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The article offers information on the mechanics on how to submit papers and training session proposal for the 2011 National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) Annual Meeting: Innovations in Assessment. It mentions that the meeting enables one to exchange ideas, results, and concerns with other members of the organization. It mentions guidelines in the submission of proposals such as presentations must be related to some aspect of measurement in education. General information on paper proposals, coordinated session proposals, and training session proposals are discussed.

The concept of learning ecologies emerged in a context of educational change. While the "learning ecologies" construct has offered a broad semantic space for characterizing innovative ways of learning, it is also true that its potential to promote innovative educational interventions may have been hindered by this same broadness. Based on this assumption, in this paper the authors carried out a systematic review of the literature on learning ecologies with the aim of analysing: (1) the varying definitions given to the concept, including the ontological perspective underlying the phenomena studied; (2) the methodological approaches adopted in studying the phenomenon; and (3) the applications of the research on this topic. Throughout this analysis, the authors attempt to describe the criticalities of the existing research, as well as the potential areas of development that align well with the theoretical/ontological issues, methodological approaches and educational applications. The authors selected and analysed 85 articles, which they then classified in a set of 20 categories defined by them on a theoretical basis. Moreover, in order to triangulate the manual coding, a bibliometric map was created showing the co‐citation activity of the 85 papers. The emerging picture showed significant variability in the ontological definitions and methodological approaches. In spite of this richness, few educational applications currently exist, particularly with regard to technology‐enhanced learning developments. Most research is observational, devoted to describing hybrid (digital and on‐site) learning activities that bridge the gap between the school and social spaces. Furthermore, many of the studies relate to the field of secondary education, with fewer studies exploring adult learning and higher education. The studies dealing with professional development relate mostly to teachers' continuing education. The authors conclude that the concept of learning ecologies could be used to address further experimental and design‐based research leading to research applications if there is proper alignment between the ontological, methodological and applicative dimensions. The main potential of this strategy lies in the possibility of supporting learners by raising their awareness of their own learning ecologies, thereby empowering them and encouraging them to engage in agentic practices. This empowerment could help maintain and build new and better learning opportunities, which every learning ecology can incorporate, amidst the chaotic abundance that characterizes the digital society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic is a huge challenge to education systems. Most governments around the world have temporarily closed schools, universities, and colleges. At the same time, teachers and students are encouraged to use the online and distance learning programs and platforms as an alternative. In the present study, we proposed a series of innovative solutions in Medical Molecular Biology education during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China, including a flipped classroom model, live streaming course, chat Apps, and scientific papers on COVID‐19 as additional learning material. Our results demonstrated that these innovations not only help teachers to maintain the teaching process as usual but also be useful for protecting students from psychological trauma. Our study indicates that online education with a well‐designed workflow for conducting provides an alternative approach for teachers to maintain quality education during the onset of the emerging crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers for the periodical "Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education" is presented.

The article announces that the "Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education" is currently seeking articles for specific issue on a theme "Qualitative and Case-Based Research in Innovative Education."

The article presents information on video-based learning research. The author looks at the use of learning videos on platforms such as the video-sharing website YouTube and terminals including desktops, phones, and tablets. The article also discusses massive online open courses (MOOCs), the growth of video-based learning studies, and the literature on video-based learning research.

This article introduces the articles in the June 2005 of the "Journal of Computer Assisted Learning," about wireless and mobile technologies in education. The issue features revised and elaborated versions of best papers presented at the two international conferences on mobile learning. The Second IEEE International Workshop in Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education was held at the National Central University in Chungli, Taiwan, in March 2004 with the theme of mobile support for learning communities. The Third European Conference on Mobile Learning was at Lake Bracciano, Italy, in July 2004, with the theme of learning anytime, everywhere. The special issue reveals the productive interaction between new ecologies of learning and wireless and mobile technology. Three of the papers focus on extending learning outside the classroom.

