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The University of North Texas conducted a project involving rigorous curriculum development and instructional design to address the goal of building capacity in the Library and Information Sciences curriculum. To prepare information professionals with the competencies needed for digital curation and data management practice, the project developed curriculum using a competency-based approach. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the design and implementation of the digital curation curriculum at the University of North Texas. The paper advances theoretical perspectives of competency-based curriculum as steps taken toward innovative curriculum development efforts. Additionally, it contributes to the practice of digital curation education. The set of competencies defined in the paper can serve as a common language among stakeholders to prepare future digital curation professionals. This paper concludes that a competency-based approach is effective, sustainable, and can be customized to address the skill gaps in the rapidly evolving information professions.

In any honors program, the freshman seminar is designed to introduce incoming students to the rigors of collegiate honors study. The Marymount University Honors Program's freshman seminar (Honors 101) is no exception; its objectives follow many of the concepts outlined by the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) alongside an interdisciplinary approach that supports the variety of majors represented in the incoming class. This paper presents a research study which examines the writing process and format centered on the Turning Point, or Critical Incident, Essay. As outlined by the NCHC, the Turning Point essay asks students to explore the relationship between meaning and context as informed not only by their personal observations and experiences in the excursion walkabouts but also through reading, discussion, and seminar interactions. The study described in this paper examined the use of personal blogging as a tool in completing Turning Point Essays in two consecutive Honors 101 City as Text™ (CAT) seminars. Researchers aimed to determine if more successful reflection and integration could be expected within the writing forum of a personal blog than in a word-limited essay submitted at the start of class.

This paper reports on the first stage of an Italian national project, Access Thorough Text (ACT henceforth), designed to respond to issues related to reading strategies, textual barriers and online access to web texts in English in educational environments, with specific reference to English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The first stage of the work has been focused on the theoretical foundation on which the project is based, in particular giving suggestions about how digital literacy for learners aged 6-18 can be encouraged and facilitated in web-based multimodal platforms (Jones, Hafner 2012). An inventory of integrative systems has been created to account for a range of devices that help break down barriers in texts (Baldry, Gaggia, Porta, 2011; Gaggia 2012; Porta 2012). The second section of this paper presents the design and administration of a needs analysis for the identification of specific needs for the three targeted age groups of EFL learners (group 1: 6-10, group 2: 11-14; group 3: 15-18). The survey also investigates which best practices can be adopted with regard to a) ease of access; b) awareness of sociocultural and genre-related textual barriers, and c) language problems for EFL learners. This paper will focus on Group 3, i.e. learners aged 15-18, and on how New Travel websites (NTWs) can be used in educational environments through task-based activities. Preliminary findings have shown that the text barriers identified in NTW can be ascribed to different socio-semiotic, multimodal and linguistic areas. Multimodal corpora have been created and annotated for the purpose of unpacking and tackling text barriers. The rationale of corpora selection (Baldry, O'Halloran 2010), replicability of the experiment, issues in categorization and taxonomies involved in NTWs will be discussed, with the final goal of providing guidelines for teachers, parents and other stakeholders in the field of digital literacy.

Within the context of "big data", there is an increasing focus on the source of the large volumes of data now stored electronically. The greatest portion of this data is unstructured and comes from a variety of sources in a variety of formats, much of which does not conform to a consistent data model. As business and government organizations become "paperless", the system of "record" in these documents (including text messages, social media postings, tweets, and email messages) becomes more important. The job of "records management" is becoming more significant in the information systems discipline, as businesses and government agencies struggle to control and manage their electronic resources for regulatory, compliance, legal, and business analytics purposes. Records management has risen to be a separate discipline with its own certifications and job classifications. Many of the principles in the discipline were developed in the time of paper records but still apply in this electronic age, and are now considered part of the responsibilities of the information technology worker. As this is a potential large job market, it is time to consider whether electronic document management (in addition to database management) should be included in the college-level preparation of undergraduate students who will join the workplace in the time of "big data" and its exploitation. This paper looks at the field of electronic document (records) management and its insertion in the undergraduate information systems curriculum.

Opportunities for working, volunteering, and studying abroad have become popular in higher education as vehicles for the development of cultural awareness and global citizenship. However, such experiences on their own do not guarantee the development of such attributes. What appears to be essential to maximizing the benefits of educational sojourns are well-designed training and support provisions. In this paper, we present an analysis of a training and support program that we piloted in order to explore what aspects of the program facilitated the development of intercultural skills and how they did so. In our analysis, we draw on concepts from psychodynamic theory to discuss the impact that preparation and support can have in enabling students to venture out into the world of difference. Illuminating the phenomenon of study abroad through psychodynamic theory can offer a useful lens that may facilitate a move towards more relational and reflexive practices, promoting meaningful intercultural engagement.

This paper reports on a collaborative effort taken by a team of three teacher educators in using the Project Based Learning (PBL) approach in the teaching of Japanese culture with the aim to investigate the presence of actual "meaningful learning" among 15 students of a 12-Week Preparatory Japanese Language course under a teacher training programme. The instrument used in the study was a blog created for the project and the data collected was a compilation of students' reflection reports and messages about their learning experience uploaded onto the blog. The qualitative data was analysed using an adapted version of Jonassen's 1999 rubric on meaningful learning attributes. Findings from this study showed a significant presence of meaningful learning attributes, namely constructive and authentic learning. This paper reaffirms project-based instruction as a viable and flexible alternative to traditional intensive coursework.

