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The purpose of this paper is to examine Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ and students’ views and use of ICT in education.

In total, 25 individual teachers and 39 students in small focus groups were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis was performed using NVivo11. The analysis was conducted in three steps: with each individual teacher, the student groups and the cohort of teachers and students. A comparative analysis was also conducted.

The teachers’ views and use of ICT are diverse. Teachers and students identify similar challenges when using ICT in education, e.g. time and subject, the shortcomings of a school’s learning management system (LMS) and teachers’ digital competence. Students report an extensive out-of-school use of smartphones and an extensive in-school use of laptops and LMS.

The relatively small number of teachers and students in three schools make generalisations difficult. The examination of teachers’ and students’ views and use in the same context reveals new knowledge.

The study may influence teachers’ use of ICT in education, based on a better understanding of students’ use.

The study may lead to a better understanding of teachers’ and students’ different perspectives and a more enhanced and sustainable in-school use of ICT.

The originality is that teachers’ and students’ views and use of ICT in education are examined at the same time. The paper contributes new knowledge about how teachers and students conceptualise and use ICT in upper secondary school practices.

The main argument behind this paper is learning in the digital age should not be restricted to creating digital infrastructures for supporting current forms of learning nor taking schools in their current form as God-given, natural entities, but changing current forms of education by developing new frameworks and socio-technical environments for making learning an integral part of life. The authors provide a framework for this argumentation as well as a call-to-action for research on the co-evolution of learning, media, and learning organizations.

This paper theoretically and argumentatively explores the core assumption that the digitalization of society results in challenges and opportunities for learning and education based on fundamental transformations (Collins and Halverson, 2009; Fischer et al., 2020).

The digital age greatly enhances the opportunities and supports the necessity for “making learning a part of life”. But while the growth of technology is certain, the inevitability of any particular future is not. The impact of schooling goes beyond that new information about computers, the Internet, and social media are integrated into the schools of today. The transformation of schools needs to be informed by an understanding of the impact of mindset formation that will determine people's approach to learning for the rest of their lives. The authors’ framework is focused on moving “beyond gift-wrapping” by not only fixing and existing systems but to change them and not only reforming but transforming them.

It is the authors’ hope that this article will be of interest to many stakeholders (including learners, teachers, curriculum designers, technology experts, parents, and politicians) and provide a foundation for an ongoing debate and informed actions for “Making Learning a Part of Life” in the digital age.

The purpose of this paper is to explore upper secondary school students’ voices on how information and communication technology (ICT) could structure and support their everyday activities and time at school.

In all, 11 group interviews were conducted with a total of 46 students from three upper secondary schools. NVivo PRO 11 was used for a qualitative content analysis.

The results show that ICT plays a central role in the students’ schooling, not in terms of “state-of-the-art” technology, but rather as “state-of-the-actual”, by for example supporting the writing process and for peer support, digital documentation and storage.

A relatively small number of students in three schools and three specific programmes make generalisations difficult.

Students’ perspectives on the “state-of-the-actual” could influence teachers’ use of ICT in education, their professional development activities and the development of an in-school ICT infrastructure.

The study could lead to a better understanding of students’ expectations and use of ICT at school and in everyday life.

The originality of this paper is the focus on students’ voices about how the basic use and functionality of ICT could structure and support their everyday activities at school.

The digitalization of society results in challenges and opportunities for learning and education. This paper describes exemplary transformations from current to future practices. It illustrates multi-dimensional aspects of learning which complement and transcend current frameworks of learning focused on schools. While digital technologies are necessary for these transformations, they are not sufficient. The paper briefly illustrates the applicability of the conceptual framework to the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that design opportunities and design trade-offs in relation to digital technologies and learning should be explored by envisioning the cultural transformation that are desirable for making learning a part of life.

This paper is based on the work conducted at the symposium “Rethinking and Reinventing Learning, Education, and Collaboration in the Digital Age—From Creating Technologies to Transforming Cultures” that took place in Engeltofta outside of Gävle, Sweden in September 2019. The symposium invited scholars in collaborative analysis of design opportunities and design trade-offs in relation to digital technologies and learning and explored design strategies for systematically and proactively increasing digital technology's contributions to learning and collaborating. The paper first provides a condensed introduction of a conceptual framework summarizing current practices, their problems and promising alternatives. Multi-dimensional aspects of learning and lifelong learning will be briefly described as promising future alternatives to school learning. Examples of transformative practices are supporting the major argument of the paper that creating new technologies is an important prerequisite to address the fundamental challenge of transforming cultures. The unanticipated but fundamental event of the occurrence of COVID-19 will be briefly described to provide further evidence for the need and the applicability of our conceptual framework for rethinking and reinventing learning, education and collaboration in the digital age.

The paper provides a condensed introduction of a conceptual framework summarizing current practices, their problems and promising alternatives. The framework includes multi-dimensional aspects of learning and lifelong learning as a promising future alternative to a focus on school learning.

This paper describes exemplary transformations from current to future practices. It illustrates multi-dimensional aspects of learning which complement and transcend current frameworks of learning focused on schools.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of blogs as part of a formative assessment practice, to report how reflective peer‐to‐peer learning can be designed and provided in online higher education.

The research relies on a qualitative approach. The empirical setting comprised an online higher education course in which 23 students were enrolled. All students wrote individual blogs, and the analysis was done using all postings and comments from the blogs. For the analysis the ICE (Ideas, Connections, and Extension) three level classification model was used.

The designed blog exercise turned into an informal and formative type of assessment that scaffolds the students' learning, providing a reflective peer‐to‐peer technology‐enhanced learning design.