This paper analyzes the findings of an international survey questionnaire to which responses were received from over 500 members from different technical societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The survey is primarily intended to uncover members' perceptions of patent filing and research‐driven innovation. Our thesis statement is twofold. First, the introduction of basic intellectual property (IP) courses to university Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics curricula would teach students valuable basics of IP and associated issues, technology protection; and possibly stimulate novel/innovative R&D outcomes. Second, studying relevant active/lapsed/expired patent documents could provide stimulating input for ongoing academic research. After analyzing the survey results we conclude that IP coursework could be a catalyst for students and researchers to explore patent opportunities related to their specific interests. The resulting knowledge would further enable researchers to prepare more compelling funding applications. In our experience, IEEE conference publications are often closely aligned with inventions to solve pressing technical problems. Conference papers typically comprise of cutting‐edge research/industry findings, with a short time between paper submission and presentation. Furthermore, conference organizers choose themes representing the forefront of technologies that often lead to inventions. These could fuel patent developments, but academic research environments often provide little if any incentives for academic researchers to prepare and file patent applications. Indeed, the attainment of high impact journal publications remains the primary metric by which research activity is judged and future academic tenure achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the publication of research papers from the Asia-Pacific region concerning developments in distance education. It states that a survey of 695 papers published between 2000 and 2008 in five education journals found that 80 percent of the papers originated from the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, Australia and China, and that only a third of contributions to the "British Journal of Educational Technology" came from the Asia-Pacific region. It comments on the expansion of distance education in the Asia-Pacific and integration of information and communications technology in open and conventional schooling. It talks about reasons for rejected papers including questionable research methodologies and data analysis and a lack of coherence, persuasiveness and logic in arguments.

This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach combining digital education with disability theory to investigate disabled children's digital use practices for formal learning. Evidence suggests that children's lives have been transformed through engagement with digital technologies, eg, computers, laptops and mobile devices. Even so, empirical studies about disabled children's uses of technology remain limited, particularly studies that engage with disabled children's own views in context. In response, an exploratory, participatory research study was designed to gain up‐to‐date insights into how visually impaired children, as an illustrative case, experienced digital technologies for learning within the context of inclusive education policy. Disabled children and teachers were interviewed in mainstream schools in England; results were analysed using social practice theory to identify digital use practices characterised as digital learning and digital accessibility practices alongside children's experiences. Outcomes were mixed. Youngsters saw benefits to using digital technologies, particularly tablets, for learning. Nevertheless, digital accessibility practices were potentially stigmatising and carried an extra task load to overcome barriers that occurred when teachers had not developed inclusive digital pedagogy. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and calls for further research to guide schools to use digital technologies to support inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of grammar instruction in second or foreign language (L2) pedagogy has always been highly controversial and although there is currently consensus that such pedagogic intervention is beneficial, numerous questions remain as to how it should most propitiously be conducted. Different theoretical perspectives have resulted in a wide array of instructional options intended to enhance the effectiveness of grammar teaching, both with respect to ensuring fuller understanding of grammar rules and helping learners use these rules in communicative interaction. The paper provides a selective overview of such "new solutions" and argues that they have not really contributed much to solving the "old problems" of grammar instruction. Reasons for this state of affairs are considered and some suggestions for how the situation can be improved are offered. The Challenge: The last few decades have seen a number of theoretically and empirically driven innovations aimed at making the teaching of foreign language grammar more effective. Have those proposals succeeding in helping learners employ grammar structures successfully in communication? The papers addresses this question and points to the way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project, a 3-year longitudinal study of early career researchers ( ECRs), which sought to ascertain current and changing habits in scholarly communication. The study recruited 116 science and social science ECRs from seven countries who were subject to in-depth interviews, and this paper reports on findings regarding publishing and authorship practices and attitudes. A major objective was to determine whether ECRs are taking the myriad opportunities proffered by new digital innovations, developing within the context of open science, open access, and social media, to publish their research. The main finding is that these opportunities are generally not taken because ECRs are constrained by convention and the precarious employment environment they inhabit and know what is best for them, which is to publish (in high impact factor journals) or perish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Funding for educational innovations is increasingly scarce in academic medicine. While there is some funding for medical education research, this is often for discovery or application work, and there are few avenues for those with a heavy innovation focus to fund early work. Objective of the Innovation: The objective was to develop an intrapreneurial unit focused on medical education projects and scholarship. Development Process and Implementation: The GridlockED and TriagED games are educational or serious games that seek to teach health care learners about emergency medicine processes. Both games were cocreated with learners and brought to market in the past 3 years. All of the proceeds from the sales of these games have been accrued over time to create a new innovation fund. This fund seeks to support trainees and early career educators in their medical education projects. Outcomes: Sales for GridlockED began in March 2018 and the TriagED began in November 2019. In the first year, sales for GridlockED yielded a total of $9,534. After 18 months of sales, the fund has accrued a total of $14,530. The fund has helped finance the development of new games. Additionally, the fund awarded two internal $500 Kickstarter grants to assist with evaluating and improving two local education projects. The GridlockED and TriagED games have also spurred multiple academic opportunities for junior educators interested in this domain: five workshops, eight conference abstracts, two peer-reviewed papers, and two research protocols are being developed. Conclusions: The GridlockED and TriagED games represent a new academically oriented, intrapreneurial approach to medical education work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EDUCATE is a London‐based programme that supports the development of research‐informed educational technology (EdTech), allowing entrepreneurs and start‐ups to create their products and services, and simultaneously grow their companies in a more evidence‐informed manner. The programme partners businesses with researchers who mentor, guide and support this research journey, a key aspect of which is the evaluation of the company's EdTech product or service. However, conducting impact evaluations of technology in education is challenging, particularly for early stage technologies, as rapid cycles of innovation and change are part of their essence. Here, we present the pragmatic approach to evidence‐informed education technology design and impact evaluation, as developed and adopted by the EDUCATE programme. The research process is shaped by the core principles of evidence‐informed decision making detailed in the paper. The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it defines and details an academia‐industry‐education collaboration model centred on a research training programme. Second, it presents emerging impact results of the programme. Third, it provides clear reflections on the challenges encountered during the implementation of the model in the EdTech ecosystem of London, which should be addressed if we are to move towards evidence‐informed EdTech globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on educational technology. Educational technology research and study of change; Systemic change within a rural school system; Changes in the way people teach and learn.

