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Purpose – This study aims to investigate the perceptions, acceptance, usage and access to social media by students and academics in higher education in informatics programs in Malaysia. A conceptual model based on Connectivism and communities of practice (CoPs) learning theory was developed and were used as a basis of mapping the research questions to the design frameworks and the research outcomes. A significant outcome of this study will be the development of a design framework for implementing social media as supporting tools for student engagement and teaching and learning of informatics programs in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-method research methodology with a significant survey research component was employed for this research. This methodology focused on collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to better understand the research problems. For this study, a mixed-method sequential transformative research strategy based on a QUAN-Qual model was used in the data collection process. Mixed-method research methodology is considered to be most appropriate for this study, as it allows the researcher to gather multiple forms of data from diverse audiences such as educators, administrators and students. Findings – The findings show the close matched of the ownership, amount of hours spent online, types of social media technologies (SMTs) used and pattern of usage between informatics and non-informatics students. It also shows that many students and instructors have started to explore and accept the use of SMTs as a tool for engaging with their institution and their peers as well as for teaching and learning purposes. Innovative institutions need to understand the critical success factors and the barriers that restrict the implementation of SMTs within the HEI to take advantage of the opportunities offered by SMTs in higher education. Research limitations/implications – The surveys and interview participant, in part, are self-selecting, so the data collected cannot be claimed to be representative of the population. However, because of the relatively large number of participants, it can be considered that the findings are indicative. Other limitation includes the depth of data that can be collected using this methodology. Practical implications – There is wide range of social media usage in educational settings now being reported, but many issues are still unexamined. Limited studies have been focusing on the educators’ readiness, acceptance or refusal in integrating social media into their courses, the perceived effectiveness of the tools and student outcomes for their learning. The central outcome of this research will be the development of a design framework that will be used as a guide for Malaysian HEIs and informatics academics to engage students using SMTs in creating effective learning communities for informatics programs. Social implications – The framework will have implication for the social interaction and engagement of students with their institution. Originality/value – Very little work has been reported on student and academic engagement, their perspectives and perceived effectiveness of social media usage in higher education, especially in the Malaysia context. Most of the research focused only on the quantitative research with students from universities in the USA and Australia, with an emphasis mainly on student’s perception and acceptance. There are calls for more research to examine how social media is perceived and accepted by students and academics for teaching and learning, especially in Malaysia.

Examining British cohort data we find significant differences in the occupational aspirations of boys and girls at age 16 that appear to follow a traditional pattern. To isolate the effect of gender hiring bias on occupational attainment a conditional hiring model is estimated. This separates the occupational preferences of workers to join a pool of job applicants from the hiring decision of employers. Conditional on occupational preferences, we find, in general, no evidence of hiring bias against women except in manual/craft occupations. Failure to control for differences in career aspirations, in this study, produces an overestimate of the extent of occupational sex discrimination of around 60%. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

The occupational attainment of men aged thirty-three is examined using longitudinal cohort data. The authors find that family background and early child development has a much stronger effect on occupational attainment than found in previous studies for Britain. Tests in math and reading taken at age seven, eleven, and sixteen provide important information regarding the likelihood of occupational success. The authors' results appear to be insensitive to whether they measure attainment using mean earnings or occupational status. Failure to control for unobserved person specific fixed effects causes significant downward bias in estimated returns to educational qualifications acquired after age twenty-three. Copyright 1997 by Royal Economic Society.

This chapter builds on and brings up to date the work described in Chapter 6. The authors report on a decade of empirical work with teaching practitioners which has led them to conclude that learning designs (by which they mean a specific form of graphical representation and explanatory text) are usable by university teachers. Designs are referred to for guidance and inspiration, in what the authors see as an example of case-based professional learning. Having a classification system seems to support this, even though it is not directly related to subject area. An important finding is that learning designs from the AUTC project can support the integration of pedagogy, technology and content knowledge in practitioners' design thinking.

