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This research paper explores podcasting as a viable assessment technique in current academic English language teaching pedagogy. The study was done with two 3rd-year university classes who created the podcast in groups of four as an academic English-speaking exam with the goal being to enhance the student's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, through self-determination theory, to assess the students' speaking skills. Motivation is the core concept of this study, and it aligns with current trends in technology and a desire among students for speaking assignments to reflect real-world practices. Critique on the podcast as a form of academic English-speaking assessment was given in the form of questionnaire surveys and interviews with students from the selected classes, with the results presented giving evidence that podcasting is a suitable alternative method in assessing university student's academic speaking skills. It was seen to increase motivation, enhance self-efficacy, and encourage speaking in a suitably congenial environment.

Members of the Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists (IONiC) report the development and sustained efforts to provide virtual professional development sessions: Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable (SLiThEr). SLiThEr's emerged from a community need at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; since then, SLiThEr's have become a standard event for the IONiC community. SLiThEr's are real- time virtual community events, after which a recording of the SLiThEr is posted on the IONiC YouTube channel. In this paper, an overview of the structure, format, and emergence of SLiThEr's is reported, followed by evaluation of SLiThEr offerings, a plan for future SLiThEr offerings, and a discussion of how SLiThEr's impact teaching practice.

The following paper makes the case for a recommended practice of depositing undergraduate student dissertations into Higher Education Institute (HEI) institutional research repositories. In discussing this, the reasons for doing so, and a comprehensive discussion of the benefits and challenges (motivationally, logistically and ethically) for the discipline, students and supervisors are highlighted, along with ways in which the challenges may be addressed. Guidelines to simplify, and therefore encourage, greater rates of submission of undergraduate dissertation research into institutional research repositories are noted, along with the potential consequences for the Research Excellence Framework and Teaching Excellence Framework exercises. It is the author's hope that this paper will stimulate further discussion of this idea, including bringing to light considerations not addressed here.

In the ongoing pandemic context, short-term study abroad opportunities remain limited for many students. As a result, there has been a need for universities to develop educational innovations for home context learning to meet institutional intercultural learning aims. The purpose of this action research paper is to outline how a small-scale e-learning innovation was designed based on characteristics of intercultural citizenship education to encourage connections with, and responsibility towards, communities beyond national borders. The innovation involved critical exploration of a student-selected social issue using online texts, and reflections and blogging on the issue from individual, local, national, and international perspectives. A qualitative content analysis of reflections in blogposts of 49 students showed that the majority expressed connections with intercultural citizenship, though a minority rejected international identifications. The paper offers a timely and systematically designed intercultural e-learning innovation, implementable in other contexts, to support intercultural learning in a context of limited study abroad.

Introduction: Social media are increasingly popular and emerging as important information sources. The study investigates how users' sex and problem-solving style affect their use and evaluation of social media in two contexts. Method: A Web survey including the problem solving inventory (problem solving inventory) was used to collect data. Over 1,000 undergraduates in the United States participated. Analysis: For each context, two-way ANOVAs were conducted with sex and problem solving inventory score as independent variables and the frequency of using different social media platforms and the frequency of taking different evaluative actions as dependent variables. Results: In academic contexts, significant sex effects were found in the use of wikis, blogs and internet forums. Significant effects of problem-solving style were found in the use of social networking sites, user reviews, blogs and microblogs. An interaction between sex and problem-solving style was found in the use of social networking sites and microblogs. In everyday life contexts, sex effects were found. Males used wikis and internet forums whereas females used social networking sites and microblogs frequently. As for problem-solving styles, ineffective problem-solvers used internet forums frequently. Regarding the use of evaluation strategies, females with effective problem-solving styles checked other users' reactions frequently while males with ineffective style did so in academic contexts. In everyday contexts, effective problem-solvers used most of the evaluation strategies frequently. Conclusions: Social media use and evaluation behaviours varied depending on contexts. sex effects remained significant when problem-solving style has been taken into account. Findings suggest that effects of sex on information behaviour may need to be examined along with other psychological and sociocultural factors. [This paper was published in: "Proceedings of ISIC: The Behaviour Conference" (Leeds, England, Sep 2-5, 2014), Part 2, Paper isic24.]

Predictability of absolute data transaction for real time information and reduction of incalculable data delivery time are the major factors to lead the global education as well as economic system towards a paperless environment. Some universities such as the University of Phoenix, Western Governors University, UK Open University, University of California, and Hong Kong University are playing a pioneering role to achieve this paperless environment in the respective campuses. Multimedia University (MMU) is a very distinctive university and is considered the jewel of Malaysia's bold plan to enter the world arena of 21st century information technology. The university is now operational with intelligent building systems, wireless technology system, satellite tele-education, a digital library, state-of-the-art learning, and research facilities, as well as an integrated computer education management system. MMU runs a paperless administration with the full-fledged e-governance having all these facilities. E-governance is about the use of information technology to raise the quality of the services organizations deliver for its management. The university also provides a Registry of Graduates homepage that not only eliminates fraud, but also complements the e-governance system, preparing itself for a truly web-based society. This article mainly aims to illustrate the development of higher education in the Multimedia University by establishing a paperless environment. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

The support of multilingual content becomes crucial for educational platforms due to the benefits it offers. In this paper we propose a concept that allows content authors to use the power of the crowd to create (semantically) structured multilingual educational content out of their material. To enable the collaboration of the crowd, we expand our previously developed CrowdLearn concept and WikiApp data model to support multilingual educational content. The expanded concept, CoSMEC, was evaluated with an example implementation within the web-based educational platform SlideWiki. Based on this experience, we provide solutions for the most complicated technical issues we faced during the implementation. This paper also discusses statistics which show the flow of multilingual content usage. [This paper was presented at the OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Conference (Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 23-25, 2014).]

