ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Bridging the Gap--Taking the Distance out of e-Learning
Author: Karlsudd, Peter
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Distance Education,Electronic Learning,Faculty Development,Capacity Building,Teacher Competencies,Intervention,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Change,Delivery Systems,College Faculty,Educational Practices,Foreign Countries,Action Research

In order to promote closer relations between two existing academic environments--on-campus and distance learning--a pedagogical intervention was made aiming to raise the level of competence and awareness among faculty regarding flexible learning and the use of ICT in higher education. The intervention was a process-oriented pedagogical effort based on collaborative learning and cross-institutional cooperation. Teacher teams worked to enhance flexible learning in either new or existing courses. The intervention resulted in more teachers getting involved in flexible learning. At the same time several problems surfaced indicating the need for further competence development efforts in order to further promote flexible learning environments.
Cultural Impact on Online Education Quality Perception
Author: Milani, Manuela
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Cultural Influences,Educational Quality,Educational Technology,Online Courses,Technology Uses in Education,Foreign Countries,Standards,Literature Reviews,College Instruction,Evaluation Methods,Cultural Differences,Case Studies,Virtual Universities

Numerous stakeholders in the field of education have been working on the development and extent of the use of ICT in different learning communities (higher education, vocational training) and in different multicultural contexts thanks also to EU funding opportunities. In this framework, they have participated in the building of various cross-national teaching and learning models. The strategies which supported the development of such educational projects introducing online teaching and learning activities in the framework of European projects generally rely on the basic premise of the homogeneity of the educational systems likely to be used, and according to similar methods, the resources and training devices with ICT. This can lead to the negation of potential discrepancies, particularly cultural ones, in educational systems. The aim of this paper is to analyse the concept of &quot;quality in online education within European Online Academic Education's context,&quot; how this concept takes shape and how it becomes--or not--part of teaching and learning practices. We decided to focus our attention on the concept of &quot;quality&quot; to understand the eventual impact of the cultural factor on the developing scenario of virtual education because this concept seems to be particularly revealing if we take into consideration its &quot;open nature.&quot; The increasing number of virtual campuses reveals how common the development of teaching modules are nowadays together with complete degrees based on inter-university and transnational collaborations with the aim of transferring learning objects from one educational context to another. Virtual mobility is thus becoming a reality for a greater number of students. However, the multicultural dimension of these new environments has not been investigated yet and in particular the notion of &quot;online teaching quality&quot; is still under-exploited. This paper intends to provide a review of current works on Online Education Quality Measurement in general focusing on the investigation of Cultural Impact on Quality issues. At the same time this paper intends to shift the attention from students' to teachers' perception of quality and consequently on the possible different evaluation frameworks used within the same context: European Online Education. The paper is part of a PhD research aimed at exploring the impact of cultural dimensions on the design of online courses offered by universities from different European areas. The research notably aims to reveal differences between online courses' models, in order to uncover which one of them can be connected to the cultural dimension they belong to.
Web-Based Learning in Practice Settings: Nurses' Experiences and Perceptions of Impact on Patient Care
Author: Lockyer, Lesley
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Web Based Instruction,Nurses,Cancer,Delivery Systems,Clinical Experience,Electronic Learning,Online Surveys,Focus Groups,Interviews,Nursing Education,Workplace Learning,Learning Experience,Hospitals,Foreign Countries,Mixed Methods Research

This paper presents qualitative research completed in two groups of hospitals in the United Kingdom, as part of a larger mixed methods study. It involved eight qualified nurses caring for patients with gastro-intestinal cancer in general surgical wards. It explored the nurses' experiences of using an online programme and their perceptions of the impact of learning on patient care delivery. The nurses volunteered to complete an online open source package www.cancernursing.org. and meet for focus group discussions and interviews following a lapse of six weeks. Two of the participants experienced difficulties completing the package and following changes to the previously attained ethical approval, a focus group was conducted with these staff. Analysis of the transcripts identified a number of issues for those considering the adoption of such modes of delivery within healthcare. Nurses referred to a lack of information technology skills and competence in computer use, access issues, organizational barriers and lack of protected study time. In spite of difficulties they gave examples of how their learning had impacted on patient care.
Behind the Scenes with OpenLearn: The Challenges of Researching the Provision of Open Educational Resources
Author: Godwin, Stephen
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Resource Units,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Technology,Shared Resources and Services,Educational Resources,Higher Education,Social Theories,Videoconferencing,Action Research,Research Methodology,Computer Software,Computer Mediated Communication,Foreign Countries

