ICT in teacher education in an emerging developing country: Vietnam’s baseline situation at the start of ‘The Year of ICT’

In many developing countries, integration of ICT is a key component of an educational reform agenda. These countries can draw on a tradition of research in the developed world on factors determining integration of ICT in education. In this tradition, this study investigates the current situation of ICT integration in teacher education in Vietnam, an emerging developing country at the beginning of integrating ICT in education. 783 educators of five Vietnamese teacher education institutions completed a questionnaire. This analysis illuminates teacher educators’ access to ICT, their intensity of use, their related skills, and their confidence in using ICT, as well as their conceptions of learning. Exploratory multiple regression analysis addresses the importance of these different factors at the level of the educator for use of ICT in teaching practice. Even though teacher educators adhere to a constructivist approach to student learning, the use of ICT applications in teaching practice remains limited, mostly replacing traditional teaching practices. The factors currently determining the use of ICT in teaching practice are ICT skills (β = .522) and computer confidence (β = .158). Suggestions are provided for the country to move beyond an access and skills based approach of integration of ICT in education and for emerging developing countries to cease the promise of ICT for education.     

Sociomateriality and boundary objects in information systems development

Information systems (IS) development is a complex organisational activity involving multiple stakeholders who interact with various artefacts in order to facilitate understanding and cooperation across diverse knowledge domains. A considerable body of work has analysed such artefacts as boundary objects, focusing on their interpretive flexibility across communities of practice. Increasing interest in the materiality of organisational practices directs attention to how such objects result from the performance of sociomaterial relations. This paper draws on these two strands of research to complement the analysis of project-related artefacts as boundary objects with a sociomaterial perspective on such objects and the practices within which they are constituted. The contribution of this combined approach is illustrated using the findings of a longitudinal case study of IS development. We trace the production and use of a prototype, the various people and practices with which it was associated, the multiple sociomaterial configurations that constituted it as a boundary object, and the social and material consequences of its use. The utilisation of sociomateriality as a theoretical lens enables us to further our understanding of how project-related artefacts act as boundary objects, and in doing so, constitute IS development as a sociomaterial practice.     

Examining the designs of computer-based assessment and its impact on student engagement,satisfaction, and pass rates

Many researchers who study the impact of computer-based assessment (CBA) focus on the affordances or complexities of CBA approaches in comparison to traditional assessment methods. This study examines how CBA approaches were configured within and between modules, and the impact of assessment design on students' engagement, satisfaction, and pass rates. The analysis was conducted using a combination of longitudinal visualisations, correlational analysis, and fixed-effect models on 74 undergraduate modules and their 72,377 students. Our findings indicate that educators designed very different assessment strategies, which significantly influenced student engagement as measured by time spent in the virtual learning environment (VLE). Weekly analyses indicated that assessment activities were balanced with other learning activities, which suggests that educators tended to aim for a consistent workload when designing assessment strategies. Since most of the assessments were computer-based, students spent more time on the VLE during assessment weeks. By controlling for heterogeneity within and between modules, learning design could explain up to 69% of the variability in students' time spent on the VLE. Furthermore, assessment activities were significantly related to pass rates, but no clear relation with satisfaction was found. Our findings highlight the importance of CBA and learning design to how students learn online.     

Preparation versus practice: How do teacher education programs and practicing teachers align in their use of technology to support teaching and learning?

Researchers have called for renewed efforts in exploring both what knowledge should be taught in preservice teacher education programs with regard to technology, and how to best prepare teachers to effectively use that knowledge to support teaching and learning. This study compared the importance of technology topics from teacher educators and teachers’ perspectives. A two-phase mixed-methods research design utilized surveys and multiple case studies (interviews, documents) to collect data from both teacher educators and practicing teachers. Findings indicate that teachers and teacher educators demonstrated similarities in their views regarding the use of technology for personal productivity, information presentation, and the access and use of electronic resources to support teaching and learning. Teacher educators and teachers differed with regard to their use of technology for communication, analysis of student data, documenting professional growth, and facilitating higher-order thinking skills. Recommendations for how teacher education programs can incorporate and address technology topics in order to increase relevance for teachers are discussed.     

Investigating the interrelation between attitudes,learning readiness,and learning styles under virtual learning environment: a study among Indian students

ABSTRACT

Over the last few years there has been an increased emphasis on conceptualising, developing, and implementing virtual Learning initiatives across the Indian education sector. Effective and successful use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in academic setting requires identifying and solving many important social and behavioural issues. Without identifying and addressing these issues, their use can compound the mistakes of the past and leave the learner with a passive, un-engaging experience, leading to incomplete learning and low performance. Therefore, educators are required to recognise learner’s attitude, readiness, and learning style to take advantage of VLE. This study was conducted to find interrelationship of student attitude, readiness, and learning style towards the effective use of VLE. A total of 240 students who are using any form of VLE for their learning and research volunteered for the research, and the scales were filled via the convenience sampling method. The scales of learning readiness, attitude, and learning style were administered to the participants. The relationship among the variables of the research and the research hypotheses for the model were tested using different statistical tools like correlation, t-test and regression. The research result revealed that there is a correlation among learning readiness, attitude, and learning style, and each of these factors influence the effective use of VLE.     

