Although use of podcasts and vodcasts are increasingly becoming popular in higher education, their use is usually unidirectional and therefore replicates the transmission mode of traditional... Show More

Although use of podcasts and vodcasts are increasingly becoming popular in higher education, their use is usually unidirectional and therefore replicates the transmission mode of traditional face-to-face lectures. In this paper, the authors propose a tool, MOBILect, a mobile lecturing tool that enables users to comment on lecture vodcasts using mobile devices, and aggregated comments become an educational resource. The vodcasts are generated through Opencast Matterhorn and YouTube. The tool was evaluated at the University of Cape Town with students’ own devices. The paper reports on the architecture of the MOBILect, its framework for student-vodcast interaction, and evaluation results. The paper concludes that the MOBILect has potential for use as a supplement to the traditional face-to-face lectures especially in scenarios of large classes, or where the medium of instruction is not the students’ mother tongue.

This paper explores the impact of social media upon journalism education from two perspectives: both from the pedagogical changes Web 2.0 and mobile devices enable, and within the context of the... Show More

This paper explores the impact of social media upon journalism education from two perspectives: both from the pedagogical changes Web 2.0 and mobile devices enable, and within the context of the changes in journalism that social media use are driving. A participatory action research approach was adopted, beginning with the establishment of a lecturer community of practice focusing upon exploring pedagogical change enabled by mobile social media while allowing the project to develop within a series of reflective interventions within the course. These interventions included the use of Twitter, blogging, QR Codes, and Facebook as part of authentic scenarios throughout the course. Drawing on this experience, the paper presents an emergent framework for a response to social media within journalism education, illustrating the positive impact of integrating the use of mobile social media on student engagement, collaboration and contextualising theory within authentic learning environments.

In this paper, the special needs/requirements of disabled students and cost-benefits for applying blended learning in Personalized Educational Learning Environments (PELE) in Higher Education are... Show More

In this paper, the special needs/requirements of disabled students and cost-benefits for applying blended learning in Personalized Educational Learning Environments (PELE) in Higher Education are studied. The authors describe how blended learning can form an attractive and helpful framework for assisting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D-HH) students to learn and communicate. The described blended learning experiment integrates face-to-face, synchronous, and asynchronous e-learning, bilingual teaching (oral language and Sign Language) in the mainstream class, teaching in parallel classes, and personalized access to distributed databases of educational material. At the core of PELE, the authors use Multimedu, a web-based tailored made tool for disabled students. This experimental tool includes applications of a traditional Learning Management System (LMS), supporting a multilingual dictionary of terms, multimedia management and social networking. Finally, this paper describes the use of the blended e-learning model in “Database I” course, given at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece.

This study applies a comprehensive set of measures to document teaching practice and instructor responses when integrating new mobile technology devices in the classroom. The triangulated measures... Show More

This study applies a comprehensive set of measures to document teaching practice and instructor responses when integrating new mobile technology devices in the classroom. The triangulated measures include a rubric for observing teaching with mobile learning devices in higher education, an interview protocol for capturing faculty levels of mobile learning knowledge, and a survey of faculty understanding and implementation of the adopted four pillars of mobile learning. The pillars were chosen as foundations to guide why, what, where, and how mobile learning technology supports student learning. The authors offer suggestions for collecting data regarding large-scale mobile learning implementation over time with input from a range of stakeholders to capture how they characterize and disseminate pedagogies that are developed in the new learning environment.

This paper presents findings of a pilot study which used pedagogical agents to examine disclosure in educational settings. The study used responsive evaluation to explore how use of pedagogical... Show More

This paper presents findings of a pilot study which used pedagogical agents to examine disclosure in educational settings. The study used responsive evaluation to explore how use of pedagogical agents might affect students’ truthfulness and disclosure by asking them to respond to a lifestyle choices survey delivered by a web-based pedagogical agent. Findings indicate that emotional connection with pedagogical agents was intrinsic to the user’s sense of trust and therefore likely to affect levels of truthfulness and engagement. The implications of this study are that truthfulness, personalisation and emotional engagement are all vital components in using pedagogical agents to enhance online learning.