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The blackboard learning system is an online platform designed for e-learning employed by higher education institutes like universities that facilities students to continue learning and educational activities. This study explores the determinants that affect students' acceptance and use of Blackboard learning system (BLS) in Pakistan utilizing the modified UTAUT framework with social isolation as an additional variable.

A questionnaire survey was conducted, and the study gathered 494 university students' responses in Pakistan as participants. The collected data were interpreted applying PLS-SEM version 3.2.3 software.

The study's findings exhibited that PE, EE, FC and SI are the prime determinants influencing the intention and use of BLS in Pakistani universities. Hedonic motivation and social isolation interact differently between UTAUT variables and use intention. The results verify the suitability of the applied theory in the background of the study.

However, the findings highlight the present understanding of BLS use from the learners' aspect, but the study's limitation cannot be evaded. The study respondents belonged to a specific region of Pakistan (Karachi) that might influence the usefulness of the outcomes. Other factors categorized as the environmental, system and organizational elements were not part of the study that may also differentiate the BLS acceptance. The model was extended by including the social isolation, but the effect is insignificant yet positive; therefore, it is required to evaluate the model differently, such as the organizational aspect, for future research. Moreover, the ethnic factors that vary in emerging and developed economies may provide different explanations; therefore, they can be incorporated in future studies. Likewise, the variables such as hedonic motivation need to be emphasized more by examining and evaluating its effect on students' education performance in the future.

The outcome of the study suggests some implications. At first, being the modified framework UTAUT2 application makes the collaboration appropriate according to the current phenomena of the COVID-19 pandemic and its contribution to the higher education region to analyze the acceptance of e-learning systems. Educational institutions within Pakistan would emphasize enhancing students' accomplishment by improving the interface and the blackboard learning system workability. Hence, learners' effectiveness in learning would be escalated; they would be encouraged to accomplish study objectives using BLS, particularly when they consider it easy to use and a useful platform for e-learning during the pandemic. Furthermore, enhancing the e-learning system in the context of the effort demands to be required to utilize BLS should be the foremost objective as learners would be motivated to accept the technology if they consider it simple, convenient, and user-friendly to adopt. Thus, the benefits of using BLS during this situation when universities are not operational will make students adaptable to change in the prospect. Learners will accept the model of online education, even if the universities become operational. However, it can increase the rate of earnings and revenue for universities as they can enroll in online and regular classes. Therefore, it is suggested that higher education management should create a resilient online platform by which facilitators can communicate with learners without any obstacles.

Hence, it is recommended to introduce the online short course, qualification, certified courses and integrated coursework with international ventures and ongoing classes. Numerous learners continue their studies along with the job. Therefore, it is suggested to introduce online programs for those learners. Another benefit would be that it offers an integrated platform for sharing knowledge. BLS offers to maintain the complete information in one place, and learners can see them as per their convenience based on their availability. This reduces the burden on administration related to keeping the educational material and resource in various files. Thus, it also reduces the expense of universities. It is suggested to emphasize encouraging the use of BLS through an effective plan that can assist in execution and help learners identify the technology features rather than to face difficultly to accept the change. Moreover, the acceptance of BLS for educational purposes verifies that other learning events can occur on the online platform. Thus, it is recommended to promote the origin of the online atmosphere and the initiation of other events. Globally, dynamics are changing frequently and continuously and are moving towards artificial intelligence systems; the circumstances are suitable for promoting online educational platforms' acceptance by incorporating it with the current educational arrangement.

The study provides recommendations for the research to be conducted to explore the modified framework in different regions and boundaries to evaluate the effect of other factors on adopting e-learning platforms.

The current paper focuses on the increasing demand for generic competences both from governments and industries. Despite this fact, there is insufficient awareness and information in education systems on how to equip graduates with appropriate generic competences for the world of work and citizenship. This is even more complicated in online virtual learning programmes where face‐to‐face communication is excluded in the design and implementation of the programme curriculum. The paper seeks to question if it is possible to develop generic competences in an online virtual learning environment.

