Little experience with ICT: Are they really the Net Generation student-teachers?

The aim of this study is to investigate the complexity of past experiences with ICT, pedagogical beliefs, and attitude toward ICT in education that the Net Generation student teachers have about their intention to teach and learn with technology. This study has a particular focus on their lived experiences as school students where ICT related policies were actively enacted in Korea and Singapore for the past decade. To unpack the profile of the Net Generation student teachers, we selected six factors (i.e., past ICT experiences, personal computer use, constructivist belief, computer efficacy, attitude toward computer in education, and prospective computer use) related to ICT use and examined them empirically with 225 first- or second-year student teachers in Korea and Singapore. Overall, our findings indicate that student teachers in both countries tend to hold fairly constructivist beliefs and positive computer efficacy and attitude; attributes that teacher educators can tap on. Student teachers' perceptions about their use of computers for personal purposes and their past experiences with ICT were not relatively high compared to the other variables examined. This study also provides empirical evidence that students teachers who hold constructivist beliefs, have strong computer efficacy, and show positive attitudes toward computers in education are more interested in using computers in future teaching practices. As a conclusion, we argue that the profile of the Net Generation student teachers shows a more heterogeneous composition than we initially expected, and that teacher educators need to be cautious about making generational assumptions solely based on the structural and technological changes.     

Real-time collaboration of virtual laboratories through the Internet

Web-based learning environments are becoming increasingly popular in higher education. One of the most important web-learning resources is the virtual laboratory (VL), which gives students an easy way for training and learning through the Internet. Moreover, on-line collaborative communication represents a practical method to transmit the knowledge and experience from the teacher to students overcoming physical distance and isolation. Considering these facts, the authors of this document have developed a new dynamic collaborative e-learning system which combines the main advantages of virtual laboratories and collaborative learning practices. In this system, the virtual laboratories are based on Java applets which have embedded simulations developed in Easy Java Simulations (EJS), an open-source tool for teachers who do not need complex programming skills. The collaborative e-learning is based on a real-time synchronized communication among these Java applets. Therefore, this original approach provides a new tool which integrates virtual laboratories inside a synchronous collaborative e-learning framework. This paper describes the main features of this system and its successful application in a distance education environment among different universities from Spain.     

Current status,opportunities and challenges of augmented reality in education

Although augmented reality (AR) has gained much research attention in recent years, the term AR was given different meanings by varying researchers. In this article, we first provide an overview of definitions, taxonomies, and technologies of AR. We argue that viewing AR as a concept rather than a type of technology would be more productive for educators, researchers, and designers. Then we identify certain features and affordances of AR systems and applications. Yet, these compelling features may not be unique to AR applications and can be found in other technological systems or learning environments (e.g., ubiquitous and mobile learning environments). The instructional approach adopted by an AR system and the alignment among technology design, instructional approach, and learning experiences may be more important. Thus, we classify three categories of instructional approaches that emphasize the “roles,” “tasks,” and “locations,” and discuss what and how different categories of AR approaches may help students learn. While AR offers new learning opportunities, it also creates new challenges for educators. We outline technological, pedagogical, learning issues related to the implementation of AR in education. For example, students in AR environments may be cognitively overloaded by the large amount of information they encounter, the multiple technological devices they are required to use, and the complex tasks they have to complete. This article provides possible solutions for some of the challenges and suggests topics and issues for future research.     

Contrails of Learning: Using New Technologies for Vertical Knowledge-building

Higher education is still dominated by objectivist models of learning involving experts who convey information to novices. Educational research has shown that this model is less effective than more active, constructivist approaches that help learners to build new knowledge on existing knowledge. Although to a lesser extent, the objectivist model is perpetuated in graduate education, a context where students are, ironically, assumed to be working alongside their mentors and becoming part of the culture of research in their fields. Using a recent report issued by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, The Responsive Ph.D.: Innovations in Doctoral Education (2005), we argue that emerging technologies can help to create constructivist learning environments that challenge students to participate more actively in their own education. As illustration, we consider a graduate seminar on educational technologies that uses a wiki not only to engage students in knowledge-building but to link subsequent sections of the course into an ongoing, purposeful activity that functions both within and beyond the classroom. We explore some of the challenges we faced in getting students to take control of the wiki and overcome their existing assumptions about power and authority in graduate education.     