Web-enabled technology is now being applied on a large scale. In this paper we look at open access provision of teaching and learning leading to many users with varying patterns and motivations for use. This has provided us with a research challenge to find methods that help us understand and explain such initiatives. We describe ways to model the research and identify where pressures and contradictions can be found, drawing on a reflective view of our own practice in performing the research. Open educational resources are defined as technology-enabled educational resources that are openly available for consultation, use and adaptation by users for non-commercial purposes (UNESCO, 2002). OpenLearn is one of the largest of such initiatives and is committed to the provision of open educational resources for all. It is being developed by The Open University and is primarily sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It provides users with over 4,200 hours of higher educational material drawn from Open University courses. Other learning tools such as discussion forums, video conferencing, and knowledge mapping software are also available to the user. In this paper we aim to introduce OpenLearn and outline some of the main research issues surrounding such an initiative. We seek to explore theoretical and practical approaches that can provide suitable tools for analysis. Activity theory is seen as a suitable approach for macro analysis and its use is illustrated in terms of the complexity of large scale research. Activity theory, besides informing research perspectives, can be turned in upon the research process itself allowing us to consider the challenges and context of the research. By using activity theory in this way and illustrating from a range of practical approaches we demonstrate and illustrate a useful research approach.
The eLIDA CAMEL Nomadic Model of Collaborative Partnership for a Community of Practice in Design for Learning
Author: Jameson, Jill
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Communities of Practice,Partnerships in Education,Electronic Learning,Case Studies,Instructional Design,Higher Education,Adult Education,Integrated Learning Systems,Educational Innovation,Student Surveys,Student Attitudes,Teacher Surveys,Teacher Attitudes,Foreign Countries

A nomadic collaborative partnership model for a community of practice (CoP) in Design for Learning (D4L) can facilitate successful innovation and continuing appraisals of effective professional practice, stimulated by a &quot;critical friend&quot; assigned to the project. This paper reports on e-learning case studies collected by the UK JISC eLIDA CAMEL Design for Learning project, which implemented and evaluated learning design (LD) tools in higher and further education as part of the 2006-07 JISC Design for Learning pedagogic e-learning programme. Project partners carried out user evaluations on innovative tools with a learning design function, collecting D4L case studies and LD sequences in post-16/HE contexts using LAMS and Moodle. The project brought together learning activity sequences from post-16/HE partners into a collaborative e-learning community of professional practice based on the CAMEL (Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e-Learning) model, contributing to international D4L developments. This paper briefly provides an overview of key project output contributions to e-learning innovations, including results from teacher and student evaluations using online surveys. The paper explores intentionality in the development of a community of practice in design for learning, reporting on trials of learning design and social software that bridged some of the tensions between formalised intra-institutional e-learning relationships and inter-institutional project team dynamic D4L practitioner development. Following a brief report of practitioner D4L e-learning case studies and student feedback, the catalytic role of the &quot;critical friend&quot; is highlighted and recommended as a key ingredient in the successful development of a nomadic model of communities of practice in the management of professional e-learning projects. eLIDA CAMEL Partners included the Association of Learning Technology (ALT), JISC infoNet, three universities and five FE/Sixth Form Colleges. Results reported to the UK JISC Experts' Pedagogy Group demonstrated e-learning innovations by practitioners in D4L case studies, illuminated by the role of the &quot;critical friend&quot;, Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University. The project also benefited from case study evaluations by Dr. Liz Masterman of Oxford University Learning Technologies Group and the leading work of ALT and JISC infoNet in the development of the CAMEL model.
Digital Literacies in the Lives of Undergraduate Students: Exploring Personal and Curricular Spheres of Practice
Author: Jones, Sylvia
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Technological Literacy,Technology Uses in Education,Electronic Learning,Educational Technology,Teaching Methods,Interviews,Foreign Countries,Social Media,Computer Mediated Communication