This paper explores three potential affordances (social, technical and pedagogical) of wikis in the context of designing 32 teachers' learning of classroom management cases. Two learning environments were designed and two groups of the teacher-participants posted their own written and audio cases, identified problems, discussed and proposed solutions with the input of their peers, in the respective wikis hosted in Google Sites[R] and Learning Activity Management System[R] (LAMS). The teachers' perceptions of the wikis' affordances to support their case-based learning were surveyed quantitatively. The five-point Likert scale survey ranked technical affordance highest, followed by social affordance and pedagogical affordance. Qualitative data from their online discussions and reflection logs were also analyzed to probe the variations in perceived affordances. Participants experienced ease of use and freedom from technical difficulties in achieving their learning goals (interaction with peers and sharing of resources). This paper discusses further work in harnessing wikis' affordances for designing more effective case-based learning environments to cater for diverse learners. It also provides suggestions for further research into wiki pedagogy

The number of publications is the first criteria for assessing a researcher output. However, the main measurement for author productivity is the number of citations, and citations are typically related to the paper's visibility. In this paper, the relationship between article visibility and the number of citations is investigated. A case study of two researchers who are using publication marketing tools confirmed that the article visibility will greatly improve the citation impact. Some strategies to make the publications available to a larger audience have been presented at the end of this paper.

This research explores the professionalization of Library and Information Science (LIS) students who participated in a peer-tutoring service, "Research Rescue." Research Rescue was a collaboration of the Chapman Learning Commons and the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia. The purpose of the service was to provide an experiential learning opportunity for LIS students, benefit undergraduate students in need of assistance with term papers, and increase undergraduates' awareness and use of the campus libraries through targeted referrals. Research Rescue interactions were documented as "shift notes" in a wiki, which was moderated by a learning services librarian and SLAIS faculty. The wiki acted as a shared learning resource and a means of observing and exploring LIS students' learning and professional development as an outcome of participating in the service. In this paper, we report on our qualitative analysis of the shift notes, which provide evidence that peer tutors took steps towards the formation of their professional identities. We explore the learning and socialization that occurred as part of tutors' involvement in Research Rescue, while also advocating that peer tutoring is a viable model for LIS education.

This paper describes an ePortfolio implementation strategy at Federation University Australia, Victoria (formerly the University of Ballarat). The authors combined a personal and practical viewpoint to elicit pitfalls, challenges, and recommendations for improvement. The paper is divided into three main areas in order to outline the experiments that occurred. The first section provides a standard literature review around ePortfolio adoption as well as a research-based analysis of available ePortfolio software at Australian universities. The second part depicts the University's ePortfolio implementation strategy that focused on "test-to-production" and technology dissemination phases. This section is based on the authors' personal viewpoint of ePortfolio adoption at a university where a "top-down management decision making model" (Slade, Murfin, & Readman, 2013, p. 178) was used. Third, the evaluation strategy is reported, which was based on similar research conducted at Australian universities (Hallam & Creagh, 2010; Hallam, Harper, Hauville, Creagh, & McAllister, 2009). This part is offered as a modest-scoped, mixed methods evaluation process. The paper extends on ePortfolio implementation strategies (Bell & White, 2013; Coffey & Ashford-Rowe, 2014; Jarrott & Gambrel, 2011; Lambert & Corrin, 2007; Ring & Ramirez, 2012; Slade et al., 2013) and software analysis (ACODE, 2011; Slade et al., 2013). Recommendations are made for the careful integration of pre- and post-rollout of ePortfolio programs with face-to-face ePortfolio tutor support, offering online resources and alternative portfolio-making options for students with poor broadband access.

This paper describes a survey of online learning which attempts to determine online learning providers' awareness of potential security risks and the protection measures that will diminish them. The authors use a combination of two methods: blog mining and a traditional literature search. The findings indicate that, while scholars have identified diverse security risks and have proposed solutions to mitigate the security threats in online learning, bloggers have not discussed security in online learning with great frequency. The differences shown in the survey results generated by the two different methods confirm that online learning providers and practitioners have not considered security as a top priority. The paper also discusses the next generation of an online learning system: a safer personal learning environment which requires a one-stop solution for authentication, assures the security of online assessments, and balances security and usability.

The goal of this paper is to highlight how instructors may integrate the different social media into various marketing classes. The paper will address the major social networks, and then follow with discussions of microblogging, media sites, and social gaming. Given that there is a great deal of research highlighting the effectiveness of utilizing social media in academic classes, this paper focuses on providing practical guidance as to how social media could be integrated into the classroom, homework, and project experience.

ETDs are the Swiss-army-knife which has unearthed the shades of grey by bringing forth the until now hidden research to the forefront of the world. ETDs powered by open source software like DSpace, EPrints build up information ecosystem for effective storage and retrieval of theses and dissertations which take years of hard work to culminate. Such systems need to be evaluated as its purpose gets defeated if users find it hard to retrieve desired information from it. Webometrics involves the study of the web through which one can analyze the number of hyperlinks, type and structure of the hyperlinks, website usage and its effectiveness. The present article is an attempt to assess the performance of online portal of the national ETD repository of India by using Web Analyzer Test Score (WATS). It also highlights the status of Open Access (OA) ETD repositories with respect to other OA content like research papers, conference papers, etc. along with exploring the software used for Indian ETD Repositories. The overall score of the webometric analysis was found to be 6.4.

Reaching a reading goal of 150,000 words in a semester is no easy feat for many language learners. To reach this goal, an extensive reading (ER) program needs to invest in and select a format that can best enable this achievement. This preliminary study compares the use of two different extensive reading (ER) formats that employ two learning management systems to determine which format has a greater impact on the number of words read and how they influence learner and teacher attitudes towards ER. Printed graded readers (PGRs) using MReader and digital graded readers (DGRs) using Xreading were used in an advanced required TOEFL course for first-year students at a large, private university in Japan in the spring semesters of 2019 and 2020, respectively. This paper examines student achievements (N=95) with MReader and Xreading reading logs (number of words read) and attitudes towards ER as revealed in the student survey responses and teacher (N=3) qualitative feedback. The preliminary findings suggest that PGRs may produce higher outcomes in terms of words read. In general, both PGRs and DGRs were received favorably by students and teachers, suggesting that institutions can successfully utilize either system based upon their existing infrastructure needs.

In recent years, many Turkish universities, particularly the foundation universities in the private sector, have adopted English either in part or in full, as the language of instruction. In practice, this has meant that English should be the only working language of instruction in all academic activities, ranging from lectures, seminars, presentations to thesis defenses. However, little attention has been paid to the fact that the ideals of policymakers are not always in tune with the actuals of the policy implementers ( Jenkins, 2014; Karakas, 2016a). In the Turkish higher education, there is evidence that lecturers and students often breach the English-only policy by using a mixed-version of Turkish and English, which is widely known as Tarzanca (Tarzanish in English) in Turkey (Collins, 2010; Karakas, 2016b). This critical review seeks to explore the phenomenon of Tarzanish in general and its use in English-medium instruction (EMI) universities in particular. While doing so, it is also aimed to find answers to the following questions: (1) How is Tarzanish conceptualized and described in the dictionaries, literature, online sources (e. g. blogs, discussion forums, etc.) and by scholars? (2) What are its descriptive characteristics in terms of morphology, syntax, and lexis? (3) Why do EMI people (lecturers and students) resort to it? Moreover, (4) what can be done to resolve the issue of Tarzanish in EMI universities? Drawing on the answers to these questions, the paper suggests that the notion of Tarzanish means different things to different people, lay people and EMI people resort to it for different purposes, and its use by lay people and EMI people show divergences due to some variables such as the level of language proficiency and the domains of language use (e.g., tourism, business, and higher education). Finally, some suggestions have been offered for the solution of the issue of Tarzanish in EMI universities.

The purpose of this paper is to review the role of software within an ePortfolio (ePF) initiative for students of a five-semester master's program for Business Education and Development. The didactical aim of the ePF initiative presented is to enhance students' ability for (self-)reflection. An accompanying study of the implementation process allows for evaluating the impact of the ePF initiative as well as for the evaluation of its implementation. At six points of time students fill in questionnaires regarding their self-perception of their own competences and their rating of the side conditions of the implementation, leading to 1,925 questionnaires up to September 2018. Results show a positive impact on students' self-perception of their own competences and the perceived importance of self-reflective learning. Regarding the ePF implementation, students generally value the ePF work, especially with regard to the support of their reflection process by an external coach. However, they criticize the time intensity of the reflection process, resulting in the need of a clear communication of the aims of portfolio work to uphold students' motivation. Although the software only represents a side condition in the ePF initiative discussed, students have specifically criticized the software provided -- leading to the conclusion that the software might act as hygiene factor on students' motivation to reflect. From these findings arises the need for further research, which is subject to an interview study among the participants of the ePF initiative being currently in preparation.

In the present study, mobile technology was leveraged as a learning tool for core math instruction during a whole number multiplication and division unit. The researchers redesigned paper--pencil worksheets from the math curriculum into multimedia-enhanced, interactive math practice (the eWorkbook) accessed by students on an iPad. With this eWorkbook, which was conceptualized within a Universal Design for Learning framework, we aimed to reduce barriers and capitalize on strengths by embedding flexible scaffolds/supports, allowing for student choice, and incorporating evidence-based teaching practices. Results of this case study suggest students with and without learning disabilities can leverage multimedia to foster unique opportunities for the understanding and expression of mathematical knowledge. Additional affordances of the eWorkbook include extending the reach of teacher support while encouraging self-support. Implications for teachers and researchers are discussed.

Current communication is increasingly computer-mediated, dynamic, dialogic, and global, so students should master new information, communication technologies, and digital genres, as well as acknowledge the global role of the English language. Thus, this paper aims to offer a teaching proposal, to be ideally implemented in the secondary education English as a foreign language classroom, on how to develop students' communicative and digital competences based on a digital genre like the travel blog. First, a corpus of travel blogs was compiled, and the blogs' communicative purposes and prominent linguistic and discursive features were identified. Next, different lesson plans were designed on the principles of communicative language teaching and task-based learning, together with the corpus-based results. Overall, students are expected to follow a process-writing approach that enables them to interact digitally in travel blogs.

