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Over the past decade, an explosion in the availability of education-related datasets has enabled new computational research in education. Much of this work has investigated digital traces of online learners in order to better understand and optimize their cognitive learning processes. Yet cognitive learning on digital platforms does not equal education. Instead, education is an inherently social, cultural, economic, and political process manifesting in physical spaces, and educational outcomes are influenced by many factors that precede and shape the cognitive learning process. Many of these are social factors like children's connections to schools (including teachers, counselors, and role models), parents and families, and the broader neighborhoods in which they live. In this article, we briefly discuss recent studies of learning through large-scale digital platforms, but largely focus on those exploring sociological aspects of education. We believe computational social scientists can creatively advance this emerging research frontier-and in doing so, help facilitate more equitable educational and life outcomes., Comment: In: T. Yasseri (Ed.), Handbook of Computational Social Science. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. (Forthcoming, 2023)

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have sparked renewed interest in its potential to improve education. However, AI is a loose umbrella term that refers to a collection of methods, capabilities, and limitations-many of which are often not explicitly articulated by researchers, education technology companies, or other AI developers. In this paper, we seek to clarify what "AI" is and the potential it holds to both advance and hamper educational opportunities that may improve the human condition. We offer a basic introduction to different methods and philosophies underpinning AI, discuss recent advances, explore applications to education, and highlight key limitations and risks. We conclude with a set of questions that educationalists may ask as they encounter AI in their research and practice. Our hope is to make often jargon-laden terms and concepts accessible, so that all are equipped to understand, interrogate, and ultimately shape the development of human centered AI in education.

The development of digital skills for all is a key focus of many educational policies across the globe. Despite the significant attention paid to the nature and suitability of such policies targeted at young people, there has been far less focus on digital skills policies targeted at adults. This article contributes to this literature. It outlines current digital skills policy in England. Having established this background, it analyses 30 interviews with digitally competent adults from lower socio‐economic backgrounds about their experiences of learning to use the Internet. In doing so, the article highlights that a narrow and instrumental digital skills agenda is emerging in the education of adults, driven by the needs of the commercial sector, that is in stark contrast to the experiences, motivations and hopes of adults who learn about, and use, digital technologies. Reframing digital skills as part of a broader adult education agenda may offer a way to facilitate the development of digital literacies that individuals seek.

This study aims to contribute to existing understandings of the relationships between social inequality and Internet use through 30 in-depth interviews with people in Britain who have digital access, are digitally competent, and use the Internet for a broad range of purposes, yet come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Using a critical realist lens, it examines the everyday experiences and implications of using the Internet for this group. The paper explores individuals uses of the Internet, the ways people are able to exert agency using the affordances of the Internet and the structural conditions which constrain or enable what is possible for participants to achieve. The analysis provides a way to understand the complex mechanisms of agency and structure that help to explain the varied outcomes of Internet use for different individuals; and promotes a move beyond a focus on access and skills in digital inclusion policies.

Over the past few years, two forms of crowd-based initiatives have been supported and facilitated by universities. First is the focus on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) where thousands of peopl...

Through a survey with a representative sample of Dutch Internet users, this paper examines compound digital exclusion, that is, whether a person who lacks a particular digital skill also lacks another kind of skill; whether a person who does not engage in a particular way online is also less likely to engage in other ways; and whether a person who does not achieve a certain outcome online is also less likely to achieve another type of outcome. We also tested sequential digital exclusion, whether a lower level of digital skills leads to lower levels of engagement with the Internet resulting in a lower likelihood of an individual achieving tangible outcomes. Both types of digital exclusion are a reality. A certain use can have a strong relation with an outcome in a different domain. Furthermore, those who achieve outcomes in one domain do not necessarily achieve outcomes in another domain. To get a comprehensive picture of the nature of digital exclusion, it is necessary to account for different domains in research.

As I write this editorial the UK is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the Representation of the People Act. This law, passed on the 6th of February in 1991, allowed some women to vote for the...

Discussion of the role of the Internet in government and research tends to be 'institution-centric' in that e-Government and e-Research initiatives are both anchored in top-down strategies to provide information resources to citizens or researchers by place-based institutions, including governments and universities. In both institutional arenas, the diffusion of these services has been limited to small albeit growing proportions of their target audiences. In contrast, individuals with access to the Internet have taken bottom-up initiatives to obtain information and services from the space of flows of the Internet in ways that reach beyond the boundaries of both governmental and research institutions, but in ways that could compete with but also enhance existing institutions, such as by making them more accountable to their respective constituencies. Institutional actors in government and research need to more explicitly recognize and strategically adapt to the practices and tools taken up by networked individuals, such as by creating e-infrastructures that -- like the Internet -- enable rather than constrain bottom-up innovation.

