International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education最新文献

Higher education institutions may adopt various approaches to the pedagogic principles and methods used in teaching sustainable development in business and marketing courses. These methods can include the utilisation of digital technologies and online communication to facilitate distance learning and fast access to relevant information. Changes towards the digitalisation of the learning environment especially gained popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the post-pandemic period, digitalisation continues to facilitate the learning and teaching processes. However, the implementation of digital technologies, besides technological expertise, requires appropriate theoretical frameworks for understanding how learning is developed. This study explores connectivism theory applied to the pedagogic practices of knowledge dissemination concerning sustainable development in the fields of business and marketing. Connectivism embraces knowledge as a network where the learner, with the help of digital technologies, develops mental connections between pieces of information during interaction with various information sources. This qualitative research empirically explores the principles of connectivism embedded in the learning and teaching of a university course conducted online. The research findings indicate that connectivism may be a suitable conceptual framework that motivates learners to develop knowledge through digital enablers, discussions and social networking and to make connections to sustainability concepts. The principles of connectivism may help instructors to develop a learning environment where learners add understandings to their previous knowledge on sustainability through online interactions and by accessing digital knowledge sources. This study makes several interdisciplinary contributions by deepening the insights into digital pedagogic methods and approaches for the facilitation of learning, which may be of interest to academic and other pedagogic practitioners.

This article reports on a study analysing changes in the use of digital technologies and working from home during the COVID-19 crisis and the impact of these changes on the wellbeing of five female university lecturers from Australia and Sweden. Applying collaborative autoethnographical methods, this study employed Weick's sensemaking framework to explore how the academics made sense of these sudden changes. The Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA) wellbeing framework was also employed to explore the effect of these changes on the academics' wellbeing. Findings from the reflective narratives show that after the initial experiences of stress, each university lecturer was able to adapt and navigate the online teaching environment during the pandemic. However, the time constraints in preparing and adapting to online teaching, and working from home, were experienced by some of the university lecturers as highly stressful and isolating which impacted their sense of wellbeing. Even so, working from home was recognized as a positive experience, providing time for research, hobbies, and time with family. This study addresses a gap in current knowledge by examining the impact of the sudden transition to online teaching and learning had on academic wellbeing as conceptualised through the PERMA framework. In addition, by applying Weick's sensemaking framework, this study provides a unique perspective around how academics made sense of the sudden switch to online teaching and learning during COVID-19.

In recent decades, higher education institutions around the world have come to depend on complex digital infrastructures. In addition to registration, financial, and other operations platforms, digital classroom tools with built-in learning analytics capacities underpin many course delivery options. Taken together, these intersecting digital systems collect vast amounts of data from students, staff, and faculty. Educators' work environments-and knowledge about their work environments-have been shifted by this rise in pervasive datafication. In this paper, we overview the ways faculty in a variety of institutional status positions and geographic locales understand this shift and make sense of the datafied infrastructures of their institutions. We present findings from a comparative case study (CCS) of university educators in six countries, examining participants' knowledge, practices, experiences, and perspectives in relation to datafication, while tracing patterns across contexts. We draw on individual, systemic, and historical axes of comparison to demonstrate that in spite of structural barriers to educator data literacy, professionals teaching in higher education do have strong and informed ethical and pedagogical perspectives on datafication that warrant greater attention. Our study suggests a distinction between the understandings educators have of data processes, or technical specifics of datafication on campuses, and their understanding of big picture data paradigms and ethical implications. Educators were found to be far more knowledgeable and comfortable in paradigm discussions than they were in process ones, partly due to structural barriers that limit their involvement at the process level.

Graphical abstract:

In recent years, COVID-19 policy measures massively affected university teaching. Seeking an effective and viable way to transform their lecture material into asynchronous online settings, many lecturers relied on prerecorded video lectures. Whereas researchers in fact recommend implementing prompts to ensure students process those video lectures sufficiently, open questions about the types of prompts and role of students' engagement remain. We thus conducted an online field experiment with teacher students at a German university (N = 124; 73 female, 49 male). According to the randomly assigned experimental conditions, the online video lecture on topic Cognitive Apprenticeship was supplemented by (A) notes prompts (n = 31), (B) principle-based self-explanation prompts (n = 36), (C) elaboration-based self-explanation prompts (n = 29), and (D) both principle- and elaboration-based self-explanation prompts (n = 28). We found that the lecture fostered learning outcomes about its content regardless of the type of prompt. The type of prompt did induce different types of self-explanations, but had no significant effect on learning outcomes. What indeed positively and significantly affected learning outcomes were the students' self-explanation quality and their persistence (i.e., actual participation in a delayed posttest). Finally, the self-reported number of perceived interruptions negatively affected learning outcomes. Our findings thus provide ecologically valid empirical support for how fruitful it is for students to engage themselves in self-explaining and to avoid interruptions when learning from asynchronous online video lectures.