How students and instructors using a virtual learning environment perceive the fit between technology and task

Abstract   Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are widespread in higher education today, typically used to deliver instructional materials and facilitate communication within a course. This study aimed to investigate the task–technology fit of VLEs for their two main groups of users: instructors and students, using the VLE WebCT. Task–technology fit, user satisfaction, attitude towards use and anticipated consequences of use were found to be significantly higher for students than for instructors. Instructors were found to have higher perceptions of social norms and higher perceptions of facilitating conditions than students. However, there was no difference between the instructors and students in level of utilization of the VLE. Students perceived that the VLE had higher impacts on their learning compared with instructors' perceptions regarding their teaching. These results suggest that despite high levels of support acknowledged by instructors, they may still be unsure about the contribution of VLEs to their teaching.     

Finding the crack in everything: Exploring the causal promise in science education

Abstract:

The author argues that there is a causal promise in pedagogic assumptions about the teaching and learning of science. That is, if teacher educators convince pre‐service teachers a concept is important, they will use it. As a result of a study of five beginning teachers, the author came to question this promise, through a critical ideological frame. In this study, the beginning teachers, who were taught critical science education as pre‐service students, claimed that they embraced this approach in their own teaching practices. However, on investigation, it was found that the teachers were not doing critical science education, as presented in their pre‐service course. This presented a paradox: What does it mean when the dualism of either taking up a theory or resisting it is shattered? Using a feminist post‐structuralist analysis to explore this paradox, the author critiques modernist notions of self, language, and desire to offer another way of making sense of what these teachers discussed. Upon reflection, the author outlines how feminist post‐structuralism has influenced her own practice teaching critical science education.     

Impact of an Integrated Methods Course on Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives of Curriculum Integration and Faculty Instructors’ Professional Growth

Abstract

Many of today's educators support integrated curriculum. To prepare preservice teachers to teach an integrated curriculum in elementary schools, a methods course that covered multiple disciplines was offered to preservice teachers registered in the teacher education program of a public university in the city of New York. Through observations and reflective journals, this study investigated how this course influenced preservice teachers’ perspectives on teaching science, mathematics, and music in an integrated way. Results indicate that preservice teachers’ understandings of curriculum integration were enhanced by the course. They also demonstrated high enthusiasm for curriculum integration during their teaching practice. Faculty instructors’ professional growth in the process of the planning and teaching of this course is also highlighted.     

A survey on pervasive education

Researchers and developers worldwide have put their efforts into the design, development and use of information and communication technology to support teaching and learning. This research is driven by pedagogical as well as technological disciplines. The most challenging ideas are currently found in the application of mobile, ubiquitous, pervasive, contextualized and seamless technologies for education, which we shall refer to as pervasive education. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the existing work in this field and categorizes it with respect to educational settings. Using this approach, best practice solutions for certain educational settings and open questions for pervasive education are highlighted in order to inspire interested developers and educators. The work is assigned to different fields, identified by the main pervasive technologies used and the educational settings. Based on these assignments we identify areas within pervasive education that are currently disregarded or deemed challenging so that further research and development in these fields are stimulated in a trans-disciplinary approach.     

Appropriating virtual learning environments: A study of teacher tactics

In research on Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), it has been shown that teachers often do not explore VLEs to their full potential and only adopt a limited set of the available tools. In this article, we approach teachers’ design of VLE learning activities as end user development. We describe a study of Toledo, a virtual learning environment used across several higher education institutions in Belgium. Using a combination of a semiotic, multimodal analysis and an in-depth user study with 24 respondents, we provide a detailed account of how teachers appropriate the learning environment to suit their needs. Combining the insights from the semiotic investigation and the user research, we analyze how user appropriations can be explained as practices emerging from both how the platform communicates, and contextual factors. The study showed that some teachers design very specific learning activities using the VLE - not by using the dedicated VLE tool, but by reinterpreting more generic tools. These appropriation tactics concentrate platform use in a limited number of tools, even when teachers do use more complex learning activities. These results have implications for the design of VLEs: rather than offering a wide range of tools targeted at specific learning activities, VLEs could concentrate on providing basic communication tools that are open for appropriation.     

Writing power into online discussion

This article considers the way in which control of interaction emerges as a function of personal agency and external factors in a group of students engaged in online asynchronous text-based communication in a distance education program. It is structured around the argument that control is partly related to the power that individuals have to give effect to their wishes, but also acknowledges that this sense of agency is always in relation to the powers of others and more structural constraints. A picture emerges of the choices students make in deciding when to initiate discussion and respond to others, and about decisions concerning whose messages they would read and when. The impact of other students, of online groups, and instructors seems to play an important role in determining how participants participate in online interaction. Consideration of broader issues shows how the context in which students engage in interaction impacts the nature and extent of that interaction. The article concludes that being aware, and taking advantage of the socially grounded nature of online interaction provides the basis from which educators can act to ensure that interaction in online learning communities is enabling for the learning of all students.     

