bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Effects of using mobile devices on English listening diversity and speaking for EFL elementary students
Authors: Hwang Wu-Yuin , Huang Yueh-Min , Shadiev Rustam , Wu Sheng-Yi , Chen Shu-Lin 
Published: April 2016

<p class="Abstract">This study designed learning activities supported by a mobile learning system for students to develop listening and speaking skills in English as a foreign language (EFL). How students perceive learning activities and a mobile learning system were examined in this study. Additionally, how different practices relate to students’ language proficiency was also explored. It was found that students had positive perceptions and intentions toward learning activities; thus, students were motivated to practice English skills more when using a mobile learning system. The results demonstrated how students’ speaking and listening skills practices using mobile devices had different correlations depending on their proficiency levels. For example, listening diversity, defined as the number of other classmates a student listened to, was found to have an inverse correlation with speaking and listening proficiency. This finding does not support previous research and indicates that students who carefully selected their listening partners performed better than those who did not. It was further found that the better students performed in English learning, the fewer partners they would choose. EFL instructors can use the insights of this study to design more effective language learning activities for students using mobile devices.</p><p class="Firstparagraphstyle"> </p>
Using the TPACK framework to unite disciplines in online learning
Authors: Anderson Alan , Barham Nicholas , Northcote Maria 
Published: April 2016

<p>This paper builds on a previous case study in which a group of lecturers from various disciplines were interviewed about their practice as facilitators of online learning. The lecturers' comments about their teaching practices revealed their awareness of specific types of teacher knowledge about online teaching. This was an unintended outcome of the previous study. Subsequently, as reported in this paper, the data were interrogated further using a new lens to investigate the extent to which these elements of teacher knowledge were evident throughout their practices. The technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) theoretical framework enabled the researchers to identify the lecturers' views about the content taught in online and blended environments, the pedagogy which guided teaching and course design, and the technology selected to facilitate students' learning. This paper also considers practical issues about using the TPACK framework as a research tool as a lens through which to view online teachers' knowledge about pedagogy, technology and content.</p><p> </p>
EDITORIAL 31(4)
Authors: Dalgarno Barney , Bennett Sue , Henderson Michael 
Published: April 2016

In this editorial we report on a workshop of editors of educational technology and open and distance education journals held in Barcelona, Spain in June of this year, attended by Barney Dalgarno on behalf of the AJET editorial team. Some of the key issues discussed during the workshop included editorial processes, author services, sustainability of business models, and emerging impact metrics. Overall the workshop was a valuable opportunity to compare the processes used by AJET with those used by other journals. An online network of participating editors has now been established and a commitment has been made to come together for similar events in the future.
The influence of students' ICT skills and their adoption of mobile learning
Authors: Mac Callum Kathryn , Jeffrey Lynn 
Published: April 2016

<p>Mobile technology has gained increased focus in academic circles as a way to enable learning that is not confined by time and place. As the benefits of mobile learning are being clarified so too will researchers need to understand the factors that influence its future use. The adoption of mobile technology will largely depend on whether students believe that mobile technology fits their particular needs. However despite the interest in the potential of mobile learning, researchers have only a limited knowledge of the factors that may influence student adoption. To address this gap in the literature, the present study was undertaken to determine how ICT skills impact students' adoption of mobile learning. The study posited that the perceived ease of use and usefulness of mobile technology would mediate the relationship between ICT skills and the intention of students to adopt mobile learning. A survey of 446 students from three tertiary institutions found that students' intention to adopt mobile learning was influenced by specific types of ICT skills. In particular, it was found that advanced skill in mobile technology and basic ICT skills both played significant roles in the intention to adopt mobile learning. No evidence was found to support the assertion that advanced ICT skills influenced their adoption of mobile learning.</p><p> </p>
Augmentation of information in educational objects: Effectiveness of arrows and pictures as information for actions in instructional objects
Authors: Pekerti Andre A. 
Published: April 2016