Norwegian students using digital artifacts in project-based learning

Abstract Discussion about information and communication technologies in education are often conducted at a general level. To increase understanding about new technologies and learning it is necessary to be more specific about what kinds of tools are being used and how they are related to knowledge construction by students within specific subject domains. Three Norwegian cases studies are reported so that different school cultures on how the learning environments are implemented are exposed. One important conclusion from the cross‐case analysis is the diversity among cases. What is the added value or changes that these technologies represent? Within a Norwegian context the paper shows how technology contributes to the design of new learning environments and how it might stimulate knowledge construction among students.     

Practices with technology: learning at the boundary between study and work

A study of part‐time student experience of university courses delivered using a range of technologies found that information and communication technology enabled students to move between study and work experience to the benefit of their learning in both contexts. Technology‐based study activities enabled students to participate in learning both as a student and as a member of a practice or work context. Given the increasingly pressured lives of all students in higher education and their aspirations for employment after graduation, this suggests that we would benefit from taking their relationship to work and professional practice into account more directly, in deciding how to integrate technology into their study experience. Teacher conceptions of technology as a tool primarily for information delivery and discussion need to expand to recognize that it can be used to construct learning experiences situated in roles, skills and interactive environments that enhance students' ability to make transitions across the boundaries between contexts of study and work.     

Personalising learning: Exploring student and teacher perceptions about flexible learning and assessment in a flipped university course

Flexible teaching and learning and the ‘flipped classroom’ are current buzzwords in higher education in Australia and elsewhere in the world. They are reflections of the progressive change in higher education over the last few decades towards more student-and learning centred pedagogies and practices, which are made possible through new technologies and more delivery of online and blended (combination of face-to-face and online components) courses. The increasing personalising and flexibility of learning in higher education requires equal attention spent to assessment practices to ensure a cohesive learning experience. This paper provides the findings and conclusions of a study about a flipped classroom, which also included flexible assessment components. The study showed that students enjoy and are more engaged in a flipped classroom, prefer a blended learning to a fully online learning approach, want and require clear structure and guidelines, and strongly value flexible assessment through more choices and control. The main concern of higher education teachers is the time commitment and lack of institutional support for flipping classrooms and providing flexible assessment. It is argued that personalising learning requires more personalising of assessment, and that it is mainly the responsibility of teachers and institutions to develop ‘flexible students’.     

The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation

Low-bridge approaches to multimedia in the writing classroom rely on familiar literacies, free consumer-level software, and remix uses of materials to facilitate student production of new media compositions. The projects shed light on reconfigurations of teaching environments that foreground the classroom as a construction site or studio space. The model features an emphasis on the interplay between technical things and human goals and concerns. This emphasis requires hands-on experiences working with technologies as part of classroom activities. Skill challenges yield high levels of motivation, and student composers experience flow-like states of creativity. The writing class as new media studio becomes a site of heightened personal engagement with learning that moves from the practical to the personal to the public. These practical approaches yield significant opportunities for students to develop new media literacies through the process of making projects. Examining these projects reveals the need to focus on a sense of personal agency and the possibilities for delivering social change when we talk about new media literacy.     

Digital creativity and transdisciplinarity at postgraduate level: the design and implementation of a transdisciplinary masters programme and its implications for creative practice

This article investigates how transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum design on a taught masters programme in creative technologies enhance digital creativity in students. Drawing on the experience of developing and running the Masters in Creative Technologies (MA/MSc) at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, Leicester, we explore a number of areas relating to transdisciplinary teaching and learning in higher education, including: how digital technologies enable students to work in a transdisciplinary manner; how working creatively with technology enables transdisciplinary modes of working; and the ways in which transdisciplinarity, enabled by digital technologies, has affected the creative practice of learners. The article discusses how the programme has developed a climate for creativity, and outlines how the knowledge and skills gained during a creative technologies-related transdisciplinary programme meet the needs of a changing workplace.     

