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Fragmented connectivity in South Africa is the dominant barrier for digitising initiatives. New insights surfaced when a university-based nursing programme introduced tablets within a supportive network learning environment. A qualitative, explorative design investigated adult nurses' experiences of the realities when moving from paper-based learning towards using tablets within a blended learning environment. Purposive sampling was applied. 45 (N) participants were included, each receiving a preloaded tablet (15 running on iOS, 15 on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and 15 on Windows® 8 operating systems), being WiFi-dependent, integrated into a supportive learning network. Participants completed eleven compulsory Internet-based activities. Three reflective focus groups with 18 (n) participants concluded the project. Through self-empowerment and supportive environment, students adopted seamlessly, overcame network and resource-related challenges. Valuable lessons were learned within the digital divide, integrate tablets into distance learning from a resilient and pragmatic approach.

The MICRO project has developed a series of active-learning labs that can be safely delivered to students either at home or in person using paper microfluidic technology. The skills covered in these labs are appropriate for sophomore-level analytical chemistry courses and general chemistry.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the effort by most educational institutions (EI) over the world was necessary to ensure the pedagogical continuity during school closures so that schools could fulfill their role. In this chapter, we will describe how EI have switched in record time from traditional teaching using textbooks and face-to-face learning to one-way teaching that in most cases is based on the online screen. We will discuss the situation of distance learning and how stakeholders have prepared to face this pandemic. We will also highlight some challenges of the digital transformation in education during the past decade. An overview of the situation of the disruptive school will be presented, focusing on the main impacts on our society. Then, a brief description of the requirements for remote education in the crisis period will be presented, and adopted solutions will be discussed knowing that most of them were based on the use of online screen solutions. Finally, lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic will help all stakeholders to start thinking and designing the future of education.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the Arab World are still in their infancy. Many Arab countries are now starting to launch their MOOC platforms; however, there are only a few who have actually implemented such systems. This paper will explore online learning, in particular the rise of MOOCs around the world and their impact on the Arab World. The purpose of this paper is to give a true picture of the development of the first MOOC platforms in the Arab World. It will analyse in detail the concept, definitions, background, and types of MOOCs (xMOOCs and cMOOCs), as well as the main MOOCs platform in the Western and Arab worlds, and a timeline of the development of MOOCs. It will then observe the status of MOOCs in the developed world, opportunities in the Middle East, and the influence of Western MOOCs on the Arab world, from many perspectives, e.g. educational, religious, cultural and social.

Some distance education institutions have invested heavily in print-based resources, and learners still show a preference for print; but some concepts and practical or skills based courses, for example science or engineering, do not translate well into the print medium. This paper presents Augmented Reality (AR) as a possible solution and discusses the development and implementation of an AR application into traditional print learning materials.

The seventh issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning (IJELL- formerly Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects - IJELLO) special series includes a selection of best papers presented at the 10th Chais Conference for the Study of Innovation and Learning Technologies: Learning in the Technological Era. The Chais conference 2015 was held at The Open University of Israel, Raanana, Israel, on February 10-11, 2015, and was organized by its Research Center for Innovation in Learning Technologies. This preface presents the mission and activities of the Research Center for Innovation in Learning Technologies at the Open University of Israel. It describes the objectives and themes of the Chais conference 2015, explains the special series synergies with IJELL and the Informing Science Institute, chronicles the topics that have been published in the series, and introduces the papers included in this special selection.

This article focuses on the dilemmas science educators face when having to introduce Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) to science student teachers in a predominantly paper-based distance learning environment. It draws on the premise that science education is bound by the Nature of Science (NOS), and by the Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI). Furthermore, science educators’ own PCK, and the limitations of a predominantly paper-based distance education (DE) model of delivery are challenges that they have to face when introducing PCK and authentic inquiry-based learning experiences. It deprives them and their students from optimal engagement in a science-oriented community of practice, and leaves little opportunity to establish flourishing communities of inquiry. This study carried out a contextual analysis of the tutorial material to assess the PCK that the student teachers had been exposed to. This comprised the ideas of a community of inquiry, a community of science, the conceptualization of PCK, scientific inquiry, and the 5E Instructional Model of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. The analysis confirmed that the lecturers had a good understanding of NOS, NOSI and science process skills, but found it difficult to design interventions to optimize the PCK development of students through communities of inquiry. Paper-based tutorials are ideal to share theory, policies and practices, but fail to monitor the engagement of learners in communities of inquiry. The article concludes with a number of suggestions to address the apparent lack of impact power of the paper-based mode of delivery, specifically in relation to inquiry-based teaching and learning (IBTL).

