Computers and Education Open最新文献

With technologies changing faster than ever before, engineering faculty must continuously update the technologies they use and teach to students to meet accreditation requirements and keep up with industry standards. Many do not, however. Additionally, existing models of technology adoption do not account for all variability within intention to use a technology, nor its actual use. Informed by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study examined which constructs from prior models apply to engineering faculty's adoption of industry-specific technologies, as well as other factors influencing faculty adoption of these technologies for their teaching or research. We interviewed 21 engineering faculty at a Midwestern United States STEM-focused institution about their adoption of engineering technologies. Deductive and inductive coding were used to identify themes within the qualitative data. Constructs from existing models were confirmed to influence faculty engineering technology adoption. We also identified specific Facilitating Conditions (Other People, Digital Resources, Non-Digital Resources, Time, and Formal Training) that faculty leverage to adopt new engineering technologies, and uncovered two additional themes—Access and Personal Traits, including several component traits (Persistence, Humility, Self Efficacy, Growth Mindset, Ambiguity Acceptance, and Curiosity) that influence faculty engineering technology adoption. We propose a new Theory of Faculty Adoption of Engineering Technologies specific to faculty adoption of new engineering technologies. These findings have the potential to help universities determine how to effectively support faculty in providing their students with relevant technological skills for entry into the engineering workforce.

The integration of technology in Higher Education has witnessed substantial growth in recent years. While extensive research has explored the collective educational implications of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) at universities, there remains an incomplete understanding of its effects on individual students when viewed through the lens of Person-Environment misfit theory and technostress. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of student and university misfit when adopting TEL and technostress on students' performance, satisfaction, and motivation. Utilizing a quantitative survey, we gathered data from a sample of 332 Higher Education students in the UK. The results reveal the significant influence of student and university misfit in adopting TEL on academic performance, satisfaction, and motivation. Moreover, the findings highlight the mediating role of technostress in these intricate relationships. Our research indicates that technostress stems not from the use of technology itself but from the misfit between students and the university learning environment. To address this, universities should enhance students' sense of belonging by offering additional pastoral and academic support. Moreover, providing training to boost students' digital confidence and skills is crucial. Creating a psychologically healthy technology-enhanced learning environment will ensure a more pleasant learning experience, alleviating student technostress.

Context is regarded to crucially affect teachers’ application of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). However, whether and how contextual variables, such as instructional context or teaching experience, influence the concrete application of the different TPACK-components remains an open question. To explore teachers’ application of TPCK in various contexts, we re-analyzed data from two studies composing n = 198 pre-service and n = 243 in-service teachers. All teachers were asked to reason about the potential integration of educational technology across three instructional contexts (i.e., individualized learning, collaborative learning, and practice tasks). We analyzed the application of the different first-order TPACK-components (i.e., technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge) using percentages and logistic regressions to determine the effects of instructional context and teaching experience. Additionally, we examined the co-occurrences of these components using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). Overall, we found that technological knowledge played a dominant role across all instructional contexts regardless of teaching experience. However, the application of content knowledge varied considerably across instructional contexts. The analysis of the co-occurrences showed that technological and pedagogical knowledge was consistently applied together across all instructional contexts, while content knowledge co-occurred predominantly in practice tasks. Qualitative analyses further revealed that in-service teachers applied their TPCK in a more situated way in specific teaching scenarios, whereas pre-service teachers’ reasoning was more fragmented. These findings suggest that TPACK may be conceptualized as a dynamic construct that is applied differently depending on the context and teaching experience rather than a static integration of its components.

Data protection regulations in educational settings rely to a great extent on the (School) Data Protection Officer. In this paper, we focus the analytical lens on the socio-legal position of the School Data Protection Officer in the UK, showing they are pivotal to ensure schools’ legal compliance. Their role requires a unique combination of skills and knowledge in a complicated landscape of data protection regulations, the pressure of the digital economy, and maintaining high-quality, high-stakes education. Yet their professional experiences and need for empowerment have gone largely unheard in academia and public debate. The social reality of schools may raise certain practical and conceptual tensions for the legal importance of the School Data Protection Officer. We highlight where this raises questions for the effective implementation of digital data protection regulation for children and young people in schools today. Further empirical research is needed to ensure the pivotal role of the School Data Protection Officer is recognised in upcoming data protection policy reviews. We recommend specific questions for future research to consider, to help overcome this gap in knowledge related to the practical safeguarding of children's digital data rights.

This paper presents part of the findings of a phenomenographically-informed investigation into higher education (HE) teachers’ perceptions of personal learning networks in the context of the recent COVID-19 emergency-remote-teaching (ERT) period, with a specific targeting of perceived challenges. This ERT period has magnified teachers’ use of personal learning networks with an absence of a coherent institutionalized approach to ERT, which has presented itself as a unique opportunity through which to explore how Networked Learning (NL) can be incorporated to help teachers manage the longer term shift towards the technologization of HE. The research therefore aims to explore the perceptions of 18 Academic English teachers at a leading English-instruction university in Kazakhstan that was forced to move online at the beginning of COVID-19. The chapter reports the teachers’ perceived challenges of using their networks for online teaching and learning—particularly for connecting to people and resources online. The results suggest that teachers perceive the challenges of network use in at least five different ways: i) technological tools, ii) technological skills (training), iii) fractious group communication, iv) subdued communicative spontaneity and v) a sense of isolation. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the results for teachers and how the challenges can be overcome.

This study took place at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when most schools worldwide were making the transition to online teaching and learning. Through this single-case study design, the study examined the learning experiences of a group of teachers engaged in interactive, inquiry-based professional learning focused on math, making and coding during a shift to emergency remote teaching. The primary objective was to identify promising practices for online professional learning (PL) focused on math and coding using a maker-pedagogies approach to teaching and learning, based on the teachers’ learning experiences. Study participants included 20 teachers from a rural school board in Northern Ontario, Canada. Findings indicated that the following may be considered as promising practices when developing and implementing virtual math and coding PL from a maker perspective. It is important to: a) balance sessions focused on specific math and coding content with more general sessions focused on learning the various maker-technology tools; b) include both synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities for the variety of teachers involved in the learning; c) include collaborative learning in the teacher PL and a virtual platform that can support this type of social learning; d) ensure the PL sessions are on-going as opposed to one-off or isolated sessions. This research suggests that online professional learning sessions need to consider three elements: the teacher, the content, and the learning environment and offers important recommendations for future work in this area.

Due to the disruptive societal challenges in the 2020s and increased use of digital tools in education, there is a growing need for more studies that investigate and reveal the factors that influence teachers’ use of digital learning resources (DLR). Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the effects of influencing factors on upper secondary school teachers' use of digital learning resources for teaching. 243 teachers from 23 upper secondary schools in Sweden participated in a survey that included a six-point Likert scale. The data was analysed using exploratory factor- and correlation analyses. The study contributes with five unique different influencing factors: 1) facilitating school environment, 2) social support, 3) previous work, education, and hobby, 4) student-oriented factors, and 5) stress. The previous work, education and hobby, and the stress categories differ significantly from previous studies. The findings also revealed five different dimensions of teachers’ use of DLR: creative purposes, providing teaching materials, providing student feedback, tests and games, and the use of film, audio, and virtual simulation. The findings indicate that teachers who use DLR with a focus on their students’ learning are more creative in their use of DLR. The implications are that some teachers need more time and in-service training to develop basic skills with DLR to reduce their stress for using DLR. Based on the findings of this research, it can be suggested that in-service training programs need to focus more on students’ needs to promote a more creative use of DLR for teaching.