BlockCampus: A Blockchain-Based DApp for enhancing Student Engagement and Reward Mechanisms in an Academic Community for E-JUST University

In today's digital age, online communities have become an integral part of our lives, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and community engagement. Higher education institutions, in particular, can greatly benefit from dedicated platforms that facilitate academic discussions and provide incentives for active participation. This research paper presents a comprehensive study and implementation of a decentralized application (DApp) leveraging the blockchain technology to address these needs specifically for E-JUST (Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology) students and academic staff

Denormalising the Future Digital University: A feminist and Decolonial Perspective

Universities have become increasingly dependent from digital platforms and AI-assisted learning environments, with unprecedented investments in educational technologies during the pandemic. Generative AI is now raising new promises of a radical transformation of education, with machine learning supporting academic writing and customised learning. It is not surprising that the most normalised narrative about the future university is that it will be highly automated and datafied. Grounded in feminist and decolonial theories, this short essay poses questions to explore alternative imaginaries to this narrative. Feminist scholarship has contributed to epistemological relativism by questioning values that are embedded in techno-scientific knowledge production. It has pointed at the way rational modern subjectivity embraces homogeneity and denies difference, identifying equality with sameness. Adopting a feminist standpoint allows us to assess discursive-material attributes of technologies that are silencing differences. Critical/speculative questions following this approach could be: what does technology do in academic spaces? What are its political effects? How does/can it silence differences? Decolonial scholarship has shown how modernity is intricated with colonial logics, a relationship that is particularly evident in the rhetoric of progress and technological innovation. Most recently, it has stressed how digital technologies and AI shall be assessed in terms of their potential to oppress people and increase inequality. Decolonial thinkers focus on the subjectivities of those who are involved and consider institutions as a space for political action. Critical/speculative questions that go in this direction will ask: in the benefit of whom are technologies used in academic spaces? What are the invisible risks of these uses in terms of social justice? How do digital technologies reproduce social oppression?We argue that the dialogue between these theories can allow us to make the effort of denormalising the role of digital technologies in the future university and understanding how structural change might occur

Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK

This research has been conducted by The Open University, UK and has been inspired by the authors’ association with Age UK Milton Keynes. Our aim has been to present a case for imparting digital skills to people aged over 55 years of age, and to present strategies, which partnerships of academic institutions, businesses, and organisations in the voluntary sector (e.g. Age UK, Carers UK) could take forward. Some of our recommendations include: •the need for more robust evidence for the efficiency and effectiveness of digital inclusion initiatives for their sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and their impact; •design of evidence-based training initiatives for digital inclusion of older people; •highlighting the significance of digital skills training of the ageing workforce; •aiming for digital competence in training initiatives so that people develop skills along with knowledge and attitudes – so that they can apply what they have learned to other emerging technologies, contexts, devices and platforms; •inter-generational digital inclusion initiatives; •improving and extending partnership working with the voluntary sector such as Age UK and Carers UK; •Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme(s) for senior managers on provding support to the older workforce (including carers and disabled people); •online learning programmes and/or certification for designers/content developers - training them on the accessible (inclusive) design of online services (including websites, smart phones or mobile interfaces) and smart spaces for an ageing society

Making academic OER easy: Reflections on technology and openness at Oxford University

Due to its stringent entry requirements, academic reputation and world ranking, Oxford University in the United Kingdom is perceived by some as being a closed, exclusive, and elitist institution. As learning technologists working in the institution, we have experienced an enthusiasm amongst academic colleagues for openness in publication and practice enhanced by new technologies, which reflects their long-demonstrated commitment to publication and the dissemination of new knowledge. Advances in digital technologies and the emergence of online platforms for global dissemination have enabled Oxford University seminars, lectures, and public addresses, many by famous figures, to be shared with an international audience. This article charts the journey Oxford has made in opening up educational content and describes the ways in which we have worked to ensure that the value added by technology aligns with current academic practice in the institution

Making academic OER easy: Reflections on technology and openness at Oxford University

Due to its stringent entry requirements, academic reputation and world ranking, Oxford University in the United Kingdom is perceived by some as being a closed, exclusive, and elitist institution. As learning technologists working in the institution, we have experienced an enthusiasm amongst academic colleagues for openness in publication and practice enhanced by new technologies, which reflects their long-demonstrated commitment to publication and the dissemination of new knowledge. Advances in digital technologies and the emergence of online platforms for global dissemination have enabled Oxford University seminars, lectures, and public addresses, many by famous figures, to be shared with an international audience. This article charts the journey Oxford has made in opening up educational content and describes the ways in which we have worked to ensure that the value added by technology aligns with current academic practice in the institution

Academic achievement and student satisfaction: moving anatomy and physiology teaching online

Introudction The COVID-19 pandemic had a large impact on tertiary education content delivery, driving university programs to replace face-to-face teaching and practical hands-on experience with digital learning through online platforms. The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in academic achievement and overall student satisfaction in a first-year undergraduate student cohort in response to Zoom-delivered ‘dissection workshops’. Methods A comparative analysis was carried out on two first year undergraduate student cohorts (2019 and 2020) studying introductory anatomy and physiology. Student exam marks for questions relating to knowledge gained from the dissections were utilised to compare academic achievement and student feedback was collected to assess how digital learning affected student satisfaction. Results and Conclusion The student cohort that participated in the Zoom dissections (2020) had comparable academic achievement however student feedback indicated that a face-to-face, hands-on learning experience is preferable to digital learning in an introductory anatomy and physiology course

