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According to the socio-constructivist theories of learning, collaborative learning allows negotiation of shared meanings and co-construction of new knowledge among peers. This approach fits particularly well with healthcare professional education needs, as these professionals often face challenging issues that require the ability to fully understand the complexity of the patients' health conditions through working with others. However, while collaborative learning approaches are widely used in face-to-face nurse education contexts, their online equivalent still seem to be understudied, in spite of their great potential for the field. This systematic literature review investigates: (1) to what extent are online collaborative learning activities being adopted and investigated in formal nurse education, (2) What kind of online collaborative learning activities/techniques are proposed and what team structures are employed, (3) what technologies are used to run these learning activities, and (4) what methods are used to evaluate the impact of these activities. Studies were included if they presented online collaborative learning activities proposed by Universities or VET (Vocational Education and Training) providers. Articles published in 2015 or later were collected in November 2022 from Scopus, Web of Science and Medline. A total of 1059 records were retrieved, selected and analysed by four coders, resulting in a final dataset of 75 papers that were coded for type of collaborative approach, study characteristics, research methodology used, strength of evidence, and relevance to the research questions. Most of them described the use of activities like Discussions, Case Studies and Peer Reviews, sometimes in association with Role Play. In terms of technologies, Learning Managements Systems, forums and social media were already common pre-pandemic, but during the lockdown synchronous communication tools -- often used to support simulations -- took over. Data collection was carried out quantitatively, qualitatively or using mixed methods, but in many cases data reporting is weak or absent at all. The majority of the retrieved papers illustrate activities where collaboration was not structured in any way and there was no joint assignment or common objective/artefact that learners needed to reach/produce. In case of blended interventions, often collaboration is limited to the face-to-face sessions, while the digital setting is used for individual work. In terms of social structure, most of the time small groups or plenaries are used. In summary, the review reveals that studies on online collaborative learning for nurses are limited, especially in Europe, and the design of online collaborative activities often clashes with the principles put forward by the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research community. Based on the results of the review we put forth some key recommendations, such as ensuring that online collaboration involves the creation of a shared artefact and striving to make virtual simulations actually collaborative, rather than limited to envisage student interactions in the debriefing phase. The paper also proposes a number of research areas seldom investigated and that would deserve further attention in the future.

This study reports the outcomes of a survey investigating the beliefs and self-reported behaviours of a sample of 238 in-service school teachers in Italy and Spain concerning their self-regulated professional learning about the design of learning interventions, an activity generally referred to as Learning Design (LD). The study adopts the lens of the 4C Framework for Self-Regulated Professional Learning, which distinguishes between Consume, Create, Connect and Contribute behaviours. The results indicate that all four Cs are deemed important by respondents, but there are statistically significant differences between perceived importance and behaviours, especially for the two Cs that can be termed 'altruistic' (Connect and Contribute). As for the 'individualistic' behaviours (Consume and Create), the gap between perceived importance and practice is narrower, especially for Create. The main conclusion is that, at least in the teaching populations of the two countries involved, the participatory culture of LD is far from being a reality, despite being strongly advocated in the literature. To this end, the authors believe that to achieve truly collaborative professionalism, responsive actions should be directed especially towards removing motivational and emotional barriers hindering 'altruistic' behaviours.

University ranking systems are being implemented with the aim of assessing and comparing higher education institutions at a global level. Despite their being increasingly used, rankings are often strongly criticized for their social and economic implications, as well as for limitations in their technical implementation. One of these limitations is that they do not consider the specific characteristics of online education. This study used a participatory approach to define a set of criteria and indicators suitable to reflect the specific nature of distance education. This endeavour will help evaluate and rank online higher education institutions more appropriately than in current practice, where indicators are devised for traditional universities. To this end, several stakeholders and informants were involved in a Delphi study in an attempt to reach the broader higher education institutions (HEI) community. According to the study participants, apart from students' achievements and general quantitative measures of HEI performance, which are quite common in traditional ranking systems, teaching and student learning experience turned out to be the most important criteria. Student support, teacher support, technological infrastructure, research and organization were deemed middle ground criteria, while sustainability and reputation were regarded as the least important criteria.