Introduction: The paper explains how the modern understanding of authorship developed and sets out the problems to be considered when discussing digital authorship. Method: The contextual analysis of contents of the key themes is employed; in the articulation of the conclusions, analytic and synthetic approaches are used. Results: At each turning point, a new layer, immanent to the modern concept, was assigned to authorship. Reference is made to changes reflecting the specifics of digital authorship, emphasising the context conditioning the position of author and the attitude to an authorial work. Conclusions: A digital author is more independent of a publisher; the work is more visible; attention is directed at the work at the expense of its medium. However, digital authors own material and moral rights to the work, which are international, while their position is made relative and re-examined. The behaviour of authors, the possibilities of publishing and accessing the work and the paradigm of preserving a work are changing in the digital environment. [This paper was published as part of: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, 19-22 August, 2013.]

To align with Kenya 2030 Vision of education for self-reliance, there is a growing need for classroom instruction that develops students' capacity to be in control of their learning. This paper reports a two-year study that tested feasibility of implementing ePEARL, an e-portfolio, in the context of Kenyan public schools. By design, the digital portfolio supports the key learning processes though the phases of self-regulated learning--forethought, performance, and self-reflection. In this study, students (N=137) from four secondary classrooms used the tool as part of classroom instruction to complete their project assignments. Repeated measures analyses revealed that, over-time, students who demonstrated fuller use of ePEARL made significantly higher gains and reported higher level of self-regulated strategies compared to their classmates who hardly used the tool. The results suggest that in order to yield important benefits, the tool should be meaningfully integrated into classroom instruction.

Author(s): Quirin Schiermeier Ross Mounce knows that when he shares his research papers online, he may be doing something illegal - if he uploads the final version of a paper [...]

Introduction. Taxonomy is an effective mean of managing and accessing a large amount of digital information. Various techniques have been developed to generate taxonomy automatically. The purpose of this study is threefold: (i) review methods and approaches adopted during taxonomy generation, (ii) identify the factors influencing the choice of a particular method or approach, (iii) highlight issues and open challenges. Method. This paper adopts a systematic literature review approach proposed by Kitchenham, and the nature of this review is qualitative. Analysis. A total of thirty techniques were reviewed and categorized into various categories and subcategories. An in-depth analysis of the existing techniques was performed based on this categorization. This ultimately helps in identifying factors influencing the choice of a particular method or approach, and also determines issues and challenges associated with the automatic taxonomy generation. Results. Four major factors influencing the choice of a particular method or approach for generating taxonomy have been identified. Moreover, five major challenges associated with the existing automatic taxonomy generation techniques have also been highlighted. Conclusions. This paper presents a comprehensive review of taxonomy generation so that taxonomy can be used effectively, and it highlights open challenges for future research in the area of taxonomy generation so that new and improved techniques can be developed.

The use of paper books for teaching and learning has many limitations in terms of cost and efficiency. The advantages of digital textbooks are emphasized in many studies. Researchers say that the use of digital textbooks as mediators of the 21st century provides the ability to solve a variety of educational and learning problems for the future. However, many stakeholders in education, such as teachers, students, parents, publishers and educators, are not prepared to accept it and infrastructure is incomplete. In Korea, digital textbooks are used in classrooms in 2018. Publishers are creating new digital textbooks containing sophisticated digital content in accordance with government guidelines, teachers want to create customized lessons for each student level, and profitability and market expectations are changing the importance of digital asset pricing in the textbook market. In this paper, we explore factors that affect digital textbook pricing, to help publishers maximize revenue over their product lifecycle.

In today's society, information technology transforms the way people do business and activities. Such phenomenon eliminates the previous jobs and creates a new job title. In this regards, professional writers offer new jobs in this digital age. Books and papers are substituted with new platforms because of industrial changes. Web portals, paperless media, tablets, smartphones and other gadgets were created to spread information. However, these have become tools and media for authors in the 21st century. User generated content platform is the most promising tunnel for technopreneur writer. A lot of features can be used to write and asses the author's materials. For example, analytic dashboard or perception content analysis are powerful tools to asses the effectiveness of author's work. There are certain strategies for technopreneur authors to be considered to gain benefits from user generated content platform. Those factors are: characteristics for content, audience assessment, effectiveness of materials and profitable contents. In a nutshell, this paper exposes news tunnels; the most promising way that writers can express their talents in digital age as technopreneurs.

Background: In South Africa, and in many other African countries, official language-in-education policy supports the use of learners' primary language(s) in early schooling. In reality, texts in the language(s) of the former colonial power are dominant, with high-interest texts in languages familiar to young learners in short supply or non-existent. Where government education departments have begun to address this shortage, it is mainly by producing graded readers in the 'standard' variety of a language. Aim: The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate how quality texts can be provided in a wide range of African languages to stimulate children's interest in reading, across the African continent and beyond. Setting: The African Storybook (ASb) initiative of the South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide) aims to provide illustrated texts in local languages and language varieties that enable children to read for pleasure and for learning. This is done through a publishing model that makes these texts available, cost-effectively, as needed, by teachers, librarians and caregivers. Methods: Internal reports, external evaluations, two interviews with the initiative's co-ordinator and a review of selected texts on the ASb website provided data for analysis. Results: The analysis enabled reflection on the challenges faced and the successes achieved, identification of factors that have enabled many of the challenges to be addressed and finally consideration of what the initiative offers as a model for supporting literacy development in local languages. Conclusion: While the paper tells a story that includes elements of a cautionary tale, it is primarily a story that offers inspiration and guidance to other organisations already involved in, or wishing to embark on, the important project of providing texts for young readers in a wide range of languages.

This paper aims to sketch a framework for comparing the efficiency of printed and digital textbooks. Considering the fact that digital textbooks are a relatively new phenomenon, they lack both practical experiences with their use, and research on their efficiency - which is why all results will only be of a preliminary nature. This is also why our paper will focus on an initial definition of not only the theoretical framework for analysing the nature of digital media, but also for analysing printed and digital textbooks. The broadest theoretical framework consists of Lev Vygotsky's theory on the character of culturally-psychological tools and their influence on the functional organisation of the brain and of Marshall McLuhan's theory of media, concerning the general fact of the medium (and not its content). The theoretical analysis shows that media (printed and digital) have significant impacts on the functional organisation of the brain, which is based on the brain's neuroplasticity. The analysis of digital media shows that they possess a set of specific features that, despite all the advantages they have, carry important risks for the organisation and functioning of the brain and for the process of learning. The production of digital textbooks also faces a significant number of challenges that the current production has not yet solved. Empirical research on the process of digital reading and understanding what has been read, indicate all the problems that still exist in digital textbook creation.

Objective - To investigate the citation performance of open access (OA) and toll access (TA) papers published in author-pays open access journals. Design - Longitudinal citation analysis. Setting - Publications in Springer and Elsevier's author-pays open access journals. Subjects - 633 journals published using the author-pays model. This model encompasses both journals where the article processing charge (APC) is required and journals in which authors can request open access and voluntarily pay APCs for accepted manuscripts. Methods - The authors identified APC funded journals (journals funded by mandatory author processing charges as well as those where authors voluntarily paid a fee in order to have their articles openly accessible) from both Springer and Elsevier, and analyzed papers published in these journals from 2007 to 2011. The authors excluded journals that adopted the APC model later than 2007. To identify Springer titles, the authors created a search strategy to identify open access articles in SpringerLink. A total of 576 journals were identified and double checked in the Sherpa- Romeo database (a database of copyright and open access self-archiving policies of academic In order to identify the Elsevier APC funded journals, the authors referred to "Open Access Journal Directory: A-Z," which contained 35 OA journals (p. 584). Once the authors consulted "Sponsored articles" issued by Elsevier and verified titles in Sherpa-Romeo, they identified 57 journals that fit the "authorpays" model. The bibliographic information was downloaded and OA articles were separated from TA articles. The authors confirmed that all journals were indeed OA publications by downloading the full-text from off-campus locations; they also verified that the journals were using the APC model by visiting each journal's website. Because of the large number of subject areas of the identified journals, the researchers decided to classify the journals into four broader categories: Health Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. To calculate the impact of OA papers, citation per paper (CPP) was calculated for each subject area. Impact values were calculated on an annual basis as well. The researchers calculated the citation advantage of OA articles as the "difference between the open access and toll access impacts in terms of a percentage of the latter" (p. 585). Main Results - The authors categorized their findings according to three themes: the growth of APC funded OA papers, the number of OA papers by discipline, and citation advantage of OA vs. TA in general and by subject area. Together, Springer and Elsevier published 18,654 OA papers in the APC journals; this number represents 4.7% of the 396,760 papers published between 2007 and 2011. While the number of OA and TA papers has been growing annually, the number of OA papers has been growing more rapidly compared to the TA papers. In terms of subject areas, Life Sciences had the largest number of OA and TA papers (184,315), followed by Health Sciences (149,341), Natural Sciences (121,274), and Social Sciences and Humanities (42,824). Natural Sciences had the most OA papers (5.7%) in terms of the number of papers in this subject area being OA papers, followed by Social Sciences and Humanities (5.2%), Health Sciences (4.6%) and Life Sciences (3.6%). Overall, the researchers found that the impact values of OA papers were larger than those of the TA papers for each year examined. In considering subject areas, in all disciplines except Life Sciences, the most highly cited paper in the field is an OA paper. In Life Sciences, the most highly cited TA paper had 2,215 citations, compared to the OA paper, which had 1,501 citations. Even though the TA paper had more citations, overall, the OA papers had a higher impact (citation advantage). In Health Sciences, the most highly cited OA paper received 1,501 citations, which is 1.2 times the most highly cited TA paper, with 1,252 citations. The citation advantage for the OA group is 33.29% higher than the TA group. In Natural Sciences, the number of citations from the highest cited OA paper is 1,736, or 2.52 times higher than the most highly cited TA paper. The OA papers in this discipline had a 35.95% citation advantage. In Social Sciences and Humanities, the most highly cited OA paper had 681 citations, compared to the TA paper, with 432 citations. For this subject area, the citation impact of the OA paper is 3.14% higher than the TA paper. Conclusions - In sum, the number of article processing charge funded open access papers has grown tremendously in recent years. Furthermore, open access papers have a citation advantage over toll access papers, both annually and across disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-books have been introduced to educational institutions in many countries. The use of e-books in traditional classrooms enables the recording of learning logs. Recently, researchers have begun to carry out learning analytics on the learning logs of e-books. However, there has been limited attention devoted to understanding the types of learning strategies that students employ when they read e-books. In this paper, using e-book learning logs, we examine the learning strategies that students employed when reading e-books. In this paper, we will introduce how to identify learning strategies from e-book learning logs with two case studies. One is "Identifying Learning Strategies Using Clustering" and the other is "Examining Learning Strategies Using Sequential Analysis."

