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The mobilization of academic research via online platforms presents a troubling paradox. Digital-first publications offer the opportunity for scholars to reach a wider audience, yet this same online vehicle for knowledge mobilization opens scholars to the risk of online abuse. Furthermore, the concept of online abuse is often misunderstood or dismissed by post-secondary institution administrators. The aim of this research is to understand why faculty members who experience online abuse do not report the such abuse to their administration, even though there is indication that support from administration is needed to manage the problem. Drawing from a series of semi-structured interviews and focus groups, this research examines the reasons why faculty members decide not to report their experiences of online abuse to their various academic administrators. A total of 11 faculty members in academic positions located North America agreed to participate in the research. We used a combination of semi-structured and narrative interview questions to understand participants’ experiences of online abuse. The data was coded using the constant comparative approach to identify emergent themes (Glaser & strauss, 1967), a nd guided by the research questions. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to schematize the attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral controls that dissuade reporting of online abuse, and provide institutional recommendations that may encourage reporting and improve support for targeted faculty members. This study contributes to theory and practice by offering that when academic administrators foster a culture of care, faculty would be encouraged to report incidences of online abuse.

Higher education worldwide is facing several challenges spanning from economic, social, technological, demographic, environmental, to political tensions. Calls to rethink, reimagine, and reform higher education to respond to such challenges are ongoing, and need to be informed by a wide variety of stakeholders. To inform such efforts, we interviewed thirty-seven faculty members at Canadian colleges and universities to develop a greater understanding of their hopes and anxieties about the future of higher education as they considered what higher education may look like five years into the future. Results centred on four themes: (1) anxieties and hopes are shaped by supports and resources from various sources, (2) faculty members face anxiety over matters that negatively impact them but are beyond their control, (3) faculty members hope that “good” comes from the COVID-19 pandemic, and (4) faculty members hope for a well-rounded education that will enable students to succeed both within and beyond their careers. Implications for these findings suggest a need to direct research efforts and practices toward more hopeful futures for higher education, especially in the context of online and blended learning.

Abstract This paper explores faculty’s perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics’ awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may influence individual views. Data were collected through nine expert reports on each country studied (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey) and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using thematic coding. Findings show the impact on individual OER adoption with regard to the individual control of diverse factors by faculty members; of institutional policies and quality measures on the externally determined factors (by the institution); and of institutional professional development and provision of incentives in more internally determined factors (by the faculty members themselves). These findings carry implications for higher education institutions around the world in their attempt to boost OER adoption by faculty members.

Research on faculty use of technology and online education tends to be cross-sectional, focusing on a snapshot in time. Through a secondary analysis of the annual Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology conducted by Inside Higher Ed each year from 2013 through 2019, this study investigated changes in faculty attitudes toward technology and online education over time. Specifically, the study examined and synthesized the findings from surveys related to attitudes toward online education, faculty experiences with online learning, institutional support of faculty in online learning, and faculty use of technology. Results showed a low magnitude of change over time in some areas (e.g., proportion of faculty integrating active learning strategies when converting an in-person course to a hybrid/blended course) and a large magnitude of change in other areas (e.g., proportion of faculty who believe that online courses can achieve the same learning outcomes as in-person courses). These results reveal that, prior to the widespread shift to remote and online learning that occurred in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty perceptions of technology and online learning were static in some areas and dynamic in others. This research contextualizes perceptions towards online learning prior to the pandemic and highlights a need for longitudinal studies on faculty attitudes toward technology use going forward to identify factors influencing change and sources of ongoing tension.

This article examines how imagined audiences and impression management strategies shape COVID-19 health information sharing practices on social media and considers the implications of this for combatting the spread of misinformation online. In an interview study with 27 Canadian adults, participants were shown two infographics about masks and vaccines produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and asked whether or not they would share these on social media. We find that interviewees’ willingness to share the WHO infographics is negotiated against their mental perception of the online audience, which is conceptualized in three distinct ways. First, interviewees who would not share the infographics frequently describe a self-similar audience of peers that are “in the know” about COVID-19; second, those who might share the infographics conjure a specific and contextual audience who “needs” the information; and finally, those who said they would share the infographics most frequently conjure an abstract audience of “the public” or “my community” to explain that decision. Implications of these sharing behaviors for combatting the spread of misinformation are discussed.

Objectives: This paper proposes an intervention into health misinformation that relies upon the health belief model as a means to bridge the risks associated with health misinformation and the impact on individual health, beyond the current recommendations for fact checking and information literacy. Study design: This is a short theoretical paper. Methods: N/A. Results: N/A. Conclusions: Misinformation researchers and public health practitioners and communicators can benefit using the infrastructures afforded by public health offices to mobilize the health belief model as a site for misinformation education.

