Making the technology fit the pedagogy

In this paper we explore whether technology provides the teaching profession with a new form of pedagogy, often referred to as ‘e-learning’, or is merely an attempt to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Salmon’s e-tivities, Laurillard’s conversational framework and others have helped to further the case in favour of a new pedagogy. Distance learning particularly has been has able to derive considerable benefit from the opportunities involved. However, is ‘the Internet’ nothing more than an all-embracing metaphor for a multitude of traditional teaching locations, for example the classroom, campus and the lecture theatre? We find these ‘learning environments’ can exist wherever we want them, as virtual, mobile, personal or even real locations. Has the online world bridged the gap for distance teaching, drawing it closer to traditional forms of teaching, and therefore traditional pedagogy? Does it mean that there are more opportunities for HEIs to move into distance learning provision

Using tablets for e-assessment of project-based learning

Technology is confirmed to be an effective tool for assessment and feedback, in particular for computer-assisted assessment (Irons, 2008; Challis, 2005), producing feedback (Heinrich et al., 2009) and publishing feedback (Bloxham and Boyd, 2007; Denton, 2003; Denton et al., 2008). The arrival of affordable mobile devices has introduced a new means for enhancing the above practices (Fabian and MacLean, 2014; Plimmer and Mason, 2006; Salem, 2013). Student preferences to smart phones and tablet devices steer the technological innovation towards ubiquitous mobile connectivity. Inspired by the benefits of such life and study style, educators have started exploring the use of these technologies. Tablet computers prove to become their preferred choice as they resolve some of the limitations associated with the design, readability and comprehensiveness of the feedback for mobile devices with smaller screens (Strain-Seymour, 2013, Rootman-le Grange and Lutz, 2013). This paper reports how tablets and the Form Connext mobile app have been used for engaging a sample of 300 Business Studies students in in-class online assessment and designing and providing timely comprehensive feedback. The study has followed an action research strategy that is grounded on a continuous and dynamic process of reflection (Carr and Kemmis, 2003) on the effectiveness of assessment of student projects documented electronically through wikis and electronic portfolios. It refines the use of tablets for summative and formative assessment of the project-based learning tasks through three review cycles, each of which incorporated a Reflection and Improvements stage. The experience resulted in enhancement of assessment strategies and contribution to the development of contemporary models of learning through effective assessment and feedback (Carr and Kemmis, 2003). The results of the work confirm that tablet computers are an effective tool in assessing e-materials in larger classes for two primary reasons. Firstly, design of e-forms facilitates rigorous process of reflection and understanding assessment criteria that in turn benefit students when preparing for the assessment. Hence, legible and detailed feedback is produced anytime anywhere with synchronous updates within the marking team. Secondly, students benefit from immediate comprehensive feedback allowing them to reflect on and improve their understanding of subject matters, as well as to engage in discussing specific details of the work that are captured through the form. An unexpected outcome was the enhanced reputation and respect to the tutors amongst students, the triggering of student curiosity and enthusiasm in applying similar approach to their own work. The diffusion for the practice amongst other units and identifying other purposes for which the mobile app could be used are also seen as achievements exceeding the expectations of the project team

Technologies for engineering education

Within any discipline, teaching involves a distinctive relationship between content, pedagogical approaches and the use of technologies. In engineering education, the content includes mathematical symbolic and diagrammatic forms, traditionally taught using handwritten and talk-based approaches which have not been easily accommodated by keyboard-centric digital technologies. In 2012, a pilot project involving staff in the AUT School of Engineering was initiated to explore the use of digital pen-enabled technologies. This paper reviews educational research supporting the use of these technologies in an engineering education context and reports on findings from the project. The paper also discusses ways of integrating digital pen-enabled technologies with other developments in educational technology to enhance traditional pedagogical approaches to the teaching of engineering, and to facilitate progressive development of transformative approaches

E-Government, Information and Communications Technology Support and Paperless Environment in Nigerian Public Universities: Issues and Challenges

The move toward a paperless environment has become the driving force behind sustainable development and e-government usage in many public sector institutions. It is equally at the heart of the government campaign to make service delivery in public institutions cost-effective, seamless, and efficient. The universities are supposed to be at the front-line of this campaign due to their operations which involve the heavy usage of papers at huge costs. Thus, making it important for university management to provide ICT support in order to promote paperless exchange of information and presentations. It is, however, understood recently, that there are issues which surround the low usage of ICT among university management and ultimately paperless environment. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to conceptually discuss the mode of university operations and how paperless environment can be attained. The paper highlights the cyclical order of document generation, document management and document sharing as the process in which a paperless environment can take place within both the academic and the administrative settings in the university. The paper further discusses the challenges hindering the attainment of paperless environment among which are infrastructural gap, inadequate ICT support and attitudinal challenge. It is recommended that for the smooth operation of a paperless environment, the government must bridge the infrastructure gap especially power as well as train and retrain staff on the path ICT usage

Design And Development of Online Admission System For Alquds Open University in Palestine

Student admissions are playing very important role in major activities of the any university as the basic requirement of the university is students and without students university cannot survive. An inefficient admission application system may reduce the number of admitted student in the esteemed university because if the admission system is slow and having many delays in the process. When considering Palestine students this is unfortunate, but when considering Palestinian international students it can mean the difference between success and failure because of the large sums of money each brings to the university’s economy. This project is to design and develop the under-graduate Palestinian international and local admission process at the University of Alquds Open University to develop an easy to use system that will significantly quicken and simplify this process. The interviews were conducted for the data collection, after that the design was made in UML for meeting the requirement of admission system. This admission system was developed by using JSP and MySQL. The system usefulness, quality of information and quality of interface were evaluated by distributing questionnaire to users and analysis on the data collected from questionnaire was analyzed by using SPSS software

Using technology to encourage student engagement with feedback: a literature review

This article presents a review of the literature over the past 10 years into the use of technological interventions that tutors might use to encourage students to engage with and action the feedback that they receive on their assessment tasks. The authors hypothesise that technology has the potential to enhance student engagement with feedback. During the literature review, a particular emphasis was placed on investigating how students might better use feedback when it is published online. This includes where an adaptive release technique is applied requiring students to submit an action plan based on their feedback to activate the release of their grade, and electronic generation of feedback using statement banks. Key journals were identified and a snowball technique was used to select relevant literature. The use of technology to support and enhance student learning and assessment is well documented in the literature, and effective feedback practices are similarly well published. However, in terms of the use of technology to support and enhance feedback processes and practices (i.e. production, publication, delivery and students making use of feedback through technology), we found the literature to be limited

The Paperless Organization: Improved processes and reduction in paper usage through wider use of electronic documents and tablet computers

This qualitative, descriptive research study aimed to investigate the way in which documents were handled in an organization in relation to how much paper was wasted, and opportunities presented to save paper via new technologies. For the purposes of this study, an example organization was chosen, being the University of Waikato in New Zealand. However, the findings of the investigations comprising this thesis can be considered generalizable across organization types. The results of the investigations revealed that the university wasted a great deal of paper in the process of performing the three example activities: producing the university calendar, distributing meeting agendas and processing PhD student reports. These activities have been chosen, as an example of other practices, as they involve documents processing, several committees, and diverse types of tasks and includes staff and students working in different positions. This wastage was as a direct result of the inherent drawbacks of working with paper documents. These drawbacks were found to include: the high cost of producing, storing and maintaining paper documents, the risk of lost documents, the difficulties in sharing and tracking the documents, problems of security and delays caused by difficulty accessing the documents in a timely fashion. It was therefore suggested that working electronically would reduce paper wastage, and streamline the performance of the activities in the process. Specifically, this thesis presents the tablet computer as the key to moving organizations towards their paperless futures. The research explores the potential of using tablet devices in general and the specialist facilities of the iPad in particular as an example of modern technology. Participants in the unstructured qualitative research interviews stressed the functionality provided by the iPad, which overcomes many of the drawbacks of using paper documents. They also highlighted the effectiveness and advantages of using an electronic system as comparing to the current paper-based system. The final investigation presented in this thesis highlights the tools and applications of the iPad most promising for helping to reduce the use of paper documents in the workplace

APPLICATIONS PLATFORM FOR ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS THROUGH MOBILE COMPUTING

In this paper, an application platform for delivering academic documents in electronic format through  mobile computing is presented. The platform is service-oriented students, where they can make the  request for an academic document such as: proof of enrollment, credits studied, average, among  others. A request can be issued from a mobile device via the GSM network using the short text  messages service (SMS). Also from an Android/iOS based application designed to connect through a  wireless network which shall request the document through a Web Service. The cost of transaction  will be charged from credit line applicant or via the PayPal system. Ending with the creation of the  PDF document (electronically signed) and sent to the email of student. SEDE will provide benefts to  both: users and service providers, as they can save on costs, improve response times for applications  and mainly the ecological impact by using less paper. KEYWORDS: Electronic document, Mobile Computing, Web Services, GSM, SMS, Android, iOS.En este artículo se presenta el diseño de una plataforma de aplicaciones para la emisión de documentos académicos de manera electrónica a través de computación móvil. La plataforma está orientada al servicio de los alumnos, donde puedan realizar la solicitud de algún documento académico tales como: constancias de inscripción, créditos cursados, promedio general, entre otros. Una solicitud puede emitirse desde un dispositivo móvil a través de la red GSM, mediante mensajes de texto cortos (SMS). También desde una aplicación basada en Android/iOS diseñada para conectarse a través de una red inalámbrica la cual solicitará el documento a través de un Web Service. El cobro de la transacción se descontará del crédito de la línea telefónica del solicitante o por el sistema de cobros PayPal©, fnalizando con la creación del documento en formato PDF (frmado electrónicamente) para su envío al correo electrónico del solicitante. SEDE aportará benefcios tanto a los usuarios como a los proveedores del servicio, ya que podrán ahorrar en costos, mejorar los tiempos de respuesta de las solicitudes y principalmente el impacto ecológico al utilizar menos papel.PALABRAS CLAVES: Documento electrónico, Cómputo Móvil, Servicios Web, GSM, SMS, Android, iOS.