Higher education is described as being in a time of crisis. In the US, tuition costs have been escalating beyond the cost of inflation for some years, students are building up significant debt, whilst completion rates are in decline. The higher education system is creaking under the strain of additional scrutiny from government, funders, parents and students, yet is struggling to re-invent itself to reduce costs whilst improving quality and increasing flexibility for learners. In a Europe facing the financial downturn, universities struggle to retain their public service ethos when budgets are under huge pressure. Elsewhere in the world, many countries plan dramatic expansion to their higher education systems to fuel their growing economies, but they are being held up by lack of infrastructure and the increased intellectual capital that is needed. Higher education is becoming a global, Internet-based business. But few universities are equipped to fully embrace the potential that this offers. Few faculty were even aware of these seismic shifts until the recent publicity around Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which provide access to free online courses by a wide range of universities and opened to students with any academic background. They are attracting millions of students from across the globe. To what extent though is the MOOC really revolutionary and disruptive, or is it being used cynically by the most elite institutions to further increase their brand power and assert their superiority, whilst the middle tier of institutions lose student numbers and academic credibility? Do MOOCs hold the potential to support the developing world in its academic ambitions, or are they just another example of neo-colonialism? And what about online learning more broadly – are we giving enough attention to the quiet revolution of blended learning that has been taken place over many years, and what that means for higher education?

We describe the evaluation of eight modules of clinical risk management training in the West Midlands, funded by the modernisation fund. 174 participants attended. 126 (72%) replied to a questionnaire sent three months after completion, looking at course perceptions and impact on practice. Courses were viewed positively and did have some impact on practice. We make recommendations for the organisation of training, course content, and enhancing impact on practice.

Information seeking is one of the most popular online activities for young people and can provide an additional information channel, which may enhance learning. In this study, we propose and test a model that adds to the existing literature by examining the ways in which parents, schools, and friends (what we call networks of support) effect young people's online information behaviours, while at the same time taking into account young people's individual characteristics, confidence, and skills to use the Internet. Using path analysis, we demonstrate the significance of networks of support in understanding the uptake of online information seeking both directly and indirectly (through enhancing self-concept for learning and online skills). Young people who have better networks of support, particularly friends who are engaged in technology, are more likely to engage in online information seeking. While quantitative models of this nature cannot capture the complexity of individual online search practices, these findings may assist in the development of policy and practice to support young people to make the most effective use of the Internet for information seeking. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This report presents findings from the third phase of data gathering during the initial year of the Learner and their Context research project, being carried out at the Oxford University Department of Education in association with Becta. The aim of the Learner and their Context research is to gain up-to-date understandings about how a wide range of learners experience new technologies in their lives outside formal education, and the learning made possible by those experiences. The research is being conducted in support of the Government’s Harnessing Technology strategy.

This report from research commissioned by Becta investigates what, how and why people learn outside formal educational settings using technology. This study, The Learner in Context, explores the: • ways in which many learners individually and as members of social groups manage and develop their engagement with digital technologies in order to adapt it to their needs • sources of frustration, lack of skills and lack of opportunity that separate many other learners from the benefits of the same new technologies.

Progress towards realizing the full potential of 'e-government' - using digital technologies to improve public services and government-citizen engagements - has been slower and less effective than the technologies' take-up in spheres such as e-commerce. Evidence from across Europe reported here, including an online survey and case studies, indicates a significant reason has been an overly narrow focus on substituting electronic for traditional services. Theoretical and empirical perspectives on barriers to e-government identified (e.g. poor coordination; workplace and organizational inflexibility) suggest greater attention should be given to supporting organization innovations to achieve maximum benefits from networking in the public sector.

This short paper, to accompany the forthcoming VFM study on the filing of VAT and Company tax returns, looks at the barriers to businesses filing complete and accurate VAT and Company Tax returns on time and the range of incentives HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) might use to encourage better compliance. First, it identifies potential barriers to efiling of taxes; barriers to e-government, those that might be specific to tax, those that might be specific to business. Second, it identifies those barriers that might be specific or particularly pertinent to the UK tax agency, putting the UK case in comparative perspective. Third, it identifies a range of possible ways to use incentives to overcome these barriers to maximizing the benefits of electronic taxation. In light of the recommendations of the Carter review and the commitment of HMRC to mandate all businesses to file electronically in a phased programme of mandation for businesses up to 2012, it looks across the world for examples of best practice, where countries have managed to achieve higher take-up rates than the UK, using both compulsion and other forms of incentivization, and explores whether such evidence can provide any useful lessons for the UK tax agency.

