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The present study investigated the effect of online collaborative project-based learning on the language performance and attitudes of intermediate level students at the College of Applied Sciences in Oman. The study is a quasi-experimental study and the sample consisted of four classes (93 students in total) in Nizwa College of Applied Sciences. These participants were in their foundation year and were taking the Academic English Course during the time of the research experiment. Two classes were assigned to the experimental group (46 students) and they were directed to collaborate online in doing their research projects. The other two classes were assigned to the control group (47 students) and did their projects individually. A language test containing reading and writing questions, an attitude questionnaire, students' project scores and transcripts of focused group discussions were used to collect the data needed to answer the research questions. The study revealed that the main positive effect of online collaborative project-based learning was clear on students' writing skill in the post test (i.e. students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group).

Considering the potential of Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) for cross-boundaries interacting and collaborating effectively, this study aims to explore the intercultural awareness of pre-service language teachers after participating in a COIL project.

Following a quantitative research approach and an exploratory cross-sectional method, the authors administered a 13-item questionnaire to unveil the perceptions of 64 future language teachers from Spain after their online experience with counterparts from the USA.

Participants consider that COIL may have enhanced their intercultural and global awareness and equipped them with valuable skills and knowledge for the future, being women more positive than men. Moreover, the results also suggest that those participants who have not traveled abroad consider COIL to be a good opportunity to compensate for the lack of knowledge or experience with other cultures resulting from not having had the opportunity to visit other countries.

COIL needs to be seen as a powerful tool to promote global learning, intercultural understanding and the development of skills among students that will be vital for success in today’s interconnected world. Nevertheless, universities and teacher training centers need to rethink the preparation of future teachers for the increasing demands to prepare students for the requirements of the global world, and to do so, they need to consider that COIL may offer them significant benefits.

This work offers an interesting exploration of teachers’ attitudes toward COIL, providing insights into the potential of online collaboration for developing intercultural awareness.

This paper aims to provide evidence that online well-designed educational tasks can provide more relevant and richer active learning environment for business English learners. The benefits of online tasks, as an education tool, became more apparent and gained more importance during the events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task design is based on task-based interactions and in a sequence of tasks with the support of an online learning management system (LMS). The findings suggest that online task-based learning (and would-be blended learning in the future) enables meaningful and authentic activities promoting interactions and communicative competences to prepare for learners of business English to enter the workplace.

The overarching aim of the study is to explore how task-design-utilizing online LMS could contribute to enhancing the learning process and to the development of the learner's communicative competences. The study included two aspects, namely: (1) the design of online tasks and (2) pilot evaluation. The task design involved tasks that required interactions between the learners. The pilot evaluation relied on data collection via questionnaires.

Two aspects relating to the findings: (1) a description of the teaching initiatives which was designed to see how blended learning and online tasks can enhance learning and develop the skills of the learners: with questioning techniques targeting communication skills, simulated workplace situations and timely feedback and peer influence; (2) the findings of the pilot study evaluation to see the actual implementation of online tasks. The students' responses corroborate the teachers' comments. The findings of this research showed that LMS tasks, which were designed for this study, helped the learners to enhance their competence in business English. Such competences included communicative skills needed for learners to enter the workplace such as interpersonal skills, presentation skills and negotiation skills in contexts. These findings lead to significant recommendations regarding the way forward for developing active blended learning.

Firstly, teachers need to be trained and involved in designing such online tasks and materials to be used in active blended learning. More training in language teaching methodologies should be investigated to adapt the transition from a traditional to a computer-assisted language learning teacher. This helps teachers to design and implement online simulated workplace tasks. Secondly, time for the use of online tasks should be allocated satisfactorily. This can be achieved by building online learning sessions into class schedule or developing active blended courses. The time for the use of online simulated tasks should be allocated satisfactorily with lab or simulation room, in which students would be shown how to access the online tasks designed on the university LMS and the way to practice with different kinds of tasks.

