ABSTRACT
As the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures since early 2020, children have spent more time online through virtual classrooms using educational technology (EdTech) and videoconferencing applications. This increased presence of children online exposes them to more risk of cyber threats. Here, we present a review of the current research and policies to protect children while online. We seek to answer four key questions: what are the online threats against children when learning online, what is known about children's cybersecurity awareness, what government policies and recommendations are implemented and proposed to protect children online, and what are the proposed and existing efforts to teach cybersecurity to childrenƒ Our study emphasizes the online risks to children and the importance of protective government policies and educational initiatives that give kids the knowledge and empowerment to protect themselves online. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Educational technological tools are now an integral part of the education industry. Various platforms used for educational purposes were analyzed to find the perception of the learner;however, the major analyzing trends revolve around Zoom, Google meet, Google Classroom, and Institutional LMS, overlooking the evaluation of the perception of Teachly: an Ed-tech application developed by Harvard Kennedy School. The objective of this study is to determine the perception of students at Stamford University (n = 36) who enrolled and completed a semester at Teachly using descriptive statistics. For precision, a slider scale was used to collect data using the Google form in a semi-structured questionnaire. The data were then analyzed using the mean and standard deviation to find the central tendency and the measure of variability. The analysis confirms that the student has a positive perception towards using Teachly covering Walgito's three components of perception, and it also points out some limitations identified by the student which hampers its future implementation. © 2023, North American Business Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Educational Technology (EdTech) lacks a foundational, formal, scientific, epistemic theory. Therefore, it lacks native constructs/variables and an epistemological object of study for scientifically deploying its work. This study determines the existence (ontology) of the theorized constructs Instructional Usability (UsI) and Learner-User eXperience (LUX) and defines their characterization (epistemology). Both constructs were modeled and instrumented. Furthermore, a Tech-Instructionality Model (TIM) was theorized and developed in this paper, both analytically and empirically. The model integrates UsI and LUX as two pairs of constructs linked with two EdTech epistemological objects of study, the instructional interface and the instructional interaction in two assessment modalities, testing mode (user-learner view) and inspection mode (expert/designer view). Two instruments were developed and validated in this study for testing mode, the Instructional Usability Scale (SUsI) and the Learner-User eXperience Questionnaire (QLUX). Both instruments were tested in a non-immersive virtual reality educational milieu during the academic lockdown of the Covid19 pandemic. The results show that both SUsI and QLUX consistently measured UsI and LUX, thus, providing a valid assessment for tech-instructionality and a foundation for constructing a scientific theory of EdTech. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The pivotal role Ed-Tech facilitates as an industry is increasing in education. As education evolves, the emergence of Ed-Tech in the classroom, data collection, curriculum, assessment, and student information continues to drive new initiatives, projects, and solutions in the school. The cross-sectional relationship between education and organizational culture during the COVID pandemic identified emerging themes of the increasing reliance on education and the emphasis society and education place on technology. This study analyzes and developed an action plan to address the disconnect between educational stakeholders and client organizational engagement. This qualitative study focuses on the role of the organizational culture of Ed-Tech organizations in improving practices of engagement, user experience, and internal client success practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Governments worldwide have introduced various programmes to facilitate distance learning in home settings during the COVID-19 school closure. However, given cross-country variations in state capacity, these schemes differ significantly in design, delivery and coverage. Within-country variation in poverty and home conditions also create added challenges for home-schooling programmes. Therefore, case studies examining country-specific initiatives are necessary. To this end, this paper examines the Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran di Rumah (PdPR) in Malaysia, an upper-middle-income country with high Internet coverage and a low level of extreme poverty. Data come from a purposefully designed nationwide social media survey on secondary school children conducted in January 2021. Under the PdPR scheme, the government created various technology-based platforms to ensure online learning. By way of studying children's participation in educational activities during school closure, this paper presents a descriptive assessment of PdPR. We first develop a conceptual framework to summarize the initiative. Then we examine the scheme in three aspects: the regularity of online lessons offered by school authorities;the extent of use of specific components and the medium of access of PdPR by learners;and their subjective evaluation of and difficulties faced with online schooling. Data confirm a significant socio-economic divide by income and location in access to EdTech as well as home support provisions. Most importantly, online lessons are irregular, and a significant proportion of students find online programmes challenging to follow. Given the dissatisfaction, most prefer to return to onsite education once schools reopen.
