E-Learning and Digital Media |
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Volume 5 Number 1 2008 |
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Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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Editors’ Note, page 1
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Editors’ Note |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.1 |
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E-Learning enters its fifth year with a characteristically diverse issue reflecting the journal’s interest in tapping the discursive richness and variety that characterizes e-learning in theory and in practice. Educational discourse generally ranges over conceptual and theoretical approaches and perspectives that are more or less skills-based, technology- or tools-oriented, practice-based, cognitivist, sociocultural, and so on, respectively. E-learning can be understood and approached with wider and narrower lenses. Thematic interests can range over developing or evaluating matters of practical ‘how to’, of evaluation, of model development, and the like, across formal, semi-formal and non-formal settings, whether ‘totally e’ or ‘partly e’ in nature. Rather than adopting a particular party line, E-Learning aims to champion this diversity and encourage conversations within and across positions and viewpoints The articles here address issues pertaining to gaming, student responses to online discussion lists, the evaluation of texts produced on screen, student roles and emotions in an online course, the impact of online course graduates in their work environment, quality in e-learning in higher education, identifying the ‘shortest path’ in virtual learning environments, agile software development, and digital narratives and identity semiotics. The journal’s Reviews section publishes full-length book and games reviews as well as running a regular e-Review Links column. Just as we solicit articles for publication, so we solicit reviews for publication. The journal has adopted two options. In one, we send books out for review to people interested in reviewing them. With this issue we begin a short column of ‘books available for review’ on a first come, first served basis. The second option invites reviews of books from anyone who has read a book they would like to review for publication. As always, we invite publishers to send us books for review. Equally, we invite readers to submit their proactive reviewing work for consideration. We thank our past and continuing authors for their contributions, and hope you will continue to see the journal as an attractive venue for your work. We also encourage new authors to send us work for consideration. The continuing growth in submissions rates has been very heartening, but there is still scope for growth. E-Learning seeks to balance scholarly academic criteria and virtues with responsiveness to user needs and interests. For this reason, we keep communications channels open and welcome suggestions for new features, occasional features, and ideas for enhancement generally. Above all, if you have an idea for a guest issue, or an extraordinary issue, or if you have a conference or symposium you think would be appropriate for E-Learning, please contact us. Because electronic publishing is that quality does not have to be sacrificed at the altar of economic cost. If the quality is there, we will publish it, running to extraordinary issues as and when required. Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel, for the Editorial Team |
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The Higher Education of Gaming |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.2 |
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New models of schooling are necessary as educational institutions attempt to transition into the digital age. This article is an ethnography of Apolyton University, an informal online university of gamers created to enhance pleasure from the game experience, teach the game, and improve upon the game’s standard rule set. It identifies the life trajectory of the community from formation to completion, and identifies key participant structures that scaffold learning. The article argues that participation results in a trajectory of experience whereby players enter as players but leave as designers, as evidenced by gameplay practices, as well as several participants being hired by game companies as a result of their participation. The authors argue that this sort of participatory ethos is central to learning systems in a digital age. |
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Hitting Reply: a qualitative study to understand student decisions to respond to online discussion postings |
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DIANE D. CHAPMAN, JULIA STORBERG-WALKER & SOPHIA J. STONE North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.29 |
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Providing tools for dialogue exchange does not ensure that students will respond to team mate postings or that online groups will grow in cohesiveness. Students decide whether or not to reply, and it is increasingly important to understand how students make these decisions due to the increase in distance education, millenials, and asynchronous teamwork in the workplace. This exploratory qualitative study was based on an interpretivist philosophy to understand how students reply to discussion postings. Students from two Master’s-level research classes were asked why they chose to respond to certain discussion postings and why they chose not to reply to certain postings. The reasons why students responded to postings were clustered into four themes: group process criteria, leadership criteria, social criteria, and judgment criteria. The reasons why students did not respond fell into the criteria of applicability, judgment, leadership, and social criteria. Implications for e-learning instructors and practitioners are discussed in terms of promoting social presence and facilitating collaborative group work. |
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Judging Text Presented on Screen: implications for validity |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.40 |
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Technological innovation undoubtedly offers many potential benefits for education and the assessment of learning, which have been acknowledged elsewhere. One area that is relatively under-researched relates to the practice of how assessors interact with longer texts that are presented on screen. This is an important area of study because there might be moves to scan or digitally capture longer texts, such as essays or portfolios that contain long textual chunks, and to deliver them online to assessors. This use of technology affords a number of benefits, including the opportunity to transfer data speedily. It also allows a number of assessors to view the same evidence simultaneously, enabling the timely checking of assessor reliability during the assessment process. This article explores the theoretical and limited empirical literature to discuss the potential impact that technology might have on assessors’ judgments of texts presented on screen. The review cites literature from across a variety of educational settings where it is increasingly becoming common practice to capture and assess learners’ work through digital methods. |