In this study context, the online tasks design can initiate at activity-level blending to support face-to-face (F2F) activities, for example, online activities to support tasks for the topic Make a request or Offer for help. This can be extended to course-level blending when more online activities are designed to use with F2F activities such as online comparing and contrasting tasks to develop skills in connections with the awareness of cultures. The findings of the research suggest to develop and to implement online tasks alongside with classroom learning and teaching to enable the objectives of business English programme at university for preparing learners to enter the workplace. The recent pandemic highlighted the need for effective methodologies for active blended learning. It is now required that professionals in higher education to collect evidence base to inform future practice of such methodologies. Further significant research efforts should be directed towards collecting such evidence of the effectiveness and improvements of such methods. The support of higher education management professionals in securing funding for such research will be essential.

This paper examines the pedagogical features of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for language learning–known as language MOOCs. The mainstream pedagogy of MOOCs typically involves the provision of short videos and reading materials for self-study; discussion forums, mostly for peer-to-peer interaction on course content; and machine-graded quizzes for self-assessment. For language learning, which has been conventionally understood as skill development, the pedagogical features of relevant MOOCs have yet to be comprehensively surveyed.

This study surveyed a total of 123 language MOOCs from the major MOOC platforms. The pedagogical features shown in these courses were identified and categorised according to the types of course materials and learning activities as well as the participation of learners and instructors.

English was the most common language taught in the courses. Over 80% of the courses took not more than six hours to complete. Most of these courses followed the typical approach of xMOOC delivery, with video watching, reading and auto-graded assessment being the most common learning activities. Less than half of the courses included discussion as part of learning, and instructors were involved in less than 30% of the discussion.

The findings show that, despite the technological advances in course delivery, current language MOOCs do not differ substantially from conventional distance language learning. Yet, the utilisation of computer-assisted language learning technology and the massive student base of MOOCs for creating a virtual social community are opportunities for developing learners' language proficiency on this learning environment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the components, structure and theoretical underpinnings of a cognitive remediation intervention that was delivered within a supported education program for mental health survivors.

In total, 21 participants enrolled in the course Strengthening Memory, Concentration and Learning (PREP 1033 at George Brown College (GBC)) with the diagnosis of depression, anxiety, PTSD, ED and substance use disorder were included in the research. After a baseline assessment, participants completed 14 week cognitive remediation training (CRT) protocol that included six essential components that were integrated and implemented within the course structure of the supported education program at GBC. This was followed by a post-training assessment.

Analysis of the participants’ performance on CRT protocol using computerized games showed little significant progress. However, the research found a positive change in the self-esteem of the participants that was statistically significant and the findings also aligned with the social and emotional learning framework.

One of the limitations in the research was the use of computer-assisted cognitive remediation in the form of the HappyNeuron software. The value and relevance of computer assisted needs are to be further examined. It seems that the implementation of the course that explicitly address cognitive challenges creates a supportive environment can be helpful.

Despite the mixed results and the few limitations associated with the CRT intervention reported in the research, the study offers reminders of the complexity of cognitive remediation and all the factors involved that need to be taken into consideration.

This research created explicit space for addressing some of the implicit assumptions about the cognitive abilities when in post-secondary education.

This work is based on author’s previous work on cognitive remediation research within the supported education setting.

The study explored the effect of information and communication technology-assisted instruction (ICTAI) on civic education (CE) students' academic performance and the effect of gender on students' performance. Specifically, the study addressed the facilitating effect of ICTAI on students' scholarly performance.

This study utilised the quasi-experimental approach. A sample of 255 senior secondary school students was the analysis unit. A teacher-made performance test was used as an instrument for the study. The data were analysed with descriptive statistics for the research questions, and hypotheses tested with paired sample t-test statistics.

The study results indicated that ICTAI improved student scholarly performance. The study also proved that gender had an impact on student academic performance.

Not all the students in intact classes that were used for conducting the study/research, and the background and gender of research assistants were not considered, and these could have affected the result of the study. The study implications are that this study is a piece of deeper ingenuity and innovation that provides an additional source of information to study. The study provided proof that innovative activity-based instructions such as computer-assisted instruction (CAI) boost students’ performance.

