Michelle Mukherjee

Text analysis in education: a review of selected software packages with an application for analysing students’ conceptual understanding

ABSTRACT Using text analysis, computers can find patterns to determine and extract useful information from a set of text. Exploiting the capabilities of text analysis software can efficiently provide educators with the ability to analyse students’ answers and make better judgement on their performance. Such ability would otherwise be impossible to practically gain, especially for large classes. Because of the availability of a wide range of text analysis software, with varied features, an important question to ask is which software to use, that best suits a certain application, and users’ educational technology skills. This paper evaluates seven selected software packages which can be used for textual analysis. The graphical abstract, Figure 1, shows the outputs of one of the software packages (Leximancer), using the text from this paper as input. The data set and results presented use responses from a university-level test in an electrical engineering topic, which are included in this paper. The test was designed to assess students’ conceptual understanding. Students were asked to provide an explanatory text justifying their selection of a multiple-choice option. The principles, ideas and software evaluation criteria discussed, although applied to our dataset, can be extended to many other areas and fields. Graphical Abstract

Cross Cultural Similarities in Using Mobile Technologies to Engage and Connect with Students

The access to mobile technologies is growing at an exponential rate in developed and developing countries, with some developing countries surpassing developed countries in terms of device ownership. It is both the demand for, and high usage of mobile technologies that have driven new and emerging pedagogical practices in higher education. These technologies have also exponentially increased access to information in a knowledge economy. While differences are often drawn between developing and developed countries in terms of the access and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), this paper will report on a study detailing how higher education students use mobile technologies and social media in their studies and in their personal lives. It will contrast the similarities in how students from an Australian and Vietnamese university access and use mobile and social media technologies while also highlighting ways in which these technologies can be embraced by academics to connect and engage with students.