scholarly journals Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice Editorial 9.1

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-4
Author(s):  
Geraldine E. Lefoe ◽  

Welcome to the first issue of Volume 9 of Journal of University Teaching and Learning (JUTLP) in 2012. Higher education institutions continue to adapt to the many changes occurring in education. Increasing pressures on systems and the people who work within them are becoming more evident. For this journal one such impact has been the submission of several papers which have evidence of plagiarism or selfplagiarism. Contributing factors may indeed be increased pressure to publish and a lack of understanding of what constitutes plagiarism amongst inexperienced authors. In the Higher Education Teaching and Learning group in Linkedin (http://tinyurl.com/HETL-SOTL) suggestions have been offered in terms of education for authors and reviewers to address the problem. It seems that new technologies, as well as those that have been around for quite some time, offer both advantages and disadvantages for academic activity. Fortunately, for many of our authors the use of technology to support teaching and learning is providing avenues for increased support for student learning.

Author(s):  
Anwar Hossain Masud ◽  
Xiaodi Huang

The education landscape around the world is in a constant state of flux and evolution, facing significant challenges in adopting new and emerging technologies. This is driven mainly by a new genre of students with learning needs that are vastly different from those of their predecessors. It is increasingly recognized that the use of technology in higher education is essential to providing high quality education and preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century. Advances in technology offer new opportunities in enhancing teaching and learning. The new technologies enable individuals to personalize the environment in which they work or learn a range of tools to meet their interests and needs. In this chapter, we attempt to explore the salient features of the nature and educational potentials of ‘cloud computing' in order to exploit its affordance in teaching and learning in the context of higher education. It is evident that cloud computing plays a significant role in the higher education landscape as both a ubiquitous computing tool and a powerful platform. Although the adoption of cloud computing promises various benefits to an organization, a successful adoption of cloud computing in an organization, particularly in educational institutes, requires an understanding of different dynamics and expertise in diverse domains. This chapter aims at describing an architecture of Cloud Computing for Education (CCE), which includes a number of steps for adopting and implementing cloud computing. To implement this architecture, we have also outlined an open framework that is used as a guidance in any organisations with any cloud computing platforms and infrastructures towards the successful adoption and implementation of cloud computing.


Author(s):  
Donna Mathewson Mitchell

Initial teacher education has a critical role in preparing future teachers. In an era of increasing distance education, an additional challenge is to effectively prepare pre-service teachers who connect with higher education in an online environment. The diversity of the higher education student cohort studying by distance is significant and can easily be rendered invisible through the ‘facelessness' of digital technology. In addressing this challenge, this chapter outlines an innovative program undertaken in two secondary visual arts curriculum subjects delivered in distance mode in a graduate-entry teaching course. The innovation models a practice-based partnership involving higher education and community and culminates in a professional student exhibition. Outcomes include: positive student experience; high levels of achievement; increased civic consciousness and involvement; meaningful integration of cross-curriculum perspectives; and sustained focus on teaching practice. The program provides an example of an integrated use of technology to enhance university teaching and learning with the aim of informing future K-12 educational possibilities.


2016 ◽  
pp. 944-963
Author(s):  
Donna Mathewson Mitchell

Initial teacher education has a critical role in preparing future teachers. In an era of increasing distance education, an additional challenge is to effectively prepare pre-service teachers who connect with higher education in an online environment. The diversity of the higher education student cohort studying by distance is significant and can easily be rendered invisible through the ‘facelessness' of digital technology. In addressing this challenge, this chapter outlines an innovative program undertaken in two secondary visual arts curriculum subjects delivered in distance mode in a graduate-entry teaching course. The innovation models a practice-based partnership involving higher education and community and culminates in a professional student exhibition. Outcomes include: positive student experience; high levels of achievement; increased civic consciousness and involvement; meaningful integration of cross-curriculum perspectives; and sustained focus on teaching practice. The program provides an example of an integrated use of technology to enhance university teaching and learning with the aim of informing future K-12 educational possibilities.


Author(s):  
Donna Mathewson Mitchell

Initial teacher education has a critical role in preparing future teachers. In an era of increasing distance education, an additional challenge is to effectively prepare pre-service teachers who connect with higher education in an online environment. The diversity of the higher education student cohort studying by distance is significant and can easily be rendered invisible through the ‘facelessness' of digital technology. In addressing this challenge, this chapter outlines an innovative program undertaken in two secondary visual arts curriculum subjects delivered in distance mode in a graduate-entry teaching course. The innovation models a practice-based partnership involving higher education and community and culminates in a professional student exhibition. Outcomes include: positive student experience; high levels of achievement; increased civic consciousness and involvement; meaningful integration of cross-curriculum perspectives; and sustained focus on teaching practice. The program provides an example of an integrated use of technology to enhance university teaching and learning with the aim of informing future K-12 educational possibilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 221258682110070
Author(s):  
Ka Ho Mok ◽  
Weiyan Xiong ◽  
Hamzah Nor Bin Aedy Rahman

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has forced online teaching and learning to be the primary instruction format in higher education globally. One of the worrying concerns about online learning is whether this method is effective, specifically when compared to face-to-face classes. This descriptive quantitative study investigates how students in higher education institutions in Hong Kong evaluated their online learning experiences during the pandemic, including the factors influencing their digital learning experiences. By analysing the survey responses from 1,227 university students in Hong Kong, this study found that most of the respondents felt dissatisfied with their online learning experiences and effectiveness. Meanwhile, this study confirms that respondents’ household income level and information technology literacy affected their online learning effectiveness. Moreover, this study highlights the significant contributions of the community of inquiry, which places social presence on the promotion of a whole person development that could not be achieved when relying mainly on online learning. Findings encourage university leaders and instructors to search for multiple course delivery modes to nurture students to become caring leaders with the 21st century skills and knowledge set.


