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The increasing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe places new demands on European education systems. In this context, the role that free digital learning (FDL) could play in fostering inclusion has attracted renewed interest. While the existing literature highlights some general design principles for developing FDL for migrants and refugees, there is little information on the use of FDL at specific education levels, or for specific learning purposes. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study that was carried out as part of the Moocs4Inclusion project of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) between July and December 2016. The study, which has a European focus, disaggregates the analysis of FDL initiatives by what were identified as its three most common purposes: a) language learning, b) civic integration and employment, and c) higher education. For each of these topics, the study sheds light on the approaches used by a wide sample of initiatives, users’ levels of awareness of what is available and take up, and migrants’ and refugees’ perceptions of the current offer. In order to collect the information needed to cover different approaches and perspectives, semi-structured interviews with 24 representatives of 10 FDL initiatives and four focus groups with 39 migrants and refugees were carried out. The results show that there are indeed overlaps between the purposes of FDL initiatives and their design principles. Specific recommendations on how to better design FDL initiatives for migrants and refugees, taking into account their specific purposes, have also been identified.

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This paper will share Discover Palestine, an interdisciplinary Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) and the first MOOC to be created in Palestine, by the E-Learning Centre, Faculty from the Department of Geography, and Department of Tourism and Archaeology from An-Najah National University in Palestine. The paper traces the process of development of the Discover Palestine MOOC from its early inception as a cross institutional online course, to its current delivery and engagement with a global and diverse group of learners. Using a descriptive case study design and thematic analysis, the reflective experiences of four course team members involved as facilitators/designers in the design and delivery of the MOOC are shared. Three key themes, namely, “Informing pedagogies including delivery methods,” “A commitment to a national cause,” and “Teacher presence,” are presented and contextualized with data evidence. The findings share not only the hurdles the Discover Palestine team had to navigate during the MOOC development, but more importantly, how academic collaborations promoting open education practices offer powerful tools for the reciprocal exchange of knowledge, not least in shifting mindsets, and offering opportunities for shared fields of understanding to be realized in revealing creative, cultural practices, as well as lost histories.

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Although collaboration skills are highly valued by employers, convincing students that collaborative learning activities are worthwhile, and ensuring that the experience is both useful and enjoyable, are significant challenges for educators. This paper addresses these challenges by exploring students’ and tutors’ experiences of a group project where part-time distance learners collaborate online to create a website. Focus groups were conducted with students who had recently completed the project, and discussion forums were used to gather feedback from tutors who supported students and marked their group work. The research showed that students’ attitudes towards the group project on completion were generally favourable. Findings highlighted key aspects for successful online group projects and for motivating students to participate fully. These included: the design of authentic tasks, with skills development relevant to the workplace; careful attention to how the group work is assessed; and enabling students to develop websites they could be proud of. Frustrations for students were associated with the lack of engagement of fellow students and with limitations of the tool provided for building the website. Tutors found marking the work a time-consuming and complex process. Tutors were also unconvinced of the value and fairness of assessing students partly on a group, as opposed to an individual, basis.

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Educators within Higher Education (HE) and K-12 share in the need for high quality educational resources to assist in the pursuit of teaching and learning. Although there are numerous differences between the two levels of education, there are commonalties in the perceptions of the purpose, practical uses, and challenges that abide in the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Observations made while producing podcasts and videos for OER awareness, use, and championing, form an exposition of the merits of OER for HE and K-12. Benefits include cost-savings in acquiring resources for teaching and learning as well as user-generated content, instructor creativity, and contextualized and responsively timely learning opportunities. Additionally, the teaching culture of K-12 has historically supported the sharing of learning activities and learning resources. At all levels of education, OER awareness requires a deeper understanding of the changes to teaching and learning borne by open educational practices.

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Access to relevant learning resources is an important aspect in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all as outlined in the sustainable development goal 4 (SDG4). The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has identified the development of open educational resources (OER) as a potential answer to these challenges. A total of 29 provincial/regional OER policies and guidelines were developed in Sri Lanka, Botswana, and Cameroon closely involving 608 provincial/regional policymakers from the general education system. The innovation of this project lies in the collaborative approach adopted for OER policy/guideline development where a maximum number of policymakers at the provincial/regional level have been included in the policy development process. Key applications of the approach are mass-sensitization of policymakers, identification of champions in each province or region to drive the OER agenda forward, and the development of policies/guidelines tailored to the specific needs of a particular jurisdiction. The paper will also highlight the success factors, challenges, and the follow-up activities of the project.

