EXPLORING HOW FACULTY MOTIVATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES INFLUENCE DIGITAL LITERACY PRACTICES IN A STUDY ABROAD PROGRAM IN ITALY: A CASE STUDY

The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to explore the multifaceted motivations, perceptions and attitudes that influence digital literacy practices in a small group of study abroad faculty and how professional development can help inspire them to act to innovate their digital literacy practices within a study abroad context. The role of study abroad programs in the U.S. has grown significantly in recent decades. As the number of students participating in these programs continues to increase, so have questions about the role of digital literacy practices in foreign education. Digital literacy embodies a way of learning that focuses on solving real-world problems, awakening students to their democratic social responsibilities, and has transformative implications. Participants were drawn from faculty teaching in the Italian branch campus of a higher educational institution in the eastern United States. The data from interviews and observations were coded to generate themes to structure potential answers to the research questions. The findings of this research showed that faculty digital practices are influenced by four domains: the professional domain, the personal domain, the environmental domain, and the cultural domain. These domains are interrelated and can shape the way faculty approach digital practices. The forces driving digital transformation affect both the environmental domain and cultural domain which consequently impact the professional and personal domains, forming a dynamic model where professional development is key to support faculty in approaching technology changes and in helping them succeed in integrating digital practices in their teaching models and strategies

Determining the Factors Affecting on Digital Learning Adoption among the Students in Kathmandu Valley: An Application of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

This study investigated students’ perception towards acceptance of digital transformation in teaching-learning activities studying at different levels in Kathmandu valley (includes 3 districts: Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur), Nepal. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a research framework to examine the factors affecting how students come to accept and use technology. The literature review indicated that social influence, accessibility, computer self-efficacy, infrastructure, and perceived enjoyment were the most common external factors of TAM. A total of 384 students were participated in the study. Different statistical analyses have been performed in order to test the significance of the considered factors that may affect the digital learning practices of students. The result of the data analysis revealed that social influence, accessibility, computer self-efficacy, infrastructure, and enjoyment have a significant impact on perceived ease of use of the digital learning system. Furthermore, social influence, accessibility, computer self-efficacy, infrastructure, and enjoyment were also found to have a positive influence on the perceived usefulness of the digital learning system. The Digital learning system is changing the traditional practice of learning with technology and innovation. The study support that using digital tools in education makes academic activities more interesting, easy to access, creative, effective, and productive

La formación de docentes en TIC: aportaciones desde diferentes modelos de formación

Training the teaching staff in Information and Communication Technologies comes implicitly with the study of its different dimensions and principles, regarding the indications that have been pointed from a variety of studies and works. In our current society, it is clear that the significance of ICT to improve quality and educational performance is not exclusively determined by its presence, but also by the variety of transformations that involves not only using them as a way of consuming knowledge but also seeing them as tools to enrich, create and generate said knowledge. From this perspective, investment in professional development is more important than investment in resources associated with technology. ftis is an important aspect for incorporation of ITC, not considering only its use to do better things than we do without it, but to do things in a complete different manner. We present this article which describes a tour of some of the bases and models, analyzing the problematic of training in digital skills that teachers might face when they incorporate them into their teaching and professional practice.Hablar de la formación del profesorado en Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, implica el estudio de diferentes dimensiones y principios, contemplando las indicaciones que han apuntado distintos estudios y trabajos. En la sociedad actual, es claro que la significación de las TIC para mejorar la calidad y el rendimiento educativo, no viene exclusivamente determinado por su presencia, sino también por diferentes transformaciones que implican pasar de utilizarlas únicamente como una forma de consumir conocimientos, a verlas como herramientas para enriquecerlos, crearlos y generarlos. Desde esta perspectiva, la inversión en desarrollo profesional es más importante que la inversión en recursos asociados a la tecnología, siendo unaspecto importantepara su incorporación, el noplantearse únicamente su utilización para hacer mejor las cosas que hacemos sin ellas, sino para hacer cosas completamente distintas. Desde esta óptica, planteamos el presente artículo en el que se describe un recorrido por algunas de las bases y modelos, analizando la problemática de la formación en las competencias digitales que debe poseer el profesorado a la hora de incorporarlas en su práctica docente y profesional

