A proposed blended mobile learning model for application in higher education

Today’s learners exhibits the attitude towards 24/7 access to their learning materials, and wanting these materials to be available in mobile format so it can be portable, and they will be able to access it on-the-go. This paper investigates the use of mobile learning technologies in higher education, and proposes a blended mobile learning model, which has the ability to serve the emerging learning process and delivery, and provide a well balanced learning environment that meets the current learners’ needs.

Diabetes education : art, science and evidence

Diabetes education is a process, the key to which is establishing a therapeutic relationship with the individual. The overall goal of diabetes education is to enhance the individual's health capability, including their ability to solve problems and apply the learning to self-care. Thus, diabetes education is an interactive process of teaching and learning where information is co-generated. This innovative new book explores the 'how' of diabetes education, rather than the 'what' and the 'why'. This thought stimulating textbook will helping health care practitioners to teach diabetes effectively from diagnosis and ensure people living with diabetes get the individualised support and information. It will enable practitioners and educators to examine and reflect on their practice when managing the diabetic patient. Bringing together all the thinking and experience on the diabetes journey in one text, this book will be essential reading for all practitioners and students in involved in diabetes care

Bridging formal and informal learning : a mobile learning attitude scale for higher education

Problem Statement: Over the past decade there has been an increasing global demand towards the integration of mobile technologies for teaching and learning. There has emerged a need for a survey instrument that can form a solid foundation for objective judgment of leaner perspectives as they begin using mobile applications for learning. The Mobile Learning Scale, a seven-item, Likert-type survey instrument, was developed by the authors in response to this need. Items were drawn from the key points developed for a 2011 paper by the authors on mobile learning prospects for informal learning in higher education [13], with many of these points initially developed during group discussions at the 2011 International Summit on ICT in Education hosted at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. Approach: In order to access the performance of the instrument, data were gathered from 81 undergraduate and graduate university students during August and September of 2011. Follow-up data were also gathered from 19 undergraduates in February, 2012. Results: Initial indications are the instrument has good reliability (Alpha = .80 - .85) as well as acceptable content, construct, and criterion-related validity when used with its intended audience. Conclusions/Recommendations: The authors conclude that the Mobile Learning Scale v1.0 performs well as a unidimensional scale that is capable of assessing pre-post gains resulting from a mobile learning intervention within a university course. The authors propose that this new instrument should be useful for helping guide educators in the process of meaningful integration of Mobile Applications (Apps) into teaching and learning, inside and outside the classroom.

Marking time: leading and managing the development of assessment in higher education

This book highlights the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Assessment as Learning Project, a three year process of assessment change in faculty. The UNSW Vice-Chancellor, Professor Frederick Hilmer charged faculties with a learning and teaching agenda to investigate ways to make quality assessment practices more effective and efficient for both staff and students. The examples provided in this edited collection demonstrate exemplary case studies and theoretical perspectives on learning, teaching, and assessment. This book presents leading research in assessment as learning with a focus on changing practices as well as discipline specific practices.

Transformative learning and international students negotiating higher education

This chapter aims to explore the theory of transformative learning as a possible explanation for the changes international students make in their journey to negotiate higher education. The chapter is derived from a doctoral study that involved international Chinese and Vietnamese students' adaptation to Australian higher education academic practices (Tran 2007). Within this chapter, transformative learning is viewed as a changing process in which international students construct reality through revisiting their existing assumptions and moving towards life-changing developments in their personal and professional perspectives (Cranton 2002; Mezirow 2000). It will be argued in this chapter that international students' process of negotiating higher education is a dynamic interplay between challenges and transformative power. Cross-border intercultural experiences are intimately linked to opportunities for self-transformation, and the challenging experiences that international students go through indeed foster the conditions for professional development and life-enhancing changes to take place. Given the current lack of theoretical and empirical research on the transformative power of international students, there is a critical need for more research on the transformative characteristics of international students and how best to capitalize on their potential. In this chapter, I draw on excerpts from two rounds of interviews with individual international students to illustrate the specific ways in which international students have the capacity to transform their own learning and develop life-enhancing skills. The discussion shows that they experience evolution in professional outlook, attitudes and personal qualities through the process of critical self-reflection and adaptation to disciplinary demands in higher education. The chapter also highlights the contradictions regarding the discursive practices within the current context of international education export.

