The Online Student: Lurking, Chatting, Flaming and Joking

This paper looks at the use of online conference interaction as a part of a web-based distance-learning course. There has been much debate surrounding the potential of educational technology, particularly online conference interaction, to support teaching and learning yet little attention has been paid to student experiences and understandings of the online learning environment. Drawing on data from auto-ethnographic fieldwork the paper identifies 5 categories of participation in asynchronous online conferences: lurker participation, member participation, expert/experienced participation, flamer participation and joker participation. Through an exploration of these forms of participation the paper attempts to understand and illustrate the complexities and contradictions of situating conference interaction alongside the demands of study. The analysis highlights the role of online conferencing as a space for \'interaction work\' distinct and separated from existing repertoires of formal study. The paper concludes by suggesting that pedagogically successful use of conferences as part of distance learning needs to understand the challenges and demands of remediating existing practices of interaction and study.Distance Learning, Auto-Ethnography, Online Conferencing

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

A scoping review of videoconferencing systems in higher education:Learning paradigms, opportunities, and challenges

Videoconferencing as a learning tool has been widely used among educators and learners in order to induce effective communication between learners and teachers or learners and their peers, especially when face-to-face means are not possible. Different types of videoconferencing platforms or systems have emerged for use in today’s higher education institutions. Previous research has focused on examining the potential of three different forms of videoconferencing systems: desktop videoconferencing (DVC), interactive videoconferencing (IVC), and Web videoconferencing (WVC). In this study, a review of the literature was conducted to increase the current knowledge regarding the use of these videoconferencing systems. A classification of the videoconferencing paradigms from the constructivism and cognitivism perspectives was provided. The summary of the results for these videoconferencing systems revealed specific learning opportunities, outcomes, and challenges for both learners and instructors. The results suggest that current policy and teaching strategies are not ready to provide an accessible and comprehensive learning experience in DVC and IVC. Relative to previously conducted studies regarding the use of videoconferencing in higher education, this study offers a broader consideration of relevant challenges that emerge when using certain videoconferencing systems in both learning and teaching situations

Intercultural Communication Competence in upper primary students: International collaboration case studies using Web 2.0 technologies

Globalisation has seen our world become increasingly interconnected through the rapid expansion of digital technologies. Intercultural communication competence is a key aspect of global competence for young people to develop their skills, values and behaviours as global citizens. The rapid expansion of the social web (Web 2.0) enables teachers to create rich authentic learning experiences that foster the development of students’ intercultural communication competence through synchronous and asynchronous web tools. The inclusion of these learning experiences engage students beyond the traditional classroom, enabling them to improve and advance 21st Century skills of collaboration, critical and creative thinking, perseverance, interpretation and problem solving. Intercultural communication competence encapsulates the ability to interact with people from another culture in appropriate and effective ways, involving not only language skills but also knowledge and a willingness to learn other cultures. Through a social constructivist approach, students’ intercultural interactions with web tools and each other promote the extension of human capabilities. Current research predominantly focuses on the development of intercultural communication competence with students in tertiary institutions through telecollaboration or computer-mediated collaboration. Developing intercultural competence is a lifelong journey. This research study explored what intercultural communication competences developed in upper primary students in Australia when communicating and collaborating with same-age students internationally and interculturally through authentic learning environments facilitated by Web 2.0 tools. Additionally, the study explored if Web 2.0 tools could be used to facilitate collaborative projects online with students in upper primary from two different countries, with different native languages. This research study utilised participatory action research methodology through exploratory case studies, combining techniques of case study approach with the use of multiple cases. Cross-case analysis using qualitative methodology was employed. Three case studies were undertaken. Upper primary students from an independent school in Western Australia collaborated with two cohorts of students from a school in Spain as separate case studies (case study one and two), and one cohort of students from a rural school in Thailand (case study three). Qualitative data included open-ended questionnaires and documentation data. Triangulation of the data occurred through teacher questionnaires, email correspondence and the researcher’s journal notes, creating a chain of evidence. The qualitative data set was analysed through progressive focus into emerging themes and codes to illustrate the students in Australia’s perspective. Through data reduction, categories emerged in the three dimensions of intercultural communication competence or the use of Web 2.0 tools to collaborate interculturally. Results showed that students’ ICC was enhanced in all three dimensions of intercultural adroitness (behaviour), awareness (cognitive) and sensitivity (affective), the relative rank order of importance of these dimensions the same across all three cases. Intercultural behaviours emerged as the most frequent whilst intercultural sensitivity the lowest. Ethnocentric thinking and behaving, the tendency to evaluate, anxiety, persevering through language barriers, expectations and the importance of cultural distinctiveness were barriers exhibited through the intercultural communications. The structural and cultural characteristics of ICT in the schools participating enabled the international, intercultural collaborations to occur. Increase to the consistency, quality and quantity of student responses as well as collaborative skills, requires reflection and improvement

