Michael Henderson

What works and why? Student perceptions of ‘useful’ digital technology in university teaching and learning

Digital technologies are now an integral aspect of the university student experience. As such, academic research has understandably focused on the potential of various digital technologies to enable, extend and even ‘enhance’ student learning. This paper offers an alternate perspective on these issues by exploring students’ actual experiences of digital technology during their academic studies – highlighting the aspects of digital technology use that students themselves see as particularly helpful and/or useful. Drawing on a survey of 1658 undergraduate students, the paper identifies 11 distinct digital ‘benefits – ranging from flexibilities of time and place, ease of organizing and managing study tasks through to the ability to replay and revisit teaching materials, and learn in more visual forms. While these data confirm digital technologies as central to the ways in which students experience their studies, they also suggest that digital technologies are not ‘transforming’ the nature of university teaching and learning. As such, university educators perhaps need to temper enthusiasms for what might be achieved through technology-enabled learning and develop better understandings of the realities of students’ encounters with digital technology.

Silences of ethical practice: dilemmas for researchers using social media

Social media, such as social network sites and blogs, are increasingly being used as core or ancillary components of educational research, from recruitment to observation and interaction with researchers. However, this article reveals complex ethical dilemmas surrounding consent, traceability, working with children, and illicit activity that we have faced as education researchers for which there is little specific guidance in the literature. We believe that ethical research committees cannot, and should not, be relied upon as our ethical compass as they also struggle to deal with emerging technologies and their implications. Consequently, we call for researchers to report on the ethical dilemmas in their practice to serve as a guide for those who follow. We also recommend considering research ethics as an ongoing dialogical process in which the researcher, participants, and ethics committee work together in identifying potential problems as well as finding ways forward.

Sustaining online teacher professional development through community design

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of community of practice in sustaining teachers participation in a blended (face‐to‐face and online) professional development course.Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal multiple‐case study methodology was used in researching groups of five teachers in Australia and four teachers in the UK. The two groups independently participated in an initial face‐to‐face training day and then completed the professional development course via an online learning environment (Blackboard). The course was designed to facilitate community of practice cohesion. Data collection included surveys, data mining of online activity, discussion forums and e‐mails, and semi‐structured interviews.Findings – The paper finds that the participants of both case studies demonstrated sustained engagement for more than twice the minimum requirement. While the Australian case study was sustained through a community‐defined regime of participation, the UK case study increasing...

Using mobile phones as placed resources for literacy learning in a remote Indigenous community in Australia

Despite massive funding from the Australian government, the literacy achievement of Australian Indigenous children remains significantly lower than for non-Indigenous. With the aim of identifying innovative ways to improve Indigenous childrens literacy achievement, this study explored the social practices surrounding everyday mobile phone use by Indigenous people in a remote Australian community. Informed by the notion of ‘placed resources’, which highlights the understanding that digital literacies are best considered as resources situated by social practices that have local effect, the study surveyed 95 people living in a remote Indigenous community about their mobile phone practices. The study also examined a video of a literacy event between a mother and her child around the use of a mobile phone. The findings revealed the strong relational aspects of phone use in remote communities. Integral to the concept of placed resources is a respect for the practices communities find important as they adopt artefacts for their everyday communication.

The quantitative crunch: The impact of bibliometric research quality assessment exercises on academic development at small conferences

Purpose – Small and specialist inter‐disciplinary conferences, particularly those relating to technology enhanced learning such as International Conference on Information and Communications Technology in Education, provide valuable opportunities for academics and academic‐related/professional staff to report upon their research and development activities, including their insights into teaching practice. However, the existence of such conferences is now under threat due to a global shift towards quantitative research assessment exercises, which favour bibliometrics, such as citation counts and impact factors, over peer review. The purpose of this paper is to contextualise the discussion by describing the nascent qualitative research assessment in Australia and its implications for small conferences. It also aims to present heuristic strategies to ensure that publications are recognised by quantitative research assessment exercises.Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw on a wide literature base as ...