The disruption that resulted from COVID-19 in 2020 impacted the ways in which higher education faculty lived and worked. Earlier literature describes how faculty members’ experiences during the early months of the pandemic included emotional impacts such as stress and anxiety, with little support to manage these impacts. In this paper we report on a thematic analysis of interviews with Canadian faculty members which revealed that the sources of impacts on Canadian faculty were both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as racial tensions. These impacts revealed themselves in both the personal and professional lives of participants. With regard to their professional role, participants reported that the additional time and care that they put towards learning new technologies, implementation of new teaching practices, support of students, and efforts to sustain their perceived obligations as a scholar carried an emotional burden. With respect to their personal lives, participants noted that emotional impacts emanated from increased caring responsibilities for family and friends, reduced in-person connections, and news reports and social media. We conclude by presenting support recommendations for individual faculty members, teaching and learning centres, and university administrators.

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project “Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures–EduArc”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed within the digital transformation of ten different Higher Education (HE) systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Following a comparative case study approach, we investigated issues related to the existence of policies, quality assurance mechanisms and measures for the promotion of change in supporting infrastructure development for (O)ER at the national level in HE in the different countries. The results of this mainly documentary research highlight differences and similarities, which are largely due to variations in these countries’ political structure organisation. The discussion and conclusion point at the importance of understanding each country’s context and culture, in order to understand the differences between them, as well as the challenges they face.

As digital education at the post-secondary level continues to grow, robust professional development that prepares faculty to teach in online and blended settings is necessary. In this study we analyze open-ended comments from the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association’s annual survey of Canadian post-secondary institutions (2017-2019) to deepen our understanding of faculty training and support for digital education as articulated by higher education institutions. We find that 1) digital education orientation or on-boarding processes for faculty vary widely; 2) institutions employ an extensive array of professional development practices for digital education; 3) institutions report culture change, work security, and unclear expectations as challenges in providing digital education training and support; and 4) institutions articulate aspirations and hopes around professional development investments in order to build digital education capacity. These findings have significant implications for research and practice and we describe these in the article.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and rapid impact on higher education institutions across the world. In this study, we report the findings of a survey investigating the rapid transition to emergency remote teaching in the early weeks of the pandemic at public and private post-secondary institutions in the United States. Participants consisted of 897 faculty and administrators at 672 U.S. institutions. Findings reveal that with few exceptions nearly all reporting institutions transitioned to emergency teaching and learning approaches. Administrators reported that faculty with and without online teaching experience pivoted to online teaching, and nearly all administrators indicated that those who did not have online teaching experience were in the process of learning how to teach online. Regardless of whether faculty had previous experience teaching online or not, many faculty reported that they were using new teaching methods. A majority of faculty reported making changes to their assignments or exams as a result of transitioning to a new mode of delivery. Nearly half reported lowering the expected volume of work for students (including dropping assignments or exams) and/or shifting to a pass/fail model for this semester. The primary areas where faculty and administrators identified a need for assistance related to student support, greater access to online digital materials, and guidance for working from home. This study provides an early snapshot of efforts towards teaching and learning continuity at a large scale and provides some insights for future research and practice.

This paper explores elements of open education within the context of higher education. After an introduction to the origins of open education and its theoretical foundations, the topics of open and distance learning, international education issues in open education, open educational practices and scholarship, open educational resources, MOOCs, prior learning accreditation and recognition, and learner characteristics are considered, following the framework of macro, meso, and micro levels of research in open and distance learning. Implications for future research at the macro, meso, and micro levels are then provided.

In UNESCO's 2021 report, "Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education," futures emerge as a key orientation for establishing not just improved educational systems but for creating liberatory worlds for everyone. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, social and economic instability, and the climate crisis, the future of education, especially higher education, has become highly uncertain. Dominated by "elite futurism", education futures are often dictated by powerful institutions, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations, failing to account for the diverse perspectives and needs of communities. This lack of inclusivity perpetuates conditions of uncertainty and instability worldwide. To address these challenges and foster education futures that prioritize justice and liberation, this article explores the role of radical imagination. While conventional imagination is constrained by discursive enclosures and powerful affective economies, hindering transformative and diverse visions of the future, radical imagination challenges the status quo, seeking to address the root problems of societal norms and ideologies. This article emphasizes the importance of collective processes in radical imagination, promoting inclusivity and diverse perspectives. Importantly, this work isn't simply for students, but must include researchers, educators, and policymakers, challenging their complicity in systems of oppression and divesting from harmful structures. By incorporating "depth pedagogies" that prioritize caring relationships with the natural world and contextual understanding of histories of oppression, education can empower learners to envision and act on alternative futures.

