This issue of the international journal: Education and Information Technologies has a total of 30 articles coming from Finland, Macau, The Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Algeria, France, USA, Australia, India, Germany, Sultanate of Oman, Pakistan, Turkey, China, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Kuwait, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Japan and Vanuatu.

To begin is an article by Sini Kontkanen, Patrick Dillon, Teemu Valtonen, Lasse Eronen, Hannu Koskela and Pertti Väisänen from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Eastern Finland, titled: “Students’ experiences of learning with iPads in upper secondary school – a base for proto-TPACK”. This article examines Finnish students’ experiences of using personal iPads in their three years of upper secondary schooling, using data from a Finish school Finland where all new students were provided with iPads at the start of their studies. The value that iPads add to teaching and learning is difficult to quantify because of complex and often conflicting factors involved. Overall, the findings imply that teachers’ TPACK is generally resistant to change and students’ proto-TPACK is insufficiently developed to initiate change. An approach that systematically develops both students’ and teachers’ TPACK is advocated.

The next article: “Utilization of online educational resources in teaching: A moderated mediation perspective” has been contributed by Su Iong Kio (University of Saint Joseph, Macau) and Meng Chan Virgina Lau (Institute for Tourism Studies, Macau), China. Their study builds on a newly modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to substantiate the motivation and operation of teachers’ utilisation of online learning resources in which a ‘Comprehensiveness’ construct is proposed to reflect the breadth and depth of rich online knowledge. This new construct serves as the mediator between ‘Usefulness’ and ‘Behavioural Intention’ in the new TAM structure. In addition, the ‘Ease of Use’ factor in conventional TAM is proposed to moderate the mediation in the modified TAM.

“Understanding teachers’ routines to inform classroom technology design” is from Pengcheng An, Saskia Bakker and Berry Eggen from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. In their article they note that secondary school teachers have quite busy and complex routines in their classrooms but that present classroom technologies usually require their focused attention while being interacted with and this restricts their use in daily routines. They note that Peripheral Interaction is a human-computer interaction style that aims to enable interaction to take place both in the centre and periphery of users’ attention and naturally shift between the two, and that classroom technologies employing this style can reduce attentional resources required for teachers to interact with the technologies. Their paper discusses a qualitative study on everyday routines of seven Dutch secondary school teachers using context mapping methodology.

An article by Nicholas Zaranis and Evanthia Synodi from the University of Crete, Greece follows. “A comparative study on the effectiveness of the computer assisted method and the interactionist approach to teaching geometry shapes to young children” compares and evaluates the effectiveness of computer assisted teaching of geometry shapes with an interactionist approach to teaching geometry in kindergarten versus other more traditional teaching methods. Their research compares the improvement of the children’s geometrical competence using two teaching approaches, one employing an ICT oriented learning method specifically targeting Realistic Mathematics Education and the second based on the interactionist approach of teaching children in kindergarten.

“In search of attributes that support self-regulation in blended learning environments” points out that blended forms of learning have become increasingly popular and learning activities within these environments are supported by a large variety of online and face-to-face interventions, but that it remains unclear whether these blended environments are successful, and if they are, what makes them successful. The article describes research by Stijn Van Laer and Jan Elen from the Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology, Leuven, Belgium. The article raises questions about how blended learning relates to well-established learning theories and provides a basis for future research on self-regulation in blended learning environments.

The article that follows: “Personalized recommender system for e-Learning environment” is from Soulef Benhamdi (University of Badji Mokhtar, Algeria and University of 8 Mai 1945, Algeria), Abdesselam Babouri (University of 8 Mai 1945, Algeria) and Raja Chiky (ISEP, France). They note that traditional e-Learning environments are based on static contents, presuming that all learners are similar and so are thus not able to respond to each individual learner’s needs. Their described research aims to develop a new personalisation approach that provides to students the best learning materials according to their preferences, interests, background knowledge, and their memory capacity to store information.

Next, “Content and language integrated learning in OpenSimulator project. Results of a pilot implementation in Greece” by Emmanuel Fokides and Constantina Zampouli (University of the Aegean, Greece) presents the results of a pilot implementation of the Content and Language Integrated Learning in OpenSimulator Project-CLILiOP. Content and Language Integrated Learning together with constructivism provided the theoretical basis of the project described. Their research involved a project of ten weeks duration with a multi-user virtual environment using Opensimulator, which entailed a tour of the students’ avatars on a virtual island where they viewed and exchanged information in the English language regarding geographical terms and concepts.

