This paper aims to assess the relevance and usefulness of the SAPO Campus recommender system, through the analysis of students' and teachers' opinions. Recommender systems, assuming a "technology-driven" approach, have been designed with the primary goal of predicting user interests based on the implicit analysis of their…

Two studies tested the hypothesis that use of learning technologies among undergraduate psychology students was associated with higher Internet self-efficacy (ISE). In Study 1, the ISE scores of 86 students were found not to be associated with either attitudes towards, or measured use of, blogs and wikis as part of an IT skills course. ISE was…

Online communication is increasingly used in education, but it is not without problems. One significant difficulty is a lack of social presence. Social presence relates to the need for users of technology-based communication to perceive each other as real people. Low social presence can be a particular issue in text-based, asynchronous systems…

We introduced voluntary wiki-based exercises to a long-running cognitive psychology course, part of the core curriculum for an undergraduate degree in psychology. Over 2 yearly cohorts, students who used the wiki more also scored higher on the final written exam. Using regression analysis, it is possible to account for students' tendency to…

As universities invest in the development of e-learning resources, e-learning sustainability has come under consideration. This has largely focused on the challenges and facilitators of organisational and technological sustainability and scalability, and professional development. Little research has examined the experience of a teacher dealing…

This paper explores how Sharpe and Beetham's Digital Literacies Framework which was derived to model students' digital literacies, can be applied to lecturers' digital literacy practices. Data from a small-scale phenomenological study of higher education lecturers who used Web 2.0 in their teaching and learning practices are used to…

This paper explores the experiences of two doctoral students who embraced Web 2.0 tools in their digital scholarship practices. The paper gives an insider perspective of the challenges and potential of working with online tools, such as blogs, and participating in online communities, such as Twitter's #phdchat. We explore by drawing on our…

Teaching and assessment in higher education institutions are increasingly supported by digital tools and services. Students, however, perceive and value the importance of such e-learning offerings in very diverse ways. The goal of this article is to examine which predictors significantly influence students' perceptions of the value of digital…

This article reports on an action-research project designed to investigate the effect of a technological intervention on the complex interactions between student engagement, participation, attendance and preparation in a large lecture delivered as part of a compulsory first-year law course, a discipline which has not been the focus of any previous…

The collection of electronic course templates suggested in this article results from collaborative investigation between instructional support staff and academic staff users of the virtual learning environment (VLE) at two institutions, one in the United Kingdom and the other in the United States. The particular VLE in use at both institutions was…

This study set out to explore the use of the Internet in peer-to-peer learning environments within vocational education and training and to investigate whether this approach could replace traditional teaching and learning. A mixed methods design, including classroom observations, design experiments, interviews and questionnaires was adopted.…

Moving innovation in teaching and learning beyond isolated short-term projects is one of the holy grails of educational technology research, which is littered with the debris of a constant stream of comparative studies demonstrating no significant difference between innovative technologies and traditional pedagogical approaches. Meanwhile, the…

This paper reports on an observation of 70 university students' use of their personal social network site (SNS), Facebook, over a 22-week university study period. The study sought to determine the extent that university students use their personal SNSs to support learning by exploring frequencies of academic-related content and topics being…

This study set out to explore Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions on the implementation of online EFL instruction. A mixed-methods design, including semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, was employed for the specific purposes of this study. A total of 242 EFL teachers participated in the questionnaire…

Inquiry has been the framework for guiding reform-based science instruction. All too often, the role of technology is treated tacitly without contributions to this framework. This case study examines a collection of pre-service teachers enrolling in two educational technology courses and the role these experiences play in promoting inquiry…