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COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic had led to the confrontation of higher education system with enormous challenges. That necessitated the urgent transition from face-to-face teaching to online-teaching. The change was an innovation in higher education. A comparative study of digital education based on the survey in 2020-2021 in seven different countries was conducted at Shanghai University. The study was based on grey comprehensive evaluation model. In general, developed countries had high comprehensive evaluation value, while Finland, United States of America, South-Korea and Latvia had relatively low grey correlation coefficient in several certain indicators, leading to a sharp drop in the overall score. Romania ranked last while China ranked second as a developing country as well. The study launched a conclusion that research and development personnel, infrastructure funds and university financial investment in digital education had relatively more obvious effects on improving the innovations and quality of higher education system including the leadership system of universities. [For the full proceedings, see ED639633.]

COVID-19 pandemic has led to the confrontation of higher education system with enormous challenges. This necessitated the urgent transition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. A comparative study of digital education in seven different countries was conducted. This study established grey comprehensive evaluation model based on entropy weight method, which was successfully validated by reliability test. In general, developed countries tend to have high comprehensive evaluation value while Finland, South-Korea and Latvia have relatively low grey correlation coefficient in several certain indicators, leading to a sharp drop in the overall score. Romania ranked last while China ranked second as a developing country as well. This is followed by model optimization though input-output analysis method based on the upgrading of higher education system due to the pandemic's influence. The study launched a conclusion that research and development personnel, infrastructure funds and university financial investment in digital education have relatively more obvious effects on improving the quality of higher education system. [For the full proceedings, see ED621892.]

Analysis of the applicability of a learning technology requires evaluating how the affordances of the technology respond to the users' needs. We examine affordances of a digital learning environment. We concentrate on organizational and socio-interactional affordances, which are based on technological affordances. The analysis shows how organizational and socio-interactional affordances emerge from the use of technological affordances. We offer an analytical understanding of the dynamics of various kinds of affordances and how they can be assessed to help educators to better understand how the learning process and the use of affordances can be facilitated and supported. [For the complete proceedings, see ED608557.]

A recursive partitioning model approach in the form of classification and regression trees (CART) was used with 2012 PISA data for five countries (Canada, Finland, Germany, Singapore-China, and the Unites States). The objective of the study was to determine demographic and educational variables that differentiated between low SES student that were overachieving or not and to explore the differences across countries. A review of the decision trees indicated contextual differences across countries, suggesting that a universal approach to facilitate overachievement for low SES students is not appropriate. Countries should look to efforts specific to their country and culture and the nature of their students when considering policies and programs for low SES students.

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the University of Gothenburg in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology. The local committee members represented three collaborating institutions: "Faculty of Education, the University of Gothenburg"; "Department of Languages and Literatures, the University of Gothenburg"; and "Division for Language and Communication, Chalmers University of Technology." This year's conference theme was "CALL: using, learning, knowing." The conference seeked to establish the current state of the art, how using technologies shape what and how we learn, and what we consider we know from research and development within CALL. These three dimensions are in a continuous fux and interplay as an upward spiral, contributing together to create a dynamic learning experience for the student. There were presentations presented at the conference. 59 of these were submitted as extended papers and appear in this volume of proceedings. An author index is included. (Individual papers contain references.)

This year the Research Institute for Higher Education in Hiroshima University hosted an international conference in close collaboration with Hijiyama University. The main purpose of the 2008 conference was to enable the participants to give preliminary country/regional reports based on their national/regional surveys. This publication reports the proceedings of the conference. The following papers are presented at the conference: (1) International Implications of the Changing Academic Profession in Japan (Akira Arimoto); (2) The Context for the Changing Academic Profession: A Survey of International Indicators (William K. Cummings); (3) The Changing Academic Profession in Canada: Exploring Themes of Relevance, Internationalization, and Management (Amy Scott Metcalfe); (4) The Changing Academic Profession in the United States: 2007 (Martin Finkelstein and William Cummings); (5) The Academic Profession in England: Still Stratified after All These Years? (William Locke); (6) Changes in the Finnish Academic Profession Reflect Reforms in Higher Education (Timo Aarrevaara and Seppo Holtta); (7) Academic Staff in Germany: "Per Aspera Ad Astra?" (Ulrich Teichler); (8) The Changing Academic Profession in Italy: Accounts from the Past, First Insights from the Present (Michele Rostan); (9) The Australian Academic Profession: A First Overview (Hamish Coates, Leo Goedegebuure, Jeannet Van Der Lee and Lynn Meek); (10) Governance and Decision-Making Related to Academic Activities: The Case of Higher Educational Institutions in Malaysia (Muhammad Jantan and Morshidi Sirat); (11) A Preliminary Review of the Hong Kong CAP Data (Gerard A. Postiglione and Hei Hang Hayes Tang); (12) Progress of the Academic Profession in Mainland China (Hong Chen); (13) Analyses of the Educational Backgrounds and Career Paths of Faculty in Higher Education Institutions in Beijing Municipality, China (Yan Fengqiao and Chen Yuan); (14) The Changing Academic Profession in an Era of University Reform in Japan (Tsukasa Daizen and Atsunori Yamanoi); (15) Brazilian Academic Profession: Some Recent Trends (Elizabeth Balbachevsky, Simon Schwartzman, Nathalia Novaes Alves, Dante Filipe Felgueiras dos Santos, and Tiago Silva Birkhoz Duarte); (16) Mexican Academics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: Who Are They and How Do They Perceive Their Work, Institutions and Public Policies (A Preliminary Analysis) (Jesus Francisco Galaz-Fontes, Laura Elena Padilla-Gonzalez, Manuel Gil-Anton, Juan Jose Sevilla-Garcia, Jose Luis Arcos-Vega, Jorge Martinez-Stack, Sergio Martinez-Romo, Gabriel Arturo Sanchez-de-Aparicio-y-Benitez, Leonardo Jimenez-Loza and Maria Elena Barrera-Bustillos); (17) The Academic Profession in Argentina: Characteristics and Trends in the Context of a Mass Higher Education System (Monica Marquina and Norberto Fernandez Lamarra); and (18) The Academic Profession in South Africa in Times of Change: Portrait from the Preliminary Results of the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) Research Project (Charste C. Wolhuter, Philip Higgs, Leonie G. Higgs, and Isaac M. Ntshoe). Appended are: (1) CAP Questionnaire; (2) Conference Program; and (3) List of Participants. Individual papers contain figures, tables, references and footnotes.

