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Background: Micro-credentials are increasingly considered a key mechanism through which to empower learners by enabling flexible upskilling and reskilling. Despite their apparent importance for higher education institutions (HEIs) and learners, empirical research is limited. More needs to be understood, particularly about the ways in which micro-credentials can shape institutional practice and provide benefits to learners. Purpose: Using a foresight approach, this study sets out to explore the potential for micro-credential adoption in relation to national and international policy initiatives and rapidly developing technologies. Its intention is to offer findings of interest internationally, particularly to those involved in strategic activities around micro-credentials. Methods: A four-step Delphi study approach was used to explore how micro-credentials may shape higher education (HE) in the next 5–10 years. Educational experts undertook a consensus-building activity utilising workshops and surveys: (1) initial identification of enabling factors (i.e. drivers) and beneficial outcomes (i.e. impacts) of micro-credentials; (2) prioritisation based on importance; (3) identification of enabling factors considered essential for each beneficial outcome and (4) analysis of the extent to which micro-credentials might be accepted in HE, with participants reflecting on the importance of the previously identified enablers and outcomes for alternative scenarios. Findings: The analysis sheds light on three alternative possible futures for micro-credentials. Expert consensus indicated that the potential of micro-credentials lies especially among educational institutions and the networks of institutions innovating beyond, and within, traditional study offerings and programmes. Future wide-scale adoption of micro-credentials was considered unpredictable, due to external factors at the ecosystem level, and beyond institutions’ own strategies and control. Conclusion: The findings suggest that, for the successful uptake of micro-credentials, the same benefits do not need to accrue for institutions and learners: a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not necessary or optimal. In order for the wider-scale influence of micro-credentials to be felt, there is a need for considerable international and national strategy development and implementation to overcome a variety of policy- and technology-related barriers that HEIs cannot influence or tackle on their own. publishedVersion

Serendipity experiences are highly desirable in work life, considering both individuals' learning and organizational innovation capacity. This study looks into information and social serendipity in the context of Twitter. While Twitter can be viewed as a fruitful platform for serendipity to emerge, there is little understanding of what technology characteristics and use practices contribute to such experiences in work-related use. Drawing from the functional affordances theory, the paper investigates the role of presenteeism, self-disclosure, recommendation quality and pace of change, and different types of Twitter use as possible antecedents of serendipity. A cross-sectional international online survey was conducted with 473 respondents who actively use Twitter in their work. An exploratory factor analysis was performed, followed by linear regression analysis to identify relevant statistical associations. The findings indicate that presenteeism (i.e., the fundamental element of reachability) seems to have an effect on serendipity while the more designable characteristics, like the quality of recommendations, do not. Overall, the findings imply that serendipity experiences are primarily explained by individual characteristics like personality and specific ways of using Twitter. This is amongst the first studies on the role of Twitter characteristics as functional affordances in the formation of serendipity. The extensive empirical study contributes a detailed analysis of the antecedents of serendipity and opens avenues for research and design to identify new serendipity-inducing mechanisms. publishedVersion

Early adolescents are accustomed to using information technology (IT) for different purposes as a part of their everyday life. While IT use can provide many benefits, it can also include negative experiences, such as feelings of stress (i.e. technostress). Considering that young IT users’ technostress perspectives have remained limited in the literature, this paper attempts to contrast their experiences with aspects from earlier research. A qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 31 primary and secondary school students reveals that early adolescents have encountered stressful IT use experiences that vary based on the degree of stress. The experiences relate to different dimensions of IT use, namely 1) online social (media) behaviour, 2) notification-driven behaviour, 3) social distancing and online education behaviour, and 4) gameplay and other aspects of IT use behaviour. Common denominators for these experiences include the attention or time required by IT use and coming across unwanted content or communications. In addition to reporting negative feelings and emotions, the participants mentioned physical strains, including headache and exhaustion. Although early adolescents can face experiences that can be contrasted with similar stressors and strains as adults, the distinct characteristics of their IT use should be considered in future research. publishedVersion