ABSTRACT
This article is based on a keynote address to the second Higher Education Conference in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the environmental and inequality crises confronting South Africa and the world. After an examination of the societal context of universities, the article discusses critical issues in relation to university-community engagement. It attempts to address these issues by firstly providing an overview of the long-standing debates in our country concerning the academy's responsibilities and accountability to various constituencies beyond the universities gates and the imperative to rethink scholarship to engage communities meaningfully. Secondly, it will provide an appreciation of the overarching political economy of higher education and the corporatisation of universities before drawing conclusions about the processes that impede or allow the university to be responsive to community engagement. The article will provide a few historical and contemporaneous examples of the work of university-based researchers with various communities. The research of those who have an orientation toward working class communities and aim to democratise knowledge production will be highlighted. It will be argued that the latter's "praxis epistemology" (Amini 2017) assists us in reimagining university-community relations.
ABSTRACT
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the education sector worldwide had to adapt rapidly from in-person to virtual modes of teaching and learning to mitigate the spread of the virus. In a short period of time, teachers were forced to find new and innovative ways of delivering education to their students to ensure the continuation of education. In this context, this paper investigates how teachers in Pakistan leveraged mobile technology as an alternative teaching strategy to provide access to and to ensure the continuation of education. Through in-depth interviews with 13 selected teachers, this study explores the potential of mobile technology to offer alternative teaching and learning arenas. The findings underscore the importance of embracing new pedagogical possibilities offered by mobile technology and the significance of effective teacher professional development in the post-pandemic era. This study provides valuable insights into the utilization of mobile technology in the education sector, even in the most challenging circumstances, and highlights the potential for mobile learning to contribute to education reform.
ABSTRACT
Online learning has been present since the 1960s and has risen in popularity over time. World-class universities have been using online teaching-learning methodologies to fulfill the needs of students who reside far away from academic institutions for more than a decade. Many people predicted that online education would be the way of the future, but with the arrival of COVID-19, online education was imposed upon stakeholders far sooner and more suddenly than expected. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, educational institutions began to explore digital ways to keep students studying even when they couldn't be together in person as governments enacted legislation prohibiting large groups of people from gathering for any reason, including education. The future of such a transition looks promising. However, transitioning from one mode of education to another is not easy. Historically, when educators adopt new tools, learning still continues in the conventional manner. Based on the responses of 176 students, this paper studies the challenges of Digital transformation in the Education sector. The research is extremely beneficial in evaluating the scope of societal opposition to change. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Technology in education (edtech) has often been viewed as something of a Cinderella subject—"one day you shall go to the ball, but that day never seems to come.” This chapter explores the promise and vision of edtech espoused by its most ardent enthusiasts, and how this has collided with the realities of overhyped and underbaked technologies and conservative education systems. It goes on to consider the system shock created by the COVID-19 pandemic and how those education systems and the people involved in them ultimately responded to what was for many the most profound and far-reaching crisis they had ever experienced. The chapter includes case studies of two of these system-level responses that the author has been personally involved with, and it concludes with a discussion comparing and contrasting these system-level responses with the visions of the edtech mavens. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The emergency distributed education that the COVID-19 pandemic imposed on households amplified and accentuated the use of digital technologies in the teaching profession, specifically through the production of informational goods and the use of platforms. In this context, different corporations in the information sector increased their business by providing software and computer services to educational systems. This situation brought about a series of changes in the work of teachers that go far beyond didactic issues. In order to explore the potential changes in teachers' work, we conducted fieldwork consisting of a survey of Argentine teachers and professors (a self-selected sample of 205 cases), which we expanded with data from secondary sources and previous research. In a central way, we inquired about: a) production of educational resources in pandemics, types and time production, b) recognition for the work done and c) perception of changes in the teaching work. From the analysis of the testimonies, it is evident, firstly, that the pandemic has led most teachers to become information workers through the production of digital goods, the use of platforms for pedagogical mediation and the automation of certain tasks. This transformation has brought about a series of changes in teachers' work: working time, classroom management and health discomfort. The discussion we raise here consists of warning, on the one hand, that it is imprecise and limited to refer only to digitalization in the world of work and, on the other hand, that the trends already identified in different work environments -informationalization, platformization, automation- need to be interpreted in the light of the teaching work pandemic. © Univ Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED). All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted livelihoods on different fronts and at varying degrees globally. The global education sector was one of the key sectors that bore the heaviest brunt, particularly in the teaching and learning delivery modes. For instance, digital educational technologies became vital methods for teaching and learning. In response, a number of initiatives were adopted by countries to lend insight into how to cope with the emergent challenges, as well as how to alleviate the challenges brought about by the pandemic for post-COVID-19 recovery and growth. In this paper, we explore the contribution of industry and academia to post-COVID-19 recovery and growth, with a special focus on education technologies (ICT)'s adoption and promotion of entrepreneurial efforts in Africa. To attain the paper's objective, we used a scoping review approach to obtain crucial literature from credible and relevant databases to demonstrate and deliver succinct, stronger, clear, and clarified findings on the areas of focus. Additionally, we visited websites of certain international organizations that supported sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically focusing on responses targeting the education sector. The findings highlighted in this paper reveal that both academia and industry have a significant contribution to building back better efforts for a post-COVID-19 recovery and growth. Such efforts operate within the realms of adoption and adaptation of technology in the education sector, and increased emphasis on involvement in entrepreneurship practices. The paper also offers salient recommendations on how to better improve academia and industry's involvement in post-COVID-19 recovery and growth efforts.
ABSTRACT
The study focused on identifying innovations deployed by lecturers when teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic at the University of Zambia. The interpretivist worldview anchors the study. Researchers adopted a descriptive qualitative case study design. Purposefully and conveniently sampled lecturers (n = 21) took part in key informant interviews from the university faculties: the school of education, the school of humanities and social sciences and the school of health sciences. Thematic analyses were applied to the data collected using face-to-face and telephone interview schedules. Results show that all lecturers fully know online instruction's possible challenges. Lecturers have devised innovations that are lecturer-oriented, lesson-oriented, resource-oriented and student-oriented in managing online teaching and learning. The success of online teaching in an EdTech low-resourced university depends on the lecturers' desire to learn, the availability of essential ICT devices, the use of open educational resources-OER, the potential of the use of devices and the availability of internet connectivity. However, intermittent internet connectivity, student absenteeism, a lack of primary ICT devices, and EdTech illiteracy persist. External support-such as continuous professional development programs (CPDs), import duty exemptions or corporate sponsorships and donations-should be sought to facilitate online lessons. Innovation in teaching and learning does not only entail high-tech educational technologies but the use of what works best for a community of learners in a particular context. Though focused on Zambia, the study results reflect the situation and experience of universities in other countries with similar characteristics.
