Search

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020, universities around the world have quickly adopted online teaching as an emergency measure. Informed by activity theory, the present qualitative case study aims to better understand the nature of the rapid institutional transition and its impact on academics' pedagogical experiences during this period. A multiple set of qualitative data was collected in a national university in South Korea that rapidly made the online transition, following government directives in February 2020. This article provides useful accounts of the changes that occurred in interconnected teaching activity systems at the university while adopting online teaching, highlighting the complex factors underpinning individual academics' experiences. The sudden shift in institutional teaching activities and conditions created a range of contradictions that were experienced as dilemmas by academics, the main subject of the activity systems. The results demonstrate that two groups of university faculty, separately identified as novice online teachers and expert online teachers, faced different dilemmas and challenges. An essential lesson learned from this analysis is the need for a more holistic, realistic, and sensitive approach to emergency teaching scenarios that may enable educational institutions to better respond to such emergencies in the future.

While much is discussed of the challenges that educators and their institutions have been facing during COVID-19, there is little reported about how students have been coping with the challenges. In this short piece, we present preliminary data on university students' perceptions of online learning and teaching during the pandemic. Our findings from a student course satisfaction survey, conducted in two universities during the 2020 summer term (June through August), reveal that students have been more resilient than is often assumed. In light of these findings as well as the reflections of authors in a previous issue of "Distance Education," we will discuss some important implications for distance education scholarship.

In the current higher education context, offering online programmes is seen as an effective means to recruit more international students. However, supporting online international students studying at a distance is not a simple task for both universities and tutors. The problem mainly stems from a lack of theoretical understanding of online international students and their learning experiences. The present article, therefore, aims to address the gap, by systematically, yet critically reviewing relevant academic narratives about online international students. Our review reveals four types of narratives presented in the literature, describing online international students in particular ways: unspecified others with a rapid increase in their numbers, specific others with deficits, specific others as pedagogical resources and active participants in international learning communities. We discuss the merits and the drawbacks of each type of narratives for online educators seeking pedagogical suggestions about supporting online international students.

Learner agency, often understood in terms of self-direction and negotiated engagement, is considered important in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Yet nurturing and supporting agency is resource-intensive and difficult. In this paper, we consider learner agency for online TVET—a setting where content delivery models can be experienced as stultifying. We document the design and evaluation of specific task designs using the method and principle of double-stimulation, where prompts help participants to reconceptualise problematic situations and break out of conflicting motives. We draw on data from a research-intervention with adult learners undertaking a facilities management diploma online, while working. We explore how, across nine online workshops, task designs engendered transformative agency: the ability to collaboratively diverge from instructional intent, question dilemmatic conditions, and propose and enact change. We claim (1) that specific double-stimulation tasks encouraged participants to engage in understanding institutional practice, exposing conflict, and enacting change; (2) that participants came to view their own problematic conditions as stimuli for resistance, criticism, and development; and (3) that online resources were crucial for highlighting evidence of failure and learners' potential roles in change. Our findings are of importance to help learners set and evaluate their own learning agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to discussion of theory application in higher education research. We examine 59 empirical research papers from specialist journals that use a particular theory: activity theory. We scrutinise stated reasons for choosing the theory, functions played by the theory, and how the theory is valorised. We find that the theory is usually chosen for its direct empirical applicability; used for abstraction, explanation and contextualisation; and valorised for apprehending complex situational dynamics. It is rarely chosen to challenge conceptualisation of the research object; used to establish investigative paradigms; or valorised in ways that implicate wider bodies of knowledge or potential theory development. We argue that higher education researchers should reconsider how their application of activity theory is interwoven with interpretative processes, how the theory might frame research design rather than simply data analysis, and how they account for the range of roles that the theory actually plays across research endeavours.

This paper uses an Activity Theory framework to evaluate the use of a novel, multi-screen, non-linear presentation tool. The Thunder tool allows presenters to manipulate and annotate multiple digital slides and to concurrently display a selection of juxtaposed resources across a wall-sized projection area. Conventional, single screen presentation systems have been frequently criticised in the literature. Yet very little work has investigated the use of multi-screen alternatives, particularly within authentic activity systems. We placed the Thunder tool into an established activity system of student presentations in University-level Architecture education and examined how that system was re-mediated by participants' use of the tool. Our instruments included in-room and video-based observations, questionnaire responses and transcribed interviews. We analyse how using Thunder in this setting re-mediated conventional activity structures in terms of interactivity, efficiency, cost, failure and serendipity. Drawing actions became prominently used to support design arguments, resulting in the "easel" screen becoming a site for struggle between students and tutors. Slide manipulation was not well managed by students and yet the disorganised wall projection area nonetheless supported a directness of communication between participants that was novel for the activity. Students' historical learning costs, in terms of time and money, were removed, serving as the basis for the more fluid, contingent interactions, while participants' perception of tool failure was heavily influenced by prior expectations and historical activity forms. Novel forms of serendipitous discovery were enabled by the juxtaposition and annotation of materials, but such discovery was possible for both student-presenters and their audience and could be used to challenge presenters' narrative. We conclude by discussing how the re-mediation we document is pertinent to the contradictions in the activity system and suggest that, for the particular activity system we studied, a new leading form of the activity system would need to emerge if tools such as Thunder are to better mediate student presentation activity. (Contains 7 figures and 5 tables.)

The CourseMarker system has been used to assess free-response computer based assessment (CBA) exercises since 1998. The aim of the studies reported here was to evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of developing and deploying diagram-based exercises using DATsys, an authoring environment for diagram-based CBA, together with CourseMarker. Postgraduate students constructed diagram-based exercises in four domains. The process of constructing the exercises was captured as an indicator of feasibility. The exercises were then used to assess two cohorts of undergraduate students. Instruments including system submission logs and student questionnaires were used to assess usefulness. Findings indicate that there is considerable potential for the assessment of free-response domains such as diagrams. Such an approach can help students as part of an iterative process of learning by allowing repeated submission of coursework, which may be most appropriate within a formative assessment context. The exercises are popular with students and demonstrate a gradual, though decelerating, increase in marks over subsequent submissions. The techniques are reliable, but further development allowing for alternative model solutions and assessment of the aesthetic appearance of diagrams would increase validity. Our techniques and findings are novel for CBA, and have implications for the increasingly important research area of formative assessment. (Contains 2 tables and 7 figures.)

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020, universities around the world have quickly adopted online teaching as an emergency measure. Informed by activity theory, the present qualitative case study aims to better understand the nature of the rapid institutional transition and its impact on academics' pedagogical experiences during this period. A multiple set of qualitative data was collected in a national university in South Korea that rapidly made the online transition, following government directives in February 2020. This article provides useful accounts of the changes that occurred in interconnected teaching activity systems at the university while adopting online teaching, highlighting the complex factors underpinning individual academics' experiences. The sudden shift in institutional teaching activities and conditions created a range of contradictions that were experienced as dilemmas by academics, the main subject of the activity systems. The results demonstrate that two groups of university faculty, separately identified as novice online teachers and expert online teachers, faced different dilemmas and challenges. An essential lesson learned from this analysis is the need for a more holistic, realistic, and sensitive approach to emergency teaching scenarios that may enable educational institutions to better respond to such emergencies in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]