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Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory focuses on developing language learners’ meta-linguistic understanding of the interrelation among linguistic form (grammar/vocabulary), meaning, and context. Guided by SFL when using a mandatory textbook and open educational resources, this study investigates how exposure to this blended teaching and learning context may impact English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ adjustment to materials used in their learning, as well as their learning practices. By drawing on the written documents of four students written, and on interviews conducted with these students over an academic semester in an EFL writing course, this qualitative study, through content analysis and discourse analysis, shows that the SFL theory-based material adoption did a good job of supporting EFL students in their internalization of language knowledge from both open educational resources and traditional textbooks, while also enabling students to use materials flexibly instead of passively following along with the content in the mandatory textbook. The flexibility of the students participating in the study was particularly reflected by their ability to construct principled knowledge informed by SFL and to independently apply such knowledge to effectively navigate literacy practices (e.g., critical construction and deconstruction of discourses).

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This paper examines the students’ experiences with instructional delivery (ID) of distance and online learning of undergraduate mathematics in two major Nigerian universities. Purposive sampling was used in the study to select mathematics students from University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute (DLI) and the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). Data were collected through mixed-methods and a one-sample binomial test was employed to analyse the quantitative data. Furthermore, narrative and content analyses were done to explore how respondents make sense of their experiences of learning mathematics through the distance and online mode. Among others, the results of the study suggest that the abstract nature of mathematics was not appropriately addressed in the course content and that the absence of helpful and visible tutors for the subject complicated the challenge of understanding abstract mathematics even further. Among the many challenges, the abstract nature of mathematics and the absence of qualified tutors points to the need for improvement in the design, development, and provision of mathematics course materials and programmes for distance and online mathematics learning.

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The quality assurance of online Higher Education online programmes is one of the great challenges faced by Spanish universities. Regular assessment of these programmes is essential in order to take actions to improve their quality. The said assessment should be complex and include all of the components of the programme, as well as its planning and implementation stages and its effects. The purpose of this paper is to present a model designed to assess the quality of online Higher Education online programmes that includes the assessment of the quality of the programme itself, as well as its continuous assessment. In order to design the model, the author conducted a bibliographical analysis of different standards, models, and guides developed in Spain and other countries to assess online education. The model was validated by 23 international online education experts. The results of the validation were triangulated with specialized literature, thus allowing the author to make decisions regarding whether to change the model by keeping, reformulating, or removing a dimension or indicator. As a result, two variables, fourteen dimensions, and 81 indicators were obtained. In order to verify the utility of the model it was applied in the assessment of four online programmes. The model guides the persons in charge of the implementation of online programmes and allows to conduct a more comprehensive assessment of the programme in order to discover its strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities for its improvement. The model can be also applied by online programme designers as a guideline for creating other, high quality programmes.

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The effectiveness of traditional face to face labs versus non-traditional online, remote, or distance labs is difficult to assess due to the lack of continuity in the literature between terminology, standard evaluation metrics, and the use of a wide variety non-traditional laboratory experience for online courses. This narrative review presents a representative view of the existing literature in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of non-traditional laboratories and to highlight the areas of opportunity for research.Non-traditional labs are increasingly utilized in higher education. The research indicates that these non-traditional approaches to a science laboratory experience are as effective at achieving the learning outcomes as traditional labs. While this is an important parameter, this review outlines further important considerations such as operating and maintenance cost, growth potential, and safety. This comparison identifies several weaknesses in the existing literature. While it is clear that traditional labs aid in the development of practical and procedural skills, there is a lack of research exploring if non-traditional laboratory experiments hinder student success in subsequent traditional labs. Additionally, remote lab kits blur the lines between modality by bringing experiences that are more tactile to students outside of the traditional laboratory environment. Though novel work on non-traditional labs continues to be published, investigations are still needed regarding cost differences, acquisition of procedural skills, preparation for advanced work, and instructor contact time between traditional and non-traditional laboratories.

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Universities depend on committed efforts of all staff members to function effectively. However, where occupational demands outweigh occupational resources, challenging work becomes stressful, followed by an exhausted, disengaged workforce. It is unlikely that disengaged university staff will provide adequate care and service to geographically distant and psychologically isolated learners. As students rely heavily on the support of both administrative staff, as well as academic staff, to manage their learning experience, the work stress experienced by both groups deserves research attention. This study employed a comparative mixed method design, including administrative and academic staff from an Open Distance Learning university in South Africa using the Job Demands-Resources measurement instrument. Findings established from 294 university staff members elucidated staff members’ experience of work stress within a mega-distance learning university in the developing world. Mindfulness about the stressors that influence university personnel can inform strategic interventions required to alleviate distress for each employment category.

