Managing variety to establish viable videoconferencing in remote music tuition from an educational technologist's viewpoint

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5163152*es

The educational technologist as a teacher

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5366838*es

The educational technologist as a change agent for innovation at a German school. An auto-ethnography in the form of a dialogue

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5373447*es

Exploring the students’ digital competence development in the education policies of Singapore and Estonia

It is not a surprise to anyone that the today’s world lives in the era of increasingly rapid technological progress. The increasing number of governments around the world aim to enhance students’ digital competence development starting as early as from pre-school education level. The necessity is recognized to focus the education policy not only on promoting technical skills but also communication and collaboration skills, digital safety, content-creation, innovation, problem-solving, and responsible use of the Internet and digital tools. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and compare how the governments of Singapore and Estonia approach the development of students’ digital competence at pre-school, primary, and secondary education levels. For this, a text-based analysis of the education policies of both governments was conducted from the perspective of different digital competence areas. The analytical framework was developed on the basis of the literature review and existing digital competence frameworks. Seven areas of digital competence were used to analyze different elements of education policies, namely the ‘Devices and software operation’, ‘Information and data literacy’, ‘Communication and collaboration’, ‘Digital content creation’, ‘Safety’, ‘Problem solving and continuing learning’, and ‘Career-related competences’. The examined elements of the education policies included government programmes, initiatives, school curricula as well as activities aimed at enhancing digital infrastructure in schools. The findings from this study show that both governments in their education policies equally emphasize the students’ digital competence development in the Devices and software operation, and Information and data literacy areas. However, the government of Estonia approaches the students digital competence development by prioritizing the competences in the ‘Communication and collaboration’, ‘Digital content creation’, and ‘Problem solving and continuing learning’ areas. The Singaporean education policy, in turn, takes a more holistic approach with regard to the students’ digital competence development. In terms of a variety and number of the learning activities represented in their education policy elements, the focus is almost equally spread over all seven digital competence areas. Furthermore, the findings reveal the difference in the ways in which the two governments approach the students’ development of digital competences in the ‘Career-related competences’ area. The analysis of the Singaporean policy elements show that the government puts comparatively more efforts into ensuring a smoother transition of students into the labor marker upon their graduation from upper-secondary schools. In addition, the findings show that the Estonian government places a lesser priority on the development of students’ digital competences in the ‘Safety’ area

Towards a Digital Capability Maturity Framework for Tertiary Institutions

Background: The Digital Capability (DC) of an Institution is the extent to which the institution's culture, policies, and infrastructure enable and support digital practices (Killen et al., 2017), and maturity is the continuous improvement of those capabilities. As technology continues to evolve, it is likely to give rise to constant changes in teaching and learning, potentially disrupting Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs) and making existing organisational models less effective. An institution’s ability to adapt to continuously changing technology depends on the change in culture and leadership decisions within the individual institutions. Change without structure leads to inefficiencies, evident across the Nigerian TEI landscape. These inefficiencies can be attributed mainly to a lack of clarity and agreement on a development structure. Objectives: This research aims to design a structure with a pathway to maturity, to support the continuous improvement of DC in TEIs in Nigeria and consequently improve the success of digital education programmes. Methods: I started by conducting a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) investigating the body of knowledge on DC, its composition, the relationship between its elements and their respective impact on the Maturity of TEIs. Findings from the review led me to investigate further the key roles instrumental in developing Digital Capability Maturity in Tertiary Institutions (DCMiTI). The results of these investigations formed the initial ideas and constructs upon which the proposed structure was built. I then explored a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to substantiate the initial constructs and gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between elements/sub-elements. Next, I used triangulation as a vehicle to expand the validity of the findings by replicating the methods in a case study of TEIs in Nigeria. Finally, after using the validated constructs and knowledge base to propose a structure based on CMMI concepts, I conducted an expert panel workshop to test the model’s validity. Results: I consolidated the body of knowledge from the SLR into a universal classification of 10 elements, each comprising sub-elements. I also went on to propose a classification for DCMiTI. The elements/sub-elements in the classification indicate the success factors for digital maturity, which were also found to positively impact the ability to design, deploy and sustain digital education. These findings were confirmed in a UK University and triangulated in a case study of Northwest Nigeria. The case study confirmed the literature findings on the status of DCMiTI in Nigeria and provided sufficient evidence to suggest that a maturity structure would be a well-suited solution to supporting DCM in the region. I thus scoped, designed, and populated a domain-specific framework for DCMiTI, configured to support the educational landscape in Northwest Nigeria. Conclusion: The proposed DCMiTI framework enables TEIs to assess their maturity level across the various capability elements and reports on DCM as a whole. It provides guidance on the criteria that must be satisfied to achieve higher levels of digital maturity. The framework received expert validation, as domain experts agreed that the proposed Framework was well applicable to developing DCMiTI and would be a valuable tool to support TEIs in delivering successful digital education. Recommendations were made to engage in further iterations of testing by deploying the proposed framework for use in TEI to confirm the extent of its generalisability and acceptability