Learning design is growing in importance but is not yet widely adopted by teachers. This paper describes the development of a scenario‐led learning design process, divided into two stages, which was implemented with over 500 teachers altogether from 15 European countries. Activity theory is used to explore the contradictions that arose when such changes were introduced into the established activity system of lesson planning. Data were collected through interviews and questionnaires from a small sample of participants including national coordinators (stage 1: n = 8; stage 2: n = 13) and teachers (stage 1: n = 13; stage 2: n = 23). These participants perceived that the scenario‐led learning design process, involving a wide range of stakeholders, was collaborative, supportive and innovative (compared to previous lesson planning practices). However, a number of contradictions were identifiable between: (1) the shift to collaborative learning design from teachers preparing their lessons alone; (2) the new tools and the existing rules of the national/regional education systems; (3) the time required to both understand and implement learning design, and the impact of competing demands. This paper discusses the challenges faced when attempting to scale‐up European school teachers' development of digital pedagogy. The structured (yet flexible) approach was welcomed and the tools promoted teacher reflection but, as commonly noted, the complexity and time‐constraints were major issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles which deals with issues and innovations in nursing education.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) is regarded as one of the contemporary technological innovations with rich educational potential. As a subset of IVR, spherical video‐based IVR (SV‐IVR) immerses users centrally in a human‐recorded real‐world environment, allowing them to explore the environment in any directions via mobile phones and cardboard goggles. We have proposed a pedagogical framework—Learner‐Immersed Virtual Interactive Expedition (LIVIE), which leverages SV‐IVR to integrate immersive and interactive virtual inquiry‐based fieldwork into learning and teaching of physical geography. Besides discussing the design of LIVIE, this paper reports on the quasi‐experimental study that we carried out to evaluate its pedagogical effectiveness. The research subjects were 566 students from upper, middle and lower academic‐category secondary schools in Hong Kong. The study showed that LIVIE had different degrees of positive effects on the high, moderate and low academic‐achieving subjects. Our work not only provides evidence for supporting wider adoption of LIVIE in geography education, but it also sheds light on how to design and implement the pedagogical use of SV‐IVR in school education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given growing systemic investment in the designing of new learning spaces, researching the relationships between physical space and learning and teaching processes is imperative. Researching innovative learning spaces is challenging, therefore the aim of this paper is to demonstrate a pedagogical characterization based on a three‐dimensional theoretical framework. The study presented here includes three schools in the process of implementing a constructivist pedagogical change involving gradual development of educational intiatives including the redesigning of learning spaces. We characterized learning environments by space, pedagogical practices and curricular potential and explored the relationships between space, active learning and the development of high‐order thinking skills (HOT). Characterization of teaching and learning processes was based on interviews with 12 teachers, 478 class observations and analysis of 307 learning tasks. The findings indicate a higher expression of active learning in the innovative learning spaces compared with the traditional spaces. Nevertheless, results demonstrated difficulties in designing constructivist learning tasks and developing HOT skills, with relatively low encouragement for problem solving skills and critical thinking. Learning tasks were characterized by low cognitive complexity. This study provides a new methodology for investigating teaching and learning processes in innovative learning spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an iterative design‐based research project to develop an online design tool (the Learning Designer) to support "teachers as designers." The aim is to evaluate the potential of the tool to develop and support a knowledge‐building teaching professional community. The Learning Designer was embedded and evaluated through international online "design challenge" events, and a series of MOOCs, providing both quantitative and qualitative data. Findings indicate that the Learning Designer enables an online community of teachers from across the K‐12, further and higher education sectors (~400 per day) to build and share their developing knowledge of learning design, and that this would be strengthened by further functionality to support collaboration and peer review of the learning designs created. The research shows how digital technology could bring about large‐scale improvements in teacher professional development of TEL. The paper concludes with users' priorities for new features to mobilise community knowledge via large‐scale professional development of teachers as innovative TEL designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The free-market is commonly presented by its supporters as the best environment for introducing innovations. This paper challenges the universality of this contention by arguing that free-market dynamics cannot provide the appropriate conditions for significant educational changes. By adopting the perspective of systems research, I claim that the degeneracy characterizing free-markets lodad educational systems with extreme resilience to changes. Based on Barabasi's network theory, I argue further that introducing change is extremely difficult due to the need to invest extensive effort in identifying specific sources of power (i.e., hubs) and removing them. Thus, this paper suggests that despite the prevalent image of public institutions as highly conservative and stagnant, it might be interesting to investigate their potential as sources of innovations that are no less radical than the alternatives proposed by free-market ideologues. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents various updates related to the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE). It expresses that the December 2007 issue of the "International Statistical Review" journal features articles on statistics education that focus the use of technology in instructional environments. It offers information on the ICM/IASE study conference that will be held on June 30-July 4, 20008 in Monterrey, México. It announces that the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education has launched the Variety in Statistics Assessment project in Great Britain.

