Students and instant messaging: a survey of current use and demands for higher education

Instant messaging (IM) is the term used to describe the technology through which ‘users can set up a list of partners who will be able to receive notes that pop up on their screens the moment one of them writes and hits the send button’. While early use could be described as mainly for fun, IM today is a serious communication medium. Remarkably, it seems that educational institutions have been doing very little with it, while several studies indicate that it could indeed be a valuable tool in education. As a first step towards a better understanding of the educational use of IM, we want to gain insights in how students currently use IM and what opportunities they themselves see for the medium. To that end we conducted a survey among students of the Fontys University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. A large majority of the participating students indicated using IM for their studies. Also, when asked about their demands for a possible educational implementation, the majority were positive

Lifelong learning in a network

Paper accepted for ODLAA conference (Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia), titled 'breaking down barriers', Adelaide, 9-11 November, Australia. Will be published as a chapter in the book: 'Breaking Down Boundaries: The International Experience in Open, Distance and Flexible Education'In our knowledge-based society learning will no longer exclusively be tied to the traditional educational institutions, but becomes lifelong. E-learning has enabled the establishment of networks of distributed collaborating learners, teachers and institutions. Lifelong learning in a network is quite different, because the student doesn’t belong to one institute and the roles of persons are no longer fixed. At the OUNL we are developing a set of models (a 'learning network'), technologies and open specifications in order to support networked learning. It will be related to the MSc-programme we are developing in collaboration with Sydney University and Florida State University

Exploring what works in professional development: An assessment of a prototype intervention and its accompanying design principles

The growing complexity and numerous changes in Dutch vocational education and training (VET) pressureteachers to continually develop their teaching profession. Therefore professional development (PD) is needed, but policy-initiated and imposed PD might be ineffective. Thus the purpose of this research is to evaluate which design requirements (DR) in a mandatory PD programme delivered in a VET institute appear to show the most effectiveness. Based on a review study aimed at detecting effectiveness enhancing DR an assessor PD programme was redesigned and implemented. This programme was evaluated with respect to effectiveness on five different levels of impact considering participants’ attitudes, their reactions, what they had learned or what behaviour they developed, and organizational support. Each level of impact was evaluated using existing and self-constructed instruments including questionnaires, surveys, interviews and observations. Thirty-nine teachers took part in this redesigned PD programme. Several DR appeared to show measurable levels of effectiveness: tolerance for complex contexts, contribution to a professional identity and team based and collective participation

Application of an instructional systems design approach by teachers in higher education:individual versus team design

Hoogveld, A. W. M., Paas, F., & Jochems, W. M. G. (2003). Application of an instructional systems design approach by teachers in higher education: individual versus team design. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19, 581-590.Curricular changes in higher vocational education have rendered teachers' instructional design activities increasingly important. Using a repertory grid technique, this paper sets out to analyse current design activities of ten teacher trainers. Their actual approach is compared with an instructional systems design (ISD) approach and related to innovative teacher roles. Teachers’ activities show an imbalance in two ID phases, that is problem analysis and evaluation. The results suggest that they attempt to translate curricular goals directly into concrete lessons and they pay relatively little attention to evaluation. In line with this finding, they underrate the two innovative teacher roles of the “diagnostician” and the “evaluator”. It is argued that imbalanced or incomplete design approaches and perceived roles may hinder innovation in education. Implications for the support of teachers’ design activities are discussed

Methodological triangulation of the student’s use of recorded lectures

Abstract: A lot of research into the use of recorded lectures has been done by using surveys or interviews. We will show that triangulation of multiple data sources is needed. We will discuss how students use recorded lectures according to their self-report and what actual usage of the recorded lectures can be derived from the data on the system. We will present the data collections and cover areas where the data can be triangulated to increase the credibility of the results or to question the students' responses. The triangulation shows that we lack data for a number of areas. We will need high-quality surveys and interviews combined with the log data to get a complete picture. We need to be able to link data sets together based on the identification of the individual students, which might raise privacy issues

