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The purpose of this paper is to determine the perspectives of increase of effectiveness of university education, related to the use of private educational resources.

In order to determine the dependence of effectiveness of university education on the use of private educational resources, this work uses the instrumentarium of economic analysis – in particular, the method of correlation analysis – for finding the value of the coefficient of correlation and regression analysis for compiling the model of paired linear regression. Using them, the authors determine the dependence of the quality of human resources in the country on the number of private organizations with their own educational resources and on the volume of private investments in education on the basis of the 2010-2014 data. In order to ensure comprehensiveness of research, it was conducted following the example of various countries – USA, India, France, Germany, and Russia.

The authors define the notion and determine the specifics of private educational resources, study their structure and sources, and substantiate the increase of effectiveness of university education as a result of the use of private educational resources with the help of economic and mathematical instrumentarium.

Practical significance of the research consists in the fact that proprietary conclusions, related to the use of private educational resources, are recommended for use in modern universities for increase of effectiveness of the system of university education.

The theoretical value of the conducted research is determined by its contribution to the development of the concept of human resources, through substantiation of necessity for use of new methods of their formation by means of use of private educational resources in the system of university education, as well as by its development of the concept of economic effectiveness, through determination of a new factor of effectiveness of university education – the use of private educational resources.

Educational resources are integral components of resource‐intensive technology‐enhanced and “student‐centered” learning environments. While resources on delivery formats such as CD‐ROMs are carefully selected, edited, reworked and presented for specific educational purposes, a lot of resources on the Web are not. Adopts the term “non‐educationally‐focused (NEF) resource” to refer to such resources. NEF resources may have the potential for educational use, but have not been identified for this purpose. Recognizes this subtle but significant difference between “educational resources” and “educational aspects of resources” among the plethora of information that can be found on the World Wide Web, and promotes the direct learner use and reuse of NEF resources. Urges those concerned with formulating metadata standards to recognize the notion of NEF resources and start the process of extending the standard to enabling the effective use and reuse of the richer NEF resources base on the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the spatial patterns of gender inequality in junior high school enrollment and the educational resource investments associated with the spatial trends.

The paper uses data on 170 districts in Ghana and hot spot analysis based on the Getis-Ord Gi statistic, linear regression, and geographically weighted regression to assess spatial variability in gender parity in junior high school enrollment and its association with resource allocation.

The results reveal rural-urban and north-south variability in gender parity. Results show that educational resources contribute to gender parity. At the national level, educational expenditure, and the number of classrooms, teachers, and available writing places have the strongest positive associations with girls’ enrollment. These relationships are spatially moderated, such that predominantly rural and Northern districts experience the most substantial benefits of educational investments.

The findings show that strategic allocation of infrastructure, financial, and human resources through local governments holds promise for a more impactful and sustainable educational development of all children, regardless of gender. Besides seeking solutions that address the lack of resources at the national level, there is a need for locally tailored efforts to remove the barriers to equitable distribution of educational resources across gender and socioeconomic groups.

This paper’s use of advanced spatial analysis techniques allows for in-depth examination of gender parity and investments in educational resources, and highlights the spatial nuances in how such investments predict gender disparities in junior high school enrollment. The findings speak to the need for targeted and localized efforts to address gender and geographical disparities in educational opportunities.

Research in the area of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) throughout the last decade has largely focused on sharing and reusing educational resources and data. This effort has led to a fragmented landscape of competing metadata schemas, or interface mechanisms. More recently, semantic technologies were taken into account to improve interoperability. The linked data approach has emerged as the de facto standard for sharing data on the web. To this end, it is obvious that the application of linked data principles offers a large potential to solve interoperability issues in the field of TEL. This paper aims to address this issue.

In this paper, approaches are surveyed that are aimed towards a vision of linked education, i.e. education which exploits educational web data. It particularly considers the exploitation of the wealth of already existing TEL data on the web by allowing its exposure as linked data and by taking into account automated enrichment and interlinking techniques to provide rich and well‐interlinked data for the educational domain.

So far web‐scale integration of educational resources is not facilitated, mainly due to the lack of take‐up of shared principles, datasets and schemas. However, linked data principles increasingly are recognized by the TEL community. The paper provides a structured assessment and classification of existing challenges and approaches, serving as potential guideline for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Being one of the first comprehensive surveys on the topic of linked data for education, the paper has the potential to become a widely recognized reference publication in the area.

A critical attribute of open educational practices (OEP) is the pursuit of open scholarship which comprises the release of educational resources under an open licence scheme that permits no-cost access, use, reuse, adaptation, retention and redistribution to others. The degree of openness in relation to this attribute will depend on the context and culture of the place and the people in it. When left to chance, the adoption and practice of open scholarship by educators is at best sketchy. For optimum impact, a design-based approach is essential. A central focus of such an approach will need to target educators’ belief systems and practices about their scholarship. Any such work will involve researchers collaborating with practitioners in real-life settings to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to report on how the development and use of such a design-based approach, implemented by the Open University of Sri Lanka, impacted the adoption and uptake of open scholarship among teachers in the Sri Lankan school system in terms of changes in their use of instructional resources, pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices.