This paper describes the issues surrounding information systems (IS) in the school, in particular the concerns which need to be considered when generating a comprehensive strategy for the implementation of an educational integrated IS. The paper reviews both IS strategy research and innovations in educational technology, and reports on two studies of the problems in IS strategy of educational professionals. In the major study, survey responses from 432 high schools were analyzed to examine the relative use of microcomputer school IS for efficiency of routine functions versus effective decision making defined as greater use of information by school personnel. Schools showed significantly greater use of the systems for more efficient processing of routine tasks. However, operational factors related to the use of the systems as informing tools for more effective decision making were able to be singled out, and relationships among measures of efficiency, effectiveness, decision making and operational factors were identified. The article concludes with implications for institutional practice, related research and professional preparation of educational administrators.

Based on the premise that providing support for university teachers in designing for their teaching will ultimately improve the quality of student learning outcomes, recent interest in the development of support tools and strategies has gained momentum. This article reports on a study that examined the context in which Australian university teachers design in order to understand what role design support tools and strategies could play. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 academics across 16 Australian universities. The findings suggest that most Australian university teachers have a high degree of flexibility in their design decisions suggesting that opportunities exist for learning design tools and strategies to be adopted. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Designing learning experiences supported by information and communication technology (ICT) is becoming an important skill for all academics in the higher education sector. With a range of "quality" measures being implemented and foreshadowed by government, including "dollars" linked to student learning outcomes, all academics will be increasingly asked to examine their instructional strategies and to offer high quality learning opportunities. Sharing learning resources is seen as one strategy to help academics in this change process. As such, online repositories of learning objects are flourishing to encourage the concept of reuse. However, what is lacking are tools to support academics in designing high quality learning environments that incorporate learning objects. This paper presents a prototype tool that uses the concept of a "learning design" as the framework to assist academics in the design process and demonstrates how learning objects can be incorporated.

This paper reports recent work in developing of structures and processes that support university teachers and instructional designers incorporating learning objects into higher education focused learning designs. The aim of the project is to develop a framework to guide the design and implementation of high quality learning experiences. This framework is premised on the proposition that learning objects are resources that can be incorporated within a learning design. The learning design serves as the pedagogical model that drives the development. The first phase of the project required an analysis of metadata schemas by which learning objects could be described, to facilitate discovery, retrieval and inclusion in a learning design. In particular, the pedagogical descriptors within the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard were examined to determine their suitability for use in this project. The findings indicated that enhancement of the educational descriptors was required. To address this, a learning object metadata application profile specific to Australian higher education has been developed. This paper describes the process by which the metadata application profile was developed within the context of the overall project.

This paper describes two empirical studies which investigated the importance for spatial learning of view control and object manipulation within 3D environments. A 3D virtual chemistry laboratory was used as the research instrument. Subjects, who were university undergraduate students (34 in the first study and 80 in the second study), undertook tasks in the virtual laboratory and were tested on their spatial knowledge through written tests. The results of the study indicate that view control and object manipulation enhance spatial learning but only if the learner undertakes authentic tasks that require this learning. These results have implications for educational designers making a choice between video or animation and interactive 3D technologies. The results are discussed within the framework of Piaget's theories on active learning and Gibson's ecological theory of perception and action.

Within the context of an AUTC funded Project: Information and Communication Technologies and Their Role in Flexible Learning, this paper presents an analysis of learning designs using ICTs and how this grounded approach might be a more useful structure to design effective learning environments. The project has developed generic or reusable frameworks for technology-enhanced high quality learning experiences in higher education and this paper will present several examples, of the original design and how the key elements were selected and developed for use by others. As this project is currently developing these generic exemplars of learning designs, the final presentation will demonstrate how the designs might be reengineered to become useful templates for other instructors and other knowledge domains.

In recent years, research has focused on understanding how learners can benefit from tools that can assist in the development of informal reasoning skills when constructing arguments in collaborative learning with web-based learning environments. A common approach taken by each of these systems is to use support mechanisms (scaffolding) to facilitate student learning through the development of improved reasoning and argumentation skills. The authors of this paper have been developing computer-based learning environments for the past ten years, and have developed several award winning CD-ROM packages that feature a range of cognitive tools designed to assist learning. The development of these products has provided a rich source of information about learner use of cognitive tools. Our research has shown that two recurring issues keep emerging: 1. There is a need to develop generic cognitive tools that assist learners to understand and solve problems that relate to different knowledge domains. 2. There is a need to help learners to analyse and structure information gathered, when they use cognitive tools. This paper reports on the outcomes of a study into the reasoning and argumentation skills of pre-service education students engaged in problem solving within a computer-based learning environment. The implications for the design of a support framework to assist in this process will also be discussed.

