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This exploratory and cross-cultural mixed method study aimed to understand the perspectives of learners and instructors in engineering education on mobile learning and information and communication technology (ICT) tools in different countries. A total of 197 participants attended the survey for understanding perspectives of mobile learning in engineering education: 54 participants from Belgium, 36 participants from the Netherlands, 41 participants from Spain and 66 participants from Turkey, respectively. Data was collected via (i) surveys, (ii) open-ended questionnaires, and (iii) semi-structured focus group interviews, respectively. The results showed that most of the learners preferred to use a mobile education application in their native language. The learners mentioned that they preferred to learn by videos and audios; similarly, according to the instructors' data, most of the instructors preferred to teach with videos as their favorite learning tool. However, using educational technological tools is limited by instructors' lack of experience. It is very important to overcome the fear related to using new technologies in the classroom and increase the readiness of using educational tools by integrating them into their courses effectively. It is strongly recommended that digital learning materials collected in a virtual environment should be accessible to instructors and learners.

Creativity is a crucial skill for future engineers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly important for higher education (HE) engineering educators to foster and enhance engineering students' creative abilities. Simultaneously, online learning has found a place in engineering education. Nevertheless, we find that HE engineering educators in all domains continue to express a sense of inadequacy when it comes to fostering creativity in hybrid and online learning environments. This sentiment persists despite the existence of scholarly work that suggests strategies for addressing these challenges. In this paper, we assume that the rationale behind this is that the proposed pedagogical approaches are primarily established through conceptual reflections, whereas the perspective of the HE engineering educators on the perceived barriers has thus far been largely neglected. Therefore, we present a study that uses data from experience interviews and focus group techniques involving 71 HE engineering educators from Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Turkey to identify the common challenges that HE engineering educators perceive when facilitating creativity in online and hybrid classroom environments. These are used to extend theory by developing a four‐field conceptual model organizing the eight overarching challenges encountered. This model can be used as a basis for defining measures to support HE engineering educators in facilitating creativity online and serves as a guide for future research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitalization of education is a continuously developing process, aimed at the use of information and communication technologies. However, engineering education utilizes several forms of learning, with laboratory experiments being one of them. The use of digital learning materials (DLM) in labs is still limited due to numerous existing factors. This study investigates students' acceptance of using DLM during laboratory exercises in three universities located in Turkey, Poland, and Bulgaria. A questionnaire was prepared, and a survey was conducted among 625 learners. They were divided into eight categories, based on their engineering area and country. The survey results demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between the students' opinion on DLM and the use of DLM by their lab instructors, which means that their acceptance could be increased if more DLM are integrated in lab courses. The analysis of the questionnaire results also showed that there is a significant difference in the students' opinion on DLM, depending on the engineering area. Students of Food, Chemistry, and Electrical engineering rated the use of DLM quite high (above 4.0 out of 5), followed by the Civil engineering students with average results between 3.5 and 4.0. Respondents involved in Textile, Bio, and Machine engineering were the most skeptical (<3.5). Furthermore, their opinions covered a wide range from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]