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While some may perceive technology as disruptive in higher education, this chapter makes a case that video technology can be used to increase collaboration and engagement in learning and teaching. It is argued that digital storytelling can be integrated as part of the assessment in graduate-level courses without compromising expectations related to academic rigor. Rather, digital storytelling advances multimedia literacy for the individual and supports the generation of bounded learning communities, specifically in online and blended programmes. Covering social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence, the chapter draws on two examples of digital storytelling used in the MA in Conflict Analysis and Management and the MA in Global Leadership at Royal Roads University, Canada. Overall, the chapter makes a contribution to the conversation of how assessment formats can be updated to match the shift from traditional, lecture formats and brick-and-mortar institutions to applied, collaborative programmes that are often delivered in blended and online formats. Thus, as the field of higher education continues to evolve and adapt alongside technological innovations, the chapter suggests that digital storytelling can be one way to complement and update assessment formats to match the evolution of the twenty-first century.

Connectedness is essential for student success in online learning. By projecting themselves as real people through video, instructors support connectedness. In this chapter, researchers apply the theory of social presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) to case studies from two public higher education institutions: a four-year university and a large research university. Analysis identifies video as a humanizing element of online courses. Findings suggest video could be used in a variety of ways (e.g., video lectures, synchronous office hours, weekly overview videos), and no single use of video was perceived to be more or less effective in developing social presence and humanizing the learning experience. However, participants especially perceived connectedness when video was used in a variety of ways. Students from the second case study validated a perception of connectedness to the instructor that faculty in our first case study hoped to achieve. However, one instructor’s perception of disconnect illustrates that video is just one of several pedagogical practices necessary to create a satisfying learning experience for both students and instructors. While video is not the only way to establish social presence, findings suggest video is an effective practice toward creating a humanized and connected online learning community.

Technology is becoming a part of students’ lives more every day. How as educators can we use technology as a developmental tool instead of a distraction in the classroom? This paper frames technology in leadership instruction through situated learning, specifically how a video production course assignment provided a developmental opportunity for students in an introductory leadership course. The research reports students’ perception of using technology that extends beyond the specific objective of development of a personal definition of leadership and offers a new perspective for engaging other forms of technology.

This paper aims to describe the development and execution of the video cover letter exercise. This learning innovation challenges students to develop a concise, targeted marketing message using video technologies and tools.

In the first full semester of mandatory implementation, a pre-test/post-test design using McCroskey's measure of communication apprehension (CA) examined the effects of the exercise in reducing students' levels of CA. There were 200 students in the course, of which 139 completed both the pre-test and post-test measure survey. The measure captures overall levels of CA and more specifically examines anxiety associated with oral communication in group discussions, dyads, group meetings and public speaking.

Paired sample t-tests revealed that the CA was significantly reduced overall and more specifically in settings related to group discussions and public speaking. The tool provides an effective and efficient means for assessing basic oral communication skills. It also advances oral communication skills by significantly reducing levels of CA in undergraduate business students.

Oral communication skills are consistently ranked toward the top of faculty, student and recruiter lists of requisite skills for successful business graduates (Maes et al., 1997) and marketing majors more specifically (Nicholson et al., 2005). It is not surprising then that oral communication skills are also typically included as one of the most commonly assessed learning outcomes in college of business programs (Martell, 2007). Unfortunately, decreasing resources, growing class sizes and diverse course formats (e.g. online, face-to-face and blended) create ever growing challenges to effective development and assessment of oral communication skills in our marketing and business student populations.

This paper reports on how micro-learning design principles are being trialled in an Australian and a Malaysian university to make online courses more accessible and attractive, and a more positive experience, with the aim of increasing student success. Central to this approach is segmenting materials into “bite-size” instalments by way of short micro-lecture presentations and reducing other content. The aim of this “less is more” strategy is to reduce unnecessary cognitive load as an impediment to learning so that focus can shift to prioritising the most essential skills and content. The purpose of this trial is to explore the efficacy of micro-learning as a means for increasing student engagement and learning.

The trials involved a mixed mode methodology drawing on qualitative and ratings data from course satisfaction surveys and records on grades and completion.

To date, results have shown significant increases in student engagement and satisfaction, and also performance. Our application of micro-learning included reducing volume of content based on its practical value, use of novelty (e.g. infusing guest presenter input) and design of practical and collaborative student activities.

Early results are encouraging regarding apparent utility for engaging learners and ease of application, i.e. implementability and transference potential. However, the rapidly expanding area of online learning requires further research to establish a well-validated evidence base for effective online teaching practices.

The findings are relevant to universities involved in online and blended learning. Micro-learning design methods show promise in being able to address major engagement barriers including cognitive overload.

More students are struggling with learning in today's social environment brought about with the massification of higher education. Micro-learning seeks to address major barriers these learners face with methods that go beyond traditional teaching practices.