As teachers adopt technology in their classrooms and develop the pedagogical models that will allow them to make use of the affordances of the technology, we are seeing improved learning outcomes and high-quality learning demonstrated. The pedagogical models that are showing the most promise come from ideas about how designers can implement the class of theories referred to as constructivism. Designers of technology-based learning environments can draw on the work of the many writers who have sought to develop guidelines and heuristics to support new modes of learning (see for example, Grabinger, 1996; Hannafin & Land, 1997; Squires, 1996). Constructivist frameworks are based upon the argument for learners being placed in authentic environments that incorporate sophisticated representations of context through such constructs as virtual “worlds”. Learning experiences, which adopt these approaches, designed around bounded resources, such as CD-ROM technologies, are now well documented and many teachers have been making extensive use of these environments for some time. One such project, Exploring the Nardoo, which has been developed within constructivist frameworks as a virtual world has been acclaimed for its illustration of these concepts. The product displays varying degrees of fidelity of representation, learner immersion and active participation and has been shown to offer learning advantages for users.

This paper discusses the thinking behind MediaPlant, an authoring tool which has been designed to embody several constructivist ideas in its development. It begins with some comparisons with some commonly employed tools and suggests that how the tools are designed to be used poses limitations upon the learning tasks which are designed. The chapter concludes with some examples of how the tools have been used and the types of products that have resulted from its use.

Teachers in a range of disciplines are interested in engaging their students in authentic activities that reflect the experiences of real world practitioners. Adopting this approach requires the design and implementation of learning environments that incorporate and support such activities. This paper describes two real life cases developed as support materials for learners undertaking a major multimedia design project. Their implementation in a graduate education subject forms the basis of a wider study investigating learners' interpretations and use of case materials.

This paper reports on the development and evaluation of cognitive tools used to interpret graphs and tables. The development of these tools was informed by research about how learners interpreted graphs and tables. A prototype of the cognitive tools was trialed with a small sample of preservice teachers. This prototype was then improved and used again with a larger sample. Data from individual audit trails of software use, journal entries and interviews with a small sample of preservice teachers were used to evaluate the cognitive tools. The findings showed that the simple, context-specific cognitive tools developed helped to reduce the cognitive load associated with the interpretation of graphs and tables.

The increasing availability of CD ROM based interactive multimedia packages to support learning in science classrooms offers science teachers new pedagogical opportunities for student-centred and cooperative learning. However, many of the current products do not make full use of the existing technology in schools and even when they do they tend to constrain the student to a very limited view of information and how it can be used as part of student reporting of inquiry projects.Interactivity in many packages has been limited to "point and click" rather than employing instructional strategies that immerse and challenge students. The Interactive Multimedia Learning Laboratory at the University of Wollongong has developed two interactive multimedia packages designed for Australian schools that not only attempt to develop problem solving skills but also allow students to express their ideas with different forms of representation in their reports.Investigating Lake Iluka, based on the ecology of a coastal lake environment uses a text based notebook which allows the student to select text and edit it into their report on their problem investigation A second package, Exploring the Nardoo, based on water management issues extends the concept to include multimedia elements in the student's notebook. The evaluation of both packages has examined the ability of students to express themselves in text together with static and dynamic aural and visual forms. This paper also reports on improvement of scientific understanding and improved problem' reporting based on metacognitive supports included in these interactive multimedia packages, especially the use of genre templates and guides.

The emergence of integrated technologies is facilitating the configuration of vision and sound in ways previously impossible with discrete technologies. The attributes of infinite storage, continually increasing speed of access and phenomenal manipulation of images and sound are moving rapidly towards the notion of virtual reality in technology based information and presentation systems. What are the implications for instructional design? This paper discusses effective multimedia design strategies which results in the creation of multimedia programs. Implications for the development of materials with groups located at geographically different places are discussed. This impacts on the possibility of developing multimedia material between different groups in different countries.