This special Open Praxis issue includes selected papers presented at the Open Education Consortium Global Conference, held in Delft (The Netherlands) on April 24-26, 2018.

In this paper, I examine the provenance of distance education or ‘teledidactics’ in Australia. I take as my case studies the New South Wales Correspondence School and the School of the Air and suggest that their emergence was underpinned by a desire on the part of educational and broadcasting bureaucrats to increase the equity of school provision by addressing the problem of educating remote populations. I argue that this problem was ultimately solved by drawing on elements of the medial ecology (as theorised by Friedrich Kittler) that emerged circa 1900 and that the machines associated with this ecology underpinned the realisation of educating such populations.

This paper presents the results of a study evaluating student perceptions of online assignment submission. 47 students submitted assignments and received feedback via features within the Virtual Learning Environment Blackboard™. The students then completed questionnaires comparing their experience of online submission and feedback with traditional methods. Results indicated that 88% of students reported a time saving and many reported financial benefits using online submission. 93% of students preferred having their feedback available online rather than printed and handed to them. Overall, students preferred online assignment management to postal or physical hand-in. The main disadvantage of electronic submission appeared to be student distrust of the receipt system. The use of online assignment submission and management is recommended for use in Higher Education establishments where students may be remote. It is most suitable for assignments that do not require inclusion of many images.

This article describes the simultaneous development of paper-based and digitized versions of a textbook and related instructional material used in an independent study, undergraduate introductory financial accounting course. Faculty and mangers of postsecondary institutions will be particularly interested in the development process, as there is an increasing need to produce instructional material in these two media. Break-even analysis is used as an initial evaluation measure to determine cost-effectiveness. An ongoing study is described which, when completed, will evaluate the relative efficacy of each medium in terms of learning outcomes, completion rates, and selected qualitative attributes.

This presentation reports the results of a project to extend the services and resources of Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library to distance education students located in many areas of the world. Focusing on students enrolled in university-level English courses, the project team created a one-stop, integrated Web portal of library services and resources in Independent Study courses. This Library portal includes links to subscription databases, interlibrary loan, and personal reference services such as Ask a Librarian Live. The project team promoted faculty members' use of library research in the assignments for their Independent Study English courses. Finally, to ascertain the success of the project and make recommendations for further implementation and improvement, the project team tracked the students' use of library resources for their English courses and evaluated their experience with the portal. The ALA SIRSI's Leader in Library Technology Grant provided funding for the project.

On the basis of the statistics of keywords from 5750 papers published in professional journals from 2007 to 2011 in educational technology, this paper selected the top 46 high-frequency keywords, generated co-word matrix by using SATI tools, made use of statistical analysis software SPSS for co-word clustering analysis, deeply analyzed the relationships and rules among the selected high-frequency keywords, and then explored hot topics and developing trends in the field of educational technology. After summing up, nine hot topics were finally determined, including student-centered learning activities, network education, distance education, educational informationalization.

There is a growing tendency for model answers to past examination questions to be made available to students. Laudable though this may be, it does encourage some to concentrate on how to answer the usual questions that occur every year, rather than to learn the whole content of the module. Those students may achieve higher marks than they would otherwise do, but would they be less able to apply the content in novel situations? This paper records an evaluation of a proposed system that allows individual parts of past examination papers to be submitted to a search engine. The files used by the search engine are derived from a series of narrated and animated online lectures in digital circuit design. The resulting returns purport to offer a recommendation as to those lecture slides that are relevant for answering the question. The paper briefly describes the essential characteristics of the on-line lectures and how they are specified. The search mechanism is based on a conventional term frequency-inverse document frequency scheme. The post processing of the results prior to display are described and a mock-up of the interface is illustrated. The paper concludes with an objective and discursive evaluation of the results and indicates the path for future work.

The importance of formative assessment in higher education is agreed among researchers, but marking this type of assessment is a heavy burden. Computer-based assessment and on-screen marking tools are attempts to overcome this burden, but while the former is not suitable for handwritten answers, the latter requires commercial OCR software. This paper describes the design and development of an eMarking tool to support the printing, digitalization and marking of paper based evaluations based on open source software.

When generating test paper, traditional distant education online examination system either merely extracts the same test questions from item bank or extracts test questions at random, or select test questions according to some classifications of student. It can not individually varies and give custom made scheme according to student's learning situation. This paper improved the traditional genetic algorithm and proposed a new method of test paper generating based on student's learning situation. It can generate personalized test paper dynamically that satisfying every student according to student's online self-condition in distance education network and factors reflected during learning such as psychological status, comprehension and application level.