The design of medical instrumentation is a vital aspect of Biomedical Engineering (BME) programs. Yet, no full-length study analyzing the consequence of pedagogical methods on a medical device’s final design has been conducted. Being that these technologies are created with a specific end-use in mind, an examination of instructional design is essential for ascertaining how the user has come to be understood by those drafting solutions on their behalf. As such, this thesis examines the ways that biomedical engineering programs conceptualize user experience through design instruction. It navigates essentialist questions like who is a user and evolves to investigate the theoretical crux of medical device making to ask why decisions are made and what apparatuses might inform these choices. Through this process, it discerns a lack of critical pedagogy in BME design curricula, and thus argues that biomedical engineering programs must take seriously the ideas of race, gender, and other social categories in the teaching of medical device design. This work begins by reflecting on the socio-historical relevance of medical devices. In doing so, it outlines health, education, and illness as value-laden, multi-dimensional notions that are often singularized. This piece contends that such singularization limits the reach and effectiveness of design instruction, reifying the belief that science is distinct from social meaning. It then reflects on the use of technology in the development of medical devices. Here, it offers a generational description of mechanical Computer Aided-Design (CAD)—a band of software used to transform 2D sketches into 3D digital models. Finally, through a series of semi-structured interviews with six recent graduates of two top ranked BME programs, this work develops the concept of exclusion as enactment to describe the catastrophic impacts exclusion can have for those underrepresented in currently utilized instructional frameworks.

This study explores the diverse understandings, beliefs, and practices of EdTech in China through the analysis of 15 interviews with EdTech practitioners. Drawing on the social construction of technology (SCOT), the study investigates the construction of EdTech, providing a means with which to examine and critically assess the likely social and educational implications of EdTech. This study demonstrates the underlying mechanisms by which the economic and political factors influence the construction of EdTech. In particular, this study examines the impact of China’s policies of reducing the educational burden on students in 2021 (called “double reduction policy”) on the future construction of EdTech. Specifically, this study provides an in-depth insight into EdTech practitioners in China, uncovering the dominant narrative of practitioners’ understandings and beliefs about EdTech, and exposing the internal heterogeneity of the group. The study then investigates the economic shaping of EdTech in China with a number of first-hand examples from the industry, revealing the underlying mechanisms by which business, profit, markets, and capital shape EdTech. Finally, the study understands the mechanisms of political shaping of EdTech by studying the impact of the double reduction policy as an example.

Today, the influence of industrial design (ID) is expanding beyond the traditional field of physical modelling. However, ID students seem to struggle to cope with the changing trends of society under the traditional curriculum of design education. Even with this mismatch between ID education and the design industry, not many studies made connections between ID education and the design industry to understand how design students transfer their knowledge into the professional field of design. Despite the lack of literature on the bridge between ID education and the design industry, many studies emphasized the critique environment as an essential pedagogical space for design education and its foundational knowledge generation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the ID students’ knowledge application in professional areas through reviewing the critique environment. Two research questions formed around the research aim: (1) what knowledge gained from critique helps and hinders recent graduates’ performance in the design industry? and (2) how accurately does the critique environment portray the professional design field? With a qualitative approach, the study conducted in-depth interviews with six major stakeholders of industrial design in the US (recent graduates, educators, and designers). The study suggests that critique experience supports the identity formation of design students. In contrast, it hinders coworking with non-design fields due to students’ lack of awareness of the cross-functional culture in the design industry. Additionally, the study indicated systematic complexities existed in a collaboration between higher education institutions and companies in the US, which inhibit the active involvement of professional insights in academic critique. The study concludes by highlighting strategies to improve the critique experience of industrial design students and further support a successful transition after graduation

Our digital era is no less “human” or “authentic” than any other time in history, yet many people feel that the opposite is true. This study investigates Camp Grounded’s digital detox and summer camp for adults as an example of the “social fact” of anti-tech narratives, and as an opportunity to better understand how we live with technology today. Why do people attend a digital detox, and what happens when they return to their digital lives? This ethnography of a digital detoxing community views detoxing as a symptom of Weber’s “disenchantment,” an isolating and meaningless modern existence, which can be countered through New Age “re-enchantment.” At Camp Grounded, digital detoxers hope to recreate the experience of tribal life, using imaginaries of neuroscience to envision the dangerous, unnatural, and “disenchanted” world they live in. At camp, detoxers feel a spiritual connection to nature, to each other, and a deeply rooted sense of belonging to the human race. Returning to their digital lives after their time in the woods, digital detoxers are inspired to prioritise their personal growth and happiness. This research explores how people can have their own understandings of categories like “use" and "non use" of technology, how science is used and misused by people in everyday life, and the ways in which people imagine technology to be harmful.

