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Research suggests numerous cognitive benefits of authentic learning experiences. Beyond cognition, there are additional dimensions for learners who engage in authentic learning experiences. In education, the affective experiences of authentic learning and the role of students' social interactions remain largely unexplored. This paper examines students' affective and social experiences derived from blog posts published on the YouthMappers website. YouthMappers is an international network of university students who create open map data for humanitarian and development programming. In an analysis of two years (2016-2017) of 82 blogs from the YouthMappers network, students from the U.S. and abroad report motivating experiences fueled by social events and gatherings. The participants also find value in communicating with, encouraging, educating, and supporting their peers. Geographic region and gender also play a part in their accounts. This paper seeks to advance research in student affect and social interactions during authentic learning experiences. Positive affective and social experiences may be employed to create authentic learning experiences, building impactful social and emotional experiences for globally-diverse students.

This paper explores the redesign of a course in "Digital Storytelling" that integrates metaliteracy to advance Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Students from the United States and Prague, Czech Republic are active participants in this fully online global course as they learn to produce digital stories. The metaliteracy framework encourages metacognitive reflection and the active participation in social information environments. A collaborative teaching team from the United States and Europe redesigned this course to integrate metaliteracy into the learning activities and self-assessments. As students learn to become digital storytellers, they self-identify with specific metaliterate learner roles (producer, collaborator, researcher, etc.), assess their learning through four domains of metaliterate learning (affective, behavioural, cognitive, and metacognitive), and lastly reflect on their work in the course through the metaliteracy characteristics (collaborative, open, reflective, civic-minded, etc.). The internationalization of education in this COIL course is enhanced by the novel combination of metaliteracy and digital storytelling.

Using data collected from peer reviews for Open Textbook Library titles, this paper explores questions about rating the quality of open textbooks. The five research questions addressed the relationship between textbook and reviewer characteristics and ratings. Although reviewers gave textbooks high ratings generally, reviewers identified differences in quality according to criteria and discipline. Physics and chemistry textbooks earned significantly lower ratings than other textbook types. Ratings were not significantly associated with reviewers' status and experience, but were associated with reviewers' place of residence. We discuss the implications for OER efficacy studies and other research.

Telecollaboration has received growing interest in second language teacher education, due to the link between knowledge and practice in telecollaboration. The current research examined affordances and challenges of telecollaboration in teacher education by connecting American pre-service teachers to Korean pre-service teachers. The data for this paper focused on pre- and post-questionnaires, reflective journals, blog posts, and interviews from nineteen American preservice teachers. This study provides an empirical account of how pre-service teachers benefit from interacting with international partners for improving ICC [intercultural communicative competence], teaching skills, and digital literacy skills. The study also presents some challenges of implementing telecollaboration. By presenting the affordances and challenges of telecollaboration in a teacher training program, the study provides implications for educators about how to better assist preservice teachers while using telecollaboration.

Recent reports on xMOOCs indicate that underprivileged learners in need of higher education have minimally been reached by these courses. While the "open access" agenda is needed to reach such learners, most MOOCs have been developed in societies that have shifted toward the "lifelong learning" agenda. In this paper, xMOOCs are positioned in both the "open access" and the "lifelong learning" agendas in a developing country context. Findings from ten xMOOCs are presented and discussed. The findings suggest that two of the ten xMOOCs may be adapted for direct use in opening up higher education within the open access agenda, and two xMOOCs may contribute indirectly to the same agenda. Nine xMOOCs were found to have the potential to contribute to the lifelong learning agenda. These findings may inform policies and practices that underpin opening up higher education and open education in general.