Information and communication technologies, (ICT) in education, according to recent and past research, can motivate and engage students and promote knowledge. To meet the increasing demand for change in the incorporation of ICT in education the Greek Ministry of Education and the Pedagogic Institute of Greece, launched a nationwide project of in-service training (INSET) of teachers of the second level, training of teachers in the use and evaluation of pedagogy incorporating ICT in classroom instruction, following the successful implementation and certification of the first level, basic computer skills. The INSET course is separated into four phasesperiods, according to the topics taught and the practical activities of the sessions, as assigned to the trainers by the organisers: The Theoretical Phase, the Practical Phase, the Applied Phase and the Evaluation, Selection and Implementation Phase. The study aims to evaluate and identify the outcomes of the project in terms of the teacher trainees’ acquisition and promotion of ICT pedagogic practices and competencies in classroom instruction through a focus on any changes in the profiles and practices of the teacher-trainees during and after the course, and to identify the elements of the training that may have supported these changes. The research consists of four phases: Investigational, Transitional, In Class Support, and the Joint Teaching, Observational-Evaluative phase. Through the data collected and analysed, drawing on situated cognition, problem-based learning and just-in-time teaching, the following identities emerged: The Progressive Innovative, the Static Innovative, the Receptive Moderate, the Restrained Moderate, the Natural Reluctant and the Phobic Reluctant. Arising from the findings it is argued that change can be associated in particular with the researcher’s collaboration with the trainees in their classrooms, identification of their diverse profiles and the selection and implementation of ICT tools and training modes tailored to the their personal needs, skills and preferences.

No description available.

As new techno-literacy practices become embedded in society, they impact on ever younger age groups. The technological environment that children and young people now inhabit directly involves literacy, both in the broadest sense and in the more specific area of lettered representation. This has profound implications for how we conceive of the use of literacy in educational environments and how we plan for literacy curricula. My work focuses on children and young people's on-screen experience and particularly the productive aspect of writing-with-new-technology. I suggest that writers are involved in the production of new kinds of texts, and that these provide opportunities for different kinds of identity performance. Over the last six years I have looked at different ways of theorising changes in written communication and the relationship between these changes and curriculum design and practice. I have documented a change of emphasis in educational responses to digital literacy, a move from concerns about whether to use new technology to how to use it in literacy, and suggest that there is a need for more work that shows how digital writing can be embedded in classroom practice in ways that provide authentic contexts for learning and communication. Because digital writing involves new kinds of skills and new kinds of social practices it cannot simply be grafted on to existing instructional practices and curricular objectives, so through my classroom-based studies I have illustrated some of the possibilities and the issues that are raised by incorporating these practices. I argue that there is a need to re-evaluate the ways in which writing is taught and develop our understanding of what constitutes writing development in digital environments. This will involve more exploration of what experiences, resources and guidance are most helpful in the early stages of literacy in order to build an understanding of the appropriate balance between experimentation, skill instruction and critical engagement with new writing tools and processes.

The use of mobile devices for learning has led to an increased number of textbooks and reading materials being published in digital format. Specific digital literacies are required to take advantage of these digital texts, and students need to acquire these literacies if they are to read and learn efficiently. Teachers need to assist their students in reading with digital devices. However, research on supporting reading comprehension with mobile devices is still limited. This thesis addresses a gap in the field by identifying cognitive and metacognitive foreign language (FL) reading strategies that students employ when using tablets, and how digital features may support FL reading comprehension. Students learning Spanish at two educational institutions in Denmark (n=12) participated in this longitudinal qualitative study. The digital texts employed in the study were designed to model reading strategies by embedding prompts in the texts using features of the iBook Author application on the iPad. These prompts, which appear alongside the text for students using the iBooks app, provide opportunities to learn and practice reading strategies. Data collection was via students’ logs (records of their use of reading strategies with the iPads over three weeks), semi-structured interviews and a researcher’s log. Coding was conducted through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that students used a variety of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies. Students engaged in higher-order thinking skills by following the scaffolds provided and benefitting from some of the iPads’ features. In conclusion, provided that the student is active in the reading process and is using appropriate strategies, he or she will be able to construct meaning from the digital text. FL reading is a skill that needs to be adapted for the use of mobile technology. This research suggests that, when employed effectively, the applications available on tablets can provide scaffolds for the reading process. This thesis contributes to knowledge by: 1) applying a language learning strategy (LLS) model to mobile technology; 2) applying metacognition in the context of reading electronic books with mobile devices; 3) addressing controversies in the field of digital reading; 4) proposing guidelines for designing digital textbooks, and 5) developing a research instrument for reading strategy research.

