This thesis discusses a case study that explores the impact on educators’ teaching practices, particularly their assumptions and beliefs about teaching and self-efficacy, as a result of their participation in an educational development programme designed to prepare college educators to develop and teach online and hybrid courses. The philosophical worldview adopted in this study is closely aligned to the constructivist perspective. It draws upon the conceptions of teaching literature, Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy (1977; 1986; 1997) and Mezirow’s (1978) theory of transformational learning as a conceptual framework. The data were collected through an online survey of 34 participants, face-to-face interviews with 18 participants and documentary evidence review of 6 participants, and was analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis approach. The findings suggest that the knowledge and experience that college educators acquire when participating in educational development for online teaching produce a positive increase in technological and pedagogical knowledge and understanding of accessibility for some educators. This new understanding, in turn, results in changes to both online and face-to-face teaching practices of educators. The results also indicate that for some educators, participation in an educational development programme for online teaching encouraged more student-centred teaching approaches and helped to dispel misconceptions about the lower quality and value of online learning. Participation in educational development for online teaching was also found to increase some educators’ technical and pedagogical confidence, although a few participants experienced an initial decline in self-efficacy. Finally, the results reveal that educators perceived their participation in the educational development programme for online teaching to have a positive impact on the learning experience of their students.

The main research question addressed in this thesis is how the choice of game type influences the success of digital educational games (DEG), where success is defined as significant knowledge gain in combination with positive player experience. Games differ in type if they differ at least by one game feature. As a first step we identified a comprehensive set of unique game features, summarised in the Game Elements-Attributes Model (GEAM), where elements are the defining components that all games share (e.g. Challenges) and attributes are their possible implementation (e.g. time pressure). To deepen the understanding of relationships amongst game features, we conducted a survey based on the GEAM and received 321 responses. Using hierarchical clustering, we grouped 67 games, selected by the survey respondents, in terms of similarity and mapped the identified clusters on a 2D space to visualise their difference in distance from each other. On the resulting Game Genre Map, five main areas were detected, which proved to conform mostly to a selection of existing game genres. By specifying their GEAM attributes, we redefined these genres: Mini-game, Action, Adventure, Resource, and Role-play. Based on the aforementioned groundwork, two empirical studies were conducted. Study 1 compared three DEGs of the Mini-game genre, differing in a single GEAM attribute - time pressure vs. puzzle solving and abstract vs. realistic graphics. Study 2 compared DEGs of different genres which vary in the implementation of several GEAM attributes. For both studies, statistically significant differences were found in learning outcome, for Study 2 also in the player experience dimensions: Flow, Tension, Challenge, and Negative Affect. However, the influences of the covariates - learning and play preconditions, learning style, and personality traits - were not confirmed. Further research based on the methodological frameworks developed is needed.

Learning management systems are widely used in educational organizations and universities to deliver self-paced online courses. Furthermore, educational theories have suggested that providing learners with learning material suitable for their learning styles may affect their learning performance. Learners with different individual traits, levels of knowledge, backgrounds, and characteristics are using these learning systems to enhance their learning understanding. This study is concerned with personalizing learning environments based on each learner’s individual needs by designing and developing intelligent adaptive e-learning management systems. These systems behave according to the data collected in a ‘learner model’ from the learner to provide accurate learning material that adapts to learners’ needs by changing the learning environment rapidly based on the learners’ learning requirements and their learning styles. A dynamic adaptive e-learning system (DAELS) is proposed. The idea is to build an algorithm that can quickly understand an individual learner’s learning styles. We propose the Similarity algorithm, which aims to adapt to the student’s learning styles by taking advantage of the experience of previous students that used the same system and studied the same course. This algorithm presents the content to each student according to predictions of his/her preferred learning styles. These predictions can change during a student’s progress and response to the presentation. The ID3 machine learning method was used and integrated into our Similarity algorithm. Such a method can search learners' databases efficiently and quickly by classifying learners based on their attributes. Methods and associated techniques that address these issues by use of Felder and Silverman Learning Styles Model (FSLSM) have been developed and can be built into Moodle, the learning management system, as an integral component. We then conducted experiments on students to evaluate the flexibility of the DAELS and its effect on students’ learning performance. An experiment was designed and implemented to validate the proposed approach’s reliability and performance on learners’ scores. The proposed DAELS was compared with a static adaptive e-learning system (SAELS) and a non-adaptive e-learning system (non-AELS). The results of the empirical experiment demonstrate the effectiveness of using DAELS on student performance. On average, the dynamic adaptive group had an average increase of 60% in the post-test from pre-test, whereas the average score of the static group increased 32%, and the control group had an average increase of 8%. The results reveal that the dynamic group had the highest average scores in the post-test, and the control group had the lowest average increase in scores. The findings indicate that the developed Similarity algorithm, implemented in our DAELS for personalising learning content presentation according to students’ learning styles, is appropriate in e-learning systems and can enhance learning quality.

