Learning Management Systems (LMSs), in a blended learning educational environment, support face to face education and enable enhanced communication and interaction among instructors and students as well as among students. However, Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL), which improves the learning process, does not come without challenges. The aim of this research is double fold. Firstly, it aims to explore users’ –instructors and students- perceptions on how the LMS Open eClass, in TEI of Athens Greece, supports and facilitates their communication and interaction. Secondly, based on users’ needs and desires, the study aims to formulate suggestions for improving communication and interaction through the platform. The study adopts an interpretivist stance and is built upon an inductive qualitative approach. Firstly, users’ perceptions are solicited through semi-structured interviews and the collected data are analyzed through the thematic analysis method. Subsequently, the study adopts Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to capture the complexity of the situation, derived from the different worldviews of instructors and students in their association with Open eClass and emerge suggestions for improvements. The results indicate that Open eClass is used to facilitate instructors convey material and information to students, while neither meaningful communication and interaction nor collaboration is performed adequately through the platform. However, the users have expressed a positive disposition towards utilizing these capabilities of the platform, as they recognize their fundamental importance to learning, especially during an economic crisis which constraints the physical presence of many students in classes. Therefore, the study proposes three, accommodating to all, systemically desirable and culturally feasible changes that could improve the situation, mainly based on pedagogy. Overall, this research contributes to existing knowledge about the usage of LMS regarding interaction and communication in a blended learning environment by providing a holistic view on users’ perceptions and identifying changes capable to bring about improvements.

Les technologies de l’information et la communication constituent actuellement un défi pour l’éducation en Colombie. La plupart des institutions éducatives, encouragée par le Gouvernement, savent qu’il faut les inclure dans leurs programmes. Cependant, il existe encore une forte réticence qui repose principalement sur la méconnaissance de la part des enseignants.Cette thèse en didactique de langues et cultures essaie de montrer à travers la présentation d’un cours hybride (combinaison de séances en présentiel avec des séances à distance ou virtuelles), que les technologies de l’information et la communication en éducation (TICE) peuvent apporter des bénéfices dans une licence en langues vivantes totalement en présentiel dans une université colombienne. Dans cette université publique, qui donne priorité aux jeunes à faible condition économique, de nombreux étudiants doivent travailler pendant leurs études. C’est pour cette raison qu’un cours en semi-présentiel diminue le temps d’assistance en classe et favorise la formation intégrale en promouvant le développement de l’autonomie. L’autonomie est une condition indispensable dans cette modalité éducative. Plusieurs disciplines telles que la sociologie, l’histoire, la didactique et la pédagogie ont convergé, à travers des outils et des données, vers cette thèse. Des questionnaires, des entretiens, des cahiers de bord des étudiants et des registres sur la plateforme, où le cours a été hébergé, ont permis d’observer comment quatorze (14) étudiants ont découvert et ont vécu une expérience, qui peut contribuer à modifier positivement les attitudes des nouvelles générations d’enseignants envers les TICE. En ce qui concerne l’autonomie, une légère progression est constatée, mais ce doit être encore amélioré, car en tant que processus, cette compétence demande plus de temps. La médiatisation et la médiation, deux composantes indispensables de tout dispositif en ligne, dépendent de tous les facteurs qui déterminent le contexte : étudiants, contenu du cours, horaire, niveau d’autonomie des étudiants, objectifs institutionnels et personnels, le professeur/tuteur… / Information and communication technology (ITC) is currently a challenge for education in Colombia. Most educational institutions, encouraged by the Government, know that they must include it in their programs; however, there is still a strong resistance to ITC due mainly to teacher´s lack of knowledge.This dissertation in language and culture didactics intends to show how a blended course of in-class and online teaching benefits foreign language programs in Colombian universities. At the University of Antioquia, a public university, priority is given to young people with low income who have to work while studying. It is for this reason that a blended course reduces the time to support and promote the integral formation of students by developing autonomy. Autonomy is an essential feature of this educational