This paper reports on the initial findings from a project which offers a complementary perspective to much of the research on e-learning and student learning in a digital age. Rather than foregrounding technological applications and their associated affordances, its focus is on texts and practices and textual engagements in digital environments. Drawing on previous research into academic literacies (Lea &amp; Street 1998; Lea &amp; Stierer 2000; Lillis, 2001; Thesen &amp; Van Pletzen 2006), it takes a textual lens to the experience of undergraduate students' learning in a digital age. The project contributes to our understanding of a changing environment in exploring the nature of literacies, learning and technologies and how these intersect in students' lives as learners. The research has been carried out in three very different institutions of higher education in the UK, using qualitative, text-based methods. Forty-five undergraduates participated in the project and were interviewed on three occasions over a six month period. The interviews included discussions around their use of digital texts and technologies in their lives as students. In discussion with the research team, participants in the project accessed websites across a range of personal and curricular spheres, including social networking sites and resources directly or indirectly linked to their studies. They also showed examples of their work for assessment and guidance from tutors. This has provided a rich base from which to examine the nature of digital literacies for today's undergraduates and the implications of engagement in a range of texts and practices around technologies for learning.
Navigating the e-Learning Terrain: Aligning Technology, Pedagogy and Context
Author: Mentis, Mandia
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Electronic Learning,Teaching Methods,Higher Education,Vignettes,Teacher Education,Alignment (Education),Learning Theories

Over the last ten years e-learning has rapidly emerged as a potentially effective mode of higher education, but it is still unclear what factors are important in the design of an effective e-learning course. e-Learning has been described as being a &quot;disruptive technology&quot; that changes how learning is approached in higher education (Garrison and Anderson 2003). The extensive changes in the technologies over the last decade have the potential to influence the way we engage with knowledge, but the potential will only be realised if we integrate this with an understanding of learning, and design the use of e-learning technologies accordingly within different contexts (Laurillard 2005). This paper explores the influence of the areas of technology, pedagogy and context on e-learning practice in higher education. Three vignettes relating to e-learning are presented which represent the shifts in technology and the tensions and influences of this on context and pedagogy. These vignettes provide the background context within which to discuss the design of an e-learning alignment guide (eLAG). This guide is a navigational tool, which offers e-learning designers a perspective on navigating the e-learning topography. It is devised to assist practitioners when navigating the changing and complex terrain of e-learning and teaching. The key finding of this paper is that technology, pedagogy and context need to be closely aligned in order to realise the potential of e-learning in higher education.
Competency--and Process-Driven e-Learning--A Model-Based Approach
Author: Leyking, Katrina
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Electronic Learning,Competency Based Education,Process Education,Industrial Training,Models,Business,Computer Uses in Education,Learning Processes

As a matter of fact e-Learning still has not really caught on for corporate training purposes. Investigations on the reasons reveal that e-Learning modules like WBTs often miss any relevance for the tasks to be accomplished in the day-to-day workplace settings. The very learning needs both from an organizational and individual perspective are neglected. Content brought to the learner very often meets neither the individual competency gaps nor the organizational learning goals. Time passed between acquisition and application of knowledge is too long. In short, business processes on the one side and learning-related processes on the other are not aligned adequately. Thus, we see an urgent need for concepts on how to derive corporate training actions from business tasks in order to improve employees' business performance. This paper presents an integrated approach for competency- and business process-driven learning management supported by information technology (IT), developed within two projects named PROLIX and EXPLAIN.
Issues around Creating a Reusable Learning Object to Support Statistics Teaching
Author: Gilchrist, Mollie
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Resource Units,Statistics,Charts,College Students,Statistical Analysis,Feedback (Response),Program Effectiveness,Teamwork,Allied Health Occupations Education,Technology Uses in Education,Electronic Learning,Educational Technology,Program Evaluation,Foreign Countries

