Volume 17, numéro 5, september 2016

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Digital curation may be regarded as a core competency in higher education since it contributes to establishing a sense of metaliteracy (an essential requirement for optimally functioning in a modern media environment) among students. Digital curation is gradually finding its way into higher education curricula aimed at fostering social media literacies. Teachers are urged to blend informal and formal learning and since most people informally use curation in their daily lives for compiling relevant information, it may be fairly easy to adopt digital curation in teaching and learning. Teachers, however, require considerable insight in incorporating various informal digital curation tools in educational practices. The SECTIONS model may assist in guiding decisions around the suitability of digital curation tools for a higher education environment. Including digital literacy training in the professional development of academic staff members may sensitize them to the possibilities that incorporating digital approaches in curricula offer. The Five Cs of Digital Curation framework may guide academic staff members in compiling suitable digital material. There as yet appears not to be a pedagogy that fully acknowledges the various digital curation processes. A pedagogy of abundance, acknowledging that content often is freely available and abundant, may eventually prove relevant in this regard.

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The purpose of this paper is to explore how adult learners engage in asynchronous online discussion through the implementation of an audio-based argumentation activity. The study designed scaffolded audio-based argumentation activities to promote students’ cognitive engagement. The research was conducted in an online graduate course at a liberal arts university. Primary data sources were learners’ text-based discussions, audio-recorded argumentation postings, and semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that the scaffolded, audio-based argumentation activity helped students achieve higher levels of thinking skills as well as exert greater cognitive efforts during discussions. In addition, most students expressed a positive perception of and satisfaction with their experience. Implications for practice and future research areas are discussed.

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Current research into Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) has neglected the potential of using learner comments for discipline-specific analysis. This article explores how MOOCs, within the historical discipline, can be used to generate, investigate, and document personal narratives, and argues that they serve as a rich platform for historical resource generation. Through these narratives, this research explores changing perceptions of learning; from learning history at school to learning about history in a MOOC. This exploration uses a qualitative thematic analysis of learner comments related to personal narratives of learning history at school from the Trinity College Dublin/Futurelearn “Irish Lives in War and Revolution: 1912-1923” MOOC. These personal narratives were generated both directly and indirectly through four pedagogical tools; reflective questions, multimedia resources, external links, and inter-learner interaction. Broad themes emerged from the analysis of personal narratives including attitudes toward history at school, biased and inadequate teaching, and MOOC teaching compared with school experiences. The analysis demonstrated that MOOCs serve as a generative repository for personal and family historical narratives, and described how MOOCs can change perceptions of teaching and learning history. This paper contributes a novel understanding of MOOCs for discipline-specific analysis, provides a framework for MOOC historical resource generation, and describes changing perceptions of learning from the perspective of MOOC learners.

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The increasing costs of higher education (HE), growing numbers of flexible anytime, anywhere learners, and the prevalence of technology as a means to up-skill in a competitive job market, have brought to light a rising concern faced by graduate students and potential graduate employers. Specifically, there is a mismatch of useful skills obtained by students through HE institutions which is evident upon graduation. Faced with this dilemma, “graduate students,” or more specifically newly graduated students, with a with bachelor’s degree, and a growing number of employers are turning to Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, as a complimentary mechanism through which this skills gap may be bridged.

It is found in the literature that MOOCs are often discussed within the capacity of their development, their retention rates, institutional policies regarding their implementation, and other such related areas. Examinations into their broader uses, benefits, and potential pitfalls have been limited to date. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse the literature highlighting the use of MOOCs as a means to reduce the mismatch in graduate skills. As such, this literature analysis reviews the following relevant areas: higher education and graduate skills gap, today’s graduates and employability, and MOOCs and graduate skills. Through analysing the literature in these areas, this paper identifies gaps in the existing literature.

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While many online graduate students are gaining academic and scholarly knowledge, the opportunities for students to develop and hone professional skills essential for the workplace are lacking. Given the virtual environment of distance learning, graduate students are often expected to glean professional skills such as analytical thinking, self-awareness, flexibility, team-building, and problem-solving inherently through informal means (Cleveland-Innes & Ally, 2012). The goal of this study was to evaluate the experiences of online graduate students participating in synchronous online professional skills workshops. Students attended the sessions from the various graduate programs at an online Canadian university. The discussions from the focus group held at the end of the project were used to achieve the research goals. This paper used a phenomenological lens to accomplish its research goals. The participants reported that they experienced a “sense of community” and learned skills that were not included in their academic programs.

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This survey research study presents the findings on determinants of teachers’ attitudes towards e-learning in Tanzanian higher learning institutions. The study involved 258 teachers from 4 higher learning institutions obtained through stratified, simple random sampling. Questionnaires and documentary review were used in data collection. Data were analysed using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). Chi-square was performed to examine the association of variables.

It was found that teachers have positive attitudes towards e-learning where computer exposure played a statistically significant contribution to their attitudes. It is recommended that training in e-learning needs to be provided to teachers to widen their understanding of e-learning. There is also a need to strengthen factors associated with teachers’ positive attitudes towards e-learning. Results from this study are of particular importance to both teachers and the education stakeholders in Tanzania.

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Although the implementation of e-learning initiatives has reached advanced stages in developed countries, it is still in its infancy in many developing nations and the Middle East in particular. Recently, few public universities in Iraq have initiated limited attempts to use e-learning alongside traditional classrooms. However, different obstacles are preventing successful adoption of this technology. The present research aimed to highlight challenges that hinder effective implementation of e-learning in Iraq and recommend possible solutions to tackle them. A total of 108 respondents voluntarily participated in this research. They consisted of academic staff (N=74), professors in charge of e-learning (N=3), and undergraduate students (N=31). Three methods were used to collect data: a survey instrument, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. Data was then analyzed and reported quantitatively and qualitatively. This provided in-depth understanding to the current status of e-learning in public Iraqi universities and highlighted major hindrances of its successful application. Based on this analysis, the study proffered many recommendations that should be considered in order to fully benefit from e-learning technologies.

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Several scholars and organizations suggest that institutional policy is a key enabling factor for academics to contribute their teaching materials as open educational resources (OER). But given the diversity of institutions comprising the higher education sector—and the administrative and financial challenges facing many institutions in the Global South—it is not always clear which type of policy would work best in a given context. Some policies might act simply as a “hygienic” factor (a necessary but not sufficient variable in promoting OER activity) while others might act as a “motivating” factor (incentivizing OER activity either among individual academics or the institution as a whole).

In this paper, we argue that the key determination in whether a policy acts as a hygienic or motivating factor depends on the type of institutional culture into which it is embedded. This means that the success of a proposed OER-related policy intervention is mediated by an institution’s existing policy structure, its prevailing social culture and academics’ own agency (the three components of what we’re calling “institutional culture”). Thus, understanding how structure, culture, and agency interact at an institution offers insights into how OER policy development could proceed there, if at all. Based on our research at three South African universities, each with their distinct institutional cultures, we explore which type of interventions might actually work best for motivating OER activity in these differing institutional contexts.

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Online learning is a means of reaching marginalised and disadvantaged students within South Africa. Nevertheless, these students encounter obstacles in online learning. This research investigates South African students’ opinions regarding online learning, culminating in a model of important connections (facets that connect students to their learning and the institution). Most participants had no prior experience with online learning. Their perceptions and barriers to learning may apply to other developing countries as well.

A cross-sequential research design was employed using a survey among 58 fourth-year students who were studying a traditional paper-based module via open distance learning. The findings indicated certain essential connections: first, a strong social presence (through timely feedback, interaction with facilitators, peer-to-peer contact, discussion forums, and collaborative activities); second, technological aspects (technology access, online learning self-efficacy, and computer self-efficacy); and third, tools (web sites, video clips). The study revealed low levels of computer/internet access at home, which is of concern in an ODL milieu heading online. Institutions moving to online learning in developing countries should pay close attention to their students’ situations and perceptions, and develop a path that would accommodate both the disadvantaged and techno-savvy students without compromising quality of education and learning. The article culminates in practical recommendations that encompass the main findings to help guide institutions in developing countries as they move towards online teaching and learning.

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This paper presents a study focused on a trajectory for developing an online operating mode on a campus-based university in the area of Massachusetts, USA. It addresses the innovation process and the changes and challenges faced by faculty and administrators. Methodologically-speaking, a mainly ethnographic approach was used for a systematic process of collecting data in context, in order to understand organizational strategies put in place to launch and improve online course provision. Leaders of the process and teachers of online courses were also interviewed. What emerged was: a) the online operating mode was prepared much in advance and linked to scenarios of internationalization and inclusion in higher education; b) there was an underlying discourse of inter-connectedness among different places and groups of people; and c) the partnership and collaboration between administration and faculty was essential. One of the main conclusions demonstrates that, despite careful formulation of the online component, it still does not enjoy the same status as the face-to-face element of courses, and, as a result, is largely ignored in terms of promotion in the teaching profession.

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This exploratory study investigates how a typically disadvantaged user group of older, female learners from rural, low-tech settings used and perceived a Facebook group as a research supervision and distance learning tool over time. The within-stage mixed-model research was carried out in a module of a part-time, advanced midwifery education course in rural South Africa. To address the research questions, three quantitative and qualitative surveys were repeated, pre, post, and three months post evaluation. The findings indicate that using the social media space lowered learners' threshold to accessing educational resources. The increased ease of communication was afforded in particular by using mobile phones to access the space. The analysis also suggests that the social networking site became a more integral part of students' learning environments. The learners' use of the site to discuss further course and work-related issues increased during the intervention and also remained significantly higher in the three-month, post evaluation survey, indicating the routinisation and habitualisation of this learning space. The practical implications and constraints of using social networking spaces to enhance disadvantaged groups of learners’ access to educational resources are discussed.

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Textbook costs have skyrocketed in recent years, putting them beyond the reach of many students, but there are options which can mitigate this problem. Open textbooks, an open educational resource, have proven capable of making textbooks affordable to students. There have been few educational development as promising as the development of open textbooks to lower costs for students. While the last five years have witnessed unparalleled interest and significant advances in the development and dissemination of open textbooks, one important aspect has, until now, remained unexplored: the praxis of learning analytics for extracting information regarding how learners interact and learn with open textbooks, which is crucial for their evaluation and iterative improvement process.

Learning analytics offers a faster and more objective means of data collection and processing than traditional counterparts, such as surveys and questionnaires, and—most importantly—with their capability to provide direct evidence of learning, they present the opportunity to enhance both learner performance and environment. With such benefits on offer, it is hardly surprising that the optimism surrounding learning analytics is mounting. However, in practice, it has been pointed out that the technology to deliver its potential is still very much in its infancy, which is true in the case of open textbooks. Against this background, the main aim of our study was to develop a prototype open textbook learning analytics system to track individual learners’ online and offline interactions with their open textbooks in electronic publication (EPUB) format, and to present its developmental work as building blocks for future development in this area. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of our work and present directions for future work.

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This study explored how course instructional format (i.e., online, face-to-face, or hybrid) is related to the frequency and duration of out-of-class communication (OCC) between college instructors and students, to student motives for communicating with teachers, and to perceived teacher approachability for conversation outside of class. Though differences in frequency of and student motives for engaging in OCC were not significant, students enrolled in face-to-face courses reported significantly more ongoing/durative OCC with their instructors compared to students enrolled other course types (i.e., online or hybrid). Students in fully online courses reported instructors to seem less receptive to but also less discouraging of OCC than students in face-to-face or hybrid courses. Overall, this study offers a sense of how students who seek informal interaction with instructors beyond the classroom are faring amid the increased reliance on web-based learning environments in higher education.

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The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that a smiling expression on the face of a talking pedagogical agent could positively affect a learner’s emotions, motivation, and learning outcomes in a virtual learning environment. Contrary to the hypothesis, results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that the pedagogical agent’s smile induced negative emotional and motivational responses in learners. Experiment 2 showed that the social meaning of a pedagogical agent’s smile might be perceived by learners as polite or fake. In addition, qualitative data provided insights into factors that may cause negative perceptions of a pedagogical agent’s smile, which in turn lead to negative affective (emotional and motivational) states in learners. Theoretical and design implications for pedagogical agents in virtual learning environment are discussed in the concluding section of the paper.

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Much research has identified and confirmed the core elements of the well-known Community of Inquiry Framework (CoIF): Social, Cognitive and Teaching Presence (Garrison, 2011). The overlap of these Presences, their definitions and roles, and their subsequent impact on the educational experience, has received less attention. This article is prompted by the acceptance of that omission (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010). It proposes enrichment to the Framework, by entitling the overlapping spaces uniting pairs of Presences as “Influences.” These three spaces, linking pairings of Social, Teaching, and Cognitive Presences, can be labelled as “trusting,” “meaning-making,” and “deepening understanding.” Their contribution to the educational experience is to address constructively some of the challenges of online learning, including learner isolation, limited learner experience of collaborative group work and underdeveloped higher-level abilities. For these purposes we also envisage “cognitive maps” as supporting learners to assess progress to date and identify pathways forward (Garrison & Akyol, 2013). Such maps, developed by a course team, describe the territory that learners may wish to explore, signpost possible activities, and encourage the development of cognitive and interpersonal abilities required for online learning. We hope that considering the Influences may also assist tutor conceptualisations of online community-based learning. Our proposals call on both learners and tutors to conceive of the Presences and Influences as working together, in unison, to enhance the educational experience whilst fostering deep learning. Our suggestions are presented to stimulate scholarly debate about the potential of these interwoven sections, constructively extending the Framework.

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The situation in Ukraine poses severe problems to the higher education system and to students in Eastern Ukraine. Many students and academicians had been compelled to leave their university buildings and move westwards. Hence, they are forced to substitute face-to-face teaching with distance learning, often on a large scale, but within a short span of time and with limited resources. While technical/technological infrastructure often exists, know-how about conducting online teaching and respective faculty development is often found to be lacking. Within the framework of a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), a faculty development program developed in Turkey as an Open Educational Resource (e-Tutor) was adopted in three languages (English, Ukrainian, and Russian) to support qualifying university staff in teaching online. e-Tutor comprises of 14 modules, each with various content, covering different aspects of online teaching. In the following note, we briefly present the program along with the context, target group/aims, concept, genesis, initial experiences, and further development.