A web-based learning and assessment system to support flexible education

Abstract At a time where increased costs and resource constraints are experienced by many tertiary institutions globally, the pressure to find alternative methods to deliver teaching and assessment increases. Whilst the individual learning experience is paramount, the need to manage the numbers, resources and assessment provide an administrative overhead and headache to all teaching staff. With this predicament in mind a computer-supported learning system ( CECIL ) was developed. It is a web-based teaching and learning resource and administration system. This paper describes the CECIL structure and discusses the potential benefits that a university-wide resource management system may have in terms of the educational flexibility and resource sharing.     

A review of web-based collaborative learning: factors beyond technology

Abstract Web-based collaborative learning has a large potential for knowledge acquisition. However, it has different characteristics compared with conventional learning scenarios; especially with respect to the social communication situation, message exchange, cognitive load and participation of the learners. To cope with possible problems resulting from these characteristics suitable instructional means have to be considered, like collaborative learning methods, on-line moderation, appropriate learning tasks or computer-based visualisation tools.     

Implementing a CMC tutor group for an existing distance education course

Abstract ‘Artificial Intelligence for Technology’ (T396) is a distance learning course provided by the Open University of the UK using face‐to‐face tutorials. In 1997 a pilot study was undertaken of a computer‐mediated communication (CMC) tutor group which consisted of volunteers from around the UK. The student feedback raised a number of issues including: the need for a distinct function for the tutor group conference, the role of and demands on the tutor, and the benefits perceived by students. It is suggested that some issues arise from a conflict of cultures each with their own implicit assumptions. The traditional face‐to‐face tutorial model is sometimes at variance with the demands of the new CMC based tuition.     

Personal Digital Assistants in medical education and practice

Abstract This paper reports on a current project, KNOWMOBILE, that explores how wireless and mobile technologies, in this case how Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) may be useful in medical education and clinical practice, particularly to access net‐based information. KNOWMOBILE is a research collaboration involving academic and industrial partners which aims to support Problem‐Based Learning (PBL) and the integration of Evidence‐Based Medicine (EBM) in medical education reform in Norway. What does ‘just‐in‐time’ access to information mean in clinical settings? How can health professionals be helped with access to the most up‐to‐date medical information? From a preliminary analysis of the problems of Personal Digital Assistants in use — and nonuse — problems regarding information and communication infrastructure discussed that require work from a social historical interpretation of ‘infrastructures’ in order to enhance design perspectives and directions for future research. It is concluded that the PDAs should not be regarded as Personal Digital Assistants, but rather as gateways in complicated webs of interdependent technical and social networks.     

Web-based peer assessment: feedback for students with various thinking-styles

Abstract This study used aptitude treatment interaction design to examine how feedback formats (specific vs. holistic) and executive thinking styles (high vs. low) affect web-based peer assessment. An Internet-based (anonymous) peer-assessment system was developed and used by 58 computer science students who submitted assignments for peer review. The results indicated that while students with high executive thinking styles significantly improved over two rounds of peer assessment, low executive students did not improve through the cycles. In addition, high executive students contributed substantially better feedback than their low executive counterparts. In the second round of peer assessment, thinking style and feedback format interactively affected student learning. Low executive students receiving specific feedback significantly outperformed those receiving holistic feedback. In receiving holistic feedback, high executive thinkers outperformed their low executive counterparts. This study suggests that future web-based peer assessment adopts a specific feedback format for all students.     

Multimedia blogging in physical education: Effects on student knowledge and ICT self-efficacy

The main idea behind this study was to explore the educational potential of multimedia blogging for academic disciplines such as Physical Education (PE) that are not heavily based on written discourse and where multiple representations are important in learning. A class blog was utilized as a means for PE students to reflect on and showcase their performances of four specific basketball skills, through creating multimedia posts on these skills and receiving comments from their instructors, peers and an external expert. The effectiveness of multimedia blogging was evaluated, in terms of the acquisition of knowledge of the specific basketball skills and the self-efficacy in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as compared to that of an equivalent multimedia website which lacked the blogging component. Students’ responses to the blogging activity were also investigated. The sample were 70 undergraduate PE students who were assigned to two groups, one of which used the class blog (Group A, N = 35) and the other one the website (Group B, N = 35), both for 11 weeks. The study followed a pretest/posttest experimental design, taking before and after measurements of each group through written questionnaires. Participation in the blogging activity did have a positive impact on students’ ICT self-efficacy, given that Group A students exhibited significant gains in Internet self-efficacy as well as in multimedia processing and blogging self-efficacy, whereas those of Group B did not. Students’ responses to the blogging activity were also positive. However, within both groups no significant increase was found in students’ knowledge of the basketball skills. The implications of the findings for higher education and future research are discussed.     