“Health informatics program design and outcomes: Learning from an early offering at a mid-level university” is from Kevin R. Parker, Sankara Subramanian Srinivasan, Robert F. Houghton, Nima Kordzadeh, Karoly Bozan and Thomas Ottaway from Idaho State University, USA and Bill Davey from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. They point out that curriculum development is particularly challenging in computing-related disciplines as the computing industry changes more quickly than most. This detailed case study shows the forces related to a successful and an unsuccessful implementation of new Health Informatics degrees.

An article by Archana Singh from Amity University, India: “Mining of Social Media data of University students”, argues that youth power to speak their mind, recommendations and opinions about various issues on social media websites like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter cannot be ignored. This paper focuses on the extraction of knowledge, using data mining techniques, from data floated by the University students on social websites in various categories. The paper looks at ways to identify the frequent types of flow and exchange of data by University students.

Birgit Eickelmann (University of Paderborn, Germany) Julia Gerick (TU Dortmund University, Germany) and Christian Koop (University of Paderborn, Germany) then write on: “ICT use in mathematics lessons and the mathematics achievement of secondary school students by international comparison: Which role do school level factors play?” The research presented in the article makes use of an international comparison to identify supporting and hindering school level factors for the use of ICT in secondary school mathematics lessons. The relationship between ICT use and the performance of Grade 9 students in mathematics is examined and further integrated into a multi-level model including school level factors. The results show that characteristics at school level do play a major role in the integration of ICT into teaching and learning and turn out to be relevant across educational systems.

“Alice in Oman: A study on object-first approaches in computer science education” looks at how the success of university-level education depends on the quality of underlying school education and how any deficiency in this may be detrimental to a student’s career. The article was contributed by: Khizar Hayat (University of Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Pakistan), Naeem Ali Al-Shukaili (University of Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman) and Khalid Sultan (College of Applied Sciences, Ministry of Higher Education, Sultanate of Oman). They note that in the developing countries Computer Science school curricula are often stuffed with obsolete, unnecessary and dry content, and that this is exacerbated because of the lack of qualified school teachers and the separate media of instruction at school and university. Their paper focuses on Computer Science pedagogy in schools and examines the possibility of introducing new approaches like Alice which uses an Object-First approach like Scratch, GameMaker, Greenfoot and BlueJ.

Ümmühan Avcı Yücel from Baskent University, Turkey then offers: “Perceptions of pedagogical formation students about Web 2.0 tools and educational practices”. During the described course, the students created digital materials such as puzzles, concept maps, worksheets, presentations and posters by using software including Prezi, Glogster, and Webspiration and were introduced to numerous Web 2.0 tools for the purpose of the course. The study questioned the Web 2.0 tools students plan to use in their future professional life and why they plan to use them, their views about their use of Web 2.0 tools in the educational context and the changes and innovations that may be brought about by these technologies in the field of education.

What then follows is an article by Zhonggen Yu from Taihu University of Wuxi, China and Liheng Yu from Nanjing No.13 High School, China. “Correlations between learners’ initial EFL proficiency and variables of clicker-aided flipped EFL class” looks at correlations between initial clicker-aided flipped EFL class (CFEC) proficiency and other variables of the clicker-aided EFL flipped class. The authors note that although the flipped class has been hotly discussed, it still remains a mystery for most scholars. Their study found a significantly positive relationship between initial and final EFL proficiency, motivation levels and cultural awareness in CFEC, whereas there is a negative relationship between initial EFL proficiency and cognitive loads in CFEC.

“Exploring relationships among TPACK constructs and ICT achievement among trainee teachers” is from Myint Swe Khine and Nagla Ali from Emirates College for Advanced Education, United Arab Emirates and Ernest Afari from Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates. Their article argues that teaching in the classroom today can no longer sustain the interest of students and be effective if the process involves the traditional approach of teachers as sole provider of content information. They point out that the use of technology itself does not produce positive results in the quality of learning and students’ achievement and teachers must be competent in subject knowledge, pedagogical skills and technological know-how. Their paper examined recent studies on TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) in various countries and reports findings from a study conducted with student teachers in the UAE.