ABSTRACT
This paper contributes to the scarce literature on factors affecting EdTech use in households. These factors were considered through exploratory mixed-methods analyses of cross-sectional data on Kenyan girls and caregivers, captured during the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative analysis of the child dataset (n = 544) suggested the importance of both structural factors—such as technology hardware availability—and non-structural factors—including caregiver permission. Findings were supported by a thematic analysis of interview data from girls' caregivers (n = 58), which emphasised the role they play in girls' use of EdTech. Interviews also highlighted numerous caregiver concerns with EdTech, related to the relevance and rigour of educational content, the possibility of children accessing age-inappropriate material and child health (especially eyesight). Policy makers could alleviate these concerns by providing guidance on EdTech use and clearly signalling their approval of verified initiatives. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic EdTech can benefit girls' education, yet there are various barriers to it being used. Existing research shows clearly that EdTech use can be impeded by structural factors (eg, hardware ownership). However, we find insufficient empirical evidence on the role of non-structural or behavioural factors. What this paper adds This paper addresses this gap, using a mixed-methods approach to explore the influence of 33 different measures (including non-structural factors) that could affect the number of hours girls spend using EdTech at home. Findings from a quantitative sample of girls (n = 544) and a qualitative sample of girls' caregivers (n = 58) highlighted the importance of non-structural factors, especially caregiver permission. The variable most strongly associated with girls' EdTech usage in our selected quantitative model concerned whether this was sanctioned by their caregivers. Our qualitative data suggested why caregiver permission to use EdTech might be withheld: caregivers emphasised perceived concerns about the risks and rigour of EdTech. Implications for practice and/or policy Our findings suggest the viability of policy interventions that provide EdTech guidance to caregivers. Caregivers uncertain about EdTech could be reassured of the appropriateness of verified initiatives, while those already convinced might be aided in their attempts to support EdTech learning. Such guidance could provide a low-cost means of further exploiting the benefits that household EdTech learning can provide. © 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association.
ABSTRACT
The paper aims to propose a futuristic educational and learning framework called CO-MATE (Collaborative Metaverse-based A-La-Carte Framework for Tertiary Education). The architectural framework of CO-MATE was conceptualized in a four-layered approach which depicts various infrastructure and service layer functionalities. CO-MATE is a technologically driven educational metaverse environment involving loosely coupled building blocks to provide an a-la-carte model for platform designers. For this, the authors had undertaken a systematic mapping study of the pre/post-COVID period to review the application of various emerging technologies. Further, the paper also discusses the core attributes and component offerings of CO-MATE for a technology-driven and automated immersive-learning environment and exemplifies the same through various use cases.
ABSTRACT
School closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic affected over a billion young people worldwide and presented a threat to long-term learning, particularly for public school students in low socioeconomic situations. This article offers quasi-experimental evidence on a low-cost strategy for distance learning applied in the Republic of Panama to minimize the negative consequences of the pandemic on public elementary school children's reading levels. We conducted a 12-week intervention that utilized mobile phone technology and dissemination of reading material through WhatsApp, a cross-platform messaging freeware service, to maintain and improve children's reading levels during the pandemic school shutdown. The objective was to determine the feasibility of using WhatsApp as a digital tool to facilitate education and inform evolving practice and policy responses. Results among 292 students between the second and sixth grades indicated overall mean gains of up to 10.3% in the number of words read per minute, with statistically significant improvements overall and higher gains among the second and third grades. In addition, the adoption rate was high, with a reported average of 84% completion of the daily readings. The results of this low-tech intervention have immediate and longer-term implications for using mobile technology as a supplemental or complementary learning tool, especially for developing regions and during school closures or school vacations. © 2022, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR). All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed many aspects of people's lives, including education. The pandemic impacted schools, undergraduate, and graduate university education worldwide. Some educational institutions have moved to distance learning to prevent students and their families from getting infected, whereas others have face-To-face examinations to ensure students' integrity. However, paper-based exams are more likely to increase the virus's risk. From another perspective, the tremendous sums of papers used during exam preparation contribute significantly to paper waste. Existing proctoring solutions include learning management software or required additional hardware and software setup. In this paper, we propose a mobile application that facilitates the contactless submission of paper-based exams. The app is designed to be a medium where students can view exam questions and write down their solutions on their sheets of paper while in a proctored setting. Instructors can create exams, grade them, and monitor students through the app. The app consists of a cheating detection feature that constantly monitors app switches and network disconnects during test-Taking to combat any cheating attempts. Once the exam is over, instructors are provided with the ability to view a list of students' activities before submission. Once cleared, students can scan their solutions and upload them for grading. Our results show that the proposed tool is low-cost, user-friendly, and reliable and can be used to conduct exams in a safe and healthy environment. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Over the past few years, Online Education has been an interesting research topic. Many educationists are working on the future and the scope of online education. The COVID-19 outbreak has become a major source of imparting knowledge among children about their health and safety. While talking about EdTech, it should be kept in mind that internet connectivity and the lecturer play an important role in defining the effectiveness of online education. The paper mainly focuses on online education as the new emerging business in the country. The paper also talks about its growing role and increasing contribution to GDP in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, there was less awareness and trend of online learning;however, it is interesting to know that the outbreak of the pandemic has highlighted the importance of online learning, and it has emerged as a rare business that has shown an upward trend in the crisis. Online learning has emerged as an affordable, convenient and time-efficient method of gaining knowledge.