modality.Through the use of similar tools and data, several disciplines such as sociology, history, didactics and pedagogy converged in this dissertation. Questionnaires, interviews, students’notebooks and class recordings allow observing how fourteen (14) students discovered and lived this experience which could contribute to change to a more positive attitude in the new generations of teachers towards ICT. Student’s autonomy slightly increased as evidence by the tools used and the data gathered but it must be further improved because it is a skill that takes long to develop. Mediatisation and mediation, two indispensable components of any online device, depend on all the factors that determine the context: students, course content, schedule, level of student autonomy, institutional and personal goals, the teacher / tutor... / Las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación constituyen actualmente un reto para la educación en Colombia. La mayoría de las instituciones educativas, impulsadas por el Estado, no ignoran que deben incluirlas en sus programas. Sin embargo, todavía hay una fuerte resistencia que obedece principalmente al desconocimiento de la parte de los docentes.Esta tesis en didáctica de lenguas y culturas trata de mostrar a través la presentación de un curso híbrido (caracterizado por combinar las sesiones de clase presenciales con sesiones a distancia o virtuales), que las tecnologías de la comunicación y la información en educación (TICE) pueden aportar beneficios a una licencia en lenguas extranjeras en modalidad presencial en una universidad Colombiana. Se trata de una universidad pública que favorece a los jóvenes estudiantes con dificultades económicas, donde muchos de ellos deben trabajar durante su formación universitaria.Es por esta razón que un curso semi-presencial disminuye el tiempo de asistencia a clases y favorece la formación integral al promover el desarrollo de la autonomía. La autonomía es un factor indispensable en esta modalidad educativa.Algunas disciplinas como la sociología, la historia, la didáctica y la pedagogía convergieron a través de los instrumentos y los datos obtenidos en esta tesis. Cuestionarios, entrevistas, cuadernos de campo de los estudiantes y registros en la plataforma, donde se desarrolló el curso, permitieron observar como catorce (14) estudiantes descubrieron y vivieron una experiencia que podría contribuir a modificar en ellos las actitudes de las nuevas generaciones de docentes hacia las TICE. En lo que concierne la autonomía, se pudo constatar una ligera progresión, pues como proceso, esta competencia requiere de tiempo. La mediación y la mediatización son dos componentes indispensables de todo dispositivo en línea que dependen de todos los factores que determinan el contexto: estudiantes, contenido de los cursos, horario, nivel de autonomía de los estudiantes, objetivos institucionales y personales, profesor/tutor…

Thesis (Ph. D. (Administration)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / The thesis drew from a combination of phenomenology, interactionism and critical theories because South Africa in itself consists of a polity with national dynamics, within the matrices of globality in which connectivity plays a determining role, especially in terms of the capacity to competitively participate in the global knowledge economy. Guided by reading collectively and critically from the economic, physical development, policy analysis, interpretative as well as collaboration planning approaches, among others, and the mono-centric, multilevel and adaptive models of governance, the thesis constructed a conceptual argument that the primate enablers for modernized infrastructure, skills and culture attached to the preconditions for blended pedagogies, are modernized planning and governance. However, the attainment of planning, governance, infrastructure and skills is in itself inadequate to inculcate the culture necessary for the integration of elearning with conventional didactics. This observation is confirmed through international experiences that involve the developed countries that are in the very high and high Human Development Index (HDI) categories such as Australia, Poland and Korea as well as Thailand, Brazil and Algeria, respectively, where the presence of planning, governance, infrastructure and skills has not automatically precipitated a culture required for blended pedagogies. This evidence does not seek to underplay the significance of planning, governance, infrastructure and skills in the integration of e-learning with conventional didactics, but the thesis has established that the existence of modernized planning, governance, infrastructure and skills are a necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition. From the literature review, the thesis deduces that e-culture is a virtually sufficient condition for the establishment of blended pedagogies. Hence, variables such as GDP per Capita, Gross Fixed Capital Formation, Average Annual Growth of General Government Final Consumption Expenditure, Research and Development Expenditure and Public Expenditure on