Past and present research has provided evidence to support the claim that technologies for teaching and learning must be pedagogically sound. However, educational technologies are also part of a complex process involving the people in the implementation of the innovation. In this paper, I review existing research and explain what both of those claims entail for educational technology. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss the research agenda related to the need to provide evidence that technology innovations are successful in the implementation process. Implications of this three-part model as well as a discussion of the importance of technological pedagogical content knowledge conclude the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the Kyoto University Center for Information and Multimedia Studies, progress is being made with TIDE (Trans-Pacific Interactive Distance Education), a distance learning project which links Kyoto University and UCLA in real time through cooperation between the University of California at Los Angeles's Digital Innovation Center and NTT. In this paper the authors report on a distance learning system that takes advantage of the TIDE project. During the creation of their system, the information exchanged among the lecture participants is first classified into five categories, then the function classes necessary to exchange the various types of information between the classroom and remote locations are assembled into six classes. As a result, 30 functional elements are needed for the distance learning system. In the system reported on in this paper, the authors classify the functional elements into eight subsystems based on network bandwidth and various restrictions. The authors also report on the technology requirements for each subsystem, in addition to the system structure. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 88(3): 53–62, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20160 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Various innovations of oral health education media were used to bring an impact on oral health behavior and status among visually impaired children. This paper was aimed to systematically investigate which innovation brings the best impact of change. Methods: A systematic searching strategy in Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, EBSCO, SAGE, and Cochrane Library database was applied in this study, then followed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses guideline. Studies from the last 10 years that investigate the innovation of oral health education media for visually impaired children and its impact on change were included. Results: Of 653 studies identified, 10 were included in the data synthesis. Audio, Braille, audio‐tactile performance, verbal, tactile, or combinations were found to be utilized as the alternative media innovation of oral health education for visually impaired children. The combination of two or more media brings the best impacts of oral health behavior and oral health status among them. Conclusions: The combination of oral health education media may involve various senses of learning. Due to its impact on the improvement of oral health behavior and status among visually impaired children, this innovation should be chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemistry laboratories are expensive to setup and operate as well as it entails safety issues. However, as technologies develop and new technologies are being produced every day, an advance solution for physical Chemistry laboratories limitation is the use of virtual laboratories. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a virtual chemistry laboratory system that utilizes gesture computing technology to create an interactive and entertaining laboratory application for pupils. The system is software that works on PCs with the help of Leap motion controller, off-the-shelf gesture recognition hardware, to simulate a chemistry laboratory. The system provides number of experiments to perform along with tutorials and quizzes. A preliminary usability evaluation of the system shows the high level of interest from the pupils in using such a system and the positive feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United Kingdom, the audio-visual revolution has steadily gained converts in the nursing profession. Nurse tutor courses now contain information on the techniques of educational technology and schools of nursing increasingly own (or wish to own) many of the sophisticated electronic aids to teaching that abound. This is taking place at a time of hitherto inexperienced crisis and change. Funds have been or are being made available to buy audio-visual equipment. But its purchase and use relies on satisfying personal whim, prejudice or educational fashion, not on considerations of educational efficiency. In the rush of enthusiasm, the overwhelmed teacher (everywhere; the phenomenon is not confined to nursing) forgets to ask the searching, critical questions: 'Why should we use this aid?', 'How effective is it?', 'And, at what?'