The next article: “Co-regulation and knowledge construction in an online synchronous problem based learning setting” is by Lila Lee (McGill University, Canada), Susanne P. Lajoie (McGill University, Canada), Eric G. Poitras (University of Utah, USA), Miriam Nkangu (University of Ottawa, Canada) and Tenzin Doleck (McGill University, Canada). It notes that as learning to monitor and regulate one’s learning in an academic setting is a task that all students must engage in but that learning in ‘group’ situations requires both self and co-regulation. This research examines a case study of a small group of medical student interactions during an on-line problem based learning activity where students learn to co-regulate their performance as they construct their understanding of how best to communicate bad news to patients.

Next, “It is time to MOOC and SPOC in the Gulf Region” by M. Mutawa from Kuwait University, Kuwait, looks at Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The article discusses how they started, their targeted audience and what services they provide, and demonstrates selected MOOC service providers that can claim to best suit the Arabian Gulf region. The paper summarises the best practices and gives recommendations for any Gulf region institution or individual for better implementation of MOOCs into their learning system.

A. Sai Sabitha, Deepti Mehrotra and Abhay Bansal, from Amity University, India have contributed the article that follows. “An ensemble approach in converging contents of LMS and KMS” notes that the challenges in e-Learning are collecting the learning content from various sources and managing them within e-learning practices. The authors suggest that data mining learning algorithms can be used and the contents can be joined on the basis of the Metadata of the objects. In their research, data mining ensemble techniques are used so that an appropriate learning content is delivered to the learner.

“Pre-schoolers explore interactive storybook apps: The effect on word recognition and story comprehension” comes from Marcy Zipke, Providence College, USA. The article describes two experiments that explored the effects of reading digital storybooks on tablet computers with pre-schoolers. Firstly, the students’ word recognition scores were found to increase significantly more when students explored a digital storybook and employed the read-aloud function than when they were read to from a comparable print book. In the second experiment the same students explored digital storybooks with more animation embedded in them. The importance of digital storybook design, as well as what elements to look for in an e-book to encourage literacy learning are discussed.

“Proposing a new pedagogy-based website design: A usability test with lifelong learners” is an article by Jintavee Khlaisang from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. The study described in the article aimed to create a new pedagogy-based website based on the analysis of the needs of website users who visited the Thailand Cyber University (TCU) project website. The study consisted of: examining learners’ needs and literature related to developing a lifelong learning framework, designing a site structure and an interface for a pedagogy-based website, conducting a usability test on the website with a sample of users, and modifying the website based on results of a website usability test.

Yannis Poulakakis (University of Crete), Kostas Vassilakis (Technological Educational Institute of Crete), Michail Kalogiannakis (University of Crete) and Spyros Panagiotakis (Technological Educational Institute of Crete), Greece next present: “Ontological modelling of educational resources: a proposed implementation for Greek schools”. Their article notes that in an eLearning context, searching for suitable educational material is still challenging, but that various digital repositories such as Learning Object Repositories, institutional repositories and recently Open Educational Resources, have been developed to accommodate collections of learning material that can be used for instructive and research purposes. The purpose of the work described was to demonstrate the process of semantically enhancing learning resources by developing a new ontology and a prototype system to accommodate them.

The article that follows: “Expectations and fulfilment of course engagement, gained skills, and non-academic usage of college students utilizing tablets in an undergraduate skills course” describes research undertaken by Stephanie A. Bluestein and Taehyun Kim, California State University, USA. The purpose of their mixed-methods study was to compare the expectations and fulfilment of undergraduate students enrolled in a skills class that utilised iPads in the classroom. They found that the tablet did not meet their expectations in terms of course engagement and benefits or skills they anticipated receiving from class activities and coursework, but that their non-academic use of the iPad, for both entertainment and social media purposes, was higher than they predicted.

Michael Phillips, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia next presents: “Processes of practice and identity shaping teachers’ TPACK enactment in a community of practice”. The article begins by stating that technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) has been used by hundreds of studies as a theoretical framework to explore teachers’ technology use in classroom settings, but that while these studies have contributed to understandings of the interplay between these different knowledge domains and the differences between pre and in-service teachers’ knowledge, little work has been done to examine the influence of teachers’ socially mediated workplace settings on TPACK enactment. His paper examines the impact of situated, social contextual factors on teachers’ knowledge development and enactment by reporting findings from an eight month case study involving ten teachers in an Australian secondary school.