The dynamic interplay of news media and bilingual education policy in Australia's Northern Territory 1988-2008

his study investigates the dynamic interplay between news media and the Northern Territory’s policy of bilingual education for indigenous children living in some remote communities. It provides evidence to support the argument that the media-related practices of a range of policy actors resulted in policy processes being shaped to a significant degree by ‘media logic’. The research is based on depth interviews and uses the spoken words of participants to gain access to the local experiences and perspectives of those invested in developing, influencing and communicating the bilingual education policy. Through the analysis of more than 20 interviews with journalists, public servants, academics, and politicians as well as indigenous and non-indigenous bilingual education advocates, I have identified a range of media-related practices that have enabled policy actors to penetrate the policy debate, define problems for policymaking and public discussion through the news media, and thereby exert particular forms of influence in the policy process. The study also provides a ‘southern theory’ analysis of the Yolngu public sphere and a Bourdesian understanding of the journalism sub-field of indigenous reporting in the Northern Territory. It shows that issues of physical and cultural remoteness and the need for journalists to develop cultural competence are the hallmarks of this reporting specialization. It also identifies marked differences in journalists’ relationships with government, academic and indigenous sources and how these differences play out in the way participants understand the production and reception of media texts. This research makes an innovative contribution to Australian Journalism Studies by demonstrating how indigenous epistemologies and knowledges offer fresh perspectives and insights about news media and indigeneity that can be brought into balance with northern theories to build what Connell (2007) has called ‘southern theory’. This dovetails with another key outcome, which is the development of an academic form of journalism that serves indigenous peoples’ self-determinist aims for scholarly research, based in indigenous perspectives and research methodologies.

A participatory action research project at the nexus of health promotion and sustainability in higher education

Like many educational institutions, Deakin University has embraced the challenge of developing curricula to ensure that graduates are environmentally literate and competent to address sustainability in professional practice. Despite an abundance of literature pertaining to the link between human health and environmental degradation, the development of health-related education for sustainability curriculum has been slow. Health promotion, an integral aspect of health professional training in Australia, is considered an area of practice well suited to the action of sustainability. This article highlights the findings of a pilot project that explored which graduate-level health promotion competencies and principles for practice can be transferred to action on sustainability. Methodologically, this study offers a participatory action research process enhanced with case study design principles. Findings from the four case studies highlight that health promotion competencies are compatible with action on sustainability. The article also illuminates the themes in the literature about the value of mutually reinforcing pedagogies associated with education for sustainability and work-integrated learning. The article contributes to discussion in an emerging area of health curriculum, namely, health-related education for sustainability. It posits that health promotion is an area of the health curriculum that can support the development of competencies at the nexus between health and sustainability.

Pathways to university : enabling factors in construction management education in Australia

Past Australian and international research has shown that many students find transition and navigating pathways from vocational education to university difficult. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the success of these pathways in construction management education. Students enrolled in undergraduate degree courses responded to a questionnaire on the nature of their experiences in vocational education and how this impacted on their decision to articulate to university. The survey covered a sample of three universities across Australia. The results showed that students generally had positive experiences, but that some pathways had better outcomes than others. Utilising an existing outreach-developed matrix the research identified three factors that were good measures of the success of pathways models. The paper concludes by suggesting that universities need a greater awareness of the impact of transition issues for their pathways students. This research is significant in that it considers pathways as an organised and systematic process, which is capable of being defined and measured.