Author(s):  
Jia Li ◽  
Catherine Snow ◽  
Claire White

Modern teens have pervasively integrated new technologies into their lives, and technology has become an important component of teen popular culture. Educators have pointed out the promise of exploiting technology to enhance students’ language and literacy skills and general academic success. However, there is no consensus on the effect of technology on teens, and scant literature is available that incorporates the perspective of urban and linguistically diverse students on the feasibility of applying new technologies in teaching and learning literacy in intact classrooms. This paper reports urban adolescents’ perspectives on the use of technology within teen culture, for learning in general and for literacy instruction in particular. Focus group interviews were conducted among linguistically diverse urban students in grades 6, 7 and 8 in a lower income neighborhood in the Northeastern region of the United States. The major findings of the study were that 1) urban teens primarily and almost exclusively used social media and technology devices for peer socializing, 2) they were interested in using technology to improve their literacy skills, but did not appear to voluntarily or independently integrate technology into learning, and 3) 8th graders were considerably more sophisticated in their use of technology and their suggestions for application of technology to literacy learning than 6th and 7th graders. These findings lead to suggestions for developing effective literacy instruction using new technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Prue Gonzalez ◽  
◽  
Beate Mueller ◽  
Kevin Merry ◽  
Colin Jone ◽  
...  

In this Editorial, we take the opportunity to expand on the second Journal of University Teaching and Learning theme, Developing Teaching Practice. Building on Editorial 18(4), which articulated changes to higher education in the period roughly between 1980 and 2021, we believe it is pertinent to explore the changing conceptions of academic as ‘teacher’. We use Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory as a lens to consider how higher education teachers are situated in the current context of rapid changes arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore possible future purposes of higher education to consider flow-on impacts on the purpose of its teachers and how their roles might change to accommodate future expectations. We assert the need to challenge the notion of the academic as a person who is recruited into higher education largely because of their subject matter expertise and maintains strong commitment to teaching expertise that is grounded in scholarship, critical self-reflection, and agency. In our various teaching and leadership roles, and consistent with the literature, we have observed paradoxical outcomes from the nexus between risk, innovation and development, driving risk aversity and risk management, with significant (contradictory) impacts on teaching, teachers and student learning. The barriers to implementing innovative curricula include questions of do students get a standardised and ‘safe’ educational experience or are they challenged and afforded the opportunity to transform and grow? Are they allowed to fail? Related, do teachers have genuine agency, as an educator, or are they positioned as agents of a higher education system? We explore these questions and invite our readers to engage in serious reflexivity and identify strategies that help them question their attitudes, thought processes, and assumptions about teaching and student learning. We welcome papers that contribute values-based conversations seeking to continue exploring ways of dealing with and adapting to change in our teaching practices, case studies of learning through failure, change and adaptation and the development of the field.


Author(s):  
Ayad Shihan Izkair ◽  
Muhammad Modi Lakulu ◽  
Ibtihal Hassan Mussa

Mobile learning is presently taking part in associate degree more and more important role within the instructional method, additionally as within the development of teaching and learning ways for higher education. The power to find out ‘on the go– anytime, anywhere, is changing into more and more fashionable. The advantages offered by mobile learning are important. On the opposite hand, the implementation of mobile learning in educational activity relies on users’ acceptance of technology. Acceptance and intention to use mobile learning may be a topic of growing interest within the field of education. The model of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is planned and developed by researchers via a mixture of eight major theories in activity prediction. UTAUT is among the foremost fashionable and up to date model in information technology acceptance. This is review paper aiming to review UTAUT’s previous studies of intention to use mobile learning. In conclusion, this research provides insight regarding the necessary factors for planning and designing an intention to use mobile learning model in higher education institutions.


Author(s):  
Debora DeZure

“Interdisciplinary Pedagogies in Higher Education” explores the increasing integration of goals for interdisciplinary learning in American higher education. The chapter begins with working definitions of interdisciplinary learning and the many factors that have led to its proliferation. It then reviews the elaboration of new methods to teach and to assess interdisciplinary learning, emerging models of interdisciplinary problem-solving, and practice-oriented resources and online tools to assist undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and their instructors with interdisciplinary problem-solving and communications in cross-disciplinary and interprofessional contexts. The chapter concludes with the impact of technology, for example, e-portfolios and other digital and technology-enabled tools, and evidence of an emerging body of scholarship of teaching and learning focused on interdisciplinary learning.


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