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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.

Modern educational environment in the system of vocational education focuses on the requirements of labour market and those of employers to the content of graduates’ professional competencies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop practical guidance on the arrangement of cooperation between labour market and regional vocational education system.

Participative approach allowed considering the cooperation between labour market and regional system of vocational education as the process aimed at creating management tools for formation, use, development of human resources. The research involved 300 teachers, 400 students, 100 employers, who found out the effectiveness criteria for the cooperation between labour market and vocational education system.

The findings reveal national models characteristics and universal tools for cooperation between vocational education institutions and enterprise. National models characteristics allow identifying the most advantageous cooperation tools; comparing suggested tools with the experience of others and thereby assessing their relevance and implementation risks.

The research results allow us to plan strategies for further studies of this problem, which are related to the development of models for cooperation between labour market and vocational education system.

The identification of universal tools for cooperation between vocational education institutions and enterprise promotes the integration of national vocational education systems into national educational space. The materials of the paper can be useful for university leaders and professors; employees of centres for professional advancement and retraining in selecting and structuring the content of academic and teaching staff’s advanced training.

The revealed criteria contribute to vocational education programmes integration, connection between professional and educational standards, students’ professional identity.

The effectiveness of the cooperation between labour market and vocational education system will be improved by studying national models and identifying the most advantageous cooperation tools (modular training, voluntary social/ecological year, educational resources integration, state and public management, clustering vocational education institutions and industry companies). This will allow comparing the suggested tools for collaboration between labour market and vocational education system with the experience of others and thereby assess their relevance and implementation risks. Improving the cooperation between labour market and vocational education system will be successful provided that universal tools for cooperation (socio-economic, educational, practical, innovative and technological) are identified, which promotes the integration of national vocational education systems into national educational space. The effectiveness of cooperation between labour market and vocational education system will increase on condition of criterion assessment (clustering, subjectivity, transdisciplinarity), promoting vocational education programmes integration, connection between professional and educational standards, students’ professional identity, students’ engagement in the development and implementation of research and production projects, stepped formation of professional competencies.

The purpose of this case study was to investigate how project-based learning (PBL) is being practiced in Columbus Signature Academy (CSA), a high school located in Columbus, Indiana, USA.

The authors used the case study method to provide qualitative details about CSA ' s use of PBL that is being practiced in a natural education setting.

The authors identified six emergent themes (community partners, dedicated facilitators, student group work, authentic projects, school culture, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-focus) as the essential elements of the high school ' s PBL use. The authors also evaluated CSA ' s use of PBL using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and generated eight challenges that CSA should tackle to make it more sustainable.

This study is contextualized in a high school located in Columbus, Indiana, so the authors cannot generalize the results of this study to other contexts.

This study showed that PBL holds outstanding potential to be an innovative approach to teaching and learning, and teacher professional development.

Major strengths of CSA ' s use of PBL come from the integration of the workforce needs of local businesses and the broader educational needs of students. Active involvement of community partners to make a project authentic is an essential element of CSA ' s PBL that distinguishes it from problem-based learning.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effectiveness of Project Based Learning (PBL) in comparison to the prevailing English language pedagogy.

The pre-test/post-test experimental design with one control and one treatment group was used to complete the study that was carried out for 12 weeks. In all, 140 female students enrolled in Grade-XI at a public college in Karachi, Pakistan, were randomly divided into the two groups to compare the traditional pedagogy with the proposed PBL method. The participants in the experiment and control groups were taught the same prescribed curriculum using the PBL and traditional pedagogy, respectively.

The study shows PBL to be a better instructional method as compared to the existing traditional pedagogy for teaching compulsory English at public colleges. The participants in the experiment group who were taught through PBL performed better on different curriculum areas as established through the pre- and post-test scores; and they were also found better motivated towards the English course. The data analyses and interpretation suggests that PBL can easily replace the conventional pedagogy and can improve compulsory English teaching – learning practices and outcomes at public colleges in Pakistan.