<p>The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education is now central to facilitating links between learners, resources and instructors. Regardless of whether it is used in distance education or <em>educational objects,</em> ICT enables educators to package education opportunities in an increasing number of alternative ways so as best to meet the varying needs of the end user. Currently, one of the challenges that face instructors is to develop materials that enhance the learner-content interaction by reducing extraneous cognitive load while at the same time facilitating learning. This study explored the effectiveness of pictorial information and augmentation in instructions and educational objects. Dual coding theory is used to suggest that information that can be processed via separate but interconnected systems will facilitate faster processing and deeper learning of the information. University students were randomly assigned to six experimental conditions to perform a novel task using six different instruction manuals. A 3 (text, text-pictorial, text-pictorial-arrows) X 2 (picture of object vs. no picture of object) design was used to test whether augmenting text with pictorial information provided additional valuable information in instructional settings. Results partially support this multimedia effect; participants exhibited superior performance in a Text-Pictorial and Text-Pictorial-Arrows format over Text format. A picture of the object also facilitated superior performance on both the assembly and operating tasks, especially in a text format. Overall, combinations of text-pictorial and text-pictorial-arrows facilitated faster assembly and operation; they reduced errors, extra procedures, and unsuccessful assemblies (uncorrected errors). Results also support the idea that arrows convey unique types of information and function. In particular, arrows may attune people to important information and/or convey information movement that guides actions during tasks. Practical implications are discussed in relation to the type of information combinations that may lead to superior instructional design of <em>instructional objects</em> and research, including how to reduce errors of omission.</p><p> </p>
Central practitioners’ developing legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice for changing schools
Authors: Woo David 
Published: April 2016

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p>As new technologies continue to shape society, there has been a greater need for communities of practice to facilitate changing teaching and learning practices through technology in schools. Legitimate peripheral participation through these communities of practice has become an essential means to spread and support this technology integration movement, but understanding this participation in communities has been limited. This paper reports on a study of how central practitioners developed legitimate peripheral participation episodes in an inter-organisational, international community of practice. It describes the qualitative, case study approach to the study, and outlines the community of practice, its central practitioners and the legitimate peripheral participation episodes in which they participated. The paper presents and discusses essential central practitioner individual and organisational factors which enabled the continuity and change of legitimate peripheral participation episodes in the community. Individual factors to emerge from the study include central practitioners’ desire for continuous professional development and individual agency. Organisational factors include an organisation’s distinctive mission, its distinctive roles, and constant negotiation, including conflicts of interest, between organisations and their members. The paper concludes with considerations of the value and relevance of legitimate peripheral participation in an inter-organisational community of practice for changing practices.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 28.35pt 0pt; line-height: normal;"> </p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>
Class blogs as a teaching tool to promote writing and student interaction
Authors: Sullivan Miriam , Longnecker Nancy 
Published: April 2016

<p>Blogs are a useful teaching tool for improving student writing and increasing class interaction. However, most studies have looked at individual blogs rather than blogs maintained by a whole class. We introduced assignments involving participation in class blogs to four science communication classes with enrolments of between 15 and 36 students. We administered paper-based surveys to obtain student perceptions of the value of the blogging assignment. Based on feedback in semester one, we increased commenting requirements and spent more time integrating the blog with coursework in semester two. In semester two, students had significantly improved perceptions of the blog assignments. The most commonly cited benefit by students in both semesters was that the blog helped to improve their writing. Most enjoyed the opportunity to have increased intellectual exchange with other students and the majority agreed that knowing other students read the blog motivated them to write better. Students disliked being forced to comment and they felt that they benefited just from reading other students’ posts. However, we recommend that weekly commenting should be mandatory, as this increased involvement and perceived value of the assignment.</p><p> </p>
Implementing the interactive response system in a high school physics context: Intervention and reflections
Authors: Shieh Ruey S. , Chang Wheijen 
Published: April 2016

<p>The interactive response system (IRS) has been widely used to promote student learning since 2003. It is an electronic system connected to handset devices allowing students to transmit their responses by pressing the desired buttons and meanwhile allowing the teacher to monitor and track individual students' answers anonymously and statistically. However, there is limited research examining the challenges teachers may encounter when designing IRS-based questions and providing mediations which may lead them to develop quality questions. The purpose of this study is to address this research gap by investigating one high school teacher's IRS implementation based on both the teacher's and students' teaching/learning experiences as well as presenting an intervention to help the teacher develop higher quality IRS questions. High quality questions denote questions that are able to help students engage in deeper thinking and eventually lead to comprehensive understanding of the concepts learned. The data sources consist of tests, classroom observations, interviews, face-to-face meetings, and email correspondence. The findings disclose that enhancing the teacher's content knowledge and capability of recognizing the students' learning pitfalls is the foundation to developing quality IRS questions. Collaboration established between the teacher and a university physics education expert appears to have effectively helped both participants gain insights and knowledge into designing quality questions aimed at identifying the students' learning bottlenecks.</p><p> </p>
Implementation of an electronic Objective Structured Clinical Exam for assessing practical skills in pre-professional physiotherapy and occupational therapy programs: Examiner and course coordinator perspectives
Authors: Snodgrass Suzanne J , Ashby Samantha E , Rivett Darren A , Russell Trevor 
Published: April 2016

