E-Learning and Digital Media
ISSN 2042-7530

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

How Compatible are Communities of Inquiry and the Internet? Some Concerns about the Community of Inquiry Approach to E-learning

JENNIFER BLEAZBY Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.1

There is an extensive body of literature which argues that the Internet supports student-centred learning, collaboration, community, higher-order thinking and the construction of meaning and knowledge. As such, many e-learning advocates have turned to the Community of Inquiry as an ideal pedagogy because it too shares these educational ideals. However, I argue that the Internet may actually conflict with many aspects of the Community of Inquiry, as described by Dewey and Lipman. In particular, the Internet can negate many of the attributes and skills it is assumed to promote, such as higher-order thinking, the construction of meaning and community. E-learning needs to respond to these potential problems in order to develop pedagogies and curricula that can counter them. The author suggests that Philosophy for Children may provide the basis for such a pedagogy and curriculum.

Digital Leisure-Time Activities, Cognition, Learning Behaviour and Information Literacy: what are our children learning?

MICK GRIMLEY Faculty of Higher Education, University of Swinburne, Melbourne, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.13

Recent developments in digital technology have resulted in the unprecedented uptake of digital technology engagement as a leisure-time pursuit across the age span. This has resulted in the speculation that such use of digital technology is responsible for changes in cognition and learning behaviour. This study investigated two groups of school-aged learners (10‑12 years) differentiated by their digital immersions level (n = 48), defined by their scores on a leisure-time digital immersion questionnaire. The study’s general aim was to explore cognitive and educational differences between the two groups. Each group completed tests of attention and reasoning (verbal and non-verbal) and took part in two educational tasks where their learning behaviours were observed. Findings indicated that high digital leisure-time immersion is predictive of attentional inconsistency and that high digital consumption behaviour is predictive of low literacy levels. Further, low digital immersion females and high immersion males perform poorly for an Internet research task. However, all students were poor with regard to digital information literacy skills. The results give rise to two recommendations for parents and educators of our millennial children.

Stitching Together a Teacher’s Body of Knowledge: Frankie N. Stein’s ePortfolio

TIMOTHY HOPPER, KATHY SANFORD & SARAH BONSOR-KURKI Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.29

In this article the authors report on research into how an ePortfolio (eP) process can address the critique that teacher education programs offer fragmented course experiences and too often focus on narrow instrumentalist approaches emphasising the ‘how to’ and the ‘what works’ – implying that learning how to teach is about stitching together separate pieces of knowledge transmitted in an array of teacher education courses. In contrast, the authors believe that an eP process, systematically developed within a teacher education program, can create a complex and self-renewing system that grows from both individual and programmatic assessment of student learning. Using the eP entries of 45 elementary pre-service teachers and interviews with eight graduating pre-service teachers, they have crafted five ethnographic fictions. These narratives, drawing on themes generated in the data analysis, offer an insight into the lived experience of being a pre-service teacher in a teacher education program that uses an eP practice. Using a complexity theoretical lens the authors show how the eP process creates the conditions that enables pre-service teachers to communicate reflective thinking about teaching as they develop an understanding of learning and learners in emergent ways. The authors show how the eP process enables pre-service teachers to form a personal and collective sense of their forming teacher identity from course and practical experiences that can be integrated into an inter-connected sense of becoming a teacher.

University Students and Ethics of Computer Technology Usage: human resource development

WALEED IYADAT The Hashemite University, Jordan
YOUSEF IYADAT Yarmouk University, Jordan
RATEB ASHOUR Yarmouk University, Jordan
SAMER KHASAWNEH The Hashemite University, Jordan

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.43

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the level of students’ awareness about computer technology ethics at the Hashemite University in Jordan. A total of 180 university students participated in the study by completing the questionnaire designed by the researchers, named the Computer Technology Ethics Questionnaire (CTEQ). Results indicated that university students showed a medium level of awareness about computer technology ethics. Additionally, results indicated that there were no significant differences in participants’ level of awareness based on the demographics of gender and academic level. Ethical violations included hacking into a computer system for illegal purposes; taking on a different personal identity on the Internet; illegal use and distribution of copyrighted materials; invasion of privacy; hate speech; and plagiarism. The study ends by suggesting a number of practical and theoretical recommendations for a number of stakeholders.

Marking Extended Essays on Screen: exploring the link between marking processes and comprehension

MARTIN JOHNSON, REBECCA HOPKIN & HANNAH SHIELL Cambridge Assessment, United Kingdom

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.50

Technological developments are impacting upon UK assessment practices in many ways. For qualification awarding bodies, a key example of such impact is the ongoing shift towards examiners marking digitally scanned copies of examination scripts on screen rather than the original paper documents. This digitisation process has obvious benefits, affording flexible information management and distribution. Digitisation can also lead readers to interact differently with texts, with readers’ physical engagement with digital texts differing from traditional paper-based texts. More specifically, it appears that reader navigation and annotation behaviours are particularly influenced by a digital mode shift. A consequence of this is that it is possible that the mental workload involved in reading on screen is greater than when reading on paper. Moreover, it is theorised that this additional load can have an adverse affect on reader comprehension building. These findings prompt questions about whether the mode of marking might unduly influence marking outcomes when assessors read longer essay responses in a digital environment. In light of this concern, this article explores how marking mode influences examiner essay marking behaviours, which in turn might influence their comprehension building and their marking outcomes. This study gathers data from 12 experienced examiners working within a large UK-based awarding body to investigate how mode influences their navigation and annotation behaviours when marking extended essays on paper and on screen. These comparative data are then used to explore a model which suggests that manual marking behaviours, such as navigation and annotation, can influence examiners’ comprehension whilst marking. The implications for future developments in digital essay-marking software are then discussed.

