Notwithstanding the advantages of incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) in education, AR's concrete uses as compared to other technologies are not fully recognised. Moreover, many of the existing studies have neglected to examine the impact of pedagogy and its corresponding instructional models, whilst implementing AR in teaching and learning. In leveraging the affordances of AR, an inquiry-based learning framework, referred to as QIMS, was proposed in this study. A learning package was developed on the topic of plant reproduction for primary 5 students (aged 11-12) based on the QIMS framework. Using a quasi-experimental approach, this study evaluated three conditions (AR and QIMS; QIMS; Non-AR and Non-QIMS) for a series of science lessons in a primary school. 117 students took part in this study. The quantitative results showed that although there was no statistically significant difference in students' academic performance when AR was used, students' self-directed learning and creative thinking skills increased significantly after partaking in the QIMS inquiry-based lessons. The usage of AR and QIMS had a significant effect in increasing students' critical thinking and knowledge creation efficacy skills. Moreover, in view of students' academic outcomes, the integration of QIMS and AR proved to be more beneficial to low-progress students. Qualitative analysis of the interview data from teachers and students aids in accounting for the quantitative results and indicate productive implementation strategies. The findings of this study will guide the design of future AR interventions, by providing insights for both researchers and practitioners on how to integrate and implement AR with pedagogical approaches.

The main purpose of this paper is to add empirical data to the nascent field of metaverse learning and teaching by examining factors affecting student participation and their perceived experiences of different metaverse platforms. For data collection, 57 Korean undergraduates participated in a self-administered questionnaire and a short reflective essay regarding their experiences on three metaverse platforms (ifland, Gather Town, & Frame VR). For data analysis, exploratory factor analysis was first executed to derive the underlying factors that can explain student participation in metaverse platforms. The social and interactive learning as well as individualized and behavioral learning were identified as two main contributing factors. While the three platforms had no statistical difference in terms of social presence, students' sentimentally perceived differences among them. The sentiment analysis shows that 60.00% of users were positive, followed by 53.66% of users and 51.22% of users. Furthermore, the additional keyword analysis shows why students expressed the perceived experiences of each platform in a different way. Given that the success of metaverse instruction can be dependent upon whether students regard it as beneficial, such measurements of student perception on the effectiveness of learning on metaverse platforms can offer meaningful recommendations for tech-savvy educators.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) promoted online teaching on an unprecedented scale, raising researchers' attention to the importance of faculty's acceptance of this urgent teaching shift. This study aimed to explore the influence of organizational factors on faculty's acceptance of online teaching in terms of behavioral intention and perceived usefulness. A multilevel structural equation model was employed to analyze data on 209,058 faculty in 858 higher education institutions based on a nationwide survey conducted in mainland China. The results showed that three key organizational factors, namely strategic planning, leadership, and teaching quality monitoring, impacted faculty's acceptance of online teaching, although in different ways. Strategic planning had a direct impact on perceived usefulness, while leadership had a direct impact on behavioral intentions, and teaching quality monitoring had a direct impact on both perceived usefulness and behavioral intentions. In addition, an indirect effect was found between strategic planning and faculty's behavioral intentions through the mediation of the perceived usefulness of online teaching. The findings of this study have practical implications for college administrators and policymakers, which should effectively implement and promote online teaching and learning, and consider key organizational factors to increase faculty acceptance.

Mixed methods research is becoming more prevalent in educational technology due to its potential for addressing complex educational problems by integrating qualitative and quantitative data and findings. At the same time, a growing chorus of researchers laments the quality and rigor of research in this field. Mixed methods studies which demonstrate explicit integration in educational technology research are scarce, and even fewer apply integration strategies recommended in the literature, such as visual joint displays. Failure to address the challenge of comprehensive integration may result in missed opportunities for deeper insights. To address this methodological problem, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the procedures, opportunities, and practical challenges associated with mixed methods integration through the use of visual joint displays as an analytical tool for data interpretation and reporting in these types of designs. Using an exploratory sequential mixed methods multiple case study design as an illustrative example, we will (1) provide step-by-step guidance on how to develop a visual joint display to conduct an integrated analysis in a complex mixed methods design; (2) demonstrate how to use a display of this type to integrate meta-inferences previously generated through a series of interconnected joint displays; and (3) illustrate the benefits of integrating at the literature review, theoretical, analysis, interpretation, and reporting levels in mixed methods studies. This methodological article aims to advance knowledge in educational technology research by addressing the integration challenge in mixed methods studies and assisting researchers in this field in achieving comprehensive integration at multiple levels.