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to examine how media synchronicity facilitates the emergence of social exchange (i.e. trust and reciprocity) in organizations’ information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated interactions. A model of media synchronicity in organizational social exchange (MSiOSE) is proposed.Design/methodology/approachThe paper has a design and review approach. The theoretical analysis is based on social exchange theory (SET) and media synchronicity theory (MST).FindingsThe authors propose that, in general, social exchange benefits from both asynchronous and synchronous communication processes. However, media synchronicity has different boundary conditions (i.e. pros and cons) in relation to the emergence of social exchange, determined in accordance with the mutually interacting patterns of trust and reciprocity predicted by SET. The authors provide testable theoretical propositions to support the analysis.Originality/valueSocial exchange is a critical business factor for organizations due to its well-known positive outcomes, such as the strengthening of social ties. The need for successful social exchange in remote work conditions is particularly emphasized. However, with regard to the communication and behavioral patterns that lead to social exchange via ICT, the theoretical understanding is limited. The study reveals previously unmapped heuristics between social exchange and physical media capabilities. Thus, the study's propositions can be used to study and analyze social exchange in the ever-changing media landscape. As a practical contribution, the study helps organizations to improve their communication strategies and use of ICT.

Interest in and demand for micro-credentials in higher education institutions is on the rise. Although the concept of micro-credentials is still evolving, they can be seen as short learning opportunities that are accompanied by digital credentials that capture the proofs of the learning. These digital proofs of learning range from skills and competences acquired to information whether such skills were acquired via formal or non-formal learning activities. Micro-credential platforms are used for multiple purposes including issuing, viewing, and storing the digital credentials. Despite the growth in the number of micro-credential platforms in the recent years, literature is limited on the features offered by the platforms and how they are helpful for higher education institutions and learners. To address this gap in research, we employed a qualitative approach by semi-structured interviews and group discussions with platform providers and education experts. Our findings resulted in 38 features that can help higher education institutions, learners, and providers understand what kind of features are emphasized in micro-credential platforms and how they can be helpful for different use purposes. As practical implications, the findings of this study can help higher education institutions in considering adoption and usage of micro-credential platform. publishedVersion

In today’s technology-oriented world, individuals’ ability to cope with information technology (IT) has become increasingly important. This is especially relevant for early adolescents, who are expected to use IT from an early age on as part of their everyday lives. Although early adolescents’ IT use and its outcomes have been studied, their related coping strategies have received less attention. The current study focuses on early adolescents’ problem-focused strategies used to cope with stressful IT use experiences. The underlying data consist of semistructured interviews with 31 early adolescents. The results show that the strategies used by early adolescents differ in terms of their pervasiveness and level of IT use. Additionally, we reveal details about the connections of the strategies within different contexts, such as school and leisure. Although this study provides important insights for understanding early adolescents’ coping strategies, more research is needed to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. publishedVersion

Software development requires high problem-solving skills and creativity, making it a profession with good opportunities to become immersed in a flow experience. The characteristics of flow experience are absorption, enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation toward the activity. This study aims to better understand the barriers that prevent software developers from experiencing flow at work. Previous research has mostly examined software developers’ productivity, flow being one component of productive workdays. This study addresses the research gap by exploring the barriers to experiencing flow in software development. A qualitative questionnaire was used to gather data about flow experiences from 405 respondents. The most prominent flow barriers that emerged from these responses were interruptions, too easy, boring, or repetitive tasks, lack of opportunities, insufficient requirements, timetables and deadlines, and problems with technology or software. The results suggest that there are many more flow barriers in software development than what have been discussed in the context of productivity. These findings open up an interesting avenue for researching flow experiences in the software development context. The implication for practice is uncovering common flow barriers in software development, which can help both developers and managers identify these barriers, try to mitigate them, and facilitate more flow experiences at work. publishedVersion

PurposeExcessive use of work-related information technology (IT) devices can lead to major performance and well-being concerns for organizations. Extant research has provided evidence of the incidence of such problematic IT use in organizations. We extend the understanding of problematic IT use by examining its individual (proximal) and organizational (distal) antecedents.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from the self-worth theory and the concept of fear of being left behind, we address proximal antecedents that lead to problematic IT use. Drawing from the concept of autonomy paradox, we address distal antecedents of problematic IT use through a positive association with the two proximal antecedents. We report the results of a field study involving 846 individuals who use IT for work. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.FindingsThe results indicate that the proximal antecedents (IT insecurity and fear of missing out) are positively associated with problematic IT use. The distal antecedents (IT use autonomy and involvement facilitation) are positively associated with the proximal antecedents except for the relationship between IT use autonomy and IT insecurity, which was found statistically non-significant. Furthermore, fear of missing out fully mediates the effect of IT use autonomy on problematic IT use, whereas IT insecurity and fear of missing out fully mediate the effects of involvement facilitation on problematic IT use.Originality/valueThe paper theoretically extends the understanding of problematic IT use and identifies novel its proximal and distal antecedents.