The study is limited to one online higher education course. Additional research on educational technology and e‐assessment is needed. In particular, research on the informed design of technology‐enhanced learning practices characterized by formative e‐assessment and the role of the designed use of blogs in the facilitating and enhancement of the students' peer‐to‐peer learning.

The paper demonstrates that the design and use of blogs embrace a formative assessment approach that cultivates the students' reflective peer‐to‐peer learning.

The paper provides insight into the designed use of blogs in online higher education together with the potential in formative assessment for learning. The ICE three‐level classification model provides a dynamic possibility to analyze online higher educational practices.

With a philosophical stance in relation to education, this paper aims to discuss different understandings of participation in an information and communication technology (ICT)‐supported distance‐based teacher education program in Sweden.

The paper is based on early results from two studies, both of which involved a group of teacher‐trainees, with one interview and one questionnaire.

The findings indicate that there is a need to be explicit about the ontological assumptions inherent in the intended use of ICT. The conclusion is that the program in question is built on assumptions of realism and that ICT lays the ground for individual participation and works to tell the students apart.

Helps in understanding how ICT, and its use, can have different effects on different groups.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of students' meaning‐making processes, as they are part of an e‐assessment practice via written blog posting upon their own, and their co‐students' performances, presented online through shared video media.

The research relies on qualitative data to provide an analysis of students' use of the educational technology tool called VoiceThread^©. These data were provided by collecting Swedish higher education students' postings and comments in relation to two video clips published in VoiceThread. The formal learning sequence model by Selander together with theories on communication and reflection were used in the analysis.

The data and the analysis show that shared video media and blogging embrace a potential to facilitate communication and reflection among online higher education students. In addition, the design of the course seems to strengthen the use of formative e‐assessment.

The research reported on in this paper should, preferably, be followed by additional research on educational technology, social software and e‐assessment; informed design of practices of formative e‐assessment; and the role of formative e‐assessment in the facilitating and enhancement of the students' learning and meaning‐making processes.

This paper provides researched‐based ideas of ways in which teachers in online higher education can design their courses, if they want to cultivate the students' communicative and reflective skills.

This paper provides an important insight into the use of shared video media and blogging in online higher education, especially, the way it can be designed for within a formative e‐assessment course approach.

The aim of this paper is to report how Swedish upper secondary schools involved in a European Union‐financed collaborative project intertwined aspects of subject integration and international collaboration with the use of ICT.

The methodology used is a case study in which aspects of subject integration and international collaborative ambitions are intertwined with the use of ICT. Data consist of interviews with participants, texts concerning the project, the participating school, and the Swedish upper secondary schools system.

Teachers and students have worked towards the objectives in the project and in the national curricula, and the case shows how difficult and how many barriers there are to overcome. Even though the curricula seem difficult to coordinate, students appear to have learnt more about the European perspective, as well as about themselves, through the approach. The teacher describes student motivation as high – authenticity and real people to collaborate with support the students' experience of a holistic education, which applies to real life. The teacher tried to change the role towards providing students with structure and advice, monitoring their progress, and assessing their accomplishments, but reported to be struggling with the teacher role.

The paper demonstrates originality and value by providing important insight into the use of ICT in upper secondary schools for the purpose of collaboration and at the same time working towards joint curricular themes.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inability of the Japanese higher education system to adapt to widespread unexpected disruption. The limited metrics available to assess Japanese higher education’s response in the wake of the pandemic indicate several areas where the system needs to be strengthened. This paper aims to harness the ecological perspective to explore the procedures by which higher education in Japan can mitigate extant digital shortcomings.

Leveraging Zhao and Frank’s ecological perspective as its theoretical model, this paper proposes practical solutions to remedy deficiencies highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic rooted in existing literature both within and outside of Japanese higher education research.

The paper suggests pragmatic ideas to embolden each of the three strata encompassing the educational “ecosystem”: institutions, faculty and students. The paper identifies measures for strengthening institutions to become more adaptive and improve leadership capacity. At the faculty level, meanwhile, an increase in professional development opportunities and the bolstering of support systems may function to bridge an intergenerational digital divide. Finally, for students, the authors argue for mobile-assisted language learning in an effort to cultivate stronger learner outcomes, and prescribe how to integrate this method into formal IT platforms.

The current paper is among a select few that use the ecological perspective in the field of educational research in Japan. The authors contend that the model, while effective, offers an incomplete view of education, suggesting that the ecological perspective must be expanded to include students as a distinct species.

The authors examine how a not-for-profit organisation (NPO) coordinates NPO's actions during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic to remain focussed on strategic and operational goals.

The authors conducted a live case study of an NPO as the crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. Drawing on a sensemaking perspective that incorporates sensegiving, the authors develop a framework of five types of organisational sensemaking. The authors analyse weekly planning meetings during which managers discussed past performance, forecast performance and the forecast duration of current cash reserves.

The authors show how three of the five types of organisational sensemaking helped to coordinate actions. The authors highlight how accounting information triggers organisational sensemaking processes; but depending on the type of organisational sensemaking, accounting information has little further role. The authors also show that the stability of decisions depends on the types of organisational sensemaking.

The authors show how coordination as a management control practice is enabled by organisational sensemaking within an NPO during a crisis. Organisational sensemaking enabled the agreement of actions, which enabled coordination. Accounting practices provided trigger mechanisms to facilitate organisational sensemaking.

Since this study is the first to examine sensemaking processes and accounting practices in coordination in an NPO in a pandemic, the authors contribute to the limited research on NPOs during crises and on the management control practice of coordination. The authors extend the accounting literature on sensemaking by showing that, whilst accounting triggers organisational sensemaking, accounting is only implicated in one type of organisational sensemaking and by revealing the different outcomes of the different types of organisational sensemaking.