ABSTRACT
Early literacy skills such as alphabet knowledge and phonemic awareness are made up the foundation for learning to read. These skills are more effectively taught with explicit instruction starting inpreschool and then continuing during early elementary school years. The COVID19 pandemic school closures severely impacted early literacy development worldwide. Brazil had one of the longest school closure periods, which resulted in several children having no access to any educational activities. Education Technology (EdTech) tools can leverage access to pedagogical materials and remediate the consequences of school closure. We investigated the impact of using an early literacy EdTech, GraphoGame Brazil, to foster learning of early literacy skills during the height of COVID19 school closures, in Brazil. We carried out a quasi-experimental, pretest and posttest study with elementary school students who were taking online classes. Participants were pseudo randomly assigned to (1) an experimental group, who played GraphoGame Brazil, and to (2) an active control group, who played an EdTech that focuses on early numeracy skills. The results show a significant positive training effect on word reading accuracy associated with the use of GraphoGame for the children in the experimental group, relative to the control group. We also found statistically significant negative effect in lowercase naming for the control group. We address the consequences of COVID19 school closures, the promise of EdTech and its limitations, and discuss the issue of fostering successful early literacy instruction in countries that have struggled with teaching children to read even before the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
This viewpoint article argues that there is an urgent need to reform the project-based EdTech approach in order to allow EdTech to contribute to the resilience of education systems in the aftermath of Covid-19. Looking at the contrast between the multiplication of EdTech pilot projects presented as a necessary step in a process that will eventually lead to scaled solutions and the lack of solutions that actually scale, the article highlights those long-standing issues perceived as most pressing by the actors involved in project-based EdTech initiatives. Their perspective and statements allow one to grasp how the EdTech project approach favors the setup of EdTech projects that are by design unscalable, driven by a utopian perception of scalability and instrumentalized in the name of a goal that is de facto only a branding. As a result, and despite the mobilization of tremendous resources, the EdTech project-based approach cannot be system-transformative.
ABSTRACT
Speech recognition systems have made remarkable progress in the last few decades but most of the work has been done for adult speech. The rise of online learning during Covid-19 pandemic highlights the need for voice-enabled assistants for children so that they can navigate the menus and interfaces seamlessly. Speech recognition for children will also be very useful to develop automated reading assessment tools. However, such technology for children is challenging for a country like India where differences in accents, diction and enunciation is significant but available children speech data is limited. Through this paper, I tried various approaches to recognize hindi word audios. Commercially available Google Speech-to-Text performs poorly with only 49.7% accuracy at recall of 0.24 while recognising audio samples containing hindi words spoken by children. Using the same dataset, I experimented with clustering algorithm and logistic regression and found that the accuracy improves upto 81% with logistic regression. The paper also highlights the importance of data preprocessing by performing noise reduction using Butterworth low pass filters. © ICNLSP 2021. All Rights Reserved.