Activity Theory and Higher Education: evaluating learning technologies

Abstract This paper examines current practice in the evaluation of learning technology in the UK and proposes a new approach informed by Activity Theory. It is based on our experiences of using Activity Theory to understand students' and lecturers' experiences of technology-based teaching environments. We discuss the activity of evaluating learning technologies in higher education, and some frameworks currently in use that assume an efficiency criteria for their evaluations. We use the evaluation criteria proposed by Breen et al . (2001) as a starting point for alternative criteria to review a number of examples of technology based teaching in Higher Education. We identify a need for a broader view of the outcomes and value of using learning technologies and relate this activity to a new approach based on an Activity Theory augmented view of evaluation.     

Implementing Web 2.0 technologies in higher education: A collective case study

Web 2.0 technologies are becoming more popular in the everyday lives of students. As a result, teachers and designers have begun to explore their use in formal education. This paper presents evaluation findings from a collective case study of six Web 2.0 implementations in Australian higher education. The research was undertaken as part of a larger study that sought to understand how today’s students use information and communication technologies to support their learning. Conducted across three universities, the research included a range of disciplines, class sizes and year levels. A common evaluation strategy was used in order to collect comparable data from which commonalities and differences could be identified. This paper provides an overview of the study, describes the methodology used, summarises the implementation experiences of staff and students involved and presents the key findings. The results suggest that most students had little prior experience with relevant technologies and that many struggled to see the value of using Web 2.0 technologies for learning and teaching, both of which have important implications for the design of appropriate learning tasks. While the argument can be made for improving the design through better task-technology alignment, this study also highlights inherent tensions between Web 2.0 and educational practices.     

Technology supported collaborative learning for higher education: Comparative case studies in Tanzania

To learn, a person has to be able to communicate effectively with others about the knowledge to be learned. Communication processes in classrooms can be supported by Group Support Systems (GSS), that enable students to communicate anonymously and in parallel. Group Support Systems experiences suggest that the technology increases observed learning, self-reported learning, on-task participation, and satisfaction with the learning experience. The authors discuss case studies from higher education in Tanzania. The particular benefit of GSS in this environment was threefold: First, it encouraged meaningful interaction among students and between students and teachers. Local culture normally hinders this. Second, it allowed all participants to discuss sensitive topics freely. Finally, it exposed students to collaborative technologies that are expected to play a pivotal role in (global) collaborative development activities. Clearly, the use of collaborative technologies enables the participation of a broader range of students. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Emerging university student experiences of learning technologies across the Asia Pacific

Three hundred students across eight countries and eleven higher education institutions in the Asia Pacific Region participated in two courses on climate change and disaster management that were supported by learning technologies: a satellite-enabled video-conferencing system and a learning management system. Evaluation of the student experience across the region proved a significant challenge, particularly the way the students conceived of the links between the technologies and their studies, and the way they approached the use of the technologies in connected and sometimes disconnected ways. This study examines the results of a quantitative investigation into the student experience and identifies key aspects of the structure of the variables used to evaluate the experience as well as identifying groups of students in the sample population who reported qualitatively different experiences. Significant outcomes reveal that cohesive conceptions of the learning technologies tend to be related to more effective ways of using both the video-conferencing and learning management systems, and that both at the level of variables, and at the level of groups of students, these experiences tend to be related to relatively higher outcomes. The results have important implications for both the design and teaching of technology-mediated courses and offer ideas for courses that combine systems such as learning management and video-conferencing.     

Embodied experiences of place: a study of history learning with mobile technologies

This paper reports an empirical study that takes a multimodal analytical approach to examine how mobile technologies shape students' exploration and experience of place during a history learning activity in situ. In history education, mobile technologies provide opportunities for authentic experiential learning activities that have the potential to re‐mediate students' understanding of space and place through enacted interaction, and to make the learning more memorable. A key question is how learners work with the physical and digital information in the context of that learning experience, and how this supports new experiences and understanding of space and place. Findings suggest that embodied mobile experiences foster the creation of both physical and digital markers, which were instrumental in concretizing the history experience and developing new narratives. The findings also show how different representational forms of digital information mediated interaction in specific ways and how digital augmentation can lead to conflation in student understanding of space and time. These findings inform our understanding of the value of mobile applications in supporting embodied learning experiences and provide key implications for pedagogical design, both in situ and back in the classroom.     

