There are ample studies that demonstrate how digital technologies can be used effectively to facilitate teaching and learning in the 21st century. However, the insights gained from these studies often do not result in the uptake of technologies in educational practice (Voogt & Knezek, 2008). It is increasingly agreed upon that the implementation of digital technologies in education needs a syst...

Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER repositories have a hard time in reaching an active user-base. The opportunities of experience exchange and simple feedback mechanisms of social software have been realized for improving the situation and many are basing or transforming their OER offerings towards socially powered environments. Research o...

Recent research has demonstrated a significant disadvantage for rural teachers in a variety of aspects of ICT use. This context provides a backdrop for two professional learning programs designed to support ICT-based pedagogies in teaching science in Victorian rural primary and secondary schools. In both programs the school-based workshops initiated a community of learners supported with online...

After speculation in literature about the nature of Personal Learning Environments, research in the design and development of PLEs is now in progress. This paper reports on the first phase of the authors’ research on PLE, the identification process of what potential users would consider important components, applications, and tools in a PLE. The methodology included surveying “super-users” on t...

INTRODUCTION This study determined the prevalence of substance abuse amongst rural secondary school learners in a selected province of South Africa. METHODOLOGY The study adopted a quantitative approach using a descriptive survey design. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire from a total of 338 randomly selected learners, age 14 to 18 years, from 10 secondary schools tha...

This study compared the effects of computer-mediated (CM) versus pen-and-paper (P&P) writing on written accuracy and feedback processing in tasks rewritten collaboratively following a pedagogical treatment two intact authentic classrooms. The involved 32 secondary education low-proficiency English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners descriptive texts receiving in-class training identificat...

The notion of optimality is often invoked informally in the literature on metacognitive control. We provide a precise formulation of the optimization problem and show that optimal time allocation strategies depend critically on certain characteristics of the learning environment, such as the extent of time pressure, and the nature of the uptake function. When the learning curve is concave, opti...

OBJECTIVES To explore stakeholders' perceptions of learners teaching (near-peer teaching) in general practice in order to inform training policy. DESIGN Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 general practice stakeholders. Interviews continued until data saturation was reached. Transcribed interviews underwent thematic analysis. SETTING Nine general practices in NSW, ...

International students learning English as a second language in Australia were studied to find how their perception of teachers’ level of commitment to teach them English affects their own motivation to study English. A questionnaire survey was administered on the learners at three different levels of proficiency to also identify the relationship between the levels of study and the learners’ pe...

Adjuncts are syntactic elements that are optional, transparent to selection, and often, though not always, repeatable. Classic examples are adjectives and adverbs. How do learners learn optionaility? How do they learn repeatability? I explore a variety of learners’ approaches to optionality and repeatability, including both human learners and learning algorithms. Mathematically, a learner is a ...