Although our health professional students have some experience of simple charts, such as pie and bar, and some intuition of histograms, they do not appear to have much knowledge or understanding about box and whisker plots and their relation to the data they are describing or compared to histograms. The boxplot is a versatile charting tool, useful for presenting data from surveys and any other projects, where a reasonable quantity of data has been collected. An opportunity arose to create a reusable learning object (RLO) to describe, explore, and interpret boxplots, especially in relation to their data and summary statistics. Examples included interprofessional learning, as this was the main remit of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, from which funding was obtained. The RLO is aimed at both undergraduate and post-graduate HP students, who would be able to use the resource flexibly, to augment their limited exposure to statistical techniques, and add to their appreciation of IP learning and working. The RLO includes animation and opportunities for students to interact with the resource. Existing, available &quot;real&quot; data, collected as part of research projects concerning (IP) learning, as well as generated data, is used as illustrative material. This paper explores some of the issues raised during the creation of the RLO, and presents limited feedback from users. Issues raised include the working of the project team, delivery platform, copyright and intellectual property rights and software incompatibilities. To date, feedback from colleagues and students has been very positive and has encouraged further improvements. The creation of this RLO has been a longer and more time-consuming experience than anticipated, and has highlighted the importance of a team approach, with constant reviewing. It will be interesting to see how the RLO will be used, and usage will be evaluated in the future.
An Effective Profile Based Video Browsing System for e-Learning
Author: Premaratne, S. C.
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Video Technology,Electronic Learning,Interactive Video,Visual Aids,Human Body,Recognition (Psychology),Visual Discrimination,Factor Analysis,Mathematics,Problem Solving,Equations (Mathematics)

E-learning has acquired a prime place in many discussions recently. A number of research efforts around the world are trying to enhance education and training through improving e-learning facilities. This paper briefly explains one such attempt aimed at designing a system to support video clips in e-learning and explains how profiles of the presenters in video clips can be used to improve the usefulness of e-learning systems. The system proposed is capable of storing educational video clips with their semantics and retrieving required video clip segments efficiently on their semantics. The system creates profiles of presenters appearing in the video clips based on their facial features and uses these profiles to partition similar video clips into logical meaningful segments. The paper also discusses one of the main problems identified in profile construction and presents a novel algorithm to solve this problem.
Meeting the Training Needs of SMEs: Is e-Learning a Solution?
Author: Roy, Andrée
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Electronic Learning,Small Businesses,Web Based Instruction,Case Studies,Observation,Program Effectiveness,Foreign Countries,Workplace Learning,Qualitative Research,Semi Structured Interviews,Knowledge Level

Training is one of the basic means of human resources development in business organizations, aiming to motivate employees, to develop their potential and to help them perform better. The end of the 20th century has seen the advent of globalisation and the diffusion of new information and communication technologies. Businesses have to change and adapt to the requirements of the new knowledge-based and skill-based economy. Facing pressures from an increasingly competitive business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are called upon to implement strategies that are enabled and supported by information technologies and e-business applications in order to compete with others' organizations. One of these applications is e-Learning, whose aim is to enable the continuous assimilation of knowledge and skills by managers and employees, and thus support organisational training and development efforts through the use of the Internet and Web technologies. Little is known however as to the level of awareness of e-Learning in SMEs and as to the actual role played by e-Learning with regard to these firms' training needs. A multiple case study of sixteen SMEs in the Atlantic region of Canada, including twelve that use e-Learning with varying degrees of intensity, was designed to explore this question. We observed the firms' training process, identifying to what extent the SMEs know and use e-Learning, and to what extent e-Learning meets their training needs.
Applying Web-Enabled Problem-Based Learning and Self-Regulated Learning to Enhance Computing Skills of Taiwan's Vocational Students: A Quasi-Experimental Study of a Short-Term Module
Author: Shen, Pei-Di
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Problem Based Learning,Computer Literacy,Web Based Instruction,Foreign Countries,Vocational Education,Quasiexperimental Design,Vocational Schools,Experimental Groups,Electronic Learning,Teaching Methods,Learner Engagement,Control Groups,College Freshmen,Higher Education,Pretests Posttests,Statistical Analysis,College Students,Comparative Analysis,Self Concept,Independent Study

Contrary to conventional expectations, the reality of computing education in Taiwan's vocational schools is not so practically oriented, and thus reveals much room for improvement. In this context, we conducted a quasi-experiment to examine the effects of applying web-based problem-based learning (PBL), web-based self-regulated learning (SRL), and their combination to enhance students' computing skills in a short-term module of deploying Microsoft Word. Two classes of 106 first-year students were divided into 2 (PBL vs. non-PBL) × 2 (SRL vs. non-SRL) experimental groups. Results were generally positive. This study thus provided a significant illustration of a promising design and implementation of chosen web-based pedagogies for a short-term module. With limitations in mind, we hope that the lesson learned is also useful for those teachers engaged in e-learning, specifically, in vocational schools.