Instructional designers are under increasing pressure to enhance the pedagogical quality and technical richness of their learning content offerings, while the task of authoring for such complex educational frameworks is expensive and time consuming. Personalisation and reusability of learning contents are two main factors which can be used to enhance the pedagogical impact of e-learning experiences while also optimising resources, such as the overall cost and time of designing materials for different e-learning systems. However, personalisation services require continuous fine tuning for the different features that should be used, and e-learning systems need sufficient flexibility to offer these continuously required changes. The semantic modelling of adaptable learning components can highly influence the personalisation of the learning experience and enables the reusability, adaptability and maintainability of these components. Through the discrete modelling of these components, the flexibility and extensibility of e-learning systems will be improved as learning contents can be separated from the adaptation logic which results in the learning content being no longer specific to any given adaptation rule, or instructional plan. This thesis proposes an innovative semantic rule-based approach to dynamically generate personalised learning content utilising reusable pieces of learning content. It describes an ontology-based engine that composes, at runtime, adapted learning experiences according to learner’s interaction with the system and learner’s characteristics. Additionally, enriching ontologies with semantic rules increases the reasoning power and helps to represent adaptation decisions. This novel approach aims to improve flexibility, extensibility and reusability of systems, while offering a pedagogically effective and satisfactory learning experience for learners. This thesis offers the theoretical models, design and implementation of an adaptive e-learning system in accordance with this approach. It also describes the evaluation of developed personalised adaptive e-learning system (Rule-PAdel) from pedagogical and technical perspectives.

This research describes the implementation of a strategic institutional project at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the area of eLearning, and the qualitative evaluation of this project’s model as an approach for blended (e)Learning institutional change. The project was entitled, “3C: A strategic approach to enabling, integrating and enhancing blended (e)Learning within an institutional framework”, and the model used was three concurrent foci of collaboration, community and context (3C’s). This study used a qualitative practitioner / researcher case study approach to evaluate the 3C model, utilizing data drawn from interviews conducted at the completion of the project with a group of 16 eLearning Advocates (eLAs). The interviews with the eLAs were chosen to be the focus of this research as they had the most consistent and lived experience of the 3C model (as implemented via the project deliverables across 2 years). The key research question being: “What are the qualitatively different ways the eLearning Advocates perceive the 3C model as an approach for blended (e)Learning institutional change”? These differences in perception identified as a lens through which to evaluate the 3C model. The eLA interviews provided situational vignettes through which the practitioner / researcher explored the rich sources of data and feedback on the 3C model. These vignettes were categorized within a narrative around three factors related to blended (e)Learning institutional change. These factors were: considerations of broad structural aspects (Renovation), feedback on specific aspects of the 3C project (Revolution) and the unexpected factors that had not been considered as part of the project (Revelation). The examination of these contributed to a greater and more nuanced understanding of the 3C model as a model for institutional blended (e)Learning change and identified 11 recommendations for further consideration. It is envisaged that the outcomes of this research are useful to intuitions considering implementing similar strategic initiatives in the area of blended (e)Learning and has assisted the researcher in refining his own practice.

When a student is faced with uncertainty in the trustworthiness of a learning activity to meet their intended learning goals, it may cause anxiety and a lack of confidence in the learning. A student’s trust in the learning activity is needed to reduce this uncertainty. This work develops a conceptual trust model for e-learning activities. The proposed student’s trust model is the Learning Outcome-based Trust (LOT) model. The antecedents of trust are represented based on the intended learning outcome (ILO) structures and are used to estimate the trustworthiness values of the learning activity. Once values based on the antecedents of trust are known, these values are used to assess how much the student can trust the learning activity. The LOT model was evaluate in two real learning situation: (1) where information about the trustworthiness of the learning activity was ambiguous, and (2) where information about the trustworthiness of the learning activity was clear. Students’ trust mainly related to their propensity to trust and their prior knowledge when the trustworthiness of the learning activity was ambiguous. In contrast, students’ trust mainly related to their perceived trustworthiness of the learning activity when the trustworthiness of the learning activity was clear. The LOT model showed significant prediction of student’s trust. In addition, when the student learning path was used, trust was predicted significantly better than when the learning path was not given. The LOT model may have useful application in recommendation systems or intelligent tutoring systems.