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. "EdMedia + Innovate Learning: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology" took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 25-29, 2018. These proceedings contain 308 papers, including 14 award papers. The award papers cover topics such as Open Education Resources (OER) certification for higher education; a cooperative approach to the challenges of implementing e-assessments; developing an e-learning system for English conversation practice using speech recognition and artificial intelligence; the Learning Experience Technology Usability Design Framework; developing strategies for digital transformation in higher education; pre-service teachers' readiness to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education; teacher development through technology in a short-term study abroad program; Austria's higher education e-learning landscape; a digitised educational application focused on the water cycle in nature carried out in a secondary school in Ireland; evaluative research on virtual and augmented reality for children; how children use computational thinking skills when they solve a problem using the Ozobot; a strategy to connect curricula with the digital world; the learning portfolio in higher education; and adult playfulness in simulation-based healthcare education. [For the 2017 proceedings, see ED605571.]

The International Communication Division of the proceedings contains the following 18 papers: "Spy or Scapegoat: A News Framing Study of the 'New York Times'' Coverage of the Wen Ho Lee Case" (Jia Lin & Junhao Hong); "Individual Perceptions of International Correspondents in the Middle East: An Obstacle to Fair News?" (Dina Ibrahim); "British vs. U.S. Newspaper Framing of Arabs in Coverage of the Middle-Eastern Conflict Pre and Post Sept. 11: A Case Study" (Mia Moody-Hall); "The Role of Journalism in 19th Century National Movements in Estonia and Finland: Apples and Apples?" (Janis Cakars); "Covering the Dead: U.S. and Chinese Magazine Reportage of the Crackdown on the Tiananmen Square Movement" (Yu Shi); "Perceptions of Brazilian Journalists about Media Roles and Foreign Influences" (Heloiza G. Herscovitz); "Public Broadcasting Systems Demise Within the Dominant Private System Model: The Netherlands Case" (Tony R. DeMars); "Bridging Latin America's Digital Divide: Government Policies and Internet Access" (Eliza Tanner Hawkins and Kirk A. Hawkins); "A Profile of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium" (Peter G. Mwesige); "The Media & Foreign Affairs: A Comparative Content Analysis of 'The New York Times'' Coverage of Zaire" (Peter G. Mwesige); "Framing Environmental Destruction on U.S. Army Camps in South Korea" (Haejin Yun); "International News Flow and the U.S. News Media: A Model Proposed from a Critical Review of the Literature" (Takuya Sakurai); "Post-Communist Broadcast Media: A Case Study of Estonia's 1994 Broadcast Law" (Max V. Grubb);"Assessing the Hierarchy of Influences Theory of Content: Coverage of the Cultural Revolution in China by 'Time' and 'Newsweek', 1966-69" (Guoli Li and Anne Cooper-Chen); "Press Freedom in Hong Kong Before and After 1997--Newspapers' Coverage of China" (Tianbo Huang, Juyan Zhang, and Yi Lu); "The Possibility of Adoption of the Actual Malice Rule in Foreign Countries: From the Fourth Estate Perspective" (Taegyu Son); "'Glocalizing' a Dam Conflict: 'Thai Rath,''Matichon' and Pak Mun Dam" (Suda Ishida); and "Propaganda vs. The Market Economy: A Study of the Conglomeration of China's Newspaper Industry" (Ernest Y. Zhang and Brian S. Brooks). (RS)

This report, written in popular education style and designed to be readable both by adult educators and by the people with whom they work, describes a week-long meeting of the World Assembly of Adult Education. Under the general themes "Where are we?""Where are we going?" and How to do it" the report provides synopses of the reports of 17 working groups on the following topics: peace and human rights, popular theater and communications, participatory research, rural adult education, adult education and prisons, adult education and indigenous peoples, workers' education, adult education and self-management, adult education and new technology, literacy and post-literacy, history of adult education, adult education and women, adult education and older adults, civic adult education, training of adult educators, adult education and primary health care, and adult education and the disabled. The report also includes comments from numerous participants from around the world, as well as officials of UNICEF, UNESCO, the International Conference on Adult Education, the presidents of Argentina and France, and other dignitaries. The report includes numerous drawings and photographs. The meeting agenda and a list of participants are included. (KC)