ABSTRACT
In this research we studied usable strategies to promote student engagement and learning in the online classroom specifically connected to the development of teaching presence and student self-regulation. A design-based research approach (Barab & Squire, 2004) with multiple methods of data collection were used in the study's design, which was informed by the Garrison et al.'s Community of Inquiry framework and Zimmerman's cycle of self-regulatory phases. Qualitative sources of data included coursework and semi-structured interviews with three student participants, accompanied by text-based planning and debrief notes, and a semi-structured interview with one instructor. The study context was an online course connected to a Bachelor of Education program at a university in Ontario, Canada. Findings indicate students experienced teaching presence directly in the timely, strengths-based and personal feedback they received. Regular feedback helped students know their work was being seen and that they were "on the right track”. Strengths-based and personal feedback aided student motivation and self-regulation, which emerged as important for ongoing engagement and learning online. Recommendations that emerged from this study are of interest internationally to designers of online learning courses, online instructors and researchers in online learning. © 2023
ABSTRACT
While the digitalization of education has been around since the 1990s, it is only since the Covid-19 pandemic that it has really taken hold in education, when universities were forced to rapidly move online and traditional patterns of teaching were no longer viable. This pushed universities to provide a blended learning environment drawing on technologies that our students, as digital natives, had already been using on a daily basis for some time. However, blended learning is only effective if underpinned by tried and tested learning frameworks—something that many universities were not prepared for when the shift to online learning took place. The Cooperative e-learning Platform for Industrial Innovation (CEPHEI) however, was already prepared and ready for this shift, as from 2017 it had been working on the development of an e-learning platform with the aim of digitizing education while also integrating the reality of professional innovation activities into the context of education according to the demands of industry. To achieve this aim, one of the first phases of the project was to identify key learning frameworks for e-course syllabus design, based on existing research, that could be used to provide recommendations for instructors in the development of their CEPHEI courses. This chapter presents the culmination of this process and provides a framework that can be used by instructors or institutions wishing to design e-learning courses. To make these frameworks tangible for the reader, examples are given throughout the chapter from an undergraduate environmental engineering course in a civil engineering department. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate the key factors affecting the adoption and use of online assessment in Polytechnics in Zimbabwe during the COVID-19 era using the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework and Technology Acceptance model (TAM). A qualitative research methodology was employed to discover and explain the adoption factors of online assessment for learning based on the participants' experiences. Data were collected from lecturers and students from Harare Polytechnic using semi-structured interviews. Total of 10 students and five lecturers were purposively selected from five Departments. The factors affecting the adoption and use of online assessment were coded using Template analysis and classified based on the theoretical lens of the integration of the TOE framework and TAM. The study reveals that the adoption and use of online assessment in Polytechnics depend on technological factors (internet access, computing devices, and ICT infrastructure), organisational factors (institutional support), environmental factors (academic integrity), and individual factors (digital skills and user perceptions). This study concludes that online assessment is no longer a choice for tertiary education institutions since COVID-19 has presented a mandatory environment for its adoption. As far as theoretical contributions of this study are concerned, the study extends the TOE framework by explaining how the individual factors, for instance, the digital skills and user perceptions influence the successful adoption of technology in mandatory environments such as online assessment during COVID-19. In terms of practical contributions, the extended TOE framework can be used as a valuable point of reference for scaling up the adoption and use of online assessment in Polytechnics. The study recommends that both lecturers and students should be trained on the usage of an online assessment. © 2023 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
ABSTRACT
It is widely recognized that assessment impacts on the process and behavior of learning. In this article, we, as academic staff development professionals in two faculties at a research intensive South African university, explore the assessment challenges, processes and behaviours that emerged in the context of Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that an analysis of changes in assessment culture and behaviour point to possibilities for a shift from the pre-COVID-19 dominance of the "assessment of learning" paradigm, to an orientation of assessment where both "assessment of learning" and "assessment for learning" are more equitably balanced, with potentially profound implications for shaping the ways students construct their understandings and succeed academically.
ABSTRACT
Feedback is one of the key elements for students' online learning for it can be used to foster their knowledge and attainment. Nevertheless, the scrutiny of feedback with respect to WhatsApp amid the COVID-19 pandemic, to the best of the writers' knowledge, was still under-researched. Thereby, this study aimed to uncover the instructor feedback in a WhatsApp group. The embedded design of mixed-method was employed. Twenty-three EFL postgraduate students, taking an online course using a WhatsApp group in one university in Bandung city, were involved. Moreover, the data were garnered using a questionnaire and semi-structured interview corroborated by online chat archives in the WhatsApp group. Findings revealed that the use of WhatsApp resulted in some challenges and opportunities. Moreover, based on the content analysis, the most frequent level of instructor feedback encountered was self-level (64%) consecutively followed with process level (20%), task level (15%), and self-regulation level (1%). Additionally, descriptive statistics revealed that with a mean of 82.5 and a standard deviation of 6.5, the instructor feedback quality was categorized as a good one. Meanwhile, some themes concerning the instructor feedback characteristics found encompassed immediacy, relevancy, constructiveness, and objectivity. Some pedagogical implications and suggestions to optimize the use of WhatsApp as a learning tool were also discussed. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
There was a change in the implementation of education policies in the emergency period of the spread of the covid-19 virus, the learning process was carried out from home online using various learning resources. This condition triggers the emergence of behavioral problems and student competence in Indonesia. One of the distance learning media that was carried out during the pandemic was using the Learning Management System (LMS). Not only that, a policy evaluation needs to be carried out to evaluate the distance learning system that has been implemented in universities. This is because technology-based distance learning requires a different approach in terms of planning, implementation and evaluation. To increase the effectiveness of learning can use the assessment for learning (AfL) model. The learning process is also expected to be in accordance with learning that directs to have a computational thinking approach which is much needed considering that problem solving skills are needed in solving everyday problems. Based on the results of data analysis with 4D development model (define, design, develop, and disseminate), learning management system based on assessment for learning to improve computational thinking abilities got an average score of 85.2, which means it can be implemented well. © 2022, International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies. All Rights Reserved.