Findings here are encouraging and contribute to existing understanding on ways to increase learner engagement in the competitive and fast-growing area of online learning for universities globally.

The purpose of this study was to provide a new characterization of the extent to which learners complete learning activities in massive open online courses (MOOCs), a central challenge in these contexts. Prior explorations of learner interactions with MOOC materials have often described these interactions through stereotypes, which accounts for neither the full spectrum of potential learner activities nor the ways those patterns differ across course designs.

To overcome these shortcomings, the authors apply confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis to learner activities within three MOOCs to test different models of participation across courses and populations found within those courses.

Courses varied in the extent to which participation was driven by learning activities vs time/topic or a mixture of both, but this was stable across offerings of the same course.

The results call for a reconceptualization of how different learning activities within a MOOC are designed to work together, to better allow strong learning outcomes even within one activity form or more strongly encourage participation across activities.

The authors validate new continuous-patterns rather than a discrete-pattern participation model for MOOC learning.

The purpose of this paper is to recognize that individual learning styles must be taken into account in the instructional design template used in online education. The paper argues that when students' learning styles are identified, it is possible to define an appropriate context of learning.

The paper identifies a set of instructional principles for online learning environments that are derived from multiple theories of learning with a consideration of different learning styles. The VARK questionnaire was used to determine learning styles of students who participated in two online courses. The VARK instrument identifies four distinct learning styles: visual (V); aural (A); reading/writing (R) and kinesthetic (K). These four dimensions are used to analyze the appropriateness of online learning structures.

The paper identifies teaching strategies in online courses while recognizing the four learning styles. The paper concludes that the achievement of online learning can be improved by providing instruction in a manner consistent with each student's learning style. However, it is important to keep in mind that, even if a specific student learns best in a certain way, he or she should be exposed to a variety of learning experiences to become a more versatile online learner.

The new result indicates that students with the auditory learning preference do not select online education as their first choice for learning. The combination of different techniques can make it possible for students with all types of learning styles to be successful in an online course.

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs). With more and more courses being produced by instructors and being participated by learners all over the world, unprecedented massive educational resources are aggregated. The educational resources include videos, subtitles, lecture notes, quizzes, etc., on the teaching side, and forum contents, Wiki, log of learning behavior, log of homework, etc., on the learning side. However, the data are both unstructured and diverse. To facilitate knowledge management and mining on MOOCs, extracting keywords from the resources is important. This paper aims to adapt the state-of-the-art techniques to MOOC settings and evaluate the effectiveness on real data. In terms of practice, this paper also tries to answer the questions for the first time that to what extend can the MOOC resources support keyword extraction models, and how many human efforts are required to make the models work well.

Based on which side generates the data, i.e instructors or learners, the data are classified to teaching resources and learning resources, respectively. The approach used on teaching resources is based on machine learning models with labels, while the approach used on learning resources is based on graph model without labels.

From the teaching resources, the methods used by the authors can accurately extract keywords with only 10 per cent labeled data. The authors find a characteristic of the data that the resources of various forms, e.g. subtitles and PPTs, should be separately considered because they have the different model ability. From the learning resources, the keywords extracted from MOOC forums are not as domain-specific as those extracted from teaching resources, but they can reflect the topics which are lively discussed in forums. Then instructors can get feedback from the indication. The authors implement two applications with the extracted keywords: generating concept map and generating learning path. The visual demos show they have the potential to improve learning efficiency when they are integrated into a real MOOC platform.

Conducting keyword extraction on MOOC resources is quite difficult because teaching resources are hard to be obtained due to copyrights. Also, getting labeled data is tough because usually expertise of the corresponding domain is required.

The experiment results support that MOOC resources are good enough for building models of keyword extraction, and an acceptable balance between human efforts and model accuracy can be achieved.

This paper presents a pioneer study on keyword extraction on MOOC resources and obtains some new findings.

This case features an entrepreneur striving to rapidly grow a successful chain of hair salons that serve women with afro hair. After doubling from 13 to 26 salons across Brazil in 2014, the founders' expansion plan called for 120 Beleza Natural salons and R$1 billion in sales by 2018. CEO and cofounder Leila Velez is considering various fundamental marketing strategies to catalyze growth: Should Beleza launch a new mass-media campaign, increase promotional discounts, expand its target market to serve men, broaden its service offerings, streamline processes to reduce wait times, expand distribution channels, or franchise? Students assume the role of Velez and are asked to recommend which growth strategy would be their top priority. In doing so, they are required to evaluate how these strategies pertain to the company's business model and value proposition. They are also challenged to consider what a brand is and what makes a strong service brand in order to verify if their strategies are consistent with Beleza's brand. The teaching note outlines a framework for developing or evaluating a business model as well as developing strategies for managing growth. The case is accompanied by a series of video interviews with Velez that support case preparation, in-class discussion, and key learning points.