e-teaching craft and practice

Staff at the University of Lincoln, UK, are repositioned as students on the virtual learning environment (VLE) for the teacher education programme ‘Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age’ (TELEDA). Modules explore the social relations of virtual learning through a community approach to sharing practice, and using tools like wikis, journals and forums to demonstrate the challenges of digital scholarship enables ‘insider’ knowledge of the craft of e-teaching to be gained through experiential learning. As sector-wide shifts to flexible design and delivery increase, greater attention to the digital confidence and capabilities of staff who teach and support learning is required. Investigating the uncertain spaces between the rhetoric and the reality of teaching online has shaped the author’s doctoral research into digital education. This paper offers emerging research findings which include how experiential approaches like TELEDA are worthy investments of time and resources and reinforce the value of embedding the craft elements of e-teaching into CPD and teacher education programmes

[DC] self-adaptive technologies for immersive trainings

Online learning is the preferred option for professional training, e.g. Industry 4.0 or e-health, because it is more cost efficient than on-site organisation of realistic training sessions. However, current online learning technologies are limited in terms of personalisation, interactivity and immersiveness that are required by applications such as surgery and pilot training. Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have the potential to overcome these limitations. However, due to its early stage of research, VR requires significant improvements to fully unlock its potential. The focus of this PhD is to tackle research challenges to enable VR for online training in three dimensions: (1) dynamic adaptation of the training content for personalised trainings, by incorporating prior knowledge and context data into self-learning algorithms; (2) mapping of sensor data onto what happens in the VR environment, by focusing on motion prediction techniques that use past movements of the users, and (3) investigating immersive environments with intuitive interactions, by gaining a better understanding of human motion in order to improve interaction. The designed improvements will be characterised though a prototype VR training platform for multiple use cases. This work will not only advance the state of the art on VR training, but also on online e-learning applications in general

Knowledge mapping with Compendium in academic research and online education

This paper focuses on mapping information, ideas and arguments in virtual learning environments, as part of ongoing research into how this can contribute to distance education, open content learning communities, and distance research training. We introduce the idea of cartographic representations for learning, before describing the freely available Compendium hypermedia knowledge mapping tool developed at the UK’s Open University (OU), which provides an open architecture, information management environment supporting multiple ways to manage connections between ideas and documents. We then summarise several contexts in which it is being deployed with promising results: (1) e-PhDs: supervision and knowledge management for distance doctoral students; (2) Literature Analysis: mapping argument structures in order to identify emergent themes and cross-paper connections; (3) Online Tutoring of e-learning students, investigating a postgraduate online course at PUC-Cogeae, Brazil. We conclude by outlining how ongoing and future work is integrating knowledge mapping with replayable video conferences, and a major new investigation into knowledge mapping to support self-organising communities of learners and educators around OU Open Content

The Effect of Gamified E-learning on Employees' Engagement: A Case Study of a Lebanese Bank

Gamification is a concept that has not been analysed thoroughly for its positive outcomes or challenges. Although the effects of gamification in the field of education have been studied from numerous angles, gamified organisational learning features and the overall contribution of gamification have not been researched sufficiently. Following the implementation of a gamified E-learning platform, we conducted a case study in a Lebanese bank to measure the effects of gamified E-learning. The results showed that the adoption of gamified E-learning and employees' engagement levels were positively associated. Gamification also proved its importance in influencing employees' behaviour by creating a competitive environment and engaging employees on a knowledge-oriented platform. After the implementation, about 65% of employees declared higher levels of work engagement. Moreover, approximately 67% of employees acknowledged a higher degree of job satisfaction. This research paper also indicates the variables that can affect learners' – in this case, the bank employees' – perception of the gamified E-learning platform. Investigating the positive outcomes of implementing gamified processes in E-learning can pave the way for developing more complex gamified e-learning platforms

Challenges on e-learning: From requirements engineering perspective

Nowadays, education offers great flexibility to learners in order to help them to succeed.E learning as knowledge management tool gives service to learners in disseminating and sharing information.Therefore, there is a lot of interaction from users in E-learning community that helps them to solve tasks in E-learning application.There are challenges to sustain E-learning service because users might get bored and infrequently use it.Requirements Engineering (RE) takes the opportunity to strengthen RE process by investigating how socio-technical requirements such as lack of social presence, feeling bored and lack of motivation can be transformed as socio-technical requirements and are available to be implemented by developers as agreed by users.Therefore, RE process should manage to capture socio-technical requirements in order to allow consistent motivation among learners.Requirements elicitation, as the initial stage in RE process, may improve its mechanism in eliciting socio-technical requirements for collaborative application such as E-learning. Hence, RE process and Elearning components must be carefully studied to ensure RE as in Software Engineering field can assist collaborative application to improve elicitation process and come out with a set of requirements before E-learning is implemented.This paper describes challenges in social interaction issue for E-learning environment and how RE sees these challenges