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe effective use of technology is increasingly important in many fields where online and digital communication, collaboration, and production have become more prevalent. Although it is clear that many higher education students come into the classroom with skills involved with consuming technology, they often are much less capable of producing technology, such as editing videos or creating websites. Recently, many K-12 and higher education institutions have been redesigning instructional methods to better meet the needs of students in today's work environment through teaching collaborative, authentic technology tasks. Relatively few studies have examined the role of student communication practices in technology classrooms that involve collaboration and authentic tasks, so this dissertation describes a multiple-semester, comparative case study of student communication patterns and themes. Operating as an engaged observer, I monitored an advanced Web design course during three semesters to better understand how students' communication practice influence their collaboration on authentic tasks. Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, gathering student documents, and transcription of group talk, I was able to use Situated Learning theory to examine the way students talk about their activities and proceed through a 16-week learning period. An inductive analysis revealed several discursive patterns and practices including how using technology influenced their communication practices and their development (or not) as a community of practice. These patterns are also discussed in light of their enabling and constraining qualities and the extent to which they echo discourses within other technology classrooms. Particular focus is given to the development and process of student learning teams, categorized into stages, from Individualism, Coalescing, Maturing and Identity formation, to Production and Transformation. Finally, Situated Learning theory's and small group communication's notions of discourse is extended within the technical sphere, as students both use and create new technologies, to become Community of Practice Development theory (CPDT)

Language learning beliefs and intercultural communicative competence development through a virtual exchange project: a case study

Several studies on learners’ beliefs about language learning, the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and virtual exchange (VE) have highlighted the positive effect they have on language learning success in many contexts of instruction; however, little is known about how the integration of the three develop effectiveness in language learning in rural classrooms in Colombia. By making use of virtual exchange project, this exploratory case study aimed to explore English language learners’ beliefs about language learning and their ICCs to determine whether such exchange could positively affect said ideas and competencies for Colombian rural learners of English. This exploratory case study was carried out with a group of young students of a public, rural secondary school on the north coast of Colombia. Data was collected through the BALLI pre- and post-questionnaire for the virtual exchange program and used descriptive analysis, semi-structured interviews, and e-mail exchanges were analyzed following thematic analysis before, during and after the 14-week VE program. Findings indicate that learners’ beliefs about language learning had a positive shift. Furthermore, integration of cross-cultural interaction developed most of the dimensions of ICC: Attitudes, Knowledge, Skills of Interpreting and Relating, and Skills of Discovery and Interaction; however, the fundamental Critical Cultural Awareness was not featured on the students’ performance. Virtual Exchange proved to be beneficial to language learning achievement, experience and for language learning in rural environment in Colombia.MaestríaMagister en la Enseñanza del Ingle

Video-based collaborative learning:evidence for a pedagogical model

The educational potential of video is a long-lasting, multi-faceted topic, and the affordances of technological advancement have recently revitalized this discussion. However, teachers are still far from competently integrating or becoming accustomed to video-based pedagogy, especially in combination with collaborative pedagogy. To provide teachers and teacher educators with sound principles for implementing video-supported collaborative learning (VSCL), this symposium fosters a teacher experiment, a cross-over analysis on a pedagogical model for effective VSCL, and student feedback in relation with VSCL. The experiment shows students’ growing lexical richness and cohesion by working peer feedback on student’s video recorded teaching practice. The cross-over analysis shows the evidence for the VSCL-pedagogical model based on data from many other experiments in the European ViSuAL-project. The same holds for the student-feedback analysis. In this symposium we interact about practical experiences in relation with the effective principles of the developed pedagogical model and the experiences of the students

Exploring the experiences of instructors teaching massive open online courses in tourism and hospitality: a mixed methods approach