With the intervention of technology into education, plain text learning material does not suffice anymore. Learning Management Systems (LMS) are effectively replacing the monotonous and rigid method of imparting education. However, there is a necessity of a framework to which these learning technologies can comply to. This paper discusses such a framework-SCORM. SCORM is the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative of the U.S. Government for unifying e-learning specifications emerging from the international standards organizations into a single specification [1].

The emergence of the Internet has made many institutions involved in the delivery of distance education programs re-evaluate the course delivery framework. A variety of models and techniques co-exist in an often uneasy alliance at many such institutions. These range from the traditional distance learning model, which remains paper-based, to the purely online model. Recently, hybrid models have emerged which apparently attempt to forge elements taken from several models into a unified whole. Many of these hybrid models seek to eliminate paper-based materials from the tuition process. While many arguments are put forward about the efficacy of purely electronic delivery mechanisms, cost containment is often the driving motivation. This study explores student perceptions of the various delivery mechanisms for distance learning materials. In particular, it seeks to determine what value students place on paper-based delivery mechanisms. The study surveys a group of undergraduate students and a group of graduate students enrolled in the Faculty of Business at a large regional Australian university.

In this paper we discuss the cold-start problem in an evolvable paper recommendation e-learning system. We carried out an experiment using artificial and human learners at the same time. Artificial learners are used to solve the cold-start recommendation problem when no paper has been rated by the learners. Experimental results are encouraging, showing that using artificial learners achieves better performance in terms of learner subjective ratings; and more importantly, human learners are satisfied with the recommendations received.

Motivational forces play a significant role in the success of using virtual games and simulations for educational purposes. Intrinsic motivation is more difficult to foster in educational applications of games and simulations than those developed purely for leisure purposes. However the education sector is still dependant on this elusive variable in order to obtain desired results and student outcomes. Certain uses of educational simulations lend themselves more to fostering internal motivation, mainly optional and tangential applications, while many forms of direct content delivery for courses or units rely on extrinsic factors for completion and success. Another significant factor in the development of intrinsic motivation is whether or not the game or simulation is mandatory or optional, as required use seems to diminish internal desire to participate. Tangential uses of preexisting non-educational virtual worlds for instructive purposes increases the learners internal motivation, however concerns are raised concerning whether or not this method produces measurable learning outcomes.

Background: Distance education methods have taken on greater importance as medi-cal student education has moved off campus into the community. What the best methods are for conveying information to students at distant sites has not been determined. Objective: To determine if students at distant community sites who received an otitis media study case by e-mail that was enhanced with a referral to a web-based otitis study case, performed bet-ter on otitis OSCE stations than students who received the same case not enhanced with visuals or referrals to a web-based otitis case. Design/Methods: Students were randomized by community site to receive either the enhanced (E) or simple otitis study case (S). Students were e-mailed an otitis media study case during the 5th week of the rotation. Those randomized to the E-case received a case that started with a case scenario followed by a "Task" that instructed them to go to this web address: http://www.aap.org/otitismedia/www/vc/ear/index.cfm (American Academy of Pediatrics Otitis Web Site). They were then to select "Case 1" which was a continuation of the case scenario pre-sent on their e-mail. A list of learning objectives was also printed on the e-mail. Students receiv-ing the S-case viewed the same case scenario and objectives, but were not instructed to go to the web-page. All students rotated through two OSCE otitis stations. In the first station they inter-viewed a simulated patient(OSCE-SP) and counseled her on the management of her 12 month old with otitis. Within that station they viewed a video of a pneumoscopic exam of two ears, one ear with otitis and the other ear normal. At the 2nd otitis station the student presented the case to a faculty and was asked a series of questions about otitis media(OSCE-PR). Scores on the two sta-tions were compared by group. Results: There were 198 students who took the OSCE. 178 (90%) responded to a survey that in-dicated they had opened and read the e-mailed case. There were 87 students in the E-group and 91 in the S-group. The mean ?s.d. OSCE-SP station score for the E-group was 72.6 ?12.0 vs 75.4 ?9.8 for the S-group, p=0.09. For the otitis presentation station the scores for the E-group and S-group were respectively, 82.9 ?9.6 and 83.7 ?9.4, p=0.55. Conclusions: These data suggest that enhanced visual distance education cases may offer no dis-tinct advantage over simple paper-type case study guides. Keywords: Distance education, medical education, web-based education.

