Plumbing the depths: stories, e-portfolios; pedagogy, ownership

Over the course of this academic year, a colleague and I implemented an eportfolio pilot with 82 students aged 17 to 50 on a team-taught 30-credit Level 1 core course on behalf of the University of Greenwich. The students are studying for a degree in Education Studies and come from a wide range of backgrounds. The module comprises elements of PDP interwoven with lectures on contemporary education issues and was originally designed as a paper-based course. The pilot navigated the PebblePad system as part of a wider trial of a number of different systems by the university. This paper presents the results of research combining mixed methodologies mainly allied to the interpretive paradigm but incorporating elements of critical theory. The research evaluates the differing experiences of students and lecturers using this e-portfolio system for learning, teaching, reflection and assessment. Methods used include initial and final student reflections, surveys, interviews and critical analysis including the narrative ‘soundings’ of sample experiences from student blogs and visual analysis of some student portfolios. We used the PebblePad as a mini VLE, uploading course documents and lecture presentations and sending messages as well as creating online gateways for formative and summative assessment submission. It was accessed externally to the university systems. In a scaffolded process, students constructed and submitted blogs and e-portfolios composed of a number of assets. The process of interactions with an eportfolio system has raised substantial and complex challenges for course design and learning outcomes relating to pedagogy and assessment as well as challenges of implementation, resistance to change and around concepts of ownership. As a commentary on academic practice, an element of personal reflection on the project and the research is included in the form of a dialogic interlocution with these narratives, raising questions about the way in which we might use e-portfolios in Higher Education and considering how we evaluate online learning. As a process of evaluation, the research does not offer hypotheses or answers as such but aims to create space for different views by raising complex questions and challenges for consideration in the process of contextualising and making sense of the users’ different experiences, of plumbing the depths. Drawing on diverse genres and media the paper presents the results of the research and samples some of the work produced

Teacher roles during amusement park visits – insights from observations, interviews and questionnaires

Amusement parks offer rich possibilities for physics learning, through observations and experiments that illustrate important physical principles and often involve the whole body. Amusement parks are also among the most popular school excursions, but very often the learning possibilities are underused. In this work we have studied different teacher roles and discuss how universities, parks or event managers can encourage and support teachers and schools in their efforts to make amusement park visits true learning experiences for their students

Персональне освітнє середовище – як один із трендів сучасної освіти

To meet the needs of the modern information society one must constantly improve the education system. The effectiveness of teaching today’s students fully depends on the implementation and use in the study of modern information and communication technologies, including network services that allow you to create an appropriate pedagogy and technology support base of modern information systems for educational purposes, and effectively organize the electronic learning university environment. An analysis of e-learning environments of modern domestic and foreign universities demonstrates quite a high level of qualitative and quantitative indicators of the implementation of electronic resources for educational purposes. However, despite the relatively high level of organization and content of university portals, the creation and implementation of students‘ personalized e-learning environment, which in turn is based on personalization in a global network, student-centered learning, which acts as a basis for the formation of ICT and key competencies of modern student, is still an open issue. The selfspontaneous creation of personalized e-learning environment does not cover the training needs of students, but is only partially able to satisfy them, as knowledge students cannot improve the quality of both formal and informal learning. This paper focuses on the study of students‘ ICT competencies and their ability to use information and communication technologies to carry out information activities in their professional field. The authors also discuss the results of studies on personalized and adaptive learning, based on consideration of learning styles. Based on a statistical analysis of the pedagogical experiments, some recommendations are suggested for technology training for teachers and students in order to to improve training efficiency

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Measurements, Models, Systems and Design

531 s.