Increasing prominence continues to be given to interdisciplinary collaboration as a means of addressing challenges within academia, the private sector and government (Frodeman, Klein and Pacheco, 2017). In parallel, new and innovative technologies have been positioned as mediating artefacts in these endeavours (Mulcahy, 2013). Yet there is a need for enhanced understandings of these technologically-mediated interdisciplinary practices in order to acknowledge the depth and complexities of the phenomena, attending to the socio-materiality of humans and non-humans, to (un)settle the ‘grand narratives’ of interdisciplinarity and technology, and ‘to interrogate the unity of interdisciplinarity’ (Barry and Born, 2013: 5). This research focusses on generating deeper and more nuanced insights into how interdisciplinary research happens in projects building new technologies in Higher Education. The complexities inherent in studying interdisciplinary concepts, researchers and technologies necessitates a more critical approach which can account for the heterogeneity of practices, multiplicity of participants and ontologies, and constantly shifting relations (Mol, 2002; Barry, Born and Weszkalnys, 2008; Donaldson, Ward and Bradley, 2010). This study therefore adopts a qualitative design which conceptually, theoretically and methodologically draws from Science and Technology Studies (STS) (Sismondo, 2010), and more specifically, from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Law, 2004; Latour, 2005; Fenwick and Edwards, 2018). The core research question is: How are the socio-material practices of interdisciplinarity in research projects co-developing new technologies, in a US University, enacted? Through a praxiographic, collective case study of three interdisciplinary research projects (a Medical Robotics project, a Digital Humanities initiative and an Energy project) based at a University in the USA with a strong socio-historical culture of innovation, this study ‘follows the actors’ through the unfolding processes of interdisciplinary teams moving from research questions to emerging technological outcomes in order to investigate enactments of interdisciplinarity (Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Callon, 1986; Thompson and Rimpiläinen, 2012). Situated, distributed interdisciplinarities are found to be mediated and embodied by technologies-in-development, often irreducible to their antecedent parts, and ‘made of’ relational tensions. These findings bring forward the multiplicities of interdisciplinarity in practice, moving away from ‘conventional’ framings of interdisciplinarity as synthesis or boundary-crossing. This study also reflects upon how drawing from ANT has productively ‘opened up’ these multiplicities, moving from (inter)disciplinary perspectives to (inter)disciplinary realities, and illuminating how non-humans also participate in research practices in Higher Education. This research contributes rich empirical accounts of interdisciplinarity and technological development to the existing body of knowledge around the phenomena, and advances theoretical and methodological applications of ANT in Education (Sørensen, 2009; Fenwick and Edwards, 2010, 2018). The findings hold broad implications for substantive promotion of enhanced conceptual, socio-material understandings of technologically-mediated interdisciplinary practices.

Contemporary society is characterized by digitally mediated interactions and activities, especially through social media. As young people discover their identities, they make decisions about how to present themselves to others, and they develop an understanding of how they fit into society, what it means to be a citizen and to be civically engaged, and how to effectively engage in the political world. Literature reveals the lack of an adequate framework for understanding how young people come to develop their civic identity in contemporary times. This study therefore explores three research questions: 1) In what ways do young people, ages 14 through 17, present themselves to others in contemporary society? 2) What are the mechanisms through which young people form their civic identity in this era, and how do young people understand citizenship and civic engagement? 3) What are the means through which young people engage in the political world, and what factors contribute to this engagement? Using in-depth interviews with 46 participants of diverse backgrounds, this study investigated how young people in the United States aged 14 through 17 conceptualize their civic identities in today’s world. In the United States, the tradition of education for democratic citizenship has declined in recent decades due to a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Young people have thus not received adequate civic education, and the public has consequently perceived them as disengaged from the political world. Despite this public perception, a growing body of research indicates that young people are civically engaged in non-traditional ways, and there is an assumption that the use of technology among young people will elevate their voices and civic actions. This study finds that while young people are civically engaged, and despite the multitude of digital media that could be used to amplify their voices and causes, they still feel their voices are unheard. These findings highlight certain areas where educators, parents, and policymakers can improve their support for young people’s civic identity formation and feeling that their voices will make a difference. This thesis therefore proposes a new framework for civic identity to reflect the experiences of young people in the digital era, and recommends a reinvigoration of civic education to foster young people’s civic efficacy in contemporary society.