Scalability of assessments of wiki-based learning experiences in higher education

In recent years, the focus on higher education learning has shifted from knowledge to skills, with interpersonal skills likely being the most difficult to assess and work with. Wikis ease open collaboration among peers. A number of these skills can be objectively assessed by using wikis in an educational environment: collaborative writing, conflict resolution, group management, leadership, etc. However, when the number of students increases, their interactions usually increase at a higher rate. Under these circumstances, traditional assessment procedures suffer from scalability problems: manually evaluating in detail the information stored in a wiki to retrieve objective metrics becomes a complex and time-consuming task. Thus, automated tools are required to support the assessment of such processes. In this paper we compare seven case studies conducted in Computer Science courses of two Spanish universities: Cádiz and Seville. We comment on their different settings: durations, milestones, contribution sizes, weights in the final grade and, most importantly, their assessment methods. We discuss and compare the different methodologies and tools used to assess the desired skills in the context of each case study.     

Investigating factors that influence social presence and learning outcomes in distance higher education

There are many factors that influence distance learning especially in higher education where collaborative and communicative discourse is necessary for pursuing knowledge. Social presence, among other factors, is an important concept to be facilitated, developed and sustained in distance higher education as it promotes and supports discourse based learning. This study examines the relationship among demographic and other variables, social presence and learning satisfaction. Results showed demographic variables, such as gender, online learning experience and work status were not significant factors in terms of influencing on either social presence or learning satisfaction. While media integration and instructor’s quality teaching were significant predictors of both social presence and learning satisfaction, interactivity among participants was a predictor of social presence but not of learning satisfaction. Along with the study findings, some implications were discussed for online learning practitioners in higher education setting.     

Comparison of teaching and learning outcomes between video-linked,web-based,and classroom tutorials: An innovative international study of profession education in physical therapy

The influence of interactive videoconferencing (IVC) on health professional educational outcomes between Canada and Hong Kong students was examined. Three formats were compared with respect to the instruction of two circumscribed intensive care topics. The formats included international video-linked (VL) tutorials in combination with web-based tutorials (VL + WB), web-based tutorials only (WB), and conventional classroom tutorials (C). Physical therapy students were assigned to one of the three groups at each site. The learning outcomes included grades and evaluation of the learning experience. The instructors provided written feedback on their experience with the instructional formats. Grades were comparable across instructional groups at both sites with the exception of one question for the HK group. The VL + WB groups valued learning from international peers. VL learning outcomes appeared to be comparable to conventional formats and may augment students’ learning satisfaction. Modifications are recommended to accommodate differences in the language proficiency of students. The instructors acknowledged that preparation for VL tutorials was unique and challenging. Further research targeted at cross cultural interaction via IVC is needed to determine whether quality of learning outcomes are topic dependent. Cross cultural IVC appears to be both a distinct teaching as well as learning experience for health professional students.     

A strategy for educational technology in higher education

Abstract  Setting an institutional strategy for technology in higher education will involve both high-level political commitment and varying degrees of financial investment, depending on the extent of structures already in place. In return for this investment, institutions will expect to see significant quantifiable gains in efficiency over relatively short time periods. This article outlines a realistic approach to ensuring that such gains are made without compromising either teaching quality, or the research base.     

Invisible success: Problems with the grand technological innovation in higher education

This paper investigates a ‘grand’ educational technology innovation through theoretical lenses inspired by 10 and 11 work. Through taking this approach it is possible to show how ideas about the form of the innovation and perceptions of its ultimate ‘success’ or ‘failure’, varied between stakeholder groups. The project was pedagogically effective and popular with students, but was difficult to ‘sell’ to academics, had no senior management sponsor, and was unable to bring about cultural change in the institution despite the capital funding designed to do just that. Although many pedagogical lessons were learned, and have since been applied in other learning spaces around the host campus and elsewhere, these successful disseminations of changed practice were not in accordance with the objectives of key stakeholders. Therefore, they went unconsidered when decisions were taken about the project’s sustainability: hence the notion of ‘invisible success’. The project’s ‘failure’ is only apparent when viewed from certain perspectives; nevertheless, these perspectives are those of the powerful (or in 8 and 9 terms, those possessing capital and academic power) and are the consequence of deeply-rooted structural features in HE, which include funding models, risk-averseness, and fragmented responsibilities.     

New technology trends in education: Seven years of forecasts and convergence

Each year since 2004, a new Horizon Report has been released. Each edition attempts to forecast the most promising technologies likely to impact on education along three horizons: the short term (the year of the report), the mid-term (the next 2 years) and the long term (the next 4 years). This paper analyzes the evolution of technology trends from 2004 to 2014 that correspond to the long-term predictions of the most recent Horizon Report. The study analyzes through bibliometric analysis which technologies were successful and became a regular part of education systems, which ones failed to have the predicted impact and why, and the shape of technology flows in recent years. The study also shows how the evolution and maturity of some technologies allowed the revival of expectations for others. The analysis here, which focuses on educational applications, offers guidelines that may be helpful to those seeking to invest in new research areas.     