At a public, 4-year, open access university, students were given the choice of how they would attend class: face-to-face, online, or livestream (synchronous session in Microsoft Teams®). The 876 students in this study registered in course sections designated as face-to-face delivery yet were provided attendance flexibility due to the pandemic. This unique situation provided a research opportunity to explore the self-regulatory, motivational, and contextual factors that affected students' attendance choices as well as their academic outcomes (pass/withdrawal) and perceptions of satisfaction. Results showed that 70% of students took advantage of the opportunity to flex and strongly valued the convenience, choice, and time savings. They were satisfied with connections to instructors. They were less satisfied with connections to peers, fluency between attendance modes, and technology performance. Generally, students performed well in the HyFlex courses with pass rates and withdrawal rates of 88% and 2%, respectively, for both Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 terms. The students who were most likely to flex were first year students who lived more than 15 miles from campus; first year students comprised a disproportionately large portion of those who failed. Self-regulatory and motivational factors were explored in relation to attendance decisions. Besides COVID-related issues and work/life balance, a sizable percentage (13%) of students explained their attendance decisions in terms of quality of their learning and in this way demonstrated self-regulation. Motivation was an issue for 17% of the students, typically expressed as attending in the way they learned best or skipping class.

A growing body of research has supported the implementation of innovative and immersive video for teaching and learning across the lifespan. Immersive video, delivered through eXtended Reality (XR) tools like 360 video, provides users with new ways to see real or created environments. Unfortunately, most of the existing research has highlighted immersive video without accompanying immersive audio. This use of monophonic audio can create a disconnect for viewers as they experience close to real world video with sounds that do not match a real-world environment. The purpose of this study was to respond to this gap in the literature by exploring the use of ambisonic audio and its impact on preservice teacher noticing and variability of viewing focus when watching 360 video. Data were collected from undergraduate teacher education students who participated in a self-paced online activity that included watching 360 videos and responding to a questionnaire. A convergent mixed methods design was employed to compare participants' professional noticing and observed viewing behavior in the context of ambisonic and monophonic audio. Results showed that users in ambisonic audio conditions in 360 video environments were more likely to have higher focus. Moreover, for users who had specific professional knowledge, monophonic audio with immersive video had a negative impact on their variance in focus. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research on the use of audio in virtual and augmented reality environments.

The advent of new technology is breaking the boundaries of traditional teaching and learning patterns with virtual worlds (VW) creating new frontiers in education. Previous research has explored the use of VW within educational settings. However, limited studies have investigated the transition processes that educators experience by adopting VW based online tools during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative exploratory study investigated 18 Chilean lecturers' teaching experiences using a three-dimensional computer-mediated environment: Second Life. Findings suggest that changing from traditional to virtual teaching context is a complex process, which (re)shaped the lecturers' various senses of identity and agency towards different instructional approaches resulting in the sense of in-betweenness with multiple digital competencies. These changes indicated that they taught in an 'in-between' mode mapped by different teaching mediations. The participants' teaching experiences of shaping a sense of in-betweenness could provide a unique theoretical lens to explore instructors' teaching experiences from traditional to a technology-mediated online setting.

This paper reviews theories regarding online learning communities in higher education and their relevance to online degree programs. While these theories are used extensively to promote and maintain community within online courses, little attention has been placed on broader factors that can influence perceptions of online community. Based on our research as well as an extensive review of the literature, this paper articulates limitations in current research and posits a framework to look at institutional, program, and professional layers. The framework also considers community salience from these layers at various points in a learner's program. Based on the layers presented, the framework proposes that true communities are shaped by myriad partners and that these partnerships should not be ignored in community research. Furthermore, it admonishes educators to provide guidance to learners regarding the purposes of community formation both during and beyond program completion. Lastly, the paper articulates needs for further research as online degree programs consider community development and maintenance through more holistic approaches.