Students' Everyday Engagement with Digital Technology in University: Exploring Patterns of Use and "Usefulness"

The much-discussed potential of ‘technology-enhanced learning’ is not always apparent in the day-to-day use of digital technology throughout higher education. Against this background, the present paper considers the digital devices and resources that students engage most frequently with during their university studies, what these technologies are being used for, and perceptions of ‘usefulness’ attached to these uses. The paper draws upon data gathered from a survey of undergraduate students (n = 1658) from two Australian universities. Having explored a variety of factors shaping student engagement with digital technology within these university settings, the paper considers how ongoing discussions about digital technology and higher education might better balance enthusiasms for the ‘state of the art’ (i.e. what we know might be achieved through technology-enabled learning) with an acknowledgement of the ‘state of the actual’ (i.e. the realities of technology use within contemporary university contexts).

Methodological capacity within the field of “educational technology” research: an initial investigation

The academic study of educational technology is often characterised by critics as methodologically limited. In order to test this assumption, the present paper reports on data collected from a survey of 462 research active academic researchers working in the broad areas of educational technology and educational media. The paper explores their familiarity and expertise with various methods of data collection and analysis. Data from the survey highlight a preference for relatively basic forms of descriptive research, coupled with a lack of capacity in advanced quantitative data collection and analysis. The paper concludes with some directions for methodological capacity building to broaden the use of methods in educational technology research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shaping Online Teaching Practices: The Influence of Professional and Academic Identities

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the influence of professional and academic identities in online teaching practices in higher education. n nDesign/methodology/approach – This paper draws on data from a longitudinal study of five professional degree academics teaching subjects in nursing, teaching, engineering, allied health sciences, and journalism (here a subject refers to a course or unit which is usually undertaken over a semester and forms a part of a larger degree program). The research utilises community of practice as a social theory of learning, and the construct of identity, to better understand the connection between academic teachers pedagogical beliefs and their teaching practices in a web-enhanced learning setting. The authors contend that lecturers online teaching practices are mediated by their continually negotiated identities as members of multiple communities of practice. n nFindings – This research has found that the professional degree lecturers intentionally utilised the available technologies and tools to enact pedagogical strategies in ways that enabled them to manage the integrity of their occasionally conflicting identities as educators, professional practitioners and institutional employees. n nOriginality/value – This research goes beyond the assumption that past experiences flavour teachers pedagogical styles. A lecturer continually negotiates and maintains multiple identities where each represents a fundamental understanding of the world and can sometimes be at odds with one-another. This study has revealed how educational technologies have mediated the gap between the multiple identities held by teaching academics and been used as a bridging mechanism to connect beliefs with practice.

Technological Me: Young Children's Use of Technology across Their Home and School Contexts

Research into children’s learning with digital technologies is represented by a growing body of literature examining the relationship between home–school technological practices. A focus of this work is on the notion of a ‘digital-disconnect’ between home and school. This argument suggests that children are such native users of technologies they struggle to connect with commonly used technologies in school. This paper examines how the ‘digital-disconnect’ is experienced in children’s lives. Drawing on a data set investigating the digital experiences of 12 children aged 2–12 years, we consider the experiences of one family attending the same school. Three siblings aged 5–12 years recorded their home and school technology use for one week. The findings suggested some difference in use across both settings, but also similarities associated with information retrieval, rote learning and entertainment. We use Bulfin and North’s and Dyson’s ideas about the permeability of social boundaries to explain why technology use might be more similar than disconnected in each context. We consider the extent to which each setting influences the other as the basis for moving away from binary conceptualisations of the digital-disconnect informed by generational assumptions about children and technologies.

e-PD: Blended Models of Sustaining Teacher Professional Development in Digital Literacies

It is commonly agreed that professional development of teachers in the use of information and communication technologies should be sustained over time. Most professional development, however, is delivered in single or short sequences of face-to-face sessions, paying little heed to this requirement. Once the face-to-face training is completed, a large proportion of teachers seemingly succumb to entropy. Often there is limited application of the proposed outcomes of the professional development in the classroom and few (if any) opportunities to share examples of successful programs or student work examples, particularly when teachers return to isolated or regional areas. With particular reference to an Australian context, this article suggests one way within a pragmatic approach to extend the traditional boundaries of face-to-face training and sustain professional development.