. Influential writers in this profession have repeatedly called for a more responsible attitude towards published research work of other fields. In an attempt to discover what is known about the answers to this group of questions, an eclectic look at media research is taken and the widespread dissatisfaction existing amongst international educational technologists is noted. The paper isolates out of the literature several causative factors responsible for the present state of affairs. Findings from the field of educational television are cited as representative of an aid which has had a considerable amount of time and research directed at it. The concluding part of the paper shows the decisions to be taken in using or not using educational media as being more complicated than might at first appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Industry 4.0 has inspired education to undergo a transformation and change its delivery lens. To adapt to the expectation of Industry 4.0, Education 4.0 has built a new interface for each stakeholder. The roles of these stakeholders have been remodelled, which in turn profoundly influences the way a new‐age learner learns. The seamless union of the vision of Industry 4.0 and Education 4.0 demands the establishment of a dais where each stakeholder will play out their assigned roles. The current study proposes a conceptual model of the holistic learning educational ecosystem. The study performs an extensive literature review of the current industry and educational set‐ups to evaluate the status quo. The analysis directs towards a new concept of Classroom 4.0, which will act as a bridge between Industry 4.0 and Education 4.0—hence devising a conceptual model of the holistic learning educational ecosystem. It will help create a borderless education environment which will be a reflection of the vision of Industry 4.0 and Education 4.0. Focusing on learning, development, self‐awareness and emotional stability, the paper suggests a way forward for the new generation. Current research will act as a bridge between global path‐breaking education research and implementation of in‐class teaching methods in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study investigating the use of e-readers in education, with particular focus given to the feasibility of incorporating diverse learning and instructional materials into e-reader learning. The process of file conversion and learning materials design, the time spent by instructors on design, and the principles of digitizing learning materials are examined, and the finding that it is difficult but possible to make a range of learning materials compatible with e-readers used in classrooms is explored.

Regarding the difficulties in the assessment of innovation and entrepreneurship teaching capability currently like biased qualitative assessment and less nonlinear quantitative assessment and insufficient assessment efficiency, an assessment model of innovation and entrepreneurship education targeted at local University students on the foundation of the Back Propagation (BP) neural network is designed. First, the contents of the questionnaire are carefully designed, on whose basis the assessment index system is built. Then, a BP neural network model is utilized for the purpose of comprehensively evaluating the collected data. Lastly, we carry out a demonstration study on innovation and entrepreneurship education, whose results reveal the students' professional knowledge and skills, participation in national competitions, and centralized entrepreneurship training camp play a key role and have a profound effect on innovation and entrepreneurship capability. The evaluation system is able to effectively assess the actual effects of innovation and entrepreneurship education, direct teachers' instructional activity, as well as motivate students to learn and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how pedagogical, cultural and institutional factors interact with technical knowledge in educational technology integration and how they relate to equitable and effective technology use in low‐resource settings. In the context of a one‐to‐one tablet initiative in rural Kenya, we explore how these factors constrain or support access to technology, instructor capacity, student engagement and student learning, as well as their implications for reducing educational and digital divides. We employ a mixed methods, such as a quasi‐experimental (prepost, nonequivalent control group) research design that draws on data from classroom observations, teacher interviews, student surveys and focus groups, and assessments of student academic performance to generate evidence on classroom practices and student learning in schools with access to tablets, while also highlighting core challenges to successful technology integration. Our findings contribute to the identification of prerequisites and supporting factors for successful educational technology integration, as well as policy levers and school‐based strategies that are likely to increase equitable access to quality learning experiences in schools in low‐resource contexts. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic A lack of funding, planning and infrastructure hinder information and communication technology (ICT) integration.Procurement of educational technology and infrastructure improvement efforts has reduced digital divides, but learning divides persist in implementation.Insufficient teacher technology expertise and professional development constrain teacher's effective use of educational technology in classrooms.What this paper adds We employ mixed methods—triangulating the student assessment data with data from student surveys and focus groups, teacher interviews and classroom observations—to identify how pedagogical, cultural and institutional factors interact with technical knowledge in ICT integration in ways that support or constrain student learning in low‐resource contexts.We find that more attention is needed for cultural factors that interact with pedagogical and technical skills to ensure that the classroom instructors' attention is equitability distributed in ways that discourage in‐class "tracking" and differential access to quality learning experiences, such as some teachers' disregard of "slow learners" in the classroom.In low‐resource