Many of the software packages presently marketed as simulations are in fact little more than 'pre-set', limited models of the 'real world' systems they are designed to emulate. There is little scope for the user to interact with the model as they would in a 'real world' experience, and this must compromise the intended educational outcomes. The exact nature of what constitutes a 'good simulation' is not agreed upon among researchers or designers alike, but if the goal of the simulation is to provide experiences which approach those in the 'real world', and in so doing, provide opportunity for the development of higher order skills which research in cognitive science is suggesting are important, one must strive for the greatest degree of user interaction as possible.The achievement of this goal rests with the application of HyperMedia based platforms which may be exploited for their ability to provide the 'genuine interaction' essential to 'real world' systems, across the computer-user boundary. A number of design issues must be addressed if the full potential of HyperMedia based platforms is to be harnessed.

This paper describes the issues surrounding the provision of information systems to small educational organisations, in particular, the concerns which need to be considered when generating a comprehensive strategy for the implementation of an educational integrated information system. The paper reviews both information systems strategy research and innovations in educational technology, and reports on two studies of the problems in information systems strategy of educational professionals. In the major study, survey responses from 432 high schools were analysed to examine the relative use of microcomputer school information systems for efficiency of routine functions versus effective decision-making defined as greater use of information by school personnel. Schools showed significantly greater use of the systems for more efficient processing of routine tasks. However, operational factors related to the use of the systems as informing tools for more effective decision-making were able to be singled out, and relationships among measures of efficiency, effectiveness, decision-making and operational factors were identified. The article concludes with implications for institutional practice, related research and professional preparation of educational administrators.

YOU ARE in a small town in the American Midwest. It is the mid-1800s, and you are trying to get to the Willamette Valley. You have a little money, but you need provisions that exceed your budget, so you are keen to do some trading. With luck, you will find suitable game to hunt along the way, but you are going to need some other supplies. What should you buy? What should you trade? What if the weather turns colder? These decisions sound familiar to those who were students growing up in the pre-Web era. The Oregon Trail was a simulation that was very common in computer labs across the country in the 1980s. In those days, many of us believed that the most interesting form of computer-aided instruction was the simulation. Simulations could be as simple as a game of "Jeopardy" or as complicated as a flight simulator. In simulations, students actually played roles in scenarios in which they manipulated variables or interacted with an investigation or process. Many companies produced simulation software, including Sunburst Technology (http://store.sunburst.com), Broderbund (www.broderbund.com), Tom Snyder Productions (www.tomsnyder.com), and the not-so-corporate Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, which was ultimately absorbed into the Learning Company (www.learningcompany.com). Although much of this software is still available--in fact, the Fifth Edition of The Oregon Trail is currently featured on the Learning Company website--many teachers are not aware of it or no longer use it. In Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? students solved crimes by chasing clues from city to city around the globe. In The Other Side, students worked in teams as government representatives to peacefully coexist with a hostile neighboring country's representatives. In one memorable simulation, students "tagged" fish and released them into a lake. The next day, they sampled the lake's population, and, over time, they could estimate the fish population by catching a number of fish, determining the percentage of caught fish that were "tagged," and extrapolating. Similar "lake-based" simulations examined the role of natural predators, while others examined whether or not the lake was in a state of natural balance or equilibrium. When students were engaged in simulated activities, they were learning about processes. Simulations were seen as tools for learning rather than as tools for productivity. For example, when a student conducts a virtual experiment, he or she learns about controlling variables, about what factors contribute to an effect, and about how a system behaves. This focus was very important in the early world of computers in education. In fact, Barry Harper, David Squires, and Anne McDougall, in a paper published in the United Kingdom, stated that "the simulation paradigm formed the essential theoretical rationale for the early major computer assisted learning initiatives.... However, by the mid-1980s the general purpose software tools had become the dominant paradigm." (1) Today, schools use computers primarily for productivity tasks rather than as learning machines. Perhaps this is because most people--and most teachers--believe that children are computer "experts." The students seem to know how to handle productivity software, and they spend a great deal of time "on the computer." For those of us who work with computers in education, it is quite clear that, while students aren't afraid of software tools, they don't have a very good understanding of how computers work, how they are controlled, or even how they communicate. This is because they don't have to. Software exists for almost any productivity task, and the interface is roughly the same, with pull-down menus and dialogue boxes. Students have become quite proficient in using tools, employing software to do homework, communicating with their friends, and reading about whatever interests them. The computer is now a tool that allows them to be productive and access information, including live streams of information. …