Everyday datafication and higher education: Student agency, trust and resignation

Datafication—the transformation of human life into quantifiable digital data—raises important questions for student agency in higher education. Student agency is central to learning and engagement within university, and the development of agentic selves in students forms a core purpose of higher education. Data-driven practices such as learning analytics promise to support the development of student agency in the context of learning, while at the same time introducing new information and power asymmetries into the relationship between students and the university. Critical research on datafication, meanwhile, has highlighted the threats to student agency posed by data-driven analytics practices that reinforce structural inequalities and depend on the surveillance of student behaviours and bodies. This paper explores student agency in relation to datafication through a discussion of the findings of ethnographic research with university students in Scotland. Drawing on literature from the field of critical data studies that focuses on people’s everyday experiences of datafication, the paper will highlight how students understand, feel about and respond to datafication in their everyday lives, and what this means for their relationship with the university. Students draw on a range of everyday data literacies developed through their experiences of datafied platforms and academic knowledge to make sense of university data practices. They employ diverse tactics for coping with datafication, including minimizing perceived risks by taking measures to protect their privacy and disconnecting from certain platforms. They tend to trust the university with their data, but this trust is conditional and closely related to their overall perception of the university. Above all, perhaps, students are resigned to datafication within and beyond the university. Thus, while students demonstrate agency with respect to datafication in a range of ways, data relations between the university and students are fundamentally top-down, reflecting wider societal dynamics whereby people routinely give up their data in exchange for access to digital services, with little ability to opt out or control what happens to it. Universities, it will be argued, have the potential to introduce participatory forms of data governance that reframe these relations, thus supporting the development of student agency over datafication within and beyond the university

Virtual Library Services in Hyper- connected Knowledge Society

In the digital age, new technologies both expand and limit access to information. The global information economy is transforming the way people connect with each other, learn new things and contribute to the knowledge society. This paper explores the different virtual services platforms currently adopted in 131 subject university libraries in Kazakhstan. Using case-analysis the researcher explored deeper on how virtual services contribute to the development of research and academic endeavors of Graduate School of Business students. Findings of the study revealed that less than half of the universities in Kazakhstan have VLS; however, the value of VLS is explicitly cited by respondents. Recommendations for further study on factors affecting the implementation of VLS in all libraries, stronger collaboration and increased awareness of VLS services hope to ensure the implementation of the government program called Information Kazakhstan – 2020.Korean Library and Information Science Societ

Exploring the relationship between social media knowledge platform (SMKP) using smart devices and the impact on students’ academic performances

This research study is an attempt to investigate and recommend the applications and usefulness of social media as a knowledge sharing platform using smart mobile devices and students’ academic performances. Research literature reveals that further examination of this idea is a must as it is increasingly becoming an integral part and a current mandate for digital-era learners. This study is exploratory based on learners’ data which includes students from foundation, junior and senior courses at a university. The objective was to cognize learners’ perceptions on collaborative learning while using applications of social media knowledge platform and smart mobile devices. Structural Model approach is followed to validate the data and undertake the required analysis. The resulting analysis shows that a significantly positive relation exists between the available platforms of knowledge applications using smart devices and its substantial impact on students’ overall performances. In addition, it could be observed that generally students have positive and valuable perception on the use of social media knowledge platform and smart mobile devices in collaborative learning settings. Moreover, such settings encourage students-students’ interactions, studentsteachers’ interactions, and the growing trends of students to online experts’ interactions. Furthermore, it was noticed that these interactions improve students’ engagement with such platforms using smart devices, which consequently has significant positive impact on students’ academic performances. The findings propose the inculcation in students the positive role of the use of social media knowledge platforms using smart devices so to encourage collaborative learning, to enhance active learning, to be more dynamic & engaging, to broaden their domain-knowledge, and to promote academic researchoriented learning, which are all crucial for graduate employability

Collaboration and Co-Teaching: Librarians Teaching Digital Humanities in the Classroom

Digital Humanities (DH) as an area of engagement with students, staff, and teaching faculty has been rapidly evolving at the University of Kansas Libraries (KU Libraries) over the past several years. As the popularity of DH tools, platforms and methodologies has increased, so has the demand to support and engage teaching faculty with incorporating DH in their courses and with their own research interests. Many academic libraries, including KU Libraries, are both adjusting to and leading this shift, figuring out ways to support digital scholarship for research and teaching, while at the same time gently delineating our roles, responsibilities, and limitations. This chapter will describe three examples of efforts by librarians with subject, instruction, and digital scholarship expertise to provide digital humanities instruction and training to students and faculty, and will look at how these efforts relate to our previous and evolving roles within the library. We will also provide concrete examples of in-class assignments, describe what worked well and what could be improved, and discuss some possible ways that we ourselves might develop the knowledge and skills needed to engage in this kind of work. We hope that these examples and observations can serve as models, starting-points, or inspiration for subject specialists to both learn more about digital humanities and to develop their own course activities