The following study utilizes an ePortfolio platform to examine desirable employment competencies during an introductory level professional development course for cooperative education students at a large, research intensive institution. The researchers created course activities allowing students to demonstrate essential learning outcomes derived from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) LEAP Report (2008). While it is recognized that the student learning outcomes identified in the LEAP Report are intended to be examined through summative analysis at the conclusion of one's undergraduate experience, this study proposes that these learning outcomes can be promoted early during students' undergraduate careers through formative feedback in an ePortfolio development process. The results of this study suggest that ePortfolios could be used as a medium to encourage student confidence with respect to employment preparation. Further research should be conducted to longitudinally evaluate students' understanding and ability to demonstrate the LEAP Report's essential learning outcomes within the context of a cooperative education curriculum. [Paper presented at the World Association for Cooperative and Work-Integrated Education, International Research Symposium on Cooperative and Work-Integrated Education, (2nd, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 2016).]

This article presents Oregon State University's experience launching an innovative Open Textbook initiative in spring 2014. The partners, Open Oregon State and the Oregon State University Libraries and Press, aimed to reduce the cost of course materials for students while ensuring the content created was peer-reviewed and employed multimedia capabilities. This initiative sought to showcase existing and emerging disciplinary strengths of the University thus creating unique course content that could be shared globally. This article briefly describes the U.S. landscape for open textbook creation and adoption. It demonstrates how this unique partnership has developed, covering barriers and benefits, and what the future could hold for new projects. [This paper was presented at the "Open Education Consortium Global Conference," Krakow, Poland, April 12-14, 2016.]

The emergent COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019 has affected the whole world in a short time. Therefore, schools have been closed worldwide, and online learning opportunities have been exploited. Although lessons are taught online, problems have been experienced about measuring and evaluating lessons. This quasi-experimental study with a quantitative method was conducted to offer suggestions for the measurement problems. The present study examined the relationship between the measures of academic achievement obtained through different approaches from the students studying at a university. According to the results, the achievement points earned by the students through weekly blogs had a high level of correlation with the traditional final scores. However, the scores of the practices such as online exams and term papers were not an acceptable fit with the final exams. Therefore, the scores of online missions extended over time can be claimed to be the approach that best substitutes the final exams.

Modern disciplinary research is partly constructed, and limited, by the medium of paper. It is possible to bypass the restraints imposed by paper in modern Web publication. Still, the research sector keeps publishing as if the qualities of hard copy should be forced on the Web. This article discusses the role of paper in the construction of the boundaries of disciplines and the challenges from digital Web-based publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes how SHARE (Sharing Hosted Autonomous Research Environments) satisfies the criteria of the Elsevier 2011 Executable Paper Grand Challenge. This challenge aims at disseminating the use of systems that provide reviewers and fellow scientists a convenient way to reproduce computational results of research papers. This can involve among others the calculation of a number, the plotting of a diagram, the automatic proof of a theorem or the interactive transformation of various inputs into a complex output document. Besides reproducing the literate results, readers of an executable paper should also be able to explore the result space by entering different input parameters than the ones reported in the original text. SHARE is a web portal that enables academics to create, share, and access remote virtual machines that can be cited from research papers. By deploying in SHARE a copy of the required operating system as well as all the relevant software and data, authors can make a conventional paper fully reproducible and interactive. Shared virtual machines can also contain the original paper text— when desirable even with embedded computations. This paper shows the concrete potential of SHARE-based articles by means of an example virtual machine that is based on a conventional research article published by Elsevier recently. More generally, it demonstrates how SHARE has supported the publication workflow of a journal special issue and various workshop proceedings. Finally, it clarifies how the SHARE architecture supports among others the Elsevier challenge''s licensing and scalability requirements without domain specific restrictions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: For centuries, the research paper have been the main vehicle for scientific progress. From the paper, readers in the scientific community are expected to extract all the relevant information necessary to reproduce and validate the results presented by the paper''s authors. However, the increased use of computer software in science makes reproducing scientific results increasingly difficult. The research paper in its current state is no longer sufficient to fully reproduce, validate, or review a paper''s experimental results and conclusions. This impedes scientific progress. To remedy these concerns, we introduce PaperMâché, a new system for creating dynamic, executable research papers. The key novelty of PaperMâché is its use of virtual machines, which lets readers and reviewers easily view and interact with a paper, and reproduce key experimental results. For authors, the Paper Mâché workbench provides an easy-touse interface to build an executable paper. By transforming the static research paper into a dynamic and interactive entity, Paper Mâché brings the presentation of scientific results into the 21st century. We believe that Paper Mâché will become indispensable to the scientific process, and increase the visibility of key findings among members and non-members of the scientific community. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: As publishers establish a greater online presence as well as infrastructure to support the distribution of more varied information, the idea of an executable paper that enables greater interaction has developed. An executable paper provides more information for computational experiments and results than the text, tables, and figures of standard papers. Executable papers can bundle computational content that allow readers and reviewers to interact, validate, and explore experiments. By including such content, authors facilitate future discoveries by lowering the barrier to reproducing and extending results. We present an infrastructure for creating, disseminating, and maintaining executable papers. Our approach is rooted in provenance, the documentation of exactly how data, experiments, and results were generated. We seek to improve the experience for everyone involved in the life cycle of an executable paper. The automated capture of provenance information allows authors to easily integrate and update results into papers as they write, and also helps reviewers better evaluate approaches by enabling them to explore experimental results by varying parameters or data. With a provenance-based system, readers are able to examine exactly how a result was developed to better understand and extend published findings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study focuses on how the use of digital portfolios in teacher education can support teacher candidates to shift their understanding of assessment as they form their assessment identity. The study was in the context of changing curriculum and assessment practices promoted in British Columbia. We draw on data from a cohort of teacher candidates in the first term of a 16-month post-degree teacher education program, where they created a digital portfolio across multiple courses as part of their final assessment to be used in an exit interview with instructors and teaching professionals from the field. Narratives of teacher candidates' experiences were collected to shed light on their changing understanding of assessment for learning practices and their emerging teacher identity as assessors promoted by the digital portfolio process. Significance of using digital portfolios to support their process of becoming teachers is focused in the conclusion of the paper.