The study adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (Reeves, 2006), which involved researchers collaboratively working with practitioners in real-life settings to improve their educational practices along three aspects – instructional resource use, pedagogical perspectives and pedagogical practices. Based on the four stages of the DBR approach – analysis, solution, testing and refinement, and reflection, a professional development intervention programme was designed and implemented to support teachers on the integration of open educational resources (OER) and adoption of OEP in their teaching-learning process. Data collected throughout the process using multiple strategies such as questionnaire surveys, concept mapping, lesson plans, focus group interviews, self-reflections and “stories”, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

By the end of the intervention, significant changes were observed in teachers’ use of instructional resources, their pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices. While resource usage has shifted from no or low usage of OER to reuse, revise, remix and creation of OER, the pedagogical thinking and practices of teachers moved from a content-centric and individualized patterns to more constructivist, context centric and collaborative ways. The diffusion of OEP was prominent along two dimensions – enhancements in the individual practices in innovative OER use as well as collaborative practices of sharing of resources, knowledge and good practices.

The systematic and flexible methodology adopted based on the DBR approach via a framework designed as a contextualized, process oriented and a self-reflective enquiry has been very useful to support changes in OEP among practitioners over time.

This iterative process allowed the researchers to function as “designers”, while investigating real-life issues in collaboration with the practitioners through reflective enquiry to further refine innovative practices towards OEP. This provides valuable insights for improved design solutions for future interventions in similar contexts.

Over the past 30 years, China has made dramatic changes and improvements in various educational areas, including the educational technology field. These changes have been supported by policies initiated by the country's central government. This chapter reviews the historical development of China's educational technology policies, paying particular attention to the evolutionary process, and examining policy features that have influenced Chinese educational development. The Chinese education technology framework encourages the use of educational technology to address more ambitious goals for economic and social development and thus serves as an important catalyst for advancing Chinese education.

Actuality of this subject is predetermined by the fact that global competitiveness and expansion of exchange of knowledge made employers not only increase requirements to factual results of the study at all levels of education but also announce the necessity of formation of new qualities with graduates. The purpose of this paper is to develop a complex of recommendations for employers’ participation in the formation of educational programs for preparing specialists in the service sphere, aimed at improving education quality and the demand for graduates in the labor market.

A method which leads to the study of this problem is desk methods of research. For an evaluation of the results of realization of educational programs and use of educational resources for training of specialists in the service sphere, the authors conducted a survey of employers (representatives of service sphere); the selection constituted 300 people.

The paper determines scientifically substantiated directions of activities for the participation of employers in the formation of educational programs and resources for training of specialists in the service sphere. The authors developed a model of interconnection of purposes and results of employers’ participation in the realization of educational programs, formation, and use of educational resources.

The practical significance of this research consists in the fact that received results and offers could be used by educational establishments, employers, and professional associations.

In pursuit of achieving Education‐For‐All goals of universal primary education and improving quality of education, the Indian Government has been providing substantial resources to Indian states. The responsibility of providing access and quality remains the states' responsibility. Assessment of educational development will therefore become a focal point of the Center for Education Policy & Guidelines Formulation. While educational development indices help in ranking states, they do not help in capturing best practices and assessing the efficient utilization of resources. Assessment of the Educational Development Efficiency can augment educational development indices in vogue. The purpose of this paper is to develop an Educational Development Efficiency (EDE) model to benchmark the Indian states.

This paper uses an input‐process‐output conceptual framework to identify the dimensions of educational development. This paper employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compare relative efficiency of 28 states and seven Union territories in India and benchmark them. In order to strengthen the discriminatory power of DEA, cross‐efficiency model was used. Factor analysis was performed to determine the inter‐relationships between variables. The efficiency impacting variables were identified using multiple regression analysis.

This paper benchmarked Indian states on educational development based on their performance. Gross enrolment ratio, students' academic performance and infrastructural investments were identified as the three key variables impacting states' EDE. This paper has shown that the educational administrators can use the EDE model to identify the best practices from efficient states. Insights into utilization of input resources to enhance educational development and consequent improvement of state efficiencies are presented. Four components have been identified to analyze the states' educational development progress – namely, financial adequacy, school resource strength, educational quality and educational access.

Contributions of this paper pertain to evolving a decision support model for national education policy planners, besides providing analytic support to the administrators of the states to benchmark and emulate the efficient educational programs.

This paper is one of the few published studies concerning the evaluation of educational development programs launched in the Indian schools and providing a cross‐comparison of the Indian states for the purposes of performance benchmarking as well as exploring the influencing factors.

Access to educational material has become an important issue for many stakeholders and the focus of much research worldwide. Resource discovery in educational gateways is usually based on metadata and this is an area of important developments. Resource metadata has a central role in the management of educational material and as a result there are several important metadata standards in use in the educational domain. One of the most widely used general metadata standards for learning material is the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. The application of this general purpose, metadata standard for complex and heterogeneous educational material is not straightforward. This paper will give an overview of some practical issues and necessary steps in deploying Dublin Core based on the LITC experience in the EASEL (Educators Access to Services in the Electronic Landscape) project.

This paper asserts that while educational resources are times effective in teaching students how to write, the format in which they are delivered can influence results. With this in mind, this study aims to examine the effectiveness of using educational resources in a blended format.

This study used a mixed-method research design to elicit information from 70 participants recruited for this study. The researcher divided the participants into experimental and control groups where the researcher taught the control group writing skills in a hybrid learning environment without using educational resources while the experimental group used blended interactive educational resources. The researcher analyzed and interpreted the participants’ post-test scores and transcripts of the interviewees.

This study finds that blended interactive educational resources contribute significantly toward improving the students' writing skills; however, improvements were not found in all aspects of their writing.

This study unpacks the positive contributions of blended interactive educational resources in writing instruction. This study contributes to educational literature in showing that these resources may be effective in improving some aspects of writing text. This study adds to other corpora of studies that emphasize the importance of using educational resources for learning.