For this purpose, the research develops a theoretical framework based on the generic competences, learning content, learning support and learning activities. The paper argues that an online virtual learning curriculum design differs from a traditional face‐to‐face classroom environment in terms of learning content, learning activities and nature of learning support. Taking these elements in designing online virtual learning programme would promote acquisition of generic competences among the students.

The research examines possibilities of the online virtual learning platform ALUD (Aprendizaje en Linea de la Universidad de Deusto) at the University of Deusto, Spain, to develop generic competences online. The research demonstrates opportunities of the online virtual learning platform ALUD to develop and practice generic competences among students even without actual and traditional face‐to‐face educational communication.

The paper explores generic competence development through the online virtual learning platform ALUD at the University of Deusto, Spain. It examines possibilities of online education platform of the University of Deusto to produce alignment between what is espoused through the curriculum, what is enacted and how students experience learning through a virtual learning programme in order to develop their generic competences online. The paper argues that the virtual learning platform ALUD provides many opportunities for learners to develop and practise their generic competences even without actual and traditional face‐to‐face educational programmes.

Although e-learning has already been accepted globally as an effective medium of delivery of quality education and ensure optimum student participation, Bangladeshi higher educational institutions are still at a very early stage of adopting such technologies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the suitability of implementing effective e-learning through learning management system (LMS) at the tertiary educational institutions in Bangladesh, and how both students and teachers experience and respond to this new learning platform. Following mixed-methods techniques, data for this study were collected from students and respective course teachers of a private university in Bangladesh by administering questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The findings of this paper reveal that e-learning has been well accepted by most of the students as they are found routinely spending time on the LMS on a regular basis for watching lecture videos, viewing course information, reading postings of the fellow students in the forum. However, there are constraints as well, since the learning materials are poorly designed that do not allow much interaction between students and lecturers. There are also some technical problems such as poor internet connection which restrict access to e-learning platforms. To harness the optimum benefit of e-learning, this paper recommends a concerted effort by all stakeholders, such as students, lecturers, administrators and policy makers so that each of their priorities and expectations are reflected in the designing and implementing e-learning platforms.

This paper is based on the qualitative evaluation of Education 3.0 platform. Primary data were collected from the students using a well-structured survey questionnaire, and the findings of the survey have subsequently been cross-referred and supplemented by non-participatory observations with semi-structured interviews which allowed a better in-depth understanding of the issue at hand.

The findings of the study suggest that a majority of the students are found to be highly enthusiastic about the online courses. They are eager to participate and interact in the online platforms, which are somehow limited in the traditional classroom settings. However, there are several institutional, administrative and technical limitations of implementing e-learning in Bangladesh. It is recommended that better orientation of the users, quality content distribution though user-friendly systems and enhanced asynchronous interaction between the lecturers and students are the key pre-requisites to harness the optimum benefit from e-learning technologies in Bangladesh.

The data have been analyzed and discussed using qualitative framework which allows an in-depth understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the use of e-learning technologies at the higher educational institutions in Bangladesh.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) remains a global public health emergency as declared by the World Health Organization (WHO). The COVID-19 impacted educational institutions around the world, and they were shut down to minimize the fatalities and spread of the infection. Educational institutions around the world, including Bangladesh, started to conduct online classes as an alternative to physical classes. Therefore, this study assesses the effectiveness of online classes in terms of information and communications technology (ICT) readiness, online class assessment, online class participation, and convenience and flexibility for the educational institutions of Bangladesh.

To fulfill the objective of the study, data were collected from 817 teachers and students. Additionally, the partial least squares (PLS) regression method was adopted as a quantitative technique.

The study shows that online class participation, online class assessment, and convenience and flexibility have positive relationships with ICT readiness and the effectiveness of online classes. At the same time, the challenges of online classes have negative relationships with ICT readiness and the effectiveness of online classes.

The study suggests that the government should ensure stable internet connectivity access across the country so that both students and teachers can participate in online classes effectively. Moreover, educational institutional authorities should extend support to the institutions for developing proper ICT infrastructure.

ICT infrastructure readiness is the backbone for effective online education; however, before the COVID-19 pandemic, online education was almost non-existent at the educational institutional level in Bangladesh. The country started developing the ICT infrastructure only when online classes were scheduled to start, and the development is still ongoing. Hence, this study used ICT readiness as a mediator factor. Moreover, primary data are used in this study. The findings of the study will help academicians and policymakers to better understand the effectiveness of online classes.

