Do students and lecturers actively use collaboration tools in learning management systems?

In recent years there has been a large emphasis placed on the need to use Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the field of higher education, with many universities mandating their use. An important aspect of these systems is their ability to offer collaboration tools to build a community of learners. This paper reports on a study of the effectiveness of an LMS (Blackboard©) in a higher education setting and whether both lecturers and students voluntarily use collaborative tools for teaching and learning. Interviews were conducted with participants (N=67) from the faculties of Science and Technology, Business, Health and Law. Results from this study indicated that participants often use Blackboard© as an online repository of learning materials and that the collaboration tools of Blackboard© are often not utilised. The study also found that several factors have inhibited the use and uptake of the collaboration tools within Blackboard©. These have included structure and user experience, pedagogical practice, response time and a preference for other tools

Twitter for teaching: Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning?

Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning by students in higher education? Social media have become widely adopted by students in their personal lives. However, the application of social media to teaching and learning remains to be fully explored. In this study, the use of the social media tool Twitter for teaching was considered. Undergraduate students in Business and Management (n = 252) were encouraged to use Twitter for communicating with their tutor and each other during a 12-week course. Their involvement was evaluated using a survey considering amount of Twitter usage and students' attitudes and experiences. The data were analysed using factor analyses, which revealed a single usage construct and three attitudinal factors. Three findings emerged. Firstly, a positive correlation was found between amount of Twitter usage and student engagement in university-associated activities including organising their social lives and sharing information. Secondly, course-related tweeting was not related to interpersonal relationships between students and their tutor. Thirdly, Twitter usage did not impact class attendance. The results are salient for educational practitioners wishing to introduce social media into their teaching

Evaluating the effective use of emerging technologies in education

The aim of this tutorial is to present practical guidance for evaluating the effectiveness of educational initiatives involving social software and emerging technologies to support student learning and engagement. Examples of such initiatives are: inclusion of a blog in a course to encourage reflective learning, or having a wiki in a course for fostering team-working skills, or an activity in a 3D virtual world to enable students to learn through simulations, or the use of Delicious for bookmarking resources, or an App on a smartphone. ‘Evaluation’ implies investigating the usability, pedagogical effectiveness (does it meet the learning outcomes?), student experience, and impact on direct stakeholders such as educators and technical support staff (in terms of workload and support required). Educators, practitioners and educational researchers will find this tutorial useful for learning about evaluating initiatives in a systematic manner and yet be able to choose research methods that are not very resource-intensive for themselves and for the participants (primarily students but other direct stakeholders too such as technical support staff). Through examples of social software initiatives, we will discuss a number of data collection and data analysis methods in the tutorial ranging from traditional social science research (e.g. focus groups) to user-centred research methods (e.g. observations, diary studies) and to participatory design methods (e.g. experience sampling, student panels). We will also discuss about ethical considerations of conducting research, specifically, involving social software, where the personal and professional boundaries of user profiles (or identities) sometimes get blurred

A Proposed Blended Course Design for Inter-Professional Education: Using Inquiry to Develop Critical Thinking for Inter-Professional Practice in Undergraduate Students

The purpose of this proposed blended course design is to develop inter-professional communication and collaboration in critical thinking, inquiry, and learning. Implementation of inter-professional education between undergraduate students from different faculties enables a building of connections and relationships which could lead to improved collaboration in future inter-professional practice. Critical thinking has been acclaimed as essential in the provision of competent healthcare. The proposal of a blended-learning format provides a means to accommodate the inherent scheduling challenges between different faculties, and captures the potential of cultivating critical thinking in learning experiences during face-to-face, simulation, online learning, and social media interactions. Proposing a blended inquiry-based approach would seek to utilize various educational strategies in presenting an innovative means to teaching and learning within inter-professional healthcare education

Exploring the views of students on the use of Facebook in university teaching and learning

Facebook use among students is almost ubiquitous; however, its use for formal academic purposes remains contested. Through an online survey monitoring student use of module Facebook pages and focus groups, this study explores students’ current academic uses of Facebook and their views on using Facebook within university modules. Students reported using Facebook for academic purposes, notably peer–peer communication around group work and assessment – a use not always conceptualised by students as learning. Focus groups revealed that students are not ready or equipped for the collaborative style of learning envisaged by the tutor and see Facebook as their personal domain, within which they will discuss academic topics where they see a strong relevance and purpose, notably in connection with assessment. Students use Facebook for their own mutually defined purposes and a change in student mind- and skill-sets is required to appropriate the collaborative learning benefits of Facebook in formal educational contexts

Social design network: the integration of social software in industrial design education

Like the mobile phone before it, it could be said that social networking via social software has transformed how people, or at least the under 35‟s communicate. As far back as 2005 in the US around 85% of University students used Facebook, a figure closely matched here in the UK (Kirschner, 2010). Although this figure has fluctuated of late, the overall trend is still on an upward curve. The media famously called this revolution Web 2.0 (O‟Reilly 2005), where due to technical advances in hardware and software, larger amounts of data, particularly images and video can be freely exchanged quickly and effectively over the internet. Social software as a whole has already been well-documented, and depending on how you see it, is either all the rage or so 2008 (Underwood, 2009) and applications such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites are increasingly being used in the education domain and have received widespread attention (Schroeder, 2010). Less well documented is the application of social software specifically in relation to industrial design and product design educatio

Collaborative learning and interdisciplinary applied to teaching entrepreneurship.

This paper describes an experiment based on using collaborative learning tools for acquiring the competences considered necessary for creating new business models and formulating them in business plans. The main aim of the teaching methods used was to improve student learning through working in multidisciplinary teams. The results flag up the potential of the wikis available on virtual campuses to create work environments in which students from different disciplines can participate. Furthermore, the difficulties encountered are presented as areas to be taken into account in future experiments