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As the adoption of open educational resources (OER) continues to increase, instructors have started using these resources for more than simply delivering content. Open pedagogy is a term used to describe a range of instructional practices that often incorporate OER into the learning process. This study examined student perceptions of two approaches to open pedagogy—student creation of multiple-choice questions and student creation of the syllabus and corresponding course assignments. The sample included responses from 84 students at two colleges in the United States. Results showed that students who created the syllabus and assignments had a more positive experience and were more likely to enroll in a future course that implements this strategy. Those in the multiple-choice course felt that the approach was less conducive to learning than traditional learning activities. The significant differences in student feedback on two different approaches, both of which could be termed open pedagogy, indicate that more research is needed to examine the efficacy of the wide variety of approaches to open pedagogy. Moreover, the perceived efficacy of one instantiation of open pedagogy does not equal the effectiveness of open pedagogy, broadly defined.

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This study aims to understand factors that affect the behavioural intention of manufacturing engineers in Malaysia to use e-learning in the workplace. Two hundred usable online questionnaires were collected from respondents who were engineers in Malaysian manufacturing companies. The data were analyzed using SPSS and Smart PLS version 3.2.6. Results supported all direct relationships except for the influence of prior experience in perceived ease of use. Interestingly, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use fully mediated between computer self-efficacy and behavioural intention to adopt. The study provides theoretical implication to the technology acceptance model by confirming the mediating role of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness in the context of a manufacturing setting in an emerging market. In practical terms, the study provides insights to guide organizations in designing e-learning systems that are well-received by employees at the workplace.

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Scholarly research has indicated that technology adoption to facilitate blended learning promotes the academic success of many different types of students and improves the quality of existing educational offerings. To understand how technology enhances learning, surveys queried the faculty and students of a statewide community college system. The results indicated widespread technology use among the faculty and students. The faculty survey revealed details of technology tools employed and the motivations for their use or discontinued use. Details regarding faculty use of learning management systems, textbooks, and other media characterized the current technology adoption climate. The student survey collected information about students’ perceptions of how technology influenced their learning, their preferences for specific technology tools, and their student progress. Ninety-three percent of student respondents indicated that technology enhanced their learning. Alignment between the faculty use and student preference for technology tools suggested that students are actively engaged in the technology resources used by faculty to enhance learning. Students described how technology facilitated multimodal learning. They also noted that technology increased communication, access, and inclusion in learning. Successful technology use and integration, accompanied by ongoing scholarly debate and monitoring, has the potential to provide more access, promote learning outcomes, and preserve the investment of technology for the institution. The surveys employed here, when used semi-annually, may provide a low-cost model for technology integration monitoring and evaluation. The responses to the surveys also have the potential to provide technology use and integration data that informs strategic planning processes and institutional learning outcome development.

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Education dashboards are a means to present various stakeholders with information about learners, most commonly regarding the learners’ activity in online learning environments. Typically, an education dashboard for teachers will include some type of visual aids that encourage teachers to reflect upon learner behavior patterns and to act in accordance to it. In practice, this tool can assist teachers to make data-driven decisions, thus supporting their professional growth, however, so far, the use of education dashboards by teachers has been greatly understudied. In this research we report on two studies related to the associations between the use of education dashboards by elementary school teachers and the teachers’ professional growth. We used the framework defined by the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) Standards for Educators. In the first study, we took a quantitative approach (N=52 teachers), using an online self-report questionnaire, and found that the use of dashboards is positively associated with professional growth in the dimensions of facilitator, analyst, designer, and citizen. In the second study, we took a qualitative approach (N=9 teachers), using semi-structured interviews, to shed light on the mechanisms through which teachers benefit from the use of education dashboards.

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As instructors are forced to move their courses online, they are confronted by a sense of isolation and distance from their learners. Research has shown that feelings of loneliness are mitigated when presence is created in the online environment. An interpretive phenomenological analysis was conducted at a public university in the United States to answer the question: What are the determinants of presence for instructors in online teaching? Twenty-five online instructors from various disciplines, with diverse levels of experience teaching online, were recruited for the study. Interviews, analysis of course syllabi, and observations of course sites revealed five determinants of presence for online instructors: content, format, strategies, technology, and students. The crucial factor in deciding an instructor’s experience of presence was the degree of agency instructors had over these determinants. This paper introduces the Zones of Agency for Online Instructors model and describes how the model can be used to enhance instructors’ experiences of presence.