The role of technology in educational settings all around the world has changed the methods of teaching and assessment in the last few decades. Unfortunately, the shortcomings of e-learning in Iran has deprived students of many advantages of it. This research paper tries to answer questions regarding the effect of e-portfolio on the students' writing proficiency in the context of learning English as a foreign language and the learners' use of self-regulated learning strategies. Furthermore, the attitude of students towards the use of e-portfolio in the writing class was investigated based on the data obtained through the survey, teacher's field notes, and teachers' observations. The data obtained from English majors at State and Azad Universities in Rasht, north of Iran, was both qualitatively and quantitatively analysed. The findings revealed that the use of e-portfolio had a significant effect on students' writing proficiency and their use of self-regulated strategies. The evidence from the study also showed learners' positive attitude towards the use of e-portfolio, mainly due to its accessibility, convenience, and the feedback they could receive through it.

Jenkins (2009) asserts that it is a "digital imperative" for educators to develop their students' technology awareness and dexterity, but also their own. How can educators teach what they do not know? To make the digital imperative a reality in university and secondary classrooms, teacher preparation faculty can tap into the Internet and harness its inherent qualities of a "participatory culture." Jenkins' explanation suggests a reciprocal teacher-learner dynamic process. The concept of a participatory culture of the Internet can be a useful tool in two ways: (1) addressing the digital imperative by further developing teachers' and students' technology awareness and dexterity; and (2) maximizing student expertise and promote teacher-learner collaboration. Jenkins considers digital literacy a social skill that can be facilitated by the participatory nature of the Internet. Strategies presented in this paper can be adapted to most teacher preparation courses. In Part I, the authors discuss potential problems and criticisms in promoting digital literacy. Part 2 presents select strategies with corresponding rationales for promoting digital literacy. Finally, Part 3 illustrates practical ways for implementing and assessing the strategies in Part 2.

Research has consistently demonstrated the benefits of using ePortfolios in higher education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) added ePortfolios to its High-Impact Practices list (Watson, Kuh, Rhodes, Light, & Chen, 2016). The majority of studies on college students' ePortfolio use have focused on implementation within a specific course or from a faculty perspective. Given the important benefit of ePortfolios for lifelong student learning, it is important to assess factors which impact intrinsic motivation from a student-centered perspective. This paper details a study of college students' motivation and confidence to use an ePortfolio system as part of a university-wide quality enhancement plan that included high-impact, experiential learning activities. This study also explored college students' personal values and their perceived advantages and disadvantages of ePortfolio use within the context of experiential learning and reflection. Data were analyzed from 339 student responses from a survey constructed based on motivational interviewing. Overall, students reported low levels of motivation and moderate levels of confidence to use ePortfolios. In addition, students who had participated in an experiential learning activity through the university's QEP reported higher confidence than those who had not. Factors identified as potentially impacting students' motivation and confidence to use ePortfolios are discussed in terms of how they can support strategies to implement ePortfolio and experiential learning programs in large, 4-year college institutions.

This paper examines the importance of cultivating a sense of vocation in honors education. Through examples of coursework, program initiatives, and advising strategies, authors from across five institutions align the scholarship of vocation with best practices and principles in contemporary honors discourse, defining vocation in the context of higher education and describing how this concept works within honors curricula to enrich student experience and cultivate individual understandings of purpose. By focusing on critical reflection processes, Ignatian pedagogy, and theories of moral development and reasoning, the authors offer different models to advance the thesis that honors educators can and should address personal fulfillment in addition to intellectual talent, and they posit vocational exploration and discernment as tools for extending and deepening their students' personal sense of meaning in local and global communities.

The creation of ePortfolios as a capstone project for school counselors-in-training has many benefits for the students, instructors, and program. However, there can be tension due to misalignments in goals and lived experiences of the ePortfolio even when the students find ePortfolios useful. This paper explores this tension between instructor goals and student perceptions of the purposes and values of ePortfolios created as part of a capstone in a graduate school counseling program. While the school counseling instructor conceptualized the ePortfolio process and product as a form of personalized action research focusing on aspirational goals, the school counselors-in-training experienced the ePortfolio as a useful product for reflection and job preparation but did not grasp the process as a form of personalized action research. Reflections on this disconnect suggest recommendations for better alignment of instructor goals and student experiences in order to use ePortfolios as a form of personalized action research.

Higher education is increasingly called upon to respond to the need for educational innovations promoting graduate employability and lifelong learning (European Higher Education Area, 2012, 2015). To achieve this, students must progressively become able to reflect both on their learning and their potential to improve and plan their own educational and professional development accordingly (D'Andrea & Gosling, 2005). The portfolio, now used in many university courses worldwide, is a tool that contributes to responding to these needs. A study of literature on this subject indicates that the portfolio's effectiveness during the teaching-learning and assessment processes is dependent on the ability of teachers to master this tool. It follows that, in order to facilitate the effective implementation and use of the portfolio in universities, teachers need to receive suitable training. This paper presents the characteristics and results of a training course on the use of the portfolio. The course was part of an extensive training project for university teachers in the University of Turin's IRIDI program that was aimed at promoting the improvement and innovation of university teaching. The results of the training course show a higher level of competency in creating a portfolio, and a higher level of willingness to introduce it into teaching.