The new computing component of England’s National Curriculum was promoted as an effective and egalitarian way to provide young people with the skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking necessary to participate in an increasingly digitalised world, both as citizens and as potential tech entrepreneurs or computer scientists. What policymakers did not adequately account for was how state schools would interpret this new policy, the impact it might realistically have on young people’s relationship with modern digital technologies, and whether there might be a mismatch between the pro-technology narratives represented in this curriculum and the everyday beliefs and experiences of teachers and young families. England is at an important turning point as it haltingly transitions from its manufacturing roots to a digitalised knowledge society, with a growing nostalgia for its former position as an imperialistic power of world-leading technological advancement. Through this study I will unveil the power relationships and shared socio-cultural knowledge behind the computing education policy’s creation and its implementation. I will do this by answering the following research questions: 1) How are teachers translating the computing education policy into practice and why? 2) In what ways are the computing education policy influencing students' understanding of and disposition towards digital technology and why? and 3) What does the computing education policy – and teachers’ and students’ response to it – say about the incongruity between public policy around digital technology and people’s real-world experiences and understandings of it? Using teacher interviews, student writing and drawings, student interviews, extensive classroom observations, and policy analysis, this ethnographic case study of four primary school classrooms in the South of England will examine how the addition of computing to England’s National Curriculum came to pass and why it is not meeting its stated goals, before discussing what this means about past assumptions and future possibilities for young people’s engagement with and understanding of modern digital technologies in formal education settings. My study contributes a unique perspective of a single education policy as it passes through three different stages in its development and implementation, encountering and being shaped by the beliefs and values of several groups along the way. The results of this study inform our understanding of how power relationships function to define a policy’s purpose and value across different settings, demonstrating how the power to define equates to the power to shape reality.

Amidst a rapidly changing educational landscape that is increasingly becoming corporatised, technology companies and wealthy techno-venture-philanthropists have demonstrated significant interest in education reform. According to the 2012 American Revolution 2.0 report, the US K-12 education market is valued at over $2.2 trillion. The emphasis placed on 21st century skills and the continued fiscal starvation of public education has enabled technology companies to entrench themselves in education. Technical catalysts for education reform including affordable hardware such as Chromebooks and cloud computing with Google’s G-Suite have been the primary methods for technological integration in public schools. What is distinct about the contemporary reform movement is that it is being led and shaped by Silicon Valley values and interests. I refer to this contemporary movement as technocratic corporate reform. Encapsulating the trends and characteristics of the technocratic corporate reform is IBM’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) model. The model, first implemented in 2011, is a STEM-focused six-year high school model built around a public-private partnership between industry, school districts, and community colleges. Notably, it was designed to serve marginalised students by providing the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree at no cost. P-TECH serves as the focus of this study. This research entails a mixed-methods embedded case study research design examining three P-TECH model schools across the country. It includes 60 in-depth interviews with private partners, educators, and students across each school, participant observations, and a multi-level social network analysis of the P-TECH network. It employs a unique theoretical framework that combines the political economy of communication and cultural studies perspectives. By adopting both perspectives this research is able to capture what is happening in education at the macro and micro scales. Utilising theories of digital capitalism and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction this study provides an analysis of the underlying values, interests, and aims of P-TECH and its implications for the K-12 system. The micro level analysis unveils the ways in which P-TECH is influencing students’ identities and aspirations. It outlines the unintended consequences of this and the subsequent risk of reproducing the very inequalities the model was created to ameliorate. This thesis ultimately maps how the US K-12 education system is being reimagined and restructured according to the agenda of technology elites.