Textbooks have always played an important role in mathematics education. Textbook tasks are widely used by students, so it is important to examine their requirements in order to identify the opportunities students have to learn mathematics. Publishers now produce both printed and digital versions of textbooks. While the requirements of the tasks in printed textbooks have been well examined all over the world, the tasks in digital textbooks are yet to be analysed and systematically developed. The research presented in this paper encompasses the analysis and comparison of the tasks in the printed and digital versions of the same mathematics textbook set. The examined set covers Grades 1 to 4 of primary education in Croatia. The aim was to find what task requirements are predominant in the printed and the digital textbooks, and to determine whether these textbook versions provide a wide variety of task features. In addition, the features and capacities typical of digital tasks, such as interactivity and dynamics, are examined. These task features are particularly important in geometry education for comprehending visual and dynamic geometrical objects and relations. The results show that both the printed and the digital textbook tasks have traditional requirements, with an emphasis on closed answer forms. Moreover, the new opportunities afforded by digital tasks are not realised. These findings reveal the potential of digital tasks as a new area to be explored and developed.

In this paper, we present the development, implementation, and lessons learned during the 2-year pilot integration of an ePortfolio across a rehabilitation sciences (RS) curriculum within a publicly funded state university. We consider the educational environment and discuss decision points during various stages of the project. Four key aspects of project development and implementation are highlighted, including a contextual analysis of goals, partnerships, curricular positioning, and foundational tools. Contextual analysis of goals includes the process of creating a project vision that aligns with the student population served, programmatic goals, and the guiding frameworks inherent to ePortfolios as a high impact practice. An exploration of partnerships describes the role of diverse stakeholders, within and outside the program, and their contribution to ongoing project development and success. Curricular positioning considers which courses are utilized for the introduction, conclusion, and touch points of the project, and how success is measured in each. A discussion of foundational tools identifies the student-facing resources required to facilitate a clear, relevant, and sustainable ePortfolio across the curriculum. When possible, we highlight student voices, including reflections on motivation, adaptive skill building, and engagement with the ePortfolio process. Ongoing challenges, preliminary outcomes, and next steps are also outlined.

ePortfolios, initially viewed as a technology in 1990s, gathered momentum a decade later and began to position themselves as a powerful pedagogy in education. Experience over three years with five groups of intermediate-level English as a second language learners (before and during the pandemic) has cemented the notion that the core value of an ePortfolio is predicated on the ability of the students to become aware of their learning history. A blended course (with a capstone project in the fifth and final module) developed for a learning center in Canada helped make visible student engagement during peer-feedback interactions which led to critical reflection throughout the ePortfolio development process. In this paper, I (a language instructor) share direct practical experience implementing ePortfolios as a capstone project in five iterations of a blended course with five stand-along modules. I also describe the evidence-based theoretical constructs undergirding the development of the projects and the interconnectedness with ePortfolio learning episodes in the designing, developing, and evaluating stages of the capstone project. As a robust field of inquiry and a digital transformation pedagogy, ePortfolio projects are part of a growing movement in the field of education. They are a substrate for a variety of learning behaviours among students, demonstrate alignment with some of the learning theories, and capacitate instructor and student philosophical positioning.

This paper reports on a blended learning approach for public speaking in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The researcher implemented the course design through reduced weekly face-to-face class sessions and online student interaction using a speech video-based blog. Using a survey conducted at the end of the semester, multiple comments provided for online peer feedback, structured outlines submitted to Turnitin, and instructor's weekly observation of the students' presence and performance online, the researcher collected data about the students' progressive learning of the public speaking skills, peer feedback, and the students' assessment of each aspect pertaining to the blended learning experience. The qualitative analysis revealed the effectiveness of online peer feedback in public speaking skills development as demonstrated by students' attainment of course intended learning outcomes, as well as an overall positive student perception towards the blended learning model, with minor reservation of less confident students at the onset of the online implementation phase.