contexts, providing even basic levels of infrastructure (eg, a consistent power source) and access to general technical knowledge requires more creative and concerted efforts from school leadership and instructors, such as the offer of tutorials and reading clubs outside of the class to expand access and improve the use of devices.Implications for practice and/or policy We find that device sharing can have positive effects on peer‐to‐peer learning, which suggests that policymakers in Kenya should weigh the benefits of achieving one‐to‐one device access against the potential advantages of alternative investments, such as expanding professional development on the integration and use of currently available devices.Increasing opportunities for peer‐to‐peer learning and exchange (among teachers and students) and building shared capacities for ICT integration can help reduce technical issues and lost instructional time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ‘visual narrative’ theoretically and practically, this paper explores issues of inclusive education, during a period of curriculum reform and renewal in Australia. In Australia, the middle years of schooling, Years 5 to 9, are well researched and known as a period when students disengage with learning and participation in schooling. Research in the middle years affirms the importance of engaging with ‘student voice’. In this special edition, we are aiming to highlight how the use of visual imagery can be a rich source of understanding, illustrating students’ self-knowledge of schooling. Methodologically we refer to our research approach as ‘visual narrative’. Other writers in this edition use the term ‘photo voice’. For researchers it is important to highlight the differing orientations that ‘visual narrative’ and ‘photo voice’ signify. The terms are not mutually exclusive but highlight differing research possibilities and emphasis. Our argument, through the use of visual narrative produced by middle years’ students, is that visual texts open out some innovative possibilities for understanding inclusive education and supporting new relationships with our research community. Such approaches are not new; however, in a field such as special education that purports to support marginalised groups, liberatory research methods are under-represented. This paper aims to open out these discussions and provide a way forwards for teachers and researchers interested in breaking apart why it is that inclusive education remains a never-ending struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the effects of new technology on teaching and learning by considering examples of studies carried out with five kinds of teaching in five contexts. The five teaching situations are direct instruction, adjunct instruction, facilitating the skills of learning, facilitating social skills and widening learners’ horizons. The five contexts are primary schools, secondary schools, higher education, special education and out of school. The aim of the paper is primarily to inform teachers about current work in these different areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile technologies offer the opportunity to embed learning in a natural environment. This paper describes the design of the MobileGame prototype, exploring the opportunities to support learning through an orientation game in a university setting. The paper first introduces the scenario and then describes the general architecture of the prototype. The main part of the paper focuses on the evaluation of design issues and the effects observed in two trials. Design issues include: Supporting work on the move poses difficult interface questions, the accuracy of current outdoor, and indoor positioning systems is still problematic and the game requires near real-time response time. The evaluation of the effects shows that features such as‘map-navigation’ and‘hunting and hiding’ lead to excitement and fun. The participants immerse into a mixed reality that augments both physical and social space. The game success is based on the motivating design of the game itself. The paper concludes with open issues for future research, especially with the need to thoroughly evaluate the learning benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students often enjoy learning in teams and developing teamwork skills, but criticise team assessment as unfair if there is equal reward for unequal contributions. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation in four subjects of the Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit (SPARK), a web–based template which aims to improve learning from team assessment tasks and make the assessment fairer for students. Students benefit because the web–based template improves confidentiality and the potential for accurate assessment of relative contributions. Academics benefit through the potential for improving student learning from teamwork tasks, and saving time by automating the process of calculating self and peer adjustments of assessment grades, especially attractive for large enrolments. Benefits accrue to the institution and wider academic community because the template suits a range of group assessment situations. Based on experiences gained over five years of developing, evaluating and implementing SPARK, this paper aims to illustrate the potential benefits of the template to potential users and more critically, to use what was learned from implementing the template across a range of subjects to alert others to key issues for evaluating and disseminating educational technology innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward a prototype process for the development of educational multimedia materials, which can help educational multimedia software developers produce more coherent and effective learning resources by making explicit the value/belief system on which the project is founded. The prototype is presented as an object and stimulus for debate and discussion, around the many issues it raises. The paper critically reviews some current models of educational multimedia software development with regard to the role of "values/beliefs" and