This thesis presents an ethnographic investigation of how people organise themselves into groups in social virtual worlds and how learning occurs through such organisation. In particular, emphasis is placed on examining the learning processes occurring in both the individuals and the groups that they belong to. To examine this overarching question, an ethnographic-based study of three informal, self-organising groups was conducted over a nine-month period in the social virtual world, Second Life, with participant observation and in-world semi-structured interviews as the main data collection methods. The study is guided by the following research questions: 1) what are the salient attributes of the three groups and how have they changed as the groups developed over time?; 2) what can be observed of the ways in which learning occurs along the three planes: individuals, interpersonal relations, and group?; and 3) how does group development affect learning, and vice versa? The findings indicate that on an individual level, learning was observed to have occurred as members developed their own practice, knowledge and skills, engaged in shared practices, and felt a sense of becoming and belonging in their respective groups. On an interpersonal level, learning occurred as members worked on managing relationships with other members, negotiating and resolving conflicts and engage in collaborative projects. On a group level, learning was observed to have occurred as the group members worked on modifying norms and shared values, creating new connections, adopting new technologies, increasing responsiveness to conflicts and adaptability to change, and increasing group cohesiveness. The findings draw together individual and group cognition, as well as the social and environmental context, and stress that all of these are pertinent in advancing our understanding of the ways people learn in social virtual worlds. The importance of this thesis lies in its contributions to the emerging literature of virtual worlds, by developing a conceptual understanding of how we think about learning in social virtual worlds like Second Life. A framework that is widely applied in the literature for examining groups is the Community of Practice (CoP) model (1991; Wenger, 1998). While CoP offers important insights, I argue that it is not applicable to all groups in social virtual worlds. I suggest instead that learning be examined along three planes as suggested by Rogoff (1995; 1998). These three planes of analysis can be used to explain changes in a group's attributes as it develops and mature over time. Doing so will open up new avenues and opportunities for us to explore learning within the social virtual worlds, especially in the light of group development. Drawing on the literature review and findings of the three groups studied, I present a framework that conceptualise learning in relation to group development in the virtual world environment, with the aim of contributing to this nascent area of educational research.

With reach of the mobile phone in the developing world unsurpassed by any other form of information communication technology, and its potential as a means to support learning widely recognised and the subject of a range of exploratory interventions, researchers, policy makers and practitioners have turned to the challenges of making mobile learning initiatives more scalable, more sustainable and more sensitive to the needs and circumstances of learners. At the same time, there is a call for a critical approach to the use of technology that serves to expose immanent knowledge and to challenge unequal power relations within educational settings, in order to identify ways in which educational technologies can be used in fairer and more equitable ways. This study employs action research, a methodological approach that I argue is appropriate for to address such an agenda. This thesis sets out the study of collaborative attempts to design and implement a mobile English language learning resource in partnership with a Non- Governmental Organisation (NGO) in Dharavi, Mumbai. Through three iterative action research cycles, conducted in a participatory manner with NGO leaders, teachers and students, this study investigates how the use of a mobile learning resource can provide a sustainable means of enhancing the learning of disadvantaged young adult participants enrolled on the NGO’s Youth Empowerment Program. The design and use of a mobile learning resource is framed against a complex picture of young people's access, ownership and engagement with mobile technology, closely linked to gender, life stage and economic circumstance; as well as the NGO's shifting English language curriculum priorities and strategic change. The study reflects upon the nature of student learning experiences, through the use of the activities within the mobile learning resource itself, through broader strategies of digital engagement and through the participatory research process. Finally, the study identifies issues that constrain the sustained use of the mobile learning resource, including lack of flexibility and control over pedagogical content and the absence of continuing technical support.

Internet use is considered a lever for empowering patients, levelling inequalities and reducing healthcare expenditure. However, with digital inclusion, health provision quality and health system efficiency high on the UK and EU policy agendas, we need to better understand the relationship between Internet use and health outcomes to assess potential benefits and adverse effects. This research addresses the question of how Internet use influences individuals’ health service use and their perceived health in the context of England. Focusing on health information-seeking, it analyses variations across different kinds of users, mechanisms between Internet use and both health outcomes, and the role of individual and contextual factors in this relationship. To answer this question, this research uses a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data from the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), the English census and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) was connected through spatial microsimulation based on output areas. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, primarily with former OxIS participants from output areas in the quantitative strand. The quantitative data was revisited based on emerging interview themes. The results indicate that Internet use influences perceived health and health service use via various mechanisms based on the Internet’s content, mediation and connection affordances. However, the boundaries between users and non-users are blurry and outcomes vary for different types of individuals, classified here as learners, pragmatists, sceptics, worriers, delegators and adigitals. Age, education, socioeconomic status, long-term health conditions, and geographic context influence Internet use and health outcomes separately, while the social context shapes their relationship too. These findings advance the theoretical understanding of Internet-based health outcomes, and provide practical implications for health professionals and policymakers with insights down to the local level. Moreover, this research demonstrates how novel insights for public wellbeing can be derived from qualitatively enriched secondary data in privacy-preserving and cost-effective ways.

