There is growing demand for online learning activities that offer flexibility for students to study anywhere, anytime, as online students fit study around work and family commitments. We designed a series of online activities and evaluated how, where, and with what devices students used the activities, as well as their levels of engagement and…

How should educators teach about one of the most complex and pressing issues of our times? This paper presents an empirically-grounded framework to help educators understand the opportunities and challenges of engaging youth around the topic of migration, including migration involving refugees. It stresses the importance of inviting youth to…

This proposal presents findings from the large-scale study "Literacy Teacher Educators: Their Backgrounds, Visions, and Practices" which includes 28 literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) from four countries. Five LTEs who use a constructivist approach are presented. Three aspects of their constructivism are discussed: knowledge is…

Efficacy of a teaching strategy technically refers to the ability of that strategy to produce a desired or intended learning outcomes. To date, there is little information on the efficacy of social media technologies in academia and it is likely to be some time before their effectiveness is proven. It is therefore legitimate to ask the question,…

This paper reports on a pilot study designed to develop writing proficiency in French via collaborative writing activities at intermediate level at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Twenty four students in the final year of French studies program took part in this innovative approach which integrates multimodal functionality of the…

Recent applications of technology to mathematics education have been designed with cognitive and constructivist theoretical perspectives in mind, viewing mathematical learning as the acquisition of knowledge through the construction of meanings and connections between concepts. With the advent of increasingly flexible communication technologies,…

This article contributes to the debate about e-learning as a form of adult education. It is based on the experiences of South African students, describes and analyses group interaction in an intercontinental Masters in Adult Education Programme which uses a computer electronic platform as the primary medium for learning and teaching. The article…

National professional standards for teachers in Australia (AITSL, 2011) expect teacher education graduates to demonstrate technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). Those standards have emerged concurrently with the development of a new Australian mathematics curriculum. Thus, the expectation is that graduates can demonstrate the…

This article examines the degrees of collaborative language learning that were supported in cyber face-to-face interaction. The concept of "cyber face-to-face" is used here to encapsulate the kind of environment in which a combination of real-time oral/aural, visual, and text-based interaction happens simultaneously via the various…

Using the example of an undergraduate unit of study that is taught both on-campus and externally, but uses Internet-based learning in both cases, we explore how social media might be used effectively in higher education. We place into question the assumption that such technologies necessarily engage students in constructivist learning; we argue…

Virtual learning is a popular teaching modality, and it has been reported in research that there is no significant difference in academic outcome as compared with face-to-face courses. Not all researchers agree with this assertion and some claim it is more difficult to teach math-oriented subjects online. Given that educational psychology theories…

This paper reports the results of the first phase of a mixed methods study investigating the attitudes of students enrolled in a distance education MBA program towards interacting more with other students online. It grapples with the issue of whether students enrolled in a successful distance education program grounded in instructivist and…

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce an enterprise-wide Web 2.0 learning support platform--SNAP, developed at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Pointing to the evolution of the social web, the paper discusses the potential for the development of e-learning platforms that employ constructivist, connectivist,…

The research interrogates the connections between information and communication technologies' (ICTs') use and change processes in Australian higher education. The empirical investigation focuses simultaneously on three domains of practice: the educational, the technological and the organizational, with a particular interest in their overlaps and…

Describes the use of computer-mediated communication to develop a cooperative learning community among students in a Web-based distance education unit for practicing science and mathematics educators in Australia and Pacific Rim countries. Discusses use of the social constructivist and constructionist conceptions of teaching and learning.…