Background: Our transition to an “information society” means that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become integral to our lives. ICT has also become an essential aspect of medical institutions and healthcare settings. Healthcare professionals, especially nurses are required to use ICT in their daily work. In Lebanon, however, due to political factors, many universities have not introduced technology or any form of ICT in their curricula. Institutions of higher education do use technology in various ways, however, successful incorporation of ICT in education requires acceptance by instructors who are expected to use ICT in teaching practices. Although international findings reveal that ICT should be used in nursing education, some faculty members experience difficulty integrating it. Method: A mixed methodological research approach was used to investigate the attitudes of nursing teaching staff toward the use of ICT in nursing education. Results: Our findings revealed three categories of faculty with differing attitudes to the use of ICT in teaching and learning: pioneers, faculty members who have developed positive attitudes toward ICT usage; followers, faculty members with neutral attitudes; and resisters, faculty members with negative attitudes. Conclusions: Identification of the nursing faculty members’ attitude toward ICT and the challenges faced by them contributes to the integration of ICT into nursing curricula and further development of educational practices.
Learning objects are bits of learning content. They may be reused 'as is' (simple reuse) or first be adapted to a learner's particular needs (flexible reuse). Reuse matters because it lowers the development costs of learning objects, flexible reuse matters because it allows one to address learners' needs in an affordable way. Flexible reuse is particularly important in the knowledge economy, where learners not only have very spefic demands but often also need to pay for their own further education. The technical problems to simple and flexible are rapidly being resolved in various learning technology standardisation bodies. This may suggest that a learning object economy, in which learning objects are freely exchanged, updated and adapted, is about to emerge. Such a belief, however, ignores the significant psychological, social and organizational barriers to reuse that still abound. An inventory of these problems is made and possible ways to overcome them are discussed.
Over the past few decades, education systems, especially in higher education, have been redefined. Such reforms inevitably require reconsideration of operational notions and definitions of quality, along with a number of related concepts. This reconsideration aligns with the core of higher education reforms: improving efficacy and compatibility with emerging social demands while adapting to competitiveness and accountability trends. As primary players in the teaching and learning process, online tutors have a protagonistic role and, therefore, must be equipped with a suitable set of competencies and attributes in addition to content knowledge. This quantitative research aims to analyze the perceptions of 250 online tutors working in European higher education institutions, distributed in 5 knowledge areas: Business, Education, Humanities, Sciences and Health. This descriptive and exploratory nonexperimental study reveals the technological and pedagogical skills and competencies that online tutors consider fundamental for effective online teaching and proposes professional development actions to ensure quality online teaching.