In the UK, as many as 20% of children in primary schools are more than two years behind their peers in mathematics. Research-based intervention for such disadvantaged children has been shown to be effective but not always sufficient, such that alternative approaches might sometimes be necessary. One alternative might involve digital games. This study used a design-based research approach to investigate a prototype digital game, that implements principles of an effective numeracy intervention and draws on insights from learning theory and the cognitive sciences, designed for children in primary schools who are low-attaining in mathematics. It comprised three cycles of design, intervention, analysis and reflection. The first research cycle involved the initial design of a prototype digital game, which was researched in one school. The second research cycle involved a second iteration of the game, designed in response to the feedback of teachers and children, which was researched in three schools. The third research cycle involved the design of a final iteration of the game, which to achieve theoretical saturation was researched online with twenty-four schools. The study has shown that a game that implements principles of an effective numeracy intervention and that draws on insights from learning theory and the cognitive sciences can be designed and can be useful in schools for children who are low attaining in mathematics. However, for it to be taken up by schools, the game has to be perceived by teachers to have achieved a quality threshold. In any case, such a game is of limited use in and of itself. Where the prototype game has been shown to be most useful is when it serves as a fulcrum for social interaction and educationally productive discussion between the children and teaching staff: when it becomes an artefact that both supports individual learning and stimulates, scaffolds and mediates dialogue-based collaborative learning.

This thesis challenges core assumptions associated with the peer production of culture using the web-based collaborative film production platform Wreckamovie to understand how peer production works in practice. Active cultural participation is a growing political priority for many governments and cultural bodies, but these priorities are often implemented without a basis in empirical evidence, making it necessary for rigorous scholarship to tackle emerging networked cultural production. Existing work portrays peer production efforts as unrealistically distinct from proprietary, market-based production, incorrectly suggesting that peer production allows distributed, non-monetarily motivated, collaboration between self-selected individuals in hierarchy-free communities. In overcoming these assumptions, this thesis contributes to the development of a consolidated theoretical framework encompassing the complicated and multifaceted nature of networked cultural production. This theoretical framing extends Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production and reconciles it with Becker’s Art Worlds framework, and further embeds and draws on Benkler’s notion of commons-based peer production. Concretely, this research tackles the emergence of new collaborative production models enabled by networked technologies, and theorizes the tensions and challenges characterizing such production forms. Secondly, this thesis redefines cultural participation and considers the divisions of labour in online filmmaking materializing from the interactions between professional and non-professional filmmakers. Finally, this study considers the social economies surrounding networked cultural production, including crowdfunding, and characterizes associated conversions of capital, such as the conversion of symbolic capital into financial capital. Methodologically, this thesis employs an embedded case study strategy. It examines four feature film productions facilitated by the online platform Wreckamovie, as well as the online community within which these productions are embedded. The four production cases have completed all production stages, and have resulted in completed cultural goods during the course of data collection. This study’s findings were derived from two and half years of participant observations, interviews with 29 Wreckamovie community and production members, and the examination of archived production-related discourses (2006-2013). Ultimately, this study makes concrete proposals towards a theory of networked cultural production with clear policy implications.

There is an increasing flow of marriage migration around the world in the era of globalisation. As a result of moving to a new country, marriage immigrants typically encounter a range of difficulties due to language, cultural and environmental differences. To try to address some of these challenges a number of countries have begun to provide educational programmes for marriage immigrants.Focusing on the case of Taiwan, which is one of several countries to acknowledge this issue, this study aims to explore what educational needs marriage immigrants have and the extent to which educational programmes can help to support these individuals. Indeed, the Taiwanese government has been making a concerted effort to support marriage immigrants’ educational needs by offering a range of learning programmes. Here, the focus is on developing ICT skills because ICTs form an important part of all aspects of daily life in Taiwan and the skills are believed to facilitate independent and continued learning.Using a qualitative case study approach, this research investigates one ICT programme specifically targeted at 25 marriage immigrants in an urban district in Taipei and studies the value of the programme in assisting their adaptation to their new lives in Taiwan. This study draws on adult learning theories to examine the motivations of the participants, the barriers to learning that they encounter and the ways these can be overcome, as well as longer-term impacts of the programme and the use of ICTs in their lives.The marriage immigrants were found to have strong goal-oriented motivations. These goal-oriented motivations can be further subcategorised into those associated with job, life management and parenting. As for overcoming learning barriers for them, the government’s financial support and childcare services offered proved to be important in supporting learning by decreasing both the institutional and situational barriers. Although ICTs were proved to have the capability of reducing situational barriers, they were not the participants’ main concern. There were a number of longer term impacts of the programme. Increasing confidence is one of the most significant which led to further learning motivations. This research contributes to the understandings of the marriage immigrants’ learning needs and the possible ways ICT programmes are supportive of those needs.