With the continuous growth of online education, the quality issue of online educational videos has become increasingly prominent, causing students in online learning to face the dilemma of knowledge confusion. The existing mechanisms for controlling the quality of online educational videos suffer from subjectivity and low timeliness. Monitoring the quality of online educational videos involves analyzing metadata features and log data, which is an important aspect. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, deep learning techniques with strong predictive capabilities can provide new methods for predicting the quality of online educational videos, effectively overcoming the shortcomings of existing methods. The purpose of this study is to find a deep neural network that can model the dynamic and static features of the video itself, as well as the relationships between videos, to achieve dynamic monitoring of the quality of online educational videos.

The quality of a video cannot be directly measured. According to previous research, the authors use engagement to represent the level of video quality. Engagement is the normalized participation time, which represents the degree to which learners tend to participate in the video. Based on existing public data sets, this study designs an online educational video engagement prediction model based on dynamic graph neural networks (DGNNs). The model is trained based on the video’s static features and dynamic features generated after its release by constructing dynamic graph data. The model includes a spatiotemporal feature extraction layer composed of DGNNs, which can effectively extract the time and space features contained in the video's dynamic graph data. The trained model is used to predict the engagement level of learners with the video on day T after its release, thereby achieving dynamic monitoring of video quality.

Models with spatiotemporal feature extraction layers consisting of four types of DGNNs can accurately predict the engagement level of online educational videos. Of these, the model using the temporal graph convolutional neural network has the smallest prediction error. In dynamic graph construction, using cosine similarity and Euclidean distance functions with reasonable threshold settings can construct a structurally appropriate dynamic graph. In the training of this model, the amount of historical time series data used will affect the model’s predictive performance. The more historical time series data used, the smaller the prediction error of the trained model.

A limitation of this study is that not all video data in the data set was used to construct the dynamic graph due to memory constraints. In addition, the DGNNs used in the spatiotemporal feature extraction layer are relatively conventional.

In this study, the authors propose an online educational video engagement prediction model based on DGNNs, which can achieve the dynamic monitoring of video quality. The model can be applied as part of a video quality monitoring mechanism for various online educational resource platforms.

This research focuses on the elements of pedagogy related to teacher–student engagement that promotes a responsive learning environment and improved outcomes for diverse populations in diverse contexts. We examine the pedagogical practices occasioned by the shift to online learning as a result of schools’ closures that followed the declaration of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis first explores the status of pedagogical practices and access to education technology following the implementation of the SDG4 agenda for an inclusive quality education for all. It follows with an exploration of pedagogical shifts in response to the pandemic following school closures, paying attention to the implications for equity for diverse populations in diverse learning contexts. The analysis draws from the education practice discourse surrounding the pandemic response gained from educators and students, gray literature, emerging scholarly publications, and institutional reports on the topic of pedagogical practices. Lessons from the experiences of the authors as researchers, students, and teachers illustrate examples of Zoom classroom practices that evolved with time that might support productive experiences for learners in technology-mediated learning environments. The global pandemic experience provides an opportunity for the field of comparative education to reconsider planning for the delivery of education in unpredictable and emerging emergencies.

There are currently no studies concerning the use of Google Hangout in North Cyprus. Thus, this study examines the perceptions of preservice teacher and language instructors on the use of Google Meet (GM) as a synchronous language learning tool for a distant online program in Cyprus.

To elicit information on the perception of preservice teachers and language instructors on this issue, a quantitative research design was used for this study.

Though the language instructors deemed GM effective and efficient as a language learning tool, the preservice teachers thought otherwise.

It was difficult to collect data during this pandemic outbreak. Obtaining ethical consent from the participants was difficult as well and so the sample size was small.

The study was able to demonstrate that the use of GM was somewhat effective as a language learning tool for the online distant program, though the level of efficiency and effectiveness varies from preservice teachers to the language instructors. Also, the study was able to highlight the use of GM could be very effective if it is well managed by the teachers to stimulate student engagement during lessons. The study showcased that the unavailability of Internet data, poor Internet connection are possible constraints to the efficiency of GM. Recently, a university in Northern Cyprus has decided to partner with a telecommunication network (Turkcell) toward providing free Internet access for all registered students within a particular period of learning. This is a welcomed approach that can be emulated by other educational facilities in bridging the gap created by poor Internet connection in a remote online learning setting.