The purpose of this causal-comparative mixed-method study was to investigate and compare Saudi EFL female students' perspectives utilizing e-dictionaries to increase vocabulary learning in the Language Department (ELD) and those in the Preparatory Year Program (PYP) at Taibah University. The participants comprised (143) fourth-year students, while (152) PYP students volunteered in the study. The data was gathered using a 3-point Likert scale and an open-ended question that obtained 38 replies. The results of the descriptive statistics indicated that EFL female students in the ELD and PYP agreed on the advantages of e-dictionaries in terms of speed, time savings, and accurately translating words from L2 to L1 and vice versa. At the same time, EFL female PYP students agreed more on the benefits of using e-dictionaries to verify vocabulary meaning, comprehension, alternatives, extensive definitions and examples, and acquiring accurate pronunciation. On the contrary, EFL female students in the ELD were more enthusiastic about the benefits of e-dictionaries in demonstrating the grammatical usage of new vocabulary and accelerating vocabulary recall and retention. The results of the Mann-Whitney U test revealed that EFL female PYP students outperformed EFL female ELD students. The findings of the open-ended question showed that EFL students preferred "Google translation" and "Mobile Apps" more than "Paper dictionaries" as alternate strategies for vocabulary learning.

In response to Canada's growing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, educators in French immersion classrooms are increasingly responding with enhanced cross-linguistic initiatives, and dual language books are promising resources in the promotion of multilingualism (Zaidi, 2020; Zaidi & Dooley, 2021). This paper details a research project we completed in a 2019 classroom-based qualitative case study in a French immersion school experiencing an increasing enrollment of linguistically diverse students. The researchers sought to determine if "Storybooks Canada," a free digital platform with 40 dual language books in multiple languages, could help promote literacy engagement and strengthen home-school connections. Five teacher participants identified a range of features that make the platform a useful resource for promoting literacy engagement, text comprehension, learner autonomy, meaning-making, and instructional differentiation. These included (i) the multilingual features, (ii) the ability to project stories on a large screen, (iii) the audio component, (iv) the illustrations, and (v) the different levels of text difficulty. While teachers made almost exclusive use of the French language features of the site, for classroom purposes, they supported cross-linguistic uses of the platform in the home context, with a view of strengthening home-school connections.

Abstract: We present the Lab Wiki, an executable paper platform primarily designed but not limited to networking experiment-based research. The LabWiki leverages the current state of the art tools for the orchestration of experiments in the networking community and propose a new approach to execute and reproduce experiments. We demonstrate the usability of the LabWiki through an example at the boundary between network and high performance computing researches. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this paper is to study the development of Theory of Mind capacities in one individual's narrative writing from year 1 in elementary school through high school and onwards. To this end this longitudinal study focuses on evaluative expressions while drawing on the Appraisal theoretical frame work, developed by Martin (2000) and Martin and White (2005). Both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied. The findings illustrate clear developmental trends in the evaluative choices regarding Appraisal categories, as well as the amount and types of evaluations, and the linguistic realizations of the evaluations in the texts. The findings also display how the individual's Theory of Mind capacities are inextricably linked to the level of advancement in linguistic repertoire and an increased complexity and sophistication in the organization of narrative structure. The paper concludes with a discussion of some pedagogical implications of the study.

This paper critiques the rise and impact of the open education movement, focusing in particular on Higher Education. It considers the impact of adopting more open practices on learning, teaching and research. In terms of the impact on learning it describes three aspects: Open Educational Resources, e-textbooks and Massive Open Online Courses. In terms of the impact on teaching it describes three frameworks which can guide the design process: the 7Cs of Learning Design framework, the SAMR model and the ICAP framework. Finally, it considers the impact on research. The paper concludes by considering the barriers and enablers associated with adopting more open practices.

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.

In this paper, the author proposes a conceptual model with reference to the usage of Twitter as a language tool to enhance the learning of ESL/EFL. Due to the advancements in the technology and social media applications, teaching and learning of ESL/EFL have gone beyond the physical boundaries. This paper discusses the importance of microblog application-Twitter in ESL/EFL learning. The readers will find interesting ways of utilizing Twitter and its various features such as tweets, re-tweets, poll, etc for improving ESL/EFL scenarios. It will also be revealed that the ESL/EFL learning parameters derived from social network indicators -- degree, in-degree, centrality, density, and degree centralization play a critical role in evaluating the ESL/EFL learning. The participation level based on the social network analysis will affirm the improvement in the ESL/EFL learning. Finally, further research insights into the usage of the conceptual model in various settings are described.

Amazon's Kindle is one of many e-book readers currently available to the public. These e-book readers implement an electrophoretic display or e-paper technology which may have ramifications for libraries and publishing. Due to its low energy consumption, low heat production, and thin and portable form factor, e-paper stands to revolutionize how we access and consume information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore how a portfolio approach to teaching and learning can help the educator incorporate unique forms of reflective practice into his or her daily work. By being able to express ideas more clearly to himself, the educator can better promote the relational construction of knowledge in his educational communities. This paper, as part of a larger body of research asks, how can a portfolio approach to teaching and learning help the educator develop unique forms of reflective practice that will help him express his ideas more clearly, first to himself and then secondly to his educational communities? Research methodology is primarily participatory action research and includes an autoethnographic review of the author's work, reviews, interviews, observations, and focus groups with student teachers and professional teachers in the United Arab Emirates. The research concludes that in consideration of McLuhan's (1964) notion that the "medium is the message," the interactions that arise through the use of new media tools can lead us to relational, co-constructed ideas that are not those simply passed on from other texts. By making our thinking visible, the portfolio approach allows the educator to capture the contextual relationship between the author, the audience or community, and the knowledge being created.