Today's student must be able to work in an online environment. This often presents unique challenges for elementary students as they develop and extend fundamental literacy skills to various media. Many text features such as titles, headings, authors, and copyrights are easily transferable from paper to an online format; however, orientation and navigation of text differ in online environments where text offers dynamic features not possible in traditional print resources. We present a parallel comparison of traditional and online text to illustrate how online texts mimic their analog counterparts and highlight ways in which they differ. This offers teachers a way to make learning about text features of both formats more concrete for their students.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of the electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) to improving students' performance and the sustainability of their knowledge. The method used is the experiment with an experimental and a control group, and a pair of pre and post measurements. The survey was carried out during the first trimester of the 2016-2017 school year and its duration was 30 teaching hours. The sample consisted of 40 pupils of the second grade of primary school in the city of Rhodes. The findings of the survey show that the students of the experimental group who used the e-portfolio scored higher in all assessments and managed to maintain the knowledge they achieved by scoring higher results in the second assessment of the material fifteen days later, compared to the students in the control group who used the traditional printed portfolio and scored lower in their performance ratings.

A concern in higher education is that most students do not acquire higher-order thinking skills, 'cannot think', are not engaged in reflective student-centred teaching and learning and do not always acquire technology skills. Numerous studies have indicated the importance of a digital learning environment that facilitates the acquisition of IT skills, reflective and critical thinking learning skills while creating an electronic portfolio. To establish the impact of portfolios on the reflective metacognitive learning and the development of higher-order thinking skills in student-teachers (n=167) in the field of science, qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to collect data. The results showed that for the majority of the participants (n=160) it was the first time that they had created an ePortfolio and engaged in reflective metacognitive learning experiences. The researcher was able to identify students' weaknesses and strengths, their interests and goals in life. Most of them regarded the learning process as time consuming, did not wish to share poor learning experiences with others, found it difficult to express their learning experiences in a second language and were unable to create an ePortfolio in an organised manner as they were not capable of metacognitive reflection. This paper is relevant for higher education lecturers in developing students to become independent learners by using an ePortfolio.

The role of faculty in higher education as knowledge disseminators within the knowledge and digital society can be completely redefined. This paper presents results from a video-based flipped classroom approach combined with a project-oriented learning arrangement. I show that videos combined with a project-based learning setting can be a powerful tool to facilitate the shift from knowledge dissemination to knowledge appropriation. Besides, results show a high level of student's satisfaction and achievement during the course. The self-perceived competences obtained by the students during the course and those estimated qualitatively by the lecturer on the ground of the formative and summative evaluations reach far beyond those possible in a similar course with a traditional teaching approach.

Given the increasingly prominent position of digital technologies in the Higher Education classroom, this paper takes a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach to explore the ways in which blogging might be used to support student learning through a large MA dissertation module, comprising students from five courses. Taking as it impetuous the idea that blogging can create a community to support students in the writing of their own dissertation. The research saw 179 students invited to undertake blogging over a 10-week period, with proscribed activities for eight of these weeks. The networks built by students were modelled through Gephi, and this data was supplemented with two surveys carried out before and following the module. The results showed a mild trend towards the blogs not producing a community, nor creating an environment in which self-reflective practice was forthcoming. The role of the teacher also appeared to become solidified as the sole motivating factor, leading to a low uptake in posting on the blog, and even lower in commenting. The work also highlights the two-fold issue of students being fearful of giving negative, coupled with the sense that peer feedback was not worth as much as staff feedback, significantly reduced the development of the community, and of critical thinking. The work concludes that while blogs might have some potential, this case demonstrates that they need to be more deeply embedded within the pedagogy of the course, and not used as an 'add-on'.

This paper presents a critical account of the representation of immigration in the Brexit corpus-- a collective corpus of 108,452,923 words compiled mostly from blogs, tweets, and daily news related to Brexit debate. The study follows the methodological synergy approach proposed by Baker et al. (2008), a heuristic methodological approach that combines methods of discourse analysis and corpus-assisted statistical tools including keyword, collocation, and concordance analysis. Drawing on this methodological synergy approach, the investigation yields significant findings contextualized within the socio-economic-political context of the European Union (EU) leave referendum to trace how the issue of immigration is represented in the discourses of the Remain and Leave campaigns. The frequency results show that immigration is one of the most salient topics in the Brexit corpus. Concordance analysis of the word "immigrants" and collocation investigation of the word "immigration" reveal opposing attitudes toward immigration in the EU referendum debate. The analysis uncovers negative attitudes toward the uncontrolled flow of immigrants from other EU countries and public concerns about immigrants' negative impacts on wages, education, and health services. Other findings reveal positive attitudes toward immigrants emphasizing their positive contributions to the UK economy. The study concludes with an argument of the significant association between the political and socio-economic ideologies of a particular society and the language communicated in its media.

There is significant interest among institutions of higher education in the potential of digital textbooks to enhance student learning and to address issues arising from textbook affordability. Innovations in digital textbook design and delivery infrastructure and the emergence of exemplary practices from early adopters signal that digital reading may be a practical alternative to print. Less well understood, however, is students' experience of textbook affordability, their experience of print and digital textbook utilization, and factors that might influence their acceptance of digital textbooks. This paper explores the results of a semester-long eTextbook research project at a Canadian college and shares six suggestions grounded in student feedback.

