Designing capacity-building in e-learning expertise: Challenges and strategies

This research study looks at how organizations in developing countries perceive the challenge of building capacity in e-learning expertise. Data was collected on six such organizations, and a range of perceived rationales and constraints were identified. The paper hypothesizes a four-part framework to define the e-learning capacity gaps that these circumstances appear to represent: the 'instructional design capacity gap', the 'production capacity gap', the 'tutorial capacity gap' and the 'community building gap'. The framework is used to re-examine the data to explore the ways in which the organizations' e-learning activities might constitute strategic responses to the hypothesized capacity gaps

The challenge to professionals of using social media: teachers in England negotiating personal-professional identities

Social media are a group of technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn which offer people chances to interact with one another in new ways. Teachers, like other members of society, do not all use social media. Some avoid, some experiment with and others embrace social media enthusiastically. As a means of communication available to everyone in modern society, social media is challenging teachers, as other professionals in society, to decide whether to engage with these tools and, if so, on what basis – as an individual (personally), or as a teacher (professionally). Although teachers are guided by schools and codes of practice, teachers as individuals are left to decide whether and how to explore social media for either their own or their students' learning. This paper analyses evidence from interviews with 12 teachers from England about their use of social media as to the challenges they experience in relation to using the media as professional teachers.. Teachers are in society’s spotlight in terms of examples of inappropriate use of social media but also under peer pressure to connect. This paper explores their agency in responding. The paper focuses on how teachers deal with tensions between their personal and professional use of social media. These tensions are not always perceived as negative and some teachers' accounts revealed a unity in their identities when using social media. The paper reflects on the implications of such teachers' identities in relation to the future of social media use in education

What Needs to Be Done for Successful E Assessment Implementations?

Part 2: What Issues Do Those Developing New Educational Management Information System Face?International audienceAssessment is one of the most important parts of the education system. The effectiveness of teaching and learning needs to be assessed so that all parties involved in this system can be improved. When “Assessment” is powered with technology and named as “E Assessment”, generating the data to make the necessary improvements in education gets easier. However, as is the case in other fields, technology brings risks and challenges along with its indispensable benefits. This paper provides insights about success factors that are extracted from the literature and validated through a Delphi study. With the participation of eleven experts in two iterative rounds, in addition to the success factors, practicable solutions to achieve success are also collected. The decision makers who plan the implementation and administration processes of E Assessment can consider the proposed key success factors and the practicable solutions when allocating resources