This paper briefly describes Amanda(1), a framework for mediating collective discussions in distance learning environments. The objective of this framework is to help tutors achieve better results from group discussions and improve knowledge transfer among the participants. The overall idea is to organize the group discussion in an argumentation tree and involve the participants in successive discussion activities. The coordination of the discussion is made by a set of intelligent mechanisms which reason over the discussion and propose new interactions among the participants. Amanda advances the discussion by generating progressive discussion cycles until a desired set of target conditions are observed. At each discussion cycle, the system redistributes discussion tasks among the participants to ensure a desired degree of agreement and participation among them. In this short paper we describe the underlying coordination principles and the use of knowledge models for producing natural language questions.

The main goal of this research is to improve the personification of learning in higher education. The proposed flexible model for organizing blended and distance learning in higher education involves the creation of an individual learning path through testing students before the start of training. Based on the learning outcomes, the student is credited to the learning path. The training path consists of mandatory and additional modules for training; additional modules can be skipped after successfully passing the test, without studying these modules. The paper examines the composition of intelligent learning systems: student model, learning model and interface model. A student model is described, which contains the level of their knowledge, skills and abilities, the ability to learn, the ability to complete tasks (whether they know how to use the information received or not), personal characteristics (type, orientation) and other factors. The student’s model is described by a mathematical formula. Thus, being described using logical rules, which have formed the basis for the software implementation of mixed and distance learning rules for lifelong learning courses. There is an interface model presented in the paper, and the results of the course of the proposed flexible model for the organization of mixed and distance learning “Digital Skills of a Modern Teacher in the Context of Distance Learning”, as well as the face-to-face course “Digital Learning for Everyone” before the start of the pandemic which is close in its content to the course under study. Based on the results of the analysis, we introduced criteria for the effectiveness of the training course, proposed the weighting coefficients for evaluating the training course, carried out the assessment and drew conclusions.

As the world went suddenly into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sending individuals to their homes and shutting businesses and institutions, the closing of schools posed big problems. The majority of the world’s children were out of school, leading to the longest sustained period of school closures in history. We saw educators turning towards responses not aimed at collegial and community-engaged strategies for education in an emergency but at online learning cast as education/business as usual. This study explores the logic driving this global response through analyses of the documents released by three key global education actors: (1) the OECD and its paper A Framework to Guide Education Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020; (2) UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition #LearningNeverStops; and (3) the World Bank’s Guidance Note on Education Systems’ Response to COVID-19; and Guidance Note: Remote Learning and COVID-19. The authors of this article draw on Carol Bacchi’s approach to poststructural policy analysis to make visible the key concepts and binaries used within policy texts and to understand the “technologies of saving” that were invoked in each policy response, locating the education programmes, activities and actors within knowledge practices in educational reform. This article explores the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO responses using an analysis of knowledge harmonisation and difference among these institutions as well as their location as key norm-setters and governing actors in the field of education. The authors argue that all three responses privilege private-sector providers of digital technology. The consequence of these responses is that technologies of saving have centred on privatised, corporate edu-business and edu-tech aimed at online education delivery, bringing significant risks for the erasure of local knowledges. The authors’ study suggests that local policymakers, including community-based and national actors, must be invited into the discussion to envision other possibilities and to name the potential destructiveness embedded in the international organisations’ actions.

The purpose of this autoethnography is to share my perspective of course design and delivery considerations based on my professional experience as an instructional designer for a virtual international exchange program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the impact of the global pandemic, the partner institutions decided to take advantage of distance education to continue their exchange program. I was the instructional designer to support faculty’s transition to online instruction. Little research has been conducted to explore instructional design practices for distance teaching and learning in an intercultural context. Therefore, I applied an individual autoethnography to collect and analyze data from my narratives and artifacts to understand my perspective of instructional design and delivery practices within a cross-cultural distance learning environment. The findings showed course design in transnational distance contexts was more complicated than in distance education in a single cultural context. My role as an instructional designer was influenced by factors at both micro and macro levels.