Being and Becoming: The Heart of Teacher Education

Teacher education is of critical concern to a nation’s well-being. Scripture clearly identifies that the predominant narratives in a nation’s education are directly linked to its citizen’s behaviour (e.g., see Psalm 78, Judges 2). Literature which claims that teacher education has little influence on beliefs that pre-service teachers bring to their initial teacher education may unnerve Christian teacher educators who seek to equip teachers to make a difference in the lives of children and parents in a nation (Berry, 2004; Fletcher, 1997; Hatton & Smith, 1995; Lowery, 2003). For example, Berry (2004, p. 1302) observes that: There is little doubt that student teachers’ prior experiences as learners serve as powerful templates for the ways in which they practice as teachers. Their beliefs about teaching are informed by the accumulation of experience over time and, once formed, these beliefs are extremely resistant to change, even when they are shown to be inconsistent with reality

Open Educational Practices in Australia

This case study presents the extent of transformation that Open Educational Practices (OEP) have brought to higher education in Australia. In the early stages of the transformation, open access policies, funding, support and infrastructure were introduced by the national government. Initiatives that uncovered the transformative potential of OEP were then undertaken. The scope of transformation of OEP in Australia has since expanded, influencing and impacting institutions in several aspects, leading the sector to a better position worldwide. However, many challenges still remain. Restrictive copyright regimes and a lack of national and institutional policies and funding are among the barriers faced by OEP in Australia. If these barriers are removed and policy enablers are further developed, the higher education sector in Australia could fully benefit from the transformative potential of OEP

Academic literacies in the digital university

Academic Literacies is an international field of study concerned with literacies and learning in tertiary education. Some recent work in this field has focused on online and elearning environments. In our book of 2007 (Goodfellow & Lea 2007) we used an academic literacies perspective to critique what we see as the focus in much elearning practice on the 'management of learning' at the expense of disciplinary pedagogies. We argued for attention to be paid to the centrality of texts, however mediated, in the construction of knowledge and the practices of learning. Our current focus on the 'digital' extends this critique to engage with three major discourses of technology currently constructing the 'digital age' in relation to education. The first is the metaphor of the 'digital native' or 'net generation'. The second is the discourse of 'Learning 2.0, the third is the trope of the 'unbundled university'. We conclude that we need to pay much more attention to textual practice around learning and scholarship,and that, as researchers and scholars, we need to work for the reconciliation of new discourses of the digital with the continuing development of critical pedagogical and social practice in the academy and the public sphere

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Crossovers: Digitalization and literature in foreign language education

Digitalization produces increasingly multimodal and interactive literary forms. A major challenge for foreign language education in adopting such forms lies in deconstructing discursive borders between literary education and digital education (romance of the book vs. euphoric media heavens), thereby crossing over into a perspective in which digital and literary education are intertwined. In engaging with digital literary texts, it is additionally important to consider how different competencies and literary/literacy practices interact and inform each other, including: (1) a receptive perspective: reading digital narratives and digital literature can become a space for literary aesthetic experience, and (2) a productive perspective: learners can become “produsers” (Bruns, 2008) of their own digital narratives by drawing on existing genre conventions and redesigning “available designs” (New London Group, 1996). Consequently, we propose a typology of digital literatures, incorporating functional, interactive and narrative aspects, as applied to a diverse range of digital texts. To further support our discussion, we draw on a range of international studies in the fields of literacies education and 21st century literatures (e.g., Beavis, 2010; Hammond, 2016; Kalantzis & Cope, 2012; Ryan, 2015) and, in turn, explore trajectories for using concrete digital literary texts in the foreign language classroom