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This study investigates and fully identifies the challenges of the Iranian e-learning system. The approach was qualitative and the method was research synthesis. The statistical population consisted of studies from 2006 to 2019 in the field of challenges of the e-learning system of Iran collected with specific keywords from the country’s databases. A total of 48 studies were identified as relevant. They were screened in stages and evaluated based on their title, abstract, and content. The final 19 articles selected underwent content analysis, revealing that Iran’s e-learning system faces problems in eight dimensions: legal, human, educational, technological, sociocultural, support, economic, and managerial-organizational. The results of the analysis could serve as a model for countries with similar technology infrastructure and cultural features wishing to improve their e-learning systems.

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This study focused on the acceptance level of higher education stakeholders of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) of online courses in Iran and pre-service teachers’ learning achievement in online courses. Three cohorts of participants who were teaching or learning in online courses included pre-service teachers of TEFL (n=104), TEFL university instructors (n=23), and heads of TEFL departments (n=10). A questionnaire was designed. The Kruskal Wallis test was used to detect differences among the perspectives of the participants. Semi-structured interviews were also utilized. Results indicated that there were significant differences among the perspectives of the three groups of participants about online courses. The pre-service teachers appeared to be relatively positive about online learning, while the university instructors and heads of departments showed a lower level of satisfaction. The participants pointed out several challenges, including the lack of rigor of online courses, the incredibility of the certificates, the lack of technological infrastructures, technical problems, the impractical content of the lessons, the lack of human interaction, the low competence levels of online learning students, and employers’ lack of interest in employing graduates of online courses. The participants also mentioned that pedagogical and technological training was required for both university instructors and pre-service teachers of TEFL. The comparison of pre-service teachers’ mid-term and final scores in the online courses showed a significant difference and improvement of students’ learning achievement in online courses with medium to large effect sizes. In the interviews, the participants also confirmed that online courses could improve student learning.

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In recent years, mobile phones have been used for teacher professional development (TPD). However, the potential use of smartphones, a current-generation of mobile phones, to develop teachers’ pedagogical, social, personal, and professional competences remains underexplored. This mixed methods study, examining the potential use of smartphones for TPD by delving into English teachers’ beliefs, employed a sequential explanatory approach. A quantitative survey was completed by 81 participants, followed by qualitative interviews with 8 selected participants. All the respondents were English teachers in elementary, junior, and senior high schools in 11 provinces in Indonesia. The survey was tested for validity and reliability, and analysed using the descriptive statistics method, while the semi-structured interview was analysed using the content analysis method. Almost all teachers had very favourable and favourable beliefs about the use of smartphones for TPD, perceiving that a smartphone could facilitate the enhancement of their pedagogical knowledge, communication skills, positive characters and English proficiency. Very few teachers had unfavourable beliefs, but among those who did, they believed traditional face-to-face TPD was more beneficial and that smartphones would only lead to addiction. This study recommends that smartphones be optimally applied by English teachers for TPD activities and that governments facilitate such implementation by constructing smartphone TPD models and applications.

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The purpose of this study is to develop a valid, reliable, and useful scale to measure high school students’ levels of acceptance of mobile technologies in learning mathematics based on the second version of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) model. The study was designed based on a sequential exploratory mixed-method research design. To this end, both qualitative (interviews with students, review of literature, and expert panel evaluation) and quantitative procedures (Lawshe content validity technique, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, convergent validity, discriminant validity, nomological validity, criterion validity, internal consistency reliability, and temporal reliability) were used to develop and validate the Mobile Technology Acceptance Scale for Learning Mathematics (m-TASLM). As a result, a 5-point Likert scale with 36 items grouped under 8 factors was developed and confirmed. Both validity and reliability studies yielded favorable results.

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This article presents a case-study of two distance learning courses, in order to address the question of universal adoption of mobile devices and applications by students, and the impact of these devices in personal learning environments (PLEs). First, a critical discussion of the value of these concepts in the current technological context was carried out, followed by an analysis of their impact on educational use, based on data collected in online courses on physics and statistics at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University. The results indicated that all students have adopted mobile learning, and the make-up of an individual’s PLE depends more on the learning resources available rather than on gender or age. These findings can help provide more efficient ways to implement learning by connecting current social needs to learners’ mobile PLEs, particularly when flexibility of time and space are of utmost importance. Further studies at the Portuguese Open University will address a larger and more balanced sample of students across more course units.

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This paper uses data mining from a French project management MOOC to study learners’ performance (i.e., grades and persistence) based on a series of variables: age, educational background, socio-professional status, geographical area, gender, self- versus mandatory-enrollment, and learning intentions. Unlike most studies in this area, we focus on learners from the French-speaking world: France and French-speaking European countries, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Central and West Africa. Results show that the largest gaps in MOOC achievements occur between 1) learners from partner institutions versus self-enrolled learners 2) learners from European countries versus low- and middle-income countries, and 3) learners who are professionally active versus inactive learners (i.e., with available time). Finally, we used the CHAID data-mining method to analyze the main characteristics and discriminant factors of MOOC learner performance and dropout.

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Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been touted as an effective way to make higher education accessible for free or for only a small fee, thus addressing the problem of unequal access and providing new opportunities to young people in middle and low income groups. However, many critiques of MOOCs have indicated that low completion rates are a major concern. Using a latent class analysis (LCA), a more advanced methodology to identify latent subgroups, this study examined the heterogeneity of learners’ behavioral patterns in a MOOC, categorized them into distinctive subgroups, and ultimately determined the optimal number of latent subgroups in a MOOC. The five subgroups identified in this study were: completing (6.6%); disengaging (4.8%); auditing (4.6%); sampling (21.1%); and enrolling (62.8%). Results indicated this was the optimal number of subgroups. Given the characteristics of the three at-risk subgroups (disengaging, sampling, and enrolling), tailored instructional strategies and interventions to improve behavioral engagement are discussed.

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Isolation can affect our well-being negatively. To prevent the spread of the infection COVID-19, many workers, including university lecturers, are required to work from home. In order to maintain high levels of well-being and team cohesion, academics at the University of Derby Online Learning initiated a virtual huddle to briefly socialise and check on their colleagues’ well-being every morning. This piece of field notes reports the context (COVID-19 in the United Kingdom), the details of this morning socialization, the first-hand experience of attending this huddle, and possible applications. Perceived positive impacts of our huddles include better well-being, cultivating compassion in team culture, and enhanced team cohesion. These advantages can be also useful in student supervision, wider socialization with colleagues to counter the silo mentality, and other occupational sectors. Our field notes will be helpful for lecturers and other types of employees who work collaboratively yet in isolation during this uncertain and challenging time of crisis.

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As the rising cost of college textbooks has outpaced both inflation and increases in tuition fees, this expense has created a significant barrier to student learning. Some instructors have adopted or created open educational resources, meaning materials which are freely and openly available. While the most obvious benefit of open course content might be cost savings, the fact that these materials can be freely adapted and changed can have substantial impact on the learning experience itself and enable an instructor to completely change the structure and outcomes of a course. This paper provides a case study on writing an open textbook for a course called World Regional Geography and details the writing process and platform options. I also offer practical guidance for faculty interested in authoring open materials and insight into how writing open materials might be framed in terms of a faculty member’s larger portfolio of professional activity.

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In recent years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have gained popularity with learners and providers, and thus MOOC providers have started to further enhance the use of MOOCs through recommender systems. This paper is a systematic literature review on the use of recommender systems for MOOCs, examining works published between January 1, 2012 and July 12, 2019 and, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first of its kind. We used Google Scholar, five academic databases (IEEE, ACM, Springer, ScienceDirect, and ERIC) and a reference chaining technique for this research. Through quantitative analysis, we identified the types and trends of research carried out in this field. The research falls into three major categories: (a) the need for recommender systems, (b) proposed recommender systems, and (c) implemented recommender systems. From the literature, we found that research has been conducted in seven areas of MOOCs: courses, threads, peers, learning elements, MOOC provider/teacher recommender, student performance recommender, and others. To date, the research has mostly focused on the implementation of recommender systems, particularly course recommender systems. Areas for future research and implementation include design of practical and scalable online recommender systems, design of a recommender system for MOOC provider and teacher, and usefulness of recommender systems.

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Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are an important approach for achieving UNESCO’s aim of open and accessible education. However, there are concerns regarding fragmentation or bias of MOOCs toward certain disciplines or countries. This study sought to: (a) examine how MOOCs research has evolved and is distributed, (b) determine what key areas are discussed in MOOCs research, and (c) identify the major players in MOOCs research and their collaborations. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of 3,118 scholarly works related to MOOCs as recorded in the Scopus database in July, 2019. Specifically, we analyzed the evolution of MOOCs research by examining (a) published studies, (b) source titles, (c) types of sources and documents, as well as (d) the languages in which the documents were written in. We further analyzed the key areas of MOOCs research by looking into common subject areas, keywords used most often, and title analysis. Finally, we sought to increase our understanding of the major players in MOOCs research and their collaborations by examining (a) which countries contributed most to MOOCs research, (b) the main institutions involved, as well as (c) authorship and citation analysis. Findings indicated that in their early development starting in 2009, MOOCs caught the attention of scholars from both the East and the West, and the number of publications grew consistently over the 10 years after that. MOOCs research has been well distributed but has yet to adequately encourage inclusiveness. There has been healthy cross-country collaboration, but there is a gap in MOOCs research originating from certain countries as compared to the rest of the world. Our findings provide important input towards improving the inclusivity and global reach of MOOCs.