This research focused on the relationship between online interactions and course effectiveness in a corporate setting. The research questions were: How do learners interact with the content, the teacher and other learners in online courses? How effective are online courses characterised by high levels of different types of interactions? Which online course design (i.e., emphasising learner-content, learner-teacher or learner-learner interactions) results in the highest levels of effectiveness? The research was conducted in a large Mexican organisation, involving 163 students, 30 teachers and 3 academic assistants. Three versions of an online course were designed, each emphasising a single type of interaction, delivered online, thoroughly evaluated and compared. The researcher used a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data. She collected data through surveys, server logs, think aloud protocols, interviews, messages in discussion forums, exams, observations, sales records and a focus group. Thematic analysis was used across all sources of qualitative data. Results showed that course design does not dictate the type of interactions that students use. In corporate settings, an online course can be effective in terms of satisfaction, learning, knowledge transfer, business results and return on expectations, as long as one of three types of interaction (learner-content, learner-teacher or learner-learner) features prominently in the design, and delivery is consistent with the chosen type of interaction. The main contributions to knowledge of this thesis are: an in-depth understanding of interactions in the design and delivery of online courses in a large organisation; a comprehensive evaluation of online course effectiveness; the expansion of the interaction equivalency theorem; and how the above contributions can add value for learners and make online programmes a powerful lever for organisational change. Conclusions may be valuable for academics and practitioners interested in corporate e-learning. This study also provides evidence-based recommendations for online learning in organisations.

The overall goal of this research work was developing and evaluating a model for supporting electrical engineering with e-learning. The model development was based on the survey data collected from representative teachers and students in Turkey whereas the model evaluation was conducted in the relevant HEIs in Turkey and the United Kingdom. To develop the model, the study investigated the attitudes of representative key stakeholders towards e-learning in Turkey by administrating questionnaires and interviews with teachers and students. Then the responses of the teachers and students were compared. Based on the results, I proposed a model with a multi-dimensional approach to e-learning: (1) self-directed learning by studying e-book, (2) self-assessment by solving e-exercises, (3) teacher-directed learning by attending classroom sessions as an integral part of the blended learning (4) teacher-assessment by solving e-exercises, (5) computer-directed learning by playing e-games and (6) computer-assessment by solving e-exercises. To evaluate the applicability of the model in different conditions, a case-control study was conducted to determine whether the model had the intended effect on the participating students in HEIs in Turkey and the United Kingdom. As the result of the case-control study, the effects of e-learning, blended learning and traditional learning were verified. However, there were significant differences among the groups. The overall scores indicated that e-learning and blended learning was more effective as compared to the traditional learning. The results of our study indicated that the knowledge increase in e-learners seemed to be gradual because they tended to study daily by completing each activity on time. However, the traditional learners did not have the same pattern because they usually did not read the core text and did not solve e-exercise regularly before the classroom sessions. The results of pre-placement, post-placement tests and middle tests also justified these assumptions.

This arts-based qualitative study uses the Popular Theatre method of drama in a manner that encourages play, experimentation and reflection with cross border English-as-an-Additional Language (EAL) students in a UK university. This Participatory Action Research case study was driven by these students' reflections and explorations of their cultural experiences. This was a deliberate move away from the traditional use of drama in E~L classrooms where drama activities have been employed to reinforce language learning in an exchange format. This research is theoretically framed by the Popular Theatre method (which is informed by the writing of Augusto Boal). In the course of the project, students were able to trouble-shoot and practise problem-solving together, 'playing' with their real-lives. From this 'playing', and reflection on my own experience as a drama teacher and international student, I generated a series of scripted ethnodrama scenes. This ethnodrama reveals and breathes life into the findings from this research. The first is the examination of the differentiating characteristics of a group I am identifying as solo-nationals. These are students who are the singular person from their country of origin. The second is the inadequacy of the structure of induction programmes, such as those current in many HE Is, as a one-size-fits-all event. As a researcher I critically examine the ethnodrama and offer scenes for use in the EAL classroom or induction programmes to both represent students' experiences and provide a template for further exploration of individual experience. Further, I reflect on and evaluate what can be learned from this study about the uses and effectiveness of drama as a learning tool in this context.

