach could improve students’ proving processes and support them in mathematical thinking production. Rabardel’s cognitive ergonomics and the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge model are the lenses for reading educational experiments’ data. Data seems to show that simulation helps students find alternative and creative solutions to problems. Therefore, Serious Games’ use in education promotes significant changes and mental resources activation.

Physics’ curricula of Italian Scientific High Schools in the last years have been enhanced by the introduction of Quantum Mechanics and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Education monitoring reveals that last year’s students are experiencing many issues in learning in their...