Education, that demonstrate the level of human development of a country, do not necessarily reflect capacity to enable the establishment of blended pedagogies. Such conditions do not always coexist with pre-eminence of communication using Internet and/or Mobile Phones, characteristic of the “Net Generation Culture”. The vi latter, as a specific form of e-culture, is heavily dependent on infrastructure and skills which are, among others things, reflected in Gross Fixed Capital Formation, Employment to Population Ratio, Labour Force Participation Rate, Labour Force with Tertiary Education, Total Electrification Rate as well as Employment to Population Ratio. The observation made above is corroborated by the experiences of developing countries such as Vietnam, Zambia and Kenya, which are in the medium and low HDI categories, wherein the absence of appropriate and adequate infrastructure, skills and e-culture together with planning and governance imperil the evolution of the national culture into that of the “Net Natives”. From an empirical perspective, consistent with the hybridization of philosophy, the thesis conveniently selected a target population that consisted of a total of 15 countries, wherein 14 of these observations provide a backdrop against which South Africa’s relative readiness and appropriateness of planning, governance, infrastructure, culture and skills for blended pedagogies are determined. A combination of purposive and quota sampling procedures was adopted to select the 15 countries across the four HDI categories. The 15 countries are classified in terms of the 2015 United Nations Development Programme HDI conceptions, which produced four levels of “very high”, “high”, “medium” and “low”. A total of 28 variables were selected for Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The thesis used secondary data sources for textual and empirical data, where the latter was largely drawn from the United Nations Development Programme Reports. The textual data were analysed qualitatively through thorough descriptions, classification and drawing of connections, the statistical data were organized into a 15 (observations) by 28 (variables) raw data matrix and analysed through the PCA. Verbal tools were used to provide thick descriptions of contexts regarding historical, social, demographic and economic backgrounds in order to situate the motive underlying the planning and governance of blending e-learning pedagogies with conventional didactics in South Africa. From a quantitative perspective, PCA was used for statistical modelling that standardized the data and produced a variety of useful statistical summaries such as Principal Components, Eigenvalues, Communalities, Correlation Matrix, Component Loadings, Component Scores and Scattergrams. vii Given that the raw data consisted of 15 observations by 28 variables, a 28 by 28 variables correlation matrix was generated. Of the 378 correlations that the thesis discovered, 183 are direct and 195 are indirect. However, 276 of the 378 relationships are negligible; only 102 correlations were strong and significant enough to deserve closer examination. Principal Component Analysis extracted a total of 15 Principal Components; and, the first seven according to the thesis, accounted for the cumulative percentage of 92% in the interrelationships. Furthermore, it is evident that Principal Component 1 consists of the characteristics of Modernized, Planning, Governance, Infrastructure, Skills and Culture, which are diametrically different from the Frustrated Development, Unsustainable State Intervention and Societal Inequalities, Limiting e-infrastructure, e-skills Constraint, Muted Development Potential and the Non-existent e-culture that are associated with the rest. Given the significance and strength of the eigenvalue and component loadings on Principal Component (PC) 1, it should signify the presence of enabling environments for e-infrastructure, e-governance, e-culture and e-skills consistent with modernized planning and governance of blended pedagogies. Therefore, a country that scores negatively on PC 1 and positively on PC 2 would represent a society that is far less prepared for blended pedagogies where an unrelenting state investment for e-infrastructure, e-governance, eskills and e-culture would translate into a replacement behaviour rather than integration of conventional didactics with digital technologies. This infers that the status of governance, infrastructure, skills and culture would remain less optimal for the adoption of blended pedagogies. For such countries, investing heavily in blended pedagogies without first creating the requisite conditions for engagement in the global knowledge economy would imply that they would have sought to exploit non-existent capacity in governance, infrastructure, skills and culture. South Africa's component score on PC 1 is -0.58, which would in terms of the analysis mean that this country lacks the character of modernized planning, governance, infrastructure, skills and culture that are necessary for engendering blended pedagogies. Countries such as