discusses why there is a need for these factors to be taken into account. It particularly focuses on environmental issues and is more widely applicable to those subject areas which involve the teaching of "controversial issues". The basic process put forward involves three steps: 1) identifying and agreeing a prioritized list of the core values and beliefs on which the project is based 2) using these to inform the specification/design process 3) using them as part of the evaluation/quality control process. The process is illustrated using a small number of examples and the paper ends by looking forward to a full trial of the prototype and suggestions for further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stationary law and court cases currently leave fair use of copyrighted material poorly defined and fail to provide effective guidance for the use of others' work. Copyright legislation is undergoing significant change, accelerated by the evolution of computing and communication technologies. This paper reviews copyright issues, fair use guidelines, and applicable laws and statutes to help administrators and educators understand and comply with copyright regulations. The paper describes principles of copyright and ownership, the rights of copyright holders, and the conditions under which copyrighted material can be used by others. Recently introduced legislation, such as 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act, may significantly affect how educators can use copyrighted material in the future. The integration of computer and communication technology into education raises a number of intellectual property issues for dental schools. This paper provides some general guidelines regarding copyright issues in academic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been interest in the implications of learning by doing, and in particular in the possibility that learning by doing may be slower in less developed countries and in industries which use simpler technologies. This paper uses firm-level data from Ghana to estimate learning-by-doing effects and generates three main findings. First, the learning curve, though present, is flatter in Ghana than in developed countries. Second, any industry-wide spillovers are small and insignificant. Third, (contrary to the assumption of much theory) learning-by-doing effects are stronger at low levels of technology than at intermediate levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data from the first six‐months of an ongoing speculative design project in which youth and researchers co‐created a videogame club, and later an eSports team, in an urban youth centre in Montréal, Québec. It describes how process philosophy informed researchers' approach to speculative design, allowing youth and researchers to co‐compose a sense of value for the club and the potentials for what they could do together through the club. This speculative process is contrasted with structuralist approaches to design‐based research in education, which can overly or pre‐determine value and mechanisms of social change, with or without the collaboration of youth and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of a network of 10 special education needs schools over a span of 11 years that leveraged the opportunity offered by a government‐funded e‐learning pilot scheme initiative to further their efforts in providing the same educational opportunities to their students as those in mainstream schools. The trajectory of this network's evolution shows that its robustness lies in the joint leadership network among the schools, and the insight and agency that this leadership network exhibited in the intentional exploration and crafting of a social structure and mechanism to support innovative developments in technology and pedagogical innovation, which we refer to as sociotechnical co‐evolution. By adopting a sociotechnical system framework to analyse the changes at the landscape, regime and niches levels, we show that in fact landscape factors play a crucial role in shaping the innovation trajectory through its influence on the niches. Network leadership, within‐school leadership and organizational infrastructures evolve and play an important role in the co‐construction of the sociotechnical regimes needed to bring about deep and widespread changes in pedagogical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedagogical innovation involving smartphone technology may offer teachers the opportunity to create an environment of engaging learning in laboratories. In this paper, we outline how to use Socrative Student Response by Mastery Connect, a variation of a real‐time audience response system. We hypothesized that using this application as an audience response system can enhance learning and identify student knowledge gaps in chemistry laboratory classes. In order to explore the relationships among factors and the educational effectiveness of Socrative, data from a graduate‐level chemistry course students were investigated. Before and after laboratory classes, experimental subjects completed an audience response system quiz using Socrative application in their mobile devices. Students felt that the method enhanced their learning process whereas teachers reported that it improved academic performance and the relationships between teachers and students. Socrative can be considered as a powerful tool to dynamize and evaluate chemistry laboratory practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author discuses articles on educational technology research published within the issue.

The article introduces the thirty-fifth volume of the journal "The British Journal of Educational Technology." The journal is for trainers as well as for those working in academia. Most authors of research papers, published in the journal, are academics as they have more time to think and write. According to the author, there are potential authors who can provide valuable insights into use of technology in training, to contribute their writings to the journal. They may seek the assistance of from the journal's referees during their preparation or revision of paper for the journal.

