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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the rationale, technical framework, content creation workflow and evaluation for a multilingual massive open online course (MOOC) to facilitate information literacy (IL) considering cultural aspects.

A good practice analysis built the basis for the technical and content framework. The evaluation approach consisted of three phases: first, the students were asked to fill out a short self-assessment questionnaire and a shortened adapted version of a standardized IL test. Second, they completed the full version of the IL MOOC. Third, they were asked to fill out the full version of a standardized IL test and a user experience questionnaire.

The results show that first the designed workflow was suitable in practice and led to the implementation of a full-grown MOOC. Second, the implementation itself provides implications for future projects developing multilingual educational resources. Third, the evaluation results show that participants achieved significantly higher results in a standardized IL test after attending the MOOC as mandatory coursework. Variations between the different student groups in the participating countries were observed. Fourth, self-motivation to complete the MOOC showed to be a challenge for students asked to attend the MOOC as nonmandatory out-of-classroom task. It seems that multilingual facilitation alone is not sufficient to increase active MOOC participation.

This paper presents an innovative approach of developing multilingual IL teaching resources and is one of the first works to evaluate the impact of an IL MOOC on learners' experience and learning outcomes in an international evaluation study.

This paper aims to uncover the current status of information literacy (IL) instruction through massive open online courses (MOOCs), comparing the content and instructional design of existing offers and showing avenues for future MOOCs.

An extensive search for existing MOOCs on IL revealed 11 offers that are available for analysis. A content analysis is conducted to compare their content and instructional design. The category system is based on the IL standards and performance indicators of the Association of College and Research Libraries (2000), which has been supplemented with additional categories and an evaluation grid for MOOCs.

The results suggest first, that the topics covered by IL MOOCs differ widely. While some of the MOOCs mainly reflect the performance indicators suggested by the ACRL standards on IL from 2000, some other MOOCs focus on completely different topics such as fake news or internet security. Second, they show that MOOCs on IL tend not to emphasize subject-specific and country- or culture-specific contexts. Third, it shows that input-based teaching approaches dominate, while collaborative and interactive activities are only rarely used. Fourth, they allow drawing a possible connection between student engagement and design of the learning contents.

This work reflects the current status of IL facilitation through MOOCs. Further research is needed.

The results confirm that MOOCs are a promising approach for developing IL skills and provide avenues for future MOOC projects, especially on IL.

This paper is one of few works to discuss IL facilitation through MOOCs.

MetaForm is a database that hosts metadata element sets, descriptions and guidelines for their use. It is the focal point of the Metadata Server at SUB Göttingen for anyone who is using metadata to describe networked resources or would like to familiarise themselves with metadata element sets, in particular Dublin Core, and their application. This paper proposes to present findings on the use of the MetaForm metadata registry system based on data from web logs transactions. It aims to broaden understanding of how metadata registries are used, particularly as indicated by their own users.

The paper analyses web log transactions of more than six years (1 July 1998 to 10 November 2004). The focus of this paper is in three areas: use presented on a daily, monthly and yearly basis; (trends in use (increasing/decreasing) over a period of more than six years; and users of the metadata registry system as shown through the domain and directory reports.

Presents the daily, monthly and yearly use of MetaForm. Shows trends in its use for a period of over six years and identifies some of the metadata registry's users and the information they seek (as shown in the directory reports).

Owing to the file format of the web log transactions, results are presented as average values rather than actual access numbers.

This paper is a first assessment of its kind of the use of an active metadata registry system, as recorded through web log transactions. The aim of this research is to enhance the understanding of the use and application of MetaForm and therefore metadata registry systems in general.

The Environmental Data Registry (EDR) is a cornerstone of the US Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to manage and integrate environmental information for the purposes of safeguarding human health and protecting the environment. This paper seeks to present findings on the use of the EDR/SoR metadata registry system based on data from web logs transactions. It aims to broaden our understanding of how metadata registries are used, particularly as indicated by their own users.

The paper presents an analysis of web log transactions of a six‐year period (1998‐2004). The focus of this paper is in three areas: use presented on a daily, monthly and yearly basis; trends in use (increasing/decreasing) over a period of more than six years; and users of the metadata registry system as shown through the domain and directory reports.