This thesis explores the possibility of using a drama in education classroom model of practice, to construct a leadership model that may be used in commercial organisations and in schools. Using a case study approach of the Manx Myth, Mantle of the Expert approach to teaching, devised by the late Dorothy Heathcote the researcher attempts to demonstrate that not only was she an inspirational pedagogue, but that within her work lay seeds of a leadership model which the researcher has named the Alchemical Model of leadership. Data, consisting of two interviews alongside fourteen transcripts was subjected to thematic analysis. The study is concerned with exploring the chronological development of the leadership theory continuum to see where the classroom practice of Dorothy Heathcote may be placed among the recognised models of leadership. The researcher will make the analogy of Dorothy Heathcote as the teacher, leading learners in a constructivist classroom, to leaders leading a workforce in an organisation. Reference throughout is made to the importance of finding a new model of leadership that can contribute to the many changes facing the leading of organisations in the twenty first century.

Learning in a face to face collaborative setting can have many benefits, such as leveraging differing peer proficiency to obtain an outcome not reachable by the individuals involved. Including expertise provided by teachers decreases this gap between potential and current ability, while also providing opportunity for the expert to impart timely and appropriate assistance to the learners. In the fields of Human Computer Interaction and Educational Technology, digital tabletops have come to the fore as a medium for facilitating small groups of collaborative learners, and suitable applications can provide at least some of the support that the teacher’s expertise would in the learning process. Previously, most explorations in this area have concentrated on learning tasks that are already collaborative in nature, and have focused on single group deployments, and usually in controlled settings such as a research lab. This thesis focuses on two main aims: (i) investigating the design of such applications, and how learning tasks not normally considered collaborative, such as Persuasive Extended Writing, might be adapted to a digital tabletop mediated collaborative learning task; and (ii), how to expand this application from a single group to a classroom scenario, and overcoming all the challenges that an “in the wild” deployment of this kind might entail. A review of previous literature on collaborative learning and collaborative learning technology inform a learner centred design process of an application for the collaborative learning of Persuasive Extended Writing. This design process was conducted with three groups of three learners aged 13 – 15 in the lab. Based on this investigation of the literature around collaborative learning, there is a potential learning impact from allowing collaboration in a usually non-collaborative learning setting. The application incorporates factors designed to elicit collaborative behaviours, such as visuospatial representations and decision points. The work then sets about identifying and evaluating these collaborative behaviours, with a view that they are potentially in line with this ultimate learning goal. iii The Collocated Collaborative Writing application (CCW) is deployed and evaluated in an “in the wild” classroom setting. This involved two studies in real classrooms in schools, with eight digital tabletops allowing for a class-wide deployment. In the first study, participants were students of mixed ability, year 8 (aged 13-14), studying English, Geography and History. In the second study, participants were mixed ability year 8 students (aged 13-14) studying English. Studies were facilitated by teachers who had created the material for the studies based on their current teaching and curriculum. The process identified the issues and challenges involved in this kind of “in the wild” deployment. The lessons learned from this process about the differing expectations of the stakeholders involved in the first study informed the second deployment. A combination of addressing the issues directly, forming a more equal partnership with the school and teacher, and differences in culture between the schools lead to a study in which the collaborative writing application is evaluated. There are two main contributions of this work. Firstly, a set of design guidelines derived from lessons learned during the design process. Their intention is to assist in the process of making a normally non-collaborative learning task into a collaborative one, by exploiting affordances of the technology. The second contribution comes from lessons learned from two “in the wild” classroom studies. It outlines a deeper understanding of how this kind of application can be extended to the classroom by gaining insight into expectations of the parties involved, understanding the culture of the school and making the process a partnership rather than an imposition. The work also evaluated the Collaborative Writing Application in terms of the type and quality of the collaborative behaviours of the participants, and how they changed over time, as well as the adoption of the technology by the teacher, eventually being seen as a tool for their own agenda rather than an external element in the classroom.