Comparing universities and courses is of interest to a variety of stakeholders including potential students, policy makers, news and media organisations, ranking providers, and universities themselves. There are a range of existing university ranking schemes that provide comparisons (e.g. Academic Ranking of World Universities) but typically these are designed with face-to-face teaching and learning in mind. There is also a growing number of quality assurance tools and approaches aimed at ensuring the quality of online education This article reports on an analysis of a range of quality assurance systems for online higher education institutions and courses, together with variety of ranking systems targeting conventional universities--with the aim of establishing what they measure, and the metrics used to assess quality. The findings from this analytical study were compared with a meta-analysis of the literature about how students choose their university in order to understand how these instruments influence current student opinion and can be used more proactively by universities themselves. The findings reveal: (1) current ranking systems are of limited value for most potential undergraduate students, particularly with reference to online education; (2) comparison systems that can be of value to students from a variety of different backgrounds are likely to be complex to set up and run; and (3) quality indicators that promote both formative and summative evaluation may be beneficial to both institutions and students.

This paper reports on usage and impact on learning achievements of a dashboard developed to help monitor self-regulated learning behaviours in an online professional development path. The design of the path as well as of the dashboard were grounded on a pre-existing conceptual framework distinguishing between four different types of self-regulated learning behaviours taking place in professional learning networks and underpinning professional practice sharing. One of the objectives of the path was to promote such behaviours among participants, and the dashboard was designed to support their self-monitoring. Data were collected through usage log files analysis, a survey, and pretest and posttest. The results shed light on participants' actual usage of the dashboard, their opinion regarding its usefulness in relation of its capability to measure and support their SRL processes, and the dashboard's actual impact on their learning achievements. Moreover, some limitations in the current configuration of the dashboard emerged, which can guide further development.

Measuring psychological traits with standardised questionnaires is an essential component of clinical practice and research; however, patients and participants risk fatigue from overly long and repetitive measures. When developing the short form of a questionnaire, the most widely used method for selecting an item subset uses factor analysis loadings to identify the items most closely related to the psychological construct being measured. However, this approach will tend to select highly correlated, homogeneous items and might therefore restrict the breadth of the construct examined. In this study, we will present Yarkoni's genetic algorithm for scale reduction and compare it with the classical scale reduction method. The algorithm will be applied to the shortening of three instruments for measuring self‐compassion and social safeness (two unidimensional measures and a three‐factor measure). We evaluated the shortened scales using correlation with long‐form scores, internal reliability and the change in the correlations observed with other related constructs. Findings suggested that the classical method preserves internal reliability, but Yarkoni's genetic algorithm better maintained correlations with other constructs. An additional qualitative assessment of item content showed that the latter method led to a more heterogeneous selection of items, better preserving the full complexity of the constructs being measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between digital games and learning along the continuum from formal to informal learning. Games are an increasingly important component of our learning ecologies but their potential can prove difficult to fully harness due to the downsides of gaming in informal contexts and to the limitations games can present when adopted in formal learning contexts. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of games for learning, and to gather stakeholder recommendations for the main actors in the field. The adopted research approach is qualitative and participatory, involving players, teachers, parents, researchers and developers. Data from 25 interviews and 11 focus groups yielded insights into the educational, psychological and ethical aspects of play. Results suggest that gameplay influences individuals in a very personal manner, and that its effects cover a wide range of skills, extending to identity development. Hence, to harness this potential, all actors in the ecology need strong awareness of both the affordances and the risks of games, and deep respect for individuals' LEs. The study has implications for a wide range of actors, including educators, players, researchers, parents, game developers and policymakers.

