What Drives Students' Loyalty-Formation in Social Media Learning Within a Personal Learning Environment Approach? The Moderating Role of Need for Cognition

Our study analyzes an educational experience based on the integrated use of social media within a higher education course under a personal learning environment approach and investigates the factors that determine students' loyalty to social media learning. We examined the moderating role of need for cognition (NFC) in students' formation of attitudes, satisfaction, and loyalty toward this learning experience. The results indicate that NFC has an influence on these variables, significantly moderating how loyalty toward social media learning is formed. For high-NFC students, satisfaction with the learning experience is the most important variable to explain loyalty; whereas for low-NFC students, attitudes have a stronger effect. Different strategies are suggested, according to the learners' NFC levels, for increasing the use of social media in personal learning environments. Practical implications for improving the integration of such informal resources into formal education are discussed.Junta de Andalucía – Programa Andaluz de I + D P12 SEJ 259

Smartphones give you wings: pedagogical affordances of mobile Web 2.0

Built on the foundation of four years of research and implementation of mobile learning projects (mlearning), this paper provides an overview of the potential of the integration of mobile web 2.0 tools (based around smartphones) to facilitate social constructivist pedagogies and engage students in tertiary education. Pedagogical affordances of mobile web 2.0 tools are evaluated, and student usage and feedback is outlined via an interactive multimedia timeline (using YouTube videos) illustrating how these mobile web 2.0 pedagogical affordances have transformed pedagogy and facilitated student engagement in a variety of course contexts. A rubric for evaluating appropriate smartphone choices is provided, and a model for implementing mobile web 2.0 pedagogical integration is presented. Keywords: mlearning, mobile web 2.0

Making the Connection: Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance and Its Relevance to the Use of a Virtual Classroom in Postgraduate Online Teacher Education

This study explored the use of the Web-based virtual environment, Adobe Connect Pro, in a postgraduate online teacher education programme at the University of Waikato. It applied the tenets of Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance (Moore, 1997) in examining the efficacy of using the virtual classroom to promote quality dialogue and explored how both internal and external structural elements related to the purpose and use of the classroom affected the sense of learner autonomy. The study provides an illustration of the complexity of the relationship that exists between the elements of Moore’s theory, and how the implementation of an external structuring technology such as the virtual classroom, can have both positive impacts (dialogue creation) and negative impacts (diminished sense of learner autonomy). It also suggests that, although Moore’s theory provides a useful conceptual “lens” through which to analyse online learning practices, its tenets may need revisiting to reflect the move toward the use of synchronous communication tools in online distance learning

Home Economics in the 21st Century : A Cross Cultural Comparative Study

This article is reprinted with permission from the International Federation for Home Economics, August 2010Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Personalised Learning: Developing a Vygotskian Framework for E-learning

Personalisation has emerged as a central feature of recent educational strategies in the UK and abroad. At the heart of this is a vision to empower learners to take more ownership of their learning and develop autonomy. While the introduction of digital technologies is not enough to effect this change, embedding the affordances of new technologies is expected to offer new routes for creating personalised learning environments. The approach is not unique to education, with consumer technologies offering a 'personalised' relationship which is both engaging and dynamic, however the challenge remains for learning providers to capture and transpose this to educational contexts. As learners begin to utilise a range of tools to pursue communicative and collaborative actions, the first part of this paper will use analysis of activity logs to uncover interesting trends for maturing e-learning platforms across over 100 UK learning providers. While personalisation appeals to marketing theories this paper will argue that if learning is to become personalised one must ask what the optimal instruction for any particular learner is? For Vygotsky this is based in the zone of proximal development, a way of understanding the causal-dynamics of development that allow appropriate pedagogical interventions. The second part of this paper will interpret personalised learning as the organising principle for a sense-making framework for e-learning. In this approach personalised learning provides the context for assessing the capabilities of e-learning using Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development as the framework for assessing learner potential and development

TOWARDS A FUTURISTIC EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Majority of the nations of the world were colonized and went through wars at various times, but had turned around their fortunes through economic and educational reforms. In Nigeria however, there had been series of educational reforms from: 7/6-5-4 to 6-3-3-4 and now 9-3-4 system. Similarly, the recent reform in the higher education sector which has resulted into the conversion of the nation’s higher technical educational institutions to degree awarding universities, which arose largely from the disparity between the graduates of the two institutions in the labor market and the fallen standard of education. This paper presents a critical review of the various educational reforms with a view to designing a viable educational model based on the examples of some developed and developing nations. It attempts to proffer solutions to some of the existing problems

Learning design – making practice explicit

New technologies have immense potential for learning, but the sheer variety possible also creates challenges for learners in terms of navigating through an increasingly complex digital landscape and for teachers in terms of how to design and support learning interventions. How can learners and teachers make informed decisions about what technologies to use in the design and support of learning activities? This presentation will consider this question and present a new methodology for design – 'learning design', which aims to shift the creation and support of learning from what has traditionally been an implicit, belief-based practice to one that is explicit and design based. Learning design research at the Open University, UK has included the development of a set of conceptual design views, a tool for visualising designs (CompendiumLD) and a social networking site, for sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs (Cloudworks). An overview of this work will be provided, along with a discussion of the perceived benefits of this new approach to educational design

A critical examination of the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support

This thesis presents an investigation into the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support and comprises three volumes. Volume 1 provides an overview of the background literature, research methodology, ethical and reliability considerations linked to two projects whose overarching theme is the support and improvement of the student experience. The overview begins with an outline of the aim of this thesis, followed by a synopsis of the literature concerning student support in higher education and the use of technology to support learners. The methodological framework is then discussed and a brief introduction to the projects is provided. The overview concludes with an exploration of the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support and the presentation of a new blended approach to the organisation, delivery and typology of advising. This seeks to demonstrate the strength of a blended approach and thus makes a contribution to the practice, theory and method of supporting student learning. Volume 2 discusses the Advice Shop project and considers the processes, methods and ethics of this student learning support. A summary of eight interventions is presented together with details of how the project was subsequently rolled out across the University. A consideration of the organisational model and personnel involved in student advising is also offered. The volume concludes with student and staff feedback and a discussion of how the project aims have been achieved. Evidence of the research output and components of practice relating to Project 1 can be found in Volume2 Part 2. Volume 3 presents a discussion of Project 2 - the use of technology to support learners. The project presents two technology-enhanced interventions - an electronic student attendance monitoring scheme, and the development of two online learner support tools using QuestionMark Perception as the delivery software. The methods and ethical considerations used to establish and implement these interventions are present together with feedback from students and staff. The volume concludes with a discussion of how the aims of the project have been achieved. Evidence of the research output and components of practice relating to Project 2 can be found in Volume 3 Part 2

Constructing knowledge: an experience of active and collaborative learning in an ICT classroom

This paper reports on the impact of the implementation of active and collaborative practices in ICT (information and communication technologies) classrooms. Both of these approaches convey a lot of responsibility from the teacher to the students and the hoping, as backed up by the literature, is to promote deeper learning and reasoning skills at a higher level. The question is: how do you do all that? This research describes a specific environment that makes use of collaborative tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform and of specific CRM (customer relationship management) software. In order to analyze how this learning environment gets learners actively involved in learning and working together in productive ways, students were surveyed by responding to questionnaires. Several cause-effect relations underlying the teaching-learning methodology and the students’ performance are discussed