The primary objective of this study is to explore the perceptions and attitudes of faculty members within King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia regarding various factors that may influence their current and future use of mobile devices for teaching and learning purposes. The UTAUT and DIT theories were both utilised in this study along with two external constructs. This research employs a sequential online mixed methods approach, using quantitative statistics to illuminate qualitative findings. The sample of survey data consists of responses to 279-response online and paper-based survey. Online interviews were conducted with twenty faculty members, which added in-depth information to the research findings. This research reveals that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, perceived trialability, perceived social norms, and resistance to change were all statistically significant, and had a direct impact on faculty members’ perceptions about using m-learning, both now and in the future. However, in estimating the unique independent effect of each of the potential predictors on the faculty intention in relation to current and future use of m-learning, the results indicated that facilitating conditions, perceived trialability and perceived social norms were more likely than the other factors to influence respondent-preferences relating to their use of m-learning. In addition, the study revealed that mobile device usage was the only significant predictor from the personal characteristics of faculty members regarding the behavioural intention to use mobile learning. The current work attempts to design a unique theoretical framework and suggests that it is worthwhile for higher education institutions to review and assess the factors that are proposed to have significant impacts on faculty members’ intentions to adopt and accept m-learning in their current and future practice, as well as to look at the solutions offered as guidance for the mobile learning programme before embarking on its application.

Researchers working in child computer interaction are constantly seeking new methods and new techniques that will enable them to carry out more valid and more reliable research. Much of this research typically considers the design and development of new products and of new interactive techniques and researchers seek to understand how easy such innovations are for children, how much fun they are to use and how attractive they may be for use. The impact of prior technology use on the children’s responses in those contexts is the core concern of this thesis. The thesis provides a set of tools (survey instruments and guidelines) that can be used by the CCI research community to ascertain the prior experience of children with any technology and with any task. These tools are generated using theory, experience and literature and are validated through user studies. The PETT survey tool comprises three questionnaires, CTEQ, CTUQ and CTHQ and an associated user guide that clearly articulates how to use PETT and demonstrates the flexibility of PETT to be used in many contexts. The guidelines (RWC, SWC and SRT) can be applied on three levels, for general use in research with children, in the design of surveys and in the specifics of designing self-report tools for prior technology experience.