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have existed as a disruptive educational phenomenon for nine years. Grounded in the roots of distance education, open education, Open Educational Resources, and OpenCourseWare, MOOCs have now survived various critics and have continued growing globally. Reports about MOOCs in both the press and scholarly publications began to grow significantly in 2013 (Sánchez-Vera, Leon Urrutia, & Davis, 2015; Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017) and, since then, more and more researchers have joined the discussions, developing them to explore various new topics. To contribute to the literature of MOOC studies, this doctoral thesis begins with an in-depth analysis of the background, history, growth, and vision, and proposes a tentative definition of MOOCs. Meanwhile, by conducting bibliometric research to review MOOC studies conducted between 2015 and 2017, this thesis fills in the gap that has existed due to a lack of systematic reviews of MOOC literature since 2015. The results of the bibliometric research summarised the relevant MOOC research into nine categories, including learner focused, commentary and concepts, case reports or evaluations, pedagogy, curriculum and design, course object focused, provider focused, technology, systematic review of literature, and learning analytics and big data. They also suggested a limited amount of provider focused research, which became the research interest and focus of this thesis. In the centre of the Europe, Swiss universities have marched forward in the MOOC movement, together with other over 550 universities (Shah, 2016) around the world. Università della Svizzera italiana (USI; Lugano, Switzerland), a Swiss public university, became a MOOC provider in 2015 and offered the first MOOC in the topic of eTourism: eTourism: Communication Perspectives. This doctoral thesis is closely related to this university-level initiative, which was dedicated to producing the first pilot MOOC at USI. Therefore, the cases chosen by this thesis are positioned in the discipline of tourism and hospitality. The first MOOC with a large audience taught artificial intelligence in 2011 (Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017). Nowadays, MOOCs have broken the barrier of space and time to educate the masses in a wide range of subjects. However, the provision of MOOCs in the subject of tourism and hospitality did not appear until 2013, when two MOOCs from two American universities became available. In the past four years since these MOOCs were launched, the number of tourism and hospitality MOOCs available in the market has remained limited (Tracey, Murphy, & Horton-Tognazzini, 2016). This scarcity contradicts the fact that tourism and hospitality is the field that contributes the most to the employment of the global workforce. Pressing problems, such as high turnover, seasonality, and new global challenges have urged for solutions to quickly training people working in this area to become available (Cantoni, Kalbaska, & Inversini, 2009). A call for more studies about tourism and hospitality MOOCs has emerged. The combined reality of the lack of studies regarding MOOC providers, opportunities for first-hand experience of producing a tourism MOOC in a university, and the deficiency in both the research and practises of tourism and hospitality MOOCs has inspired the direction of this thesis in regard to exploring MOOC instructors’ experiences, using cases in the field of tourism and hospitality. It cumulates six studies, using a mixed methods approach, to tackle the two main research objectives: to investigate at large the tourism and hospitality MOOC provisions between 2008 and 2015 and to report the experiences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) when producing the eTourism MOOC. In order, the first two studies in Chapter 3 of this thesis focus on tourism and hospitality MOOCs in general and produce a big picture context for the other four studies in Chapter 4. The first study proposes a conceptual framework through which to describe and analyse the course design of a MOOC and applies it to 18 tourism and hospitality MOOCs produced between 2008 and 2015. The second study then continues to interview six tourism and hospitality MOOC instructors, to describe their experiences and perspectives of teaching MOOCs. After exploring a holistic view of the overall development of MOOCs in tourism and hospitality and gaining a deep understanding of the instructors behind these offerings, this thesis introduces the experiences of one single MOOC provider: Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Chapter 4. It first introduces its overall implementation process (Study 3), and further elaborates three phases of this process: how it selected a suitable MOOC platform at the beginning (Study 4); how it assessed learner engagement in the MOOC (Study 5); and, eventually, how it evaluated the performance of the MOOC (Study 6). This thesis was written mainly from the perspective of eLearning, with the intention of benefiting its community of scholars and practitioners. It has contributed to the literature by developing a framework with which to review MOOCs (in Study 1), the implementation process of producing MOOCs (in Study 2), practical review schema of MOOC platforms (in Study 4), the MOOC Learner Engagement Online Survey (in Study 5), and how to use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate MOOCs (in Study 6). These conceptual frameworks and experiential tools can benefit future researchers and practitioners. Meanwhile, due to its intimate connection with the field of tourism and hospitality, by directly using its cases, the research outputs of the six studies can also benefit the tourism and hospitality education and training sector as a reference for further action