Like most education systems all over the world, Egypt’s schools and universities turned to online teaching at the end of March 2020, after face-to-face classes had been brought to a halt by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. While few teachers were prepared for delivering their lessons online and for dealing with the stress and anxiety of the situation, this article showcases a group of teachers who had just acquired collaboration skills in peer communities of learners (PCLs), which proved to be an immediate source of support in this time of crisis. The authors present the results of a rapid study they conducted in June 2020 on a sample of 49 teachers from 17 schools in Egypt who had participated in a school–university partnership for reform. This included a continuous professional development (CPD) project which ran from February 2017 to March 2020. Within the project, these teachers had already successfully created PCLs in 43 schools partnering with faculties of education (FOEs) in three large Egyptian universities. The reform partnership, an ERASMUS+ initiative funded by the European Union (EU), was the “School University Partnership for Peer Communities of Learners” (SUP4PCL). By March 2020, the participating teachers had already significantly changed their teaching styles, school culture, identities and attitude towards their profession, and they continued to communicate with their peers in the PCLs they had created during the project. Prompted by the emergency situation of the pandemic and inspired by the work of Etienne Wenger and others on communities of practice, the authors’ study investigates the sustainability, viability and effectiveness of the project PCLs, their relationship to lifelong learning and their value in offering psychosocial support. The article concludes with a consideration of the usefulness of PCLs for reforms to ensure quality learning in crisis situations and more generally.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has triggered serious disruption in economic, social and cultural dynamics around the globe. Higher education has also suffered undeniable challenges as a result of the pandemic, with thousands of university students all over the world experiencing displacement, disconnect and disengagement from formal learning. In the Global South, online and distance education programmes tend to be concentrated in urban centres. In Nepal, students from rural areas, low socio-economic and gendered spaces, and those with low proficiencies in English and technological skills are experiencing inequalities in access to and participation in online and distance education. This article outlines how universities' shift to online teaching and learning modes due to the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced social inequalities in Nepal. For the study presented here, the author collected data throughL’aggravation des inégalités en raison de l’éducation en ligne et à distance à l’ère de la COVID-19: le cas de l’enseignement supérieur au Népal – La COVID-19, maladie due au coronavirus, perturbe gravement la dynamique économique, sociale et culturelle aux quatre coins du globe. Avec des milliers d’étudiants universitaires du monde entier déplacés, déconnectés et désengagés de l’apprentissage formel, l’enseignement supérieur s’est vu confronté à d’indéniables difficultés provoquées par la pandémie. Dans les pays du Sud, les programmes d’éducation en ligne et à distance tendent à se concentrer dans des centres urbains. Au Népal, les étudiants des zones rurales, de communautés socio-économiques défavorisées et genrées, et qui maîtrisent mal l’anglais et l’informatique se trouvent confrontés à des inégalités quant à l’accès et la participation à l’éducation en ligne et à distance. Cet article expose brièvement comment le passage des universités à des modes d’enseignement et d’apprentissage en ligne, dû à la pandémie de COVID-19, a creusé les inégalités au Népal. Pour l’étude présentée ici, l’auteur a collecté des données selon des méthodes de recherche

Now more than ever, Industry 4.0 and the suite of new technologies are enabling a digital transformation in the education sector. Dream to Succeed Foundation performed research on distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic and this white paper presents a review on the current state of reality and proposes an integrated distance learning solution with three intertwined domains: people, processes, and technology. Many companies, schools, research centers, universities, local government, or department of education acknowledge that artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of things, virtual reality, cloud computing, and other Industry 4.0 technologies are key components for an integrated distance learning solution. A well-defined teaching and learning process and a new mindset and skills from all personals involved will be required to improve the education system in a sustainable environment with continuous improvements to adapt to new norms. This white paper will serve as a framework for the future development of similar integrated solutions with a partnership with great companies to collaborate and implement a great and global solution.