The research addresses issues identified in an ESRC Case studentship developed in collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University and the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester. The original proposal had as its central aim "informing how museums can most effectively contribute to and enhance children's learning in primary school science". A case study is presented of upper primary school groups visiting the Museum, including discussions of the Museum's schools' provision and the practices of visiting school groups. Within that broader context, a main finding is that children can and do engage in dialogue about museum exhibits in ways that are relevant to their science learning. The finding is supported by empirical evidence from a series of discussions held with 8 to lO-year-old primary school pupils who had visited the Museum. The children find the exhibits rich, interesting and comprehensible enough to be engaging topics of conversation while being sufficiently thought provoking to challenge their ideas and their ways of talking. Sociocultural theory is used as a framework for analysing the science-relevant content of what the children talked about, the patterns of discourse they used, and the identities they enacted. The theory provides a fruitful way of understanding the children's engagement in talking as the concerns, sense of purpose, identification and emotion of participation in a social practice. Implications for museum education practice are identified. Talking about exhibits consolidates and strengthens the general educational value of visits by school groups to the Museum. Suggestions are made for how Museum staff and school teachers can build on children's museum experience to enhance their scientific literacy.

Context: In Saudi Arabia, distance-learning plays a vital role in the female higher education system. This system is considered unique among all the world’s countries because, for religious reasons, intermixing of the genders is not allowed within most educational settings in Saudi society. This system is currently facing a problem with an overflow of female students in higher educational institutions as these institutions suffer from a lack of female faculty members. To resolve this problem, all universities in Saudi Arabia utilise synchronous distance learning technologies such as video and audio conferences technologies for the delivery of subjects by male faculty members to female students, as this is the only authorised way for male faculty to teach female students. Although this method has been used in Saudi Arabia continuously since 1970, no study has addressed the perceptions of female students, regarding the problems they face whilst studying, through such technologies or proposed any solution for these problems. Aim: The purpose of this study is to identify the perceptions of female students at King Saud University regarding the difficulties and barriers they encounter in the distance learning classrooms that use video conferencing technology. This study also proposes feasible solutions for the most common problems. It has developed an innovative interactive communication system, CommEasy, based on the internet and Wi-Fi technologies for handheld devices and uses this system to enhance communication and participation in distance learning. Method: The research questions are answered by applying a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches that have been selected according to the nature of the research. A case study research design was chosen to address all the research questions related to KSU. Identifying the perceptions of female students about the problems they encounter in distance learning classrooms was gathered through a questionnaire with five main parts: classroom physical design, classroom physical features, technical support, communication and participation with male instructors and classroom management. Each part used a number of questions to measure the students' perceptions and the students were asked to respond to each question using a five-point Likert scale. Proposing feasible solutions for the problems reported by students required using a mixture of methods, such as observations, structured interviews and surveys. An incremental software development approach was used to develop the CommEasy tool that was used in this thesis and the quasi-experimental method was used to evaluate this tool in the actual learning environment. Results: The results of the thesis presented the perceptions of students towards the components of the distance-learning classrooms and showed all the satisfactory and unsatisfactory components. It produced a list of strategies for effective designing of the distance-learning classroom that uses video conference technology, produced a new physical design for the distance-learning classrooms that used video conference technologies, provided a set of feasible solutions for the problems identified and finally, showed that the CommEasy system has a positive impact, in supporting communication in the distance-learning classroom, leading to an increased level of student participation with instructors, as well as solving most of the problems students were faced with in this regard. Conclusions: in summary, the outcome of this thesis should provide both researchers and decision makers with an insight into the problems facing students in distance-learning, as well as providing them with feasible solutions for these problems. This thesis will serve as a basis for further research in this field to be conducted in Saudi Arabia.

