We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
There is still a great optimism concerning the impact of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), including CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) on the effectiveness of education. The article is a brief synthesis, mostly with a sociological leaning, of the current empirical literature devoted to the various ways in which digitalization has an influence upon the results of education. We found that the investigations of educational impact of digitalization follows the trend from the general literature concerning the social effects of ICT which reveals an empirical perspective of multi-layered divisions in which the first and the second levels (or orders) are the most thoroughly researched and theorized while current developments tentatively regard issues of third, fourth and international digital divisions. As a general overview of the domain it can be concluded that as it develops the more and more the initial optimism vanes making space for anguish over the possible socially divisive potential of ICT use in education. The digital revolution in education not only does not solves previous issues but apparently creates new ones as differences in access, in skills and in use patterns are able to increase the various offline gaps between people of different socio-economic backgrounds.
More...
The study presents a series of actions by which society is currently addressing the issue of climate change (global). We are considering the measures for mitigation and adaptation to the consequences of climate change taking place at the international, European and national level, with emphasis on the response policies of our country. We refer to the solutions that are being taken in Romania to reduce climate change in programmes aimed at the population, public institutions, administrative-territorial units and aiming to encourage the use of renewable energy and less polluting road transport. Concerning the national policy for adaptation to the consequences of climate change, the paper highlights some measures aimed at preventing situations with destructive potential for people and material goods, ensuring the protection of the persons employed, ensuring the social protection of the low income population categories, the development of the natural risk insurance system, the development of the irrigation system for agricultural crops. The analysis was carried out using statistical data (Eurostat, European Commission, Pew Research Center, National Institute of Statistics, etc.), strategic documents, normative acts, specialized papers, information contained in the websites of some institutions.
More...
This paper presents an argument which rests on two interrelated premises regarding the influence of new pedagogies in higher education. The first is that the phenomenon of web-based teaching and learning is dramatically affecting faculty roles in higher education. The second is that the role of faculty member is saturated with requirements and adding a teaching process that requires advanced teaching expertise and additional time commitments will not fit into the current role of faculty; this is so for web-based teaching and learning. Survey data from seventy-eight faculty from eighteen comprehensive academic institutions in Canada provides evidence of change in faculty views and activities in refer to teaching, , whether faculty are engaged in teaching with technology or not.
More...
The rapid growth in online learning over the last two decades has led to a considerable focus on researching a range of issues that impact on the online distance learner experience. These investigations have focussed primarily on instructional or learning design, interaction and communication in learning communities and learner characteristics. Online distance learning research which has had a focus on learner characteristics has been essential over the past two decades for understanding how to support diverse learners within this mode especially given ongoing high attrition rates. While much focus has been on the types of interventions that organisations might deploy, it remains that learners cannot be easily classified into homogenous groups and there is a need to understand more deeply who they are and how they behave as individual online distance learners. With this in mind, the focus of the research reported here was ‘how do mature-age distance learners go about learning?’ by providing insight into the lived experience of individual learners. The study focused on developing an understanding of the kinds of student-centred learning experiences that support students to be successful online distance learners.
More...
The purpose of the paper is to present the preliminary findings of a researchproject aimed at individualization in Technology Enhanced Learning. The mainobjective of the project is to elaborate the methodology of designing theindividualized courses and of implementing them into online and blendedlearning. The project has been financed by The Polish-Norwegian ResearchFund within the scope of so called Small Grant Scheme aimed at womendoing research in technical sciences 1 Although originally the scope of theproject was placed in computer science there is no doubt that pedagogicalaspects of the issue are equally important. The pedagogical and technologicalaspects influence each other, which means that the conceptual work andsoftware solutions are well settled in teaching practice which is not often thecase when talking about adaptive learning systems.
More...
Professional profiles and the skills and knowledge that individuals need tothrive in today’s society have been changing due to social changes generatedin recent decades. We know that there is no single reason, but there is nodoubt that the role of ICT have been taking in all dimensions of our society isone of them. Within this setting, where ICT have an undisputed dominance,there emerge complex sets of contexts, comprised of activities, resources, andrelationships, which provide new opportunities for learning in physical andvirtual spaces, and new opportunities for non-formal and formal learning.These sets of contexts are referred to as ecologies of learning, and in thisstudy, ECO4LEARN, we focus on how these ecologies determine theprofessional profile of teachers in compulsory education, and how they cancontribute to personalize training needs and increase the effectiveness of theirprofessional development.