Distance training or distance learning has experienced a boom in recent years in several regions of the world. It follows from this interest that the emergence of distance learning has been remarkably advocated by higher education institutions and less and less at the secondary and college levels where face-to-face training is becoming essential. However, during the period of health crisis due to Covid-19, distance education had established itself as a new alternative mode for face-to-face education for all levels of education, and for all subjects combined. Physical and sports education (PSE) is no exception to this change. In this context, the discipline EPS has sparked a debate on the modalities of engagement of teachers of EPS to participate in distance education given the almost practical nature of the subject. Faced with this problem, EPS teachers (high school and college) found themselves forced to formalize educational content and transmit it on various media. This study contributes to the identification of the degree of commitment of PE teachers to ensure the sustainability of learning and to determine the obstacles encountered in this operation qualified as urgent. This study saw the participation of 166 teachers in two levels of secondary and college education through three regional academies in Morocco. The results showed both the lack of communication between the inspectors of the EPS and the teachers of the subject, and the coordination between the teachers within the teaching units. &nbsp, La formation à distance ou l’apprentissage à distance connait son plein essor ces dernières années dans plusieurs régions du monde. Il résulte de cet intérêt que l’émersion de l’apprentissage à distance a été remarquablement prôné par les établissements d’enseignement supérieur et de moins en moins au niveau secondaire et collégial où la formation en présentiel devient essentielle. Cependant, pendant la période de crise sanitaire à cause du Covid-19, l’enseignement à distance s’était imposé comme un nouveau mode alternatif pour le présentiel pour tous les niveaux d’enseignement, et pour toutes les matières confondues. L’éducation physique et sportive (EPS) n’échappe pas à ce changement. Dans ce contexte, la discipline EPS a suscité un débat sur les modalités d’engagement des professeurs d’EPS pour participer à l’enseignement à distance vu la nature quasiment pratique de la matière. Devant ce problème, les enseignants d’EPS (lycée et collège) se sont trouvés contraint de formaliser des contenus pédagogiques et de les transmettre sur différents supports médiatiques. Cette étude contribue à l’identification du degré d’engagement des enseignants d’EPS pour assurer la durabilité des apprentissages et de déterminer les entraves rencontrées dans cette opération qualifiée d’urgente. Cette étude a vu la participation de 166 enseignants dans deux niveaux d’enseignements secondaire et collégial à travers trois académies régionales au Maroc. Les résultats ont montré à la fois l’absence de la communication entre les inspecteurs de l’EPS et les professeurs de la matière, et la coordination entre les professeurs au sein des unités pédagogiques. &nbsp

The impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on schools was massive and unprecedented. Many schools were forced to close, and teachers were forced to deliver their instruction online with a very short notice. To assist K-12 teachers to teach remotely, a simple instructional design model, CAFE (Content, Activities, Facilitation, & Evaluation), was created. This article describes the context in which CAFE was created and the three stages of improvement it went through from a simple instructional design table to the instructional design model. It also shares a reflection on the creation and characteristics of CAFE and finally, it ends with the introduction of the CAFE model.

Objective This study was conducted to study the anxiety scores among undergraduate university students in Jordan during COVID‐19 pandemic and to assess the relationship between quarantine and shifting to distance learning resulted from the governmental strict isolation measures and severity of anxiety among students. Methods A cross‐sectional design was conducted to meet the study objectives. A convenience sample of 736 undergraduate university students in Jordan was recruited, and anxiety was assessed using the Hamilton Anxiety Scale. Results The results indicated that anxiety score was 22.76 and 40.6% of the participant experienced moderate to severe anxiety, whereas 23.5% experienced mild to moderate anxiety and 35.9% experienced mild anxiety. Factors like suffering from chronic illnesses, having chronic medications, grade point average, shifting to distance learning, quarantine during the pandemic, study duties, the newly developed evaluation methods and the experience of students towards the use of anti‐anxiety drugs and herbs had significantly increased the anxiety scores. Conclusion Our findings indicate that quarantine and shifting to distance learning during COVID‐19 pandemic have negatively affected the anxiety scores of the university students which should be taken in consideration by the policymakers in Jordan in order to support this vulnerable group.

Online journals provided an essential way for the instructor to check student progress and understanding and to improve teaching and learning. Online learning requires the reconstruction of student and instructor roles, relations and practices. Instructors need to be aware of strategies and techniques they can use for improved communication and formative assessment of teaching and learning. Through adequate adaptation of the Minute Paper format or other classroom assessment techniques in online classrooms, instructors can benefit from ongoing assessment of student learning and their practices.

This short paper briefly discusses some of the challenges facing higher education in Tanzania and the panaceas that government and other institutions are implementing to address the challenges. The paper uses secondary data obtained from the country’s Ministry of Education and Vocation Training and from selected higher education institutions in the country. The challenges are identified as occurring mainly in the areas of funding, quality assurance, relevance, ICT, equity and internationalization. The following strategies for addressing these challenges are reported: matching rising enrolments with public facility enhancement; encouraging the establishment of private universities; cost-sharing; affirmative action; and distance education.

In the White Paper on Post-School Education and Training of 2013, the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) encourages the use of digital technology where appropriate to ...