Objective: This study investigates the relations of resilience with coping, personality traits, emotional intelligence, sense of coherence and maladaptive personality traits. Method: The study employs network analysis techniques to the study of resilience, showcasing how these methods can estimate a model that is simple to interpret while still retaining the most important relations and that can even suggest the direction of causality despite using a cross‐sectional design (N = 305). Results: The results highlight several important variables that should be considered for fostering resilience, foremost among them the use of positive reappraisal coping, sense of coherence, and the social management aspect of emotional intelligence. Conclusions: The results successfully replicated known associations between resilience and other psychological constructs (emotional intelligence, personality, sense of coherence, coping) and shed light on relations between resilience and maladaptive personality traits. Network analysis considered all these constructs together, so as to take into account the complex pattern of relations between them and offer a bird's eye view of the whole network of associations centred on resilience. The resulting model is parsimonious and easy to interpret while still striving to preserve the complexity of the variables' interrelations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the socio-constructivist theories of learning, collaborative learning allows negotiation of shared meanings and co-construction of new knowledge among peers. This approach fits particularly well with healthcare professional education needs, as these professionals often face challenging issues that require the ability to fully understand the complexity of the patients' health conditions through working with others. However, while collaborative learning approaches are widely used in face-to-face nurse education contexts, their online equivalent still seem to be understudied, in spite of their great potential for the field. This systematic literature review investigates: (1) to what extent are online collaborative learning activities being adopted and investigated in formal nurse education, (2) What kind of online collaborative learning activities/techniques are proposed and what team structures are employed, (3) what technologies are used to run these learning activities, and (4) what methods are used to evaluate the impact of these activities. Studies were included if they presented online collaborative learning activities proposed by Universities or VET (Vocational Education and Training) providers. Articles published in 2015 or later were collected in November 2022 from Scopus, Web of Science and Medline. A total of 1059 records were retrieved, selected and analysed by four coders, resulting in a final dataset of 75 papers that were coded for type of collaborative approach, study characteristics, research methodology used, strength of evidence, and relevance to the research questions. Most of them described the use of activities like Discussions, Case Studies and Peer Reviews, sometimes in association with Role Play. In terms of technologies, Learning Managements Systems, forums and social media were already common pre-pandemic, but during the lockdown synchronous communication tools - often used to support simulations - took over. Data collection was carried out quantitatively, qualitatively or using mixed methods, but in many cases data reporting is weak or absent at all. The majority of the retrieved papers illustrate activities where collaboration was not structured in any way and there was no joint assignment or common objective/artefact that learners needed to reach/produce. In case of blended interventions, often collaboration is limited to the face-to-face sessions, while the digital setting is used for individual work. In terms of social structure, most of the time small groups or plenaries are used. In summary, the review reveals that studies on online collaborative learning for nurses are limited, especially in Europe, and the design of online collaborative activities often clashes with the principles put forward by the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research community. Based on the results of the review we put forth some key recommendations, such as ensuring that online collaboration involves the creation of a shared artefact and striving to make virtual simulations actually collaborative, rather than limited to envisage student interactions in the debriefing phase. The paper also proposes a number of research areas seldom investigated and that would deserve further attention in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports the outcomes of a survey investigating the beliefs and self-reported behaviours of a sample of 238 in-service school teachers in Italy and Spain concerning their self-regulated professional learning about the design of learning interventions, an activity generally referred to as Learning Design (LD). The study adopts the lens of the 4C Framework for Self-Regulated Professional Learning, which distinguishes between Consume, Create, Connect and Contribute behaviours. The results indicate that all four Cs are deemed important by respondents, but there are statistically significant differences between perceived importance and behaviours, especially for the two Cs that can be termed 'altruistic' (Connect and Contribute). As for the 'individualistic' behaviours (Consume and Create), the gap between perceived importance and practice is narrower, especially for Create. The main conclusion is that, at least in the teaching populations of the two countries involved, the participatory culture of LD is far from being a reality, despite being strongly advocated in the literature. To this end, the authors believe that to achieve truly collaborative professionalism, responsive actions should be directed especially towards removing motivational and emotional barriers hindering 'altruistic' behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]