Search results

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver “equity pedagogy.” In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.

This article aims to look at the transformational changes occurring in Australian postsecondary education and libraries.

Discusses transformational changes occurring in Australian postsecondary education and libraries.

The greatest threat to librarianship is people's own attitude towards change.

Provides a discussion on surviving change.

The authors received a grant to develop a digital educational tool to facilitate student engagement with online primary sources. Students and faculty were interviewed prior to developing the tool's specifications to ensure a user‐centered focus. This research paper seeks to report the results of a user needs assessment that explored students' use of primary sources and their learning preferences, as well as faculty's pedagogical goals for student work with primary sources.

Faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students enrolled in humanities courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder were interviewed to help guide the development of this tool. The interview transcripts were analyzed to uncover several key findings.

The results of the user needs assessment suggest that primary sources have great potential to excite students' enthusiasm and enhance their learning experiences; however, these materials present several challenges that prevent students from using digital primary‐source collections to the fullest extent. Educational technology may be able to help students overcome these difficulties, but only if the technology is easy‐to‐use and designed to support faculty's pedagogical goals.

This study employed a semi‐structured interview methodology to collect the relevant data. Its central research questions could be explored in greater depth using other user‐centered design methodologies, such as artifact and task analyses.

This research will be used to inform the development of a digital educational tool for student use with primary sources.

This study contributes to the growing body of research on user needs for effective work with online primary sources in university‐level humanities education.

This paper aims to postulate an emerging unified cultural‐convergence framework to converge the delivery of instructional technology and intercultural education (ICE) that extends beyond web‐learning technologies to inculcate inclusive pedagogy in teacher education.

The paper explores the literature and a tech‐infused multicultural learning community to identify what a unified cultural‐convergence theory might consist of and how it could be shaped to align instructional technology and critical ICE in teacher education. Four questions are asked: What key learning do these two disciplines make available to teachers and educators that are essential for today's highly diverse, complex classrooms? What can we draw from a convergence of multiculturalism and global education that will help us derive a new theoretical understanding of a unified cultural‐convergence theory to connect IT and ICE education? What knowledge, skills and dispositions comprise three essential components of this literature synthesis? How can this new unified cultural‐convergence theory and relevant components be taught, practiced, and measured? The paper contains several tables, figures and over 50 sources in the research bibliography that were selected from a review and analysis of 100 documents.

The paper discovered instructional technology and intercultural educators employed web‐learning technologies in very similar ways to position critical ICE strategies into programs or courses in teacher education. The learning technologies models that were attempting to support multicultural education (MCE)/ICE and IT education included corporate, universities, research centers, schools, and government partners. Reportedly, according to the research, teacher educators in IT education do not employ instructional technology practices that differ from practices that are needed or valued by MCE educators to merge critical intercultural structures into teacher education through web‐learning technologies. This was good news as the researcher moves toward a recommendation for a research agenda that could be shared by educators from the two groups.

The paper is limited to literature reviews, reports, and evaluation documents.

The paper offers implications for curriculum development in educational technology and MCE using ICTs

Inquiry-based teaching and learning is a valued learning theory, which can transform a prescriptive, teacher-led classroom into a dynamic, active learning environment. Some factors to consider about inquiry-based activities are that they are designed to incorporate many strategies and techniques to develop students’ affective, social, and metacognition domains. Inquiry-based teaching and learning is most successful when students have some level of self-regulation and when faculty members provide meaningful guidance. Unfortunately, students are infrequently taught how to be self-regulated learners. In addition, faculty members are uncomfortable and under-incentivized to try innovative teaching pedagogies.

To illustrate the dichotomy of both the delivery of inquiry-based teaching and a student-centered approach, a DNA double helix is used as a metaphor and visual model. Importance is placed on designing learning experiences that can be adapted based on context, available technology, meaningful assessment, and positive student outcomes. Educational trends in higher education are explored and implications are drawn based on the research and programs being implemented at many universities and colleges. This chapter provides insight into how higher education institutions can scale inquiry-based teaching and learning through their strategic initiatives to promote faculty excellence. Evaluation frameworks and logic model planning strategies are included in this chapter.