This paper reviews the relationship between creativity and equitable thinking and the individual differences in personality, demographic, and experiential factors that influence both concepts as they affect each other. Given the nationwide push to increase equity in public schools, interventions beyond teaching about equity are becoming progressively more vital to school improvement. The work suggests that schools may be able to increase equitable thinking and, accordingly, community equity by employing creative thinking strategies in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senior Graduation Project highlights a significant milestone for undergraduate and graduate students in their journey of perusing their scientific degrees. It is considered a must-complete requirement in most colleges. No doubt that managing the educational tasks, such as selecting projects, creating rubrics, scheduling, submitting reports, resource managements, assessment, etc., involved in senior projects can be challenging for students and educators. In this paper, we present an innovative Graduation Project Management System (GPMS) to keep track of different senior project educational processes starting from selecting projects going through grading until assessment. GPMS is equipped with data analytic gadget to monitor students' pedagogical habits. This online system is based on open source technologies, namely, Java, Apache/Tomcat, WEKA, and MySql database management system (DBMS), and it is very flexible, adaptable, and configurable for most colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis investigates the efficiency of the Turnitin software as a formative writing tool. The inquiry is especially looking into undergraduate and postgraduate students' experiences while using Turnitin. The perceptions and experiences of students will be prioritized in the study with the purpose of determining ways to improve Turnitin from students' point of view. Turnitin obtains text matches or similarity index values of 3,173 assignments submitted on subjects uploaded between 2012 and 2014 by university students. We statistically analyzed the similarity index values or levels of plagiarism percentage between the first and the last assignments, using the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and we found that there was a significant improvement ( p = 0.002). Hence, our results demonstrated that using Turnitin as a formative writing tool, allows students to prepare an assignment in an academically acceptable way, during the second half of the semester, with less plagiarism. The results found in this study suggests an insignificant difference between the draft version and final version of the same assignment ( p = 0.192). Similarity index values are also different for different courses, such as writing based project subject and mathematics based engineering subject have different values ( p < 0.0001). We also observed that students seem to be able to fool Turnitin tool by uploading images of the assignments instead of the text. Nevertheless, the nature of the subject, individual talent, learning approach, time contribution, and the exclusion of consecutive word count may affect the plagiarism percentage. Our results also indicate that there is a substantial benefit in using Turnitin as an educational writing tool rather than a punitive tool, as the use of Turnitin, promotes student learning outcomes with significantly improved academic skills. Thus, this paper provides an insight into avoiding high levels of plagiarism by using Turnitin as a preemptive tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the data science and the summaries significance of Big Data and Learning Analytics in education. The widespread platform of making high-quality benefits that could be achieved by exhausting big data techniques in the field of education is considered. One principal architecture framework to support education research is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a set of digital artifacts related to simple examples of structural engineering are presented. The artifacts are real-time applications and visualizations of typical problems students from the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) schools are acquainted with. The real-time nature of the examples allow a high level of interaction between humans and the classic visualization of results, namely, bending and shear force diagrams, internal stresses distributions, and contour plots. These artifacts may provide in AEC a twofold educational target: (i) for users, to provide visual understanding in real time of typical problems that must be understood in classic lectures of structural engineering; (ii) for developers, to provide meaningful applications of applied digital fabrication using sensors, microcontrollers, and GUI's and their potential in the development of tools related to Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) among students of the AEC sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a significant gap in existing work within the field of educational technology-the failure to explain technology theoretically-and proposes an agenda for addressing this. While there are discussions of theory within educational technology research, these typically focus on learning. Technology itself is seldom considered, being treated instead as 'natural' or given. This is in marked contrast to other fields of study, in which robust theories of technology have been developed. The consequence of this is that technology is treated as if it will cause learning-and when it does not, there is no clear explanation of why. To advance this discussion, two traditions of work theorising technology are introduced-one positivistic, including work on affordance, and the other (largely unrepresented in educational technology) that provides a social account. An example of each is used to analyse a case study, so as to contrast the kind of claims that currently get made about technology with those that we could make. It is argued that adopting a social account of technology would enable richer, better-integrated claims to be made about technology use. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic Technology is a central concern of research in the field, but it is not clear how we should think about this term., While work in the field some decades ago tried to conceptualise technology, it is now treated as a taken-for-granted category., What this paper adds Systematic evidence is provided that we rely on a 'common sense' understanding of technology., The idea of technology is explicitly debated in other fields of study, and two of those traditions are reviewed here., An example is provided that illustrates that these other conceptions of technology can provide richer accounts of empirical work than those currently dominant in the field., Implications for practice and/or policy We cannot assume that technology will simply have 'effects' on people., Alternative accounts of technology provide richer explanations of technology use, and would benefit the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of a science e-journal initiative to publish undergraduate research and assesses student evaluations of this experience. Students in this (post-1992, non-research-intensive) institution overwhelmingly reported that research was a key feature of their course at the point of the e-journal introduction and that they were involved in research in a variety of ways (especially honours projects, lab work and fieldwork). Research-informed teaching from the student perspective involved two specific categories of pedagogic activities: things that students did and things that tutors did. Students largely understood research-informed teaching as an activity where tutors impart knowledge about their own and others' research (a research-led approach). Yet, what students wanted was a more active involvement in the research process (research-oriented/research-based). The e-journal initiative enabled some students to acquire this additional experience and without great cost so could be adopted elsewhere. There is some debate about equality of access to research opportunities in higher education, and an e-journal has the potential to be more widely accessible than, for example, research apprenticeships (especially if students can be involved as reviewers and as active contributors via Web 2.0 technologies). However, there is still an element of elitism about selection for the publication process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]