Online Advertising: examining the content and messages within websites targeted at children

LISA KERVIN Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Australia
SANDRA C. JONES Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, University of Wollongong, Australia
JESSICA MANTEI Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.69

It is recognised that from a young age children spend considerable portions of their leisure time on the Internet. In Australia a number of child-targeted magazines have associated websites, which have high and ever-increasing readership. We do not yet know the impact of this medium upon children. Overt advertising is evident on webpages, but so too are hidden advertisements in the written text, images and games. This material usually does not comply with existing broadcasting codes of practice for mainstream advertising. This article examines the instances of overt and covert advertisements for food within three websites monitored over a 12-month period. Across this time the authors found 13 examples of overt and 39 examples of covert food advertising. In this article they focus on three example advertisements as they analyse them in response to the following research questions: What examples of overt and covert advertising are evident within websites attached to children’s magazines? What messages are presented? The authors discuss the implications this advertising presents for media literacy and the critical reading strategies required by young people as they navigate their way through and make meaning from these digital texts.

The Influence of Computer-Mediated Communication Systems on Community

AMANDA J. ROCKINSON-SZAPKIW Liberty University, Lynchburg, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.83

As higher education institutions enter the intense competition of the rapidly growing global marketplace of online education, the leaders within these institutions are challenged to identify factors critical for developing and for maintaining effective online courses. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems are considered critical to successful online courses. Using the Community of Inquiry framework, this study examined the use of CMC systems. Results suggested no significant difference in social presence, cognitive presence or teaching presence between the online students who used only asynchronous CMC systems and those who used a combination of both asynchronous and synchronous CMC systems; however, students’ comments suggest that the use of a combination of synchronous and asynchronous CMC systems may increase their sense of community in the online environment.

The National Educational Technology Plan: continuing the dialogue

RAYMOND ROSE & LEONARD WAKS

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.96

The members of the working group on National Educational Technology Policy continue to base their formulations around entrenched conceptions of education, retaining the language of teachers, students, curriculum standards, specified objectives and the like. Several of those participating in the panel examining the policy report in an earlier issue (Volume 8 Number 2 2011) of E-Learning and Digital Media worried that these conceptions hamper imagination about new educational possibilities already bubbling up around the edges of conventional educational practice. The working group authors, in their rejoinder, have defended choosing and building on the older framework as a more practicable avenue for rapid change. Here Raymond Rose and Leonard Waks respond by (a) teasing out deep conflicts about this choice within the working group report, and (b) demonstrating the heavy costs of sticking with what Rose and Waks see as an outmoded approach to learning and education in the age of the Internet.

Synergy, Supervision and Self-reliance: perceptions of the role of the tutor in a postgraduate online learning programme

CATHY SHERRATT Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, United Kingdom

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.100

This article reports research into online learning in a part-time postgraduate programme in clinical education, which is delivered by means of supported online learning. The aim of this study is to obtain insights into the perceptions and experiences of tutors and students regarding the role of the tutor within the context of the online learning environment, and to identify the influence of the tutor on the development of true dialogue in online discussion. A simple model is proposed, which classifies students’ expectations of tutor intervention and support into four broad categories, represented graphically as quadrants of a square diagram. This offers a way of differentiating the highly divergent needs and expectations of students within the e-learning context, with regard to tutor input and support. The ever-present challenge for tutors is how to intervene in order to achieve optimum engagement by all participants. The emerging implications of this differential model and possible lessons for practice are discussed.

Constructing Narrative Ecologies as a Site for Teachers’ Professional Learning with New Technologies and Media in Primary Education

KEITH TURVEY School of Education, University of Brighton, United Kingdom

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2012.9.1.113

This article argues that to understand how new technologies and media can become co-agents in the process of pedagogical change, we first need to understand teachers’ complex relationship with new technologies and media in both their personal and their professional lives. A conceptual framework is delineated for constructing a complex narrative ecology around teachers’ professional and personal relationship with new technologies and media. The narrative ecology model, it is proposed, can be used to story the otherwise isolated but constituent aspects of teachers’ experiences of technology. It is an approach predicated on a view of professional learning as a narrative process. The model is applied and evaluated in a fine-grained narrative case study of one student teacher’s approach to the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) in an intervention within a primary school in the United Kingdom. The findings suggest that using the narrative ecology model to story teachers’ personal and professional experiences with technology brings meaning and new insights to teachers’ nuanced relationships with technology, creating a site for further professional development and learning.

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