There are no studies within the context of North Cyprus on the use of GM as a synchronous language learning tool for online distant programs. Though the use of GM is adjured effective and efficient, this contextual overview of GM is a new insight into academia.

Isolated within the communist Eastern Block until 1989, Romania has been experiencing numerous educational reforms, initiated by the National Ministry of Education and generally aligned with the European Union goals through the Bologna Treaty. The socioeconomic macrosystem is an important source of influence and we are looking at its main directions. Scholarship on the topic of teaching and learning in Romania is emergent but Computer-Assisted-Teaching (CAT) education in Romania remains insufficiently explored, despite the ever-growing need. This chapter analyzes the state of CAT formative programs for the preservice and the in-service teachers at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania. We are now using the lessons learned from the Covid-19 crisis to reflect on new needs for digital competencies, Professional Development (PD), and proposed systemic changes. Such professional training is offered first during the university years, during the BA and MA studies. At the university level, the teacher training curriculum includes CAT, while for the in-service teachers, the PD continues through a combination of self-pursued and mandatory teacher training sessions offered by the regional school districts, universities, and professional organizations. CAT PD is not usually the focus of teacher preparation degree programs; the computer-assisted teaching course during teachers' training program offers a general, introductory perspective on using technology in teaching. For in-service teachers, most specialized PD happens independently and/or through self-teaching. The Covid-19 crisis created not only the urgent need to learn how to teach online but also the awareness that computer-assisted teaching PD needs certain changes.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), a Taylorist attempt to automate instruction, help make course delivery more efficient, economical and better. As an implementation of Digital Taylorism Implementation (DTI), MOOCs enable individuals to obtain an occupation-oriented education, equipping them with knowledge and skills needed to stay employable. However, learning through online platforms can induce tremendous amounts of technology-related stress in learners such as complexity of platforms and fears of redundancy. Thus, the aim of this paper is to study how student perceptions of DTI and technostress (TS) influence their perceived employability (PE). The role of TS as a mediator between DTI and PE has also been studied.

Stratified sampling technique has been used to obtain data from 305 students from 6 universities. The effect of DTI and TS on PE, and the role of TS as a mediator, has been examined using the partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling approach with SMART PLS 4.0. software. Predictive relevance of the model has been studied using PLSPredict.

Results indicate that TS completely mediates the relationship between DTI and PE. The model has medium predictive relevance.

Learning outcomes from Digitally Taylored programs can be improved with certain reforms that bring the human touch to online learning.

This study extends Taylorism literature by linking DTI to PE of students via technostress as a mediator.

While online classes have enabled many universities to carry out their regular academic activities, they have also given rise to new and unanticipated ethical concerns. We focus on the “dark side” of online class settings and attempt to illuminate the ethical problems associated with them. The purpose of this study is to investigate the affordances stemming from the technology-user interaction that can result in negative outcomes. We also attempt to understand the context in which these deleterious affordances are actualized.

We obtain the data from narratives written by students at a top private university in Bangladesh about their experiences of online classes and exams and from focus group discussions with them. We use the lens of affordance theory to identify the abilities that goal-oriented actors – primarily students – obtain from the technology-user interactions, which result in negative outcomes. We also attempt to understand the contextual actualization of those affordances through the lens of Routine Activity Theory (RAT).

We find three deleterious affordances and three associated deviant outcomes. Non-monitorability which results in academic dishonesty, disguiseability which results in cyber-truancy, and intrudeability which results in embarrassment and harassment. Our findings reveal a deeper underlying problem with the existing educational approach in the universities of Bangladesh and suggest that there is a need to introduce more modern teaching techniques focused on issues such as student engagement and interactive learning.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that combines affordance theory with RAT to identify unethical practices observed in online class settings in the context of a least developed country like Bangladesh and to examine the environmental components that give rise to the pre-conditions for the unethical practices to surface.