One major limitation was that the PBL methodology was to focus around the curriculum content; and, finally, assess students on the lines as they need preparation for the state-held end of year examinations which serve as the qualification for admission to undergraduate study at universities. The present study was carried out at just one institution comprising female only population; hence the results need validation at other institutions having male or mixed populations. The study cultivated a culture among language teachers for experimenting with different pedagogies, consequently, alongside PBL other language pedagogies may be tried to improve teaching- and learning of compulsory English. The study demonstrated that there is an interest in teachers and learners both for improving current practices and culture. Also, the required resources and that enable this desired change are available within the existing academic set up.

This study attempts to solve a serious problem faced by teachers and learners pursuing English course at colleges. It tests out a pedagogy that teachers may adopt within the existing setups.

The students graduating from tertiary education institutes in Pakistan desperately need good language and communication skills for further education and career. Due to ineffective language teaching, these students are unable to develop the needed language skills, and consequently miss out on different opportunities.

This paper is among the foremost experimental study undertaken to reform language teaching at public colleges in Pakistan. It proposes a practical solution to replace the traditional pedagogy and enables teachers and students to engage in teaching learning of English more meaningfully.

Exploratory learning is regarded as an important ability for developing knowledge from open environments. During the exploration, learners not only need to acquire new information based on their current interests, but also they need to form new perspectives by incorporating new knowledge into their previous knowledge. This paper seeks to address these issues.

To this end, this paper proposes an approach that includes a concept association bank to recommend related concepts in a domain based on the goal of an exploration. By doing so, learners' knowledge can be expanded beyond their current understanding. An experiment was conducted to investigate how the proposed approach facilitated the learners' exploration.

The results indicated that the concept association bank is a useful mechanism to help learners gain new understanding, including providing exploration directions, reducing complexity and cognitive load, facilitating data‐ and goal‐driven exploration strategies, and commenting on new understanding. The implications of these results are discussed.

Current recommendation systems emphasise a data‐driven strategy, which seeks isolated pieces of information, instead of suggesting directions related to their exploration goal. The problem with such an approach is that learners' exploration will be limited by their existing knowledge. Thus, this paper presents an approach to support both data‐ and goal‐driven strategies.

This paper aims to describe how linked data technologies can change the digital library collections, what are the benefits of linked data applications in digital libraries and what are the challenges of digital libraries in linked data environment.

The present study is based on substantial literature review on the applications of linked data technologies in digital libraries. The search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Google Scholar were used to find the relevant literature for the study. Online databases such as Pro Quest, Science Direct, Emerald and JSTORE were also used to find the relevant literature of the study. Databases of Library Sciences Library and Information Science and Technology Abstracts and Library Information Science Abstracts were also used to find the relevant literature of the study. Library, linked data technologies, Semantic Web, digital library and digital collections were the main keywords which were used to find the relevant literature for the study.

The evolution of linked data technologies and Semantic Web has changed the traditional role of the libraries. Traditional libraries are converting into digital libraries and digital libraries are in a struggle to publish their resources on the Web using XML-based metadata standards. It has made capable the digital collections to be viewed by machines on the Web just like human. On the emergence of linked data applications in digital libraries, Web visibility of the libraries has been enhanced to provide the opportunities for the users to find their required quality information of libraries round-the-clock on the Web. National Library of France, National Library of Spain, Europeana, Digital Public Library of Americana, Library of Congress and The British Library have taken the initiatives to publish their resources on the Web using linked data technologies.

This study present several key issues for policy makers, software developers, decision makers and library administrators about linked data technologies and its implementations in digital libraries. The present study may play its role to facilitate the users of the Web who are enthusiastically interested to exploit the quality and authentic library resources on the Web round-the-clock. Search engines will also achieve their longstanding goal to exploit the quality resources of the libraries for their Web users to make their Web appearance more credible and trustworthy.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an innovative approach to learning that employs a multitude of strategies critical for success in the twenty-first century. It exposes students to the real world, opens an extended inquiry process, and boosts their communication skills and interdisciplinary learning. However, the extant literature on PBL places more emphasis on learning through internal rather than external projects. Industrial collaboration projects build partnerships and provide opportunities to work on real problems, often seeking multidisciplinary approaches. This study explores and suggests the benefits that students derived from their participation in an external research and consultancy project at a University in Oman.

