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Final research papers are still the preferred method for end-of-term assessment in higher education. However, there is a recent push for a greater increase in digital literacy skills in today’s students. Determining the best way to utilize technology, while keeping an eye dedicated toward the pedagogical purpose, is the ultimate focus of this chapter. The authors of this chapter have endeavored to exhibit how tools such as wikis, blogs, and podcasting were best used in higher education situations to promote learning and expand student digital literacy by providing an alternative to the classic final paper option while fully engaging learners with a multimodal approach to learning. The research discussed has demonstrated that learner-generated knowledge requires a higher order of understanding, and as such, leads to higher levels of learning and longer retention of material. Cooperation and collaboration are now key components of the higher education experience; many of these technical alternatives are designed with built-in collaborative elements.

The chapter discusses pedagogical models of digital learning in the United Kingdom with a focus on online and blended learning, rolled out as a case study in one university. The chapter appraises the effectiveness of the model that implemented and foregrounded the evidence in the wider literature on models of digital learning in higher education. The chapter provides thematic analysis and methodological opportunities for the improvement of practice and presents a set of implementation implications and pitfalls to avoid for higher education institutions in Africa. Furthermore, a number of trends regarding the blending of learning and communication synchrony in digital learning have also been identified.

Like many other organizations, universities are using social media to engage with their stakeholders as they have varying interests and commitments. This chapter focuses on strategic communication and stakeholder engagement by UK universities on Twitter. It presents a descriptive study about their engagement on Twitter in terms of their followers, number of tweets, etc. In addition, it analyzes the tweets’ content to identify British universities’ communication strategies. Hence, the results revealed a thematic model in the form of an interrelated conceptual theory that comprises three strands of communication: (i) recruiting prospective students, (ii) retaining present students and staff, and (iii) reporting activities and media coverage. This contribution presents implications for university marketing communication managers who are involved in student recruitment and/or in managing relationships with stakeholders.

Barriers exist on large scale assessment when students are not able to perform at potential for a variety of reasons. Accommodations are mostly available for students who meet criteria for diagnosed disability or criteria for the identification of students who have English as a second language. However, knowing that students have diverse needs, accommodations for a few may not be providing appropriate access for all. Options for designing broader universal design for learning (UDL) on large scale assessment, through strategies that are typically restricted to special accommodations, increase access.

This chapter aims to establish a positive vision for the technology-enhanced learning design field. It commences by summarizing the current state of technology-enhanced learning research, as established by the previous analysis, in order to clarify the foundations upon which the field can build. The future of learning technology is considered, in the first instance, by extrapolating trends in information and communication technologies throughout history. This process showcases how the most impactful technologies are those that bring information closer to us, support sharing, and offer more visceral learning experiences. The nature of learning technology trends occurring in recent Horizon Reports, for instance, gesture-based computing, augmented reality, Massive Open Online Courses, and table computing, are analyzed and explained in terms of Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Gartner’s Hype Cycle. This leads to identifying teachers as the critical lynch pin in order for society to derive greatest educational benefit from the exponential advances in technology. Consequently, support for educators is argued as essential. Into the future the learning technology field will only optimize its progress if educators and researchers work together to understand design issues and possibilities. Directions forward for educators and researchers are proposed, emphasizing a research-driven, pedagogically focused, creative, and collaborative approach to technology-enhanced learning design.

This chapter synthesizes findings from the reviews of education using Web 2.0, social networking, mobile learning, and virtual worlds, in light of the earlier chapters on context, technology, pedagogy, content, and design. Benefits and issues associated technology-enhanced learning are generalized, with an important finding being the quite different ways that different technologies contribute to each. Twenty technology-enhanced learning design principles are derived from abstracting the Web 2.0, social networking, mobile learning, and virtual worlds literature. The benefits, issues, and technology-enhanced learning design principles are then related to one another by virtue of 13 clusters of concerns, namely pedagogy, access, communication, content representation, collaboration, motivation and engagement, vicarious learning and reflection, digital learning capabilities, assessment and feedback, student-centered learning, learning communities, protecting students, and teacher support. The analysis enables the general learning technology literature to be linked to concrete examples and evidential sources, so that educators and researchers can construct a deep and connected understanding of technology-enhanced learning design.

This chapter presents innovative approaches to active learning that were introduced into the teaching of preservice teachers at the Faculty of Education of University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, in the Czech Republic. Over the last three years, the Technology-Enhanced Learning course has seen substantial innovations in both the content and use of teaching strategies designed to prepare the students for their professional lives. The whole update of the course was implemented using the results of action research – all individual changes were rigorously tracked and analyzed. The state of the art in the active learning domain in education of preservice teachers is presented in this chapter.

There is a description of the procedure to update the course, based on the reflections of teachers and feedback from students, gathered during action research. Detailed evaluations of particular methods of active learning that have been proven in teaching are provided.

Besides practical activities with tablets and smartphones, during which students familiarize themselves with various types of applications and reflect on their use in teaching, the course was extended by the use of practical aids for the efficient inclusion of mobile technologies for teaching – the Czech version of Allan Carrington’s Padagogy Wheel. This aid is derived from the revised Bloom’s taxonomy and SAMR model and helps the systematic reflection of preservice teachers when preparing for technology-enhanced teaching.

A significant part of the teaching consists of cooperative projects between preservice teachers and pupils of elementary schools – for example, the preservice teachers help elementary school pupils discover possibilities of virtual reality during Google Cardboard activities, or preservice teachers in teams with elementary school pupils create digital stories together on the topic of Internet safety.

The innovative approach to active teaching in the Technology-Enhanced Learning course is apparent even during the exam. In the course of the exam, students process, present, and defend a lesson plan for the implementation of an activity using digital technologies.

Throughout the learning, as well as at the end, preservice teachers are encouraged to reflect on the teaching in the Technology-Enhanced Learning subject.

This chapter provides an overview of two generally applicable frameworks relating to the use of technology-enhanced learning – ‘affordances’ and multimedia learning effects. First, the concept of ‘affordances’ as action potentials of technologies is identified as a way to think through technology-enhanced learning design possibilities, so as to help make technology selection decisions. Second, multimedia learning effects including the multimedia effect, the modality effect, the redundancy effect, the split-attention effect, and the personalization effect are presented as a scientific basis for understanding how to create cognitively effective learning experiences using text, images, sound, and video. Both affordances and multimedia learning effects are characterized as ongoing areas of research that are somewhat related, with the successful utilization of each depending on critical application by the designer.