The paper presents the daily, monthly and yearly use of the EDR/SoR. It shows trends in its use for a period of over six years and identifies some of the metadata registry's users and the information they seek (as shown in the directory reports).

Transactional web logs, in general, record the internet protocol address of the computer that accessed the web site/service. That is not necessarily linked to any one specific user. Therefore, results are presented as actual access numbers rather than human beings.

This paper is among the first of its kind to examine web log transactions in assessing metadata registry usage. This research is intended to enhance the understanding of the user and application of the EDR/SoR and therefore provide a baseline for metadata registry systems' evaluation in general.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an essential component of enacting an improvement network: facilitation. In it, the author surfaces synthesizing as a core, power-laden facilitation practice that brought together network members from disparate institutions to converge on a shared network aim and theory of improvement.

This study is situated within a teacher preparation improvement network. Forty-four teacher educators from seven university-based teacher preparation programs participated in the network. Guided by practice theory (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011), the author collected and analyzed network meetings and artifacts to unveil facilitation practices and their relation to power.

Synthesizing emerged as a central facilitation practice. Facilitators' engagement in this practice produced power by constraining and enabling how network members participated. Finally, facilitators were systematically and advantageously positioned to prioritize some network members' perspectives while peripheralizing others'.

This paper offers a concrete, detailed window into a core facilitation practice in a network and problematizes it to enable network leaders to be deliberate about facilitation decisions.

Facilitation is a central component of effective networks (Rincón-Gallardo and Fullan, 2016) and is considered central to the work of networked improvement (Bryk et al., 2015), but there exists a dearth of research that offers insights into how facilitation comes to be enacted in practice. This study offers detailed insights into one such facilitation practice.

Open online courses have expanded opportunities for people to learn remotely. However, few online experiences offer participants ways to create projects and actively engage with course materials while developing meaningful personal connections with one another. The purpose of this paper is to share strategies implemented in a large online course and community, Learning Creative Learning (LCL), to foster a creative, connected community of learners, particularly important at a time when many people are isolated in their homes.

LCL is a free, open, online, six-week course and ongoing community for educators and others who are interested in exploring the ideas and practices of creative learning. This paper describes the course design and highlights effective strategies for cultivating a course community, including making activities personal; creating opportunities to connect, share and reflect; engaging participants as facilitators; and supporting a global, multilingual community of learners.

The authors discuss how these strategies have engaged participants in connecting and contributing to the growing course community, providing examples from observations and feedback of course participants.

Supporting a connected community of learners is particularly relevant in current times of isolation and remote learning. This paper illustrates and discusses strategies to design online learning experiences where participants can connect, create, collaborate and contribute to community building themselves.

This paper aims to report on the decisions two teachers made about how to engage with a five-year school–university collaboration that used professional development (PD) to foster changes in language instruction for teachers of multilingual learners.

A longitudinal case study was used to examine the experiences of two teachers to provide insights into classroom-level decisions and changes in instructional practices.

Changes in instructional practices occurred when teachers made active, engaged choices about their own learning and teaching in the classroom. Teacher learning did not follow a consistent trajectory of improvement and contained contradictions, and early decisions about how to engage with PD affected the pace and nature of teacher learning. Through personal decisions about how to engage with PD, teachers adopted new instructional practices to support multilingual learners. Positive changes required extended time for teachers to implement new practices successfully.

This collaboration points to a need for long-term PD partnerships that value teacher agency to produce instructional changes that support multilingual learners.

PD can play a key role in transforming literacy instruction for multilingual learners. Teacher agency, including the decisions teachers make about how to engage with professional learning opportunities and how to enact new instructional practices in the classroom, mediates the efficacy of PD initiatives. This longitudinal case study contributes to the understanding of effective PD by presenting two contrasting case studies of teacher agency and learning during long-term school–university collaboration.

Multimodal writing portfolios were introduced and integrated into an undergraduate course and a graduate course in a research-oriented university in northwest Taiwan. This study aims to examine the influence of multimodal writing portfolios of novice researchers' academic writing.