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 is a global health problem that has a significant effect on the educational systems. Therefore, students shifted to distance learning through the digital platform. Since COVID-19 has consequences on mental health, the present study examined the perceived stress level in school students in distance learning during the COVID-19 period. A cross-sectional study of a sample consisting of 385 school students evaluated the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and their concerns and emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results showed that the mean value of the total PSS scores was 19.50 ± 9.28. About 48.6% of students had moderate stress, 28.8% had low stress, and 22.6% had high stress. Significant associations were found between the level of stress and demographic variables: age, gender, educational level, and place of residence. Female students were significantly higher than the male students in the mean score of perceived stress level (20.14 versus 18.13; p-value = 0.018). Females were more likely (53.4%) to have moderate stress than males (38.2%) (p = 0.019). The students aged 15–18 years were significantly higher than those aged 11–14 years in the mean score of perceived stress level (22.64 versus 17.24, respectively; p-value

This short paper discusses my experiences designing asynchronous online law school courses. It is meant to serve as a quick resource for professors moving classes online to deal with Covid-19 live class cancellations.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper evaluates an online programming course for K-12 educators that aimed to teach Computational Thinking (CT). CT is widely defined as a set of skills, such as problem solving and systems design, that rely on Computer Science principles. As these skills are increasingly demanded in modern society, it is critical to include CT in K-12 education to boost not only computing courses, but various other disciplines. However, most educators do not yet know the basics of CT and Computer Science fundamentals, particularly in Brazil. In this context, we designed and implemented an online programming course for K-12 educators to provide qualification in CT and Programming basics, as well as to assess learners’ attitudes towards Computing, how their motivation are expressed during the course, and the correlation between motivation and attitudes. The results indicate that participants’ attitudes towards Computing has become more positive after the course, primarily their comprehension of CT and confidence to learn Computer Science. The outcomes also suggest a high level of learners’ motivation over the course, and reveal a high correlation between the relevance expressed in the course with their interest and confidence towards Computing.

With the recent global pandemic, education institutions including higher education have shifted to offering online instruction for a prolonged period of time. Faculty and instructors have had to transform the content of face-to-face instruction into a format fit for distance education. In the virtual space, understanding or facilitating interactivity is a key component of online teaching for sustaining engagement and social interactions; promoting active learning between participants; and providing resources, tasks, and activities. The learning management system as a facilitative boundary object makes pivoting to online classes more tactical when adopting cultural-historical activity theory as an analytical lens, which can be used as a guide to re-envision how interactions can be implemented in e-learning or online courses and how instructors can repurpose resources and tools to maximize their instructional practices. Examples of interactivity and the implications for practitioners are synthesized, and the multiple components at play in the online and hybrid space are characterized in order to promote the exchange of practices and knowledge mobilization.

Lecture recordings are useful learning resources that can support flexible, remote and distance learning, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study explored students’ experiences of engaging with recorded lectures and the extent to which such engagement contributes to enhanced learning. The research involved the deployment of a questionnaire to undergraduate and postgraduate students (n = 660) who had access to lecture recordings at a research intensive public university in New Zealand. Key findings revealed that students who accessed lecture recordings reported an enhanced learning experience. They stated that the availability of lecture recordings created an inclusive learning environment for students with learning disabilities and fostered flexible learning for those who would otherwise be unable to attend lectures either due to sickness or work commitments. Data also suggest that students utilised lecture recordings as supplementary learning resources rather than a substitute for regular lecture attendance. Our findings substantiated previous research studies and additionally demonstrated the various ways in which students engage with lecture recordings. Moreover, the use of sentiment analysis shows how multiple data can be triangulated to confirm or contest research findings. Finally, we believe this study adds to the voice that lecture recordings are vital resources that support students’ learning.

Online learning is extremely prevalent in education, more than ever given the COVID-19 pandemic that has shifted most educational services to an online platform. More specifically, in 2015, close to six million students were taking at least one online learning course, which was 29.7% of all postsecondary students (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2018). In 2017, the Online Learning Consortium reported an almost 4% increase in online learning students in 2015 as compared to the previous two years. Although online learning is becoming more prevalent, there has been little to no research to determine what makes online learning most effective. Those that have, either have not compared modalities (i.e., only testing one format) (Sella et al. 2014; Walker and Rehfeldt 2012) or have focused on another aspect of the learning (e.g., does grading anonymously affect performance) (Liu et al. 2018). Determining the components of online learning that lead to better student outcomes will add to the current literature and improve online learning as a whole. The primary purpose of this experiment was to determine what forms of discussion (synchronous vs asynchronous) are most effective in an asynchronous online master-level applied behavior analysis course.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to extraordinary changes in family literacy instruction, forcing face-to-face programmes to shift rapidly (or "on the fly") to online, remote instruction. This study is one of the few on online teaching and learning in family literacy and, to the knowledge of the authors, the first on emergency remote instruction in a family literacy programme during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article examines how the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at The Pennsylvania State University in the United States has responded to the pandemic by converting its face-to-face family literacy classes into emergency remote instruction using online platforms. Serving eight immigrant families in 2019-2020 who live in the State College area in central Pennsylvania, theÀ la volée : adaptation rapide à l’urgence du télé-enseignement dans le cadre d’un programme d’alphabétisation familiale – La pandémie de COVID 19 a entraîné des changements extraordinaires en matière d’alphabétisation familiale, contraignant les programmes en présentiel à passer rapidement (pour ainsi dire, à la volée) à un mode d’enseignement à distance en ligne. Cette étude est l’une des rares à aborder l’enseignement et l’apprentissage en ligne en matière d’alphabétisation et, à la connaissance des auteures, elle est la première qui porte sur l’enseignement à distance dans le cadre d’un programme d’alphabétisation familiale durant la pandémie de COVID-19. Le présent article se penche sur la réponse que l’Institut Goodling de recherche en alphabétisation familiale de la Pennsylvania State University (USA) a apporté à la pandémie en transformant, à chaud, ses cours d’alphabétisation familiale en présentiel en cours à distance par le biais de plateformes en ligne. Le programme