This paper describes the functionality, scalability, and cost of implementing and maintaining a suite of open source technologies, which have supported hundreds of thousands of learners in the past year, on an information technology infrastructure budget of less than US$10,000 per year. In addition, it reviews pedagogical opportunities offered by a fully open digital learning ecosystem, as well as benefits for learners and educators alike. The Open Education Resource universitas (OERu) is an international consortium made up of 36 publicly funded institutions and the OER Foundation. The OERu currently offers first-year postsecondary courses through OER-based micro-courses with pathways to gain stackable micro-credentials, convertible to academic credit toward recognised university qualifications. The OERu, adhering to open principles (Wiley, 2014b), has created an open source Next Generation Digital Learning Ecosystem (NGDLE) to meet the needs of learners, consortium partners, and OERu collaborators. The NGDLE--a distributed, loosely coupled component model, consisting entirely of free and open source software (FOSS)--is a global computing infrastructure created to reach learners wherever they are. All OERu services are hosted on commodity FOSS infrastructure, conferring significant advantages and creating opportunities for institutions adopting any of these services to enhance education opportunities at minimal cost. The NGDLE can also increase technological autonomy and resilience while providing exceptional learning opportunities and agency for learners and educators alike.

While many LIS publications have focused on Wikipedia, no LIS study has used intersectional class analysis to consider the site as a transmitter and reproducer of hegemonic ideology. Using both Antonio Gramsci and LIS theorist Michael Harris as starting points, this paper argues that Wikipedia is predicated on a philosophy of pluralism that serves as a transmitter of hegemonic ideology, thereby upholding the oppressive status quo. To counter this issue, the paper encourages librarians to embrace "critical editing"--an approach to Wikipedia editing built around an awareness of power, a penchant for critical literacy, a focus on desocialization, and an emphasis on self-education. The paper concludes with an example of critical editing praxis (dubbed the "Library Repository-to-Wikipedia" method) that research librarians and information professionals can replicate to counteract aspects of Wikipedia that inherently support the status quo and, thus, hegemonic ideology.

The Linked Data initiative is considered as one of the most effective alternatives for creating global shared information spaces, it has become an interesting approach for discovering and enriching open educational resources data, as well as achieving semantic interoperability and re-use between multiple OER repositories. The notion of Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing, sharing and interconnecting data in RDF format. Educational repositories managers are, in fact, realizing the potential of using Linked Data for describing, discovering, linking and publishing educational data on the Web. This work shows a data architecture based on semantic web technologies that support the inclusion of open educational materials in massive online courses. The authors focus on a type of openness: open of contents as regards alteration i.e. freedom to reuse the material, to combine it with other materials, to adapt, and to share it further under an open license. [This paper was presented at the OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Conference (Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 23-25, 2014).]

Introduction: This investigation opens with a description of why studying non-traditional, oral documents can inform efforts to extend traditional library and information science practices, of description, storage, and retrieval, to artefacts made available through emerging media. Method: This study extends the method used to identify a document, by determining whether an artefact incorporates one or more properties of documents, to identify how a document can incorporate a dialogue. Analysis: One type of oral document, a managerial decree, a video blog, and an oral history, made up each of three cases. Analysis of one property that each document incorporates facilitates an explication of how dialogue contributes to evidence of that property emerges. Results are also analysed across cases. Results: Analysis reveals that dialogue contributes to a property of document in each of the three cases examined. Results lead to discussions regarding the extension of library and information science practices to information that becomes available in non-traditional media; formal and informal information sources; the information life cycle; oral information and context; and, the ideas of oral information literacy and tertiary orality. Conclusions: The author recommends future research to (1) determine whether the way in which dialogue occurs in the data analysed proves exemplary across other instances of oral information provision; (2) increase understanding of oral information and documents that become available in emerging formats; and (3) determine how to extend library and information science practices to that information. [This paper was published as part of: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, 19-22 August, 2013.]

Blended learning (BL) is regarded as an effective strategy for combining traditional face-to-face classroom activities with various types of online learning tools (e.g., e-books). An effective feature of e-books is the ability to use digital notes. When e-books are used in BL, the strategic adoption of note-taking provides benefits that influence the learners' progress for self-regulated learning (SRL) and course achievements. However, learners tend to be unsure about how note-taking is performed using online learning materials and lack knowledge of effective strategies for SRL. Furthermore, few studies have investigated blended learners' sequential patterns of e-book note-taking for SRL. Thus, in this paper, an exploratory study was conducted in an undergraduate course that implemented the BL design. The learning task for the blended learners in the present study was to study the learning material using BookRoll, an e-book system, during in-class and out-of-class learning sessions. Lag sequential analysis of the e-book learning behavior data was conducted to identify the blended learners' sequential behaviors of e-book note-taking for the cognitive strategy use of SRL. Moreover, the difference between higher- and lower-achievement blended learners in terms of their sequential behaviors of e-book note-taking for SRL was revealed. This study can help educators provide evidence-based educational feedback to learners regarding the identified sequential patterns of e-book note-taking that can be applied as effective strategies for promoting the cognitive strategy use of SRL and improvement of course achievement in BL.