More...
In France, seven DTUs (Digital Thematic Universities) allow open access tomore than 24,000 OERs (Open Educational Resources). A DTU is a thematic repository of OERs, all validated by the academic community and indexed using SupLomFR (the French declaration for higher education of the LOM standard). The emergence of many huge repositories of OER offers new opportunities to learners, where the OER can be freely accessed from the DTU’s portal, at any moment, by anybody, from everywhere. But it is difficult for most of learners to find interesting resources, when the only available information about resources is their indexing in an international standard suchas the LOM or one of its national declarations. Thus it is important to helplearners to find pertinent resources, even if the only thing known about alearner is the last resource he selects in the current session. One way toperform an accurate recommendation is to recommend him the nearestresources to the last one he clicked on, in term of similarity. But the nearestresources can be highly dissimilar to the last clicked resource if this latter is anisolated one. In this case, it is better to recommend nothing to him, as we cannot afford to recommend an inappropriate material in an e-learningcontext.
More...
In little over a decade, Open Educational Resources (OER) have opened upaccess to knowledge through hundreds of projects and open contentrepositories, open practices and, more recently, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). However, OER lie at the heart of the Open Educationmovement, which advocates that communities and individuals should haveaccess not only to repositories, but also to open technologies and methodologies. Since 2006, OER initiatives such as OpenLearn have beenproviding both open content and knowledge media environments. Currently, itis possible to observe that an increasing number of open learning projectshave been moving beyond the provision of repositories to offer socialpersonalised platforms for collaborative open knowledge construction.OpenScout and weSPOT, for example, offer opportunities for users toorganise their social networks and co-create resources, methodologies, inquiries and best practices.
More...
The Laboratory for experimental pedagogy (LPS) based at the Department ofEducation – Roma Tre University has been working, since 2010, on research focusing on the enhancement of students’ critical thinking skills to foster the development and promotion of the critical use of technology in education. Aseries of departmental projects, coordinated by LPS researchers, have beenfunded from 2011 to achieve these aims (Poce et al., 2011, 2012, 2014). Theprojects use specific models and coordinated approaches to teaching andlearning across a range of disciplines. Students are invited to engage inlearning activities, which involve analysis and reflection, individually and ingroups, taking into considerations the differences in learning, according to thespecific situation. Students work on the different tasks focusing on theidentification of cultural and disciplinary contexts, within the lectio magistralisframework: 1. Distinctio – Presentation of the context; 2. Divisio textus –Analysis of the text; 3. Collatio – Discussion; 4. Quaestio – Criticalinterpretation. The same analytical method is used on a variety of texts,including Descartes and Rousseau, working online on a dedicated platform.The same technique has then been applied to studying other disciplinary subjects and concepts accessing MOOCs, as described in the presentcontribution. Students are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of a massiveopen online course (MOOC) through their experience of learning online asoutlined above.
More...
The EU-funded project Elearning, Communication and Open-data: MassiveMobile, Ubiquitous and Open Learning (ECO) conceived a high-quality modelfor MOOC design. In this paper we present the model and its most innovative features, its theoretical foundations and context of development, as well asscenarios of implementation. We propose a networked learning framework foreffective MOOC design develop quality-oriented and effective approach to amassive open online form of education delivery.
More...
Previous practice in the Open University Science Faculty has been for all modules to be assessed by a combination of summative continuous assessment, with extensive feedback comments, and an end-of-module task (an examination or an extended assignment). This practice, although wellestablished and apparently well received, has led to concerns, as reportedelsewhere, that staff and students have a different understanding of the purpose of continuous assessment: staff see its purpose as primarily formativewhilst students are primarily concerned with obtaining high marks.
More...