Determinants of Electronic Learning Adoption in Higher Institutions of Learning in Uganda: A Learnersa Perspective

The introduction of electronic learning (EL) has been initiated in Higher Institutions of Learning (HIL) as an attempt to improve on education institutions2019; service delivery. By adopting the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, this study was aimed at investigating the determinants of the e-learning adoption in HIL where eight TOE factors were examined. The study adopted a quantitative approach, a descriptive research and cross-sectional survey for the research design. A questionnaire was developed based on the eight identified TOE study constructs and administered to a population of 5438 students in three Faculties of Makerere University Business School (MUBS). In regard to data analysis, factor analysis and assessment of reliability and validity of the measurements items was done. Finally, a multiple regression analysis was carried out to evaluate the relationship between the predictor variables and e-learning adoption. The findings of this study imply that the TOE can be used to analyze ELearning adoption in Universities and other HIL as relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, size, competitive intensity and regulatory environment were identified as significant predictors of EL adoption. Whereas top management support and IT/IS knowledge are insignificant predictors in the adoption of EL

University Administrators Retention: The Moderating roles of organisational justice and generational diversity

Despite its wide acceptance as a theoretically important element in an organisation, organisational justice and generational diversity are neglected research areas, especially within the higher learning institutions context. Thus, this study intends to fill the knowledge gap by investigating the moderating roles of both variables towards the Malaysian Private Universities HRM practices and the administrator's retention. Two hundred seventy-two university administrators took part in the study, and empirically, the results obtained indicated that training, performance appraisal, selection, justice - management practices and distributive justice – reward are influential determinants of university administrators' retention.   Keywords: Organisational Justice; Generational Diversity; HRM Practices; University Administrators Retention eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i20.345

High School Math and Language Arts Teachers’ Experience Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Anxious Students in High-Poverty, Rural Schools: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study

Mental health, and specifically anxiety, is a growing problem significantly impacting the well-being of adolescents in the United States. Thirteen percent of adolescent’s experience anxiety-related disorders annually (Hill, Waite & Creswell, 2016; Peterson, 2018). School districts are critical settings in which to provide the prevention and intervention of anxiety (DeKruyf, Auger & Trice-Black, 2013; Domitrovich, Durlak, Staley & Weissberg, 2017; Lendrum, Humphrey, & Wigelsworth, 2013; Warner et al., 2016). Using transcendental phenomenology, this study drew on the lived experiences of math and language arts teachers to show their perceptions of their role with students experiencing anxiety along with their background knowledge of working with anxious students. High school teachers directly educate students on a daily basis and can support students experiencing anxiety. Understanding the relationship teachers have with anxious students is essential for their success. The purpose of this study was to discover the lived experiences of math and language arts teachers as they educate high school students in high-poverty rural schools affected by anxiety. By investigating teachers lived experiences, the beliefs, attitudes and needs regarding their support of anxious students was drawn out. The analysis found several themes woven throughout the interviews of all eight participants. Those themes included: (a) teachers perceived role, (b) relationship building, (c) finding balance, (d) the learning environment, (e) changes in the classroom, (f) background knowledge and training, and (g) positive perceptions of the school counselor. The themes revealed relevant information for teachers, counselors, and school leaders as they consider the phenomenon of adolescent anxiety and the practical implications it has on student learning, the learning environment, and student well-being. The implications focus on teacher skill development along with building teacher social and emotional competency to foster positive relationships with students

Video analysis : A qualitative tool for investigating students' learning in a constructivist-oriented multimedia in a science classroom

A new software package VideoSearch, a Macintosh multimedia research tool for analysing digital video was used to analyse classroom observations. VideoSearch can digitise video from a video cassette recorder or video camera and store it on a computer as a QuickTime movie. Texts can be attached to each instance within an episode and this text can be searched. Episodes in this movie can then be coded for analysis by means of user defined categories. Analyses of three types of episodes from video segments are presented and discussed in order to investigate students' learning. Episodes from video segments include students working in pairs conducting investigations based on an inquiry- based multimedia program, students presenting their experiences of their process of investigation and the researcher probing the students' reflections on their learning during an interview. An advantage of working with the digital video analysis is greater access to fuller context for qualitative data analyses. This allows for a better understanding of the social processes of students' learning. However, the time required and the level of intensive analysis may make it a difficult process to undertake