This paper presents an ethical framework designed to support the development of critical data literacy for research methods courses and data training programmes in higher education. The framework we present draws upon our reviews of literature, course syllabi and existing frameworks on data ethics. For this research we reviewed 250 research methods syllabi from across the disciplines, as well as 80 syllabi from data science programmes to understand how or if data ethics was taught. We also reviewed 12 data ethics frameworks drawn from different sectors. Finally, we reviewed an extensive and diverse body of literature about data practices, research ethics, data ethics and critical data literacy, in order to develop a transversal model that can be adopted across higher education. To promote and support ethical approaches to the collection and use of data, ethics training must go beyond securing informed consent to enable a critical understanding of the techno-centric environment and the intersecting hierarchies of power embedded in technology and data. By fostering ethics as a method, educators can enable research that protects vulnerable groups and empower communities.

Flexible learning addresses students' needs for more flexibility and autonomy in shaping their learning process, and is often realised through online technologies in a blended learning design. While higher education institutions are increasingly considering replacing classroom time and offering more blended learning, current research is limited regarding its effectiveness and modifying design factors. This study analysed a flexible study programme with 133 courses in a blended learning design in different disciplines over more than 4 years with a mixed-methods approach. In the analysed flexible study programme, classroom instruction time was reduced by 51% and replaced with an online learning environment in a blended learning format (N students = 278). Student achievement was compared to the conventional study format (N students = 1068). The estimated summary effect size for the 133 blended learning courses analysed was close to, but not significantly different from, zero (d = - 0.0562, p = 0.3684). Although overall effectiveness was equivalent to the conventional study format, considerable variance in the effect sizes between the courses was observed. Based on the relative effect sizes of the courses and data from detailed analyses and surveys, heterogeneity can be explained by differences in the implementation quality of the educational design factors. Our results indicate that when implementing flexible study programmes in a blended learning design, particular attention should be paid to the following educational design principles: adequate course structure and guidance for students, activating learning tasks, stimulating interaction and social presence of teachers, and timely feedback on learning process and outcomes.

In this study we measured the effect of COIL on intercultural competence development using a quasi-experimental design. Our sample consisted of 108 undergraduate students from two universities, one located in the Netherlands (NL) and one in the United States (US). Students' self-reported intercultural competence was measured using a pre-post survey which included the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) and Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). Qualitative data were collected to complement our quantitative findings and to give a deeper insight into the student experience. The data showed a significantly bigger increase in intercultural competence for the US experimental group compared to the US control group, supporting our hypothesis that COIL develops intercultural competence. This difference was not observed for the NL students, possibly due to the NL control group being exposed to other international input during the course.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41239-022-00373-3.

The influence of personality traits on educational outcomes has been widely recognized and studied. Research has explored its effects on factors such as student satisfaction, academic anxiety, and dishonesty, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there has been a lack of studies comparing the learning behaviors and performance of students with different personality traits during the pre, during, and post-COVID-19 lockdown periods. This study fills this gap by analyzing the differences in academic metrics, such as class grades and assignment submissions, among students with varying personality traits during different lockdown periods. Our research, based on a dataset of 282 graduate students in the USA, identified correlations and patterns between lockdown periods, personality traits, and academic metrics. For example, the class grades and the rate of late submissions were affected by different lockdown periods. Students with lower degree in extraversion and agreeableness made less attempts in assignment submissions. These findings can assist educators in identifying impacted students and developing effective teaching strategies at early stage in future incidents.

Digital games are considered relevant in higher education due to their ability to foster authentic, active and experiential learning opportunities that are of importance in engineering education. However, as a relatively new pedagogical tool, there is the need to understand the perceptions of engineering students as well as to identify factors that influence their adoption of games for learning. So far, only a few studies have investigated the perceptions of higher education students towards learning games and even fewer for engineering students. To bridge this research gap, the current study utilises a mixed-method research design to identify factors that influence the adoption of digital learning games by engineering students as well as their overall perceptions of the use of games for engineering education. Results from the analysed quantitative and qualitative data suggest that engineering students value fun and engagement as well as relevance to the curriculum as factors that would influence their intentions to use digital games for engineering education. Students also showed openness to the use of digital games for learning, but resistance to their use for assessment. These findings have implications for the design of games and classroom deployment of games, as these provide insights to game designers and educators on the factors to consider in the design and classroom deployment of games, respectively.

This paper aims to evaluate and discuss the digital competence of academics at universities, to identify challenges and define recommendations for policy. This study was conducted through collaboration between the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and Metared of the Universia Foundation, surveying 30,407 participants who present the perceptions of their own digital competence levels. These self-reflections took place in universities in seven countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Portugal, and used the Check-In tool, which consists of 22 questions based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators-or 'DigCompEdu' framework. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed, followed by a qualitative evaluation. Almost 70% of the academics have an average intermediate level of competence when the data is aggregated, with results varying in each DigCompEdu area according to the specific question asked. There is no significant difference between young and senior academics, as well as between men and women. The results present a discussion of whether the age and gender of educators and their work environment have an impact on their digital competence level, and at the same time highlights the areas in which educators perceive themselves to be most and least competent. It shows how the amount of institutional support that is offered affects the academics' perceptions of their level of digital competence. On the basis of the results, recommendations are presented for higher-education institutions, with the aim of supporting the professional development of their academics.