Norway, Australia, Poland, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka that have variably trotted the blended pedagogies score positively on PC 1. Besides, viii some of these countries have not been successful in blended pedagogies, notwithstanding their apparent enabling environments. Conversely, South Africa's component score on PC 2 is extraordinarily higher than all of the 14 countries; and, it is 2.15 points higher than the nearest score. It is important to recognize that South Africa's score on PC 2 is an extreme case and a virtual outlier that has no connection to the rest of the fourteen countries, especially those in the Medium and Low HDI. Overall, South Africa's component scores highlight the relative dearth of appropriate planning, governance, infrastructure, skills and culture, that are necessary for the adoption of blended pedagogies. Whereas the thesis finds that there is no direct correlation between the level of human development and adoption of blended pedagogies, the latter appears to be a result of convoluted processes that involve the creation of enablers for e-culture largely through planning, governance, infrastructure, skills and culture. These qualities are embedded with societal equality, equity of access to services, capital formation, employment, education as well as Internet infrastructure. The thesis therefore, concludes that South Africa's potential for human development is derailed through endless planning that has become an end in itself. Planning for its own sake, which defines South Africa's democratic history, means that modernized governance, skills and e-culture that are necessary for blended pedagogies have remained substandard. The thesis establishes that South Africa’s national as well as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) planning demonstrates ambition and interest, which is however pursued in the absence of effective governance of implementation and adoption of appropriate educational technologies. Evidently, South Africa is yet to attain modernized planning, governance, skills and culture appropriate for the implementation of blended pedagogies, notwithstanding the infrastructure provided in some of the schools for teaching and learning. Instead, South Africa’s pedagogic digital transformation is characterized by replacement of conventional didactics with e-learning rather than integration for blended pedagogies. Therefore, this evidence suggests that, although South Africa’s educational ICT infrastructure seems to be relatively modernized, the absence of appropriate and adequate planning, governance, skills and e-culture impairs the successful implementation of blended learning. The thesis, therefore, recommends ix that adoption of blended pedagogies should be supported through the creation of eculture in households, underwritten by modernized planning, governance, infrastructure and skills for competitive participation in the global knowledge economy.

Es ist eine paradoxe Situation: Die durch Open Access und digitalisierte Forschung bedingte Transformation des wissenschaftsmethodischen Paradigmas erfordert ein besonders hohes Maß an Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten, die dem modernen Begriff von Informationskompetenz entsprechen. Gleichzeitig ist die im Wissenschaftssystem für Informationskompetenz eigens zuständige Einrichtung, die Bibliothek, immer weniger gefragt. Inhalte und didaktische Ansatzpunkte der bibliothekarischen Angebote zur Informationskompetenzvermittlung treffen offenbar nicht hinreichend die Bedürfnisse der Studierenden und NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen. Wie können also Angebote der Bibliotheken und wissenschaftliche Nachfrage wieder in Einklang gebracht werden? In diesem Kapitel skizzieren wir ein Konzept für die Vermittlung von Informationskompetenz, das sich eng am (zunehmend digitalen) Forschungsprozess orientiert, exemplifizieren dieses am Beispiel von ausgewählten Bibliotheksangeboten und diskutieren die dafür notwendigen Qualifikationen. Die Überlegungen basieren auf praktischen Erfahrungen in der Erneuerung des Informationsservice an der SLUB Dresden in den Jahren 2012 bis 2014 sowie langjähriger Marktbeobachtung im Themenbereich Literaturverwaltung.:Integriertes, am digitalen Forschungsprozess ausgerichtetes Beratungsangebot auf Augenhöhe Merkmal 1: Ausrichtung am Forschungsprozess Merkmal 2: Vermittlung von aktuellem Methodenwissen Merkmal 3: Austausch auf Augenhöhe Merkmal 4: Integration des Dienstleistungspakets in den Campus Exemplarische Anwendung des Konzepts Aufwertung der persönlichen Beratung Moderne Bibliotheksservices am Beispiel von Literaturverwaltung Fachreferatsarbeit im Sinne des Blended Librarian Fortbildung: Benötigte Qualifikationen für die Bewältigung der neuen Aufgaben Ausblick: Alte Werte neu interpretieren Literaturverzeichnis Metadaten

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The thesis presents a model, suitable for the design of any type of qualification in integrative eGovernment education. The integrative approach combines education of adult learners and students and promotes international cooperation.