Students and recorded lectures: survey on current use and demands for higher education

Online recordings of lectures provide students with anytime-anyplace access to lectures. Research shows that students prefer courses accompanied by online recordings and an increasing number of universities provide recorded lectures. This paper presents the results of a study into the use of recorded lectures at two universities in the Netherlands. The goal of the study is to gain a better understanding of the way that this group of students use recorded lectures. This understanding will enable the creation of usage scenarios that need to be supported. Our results show that students use recorded lectures as a replacement for missed lectures and for study tasks, like preparing for an exam. A large proportion of the students report that they watch 75–100% of a recorded lecture when the view one. The fact that students did not mention the quality of the actual lectures appears not to influence the use of the recorded lectures. Recorded lectures for courses that only use the blackboard are viewed less often. There are also interesting differences in the use of recorded lectures of the different groups of students at the two universities. To increase the credibility and validity of the results, we need a more direct way to measure the use of recorded lectures by students. Methodological triangulation using the log data for the recorded lectures can provide this

The effect of functional roles on group efficiency

The usefulness of ‘roles’ as a pedagogical approach to support small group performance can be often read, however, their effect is rarely empirically assessed. Roles promote cohesion and responsibility and decrease so-called ‘process losses’ caused by coordination demands. In addition, roles can increase awareness of intra-group interaction. In this article, the effect of functional roles on group performance, efficiency and collaboration during computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) was investigated with questionnaires and quantitative content analysis of e-mail communication. A comparison of thirty-three questionnaire observations, distributed over ten groups in two research conditions: role (n = 5, N = 14) and non-role (n = 5, N = 19), revealed no main effect for performance (grade). A latent variable was interpreted as ‘perceived group efficiency’ (PGE). Multilevel modelling (MLM) yielded a positive marginal effect of PGE. Groups in the role condition appear to be more aware of their efficiency, compared to groups in the ‘non-role’ condition, regardless whether the group performs well or poor. Content analysis reveals that students in the role condition contribute more ‘task content’ focussed statements. This is, however, not as hypothesised due to the premise that roles decrease coordination and thus increase content focused statements; in fact, roles appear to stimulate coordination and simultaneously the amount of ‘task content’ focussed statements increases

Introducing the SAPS System and a Corresponding Allocation Mechanism for Synchronous Online Reciprocal Peer Support Activities

While student populations in higher education are becoming more heterogeneous, recently several attempts have been made to introduce online peer support to decrease the tutor load of teachers. We propose a system that facilitates synchronous online reciprocal peer support activities for ad hoc student questions: the Synchronous Allocated Peer Support (SAPS) system. Via this system, students with questions during their learning are allocated to competent fellow-students for answering. The system is designed for reciprocal peer support activities among a group of students who are working on the same fixed modular material every student has to finish, such as courses with separate chapters. As part of a requirement analysis of online reciprocal peer support to succeed, this chapter is focused on the second requirement of peer competence and sustainability of our system. Therefore a study was conducted with a simulation of a SAPS-based allocation mechanism in the NetLogo simulation environment and focuses on the required minimum population size, the effect of the addition of extra allocation parameters or disabling others on the mechanism\'s effectiveness, and peer tutor load spread in various conditions and its influence on the mechanism\'s effectiveness. The simulation shows that our allocation mechanism should be able to facilitate online peer support activities among groups of students. The allocation mechanism holds over time and a sufficient number of students are willing and competent to answer fellow-students\' questions. Also, fine-tuning the parameters (e.g. extra selection criteria) of the allocation mechanism further enhances its effectiveness.Peer Support, Peer Allocation, Computational Simulations, System Dynamics, Distance Learning

The e-learning citizen

The paper discusses three different challenges societal development pose to educational institutions. Then it discusses a few trends within education itself. It concludes with a discussion of how education and educational institutions should adopt an innovative attitude to cope with these trends if they want to avoid being side-tracked. (In Dutch