Simulations and Serious Games are powerful e-learning tools that can be designed to provide learning opportunities that stimulate their participants. To achieve this goal, the design of Simulations and Serious Games will often include some balance of three factors: motivation, engagement, and flow. Whilst many frameworks and approaches for Simulation and Serious Game design do provide the means for addressing a combination of these factors to some degree, few address how those factors might be affected by the presence of an out-of-game tutor. It is the position of some researchers that the presence of real-world tutors in a Simulation or Serious Game experience can be shown to have a detrimental effect on motivation, engagement, and flow as a continuously changing state for the participant from in-game to out-of-game breaks immersion. The focus of this study was to develop a framework for the design of Simulations and Serious Games that could provide the means to mitigate some of these identified negative effects of real world tutor. The framework itself, referred to as the Wrongness Framework, uses artificial intelligence techniques and practices to provide internal feedback and assessment to the participant as a foundation for the creation of a rudimentary in-game tutor. To achieve this goal it was necessary to develop the Wrongness Framework to include not only the findings of other scholars and researchers on the topic of feedback and assessment but also to introduce original refinements to existing artificial intelligence mechanisms. To test the abilities of the Wrongness Framework it was applied to two unique case studies each with a different purpose and scope. The first, the AdQuest case study, was a graphic design Serious Game scenario testing the ability of the Wrongness Framework's assessment mechanisms by having 102 postgraduate design students submit graphics for a luxury brand advertisement. These graphics were then assessed by the Wrongness Framework against expectations found in the Wrongness Framework's Intelligent System Knowledge Bank. The students were then surveyed for their responses to their assessments and individual rating scores for each design were taken. The second case study, Promasim, explored the possibilities of feedback tone and efficacy for non-player characters in a project management simulation. This was achieved with the use of expert interviews by both academics and working professionals to provide the information of experienced project managers to develop experiential interaction events for the Simulation. Despite the results of these case studies a full case for the success of the Wrongness Framework could not be made. However, many of the identified challenges for the Wrongness Framework were met and, as such, a case can be made that an adequate foundation for the framework has been successful and has provided the case for further refinement.

This thesis explores resilience in an educational context and is comprised of three chapters: a systematic literature review, a bridging document and a piece of empirical research. The systematic literature review examines the views of children and teachers about the role of relationships in developing resilience in children and young people (CYP) through a meta-ethnography. The findings suggest interactions between individuals are the foundations of relationships between CYP and teachers as well as family members. These relationships and the support they provide effect how the individual child or young person makes sense of the world; how they perceive challenges and think about themselves. A model was created from these findings. The bridging document discusses my theoretical underpinnings, ontological and epistemological stance and ethical considerations of the empirical research. The bridging document aims to link the meta-ethnography and the empirical research project. The empirical research explored everyday resilience through the use of Video Interaction Guidance (VIG). It aimed to examine the following two research questions: 1. In the context of VIG, what understandings do parents, teachers and children construct about their relationships with one another? 2. What can these understandings tell us about resilience? Conceptualisation of everyday resilience through a relational lens led to an exploration of whether VIG could be used with children, parents and teachers to create a new understanding of resilience. A multiple case-study design was adopted with two triads of participants. The interviews with the participants and a selection of shared reviews from the VIG cycles were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The model created through the meta-ethnography was used to guide the creation of important themes in the empirical research but new themes were also created from the data itself. The Resilience Pyramid was then created from three aspects of their relationships that stood out as being useful in thinking about everyday resilience from a relational viewpoint. The Resilience Pyramid suggests three aspects of relationships interconnect to create a new understanding of resilience. This paper concludes that it is possible to use VIG to explore teachers’, parents’ and children’s understandings of their relationships with one another and use these understandings to create a new, relational, understanding of resilience.

This thesis examines the experience of faculty members, academic administrators and students at Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU), Lebanon in the development process of e-leaming implementation for encouraging intellectual activity in teaching and learning. The research methodology consisted of an in-depth single-case study which was adopted to drill down into the e-leaming implementation process centering on analyzing the attitudes and views of faculty members and academic administrators. In addition, students' learning styles and preferences together with their views on how their teachers use technology in teaching were examined. The total sample of the study was 203 faculty members, 18 academic administrators, and 259 students. Both qualitative and quantitative methods of data gathering were employed including two questionnaires administered to faculty members, interviews with academic administrators, interviews conducted with faculty members, and a questionnaire administered to students. Document analysis of meeting minutes and strategic planning was conducted to complement interviews and questionnaire data obtained from faculty members and academic administrators. Main results showed that institutional processes involved several steps for implementing e-leaming. Change in leadership resulted in change in the direction of e-leaming implementation, indicating the role of the culture of the institution in the context of change. The most important element in the process of implementing e-leaming was the transition from one phase to another through training and faculty members' participation in the e-leaming implementation process suggesting the significance of these factors in the change process. A key theme that arose from the research findings was the need to create a culture of engagement in the process of change. Other key factors which have facilitated the process of implementing e-leaming were analyzed. Initiatives to implement e-leaming were partly offset by the lack of written policies that will determine the use of e-leaming in the educational process. Faculty members revealed the concern that training should take into consideration how to use technology in teaching. Moreover, academic administrators emphasized the need to develop e-leaming policies. The study showed that the methods of teaching and students' learning styles are two distant areas and drawing links between the two needs adaptation and further inquiry. Contributions to knowledge and the limitations of the study are discussed. Recommendations for implementing e-leaming and carrying out future research are provided.