Promoting creative thinking through the use of ICT

Abstract A great deal has been written about the use of web-based technologies such as the Internet in promoting learning in education. In schools, research has focused primarily on social interaction and group work, student achievement levels and curriculum development. Very little study seems to have been brought to bear upon the promotion of creative thinking by the use of online technologies, and this paper attempts to contribute to this field of study. This paper reports on a pilot study which has investigated the creative impact of information and communication technology (ICT) in a rural primary school in South-west England. The school is unique because it provides a personal networked computer for each of its 41 Year 6 students (aged 10–11 years). A small group of students were interviewed about the learning activities they engaged in over the year, and this paper reports on initial findings with a special emphasis on creative working and thinking ( n  = 6). A model of creativity is presented with three discrete but related modes of activity — problem solving, creative cognition, and social interaction. The paper provides new findings about the nature of creativity in the context of computer based learning environments.     

Development of a contextual decision-making game for improving students' learning performance in a health education course

Heath education is an important component of the curriculum for fostering children's correct health knowledge and good daily life habits. However, educators have indicated that most children might fail to realize the importance and meaning of health education content owing to the lack of authentic scenarios and daily life experience. With the advancement of computer technologies, researchers have tried to develop multimedia learning content in order to improve students' learning performance. Among various technology-enhanced learning alternatives, digital game-based learning has been recognized as a highly potential approach to motivating students. However, several previous studies have indicated that, without properly incorporating learning content into game scenarios, the effectiveness of digital game-based learning might not be as good as expected in comparison with conventional technology-enhanced learning. In this study, a contextual digital game was developed for improving students' learning performance in an elementary school health education course. A quasi experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by situating the experimental group in the game-based learning scenario and the control group to learn with conventional e-books. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach not only improved the students' learning motivation, but also their learning achievement and problem-solving competences. Moreover, the significant two-way interaction suggested that the contextual game-based learning approach benefited the higher motivation students more than the lower motivation ones in terms of the advanced knowledge, showing the importance and potential of applying contextual games to health education activities.     

Deconstructing and reconstructing: Transforming primary science learning via a mobilized curriculum

The history of science education reform has been fundamentally centered around science curriculum development and implementation. The advent of mobile technologies has necessitated a re-examination of how students could better learn science through these 21st century tools. Conventional teaching materials may not prepare students to learn the inquiry way and to become self-directed and social learners who could learn “everywhere and all the time (seamlessly)” using mobile technologies. This paper is based on our first year of work in our mobile learning research project in transforming primary three science lessons into a “mobilized” curriculum for a classroom context in which students routinely use mobile technologies. Using an exemplar fungi topic, we discuss our approach as well as experiences in deconstructing and reconstructing an existing curriculum through a co-design approach with teachers in a Singapore local school. In doing so, we make a contribution to the methodology for developing mobilized science curricula for in-class learning that also extends to out-of-class learning.     

Who exactly is the moderator? A consideration of online knowledge management network moderation in educational organisations

In the knowledge society, the appearance and development of new networked working and learning environments is increasingly common. In the Accelera project, which is the basis for this paper, we have developed an online community of practice which enables experiences and knowledge to be shared between various educational agents, and analysis of the processes generated, in order to produce and validate a model for the networked creation and management of knowledge.     

Multi-computer systems for the support of inventive learning

One of the more intriguing challenges faced by educators is to help their students experience “inventive learning”. This is learning in which the acquisition of factual knowledge is enhanced by creatively extending and or synthesizing that knowledge. It is similar to the personal style of learning developed by intellectually curious adults, scholars, artists, and workers in research and development environments.Two factors that can help cultivate the practive of inventive learning in students are supportive social environments and supportive physical environments. The Solo/NET/works project at the University of Pittsburgh is currently developing a microcomputer-based system that uses multiprocess simulations to create such environments.Students use personal-level microcomputers to design local processes that they then run within a larger global-process framework. It is hypothesized that learning to deal creatively with the unforseen interactions that characterize such multiprocess simulations will foster inventive learning as a natural extension of solo-mode program design. Our experience in developing a low-cost version of the Solo/NET/works system will be described, and examples of the variety of multiprocess simulations that seem possible for the system will be given.