Lecturers in higher education often consider the incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice. Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid them in getting started with creating and deploying web-based materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning experience. Discussions among instructional…

Informational resources are essential for communities, rooting them in their own history, helping them learn and solve problems, giving them a voice in decisionmaking and so on. For digital inclusion and inclusion in the informational and democratic processes of society more generally it is essential that communities retain the skills, awareness…

Online resources for education offer opportunities for those with disabilities but also raise challenges on how to best adjust resources to accommodate accessibility. Automated reconfiguration could in principle remove the need for expensive and time-consuming discussions about adaptation. On the other hand, human-based systems provide much needed…

With the progress of Digital Inclusion, it becomes important to address marginalised groups that face specific barriers in being part of the information society. From 2009 to 2011 within the framework of the nation-wide Initiative "Internet erfahren", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Stiftung Digitale Chancen has accompanied…

The article adopts a narrative inquiry approach to foreground informal learning and exposes a collection of stories from tutors about how they adapted comfortably to the digital age.We were concerned that despite substantial evidence that bringing about changes in pedagogic practices can be difficult, there is a gap in convincing approaches to…

Attitudes are changing in education globally to promote the open sharing of educational courses and resources. The aim of this study was to explore staff awareness and attitudes towards "open educational resources" (OER) as a benchmark for monitoring future progress. Faculty staff (n = 6) were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews…

The term "flexible education" is now firmly entrenched within Australian higher education discourse, yet the term is a contested one imbued with a multiplicity of meanings. This paper describes a process designed to elucidate how the idea of flexible education can be translated into teaching models that are informed by the specific demands of…

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique timespace contexts of mobile learning. A…

Educational technology implementation often owes more to the technical proficiency of the teaching staff and/or the capacity of the institution than to a student outcome-centred design process. Creation of online resources takes considerable time and involves significant cost to both the institution, for devices and platforms, and to students for…

Podcasting is now being used frequently in the higher education sector. Although research has been conducted into the use of podcasting in teaching business, engineering, sciences and languages, little has been done on its use in arts learning. This paper reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of using podcasts to learn music and…

Educational commentators have offered many pedagogical rationales for using Web 2.0 to support learning in higher education, and academics are being encouraged to find ways for their students to use social web technologies. Questions arise as to the value of these activities compared to more conventional assignments, and whether implementing such…

Evidence shows that engaged students perform better academically than disinterested students. Measurement of engagement with education is difficult and imprecise, especially in large student cohorts. Traditional measurements such as summary statistics derived from assessment are crude secondary measures of engagement at best and do not provide…

In this paper, we examine students' reflections about the value of two photo-sharing activities that were implemented in undergraduate Biology and Chemistry subjects. Both activities aimed, broadly, to provide support for authentic and meaningful learning experiences in undergraduate science. Although the activities were similar--both required…

A dramatic, pedagogical shift has occurred in recent years in educational environments in higher education, supported largely by the use of ubiquitous technologies. Increasingly, emphasis is being placed on the design of new learning spaces, often referred to as "Next Generation Learning Spaces" (NGLS) and their impact on pedagogy. The traditional…

We present a case to reposition theory so that it plays a pivotal role in learning technology research and helps to build an ecology of learning. To support the case, we present a critique of current practice based on a review of articles published in two leading international journals from 2005 to 2010. Our study reveals that theory features only…