Digital Learning: Reforming Teacher Education to Promote Access, Equity and Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the present and future impact of digital learning on teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Digital learning in this report is defined as any instructional practice that uses new communication technologies effectively to improve access to and strengthen learning. The focus of the report is student-teachers and teachers. The 2015–2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly seek to substantially increase the supply of well-qualified teachers in the region, drawing on international forms of development and co-operation where necessary (Goal 4)

Integrating Technology With Student-Centered Learning

Reviews research on technology's role in personalizing learning, its integration into curriculum-based and school- or district-wide initiatives, and the potential of emerging digital technologies to expand student-centered learning. Outlines implications

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

But a walking shadow: designing, performing and learning on the virtual stage

Representing elements of reality within a medium, or taking aspects from one medium and placing them in another is an act of remediation. The process of this act, however, is largely taken for granted. Despite the fact that available information enables a qualitative assessment of the history of multimedia and their influences on different fields of knowledge, there are still some areas that require more focused research attention. For example, the relationship between media evolution and new developments in scenographic practice is currently under investigation. This article explores the issue of immediacy as a condition of modern theatre in the context of digital reality. It discusses the opportunities and challenges that recent technologies present to contemporary practitioners and theatre design educators, creating a lot of scope to break with conventions. Here, we present two case studies that look into technology-mediated learning about scenography through the employment of novel computer visualization techniques. The first case study is concerned with new ways of researching and learning about theatre through creative exploration of design artefacts. The second case study investigates the role of the Immersive Virtual World Second Life™ (SL) in effective teaching of scenography, and in creating and experiencing theatrical performances

How Learning Evolved from Offline Classroom to Online Platforms with its Amplifier, Edu-KOLs: A Systematic Literature Review

Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) gradually emerged on e-commerce platforms with their influencing power on global audience. E-learning platforms followed suit on drawing the influence of educational KOLs (Edu-KOLs) for perceived learning outcome, customer retention and branding. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the thematic of traditional learning and its transformation into e-learning platforms. We seek to achieve a preliminary analysis into current development and trend on educational digitalization and its effectiveness, particularly with its amplifier, Edu-KOLs who lead new waves of learning for Gen Alpha and beyond. This literature review summaries terminologies on Edu-KOLs, and prudently reviews the locus of past research on e-commerce platforms with extracted KOLs’ analysis. The findings indicate a wide research gap given few researches having been directly yielded into Edu-KOLs’ impact, as opposite to mounting empirical evidence for e-commerce platforms with perceived outcome through KOLs

Level up learning: a national survey on teaching with digital games

Digital games have the potential to transform K-12 education as we know it. But what has been the real experience among teachers who use games in the classroom? In 2013, the Games and Learning Publishing Council conducted a national survey among nearly 700 K-8 teachers. The report reveals key findings from the survey, and looks at how often and why teachers use games in the classroom, as well as issues they encounter in their efforts to implement digital games into their practice

Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning: Untangling the Evidence

Technology-enhanced personalised learning is not yet common in Germany, which is why we have tasked scientists with summarising the current status of international research on the matter. This study demonstrates the great potential of technology in implementing effective personalised learning. Nevertheless, it has not been assessed yet whether the practical implementation actually works: Even in countries such as the U.S., which lead the way in using techology in classroom settings, hardly any evaluation studies have been done to prove the effectiveness of technology-enhanced personalised learning. In the light of the above, the authors make recommendations for actions to be taken in Germany to make best use of the potential of technology in providing individual support and guidance to students

An examination of the effect of technology-based STEM education training in the framework of technology acceptance model

The aim of this study is threefold: (1) to present a valid and reliable scale in the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model; (2) to reveal factors affecting pre-service science teachers’ intentions to use technology-based STEM; (3) to examine the effect of technology-based STEM education training on pre-service science teachers’ perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude, and intention. This study has two sections. Study 1 defined the reliability and validity of the Technology Based-STEM Intention Scale (TB-STEMIS) in the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with pre-service science teachers in Turkey. Study 2 examined the pre-service science teachers’ intentions to use technology-based STEM and the impact of technology-based STEM education training on pre-service science teachers’ intentions concerning the TAM model. The results of the study revealed that the proposed model tested after STEM training is superior to the before STEM training. Findings also indicated that technology-based STEM education training had a positive effect on pre-service science teachers’ perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude, and intention to use the technology-based STEM education. Finally, implications were discussed and recommendations were found for further studies in line with the limitations. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature