Social media in collaborative learning in higher education : a qualitative case study of teachers’ and students’ views

In this study, it was investigated how social media are used in collaborative learning in higher education and also how it can be better used in teaching and learning according to the students and teachers. The research questions of this study were: 1) How social media are used in collaborative learning by the teachers and students in higher education for educational purposes? 2) How could social media be used in collaborative learning process in higher education, according to the students and teachers? Qualitative interviews were conducted to collect the data from ten students and five teachers from the different faculties of University of Lapland and Lapland University of Applied Sciences. In conclusion it was found that, social media were not much used in collaboration with teachers by the students of both institutions. In case of teachers, it was found that all of them were using social media in their collaborative ways of teaching design and they have found social media as useful tool to deliver their teaching. Most of the students and all the teachers found social media to be useful in their teaching and learning. But there were also some challenges faced and areas of improvements identified by them. Thus the higher educational institutions should understand the importance of using social media in teaching and learning and take initiatives to overcome the current challenges identified by the students and teachers

Supporting Pedagogical Practices Through the Interactive Learning Network (ILN)

Led by Mr. James Henri, Deputy Director of CITE, the IPPO project is co-investigated by six staff members of the Division of Information & Technology Studies. Like in the IPPO project, the seminar will be run as a team effort of the IPPO team.This seminar is co-organised with the Faculty of Education Research Office In this seminar, the speakers share with participants their experiences of implementing different online pedagogical practices using the ILN, the online learning support platform that CITE has developed. The speakers will draw on a collaborative action research project, the Innovative Pedagogical Practices Online (IPPO) project, funded by HKU SPACE Research Grant and launched early in 2003 within the Division of IT&S. Objectives of the study included investigating the learning styles of part-time students in the BEd ITE and LIS programs to enhance motivation and performance. Innovative practices were developed and trialed using the ILN platform to investigate how self-directed BEd students are in their learning. The ILN is a purpose built Content and Learner Management System allowing online delivery and access to materials. It is also a community-building environment where teachers/students work as teams and engage in reflective, collegial patterns of work. It facilitates both cognitive and social scaffolding, enabling educators and students to become progressively more involved in the community to sustain their commitment and interests. This environment is designed to support academic programs that rely heavily on pedagogies that emphasize the emergence and growth of autonomous, collaborative learning, rather than teacher-directed delivery of learning materials. This presentation will outline overall pedagogical design and showcase three examples of IPPO highlighting the ILN features used. The various approaches to integrating ILN to support pedagogy, peer and student-teacher interaction, and scaffolding will be demonstrated. Lecturers will provide an assessment of how well learning outcomes were achieved in their IPPO environments.published_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon

Discussing international perspectives on Open Learning in Brazil: educational politics and pedagogical principles

This paper aims to present some of the new tendencies in Open Learning in the context of international online higher education. These tendencies work as a basis for a discussion of the role of e-learning in online higher education in Brazil. The use of open source technologies and the constant search for quality and innovative pedagogies in the teaching and learning process constitute a new trend in international distance education. The main concern nowadays seems to be with ‘quality’ and ‘widening participation’, which result in initiatives such as ‘Open Educational Resources’. In Brazil, the creation of the Brazilian Open University (UAB) would appear to be consistent with these tendencies. The challenge now is to be able to set up a system that attends to national needs while being open to international tendencies. This paper aims to explore some of these issues, and also to present the most recent freeware technologies used for the purpose of enhancing open learning initiatives

Service Platform for Converged Interactive Broadband Broadcast and Cellular Wireless

A converged broadcast and telecommunication service platform is presented that is able to create, deliver, and manage interactive, multimedia content and services for consumption on three different terminal types. The motivations of service providers for designing converged interactive multimedia services, which are crafted for their individual requirements, are investigated. The overall design of the system is presented with particular emphasis placed on the operational features of each of the sub-systems, the flows of media and metadata through the sub-systems and the formats and protocols required for inter-communication between them. The key features of tools required for creating converged interactive multimedia content for a range of different end-user terminal types are examined. Finally possible enhancements to this system are discussed. This study is of particular interest to those organizations currently conducting trials and commercial launches of DVB-H services because it provides them with an insight of the various additional functions required in the service provisioning platforms to provide fully interactive services to a range of different mobile terminal types

Dual use of budgeting in uncertainty contexts: Explorative study of senior sales and marketing managers

Based on prior accounting literature and Simons’ framework (1990, 1995), the authors explore the use of budgets in PEU situations in a qualitative study. They conducted a field-based study and interviewed 14 senior sales and marketing managers from various industries, using projective techniques imported from psychological research.budgeting; uncertainty; perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU); interactive control system (ICS); sales and marketing managers

Masters' courses in the education of adults in the UK

This is a paper from the Academic Papers Online series from ESCalate, written by John Field, Richard Dockrell, Peter Gray in 2005. Universities provide a range of advanced qualifications for professionals who support adult learners. Describing and evaluating this body of work, though, poses something of a challenge. The field of continuing education is a broad one, which has been widened further by current government policies promoting lifelong learning, as well as by increased concerns for quality improvement among providers in further and higher education. Qualifications are accordingly offered under a variety of different titles: many universities now offer taught postgraduate courses in areas such as lifelong learning, continuing education, post-compulsory education and training or adult education. This report examines the background against which these courses developed, and explores a number of curricular and organisational issues associated with them. It includes, as an appendix, a list of courses currently offered in British higher education institution

From Interactive Open Learner Modelling to Intelligent Mentoring: STyLE-OLM and Beyond

STyLE-OLM (Dimitrova 2003 International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 13, 35–78) presented a framework for interactive open learner modelling which entails the development of the means by which learners can inspect, discuss and alter the learner model that has been jointly constructed by themselves and the system. This paper outlines the STyLE-OLM framework and reflects on the key challenges it addressed: (a) the design of an appropriate communication medium; this was addressed by proposing a structured language using diagrammatic presentations of conceptual graphs; (b) the management of the interaction with the learner; this was addressed by designing a framework for interactive open learner modelling dialogue utilising dialogue games; (c) the accommodation of different beliefs about the learner’s domain model; this was addressed with a mechanism for maintaining different views about the learner beliefs which adapted belief modal logic operators; and (d) the assessment of any resulting improvements in learner model accuracy and learner reflection; this was addressed in a user study with an instantiation of STyLE-OLM for diagnosing a learner’s knowledge of finance concept, as part of a larger project that developed an intelligent system to assist with learning domain terminology in a foreign language. Reviewing follow on work, we refer to projects by the authors’ students and colleagues leading to further extension and adoption of STyLE-OLM, as well as relevant approaches in open learner modelling which have cited the STyLE-OLM framework. The paper points at outstanding research challenges and outlines future a research direction to extend interactive open learner modelling towards mentor-like intelligent learning systems