Education has long been regarded as the foundation stone of national growth and international competitiveness. In the last three decades national educational reforms to improve access to higher education qualifications, individual higher education institutions' aggressive national and international marketing initiatives and improved information and communication technology (ICT) systems and infrastructure have resulted in greatly increased participation in tertiary education. As a consequence of this wider participation, tertiary educators are now engaging with increased numbers of culturally and economically diverse learners in distributed ICT environments that they, the educators and learners, are often unfamiliar with. There is an expectation that these educators will be able to design learning modules to meet students' multi-cultural needs, in a range of contexts, with no additional resources. In essence, it is expected that learners will participate in individually customised learning events at a cost similar to traditional delivery. This requires a fundamental shift in educators and learners conceptions on the provision of education. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the development and deployment of reflective frameworks, based on recognised international standards, can fully engage learners in mass-customised environments. First this article outlines the key building blocks required for reflective mass-customisation to occur. Second, it illustrates how this concept is being tentatively explored at a New Zealand institution. Finally, it recommends the areas of action for further research on the impact and effect of mass-customisation on learners, educators and institutions to be undertaken. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.) [This paper was published in the ALT-C 2012 Conference Proceedings.]

This paper considers professional development in a context that is familiar and problematic to teaching teams in tertiary education everywhere, that of delivering online programmes with an ever-decreasing complement of staff. The Teaching Qualification Further Education (TQFE) teaching team at University of Dundee confronted the reality of reduced staff numbers by centralising tutoring and support for programme participants. The new system involves standardising tutoring as far as possible through generic email, blog and microblog accounts, all badged "TQFE-Tutor" and staffed on a roster basis. Once the new "rules of engagement" via TQFE-Tutor were in place, it became clear that in addition to benefits in terms of student support, there were other unintended positive consequences: opportunities for informal professional development for staff and the promotion of effective team working. The experience of collective tutoring has facilitated collaboration on a range of innovations within online learning. This paper describes the evolution of the TQFE-Tutor innovation and reports upon a small scale study which was carried out to gather the views of the tutor team working with TQFE-Tutor. The authors conclude that the centralisation of communication and tutoring on the TQFE programme has been highly beneficial in terms of professional development for the team. (Contains 2 figures.) [This paper was published in the ALT-C 2012 Conference Proceedings.]

This paper presents the rationale, common practices, challenges, and some personal anecdotes from a journal editor on the production, use, and re-use of peer-reviewed scholarly articles as open educational resources (OER). The scholarly and professional discourse related to open educational resources has largely focused on open learning objects, courseware, and textbooks. However, especially in graduate education, articles published in scholarly journals are often a major component of the course content in formal education. In addition, open access journal articles are critical to expanding access to knowledge by scholars in the developing world and in fostering citizen science, by which everyone has access to the latest academic information and research results. In this article, I highlight some of the challenges, economic models, and evidence for quality of open access journal content and look at new affordances provided by the Net for enhanced functionality, access, and distribution. In the 17 years since I graduated with a doctorate degree, the climate and acceptance of open access publishing has almost reversed itself. I recall a conversation with my PhD supervisor in which he argued that publishing online was not a viable option as the product would not have permanency, scholarly recognition, or the prestige of a paper publication. His comments reflect the confusion between online resources and those described as open access, but as well illustrate the change in academic acceptance and use of open access products during the past decade. The evolution from paper to online production and consumption is a disruptive technology in which much lower cost and increased accessibility of online work opens the product to a completely new group of potential users. In the case of OER these consumers are primarily students, but certainly access to scholars from all parts of the globe and the availability to support citizen science (Silvertown, 2009) should not be underestimated. (Contains 2 figures.)

This paper reports on research that took place at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), United Kingdom, over two years. The project formed the basis of an iterative, interpretive, action research study focussing on a particular set of participants--trainee teachers. The insights gained from the initial cycle fed into planning the second cycle, for which the action plan was modified and the research process repeated (Zuber-Skerritt 1992). The research project focuses on the use of Web 2.0 technology, specifically web logs, (or blogs) with trainee teachers, both during their university programme and during the first year of teaching as full-time newly qualified teachers. The purpose of this research was to add to a developing body of knowledge identifying whether technology used by trainee teachers during their training course can be cascaded into their practice once qualified. Participants from the two collaborating universities were introduced to blogs and blogging during their time at university, and encouraged to use it for themselves, and to also think about how it could be used in their own classrooms when they were teaching. Questionnaires were used to ascertain their thoughts on the use of blogs during training, and these were followed up with interviews with a number of the trainees to determine the cascading of this technology, once they had become newly qualified teachers (NQTs) and were teaching in schools. These interviews explored the reasons for enabling or inhibiting the use of blogs in their teaching in school. This paper presents the findings of the research and discusses the enablers and inhibitors that were identified in the light of current research findings. The research supports the view that developing innovative use of technology in the classroom is complex and experiences during training are not always transferred into practice. (Contains 1 table.)

Utilising appropriate Information Communication Technologies (ICT) as instructional tools in teacher education can be a challenging yet worthwhile endeavour. This paper reports the difficulties and benefits of a recent inter-university project requiring preservice primary teachers to construct professional digital portfolios using the support of ICT. Challenges with regard to communication and learning were numerous as 34 preservice teachers (PSTs) from three universities in NSW (situated in country towns, and in Sydney) worked together as a collaborative learning community. Meeting regularly face-to-face during the 12-month process was not always possible and so ICT resources were employed to facilitate instruction and communication. An action research methodology generated a data set of surveys, observational field notes, and student assessment artefacts. We share the findings in this paper so that others may learn from our experiences in using free access software and commonplace hardware when constructing digital portfolios with students who are some distance from campus. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

Community engagement courses are becoming common in the discipline of information systems. In this paper the author analyzes the benefits and the challenges of an e-Portfolio in a course engaging students with a community of individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. The case study in the paper finds generally higher engagement of students from the community projects of the course if an e-Portfolio is designed flexibly for the students. The findings further indicate generally higher impact of the service and systems on the individuals with disabilities and also on the students. This paper can be beneficial to instructors considering e-Portfolio as a method for improving the impact of service involving systems.