Many children and young people in urban Japan attend Juku, a private tuition in after-school hours. Juku supplements school education or prepares students for entrance examinations. This research looks at the role of Juku in children’s lives, how children perceive their well-being, and association of these two from the child-centred perspective. The motives of this research are three-folds. Firstly, Japanese childhood seems to be problematised with a concern about their low level of well-being, for which Juku is often raised as one of the influencing factors. Despite Juku being significant for Japanese children, it has been treated with laissez-faire approach from fields of both policy and research. Finally, children’s voices still appear to be missing in public discourse. For these, it was evident that there is a need to fill the distinctive lack of knowledge. To explore the topic of interest, qualitative interviews were conducted in urban Japan with girls aged 10 to 18. Other research tools such as timeline, time-use and eco-map sheets are used to perform child-centred research. These tools appeared useful also because this research considered time and space aspects in childhood. Three key findings are suggested by highlighting the relationality of Japanese society. Firstly, Juku experience is not necessarily negative for participant children. In fact, children feel the need of attending Juku, because school pedagogy appears to be unfavourable for them. Regarding child well-being, it became evident that maintaining Ibasho, a physical, emotional and relational space, is essential. Given the significance of relationship, these findings are discussed with application of rhizome theory suggested by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Following these, this thesis suggests that current child well-being discourse is deeply embedded in Western-middle class ideology, and it appeared unsuitable when it is applied in Japanese context. Therefore, more diverse cultural-understanding is required when exploring children’s well-being.

With the exponential growth of data amount and sources, access to large collections of data has become easier and cheaper. However, data is generally unlabelled and labels are often difficult, expensive, and time consuming to obtain. Two learning paradigms have been used by machine learning community to diminish the need for labels in training data: semi-supervised learning (SSL) and active learning (AL). AL is a reliable way to efficiently building up training sets with minimal supervision. By querying the class (label) of the most interesting samples based upon previously seen data and some selection criteria, AL can produce a nearly optimal hypothesis, while requiring the minimum possible quantity of labelled data. SSL, on the other hand, takes the advantage of both labelled and unlabelled data to address the challenge of learning from a small number of labelled samples and large amount of unlabelled data. In this thesis, we borrow the concept of SSL by allowing AL algorithms to make use of redundant unlabelled data so that both labelled and unlabelled data are used in their querying criteria. Another common tradition within the AL community is to assume that data samples are already gathered in a pool and AL has the luxury to exhaustively search in that pool for the samples worth labelling. In this thesis, we go beyond that by applying AL to data streams. In a stream, data may grow infinitely making its storage prior to processing impractical. Due to its dynamic nature, the underlying distribution of the data stream may change over time resulting in the so-called concept drift or possibly emergence and fading of classes, known as concept evolution. Another challenge associated with AL, in general, is the sampling bias where the sampled training set does not reflect on the underlying data distribution. In presence of concept drift, sampling bias is more likely to occur as the training set needs to represent the underlying distribution of the evolving data. Given these challenges, the research questions that the thesis addresses are: can AL improve learning given that data comes in streams? Is it possible to harness AL to handle changes in streams (i.e., concept drift and concept evolution by querying selected samples)? How can sampling bias be attenuated, while maintaining AL advantages? Finally, applying AL for sequential data steams (like time series) requires new approaches especially in the presence of concept drift and concept evolution. Hence, the question is how to handle concept drift and concept evolution in sequential data online and can AL be useful in such case? In this thesis, we develop a set of stream-based AL algorithms to answer these questions in line with the aforementioned challenges. The core idea of these algorithms is to query samples that give the largest reduction of an expected loss function that measures the learning performance. Two types of AL are proposed: decision theory based AL whose losses involve the prediction error and information theory based AL whose losses involve the model parameters. Although, our work focuses on classification problems, AL algorithms for other problems such as regression and parameter estimation can be derived from the proposed AL algorithms. Several experiments have been performed in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms. The obtained results show that our algorithms outperform other state-of-the-art algorithms.