On the instructor, the study findings demonstrated the significant effect of ICTAI on the scholarly performance of CE students. Consequently, this study contends that CE instructors/teachers can benefit from the implications of these findings by comprehensively understanding that ICTIA usage enhances student performance and, thus, improves the students' performance. Additionally, the study's findings proved that gender affected students' performance when instructed with ICTAI. The study implies that CE instructors/teachers should pay special attention to students' gender, specifically female students, as gender affects the improvement of students' CE performance when instructed with ICTAI.

The study findings contribute to the literature on academic improvement and performance of CE students by enhancing the understanding of the effect of ICTAI on students' scholarly performance. The study recognises the existing gaps in previous literature and vivid understanding of the effect of ICTAI on students' performance and gender as a mediator.

Many students are found facing difficulties in learning English due to plenty of reasons: known and unknown ones. In order to overcome such an issue, the instructors have to explore for effective techniques of teaching English to motivate learners by any means. Technology in general and informatics in particular can be thought of as innovative tool of pedagogy in the current teaching-learning environment. The present proposal of research aims at creating innovative approaches, which attract learners' interest and catch their attention for better outputs.

Following subsections have been discussed keeping the significance in view. Setting of the study: The present study was conducted at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah-Saudi Arabia, which is one of the Saudi Arabian universities; however, it has opened up new avenues for the pedagogues, teachers of English and researchers to conduct studies in various allied fields. In order to have a representative sample of students' population, the participants were chosen from the “preparatory year”. Material and tools: This study used a questionnaire (Appendix) and a test to evaluate performances of the two groups: controlled and experimental. In order to further strengthen the findings, semi structured interview was conducted for a few select students from the student-sample. Since the questionnaire was adapted, the statistical validity and reliability was not considered to be essential; however, content/face validity was ensured by consulting 10 experts in the field of education/methods of teaching.

Based on the analysis of data gathered from the test performances of the two groups of students, it was found that there existed a significant difference in the test scores. The questionnaire responses also proved that infographics can be proved to be an interesting tool of education in general and English language teaching in particular. However, it has been noticed from the gathered data that not many teachers are comfortable using multimedia or infographics for different reasons. The results of the present study are in line with the study by Rezaei and Sayadian (2015) that support the idea of infographics that would help English teachers to develop understanding and insights to design among the learners. They further contend that the infographic instruction offers choices for the utilization of collaborative activities. In addition, the infographics enhance students' performance as a whole as also supported by Alrwele (2017).

The study was conducted on a small sample which might affect the generalization of the outcomes. It was carried out with special reference to teaching of vocabulary and reading.

There can be many recommendations for different stakeholders. For teachers, it is recommended that they should know about the significance of infographs for catching the attention of students. They should know how to design interesting and colorful infographs. The administration/management should facilitate the teachers with the required software or platform to create infographics and integrate in an English language class. In addition, teachers should attend workshops and training courses organized for topics related to the infographs.

The author checked the study for plagiarism (excluding references) and found it to be 93% plagiarism free.

This paper reviews the literature, foundational works and current trends related to the adoption of open innovation (OI) practices in the food industry, with a particular focus on the food value chain, using a bibliometric and content analysis approach.

This study is based on 84 published documents in the field of food OI obtained using the Scopus database. First, a bibliometric analysis was conducted using a bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis approach to understand the common themes and key clusters of food OI research. It further highlighted authors, countries, journals, years of publication and subject areas to comprehend the scope of the established literature. Second, a content analysis was undertaken to examine the titles and abstracts of the documents to explore the intersection of OI and the food value chain.

This study provides an integrated framework of the intersection of OI and the food value chain, including information about under-researched and emerging areas in the field of food innovation. It also highlights the critical challenges associated with OI food research and practices.

Practitioners can use the findings to uncover areas with limited open innovation adoption in the food value chain. They can identify extended research areas to explore the food value chain using an open innovation perspective, in different contexts within the food and beverage (F&B) industry. The framework can also be used for conducting comparative studies of current food innovation trends across different contexts within the F&B industry.

By adopting a multi-step approach involving a computer-assisted bibliometric examination complemented by a manual review undertaken through the lens of the food value chain, this literature review provides fresh and unique insights into past and present research on OI in the food industry and paves the way for future studies by laying out specific research avenues.