An electronic textbook (e-Textbook) is a digitized (or electronic) form of textbook, which normally needs an endorsement by the national or state government when it is used in the K-12 education system. E-Textbooks have been envisioned to replace existing paper-based textbooks due to its educational advantages. Hence, it is of paramount importance for the relevant parties (i.e. national and state governments, or school districts) to draw a comprehensive roadmap of technologies necessary for the successful adoption of e-Textbooks nationwide. This paper provides a brief overview of e-Textbooks and subsequently an extensive discussion on challenges associated with e-Textbooks in the pursuit of replacing traditional textbooks with e-Textbooks. This paper further provides an extensive review on how the challenges have been approached using existing e-Textbook technologies, such as multi-touch technology, e-Paper, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. Literature review and interview have been conducted to identify the challenges of e-Textbooks implementation in terms of e-Textbook usage levels and the reasons of its refusal. There were 180 students and 20 academic staff participated as a sample for interviews. Eight categories of key challenges were identified. Subsequently, assessment was performed on how the evolving e-Textbook technology has been applied to address the key challenges and problems. This article aims to provide a strong foundation for further investigations in e-Textbooks for successful adoption of e-Textbooks in school education. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper firstly introduces the concept of constructivist learning which advocates that students actively construct knowledge themselves with teachers' assistance. Based on the six important elements of constructivist learning and teaching planning approach, detailed examples of designing the six constructivist elements of situation, groupings, bridge, questions, exhibit, and reflections for two units offered at school of Information Technology, Deakin University are provided. A conclusion emphasizing the learners' difference to be paid attention to while educators designing curriculum on CloudDeakin platform is made at the end of this paper.

Tocal College, as part of New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI), provides training in agriculture and related disciplines across NSW and Australia. Tocal College delivers a wide range of full time, short course, and distance education courses, along with publications and study support materials. The rural and related industries in Australia operate in a complex environment and have many features which make training delivery unique and challenging. A particular challenge is servicing a clientele who are thinly dispersed over a very large part of Australia and providing relevant services to clients who have high levels of skills and knowledge acquired on the job through informal learning. As a consequence of these needs, external delivery of training and Skills Recognition (i.e., Recognition of Prior Learning [RPL]) have emerged as a key services delivered by the College. This paper will outline the development of the Tocal College Skills Recognition system from a paper-based to fully electronic system while maintaining a commitment to assessment by personal interview, client support, empowerment and respect, and active case management. The process of "going electronic" is evaluated from both the client and college perspective. The ePortfolio approach is proving to be a better way of delivering services, but it does still present some challenges to clients in regional and remote areas of Australia.

This paper aims to propose a repository of pre-use evaluation criteria for language teachers who wish to introduce e-books or e-textbooks to their own teaching practices. By selectively using a set of such criteria, they will be able to evaluate to what extent a given e-book/e-textbook lends itself to utilisation within their own teaching context. The paper briefly reviews the potential advantages of technology-enhanced language teaching. Then, it presents a range of manners in which e-books have been defined, outlines their most essential features, and demonstrates exemplary classifications of e-book types. The evaluation criteria proposed are informed by an analysis of three independent studies into the guidelines for e-book and e-textbook design, as well as the types and features of e-books presented within the paper. The outcome is a list of evaluation criteria pertaining to three aspects of an e-book: (i) layout and design; (ii) content and functionalities; and (iii) the reading device, file format and distribution.

This paper navigates into the "YouTube" website as one of the most usable online tools to learn languages these days. The paper focuses on two issues in creating "YouTube" language learning videos: pedagogy and technology. After observing the existing "YouTube" LLVs, the study presents a novel rubric that is directed towards a pedagogically sound basis for language learning in the "YouTube" learning environment. The purposes of the rubric are. (A): selecting and evaluating the appropriate "YouTube" language videos for the target audience. (B): creating effective language learning "YouTube" videos that are based on the existing language learning theories. The findings present a rubric that contains 44 questions that have been classified in five main categories: video characteristic, attractiveness, clarity, reaction and content. In each category, there are several questions discussing issues under each category. These questions are driven and modified from the language materials evaluation and design research and language classroom observations research.

This paper describes a pilot study in using Facebook as an alternative to a learning management system (LMS). The paper reviews the current research on the use of Facebook in academia and analyzes the differences between a Facebook group and a regular LMS. The paper reports on a precedent-setting attempt to use a Facebook group as a course website, serving as a platform for delivering content and maintaining interactions among the students and between the students and the lecturer. The paper presents findings from the students' self-assessments and reflections on their experience. The students expressed satisfaction with learning in Facebook and willingness to continue using these groups in future courses. (Contains 1 table.)