This paper focuses on an e-portfolio pilot initiative at the Faculty of Education at a South African university and aims to determine whether the theoretical underpinning and expectations of an e-portfolio aligns with the current practices and attributes of students' training during school practicum as teachers at a South African university. In the South African context, e-portfolios are increasingly being considered in teacher training programmes, to enable student teachers to reflect in, on and about practice in a structured way, whereby they demonstrate their growth and development as professionals. A self-selected sample of 11 student teachers placed in different urban and rural school contexts were provided with tablets and data bundles. Equipped with varying digital skills, daily reflections and regular online interaction with peers and project members was expected. Data gathering was done by means of semi-structured interviews which were analysed by means of framework analysis. Results suggest that student teachers still require support in reflective writing; that the social and collaborative aspects of e-portfolio use within the given context is underdeveloped, and that the level of digital skills of students will impact the potential success of the integration of e-portfolios as reflective tools. This paper contributes to the growing interest in South African literature regarding the use of e-portfolios for teacher training, by highlighting contextual and dispositional variables as essential considerations before adopting such a learning approach as part of teacher training.

This paper follows recent scholarship in youth studies in suggesting that young people's aspirations for the future are deeply enmeshed within a social, cultural, and economic articulation of what constitutes a "good" life that an individual ought to orient toward. It uses Ahmed's (2014) notion of "wilfulness" to consider how young people anticipate, plan for, and orient toward the future as a real and imagined space that is embedded within their relationship to everyday social, cultural, and economic practices. To do this, I draw upon digital blog and interview narratives collected across a seventeen-month period from three young women in their final year of secondary school in Victoria, Australia. These narratives take up the notion of "willed" space(s) to consider the capacities, energies, and projects that these young women tell about the future over time. Throughout, this paper argues that a willful lens is particularly productive for its capacity to move beyond an understanding of educational participation as a fixed site for realising aspirations to one that highlights multiple processes of becoming within novel spaces of identification and belonging.

The 21st century faculty member is expected to teach, engage the learner, absorb new discoveries and rely on different knowledge in the execution of duties. This calls for up-to-date skills for instruction, assessment, and identification of opportunities by faculty members to promote learning. This paper investigates the prospects of promoting training programs for faculty members in Saudi universities by presenting a comparison of qualitative data between the efforts of two major American universities, the American University and Virginia Tech University, and the efforts of King Saud University. This comparison tries to display how these universities endeavor to meet the current teaching and learning needs. The results are not surprising; the two American universities are coming up with skills training programs that are deemed to be appropriate, including: conferences and workshops, faculty member orientations, consulting, instructional support, online training, discussion forums, family-led discussions, junior faculty training, and summer training programs. They appear to have successfully instituted the 21st century focused skills training programs. Consequently, faculty members from these universities are able to provide students with the knowledge needed to navigate the current challenges. In contrast, King Saud University may have not instituted the programs effectively. Unfortunately, it has not prioritized 21st century professional skill training programs that would make faculty members fit well in the changed learning environments. However, there is a chance for fully implementing new programs that suit the current challenges and needs for faculty members in Saudi universities. Therefore, the paper provides some recommendations for trainers as well as program developers on the light of these results.

The paper focuses on the cultural content of online electronic materials developed primarily by Czech in-service teachers of mathematics for smartboards. The author presents an analysis of these materials with a focus on the cultural settings of word problems they contain. The paper builds on a poster presented on ECEL 2015 conference and a paper presented on ECEL 2016 conference. The question the author asks is how innovative electronic materials are as far as their cultural, non-mathematical content is concerned. Are these materials a mere conversion of problems from traditional hardcopy textbooks or have its authors gone further, introducing new motives, images and realities? Do they use the potential of the online environment that allows easy updates (unlike hardcopy textbooks that are used without any change for years, even decades)? The author builds on her research in the area of non-mathematical content of mathematics textbooks (Moraová, 2013) and of problems posed by teacher trainees (Moraová, 2014). The here presented research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches. The author analyses one hundred and seventeen online activities from the website www.veskole.cz. Word problems are classified according to their cultural content and the most frequent images are described and commented upon. The findings of this study are of interest to in-service mathematics teachers planning to develop an online teaching unit, mathematics educators but also policy makers as not much attention is paid to the cultural contents of mathematics teaching materials.

This paper addresses the teaching of emerging technologies to design students, using "printed electronics" as an example as it recently became viable to mass manufacture and is ready for use in designs. Printed electronics is introduced as a disruptive technology, and approaches employed in knowledge transfer to industrial/product designers is reviewed. An overview of the technology is provided; the printing processes; material properties; a comparison with conventional electronics; and product examples are identified. Two case studies illustrate approaches for knowledge transfer to student designers. The assessment criteria and design outcomes from the case study projects are reviewed and future/new approaches proposed. The paper concludes that there is a need to develop a thorough knowledge transfer strategy for printed electronics to designers, informed by case studies and extending beyond simply showing examples of existing technology. This is necessary for future proofing both in technological advances and designing for the future.