This study, originally prompted by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational practices, examined Canadian faculty members' expectations of teaching and learning modalities in the year 2026. Employing a speculative methodology and thematic analysis, interview responses of 34 faculty members led to the construction of three hypothetical scenarios for future teaching and learning modalities: a hybrid work model, a high tech and flexible learning model, and a pre-pandemic status quo model. In contrast to radical education futures described in the literature, the findings do not depart significantly from dominant modes of teaching and learning. Nevertheless, these findings offer insights into the expectations that Canadian faculty members have with respect to future teaching and learning modalities, the contextual issues and concerns that they face, the use of speculative methodologies in educational technology research, and the potential impacts remote learning trends have on the future of higher education in Canada.

Much of the literature on artificial intelligence (AI) in education imagines AI as a tool in the service of teaching and learning. Is such a one-way relationship all that exists between AI and learners? In this paper we report on a thematic analysis of 92 participant responses to a story completion exercise which asked them to describe a classroom agreement between an AI instructor and a learner twenty years into the future. Using a relational theoretical framework, we find that the classroom agreements between AI and learners that participants produced encompassed elements of education, boundaries, affordances, and social conventions. These findings suggest that the ways learners relate to AI vary. Some learners relate to AI as an object, others relate to AI as a subject, and some relate to AI both as an object and a subject. These results invite a deeper engagement with the ways in which learners might relate to AI and the kinds of ethics and social protocols that such relations suggest.

Academic labor has expanded beyond the walls of academic institutions. Academics are expected to communicate with students online, use digital tools to complete their work, and share their research with broad audiences--often through online spaces like social media. Academics also face technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) in these same spaces. When this happens, employers have a responsibility to protect and support workers. However, recent events have shown that universities are not always prepared to do so. We use data from a discourse analysis of harassment and discrimination policies and interviews with university managers (including Vice President Academics/Provost, Faculty Deans, and directors of human rights offices) to examine how prepared Canadian universities and colleges are to support academics targeted by TFVA. We found that institutions are unprepared in three ways: first, they focus on physical safety over non-contact harms; second, they envision perpetrators to be named, local, and part of the campus community; and third, the reporting process is cumbersome and outpaced by the speed and frequency with which TFVA occurs. We consider these findings in the context of work-overflow and context collapse to demonstrate how the institutional apparatus for maintaining a safe and respectful working environment has not expanded in kind with the extensification of contemporary academic labor.

The educational technology industry includes numerous learning providers and platforms offering cohort-based courses. In this paper, we examine, analyze, and critique one such platform called Maven. We focus our analysis on Maven because this specific platform describes itself as building 'the university of the future' and has recently received significant attention and funding, making it a compelling case study to better understand the potential roles and risks associated with education platforms operating outside of and alongside more traditional higher education institutions today and into the future. We highlight specific concerns about cohort-based platforms like Maven, including lack of transparency, risk of surveillance, lack of adequate financial support for learners, and over-reliance on social media networks as signifiers of educator/instructor qualification. Suggested benefits include adaptability, suitability to changing skills needs, and responsiveness to changing environmental scenarios.

Since the launch of the BC Open Textbook Project in 2012, the adoption of open textbooks has steadily grown within public post-secondary institutions in British Columbia, Canada. An analysis of adoption records over a five-year period reveals that open textbooks have been adopted across all types of institutions, including research universities, teaching universities, colleges, and institutes, and across a diverse set of disciplines, with the largest numbers in the sciences and social sciences. In this report we identify, describe, and illustrate eight distinct patterns of open textbook adoption. These are: stealth adoption, adoption by infection, committee adoption, sanctioned exceptional adoption, course developer adoption, infection by inter-institutional carrier, creation and adoption, and lone adoption. While these patterns are not intended to be exhaustive, we hope that identifying these patterns provides a useful framework for campus leaders to (a) understand how adoptions occur in their own contexts, (b) identify ways to support further adoptions, (c) recognize that there are multiple ways, and no single path, to supporting the adoption of educational innovations at their institutions, and (d) foster the embrace of wider open educational practices.

Inspired by open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open source software, the openness movement in education has different meanings for different people. In this study, we use Twitter data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in discourse around openness. By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016. Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.

Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that sentiment-based moderation would have had on posted content. We found that most comments and replies were neutral in nature and some topics were more likely than others to elicit positive or negative sentiment. Videos of male presenters showed greater neutrality, while videos of female presenters saw significantly greater positive and negative polarity in replies. Animations neutralized both the negativity and positivity of replies at a very high rate. Gender and video format influenced the sentiment of replies and not just the initial comments that were directed toward the video. Finally, we found that using sentiment as a way to moderate offensive content would have a significant effect on non-offensive content. These findings have far-reaching implications for social media platforms and for those who encourage or prepare students and scholars to participate online.

Although the open scholarship movement has successfully captured the attention and interest of higher education stakeholders, researchers currently lack an understanding of the degree to which open scholarship is enacted in institutions that lack institutional support for openness. I help fill this gap in the literature by presenting a descriptive case study that illustrates the variety of open and sharing practices enacted by faculty members at a North American university. Open and sharing practices enacted at this institution revolve around publishing manuscripts in open ways, participating on social media, creating and using open educational resources, and engaging with open teaching. This examination finds that certain open practices are favored over others. Results also show that even though faculty members often share scholarly materials online for free, they frequently do so without associated open licenses (i.e. without engaging in open practices). These findings suggest that individual motivators may significantly affect the practice of openness, but that environmental factors (e.g., institutional contexts) and technological elements (e.g., YouTube’s default settings) may also shape open practices in unanticipated ways.

Research into emergent forms of scholarship focuses on academics’ use of technology for learning, teaching, and research. Very little attention has been paid in the literature to scholars’ uses of social media to disclose challenging personal and professional issues. This article addresses the identified gap in the literature and presents a qualitative investigation into the types of disclosures that 16 scholars made online and their reasons for doing so. Results identify wide-ranging personal and professional disclosures. Participants disclosed not only about academia-related issues but also about challenges pertaining to family, mental health, physical health, identity, and relationships. Some scholars disclosed as a way to grapple with challenges they faced; others disclosed tactically, sharing information for political rather than personal reasons. Yet others disclosed as a way to welcome care in their lives. In all instances, though, disclosures were selective, intentional, and approached with foresight.

Big data from massive open online courses (MOOCs) have enabled researchers to examine learning processes at almost infinite levels of granularity. Yet, such data sets do not track every important element in the learning process. Many strategies that MOOC learners use to overcome learning challenges are not captured in clickstream and log data. In this study, we interviewed 92 MOOC learners to better understand their worlds, investigate possible mechanisms of student attrition, and extend conversations about the use of big data in education. Findings reveal three important domains of the experience of MOOC students that are absent from MOOC tracking logs: the practices at learners’ workstations, learners’ activities online but off-platform, and the wider social context of their lives beyond the MOOC. These findings enrich our understanding of learner agency in MOOCs, clarify the spaces in-between recorded tracking log events, and challenge the view that MOOC learners are disembodied autodidacts.

A deluge of empirical research became available on MOOCs in 2013–2015 and this research is available in disparate sources. This paper addresses a number of gaps in the scholarly understanding of MOOCs and presents a comprehensive picture of the literature by examining the geographic distribution, publication outlets, citations, data collection and analysis methods, and research strands of empirical research focusing on MOOCs during this time period. Results demonstrate that (a) more than 80% of this literature is published by individuals whose home institutions are in North America and Europe, (b) a select few papers are widely cited while nearly half of the papers are cited zero times, and (c) researchers have favored a quantitative if not positivist approach to the conduct of MOOC research, preferring the collection of data via surveys and automated methods. While some interpretive research was conducted on MOOCs in this time period, it was often basic and it was the minority of studies that were informed by methods traditionally associated with qualitative research (e.g., interviews, observations, and focus groups). Analysis shows that there is limited research reported on instructor-related topics, and that even though researchers have attempted to identify and classify learners into various groupings, very little research examines the experiences of learner subpopulations.

The complexity of digital and online education is becoming increasingly evident in the context of research into networked learning/participation. Interdisciplinary research is often proposed as a way to address complex scientific problems and enable researchers to bring novel perspectives into a field other than their own. The degree to which research on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is interdisciplinary is unknown. We apply descriptive and inferential statistics to bibliometric data to investigate interdisciplinarity in MOOC research. Results show that MOOC research published in 2013-2015 was (a) mostly conducted by researchers affiliated with Education and Computer Science disciplines, (b) far from monolithic, (c) had a greater representation of authors from Computer Science than in the past, and (d) showed a trend toward being more interdisciplinary than MOOC research published in 2008-2012. Our results also suggest that empirical research on xMOOCs may be more interdisciplinary than research on cMOOCs. Greater interdisciplinarity in xMOOC research could reflect the burgeoning interest in the field, the general familiarity with the xMOOC pedagogical model, and the hype experienced by xMOOCs. Greater interdisciplinarity in the field may also provide researchers with rich opportunities to improve our understanding and practice of digital and online learning.