Ponencia de la conferencia "1st IFIP WG 3.4 International Conference on Sustainable ICT, Education, and Learning, SUZA 2019; Zanzibar; Tanzania; 25 April 2019 through 27 April 2019" Usually, the cycle of innovation is sold as a great progress in Education. However, in Education, the cycle of innovation does not exist as we might expect. Innovation is cyclical by itself. Each step of the structure can be modified, improved and complemented without waiting for a whole process that shows logic in other areas (engineering, logistics, and psychology, for instance) but that, in education, seems to be a luxury. This position paper shows why and how to perform a dynamic innovation cycle that enhances learning and teaching experiences, Worldwide, including North-North, North-South and South-South approaches, supported by initiatives by UNESCO, the International Council of Distance Education, Open Education Consortium, the European Commission and others.

Philippa Levy picks up on the point made by Peter Brophy in the previous chapter regarding the need for increased pedagogical awareness within the library community as librarians become increasingly active in learning support and teaching in an environment in which there is continuing – perhaps increasing – emphasis on student-centred learning. The chapter reviews key strands of current educational theory and research, focusing in particular on the principles that underpin constructivist perspectives on learning and teaching, and the implications of these principles for the design and facilitation of ICT-enhanced, active learning. The shift from ‘transmission’-style pedagogy to task-focused pedagogy brings with it a commitment to engaging students in processes of dialogue, feedback, reflection, collaboration and participation in learning communities, and a change in the tutor's role from instructor to scaffolder or facilitator of learning conversations. The chapter also identifies the need for careful ‘information design’ in constructivist pedagogy, and points to a particular role here for the information specialist. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that, as their engagement with educational practice increases, becoming involved in practitioner-based pedagogical inquiry will help librarians in the development of their own pedagogical awareness and will strengthen their contribution to pedagogical knowledge and innovation within the sector as a whole. Introduction This chapter focuses on the theme of pedagogy in an educational environment in which the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support learning is increasingly pervasive. E-learning development has progressed at a rapid pace within UK higher education (HE) over the past decade, particularly in terms of infrastructure. In response to the government's White Paper The Future of Higher Education (Department for Education and Skills, 2003) the Higher Education Funding Committee for England (HEFCE) has recently confirmed its strategic commitment to embedding e-learning in a ‘full and sustainable way’ into the experience of learning and teaching in the sector within the next ten years (HEFCE, 2005). The early concentration on infrastructure is shifting towards a stronger focus on issues of pedagogy for both distance learning and for blended approaches in which ICT is used to mediate access to learning activities, interactions and resources in combination with face-to-face approaches.

This study intends to explore the current trends in the field of distance education research catalogued in Web of Science (WoS) database during 1980-2016. Mainly bibliographic description and social network analysis was employed to investigate the structure and patterns of information exchanged within the field of distance education research and also to interpret the interrelationship between keywords indicated in these articles. A total of 500 most cited articles (out of 6,141 relevant to the topic) were reviewed to examine the impact of factors such as journal DOI and keywords on the number of citations that they received. We also identified major trends in distance education literature including variation across publication and citation year, top ranking of institutions and top ranking of published papers based on authors, subject area and co-authorship collaboration between countries. Our results show that the most cited articles are from two institutions of United States and United Kingdom and the most prolific years in terms of number of published articles and citations are 2013.We also found non-significant and very small correlation between the number of citation and DOI number of the journals. Our study serves as a resource for future studies by indicating how trends in distance education research have gradually developed over time and demonstrating the characteristics of the most cited articles in this literature.