The provision of appropriate feedback on assessed work to students in higher education haslong been a topic of concern, not least at The Open University, UK (OU). Although The OUhas a reputation for excellence in the assignment feedback provided to students (Gibbs, 2010), ongoing experience of OU academics is that students do not always appear to be respondingto, or even in some cases reading, the tutor feedback. As established by Hattie and Timperley(2007), an essential aspect of providing feedback is discovering how students have interpretedit. In the OU distance-learning context, students typically do not contact their tutors todiscuss the feedback on their assignments and frequently tutors are working somewhat in thedark with respect to how their feedback is received. This paper discusses some of thechallenges raised by this situation typically experienced within the OU distance-learningmodel and reports on an investigation of patterns of tutor feedback in the context of written assignments in a health and social care module.
More...
The present study is situated within the Ecuadorian social and solidarity economy. It is a diagnosis of the perception of how social factors influence the sustainability of the sector’s entrepreneurship. The perspective presented here is a result of the pragmatism of the civil service of the National Institute of Social and Solidarity Economy and may be taken as a theoretical basis for the design and implementation of comprehensive institutional interventions at the national level. Based on the findings of this study, there is a need to modify the current paradigm of action in the implementation of programs and projects, and to re-assess the reality in which the sector operates at ground level, and the impact of social factors that are part of this ecosystem. A reflection on the successful components, limitations and operational considerations gives insight into the way forward for this sector, and provides guidance on establishing processes of participation, social equity, and economic and social inclusion. The outcome of the research is an innovative instrument that may be used to provide relevant information and references as well as orientation for further research into socially sustainable good practice.
More...
In Brazil, and in many other countries, the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has been an innovative alternative for job and income generation, and a solution to cope with social and labor inclusion, in the last two decades. It can also be considered a new, more humane and inclusive model of development. This fact contributes to improving the quality of life, both for people and their communities, especially those with social and economic disadvantages. This conclusion led the United Nations to recognize the SSE as one of the auxiliary contributions to fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is because the SDGs integrate and merge the three dimensions of sustainable territorial development: economic, social and environmental. However, at present, we need conclusive quantitative and qualitative studies and methodologies to be able to “quantify” the effective contributions of the SSE to the SDGs. Thus, this article aims to use a real and innovative experience of municipal SSE, carried out in an area of high socioeconomic vulnerability (Monte Alegre Land Reform Settlement), in the Brazilian municipality of Araraquara (SP), to explain its effective contributions to achieving certain SDGs. With this study, which is still being carried out, we also intend to propose a set of indicators for SDGs 1, 2, 5, 11 and 12, which can be applied in the future, as well as to other SSE experiments.
More...
The need to integrate an equality and diversity perspective into research and education programmes goes beyond social sciences and humanities and also applies to technical sciences in engineering education. How are Polish technical universities dealing with this need? Is there space for making students aware of the importance of social competences? Let us try to answer questions about the place of equality and diversity and the missions of universities, scientific research, educational programmes and social and educational projects carried out at polytechnics, referring to global good practice in this area.
More...
The article contains an analysis of the nature of the parliamentary debate concerning equal rights of men and women – including protection of children’s rights – that took place at the Polish Legislative Sejm in the period from 1947 to 1952. The discussion offered here applies themethod of critical analysis of the content of available source material as well as the biographical method seeking to answer the questions who were the female MPs fighting for women’s rights in the period of Stalinism and whether their activity proved their agency. The source basis is transcripts of Sejm sittings, the press and literary memoirs. Female MPs such as M. Jaszczukowa, E. Pragierowa, I. Sztachelska, S. Garncarczyk and Z. Tomczyk were seeking to amend legislation so as to ensure the practical implementation of the gender equality principle. That was also a flagship slogan of the new communist people’s authorities at the start of the period known in historiography as Poland’s Stalinisation. Standards and regulations were debated that were to constitute a legal environment, and thus to make it possible for women to be active in various fields on an equal footing with men. The discord between postulates justified by ideology and cultural norms did not stop legislative amendments. The female MPs initiating that change could have felt the sense of agency and their actions certainly contributed to other changes towards gender equality in Poland of that time.
More...