E‐learning offers many exciting opportunities for supporting a wide range of students to learn more effectively, but it has also created significant challenges for academic staff who feel increasingly strained to rethink teaching methodologies. This article seeks to explore the main barriers faced by academics in incorporating technology into their teaching and goes on to offer guidance and practical tips for a more successful and learner‐centred approach informed by the authors’ own e‐learning research, relevant publications and reflective analysis of their own practice. Awareness is also raised regarding survey findings and discussions with academics that confirm that successful implementation of an e‐learning strategy across an institution depends primarily on senior management’s recognition of the wide range of pedagogical, managerial and technological support needs of teaching staff and the workload implications if new student needs are to be met effectively. It is argued, furthermore, that institutions will only be in the position to draw on established benefits of teaching technologies if staff development programmes are redesigned to incorporate emerging technologies and electronic resources and show how these may be mapped on to pedagogical approaches. The paper aims to demonstrate how the lessons learnt have been applied to date and describes the ongoing activities in making the e‐learning vision a reality at Napier University. As such, the work has a predominately UK focus, rather than attempting to cover a wide range of international practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a commissioned research study that analyzed a schooling initiative with the ambitious goal of transforming learning environments across the district by advancing innovative, inquiry-driven pedagogical practices combined with 1:1 iPad distribution. The paper explores impacts of the initiative on pedagogical innovation, twenty-first century learning, and related impacts on professional learning, collaboration, and culture change in the pilot schools analyzed in the study.

A multi-dimensional case study approach was used to analyze how the initiative was implemented, and to what extent teaching, learning, and professional cultures were transformed, based on action plan inputs and “change drivers”. Research methods included structured, open-ended interviews conducted with randomly selected teachers and key informants in leadership roles, focus groups held with students, as well as analysis of policy documents, student work samples, and other data sources.

The authors found evidence of a synergistic relationship between innovations in inquiry-driven pedagogy and professional learning cultures, with evidence of increased collaboration, deepened engagement and persistence, and a climate of collegiality and risk-taking at both classroom and organizational levels. Based on initiative inputs, the authors found that innovations in collaborative technology/pedagogy practices in classrooms paralleled similar innovations and transformations in professional learning cultures and capacity-building networks.

This initiative analyzed in this paper provides a case study in large-scale system change, offering a compelling model for transformative policies and initiatives where interwoven innovations in pedagogy and technology mobilization are supported by multiple drivers for formal and informal professional learning/development and networked collaboration. Challenges and recommendations are highlighted in the concluding discussion.

The transformative initiative analyzed in this paper provides a very timely case-model for innovations in twenty-first century learning and, specifically, for enacting and sustaining large-scale system change where inquiry-driven learning and technology tools are being mobilized to support “deep learning”, “new learning partnerships”, and multilevel transformations in professional learning (Fullan and Donnelly, 2013). This research advances scholarly work in the areas of twenty-first century learning, identifying relationships between technology/pedagogy innovation and professional capital building (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012).

Mobile devices are increasingly prevalent and may have large ramifications for social studies education, but there has been limited research as to their effectiveness. This study utilized an Apple iPad to explore how a specific application (Explore 9/11) impacted secondary student interactions with primary source narratives and their influence on historical empathy during a War on Terrorism unit in a United States history course. Three sections utilized the iPad, while two used resources found on the iPad, but not the iPad itself. The study found that students using mobile devices had positive experiences in interacting with primary source documents. Students, further, were able to develop a sense of historical empathy as they came across the firsthand accounts of seven individuals’ experiences on September 11, 2001 regardless of whether or not they used the iPads. These findings, as well as their implications for social studies education are discussed.