Using appreciative inquiry to frame the appraisal of an Australian initial teacher education program

This paper reports on a study that investigated the process and outcomes of using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) in an Australian initial teacher education (ITE) program review. The aim of the study, which drew on a sample of teaching staff involved in this Master of Teaching program, was to gain an understanding of the extent to which the application of the AI framework can be used effectively in the review of ITE programs. AI promotes collegial reflective practice and the generation of positive resolutions and thus aligned with the purposes of the review that were to foster collaboration, strengthen staff morale and, subsequently, build a stronger program for students. This paper provides a perceptual account of the AI review process as reported by the facilitators and a sample of review participants, and contributes to international literature in the areas of ITE program appraisal, organisational reform and Appreciative Inquiry.

Use and perceptions of worked example videos for first-year students studying mathematics in a primary education degree

Worked example videos have great potential to be useful for students when learning mathematics as they can work through the questions at their own pace, pausing as needed, but still learn from the way the demonstrator thinks and solves problems. We created worked example videos each week for a mathematics subject taught in the first year of a primary education degree and investigated student perceptions and their usage patterns. An additional aspect of this undertaking was the inclusion of subtitles to make the videos accessible to hearing impaired and ESL students. This report will reflect on the process of creating these videos, as well as some initial findings on their success.

External policy influence and higher education reform in Ethiopia : understanding symbolic power of the World Bank

Increasingly national policy processes are intersected with and affected by global policy actors and ideas. In aid-recipient countries such as Ethiopia, donors use financial and non-financial means to influence national policy decisions and directions. This paper is about the non-financial influence of the World Bank (WB) in the Ethiopian higher education policy reform. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power as a ‘thinking tool’, the paper aims to shed light on forms of symbolic capital that the Bank uses to generate a ‘misrecognisable’ form of power that regulates the HE policy process in Ethiopia. The findings show that the WB transforms its symbolic capital of recognition and legitimacy to establish a ‘shared misrecognition’ and thereby make its policy prescriptions implicit and hence acceptable to local policy agents. The Bank uses knowledge-based regulatory instruments to induce compliance to its neoliberal policy prescriptions. The paper therefore underscores the value of symbol power as an analytical framework to understand elusive but critical role of donors in policy processes of aid recipient countries.

Creativity and education :teaching the unfamiliar

The development of capacities of creativity has long been important in creative arts education (Morgan, 2012) and is increasingly becoming important to other fields in higher education (McWilliam and Haukka, 2008, Csikszentmihalyi, 2006, Edward, McGoldrick & Oliver, 2006). To develop such capabilities at least two factors need to be addressed: defining 'creativity' and thinking about how to teach it. This paper has two aims; firstly to consider the idea that creativity is a process (Morgan, 2012) of changing habits (Koestler, 1964, McWilliam and Sandra Haukka, 2008) that is inherently traumatic (Peirce, 1940) because it involves taking risks with habits which have previously proven useful and comforting. The centrality of trauma and risk raises concerns if creativity is to become a standard graduate attribute; concerns for students asked to take risk and the concern that the university is traditionally adverse to risk-taking. Secondly, a technique for teaching how to be creative derived from Russian Formalism is considered. Ostranenie, or making strange might be deployed with the aim of teaching students a technique for habit breaking

‘Knowledge aid’ as instrument of regulation: World Bank’s non-lending higher education support for Ethiopia

In the context of low-income countries, the role of donors in public policymaking is of great importance. Donors use a combination of lending and non-lending instruments as pathways of influence to shape policy directions in aid-recipient countries. This paper reports some findings from a doctoral study on the role of the World Bank in the recent higher education (HE) policy reform process in Ethiopia. It focuses on the nature and impact of non-lending assistance by the Bank to the Ethiopian HE subsystem. Based on an interpretive policy analysis of sector reviews and advisory activities of the Bank, and selected national HE policy documents, the following findings are highlighted. First, as a ‘knowledge institution’, the World Bank produces, systematises and disseminates knowledge through policy advice, policy reports, analytical sector reviews, and thematic conferences and workshops. Second, knowledge aid from the Bank not only has a profound discursive effect on shaping Ethiopian HE policy reform priorities in accordance with its neoliberal educational agenda but also undermines the knowledge production capacity of the nation. The paper also argues that, for an effective education policy support, the Bank needs to shift its modality of engagement from knowledge aid to research capacity building.