#PhDChat is an online network of individuals that has its roots to a group of UK doctoral students who began using Twitter in 2010 to hold discussions. Since then, the network around #PhDchat has evolved and grown. In this study, we examine this network using a mixed methods analysis of the tweets that were labeled with the hashtag over a one-month period. Our goal is to understand the structure and characteristics of this network, to draw conclusions about who belongs to this network, and to explore what the network achieves for the users and as an entity of its own. We find that #PhDchat is a legitimate organizational structure situated around a core group of users that share resources, offer advice, and provide social and emotional support to each other. Core users are involved in other online networks related to higher education that use similar hashtags to congregate. #PhDchat demonstrates that (a) the network is in a continuous state of emergence and change, and (b) disparate users can come together with little central authority in order to create their own communal space.

Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices, educators and scholars are finding themselves in a position in which they can shape and/or be shaped by openness. The intention of this paper is (a) to identify the assumptions of the open scholarship movement and (b) to highlight challenges associated with the movement’s aspirations of broadening access to education and knowledge. Through a critique of technology use in education, an understanding of educational technology narratives and their unfulfilled potential, and an appreciation of the negotiated implementation of technology use, we hope that this paper helps spark a conversation for a more critical, equitable, and effective future for education and open scholarship.

While the potential of social networking sites to contribute to educational endeavors is highlighted by researchers and practitioners alike, empirical evidence on the use of such sites for formal online learning is scant. To fill this gap in the literature, we present a case study of learners’ perspectives and experiences in an online course taught using the Elgg online social network. Findings from this study indicate that learners enjoyed and appreciated both the social learning experience afforded by the online social network and supported one another in their learning, enhancing their own and other students’ experiences. Conversely, results also indicate that students limited their participation to course-related and graded activities, exhibiting little use of social networking and sharing. Additionally, learners needed support in managing the expanded amount of information available to them and devised strategies and “workarounds” to manage their time and participation.

Adventure learning (AL) is an approach for the design of digitally-enhanced teaching and learning environments driven by a framework of guidelines grounded on experiential and inquiry-based education. The purpose of this paper is to review the adventure learning literature and to describe the status quo of the practice by identifying the current knowledge, misconceptions, and future opportunities in adventure learning. Specifically, the authors present an integrative analysis of the adventure learning literature, identify knowledge gaps, present future research directions, and discuss research methods and approaches that may improve the AL approach.The authors engaged in a systematic search strategy to identify adventure learning studies then applied a set of criteria to decide whether to include or exclude each study. Results from the systematic review were combined, analyzed, and critiqued inductively using the constant comparative method and weaved together using the qualitative metasynthesis approach.Results indicate the appeal and promise of the adventure learning approach. Nevertheless, the authors recommend further investigation of the approach. Along with studies that investigate learning outcomes, aspects of the AL approach that are engaging, and the nature of expert-learner collaboration, future adventure learning projects that focus on higher education and are (a) small and (b) diverse can yield significant knowledge into adventure learning. Research and design in this area will benefit by taking an activity theory and design-based research perspective.

While there has been a lot of debate over the impact of online and remote learning on mental health and well-being, there has been no systematic syntheses or reviews of the research on this particular issue. In this paper, we review the research on the relationship between mental health/well-being and online or remote learning. Our review shows that little scholarship existed prior to 2020 with most studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We report four findings: (1) pandemic effects are not well-controlled in most studies; (2) studies present a very mixed picture, with variability around how mental health and well-being are measured and how/whether any causal inferences are made in relation to online and remote learning, (3) there are some indications that certain populations of students may struggle more in an online context, and (4) research that does not assume a direct relationship between mental health and online provides the best insight into both confounding factors and possible strategies to address mental health concerns. Our review shows that 75.5% of published research on this topic either commits the "correlation does not equal causation" error or asserts a causal relationship even when it fails to establish correlations. Based on this study, we suggest that researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and administrators exercise extreme caution around making generalizable assertions with respect to the impacts of online/remote learning and mental health. We encourage further research to better understand effects on specific learner sub-populations and on course--and institution--level strategies to support mental health.