Serious games for higher education: a framework for reducing design complexity

Abstract Serious games open up many new opportunities for complex skills learning in higher education. The inherent complexity of such games, though, requires large efforts for their development. This paper presents a framework for serious game design, which aims to reduce the design complexity at conceptual, technical and practical levels. The approach focuses on a relevant subset of serious games labelled as scenario‐based games. At the conceptual level, it identifies the basic elements that make up the static game configuration; it also describes the game dynamics, i.e. the state changes of the various game components in the course of time. At the technical level, it presents a basic system architecture, which comprises various building tools. Various building tools will be explained and illustrated with technical implementations that are part of the Emergo toolkit for scenario‐based game development. At the practical level, a set of design principles are presented for controlling and reducing game design complexity. The principles cover the topics of game structure, feedback and game representation, respectively. Practical application of the framework and the associated toolkit is briefly reported and evaluated.     

Podcasting: A new technological tool to facilitate good practice in higher education

The literature has frequently highlighted the usefulness of podcasting in higher education; however, there is an important gap between the theory on good practice in higher education and empirical studies about podcasting. With this in mind, we carried out an empirical study on an undergraduate degree course in Information Systems Management. The study consisted of the creation and broadcast of 13 podcasts, distributed over four months in which ninety distance students took part. The analysis follows the suggestions proposed in previous literature about the evaluation of technologies in a university learning environment. The findings, discussed within the framework of principles for good practice in higher education, suggest some interesting issues in distance courses, such as: (1) podcasting is a powerful tool as a complement to the traditional resources on a course, but not a substitute for them; (2) the characteristics of podcasting increase the impression of permanent contact between students and teachers, increasing students’ motivation; (3) the use of podcasting allows for a diverse range of student skills and learning methods. Other secondary findings are discussed and some suggestions for future research are proposed at the end of this paper.     

Toward online education for fingerprint recognition: A proof-of-concept web platform

Recent advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have pushed education systems into the online paradigm. Although fingerprint recognition has received considerable attention from researchers, the concept of creating online or distance education systems for fingerprint recognition systems is a valid problem that requires further investigation. This article addresses the problem and presents a web platform for online education of a fingerprint recognition system. This study focused on the technical design and implementation of the web platform solely as a proof of concept to illustrate the possibility of creating distance education for fingerprint recognition. The developed platform offers students a way to gain knowledge about the full range of fingerprint recognition system technology. The significance of using a web platform stems from the need to supplement students’ theoretical knowledge with practical hands-on experience with information security in general and with fingerprint recognition in particular. Demonstrations such as fingerprint image enhancement and fingerprint feature extraction are included in the current platform prototype. Plots of fingerprint recognition performance curves such as false match rate (FMR) and false non-match rate (FNMR) as functions of the matching threshold curve, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and the detection error trade-off (DET) curve are plotted as part of the platform. From a technical viewpoint, the platform was successfully implemented; however, its educational impact needs further evaluation.     

Inclusiveness and ICT in education: a focus on gender, ethnicity and social class

Abstract This paper presents the results of a literature review on gender, ethnic and socioeconomic status differences related to ICT in primary and secondary education. The review was conducted in order to develop an index for analysing the inclusiveness of educational ICT applications. The research question was: ‘How and to what extent do the characteristics of educational ICT tools enhance or inhibit learning for different groups of students?’ A discussion of both research- and practice-oriented literature results in a proposal for such an index. The paper concludes with a discussion of various dilemmas associated with the idea of the index, and of the ways in which it may be used in research and educational practice.     

Blended learning in higher education: Students’ perceptions and their relation to outcomes

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide educators and learners with an innovative learning environment to stimulate and enhance the teaching and learning process. In this context, novel educational concepts such as blended learning are being developed. In the present paper, we present the results obtained from a blended learning experience carried out at the University of Granada. A total of 17 groups took part, with 1431 students registered for the 2009–2010 academic year. In this study, we use objective outcomes and the students’ perceptions regarding the blended learning activities performed. The study shows that the use of blended learning has a positive effect in reducing dropout rates and in improving exam marks. Moreover, the students’ perceptions on blended learning are interrelated, with their final marks depending on the blended learning activities, and on the students’ age, background and class attendance rate.     

Using an adapted,task-level technology acceptance model to explain why instructors in higher education intend to use some learning management system tools more than others

Instructors in higher education perform some instructional tasks much more often using a learning management system (LMS) tool than other tasks. In studies that aim to explain these differences, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) perspective is missing. In this study, an adapted, task-level TAM questionnaire was used to measure task importance, task performance, LMS usefulness, LMS ease of use, and intention to use an LMS for 18 different instructional tasks among 180 instructors at a Dutch research university. The results show that low intention to use an LMS can be explained by (1) low task importance or performance, and/or (2) low LMS usefulness, and/or (3) low LMS ease of use level. The LMS tools and tasks within each of the three groups were not related substantively. This raises a question regarding whether an instructor's LMS intention level can best be explained by the combination of a specific tool, a specific instructional task, and a specific user interface.