Educational design-based research (DBR) posits classrooms as ‘learning ecologies’, and is distinguished by its ambition to design rather than simply describe them. However critics point to a lack of specificity as to the ontological status of these environments and in the argumentative grammar by which theory and method are coordinated to this end (Sandoval 2014). This thesis advances a model for DBR at programme level, coordinating ethnographic methods and single subject experiments in the design and research of learning ecologies involving the interpretation of narrative in classrooms. Section One begins with the ‘teaching dilemma’ that inspired the research. This is then reconceptualised as a subtype of ‘interpretive dilemma’- a dynamically changing problem space whose structural and relational dimensions are realised in the symbols by which people position themselves and others in the course of their interactions. On this basis, interpretive dilemmas are proposed as a unit of analysis for the research of learning ecologies in general and, specifically, those that may remediate students’ restricted orientation to narrative texts. Each of the following three sections is given over to a different DBR output relating to the design and research of a dilemmatic pedagogy for narrative interpretation. Section Two advances a ‘domain theory’ which models the role code may play in the realisation of interpretive dilemmas in school. Section Three sets out the ‘design methodology’ by which prototype materials derived from this theory can be researched and developed. Microgenetic analysis of video recorded rapid prototyping sessions in Section Four serves to identify ways that the ‘design framework’ can be addressed to particular micro-ecologies during the subsequent field trial proposed in Section Five.

This study presents an action research project on the teaching and learning of fundamental ideas about electric circuits, gathering data from two cohorts. Students’ ideas were probed using diagnostic test questions asked in pre-tests, post-tests and delayed post-tests. Semi-structured interviews were used with students of different abilities to indicate the mental models that students appeared to be using. Additional teaching activities were introduced with Cohort 1. The effect of these activities was reflected upon, guiding further additions to teaching activities used with Cohort 2. These activities addressed specific points that seemed to pose particular difficulties for students with the aim of improving students’ qualitative understanding through guided reflection and discussion. The performance of Cohort 2 was significantly weaker at the pre-test stage but Cohort 2 made better overall progress through the course of study when compared with Cohort 1. Both cohorts made noticeable improvement in their understanding of current conservation. However, problems with parallel circuits and with distinguishing between potential difference (p.d.) and current remained. While p.d. was described by the high ability students in terms of forces between negative charges and the battery terminals, no student referred to the electric field which exists between battery terminals even in open circuit. In attempting to understand the behaviour of electric circuits, students appear first to construct a mental model of electric current. The data collected suggest that students start to understand p.d. when they ‘see’ it as some kind of difference between points. The data also suggest that the scientific model of p.d. is more difficult to visualise and use, putting p.d. at a higher level than current, in a logical hierarchy of ideas. This study proposes a unified learning model for electric circuits, in terms of a possible sequence of intermediate mental models of current, resistance and p.d. leading towards the scientific view. This learning model can help both students and teachers. Students can use it to gauge their level of understanding of circuits and to reflect on what still needs to be understood. Teachers may use the learning model as a tool helping in understanding the difficulties students experience and guiding in what next to teach to improve students’ understanding of electric circuits.

This study is on using information and communication technology (ICT) in science education in Iceland. The requirement that ICT be utilized in teaching has only been met to a limited extent though schools appear to be well equipped. Data was collected through a mixed methods approach including a survey, interviews, and an intervention with eight science teachers. The study showed that teachers use equipment available to them but access to computers for pupils’ use is limited. The uses are primarily researching selected topics on the internet for writing essays or other products, watching video-clips and taking photos. Use of science specific applications is rare. Support structures for science teachers are weak and CPD opportunities scarce. Teachers have positive views towards ICT in teaching science. However there are considerable barriers to technology integration, teacher knowledge is a central element and resources, support and time are major factors affecting teachers’ use of technology. Four cases are explored through cultural historical activity theory, analysing the contradictions that are at work in the context of teaching science with ICT. This analysis illustrates how resources, knowledge and more latent factors are pivotal in the extent and proficiency of teachers’ technology use. Three interventions with a quasi-experimental design explore the effectiveness of a selection of digital learning resources (DLR). The results show that benefits from using DLR’s vary. In two topics the experimental classes scored significantly higher than the comparison classes but in the third it was the opposite. The findings indicate that DLR’s will have a more positive effect on learning results the more interactive features they contain. A further finding from the research concerns the expertise and impact of the science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Perhaps not surprisingly, pupils of teachers with strong PCK tended to score higher, indicating that successful ICT based learning is related to teacher PCK.