Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

Blended-Learning: the Responses From Non-English Students in the Indonesian Tertiary Context

The process of language teaching and learning has undergone major changes due to the developments of technology. The use of technology in education field has paved the way for higher education institution to innovatively shape their modern media in a language teaching and learning. Subsequently, the implementation of blended-learning has aroused at the Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia for approximately one and a half year ago to maximize the use of technology. Most lecturers in all study programs have increasingly utilized the social network sites such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. for the successfulness of blended-learning. This present study aims at exploring the students' responses on how blended-learning might be used to develop their language learning and discovering their attitudes towards the implementation of blended-learning as an interactional teaching and learning tool in English for Business course. Employing a qualitative in form of a case study, eighty-two undergraduate students from study program of Informatics Engineering were observed, interviewed, and distributed questionnaires. The data were performed to collect the students' responses and students' attitudes toward the implementation of blended-learning in the process of their language learning. The findings were found out that most students from Informatics Engineering major showed their positive responses and positive attitudes using blended learning for the language teaching and learning. They also gained some educational benefits for their English language development. Thus, this blended learning brings us to the new trend for language teaching and learning media in order to motivate the students in enhancing their language acquisition

Collaborative pedagogy and digital scholarship: a case study of 'Media Culture 2020'

This paper presents an educational case study of ‘Media Culture 2020’, an EU Erasmus Intensive Programme that utilised a range social media platforms and computer software to create open, virtual spaces where students from different countries and fields could explore and learn together. The multi-disciplinary project featured five universities from across Europe and was designed to develop new pedagogical frameworks to encourage collaborative approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. The main objective of the project was to break down classroom and campus walls by creating digital learning environments that facilitated new forms of production, transmission and representation of knowledge. Media Culture 2020 was designed to pilot a novel mode of ‘blended learning’, demonstrating a number of ways in which ‘Web 2.0’ networked technologies might be adopted by academics to encourage open and collaborative modes of practice. The project utilised a number of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google Hangout, Google Docs and Blogger) to enhance the learning experiences of a diverse set of students from different cultural and international contexts. In doing so, Media Culture 2020 enabled participants with a diverse range skills and cultural experiences to develop new working practices that respond to the convergence of digital media and art, as well as the internationalisation of media production and business, through the use of open, interactive software

Get yourself connected: conceptualising the role of digital technologies in Norwegian career guidance

This report outlines the role of digital technologies in the provision of career guidance. It was commissioned by the c ommittee on career guidance which is advising the Norwegian Government following a review of the countries skills system by the OECD. In this report we argue that career guidance and online career guidance in particular can support the development of Norwa y’s skills system to help meet the economic challenges that it faces.The expert committee advising Norway’s Career Guidance Initiativ

Appropriation of mobile cultural resources for learning

Copyright © 2010 IGI Global. This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices - as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them - as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the "mobile complex". Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues