Framework for Developing and Assessing Business Education Wikis

The use of Web 2.0 tools is becoming widespread in business education and educators are increasingly exploring the use of Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts in their courses. For teaching and learning to be effective in new technology-based environments, there is a need to research and design Web 2.0 learning systems that are effective platforms for incorporating interactive tools to engage students in learning. Although Web 2.0 assignments are usually tailored to meet specific learning objectives of courses and instructions can be made available to students to address the technical nature of the environment, development and assessment of Web 2.0 assignments remains a challenge for most business educators. Using the context of wikis, this article proposes a framework for development and assessment of business education wikis to assist educators who want to explore the use of wikis in their courses.

Finding Determinants Affecting Distance Education Effectiveness in Terms of Learner Satisfaction and Application Achievement

Distance education has become an important method of extending education to populations that otherwise might be educationally neglected. Distance education in the private sector provides learners with more educational opportunities and widens the range of innovative services with a one-stop educational solution. With distance education, learners can undertake customized education on a more ubiquitous scale. Additionally, information technology allows both trainers and learners to work independently, free from the constraints of location. This study selected the determinants of educational effectiveness from previous literature regarding traditional educational environments, and empirically tested the authors’ hypotheses to examine factors that affected educational effectiveness in terms of learner satisfaction and application performance using a structural equation model. Results show that factors in traditional education are still significant in terms of application performance while certain factors in distance education affect learner satisfaction. The authors expect that this research can serve as a guideline for distance education in the private sector.

Cognitive Apprenticeship in an Online Research Lab for Graduate Students in Psychology

In this paper, the authors present a qualitative study of student perceptions of a cognitive apprenticeship in an Online Research Lab (Lab). The Lab’s purpose was to provide psychology graduate students in an online university with hands-on experience in the full trajectory of a research project. Interview data were analyzed using the four categories of the Cognitive Apprenticeship theoretical framework: Content, Method, Sequencing, and Sociology. When discussing their content of the course, students focused on the challenges of tasks that went beyond their previous coursework and knowledge of statistics. Methodologically, students focused on the multiple ways course members communicated with one another. The sequence of the course, both internally as a research project and externally as part of the graduate program, were both important aspects of the experience. From a sociological perspective, social loafing, or non-responsiveness from colleagues, had a negative impact. Instructors seeking to develop online research opportunities for students must consider multiple modes of communication, provide ongoing narratives of the study context, and encourage students to use each other as well as the instructor for support.

Fostering Higher Knowledge Construction Levels in Online Discussion Forums

Prior research has suggested that higher levels of knowledge construction (e.g., where opinions are argued, challenged, or negotiated) have rarely been demonstrated in student online discussions. In this study, the authors replicate prior research on group size, discussion duration, and student facilitation techniques to examine the influence of these factors on the attainment of higher level knowledge construction. Data were collected from 12 online discussion forums involving undergraduate students and students’ reflection logs. Analysis of the data confirms a significant positive correction between higher level knowledge construction occurrences and group size. No correlation is found between the discussion duration and the occurrences of higher level knowledge construction. Further analysis between the higher and lower performing forums suggests that a certain critical mass, which appears to be a group size of about 10 participants, may be required to direct the discussion to advanced levels of knowledge construction. In addition, results show that students in higher performing forums used the facilitation technique of pointing, highlighting unanswered or unresolved issues statistically significantly more than their counterparts in lower performing forums.

Strategies for Enhancing and Evaluating Interactivity in Web-Based Learning and Teaching

Interactivity is often discussed in constructivist approaches to education, which enable the student to evolve, understand, or construct new ideas from existing concepts. Constructivist approaches rely on active participation in the learning situation. Interaction and participation are crucial ingredients in the learning process. But interactivity, as a specific learning concept that underlies the general notions of interaction and participation, is not easily tracked and evaluated. This paper examines how to evaluate interactivity. It outlines a number of criteria and student activities to evaluate success in interactive web-based teaching. These theoretical issues are illustrated in the context of two linguistics courses that involve both web-based course delivery and face-to-face course delivery. Measures taken to achieve interactivity in these courses are discussed before proposing qualitative and quantitative criteria for evaluating interactivity. Teachers in higher education can encourage students to have a more positive attitude through effective ways of increasing interaction, such as structuring the learning environment in such a way achieve a ’conversational learning community’, a learning model that promotes informal, relaxed, and interactive communities of learners and teachers.

The Impact of Blogging and Scaffolding on Primary School Pupils’ Narrative Writing

Narrative writing is a skill that all primary (elementary) school pupils in Singapore are required to develop in their learning of the English language. However, this is an area in which not all pupils excel. This study investigates if the use of blogging and scaffolding can improve pupils’ narrative writing. Data were gathered from 36 primary five (grade five) pupils through pre-post writing tests, reflection sheets, and interviews. The pre-post writing tests were administered before and after the pupils had completed their blogging activities, while the blogs were used to draft their narrative writings and to comment on their peers’ writings. The teacher also used a writing guide that served as a scaffold to help pupils plan their writing on their blogs. Overall, results showed a statistically significant difference of medium effect size between the pre-post test scores. Pupils’ perceptions of using blogs as a tool for writing were also explored.

Exploring the Association Between Leisure Time Digital Immersion, Attention and Reasoning Ability in Pre-Teens

Some researchers claim that digital natives are endowed with greater cognitive abilities than digital immigrants, due to the interactive nature of digital technologies. This study investigates relationships between different types of digital activity, reasoning ability and attention in a pre-teen population. Two hundred twenty-four participants (139 males, 85 females) aged 10-12 years completed a questionnaire measuring leisure time digital immersion. Factor analysis reveals 5 distinct types of users. Ninety-two participants completed tests of reasoning and attention to ascertain the relationship between type of digital user and cognitive ability. Results indicate that users who engaged in simple low level writing and drawing tasks with technology were inclined to have low literacy levels and poor concentration levels. In addition, users who engaged in computer mediated communication and content creation showed inconsistent and unstable attentional ability.

Cognitive Mapping Decision Support for the Design of Web-Based Learning Environments

There is much interest in the study of online learning in higher education. Student beliefs towards online learning may influence intentions and ultimately performance. Many studies have flaws in their research design and fall short in providing useful insight for decision making. In this regard, the need for developing practical e-learning implementation framework(s) is crucial. The main objective of this study is to employ the cognitive map technique to causal relationships among belief factors, and investigating various impact chains via simulations. The authors identify optimal e-learning design and implementation, while a partial least squares approach was performed to validate the proposed research model anchored in the Technology Acceptance Model. A survey was carried out and data were collected from 102 respondents. The proposed research model was tested and subsequent cognitive mapping simulations were performed. This study provides designers, instructors and decision makers an approach by which they can identify relevant factors for design, implementation and maintenance.

The Automatic Evaluation of Website Metrics and State

This paper focuses on studying website structural and related metrics that can be used as indicators of the complexity of the website and predict maintainability requirements. The second goal of the study is to evaluate possible correlations between structural metrics and popularity (particularly in-links) metrics. Examples of some of the structural metrics evaluated in this paper include: size, complexity, and speed of page loading.While results showed that structural metrics are not good indicators of websites’ popularity, they may influence indirectly the popularity through their impact on the performance or the usability of those websites. A method is developed to evaluate the state of the website automatically and evaluate any change in that state. The study points to certain requirements that educational or higher institutes’ websites should have. Those websites should combine somewhat conflicting requirements of: high performance, particularly web page loading and speed of transaction, reliability; current, correct and up to-date information, navigability, visibility and popularity where website information should be visible internally and externally and should be easily indexed and searched for.

The Blended Learning Ecosystem of an Academic Institution in Greece

Blended learning has been recognized as the most promising emerging trend in higher education, offering new capabilities, as it may significantly enhance the interaction and communication between instructors and students. The challenge of blended learning is to balance weaknesses and strengths of face-to-face and e-learning teaching environments and effectively combining them to provide enhanced learning capabilities. Its success should benefit instructor-student relation. To this end, the authors adopt ecosystem-based approach to model the blended learning environment and identify its constituents, i.e., instructors, students, consultants, technology. and their evolving relations. The proposed concept was utilized to explore the potential of blended learning in the academic environment. A study was conducted at Harokopio University of Athens over a period of three years to explore the relations between blended learning ecosystem constituents, focusing on instructor -student relation.