The study follows a qualitative analysis approach founded on an exploratory research design. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten research assistants, two research coordinators, and two project leaders involved in the project. The data from the interview were subjected to the thematic inductive qualitative analysis using Atlas.ti 8 software.

The results of the study revealed that students derived some direct academic benefits, mainly in the area of conducting research. The major learning happened mostly in non-academic areas, for they learned many things necessary for success in real-life work situations. The students benefited largely on behavioural skills and abilities such as communication, self-confidence, English language skills, planning, thinking, and time management skills. Altogether, project-based learning offered them a different skillset beyond what they usually acquire in the conventional teaching and learning environment.

The outcomes of this research support the development of curriculum design and instructional pedagogy in higher education in a specific context, concluding that PBL has much to do with the practical aspects of learning and employability. The finding suggests that by engaging in PBL, students can develop certain skills that cannot be acquired in a conventional teaching environment. PBL enables self-learning and prepares students to deal with different situations and challenges on the ground while inculcating professionalism to act in real-life situations. This study advocates the introduction of some PBL based courses in the curriculum to nurture a balanced set of skills and abilities among business students.

The research outcomes support Oman’s Vision 2040 and one of its strategies for capacity building that aims to adopt innovative methods for individual/collective development of students, as well as for their life-long learning.

Project-based learning described in this study provides a pedagogical way to connect university education to a real-life situation. These results offer promising prospects for infusing outdoor multidisciplinary projects in the course curriculum. This work bears significant value for educators in designing curriculum and facilitating projects, particularly in environments where students exhibit weaknesses or inhibitions to receive the knowledge, appropriately, from the conventional mode of teaching.

This chapter examines adolescent metacognitive knowledge in a fresh light and answers some methodological questions related to the investigation of the deepest layers of thinking during the information search. It does so by presenting a study that used an ethnographic approach to investigate the metacognitive knowledge of 10 adolescents, aged 16 to 18, over the course of four months, and in a variety of settings –– home, school, public libraries –– as they searched for, collected, and then used information for a school project. The study was framed by Flavel's model of metacognition (1977) and Kuhlthau's information search process (ISP) model, a six-stage, multidimensional model of information problem solving (1991, 2004). The chapter begins with a discussion about the ISP, metacognitive knowledge, and its potential for information seeking. The chapter then presents the findings of the study as a set of gaps and strengths of adolescent metacognitive knowledge, and concludes with commentary about the challenges and rewards related to conducting research with young people and suggestions for future areas of research.

The purpose of this paper is to describe: a new taxonomy of metacognitive skills designed to support the study of metacognition in the context of web searching; a data collection instrument based on the taxonomy; and the results of testing the instrument on a sample of university students and staff.

The taxonomy is based on a review of the literature, and is extended to cover web searching. This forms the basis for the design of the data collection instrument, which is tested with 405 students and staff of Sheffield University.

Subjects regard the range of metacognitive skills focused on as broadly similar. However, a number of significant differences in reported metacognition usage relating to age, gender and discipline.

These findings contribute to the long‐term aims of the research which are to: develop a model of the actual and potential role of metacognition in web searching, and identify strategic “metacognitive interventions” that can be built into an intelligent information retrieval system, driven by the model, capable of enhancing retrieval effectiveness by compensating for metacognitive weaknesses on the part of the searcher.

The value of the paper lies in: the consideration of metacognition in the context of web searching, the presentation of an extensible taxonomy of metacognitive skills, development and testing of a prototype metacognitive inventory, finding of significant differences in reported metacognition usage according to age, gender and discipline, and reflection of the implications of the results for future research into web searching.