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Emotions and Student Roles in an Online Course |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.51 |
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A study examining an online graduate-level course for evidence of distributed emotion yielded many findings, including emotion being socially distributed. In particular, it was found that many students played distinct and constant emotional roles which impacted all class members. These roles fall into the following categories: cognitive task-based, perspective-based, emotion-based, or a combination. The implications of this finding include the effect that distributed emotion has on collaborative online work groups and the lessening of the emotional load often felt by online instructors as distributed emotion is taken into account. |
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Impact of Graduates from an Online Program in their Work Environment |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.64 |
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Online distance education programs are populated by adult learners who try to continue or complete their education without having to leave their jobs or places of residence. Their work environment becomes not just their working place, but also the lab where they apply new knowledge. The general expectation is that after graduation they will make an impact in their work environment through their job and through interacting with peers and supervisors. This study explored the influence that K-12 teachers had in their work environment as they pursued and graduated from an online Master’s program in Education. The study shows the impact that the participants had and how they became agents of change in their immediate workplace. |
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Conceptualising Quality E-learning in Higher Education |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.75 |
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Both academic and non-academic institutions, such as businesses, have increasingly been interested in the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support learning, otherwise termed e-learning. This interest has been fuelled by the new developments in ICT, such as multimedia and the Internet with its World Wide Web. Other incentives have been the associated (expected) reduction of the cost of education and the easier expansion of education to the increasing market that cannot be reached by traditional delivery. Especially with higher education, the issue of quality is raised, leading to both anecdotal and empirical evidence of ways to maintain quality while deriving the benefits of e-learning. This article discusses the issue of quality in higher education and examines how it can be maintained in online learning. Key current research is used to develop a conceptual framework of nine factors, which include content, delivery, technical provision (referred to as tangibles) and globalisation. Areas for further studies (including primary study to validate the framework) are highlighted. |
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A Dynamic Programming Approach to Identifying the Shortest Path in Virtual Learning Environments |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.89 |
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E-learning has been widely adopted as a promising solution by many organizations to offer learning-on-demand opportunities to individual employees (learners) in order to reduce training time and cost. While successful information systems models have received much attention among researchers, little research has been conducted to assess the success and/or effectiveness of e-learning systems in an organizational context. The development of information technologies has contributed to the growth in online training as an important educational method. The online training environment enables learners to undertake customized training at any time and in any place. Moreover, information technology allows both the trainers and learners to be decoupled in terms of time, place, and space. In this article, dynamic programming is applied to find the shortest path in the learning environment for users and an analytical hierarchy process approach is used to turn the qualitative parameters into quantitative ones. |
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Agile Software Development |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.97 |
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Many software development firms are now adopting the agile software development method. This method involves the customer at every level of software development, thus reducing the impact of change in the requirement at a later stage. In this article, the principles of the agile method for software development are explored and there is a focus on its effectiveness in the industry today. The article also describes the two agile development methods used today in the information technology industry – Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum. The major differences between the two methods are examined. This article is based on a recent study and on feedback from developers in the information technology industry. |
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Narratives, Virtual Environments and Identity Semiotics: an exploration of pre-service teachers’ cognitions |
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doi:10.2304/elea.2008.5.1.103 |
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The current study explored text-based and animated narrative vignette (ANV) social simulations to specifically examine pre-service teachers’ social cognitions and personal identities. The personal and social identity and narratives of a sample of eight randomly selected elementary pre-service teachers were examined in depth out of 44 pre-service teachers. Content analyses revealed that ANV social simulations provide a psycho-educational outlet to engage in reflective cognitive processes that can engage pre-service teachers in expressions of joy and healing related to positive and traumatic events from their childhood school-related experiences. This article discusses how ANVs can provide a way of learning about personal and social identity through a critical examination of self using ANV social simulations as reflections of past school experiences. |
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