“Obstacles for teachers to integrate technology with instruction” by Abdullah Alenezi, Northern Borders University, Saudi Arabia questions: what obstacles do teachers identify when integrating technology with instruction? This paper examines educational obstacles like time to prepare materials and lessons for quality technology-rich lessons, policies and security restrictions, access to resources and the level of comfort to use technology.

The next article looks at: “Digital badges – rewards for learning?” and is by Rebecca Shields and Ritesh Chugh from Central Queensland University, Australia. Their article points out that Digital Badges are becoming an appropriate, easy and efficient way for educators, community groups and other professional organisations to exhibit and reward participants for skills obtained in professional development or formal and informal learning. Their article evaluates the use of digital badges to engage and motivate learners.

The following article: “WEB based technical problem solving for enhancing writing skills of secondary vocational students” by Eleni Papantoniou and Thanasis Hadzilacos, Open University of Cyprus discusses some aspects of a pilot e-learning technical writing course addressed to 11th grade vocational high school students in Greece. The application of this alternative teaching intervention stemmed from the researcher-instructor’s reflections relating to the integration of a problem based e-pedagogy that aims not just to familiarise students with some technical writing text-types, but to trigger a positive way of thinking and writing and thus enhance students’ linguistic literacy. The study showed that a job-related language course through the application of motivating e-pedagogy can alter the vocational students’ language literacy in a positive direction.

The next paper addresses the role of gender in End-User Development environments and examines whether there are gender differences in performance and in correlations between performance and a set of behavioural attributes. “Gender-based behavioural analysis for end-user development and the ‘RULES’ attributes” is by Katerina Tzafilkou (University of Macedonia, Greece), Nicolaos Protogeros (University of Macedonia, Greece), Charalampos Karagiannidis (University of Thessaly, Greece) and Adamantios Koumpis (University of Passau, Germany). The article theoretically selects a subset of gender related behavioural attributes: Risk-Perception, Usefulness-Perception, Learning Willingness, Ease-of-Use-Perception and Self-Efficacy. It presents an example application and conducts a basic evaluation testing.

“EDRMS for academic records management: A design study in a Malaysian university” has been contributed by Shah Jahan Miah from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia and Ahmad Zam Hariro Samsudin from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. The article notes than higher education institutes such as universities suffer from a range of issues in managing their academic records and relevant digital contents and typically use specific software applications as an effective mechanism in records management. The purpose of their study was to describe the design of a locally-innovated Electronic Document and Records Management Systems (EDRMS) implementation for managing academic records in the context of a Malaysian University.

Technology has impacted positively on health-care delivery and medical personnel have had to embrace emerging technologies in order to provide safe, competent and quality health care. The reported study: “Self-efficacy and new technology adoption and use among trainee mid-wives in Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria” investigated self-efficacy for new technology adoption and use by trainee midwives at the school of midwifery, Ijebu-Ode. The study, by Anuoluwa Awodoyin, Niran Adetoro and Temitope Osisanwo from Tai Solarin University of Education, Nigeria, concludes that trainee midwives may not be capable of adequately providing technology based maternity and reproductive health services after training and recommends review of the midwifery curriculum, internet access, retraining of tutors and increased exposure to and awareness of emerging technologies.

Didin Wahyudin (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia), Shinobu Hasegawa (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Japan) and Apep Kamaludin (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia) next address: “Students’ viewpoint of computer game for training in Indonesian universities and high schools”. Their article describes a survey conducted in Indonesian universities and high schools to examine preferences and influences of computer games for training. The survey results show that most participants believed that games could be used for training of disaster first responders.

The final article in this issue: “Learning density in Vanuatu high school with computer simulation: Influence of different levels of guidance” is from Lemuel Moli, Alice Pedregosa Delserieys, Maria Antonietta Impedovo, Jeremy Castera all from Aix-Marseille Université, France and Vanuatu Institute of Teacher Education, Vanuatu. Their article presents a study of discovery learning of scientific concepts with the support of computer simulation, particularly focusing on the effect of the levels of guidance on students with a low degree of experience in informatics and educational technology. From the analyses it was found that the construction of knowledge from discovery learning activities occurs with or without guidance, however the amount of guidance received has an influence on the depth of conceptual understanding.

Arthur Tatnall

EAIT Editor-in-Chief