PurposeSocial media platforms are increasingly used at work to facilitate work-related activities and can either challenge or make people feel more productive at jobs. This study drew from technostress and employee well-being literature and analyzed longitudinal effects of professional social media (PSM) invasion, work engagement and work exhaustion on PSM-enabled productivity.Design/methodology/approachNationally representative five-wave survey data of Finnish employees were analyzed with hybrid multilevel linear regression analysis. Outcome measure was PSM-enabled productivity and the predictors included PSM invasion, work exhaustion and work engagement. Age, gender, education, occupational sector, managerial position, remote work and personality traits were used as control variables.FindingsPSM invasion and work engagement had both within-person and between-person effects on PSM-enabled productivity. Higher educated and individuals with open personality reported higher PSM-enabled productivity. No association between work exhaustion and PSM-enabled productivity was found.Originality/valueThe findings are central considering the increasing use of social media and other technologies for work purposes. The authors challenge the dominant view in the literature that has often seen PSM invasion as a negative factor. Instead, PSM invasion's positive association with PSM-enabled productivity and the association of work engagement and PSM-enabled productivity should be recognized in work life.

Social virtual reality (SVR) enables teams to operate in a virtual environment that simulates and enhances real-world interactions. However, there is an absence of empirical analysis of how SVR can affect the performance of virtual teams. This paper documents how SVR affects the formation of team cohesion (i.e., task cohesion and social cohesion), which is a critical success factor for team performance. To address this gap in the research, we conducted a qualitative study by interviewing 20 members from virtual teams assigned to perform a challenging collaborative task in SVR. As a contribution, our study identifies five primary affordances and 11 sub-affordances for team cohesion in SVR. We also found that team cohesion actualization was limited in the use of SVR environments of our study. However, we conclude that hindrances to team cohesion formation in SVR can be mitigated by focusing on the further development of material properties of SVR. publishedVersion

Beyond the pandemic, organizations need to recognize what digital assets, interactions, and communication processes reap the most benefits from virtual reality. publishedVersion

Technostress is stress that individuals experience due to their use of information technology. It is associated with critical workplace consequences including reduced productivity. While the negative consequences are well known, what is less understood is how individuals can cope with technostress to alleviate them. We report on two studies that explain how organizational IT users can cope with technostress. The first is a qualitative study conducted in the U.K., by interviewing thirty executives/knowledge workers. Here, we identified seven coping behaviors that individuals engage in, in response to technostress. The second is a survey of 846 U.S. employees who use IT in their workplace. Here, we examined the effects of these coping behaviors on the relationship between technostress creating conditions and the individual's IT-enabled productivity. We interpret our results to explain how employees and organizations can tackle technostress. acceptedVersion

While users’ discontinuance of use has posed a challenge for social media in recent years, there is a paucity of knowledge on the relationships between different dimensions of overload and how overload adversely affects users’ social media discontinuance behaviors. To address this knowledge gap, this study employed the stressor–strain–outcome (SSO) framework to explain social media discontinuance behaviors from an overload perspective. It also conceptualized social media overload as a multidimensional construct consisting of system feature overload, information overload, and social overload. The proposed research model was empirically validated via 412 valid questionnaire responses collected from Facebook users. Our results indicated that the three types of overload are interconnected through system feature overload. System feature overload, information overload, and social overload engender user exhaustion, which in turn leads to users’ discontinued usage of social media. This study extends current technostress research by demonstrating the value of the SSO perspective in explaining users’ social media discontinuance. acceptedVersion

The open education movement has witnessed ups and downs from initial interest in transparency and openness, followed by a lack of reuse of open educational resources (OER) and the massive boost of interest in massive open online courses (MOOCs). This article addresses educators' online behaviors and perceptions regarding participation in collaborative development of OER in online settings. Using a data-driven approach to study educators' perceptions, this article presents multiple considerations for collaborative OER development and validates a new model explaining educators' intention to participate in collaborative action. The findings reveal the contradictory nature of emotional ownership of knowledge: a critical enabling factor for commitment and a barrier to knowledge exchange in an open and transparent manner. The findings also show how outcome expectations regarding increase in reputation and status in the network do not influence the intention to share knowledge. Further interviews with idea-sharing platform users enable us to explain the favorable settings to resolve the dilemma of emotional ownership. The study contributes not only to further development of the open education movement but also to theory development of educators’ collaborative behaviors online. acceptedVersion