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Research has shown the importance of goal orientation in predicting academic performance for children, adolescents, and college students in traditional educational settings. Studies on this relationship within adult distance education, however, are lacking. To fill this gap, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between goal orientation and academic performance in adult distance learners. A sample of N = 1128 distance university students (age 18-75 years) filled out an online questionnaire. Their exam grades were collected from the files of the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL). A mixed model regression showed performance approach goal orientation to be a positive predictor of academic performance, whereas performance avoidance and work avoidance were negative predictors of academic performance. Non-significant results were found for mastery approach as well as for mastery avoidance. Implications of these results are discussed.

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This study aims to apply a sequential analysis to explore the effect of learning motivation on online reading behavioral patterns. The study’s participants consisted of 160 graduate students who were classified into three group types:  low reading duration with low motivation, low reading duration with high motivation, and high reading duration based on a second-order cluster analysis. After performing a sequential analysis, this study reveals that highly motivated students exhibited a relatively serious reading pattern in a multi-tasking learning environment, and that online reading duration was a significant indicator of motivation in taking an online course. Finally, recommendations were provided to instructors and researchers based on the results of the study.

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This paper presents the results of a research study on scientific software training in blended learning environments. The investigation focused on training approaches followed by scientific software users whose goal is the reliable application of such software. A key issue in current literature is the requirement for a theory-substantiated training framework that will support knowledge sharing among scientific software users. This study followed a grounded theory research design in a qualitative methodology. Snowball sampling as well as purposive sampling methods were employed. Input from respondents with diverse education and experience was collected and analyzed with constant comparative analysis. The scientific software training cycle that results from this research encapsulates specific aptitudes and strategies that affect the users’ in-depth understanding and professional growth regarding scientific software applications. The findings of this study indicate the importance of three key themes in designing training methods for successful application of scientific software: (a) responsibility in comprehension; (b) discipline; and (c) ability to adapt.

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It is apparent that m-learning will continuously have a massive role in terms of development in teaching and learning methods for education. Student's intention to use this technology is the main factor that eventually leads to a success in implementing m-learning. The objectives of this particular research are to come up with the development and examination towards a research model to uncover the factors that have important effects on the intention to use mobile learning for basic education in Egypt. A research model was developed through extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) by incorporating two additional factors namely; learners' autonomy (LA) and content quality design (CQD). A quantitative approach based on cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 386 respondents.. The methodology used in this study was a Partial Least Squares (PLS) that was expected to test the model empirically. The results showcased that learners' autonomy (LA), performance expectancy (PE), facilitating conditions (FC), and social influence (SI) are significant in relation to behavioural intention (BI) to use m-learning while effort expectancy (EE) did not show the impact on intention to use mobile learning. The research also found that content quality design (CQD) affects significantly on performance expectancy (PE) and effort expectancy (EE). The possible development in future research and the limitations of the findings are also discussed later in this paper.

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Learning through a collective experience by taking part in group activities, such as hunting, gathering, and sharing, has always been a natural, “organic,” and “experiential” process where new skills and knowledge, if benefitting the whole group, are accepted, shared, and propagated. Nevertheless, in industrialized societies where specific knowledge and skills are an economical and societal necessity, the learning economy has largely moved to a model where the teachers “harvest” selected knowledge and “put it in a basket” from which students are expected to take from and learn. This learning model has permeated the 21st century digital world, where the main promoted advantage of these new learning environments is still the “individualization of learning,” which can result in a very solitary and isolated endeavor; however, it doesn’t have to be the case. An example of a successful online university course suggests that carefully crafted online instructional design strategies can contribute to a flexible and rich experiential learning environment. Although they might be physically disconnected, it is possible for learners and a teacher to remain closely interconnected, engaged, and accountable for both individual and group success in knowledge "hunting, gathering, and sharing" activities in a digital age.

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Recent research indicates that certain students are at risk of lower levels of academic performance in online settings when compared to peers who study only in the classroom.  Community college students have been a population of particular concern.  In this paper, we hypothesize that online course load and institutional quality may impact outcomes for such students at risk for lower levels of degree attainment.  Using comprehensive data from the 30 community colleges (n=45,557) of the State University of New York (SUNY), we conducted a state-wide study to examine whether there is a “tipping point” at which online course load becomes problematic for community college learners seeking to attain a degree through a mix of online and face-to-face coursework. We also test the conjecture that some institutions may excel at supporting online learner success among more at risk populations who choose online study. Results indicate that community college students who take more than 40% of their courses online begin to lose the benefits of enhanced degree completion conferred through a mix of online and face-to-face enrollment. Moderating variables are also identified and discussed.