The POD model: Using communities of practice theory to conceptualise student teachers’ professional learning online

This paper focuses on the broad outcomes of a research project which aimed to analyse and model student teachers’ learning in the online components of an initial teacher education course. It begins with discussion of the methodological approach adopted for the case study, which combined conventional data gathering techniques with those which are facilitated using the ‘panoptical’ tools of the VLE. The author has synthesized case study evidence, learning theory (Community of practice theory) and the advice of a key theoretician, to produce an original model of student teachers’ learning online within a professional online district (POD). The most distinctive feature of the POD model is the learning-curriculum dichotomy which recognises the potential of a VLE as a venue in which student teachers, working together in a community of practice, construct their own curriculum (both formal and informal/’hidden’. The paper also examines the key technological and pedagogical issues which affect students’ online learning.     

启发式教学程序设计

启发式教学,可提高学习的积极性和主动性,注重能力的培养,是一种好的教学方式。如何在枯燥、难懂的程序设计教学中运用好启发式教学,提高教学质量,许多教育工作者正在深入地研究和探索。通过实践探索出关于程序设计教学的“三步启发式教学法”,这三步分别是提出趣味程序问题、引导学生随着教师的讲解而思索和解决问题、精选作业来巩固知识。     

计算机课远程教育模式改革

随着网络技术的飞速发展,远程教育的教学模式的改革成为一个十分重要的问题,也是电视教育工作者应该不断研究和探索的教学方向。而计算机课程的教学改革因为其特殊性又是重中之重,也是远程教育教学改革的排头兵。对课程改革的教学方式、教学平台、考核方式的远程教育系统及其实施结构等方面进行了分析,结合现在学生的学习特点,针对计算机课程的特殊性,提出了一些独特的计算机教学和考核方式,为今后其他课程的改革也提供了一些经验。     

Perceived fit and satisfaction on web learning performance: IS continuance intention and task-technology fit perspectives

Virtual learning system (VLS) is an information system that facilitates e-learning have been widely implemented by higher education institutions to support face-to-face teaching and self-managed learning in the virtual learning and education environment (VLE). This is referred to a blended learning instruction. By adopting the VLS, students are expected to enhance learning by getting access to course-related information and having full opportunities to interact with instructors and peers. However, there are mixed findings revealed in the literature with respect to the learning outcomes in adopting VLS. In this study, we argue that the link between the precedents of leading students to continue to use VLSs and their impacts on learning effectiveness and productivity are overlooked in the literature. This paper aims to tackle this question by integrating information system (IS) continuance theory with task-technology fit (TTF) to extend our understandings of the precedents of the intention to continue VLS and their impacts on learning. By doing it, factors of technology-acceptance-to-performance, based on TAM (technology acceptance model) and TTF and post-technology-acceptance, based on expectation–confirmation theory, models can be included to test in one study. The results reveal that perceived fit and satisfaction are important precedents of the intention to continue VLS and individual performance. Later, a discussion and conclusions are provided. This study sheds light on learning system design as assisted by IS in VLE and can serve as a basis for promoting VLS in assisting learning.     

Microcomputers: An educational challenge

Findings from a series of studies indicated that educators perceived that computers will have a strong impact on curriculum and classroom instruction. Unfortunately, educators also expressed reluctance to incorporate educational change in their classrooms. Two major issues for teacher educators and teacher education programs are: (1) how best to prepare teachers to teach and use appropriate computer technology that requires new and different skills and (2) to develop quality teacher preparation programs.     

对高校服装设计专业教育教学的反思

由于受到"艺术至上论"和"技术至上论"两种不良教学思想的影响,使得我国高校服装设计教育出现毕业学生综合素质较差,学生知识结构单一,设计思路狭窄,与社会实际需求脱节现象严重等等弊端,我们要不断深刻反思,加以改进。     

Towards the reflective sports coach: issues of context, education and application

The current demands faced by elite sports coaches and the nature of their educational experiences are outlined. Examination of current approaches to coach education are considered in relation to research evidence which describes the key skills required in elite sports coaching. Recently, reflective practice has emerged as a key skill with which to enhance coach learning and increase the value of coaches' educational experiences. In tracing this emergence, this study analyses the use of reflective practice and learning strategies within six governing body award coaching programmes. Results indicate that none of the programmes examined contained structures or processes for directly teaching or overtly nurturing reflective skills. However, almost all programmes offered a potential structure for this through completion of a coaching log or undertaking a period of mentoring. Finally, recommendations are made to coach educators for developing reflection within coach education programme structures.     

软件外包人才实践教学体系探索

分析中国软件外包产业对各层次人才的需求,介绍杭州国际服务工程学院软件外包人才培养实践教学体系,阐述改革实践教学、加强学生实践创新能力、注重与产业互动、提升学生职业素养的几点做法,为培养适应市场和社会发展需求的高素质软件外包人才作出有益探索。     

信息安全专业网络与网络安全课程群建设

围绕北京工业大学信息安全专业建设情况,详细介绍网络与网络安全课程群设置与建设情况,探讨网络安全课程群的教学方法和实践教学改革思路,强调理论与实践相结合的教学方法,形成工程训练、自主学习、创新培养并举的特色教育理念,取得良好的教学效果。