Comparative case studies involve collecting data from several cases and analyzing the similarities, differences and patterns across cases (Merriam, 2009). To address this underdeveloped area of research, a comparative case study method was employed to understand undergraduate and graduate students' multimodal writing portfolios in academic writing in two courses in Taiwan.

First, multimodal writing portfolios enabled novice researchers to be more familiar with the structure of academic paper and they had better performance in intrapersonal and linguistic aspects. Second, novice researchers held positive attitude toward multimodal writing portfolios because they regarded process of making multimodal writing portfolios as preparation for their future academic writing. Finally, participants highly valued the class PowerPoint slides, weekly writing tasks and the instructor's modeling as effective facilitation for making multimodal writing portfolios.

Limited studies focus on multimodal writing portfolios (e.g. Silver, 2019). The present case study explores the integration of a multimodal writing portfolio into one undergraduate and one graduate course to explore learners' attitude and performance in academic writing.

Novice researchers can learn to compose multimodal academic texts for the academic writing community.

Suggestions on effective integration of multimodal writing portfolios into academic writing instruction were provided based on the research findings.

The findings of the study provide the field of L2 writing with insights into the pedagogical development of multilingual writing portfolios and help educators to be better prepared for teaching novice researchers to comprehend and compose multimodal texts and enter the academic writing community. The framework in Figure 1 and suggestions on course designs for academic writing can inform educators on the integration of multimodality in academic discourse. Moreover, this study moves beyond general writing courses at the tertiary level and could contribute to L2 writers' deeper understanding of how multimodal writing portfolios can be constructed.

CISV (formerly Children’s International Summer Villages) is an international charity established in Cincinnati, USA, in 1950. It offers non-formal educational programmes for children and young people from 11 years. In its intercultural programmes English is used as Lingua Franca while space and opportunities are created for participants to use their first languages. A primary aim of the organisation is to promote intercultural friendship and understanding. This chapter has dual aims. Firstly, it provides a review of the impact of intercultural learning in CISV and its unique multilingual practice on development of friendship and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) among children and youth. Secondly, it investigates the methodological issues in evaluating the development and changes in ICC, specifically, the under-reported problem of ‘inflated’ perceptions with regard to self-assessment questionnaires.

Existing research evidence corroborates the positive and long-term impact of CISV experience on participants’ social development (including friendship), cultural awareness, challenges are also identified. For example, how can programme and activity organisers encourage equitable and active participation when participants’ language proficiency in the shared language is varied? How do we explain the regression in self-assessment of ICC? In this chapter, we compare three different ways of measuring changes and propose a purposely designed predictive and reflective questionnaire (PaRQ). Open questions (‘narrative spaces’) in these questionnaires provide the opportunity for participants to comment on their own perceptions of learning and friendship development.

CISV differs from many other intercultural education organisations in that it offers opportunity for relatively young children, promotes learning and development in a multicultural environment and adopts a language practice that combines English as Lingua Franca (ELF) and a multilingual outlook. Understanding its successes and areas for improvement provides some insight into friendship development in multilingual and intercultural settings.

Ethnic minorities (EMs), who make up a sizable proportion of multilingual users, are more likely to browse and search in their native language. It is helpful to identify multilingual users' information needs to provide public digital cultural services (PDCS) for making their life better.

The in-context interview is an efficient way to explore EMs' information needs and evoke their daily experience with PDCS. The material from 31 one-on-one interviews with EMs in China was recorded and analyzed using thematic analysis.

The findings reveal that language proficiency is a critical factor influencing multilingual information access (MLIA) and multilingual users' information needs. Moreover, language ability, digital literacy and cultural literacy are important components of multilingual information literacy (MLIL), which is helpful for EMs to access PDCS. In light of Kochen's theory, the information needs of PDCS can be classified into the aroused need of resources, the recognized need of functions and services and expressed need. For the expressed need, it is necessary to develop a one-stop convergence platform of PDCS to process various requests of resources, functions and services in the future.

The findings will be valuable for governments, public institutions and social organizations in identifying, addressing and resolving these issues about PDCS.