This study was undertaken in the west coast of Scotland and contributes to literature in the fields of Drama (with particular focus on Drama Convention approaches), and primary-secondary transition. The research questions were: 1. How do young people understand and respond to the Drama Convention approaches used in this study to explore primary-secondary transition? 2. How do primary teachers understand and respond to the Drama Convention approaches used in this study to explore primary-secondary transition? 3. How does the evidence from the thesis correlate with literature?The investigator devised three Drama structures that addressed a fictional Primary seven pupil’s transition to secondary school. Data was gathered through a research diary, pupil focus groups, pupil questionnaire and exit cards, teacher observations of pupils’ interactions with the Drama structure, a teacher semi-structured interview. Data was analysed using an interpretivist stance, within a case study approach, through iterative thematic coding. The participants indicated that Drama Convention pedagogy is child-centred, motivational and engages young people in transitional learning; the majority of pupils expressed their positivity about transferring to secondary school. Drama Convention approaches developed themes of: citizenship, solidarity, empathy, meta-awareness, multiple perspectives, understanding of bullying at transition, and real-world learning. The thesis contributes to Drama literature by providing an analysis of pupil and teacher voice on thirteen specified Drama Convention approaches (Neelands and Goode, 2016). In addition, the thesis contributes to the transitional literature by indicating that Drama Convention approaches provide an engaging pedagogical approach that empowers young people to discuss their transitional thoughts and opinions in a safe and purposeful learning environment. The implications and recommendations of this study are that further research should be implemented in using Drama Convention approaches as a pedagogical method for primary-secondary transitional learning and that greater support should be given to teachers in developing their understanding of Drama pedagogy.

This thesis examines the educational drama practice of Dorothy Heathcote, who died in October 2011, and defines Mantle of the Expert, a model of learning and teaching that she invented and developed, as her legacy. Uniquely, it views this model through a historical and political framework. There is critical reflection on the failure of Heathcote’s earlier models to become mainstream drama practice in schools. Explanations are offered, such as recurring debates about the nature and function of educational drama, political pressures on curriculum design and a shift of interest from educational drama towards applied theatre. Mantle of the Expert is examined critically through case study methodology, as a situated learning system and cross curricular teaching tool. Interviews and observations with teachers, headteachers and other practitioners using the model in schools are analysed and findings presented. The features of the system as it is being practised are examined to establish whether or not a single version can be identified. Findings also embrace various aspects of professional development. Conclusions are offered about strategic models of introducing Mantle of the Expert in schools and the role of headteachers in promoting it. The impact of introducing this approach on relationships between staff in a small rural school is examined. The thesis critically explores the use of electronic media in establishing and sustaining a teaching and learning strategy. In particular, the role of a bespoke website is considered through extensive monitoring and analysis. A fundamental conclusion is that teachers who do not have an understanding of drama conventions and theatre form will have difficulty in delivering Heathcote’s model successfully. It is further concluded that Mantle of the Expert has a better chance of being sustained in English schools than Heathcote’s earlier models.

This study analysed the educational life histories of five EFL teachers at a Mexican university. The aims of the study were: 1) to explore how these teachers’ beliefs about student-centred learning had evolved over the course of their lives; and 2) to examine the relationships between their beliefs and teaching practices at different points in time. In order to achieve these aims, a life history approach was adopted, which incorporated a series of extended interviews as well as an innovative timeline activity. Classroom observations and student focus groups were also included, mainly for triangulation purposes. The four main findings which emerged from the study were as follows. Firstly, all five teachers’ felt their early beliefs about teaching were predominately teacher-centred, which appeared to be linked to their immersion in the generally teacher-centred Mexican educational culture. Secondly, all five teachers felt that their beliefs eventually became more student-centred over the course of their educational life histories. These changes towards more student-centred beliefs were attributed to a number of experiences the teachers had over the course of their lives, and in particular, the characteristics of certain training courses. Thirdly, despite all the teachers eventually starting to believe in more student-centred approaches, they reported that they were rarely able to fully put these beliefs into practices. These mismatches between beliefs and practices seem to have been linked to a number of contextual constraints which they encountered within their working contexts. Finally, all five teachers started to believe in more “hybrid” approaches to teaching by the ends of their educational life histories. This implied using a combination of teacher- and student-centred practices, depending on how appropriate they were perceived to be within their specific contexts. The emergence of this more “hybrid” approach raises important questions about what we should realistically expect from educational changes and whether student-centred learning should still be considered the undisputed “gold standard” of education.