<p>Assessment of practical clinical skills is essential in the health fields. Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs), where examiners assess students performing clinical procedures on simulated patients (actors), are central to the evaluation of practical skills. However, traditional OSCEs require considerable time-investment to administer, and providing timely, individualised student feedback is difficult. To address these issues, an electronic OSCE (eOSCE) was developed utilising the iPad and specialised software. The eOSCE was trialled in four courses within two entry-level rehabilitative pre-professional programs at two universities, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Evaluation consisted of student surveys (n = 206), eight student focus groups (n = 25), examiner surveys (n = 25) and interviews with course coordinators (n = 3). This paper describes the administration of the eOSCE and reports on its evaluation from the academic’s perspective. A majority of examiners (68%) preferred the eOSCE over traditional paper-based OSCEs, primarily because of the consistency and promptness of student feedback. The advantages academics cited were equitable student feedback and post-examination administrative time-savings. Disadvantages of the eOSCE were the pre-examination preparation required and challenges for examiners not comfortable using technology. Overall, the key benefits of the eOSCE were the automated, immediate individualised student feedback and a time saving in OSCE administration.</p><p> </p>
Learning outside the walls of the classroom: Engaging the digital natives
Authors: Veira Andrea K. , Leacock Coreen J. , Warrican S. Joel 
Published: April 2016

<p>This study investigated the response of students and teachers to the use of ICTs to promote teaching and learning outside of the classroom and regular school hours in a Caribbean secondary school. Following an action research design, Grades 10 and 11 Biology students were given access to subject content and learning support through online discussion groups (Google and Facebook), a website that hosted information and an accompanying blog. Data were collected by questionnaire, interviews, and observation. Initially, the students were reluctant to use the discussion groups, though they eventually reported that these facilities provided useful learning support outside of the classroom. They however rejected the Google group in favour of the more familiar Facebook group. Students were so enthusiastic about these resources that they requested that more subject areas be added. Teachers were somewhat reluctant to answer this call, citing the lack of access to equipment and time as deterrents. One year later, the initiative had expanded to the point where the school had acquired additional equipment, had devised a policy for ICT use, additional resources were added to the website and increasingly, students were using their portable devices for academic purposes both in and out of school.</p><p> </p>
Blended learning in design education: An analysis of students' experiences within the disciplinary differences framework
Authors: Pektas Sule Tasli , Gurel Meltem O. 
Published: April 2016

<p>Blended learning has already become an indispensable part of education in many fields. However, the majority of existing research on blended learning has assumed homogeneity of disciplines. This study suggests that research highlighting disciplinary effects and differences is much needed to effectively develop courses and tools consonant with the characteristics of each discipline. To help close this research gap, this paper focuses on design education and analyses student experiences in a “blended design studio” that combined the Moodle learning management system, live videoconferencing, and social networking media (Facebook) with traditional face-to-face learning (design studio). Students’ perceptions of the methods and tools were elicited through structured and open-ended questions and qualitative variations in responses were categorised. Subsequent quantitative analysis revealed that the characteristics of soft-applied fields require customisation in blended courses and educational system designs in several ways.</p><p> </p>
An epistemological analysis of the application of an online inquiry-based program in tourism education
Authors: Hsu Liwei 
Published: April 2016

<span style="font-family: 新細明體; font-size: small;"> </span><p>This paper was designed to investigate the application of an online inquiry-based program to European tourism from an epistemological perspective. Fifty tourism students (n = 50) participated in this study and their epistemological beliefs were measured with the Epistemological Belief Scale. A set of pre-, post-, and delayed tests were utilised to assess each participant’s learning outcomes. The results showed that online inquiry-based learning (IBL) did change the participants’ epistemological beliefs significantly, with a large effect size (Cohen’s d) of .83. However, correlation analyses indicated that the relationship between an individual’s epistemological beliefs before and after the online IBL experience, and the differences of pre- and post-tests, is rather low (g = .287). Yet, the association between their changed epistemological beliefs and the delayed test was higher (g = .556). These results suggest the possible effectiveness of online IBL in helping tourism students’ develop more sophisticated epistemological beliefs, which may not be able to help learners comprehend the subject matter immediately but may facilitate better long-term retention.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p><span style="font-family: 新細明體; font-size: small;"> </span>
Understanding the role of prior knowledge in a multimedia learning application
Authors: Mohd Rias Riaza , Zaman Halimah Badioze 
Published: April 2016