The concept of weak ties was introduced by Granovetter through the seminal paper titled "Strength of weak ties". Since then the role of weak ties in general and their specific role as occupying the structural hole has been explored in many different fields. In this study, we identify actual or potential weak ties using publicly available social media data in the context of an event. Our case study environment is community managers' online discussions in social media in connection to the yearly-organized Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD 2016) event in Finland. We were able to identify potential weak ties using the conversation based structural holes, making use of social network analysis methods (like clustering) and content analysis in the context of events. We add to the understanding of and useful data sources for the Strength of weak ties theory originated from Granovetter, and developed further by other researchers. Our approach may be used in future to make more sophisticated conference recommendation systems, and significantly automate the data extraction for making useful contact recommendations from them for conference participants.

Openness in education has sought its way to practice in schools as in universities. Many strategies and concepts have emerged: from openly shared resources to open practices to improve the access to and the quality of education. The knowledge exchange of educators has been seen a crucial activity in reaching and sustaining openness. This article analyses a typical knowledge exchange activity in schools: European teachers were engaged in virtual OER communities to exchange teaching resources as well as experiences about using OER and ICT in education. We applied technology acceptance framework and studied a potential barrier of international knowledge exchange. The findings of the study show surprising results: the willingness to exchange teaching materials within global virtual teacher communities decreases as schools mature in using OER and ICT. This study serves especially as a discussion opener for sustaining discourse and peer support in teacher virtual communities that strive for openness and international knowledge exchange. The findings have strong practical implications for the open education domain as well as for school / teacher development in general.

Multiple models, methods and frameworks have been proposed to guide Design Science Research (DSR) application to address relevant classes of problems in Information Systems (IS) discipline. While much of the ambiguity around the research paradigm has been removed, only the surface has been scratched on DSR efforts where researcher takes an active role in organizational and industrial engagement to solve a specific problem and generalize the solution to a class of problems. Such DSR projects can have a significant impact on practice, link theories to real contexts and extend the scope of DSR. Considering these multiform settings, the implications to theorizing nor the crucial role of researcher in the interplay of DSR and IS projects have not been properly addressed. The emergent nature of such projects needs to be further investigated to reach such contributions for both theory and practice. This paper raises multiple theoretical, organizational and managerial considerations for a meta-level monitoring model for emergent DSR projects.

Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER repositories have a hard time in reaching an active user-base. The opportunities of experience exchange and simple feedback mechanisms of social software have been realized for improving the situation and many are basing or transforming their OER offerings towards socially powered environments. Research on social software has shown how knowledge-sharing barriers in online environments are highly culture and context-specific and require proper investigation. It is crucial to study what challenges might arise in such environments and how to overcome them, ensuring a successful uptake. A large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation was initiated in the school context to determine which barriers teachers and learners perceive as critical. The study highlights barriers on cultural distance, showing how those are predicted by nationality and age of the respondents. The paper concludes with recommendations for overcoming those barriers.

Open educational resources (OERs) provide opportunities as enablers of societal development, but they also create new challenges. From the perspective of content providers and educational institutions, particularly, cultural and context-related challenges emerge. Even though barriers regarding large-scale adoption of OERs are widely discussed, empirical evidence for determining challenges in relation to particular contexts is still rare. Such context-specific barriers generally can jeopardize the acceptance of OERs and, in particular, social OER environments. We conducted a large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation in the school context to determine how teachers and learners perceive cultural distance as a barrier against the use of social OER environments. The findings indicate how nationality and age of the respondents are strong predictors of cultural distance barrier. The study concludes with identification of context-sensitive interventions for overcoming the related barriers. These consequences are vital for OER initiatives and educational institutions for aligning their efforts on OER. peerReviewed

Open educational resources (OER) have a high potential to address the growing need for training materials in management education and training. Today, a high number of OER in management are already available in a large number of repositories. However, users face barriers as they have to search repository by repository with different interfaces to retrieve the appropriate learning content. In addition, the use of search criteria related to skills, such as learning objectives and skill-levels is not generally supported. The European co-funded project OpenScout addresses these barriers by intelligently connecting leading European OER repositories and providing federated, skillbased search and retrieval web services. On top of this content federation the project supports users with easy-to-apply tools that will accelerate the (re-) use of open content.