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Baas, M, Admiraal, W and van den Berg, E. 2019. Teachers’ Adoption of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2019(1): 9, pp. 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.510Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to change the domain of higher education; however, adoption is still limited. As teachers are the pivotal actors to adopt OER, more insights are needed on their practices with OER and need of support. This exploratory study uses the OER Adoption Pyramid as a framework to analyse adoption of OER within a Dutch University of Applied Sciences. A questionnaire (n = 143) and semi-structured interviews with teachers who had some experience with sharing or using OER (n = 11) offered insights into the current state of affairs on adoption and need of support. The results revealed that informal sharing of resources within teachers’ personal networks happens frequently whereas the use of OER is more limited. If teachers use OER, they are mainly used ‘as-is’ or for a source of inspiration. Our findings indicate that the OER Adoption Pyramid does not properly describe the sequence of each layer within the context of this study. Availability must be lower in the pyramid as a prerequisite for teachers to explore their capacity and volition. Hence, the findings underline the need of support on subject-specific overviews of OER and the creation of national or institutional teacher communities. To improve our understanding, future research should focus on qualitative studies focusing on one case in which teachers engage with OER. This could lead to extensive insights on the factors and sequence of the OER Adoption Pyramid within different contexts.
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Theme: Quality Assurance in Higher Education An online tool was developed for (potential) students to assess the congruence between the characteristics of an educational program and student preferences (Butter & Van Raalten, 2010)
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As heavily reported by media in May 2018, Google announced that it won’t renew its contract with the US Defense Department for an artificial intelligence endeavor known as Project Maven. The tech giant took the decision amidst a widespread public backlash and multiple employee resignations. Google was assigned to provide an AI-powered image labeler that would allow the Pentagon to browse a ‘Google-Earth-like’ drone system, according to one of the emails leaked during the scandal.
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Secondary school physical education (PE) teachers are continuously challenged to find ways to support students learning and motivate them for an active and healthy lifestyle. To address this complexity, continuing teacher professional development (TPD) is key. Technological tools can facilitate the effective delivery of TPD in this context. Successful implementation of this technology, however, is not self-evident. Based on the general aim of effectively integrating technologies in the educational process and focusing on the needs of educators, this study examines how the evidence-based theoretical TARGET framework for creating a motivating PE learning climate might be embedded into a digital professional development tool for PE teachers, useful in everyday practice. It presents a case study in which a multidisciplinary team of researchers, designers, and end-users iteratively went through several phases of need identification, idea generation, designing, development, and testing. By using a participatory approach, we were able to collect contextualized data and gain insights into users’ preferences, requirements, and ideas for designing and engaging with the tool. Based on these insights the TPD TARGET-tool for PE teachers was ultimately developed. The most prominent characteristics of this tool are (1) the combination of an evaluative function with teaching strategy support, (2) the strong emphasis on ease of use due to the complex PE teaching context, (3) the avoidance of social comparison, and suggestions of normative judgment, and (4) the allowance for a high level of customization and teacher autonomy.
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This study investigates what pupils aged 10-12 can learn from working with robots, assuming that understanding robotics is a sign of technological literacy. We conducted cognitive and conceptual analysis to develop a frame of reference for determining pupils' understanding of robotics. Four perspectives were distinguished with increasing sophistication; psychological, technological, function, and controlled system. Using Lego Mindstorms NXT robots, as an example of a Direct Manipulation Environment, we developed and conducted a lesson plan to investigate pupils' reasoning patterns. There is ample evidence that pupils have little difficulty in understanding that robots are man-made technological and functional artifacts. Pupils' understanding of the controlled system concept, more specifically the complex sense-reason-act loop that is characteristic of robotics, can be fostered by means of problem solving tasks. The results are discussed with respect to pupils' developing technological literacy and the possibilities for teaching and learning in primary education.
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