Based on the idea of broadening access to learning opportunities for all by means of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has gained ground during the first years of the 21st Century while capturing the imagination of educators, university leaders, policy-makers and opinion leaders all over the globe. Drawing on socio-technical theories and adopting a case study research design, which involved the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, this thesis addresses the manifold tensions and paradoxes that may emerge out of the interplay between a highly predefined model of OER provision and the everyday realities and institutional contexts of different higher education settings. In particular, it focuses on the process of implementation by Spanish universities of OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives, a widely adopted model of OER provision that was originally devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By examining the enactment of technology as a situated phenomenon, this study sheds light on the roles that OCW initiatives play in relation to the strategic orientation of universities and how the actual involvement of scholars in the creation of this type of materials is often curbed by some entrenched institutional arrangements and prevailing academic cultures. The findings of this thesis have theoretical as well as practical implications, which suggest that the replication of models of OER provision outside the specific settings in which they were originally devised is a rather problematic endeavour. More generally, it supports the idea that the implementation of ICTs must be always accompanied by social structures that are mindful and respectful of local specificities and institutional arrangements. Another key conclusion is that, if universities are genuinely committed to broadening access to higher education opportunities and supporting participation in life-long learning by means of ICTs, it is crucial to understand the ways and extent to which OER initiatives can actually contribute to achieving such goals.

The study investigates the rise of online platforms that support teacher-to-teacher knowledge mobilisation. The adoption of the interpretative approach focuses the investigation on how the online platforms, their resources and the learning opportunities they provide are conceptualised by teachers in relation to their broader teaching practice, workplace culture and professional learning. The study is framed by two overarching research questions. (1) What is the nature of the knowledge being shared and reconstructed by teachers in Internet-mediated knowledge mobilisation? (2) What is the nature of the learning arising from teacher-to-teacher Internet-mediated knowledge mobilisation? The study employs a multiple case-study design to investigate two United States based online platforms, which facilitate teacher-to-teacher knowledge sharing. Twenty teachers from across the two cases were selected to participate in the study. A qualitative methodology was utilised. Teachers participated in an individual, face-to-face interview. In the two months following the initial interview teachers completed a weekly journal log detailing their engagement with the platform. Upon the completion of their journal logs, teachers participated in a follow-up interview via Skype. To help to contextualise the individual teachers within the broader case and to enrich their personal stories, observations of the platforms occurred throughout the data collection period. The study proposes a new theoretical model for how to conceptualise Internet-mediated knowledge mobilisation, the knowledge that is produced and the learning that occurs through the reconstruction process. It emphasises the connection between offline and online contexts and the role the platforms play in breaking down the boundaries between teachers' school-based practice and online resources and learning opportunities. The framework encapsulates the combining of the individual and their contexts of action, together with the platform and the information and knowledge it contains, to determine and shape the operation of the knowledge reconstruction process and the learning that transpires. Internet-mediated knowledge mobilisation facilitates the development of teachers' personal, practical knowledge by providing insight into the instructional practice of teachers and exposing teachers to new ideas and perspectives, which support the expansion of their propositional structures and episodic knowledge. Access to relevant, teacher-created materials increases the efficiency and effectiveness with which teachers can undertake elements of their practice, while also promoting learning through participation in work-based tasks. Individualism emerges as the dominant mode of engagement and learning in the study, with individual teachers regulating not only how and when they engage but also determining the outcomes they construct from their actions. The Internet, as a knowledge mediator, opens up new possibilities that are not available in teachers' offline contexts. It not only breaks down boundaries between teachers, but it also collapses boundaries between the various settings of teachers' professional practice and learning, effectively merging the offline and online contexts of teachers' work. The dual contexts of the platforms offer specific affordances that help to shape teachers' engagement, while also acting to promote new learning processes that do not exist in offline knowledge mobilisation.