In traditional schooling, one-way monologue from teacher to student is the established way of communica­tion in the classroom. Modern pedagogues are presently breaking free of this status quo.  This master thesis explores whether there is a change in the student’s attitudes towards their school­ing and whether there is an academic benefit for the student when applying a flipped class­room model. This study was performed in Swedish upper secondary school during the students’ last course in mathematics. The study was carried out using focus group interviews and direct participat­ing observation. During the six-week period of interviews and participating in the class­room written tasks were collected and analysed, and the classroom was filmed to help analysing behav­iour of the students, both with flipped classroom and without. The outcome shows positive reac­tions from the students concerning this change in pedagogics, but also some inertia in some individuals. The result shows a positive attitude change concerning communication and collabora­tion in the classroom, although no difference in academic achievement were visible. More studies are needed, but a theoretical base needs to be built before future studies can be con­ducted. Today flipped classroom is undertheorized in ways of an academic model. Future research could be theorizing flipped classroom and exploring whether implementing this pedagogic model also brings forth a change in academic achievement apart from changing the attitudes of the stu­dents.

This practical paper presents a successful international teaching & learning project in Higher Education (HE), which can be used as blue print for similar international HE teaching/learning cooperations. A virtual module, delivering 5 ECTS to participants from Germany and Iran, was organized as flipped classroom (FC), consisting of 2 phases: (1) online phase of 7 weeks, having started at April 12, 2019, with 15 students from Shiraz University, Iran, and 23 students from TU Dresden, Germany, collaborating in mixed teams of 5–6 participants each on a complex business case under tight guidance by qualified learning community managers, and (2) a follow-up on-site meeting at TU Dresden in the first week of July with 3 intensive workshops applying different techniques to consolidate the prior online collaboration results.

The local false discovery rate (LFDR) is one of many existing statistical methods that analyze multiple hypothesis testing. As a Bayesian quantity, the LFDR is based on the prior probability of the null hypothesis and a mixture distribution of null and non-null hypothesis. In practice, the LFDR is unknown and needs to be estimated. The empirical Bayes approach can be used to estimate that mixture distribution. Empirical Bayes does not require complete information about the prior and hyper prior distributions as in hierarchical Bayes. When we do not have enough information at the prior level, and instead of placing a distribution at the hyper prior level in the hierarchical Bayes model, empirical Bayes estimates the prior parameters using the data via, often, the marginal distribution. In this research, we developed new Bayesian methods under unknown prior distribution. A set of adequate prior distributions maybe defined using Bayesian model checking by setting a threshold on the posterior predictive p-value, prior predictive p-value, calibrated p-value, Bayes factor, or integrated likelihood. We derive a set of adequate posterior distributions from that set. In order to obtain a single posterior distribution instead of a set of adequate posterior distributions, we used a blended distribution, which minimizes the relative entropy of a set of adequate prior (or posterior) distributions to a "benchmark" prior (or posterior) distribution. We present two approaches to generate a blended posterior distribution, namely, updating-before-blending and blending-before-updating. The blended posterior distribution can be used to estimate the LFDR by considering the nonlocal false discovery rate as a benchmark and the different LFDR estimators as an adequate set. The likelihood ratio can often be misleading in multiple testing, unless it is supplemented by adjusted p-values or posterior probabilities based on sufficiently strong prior distributions. In case of unknown prior distributions, they can be estimated by empirical Bayes methods or blended distributions. We propose a general framework for applying the laws of likelihood to problems involving multiple hypotheses by bringing together multiple statistical models. We have applied the proposed framework to data sets from genomics, COVID-19 and other data.

This dissertation deals with the developing and development of EFL learners' communicative competence in writing in a blended learning course. The dissertation addresses issues related to the conceptualization of developing communicative competence and measuring learners' progress as well as using ICT in foreign language teaching. The underlying research question was whether learners' communicative competence changed after using a series of online discussion tasks, and if so, in what manner. The empirical research was conducted as a case study in which 18 learners in an EFL course at the CEFR A2 level participated in three discussion tasks conducted online, using asynchronous discussion forum. The discussions were built on social constructivist learning theories. Methods of data collection and analysis included pre- and post-tests, learner corpus compiled from the texts written by the students in two online discussions and its analysis, and a questionnaire survey. The results showed that learners' overall level of communicative competence in writing improved. Specifically, the syntactic complexity of learners' language produced at the beginning and at the end of the course increased and learners' perceived fluency in writing improved. These findings support the claim that learners' active participation in...