The body of research examining deliberate practice and self-regulation in musical instruction has grown extensively over the past decade. Compelling evidence indicates that students with higher levels of self-regulation develop superior performance skills and experience more fulfillment as musicians. But in order to develop the self-regulatory behaviours that are the hallmarks of skilled and expressive musical musicians, students need to be supported and guided as they learn to explicitly set goals and monitor and reflect on their progress. Developing these behaviours involves the incorporation of strategies that presuppose a certain level of discipline and organization on the part of the student. One way of supporting students is through digital tools, including electronic portfolios designed specifically to enhance self-regulation. The research reported in the present paper describes how a web-based electronic portfolio, called ePEARL, served to enhance the experiences of students and teachers working in music studios, and in turn, how ePEARL was then adapted to reflect music teaching and learning in a new electronic portfolio called iSCORE. The paper describes a three-phase research and development study that took place over a 22-month period. First, we used case-study methodology to examine the use of ePEARL with one teacher and student. Findings demonstrated the value of the tool in supporting student learning as well as for linking weekly lessons to include composition and school music activities. In the next phase of the study, four teachers and 15 students used ePEARL over a five-month period, when it was determined how ePEARL could be modified to more fully support both students and their studio teachers. On the basis of this second phase of research, we developed a design and development plan to create iSCORE, and then tested it with music students, teachers, and university educators. Features of iSCORE will be described and demonstrated during our presentation, featuring some of the most powerful aspects of iSCORE that support the development of self-regulation in young musicians.

The development of educational technologies has resulted in a fundamental shift in the educational paradigm with learning no longer equating to the assimilation of knowledge transmitted by textbooks and instructors but by personally building and communicating knowledge. The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss the importance of infusing blogs as a formative assessment tool in university education. After describing the theoretical aims, design, implementation and evaluation of blogging as a formative assessment tool; the paper supports the argument for the educational use and pedagogical importance of blogging. The paper also highlights potential problems and limitations of the blogging as an assessment tool and provides a conceptual framework for the effective implementation of blogs for enhancing student learning outcomes.

This paper discusses how ePortfolios, initially introduced to students in a Music Education degree program on a trial basis, are subsequently being integrated into subjects of this degree program. Discussion includes staff perspectives, and covers the varying ways ePortfolio components are utilised in a range of subject areas, issues staff encounter in introducing ePortfolios into their subjects, methods to adapt existing assessment assignments into ePortfolio tasks, and ways in which the inclusion of ePortfolio work leads to changes in learning and teaching practices. Challenges of assessing in an ePortfolio environment are explored, and a map of ePortfolios in the final years of the degree program is discussed. The mapping process, whereby ePortfolio work is perceived as transitioning into the content of this degree program, is explained and demonstrated. The paper covers the design of the map that targets the sequential development of students' ePortfolio skills through subjects in the degree program. Mapping assessment tasks for any degree program is ongoing, and researchers in this case rely on student products and formal and informal feedback to continue designing assessment tasks in a meaningful way to engage eLearners in developing ePortfolios for use inside and outside this degree program. The process is not about creating more work for students and staff, or re-inventing existing curricula by removing and adding tasks. It is about evaluating existing assessment tasks in this degree program and modifying them to act viably in an information technology environment to reflect and advance student learning. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 4 footnotes.)

Professors at higher education institutions often feel pressure to "publish or perish" in order to maintain their standing in the academic community, yet a large number of these publications languish in obscure technical journals or are presented only once at a conference or online journal. While these methods achieve the goal of spreading personal research to colleagues and other professionals, more can be done to make this information available to curious individuals. This paper examines the efficiency of using electronic publishing technology such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing to publicize scientific research in order to disseminate knowledge and ideas through the academic community. Ten publications of an educator's research in the field of geospatial science were compiled into a single book, which was then published online using Kindle Direct Publishing. By making this information readily accessible, anyone with an interest in the material could use these publications to facilitate their own work. The increased availability of these publications was beneficial for students who needed access to such research for classwork, as well as professionals who benefited from the information contained in these reports. In this manner, ideas were more effectively disseminated among the geospatial community, thus increasing the potential for scientific collaboration and advancement. Additionally, this research is being utilized to stem the aspects of publish text books digitally by faculty for courses on campus. This method of information dissemination can be easily applied to all fields of research and education with similar results. The research contained in this paper will outline the challenges and methods used to publish academic scholarly knowledge on a more widely accessible platform.

This paper examines the utilization of Computer Mediated Communication tools within collaborative learning activities. By examining the participants' attitudes and behavior, issues related to performance improvement are being discussed. Through a comparative study using a Blog, a Wiki and a Discussion Forum, students' perception of collaboration aspects and the tools' effect are examined. Furthermore, common misconceptions are discussed, along with the difficulties the students face and the ways they invent in order to overcome them. The paper concludes in raising issues to be considered when designing similar collaborative activities, involving novice computer users with mediocre developed information literacy.

ePortfolios have been used in many disciplines for different purposes. In the following paper, I describe how I created and used an eportfolio as my tenure file over a five-year period. As the first tenure-track faculty member at Delaware County Community College to attain tenure through the use of an online tenure portfolio, the tenure eportfolio played many roles including as a summative, reflective, and showcase tool. Using an eportfolio for tenure promotion has become increasingly popular at my institution which now has an institutional eportfolio software package that all new tenure-track faculty use to create their online tenure files. This paper also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using a prescribed eportfolio software package in creating tenure eportfolios.

This paper describes the Clemson ePortfolio Program initiated in 2006, where all undergraduate students are required to create an ePortfolio. Specifically, the program was designed as a mechanism through which to evaluate our recently revised general education program. In this program all undergraduates create and submit a digital portfolio as evidence of academic and experiential mastery of our general education competencies. This paper, which is the first in a series, describes the implementation process providing a detailed look at the rationale behind implementation, feedback and mentoring, assessment, and support.