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p>This study looked at the effects that individual differences in prior knowledge have on student understanding in learning with multimedia in a computer science subject. Students were identified as having either low or high prior knowledge from a series of questions asked in a survey conducted at the Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at University Technology MARA, Malaysia. The subject domain chosen for this study is a topic taught to undergraduates in the field of Computer Sciences, in the subject of Operating Systems, i.e., Memory Management Concepts. This study utilizes a multimedia application that is shown to a total of 257 students. Early results from the recall and transfer tests indicate that students' individual differences play a vital role in learning outcome. As expected, the low prior knowledge group scored significantly in the recall tests as compared to the transfer test, and the high prior knowledge group performed comparatively better in the transfer test. This suggests that educational designers who wish to foster learning and understanding should incorporate learners' prior knowledge as a design principle.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 29.35pt 10pt 31.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -31.5pt; tab-stops: 0in;"> </p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>
"I'd be so much more comfortable posting anonymously": Identified versus anonymous participation in student discussion boards
Authors: Roberts Lynne D. , Rajah-Kanagasabai Camilla J 
Published: April 2016

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p>Academic staff members encourage university students to use online student discussion boards within learning management systems to ask and answer questions, share information and engage in discussion. We explore the impact of anonymity on student posting behaviour. An online survey was completed by 131 second year undergraduate psychology students (91% response rate). Overall, students reported being significantly more likely to post to discussion boards when anonymous posting was enabled than when identified posting was required (<em>d </em>= .49). Students who preferred to post anonymously were significantly less likely to post on discussion boards requiring identification than other students (<em>η</em><sup>2 </sup>= .27). The experimental manipulation of anonymous/identified postings using a simulated discussion board thread revealed no significant differences in the perceived credibility of authors of anonymous and identified messages, or in the likelihood of responding to these messages. A combination of individual level factors; including online privacy concern, self-consciousness and self-efficacy; were predictive of the likelihood of making identified postings (<em>R</em><sup>2 </sup>= .387), but only self-efficacy was a significant unique predictor of anonymous postings (<em>sr</em><sup>2 </sup>= .05). Educators can consider enabling anonymous postings and providing training to increase student self-efficacy as ways of increasing student engagement through decreasing concerns about self-presentation online.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>
Were knowledge management abilities of university students enhanced after creating personal blog-based portfolios?
Authors: Chang Chi-Cheng , Liang Chaoyun , Tseng Kuo-Hung , Tseng Ju-Shih , Chen To-Yu 
Published: April 2016

<p>The effect of creating blog-based portfolios on knowledge management (KM) abilities among university students was examined in the present study. Participants included 43 students majoring in Multimedia and Game Science at a University in Taiwan. Students spent nine weeks creating their personal portfolios by using a blog. The <em>t</em>-test was conducted to examine the difference in KM abilities before and after creating blog-based portfolios. The results showed that students' KM abilities after creating blog-based portfolios were significantly better than before creating blog-based portfolios.</p><p> </p>
‘Partly self-made niches’? Student-only spaces in an LMS
Authors: Pettit John 
Published: April 2016

<p>Eighty-nine students were provided with a student-only live-voice space in a Learning Management System (LMS). Would they use it and, if so, would they feel sufficient ownership to create what Havnes (2008) described as “partly self-made niches”? In this study, a substantial proportion of respondents reported that they used the space not only for social support but also for key aspects of peer-learning. They reported that these student-only sessions gave them freedom to explore module-topics in new ways, and to share professional practice. Some disliked the lack of structure, but many valued the freedom to vary the focus and pace of their sessions. Several interviewees reported setting up sessions at short notice – for example, via <em>Twitter</em> – to meet their immediate concerns and requirements. A number of respondents valued these sessions as distinctive from, and complementary to, their tutorials in the same live-voice environment. The paper links these findings to debates about whether peer-learning should be explicitly organised, and about how education can disrupt itself as advocated by Bass (2012).</p><p> </p>