Critical thinking is identified as a key educational outcome in higher education curricula; however, it is not trivial to support students in building this multifaceted skill. In this study, we evaluated a brief online learning intervention focusing on informal fallacy identification, a hallmark critical-thinking skill. The intervention used a bite-sized video learning approach, which has been shown to promote student engagement. Video-based learning was implemented within a precision teaching (PT) framework, which modulates the exposure of individual learners to the learning material to enable them to build 'fluency' in the targeted skills. In one of the learning conditions, PT was applied synergistically with domain-general problem-based training to support generalisation. The intervention consisted of two learning episodes and was administered to three groups (learning conditions) of 19 participants each: a PT fluency-based training group; a PT + group, where PT was combined with problem-based training; and a self-directed learning control group. All three groups showed comparable improvements in fallacy identification on taught (post-episode tests) and unseen materials (post-intervention assessment), with lower-scoring participants showing higher gains than high-scoring participants. The results of the knowledge retention tests a week later were also comparable between groups. Importantly, in the domain-general fallacy-identification assessment (post-intervention), the two PT groups showed higher improvements than the control group. These findings suggest that the integration of bite-sized video learning technologies with PT can improve students' critical-thinking skills. Furthermore, PT, on its own or combined with problem-based training, can improve their skill to generalise learning to novel contexts. We discuss the educational implications of our findings.

Learning analytics (LA) has gained increasing attention for its potential to improve different educational aspects (e.g., students' performance and teaching practice). The existing literature identified some factors that are associated with the adoption of LA in higher education, such as stakeholder engagement and transparency in data use. The broad literature on information systems also emphasizes the importance of trust as a critical predictor of technology adoption. However, the extent to which trust plays a role in the adoption of LA in higher education has not been examined in detail in previous research. To fill this literature gap, we conducted a mixed method (survey and interviews) study aimed to explore how much teaching staff trust LA stakeholders (e.g., higher education institutions or third-parties) and LA technology, as well as the trust factors that could hinder or enable adoption of LA. The findings show that the teaching staff had a high level of trust in the competence of higher education institutions and the usefulness of LA; however, the teaching staff had a low level of trust in third parties that are involved in LA (e.g., external technology vendors) in terms of handling privacy and ethics-related issues. They also had a low level of trust in data accuracy due to issues such as outdated data and lack of data governance. The findings have strategic implications for institutional leaders and third parties in the adoption of LA by providing recommendations to increase trust, such as, improving data accuracy, developing policies for data sharing and ownership, enhancing the consent-seeking process, and establishing data governance guidelines. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature on the adoption of LA in HEIs by integrating trust factors.

This study assessed the psychometric properties of the culturally inclusive instructional design (CIID) scale with 31 items on a 7-point Likert scale. The data were collected from the training (N = 55) and validating samples (N = 80) of K-20 educators. Data analysis employed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). EFA results revealed a clear five-factor structure, and the CFA results indicated good factor loadings. The reliability indices were .95 and .94 for the training and validation samples, respectively. The significant correlations among the factors indicated the five subscales measuring on the same CIID construct. In contrast, a non-perfect correlation presented a discriminating power for each subscale measuring the unique dimension of the construct. The study results established the validity and reliability of the instrument to measure culturally inclusive instructional design with implications for the design and development of online learning for cultural inclusivity.

Project-based learning (PBL) has been identified as an effective pedagogy for instructors to help students to learn interdisciplinary knowledge, problem-solving skills, modes of thinking, and collaborative practices through solving problems in a real-world context. However, previous studies reported that instructors from K-12 to tertiary learning environments found it challenging to implement such a pedagogy for various reasons. The emergence of PBL E-learning platforms in the recent decade has attracted increasing interest in adoption and seems to provide a solution to tackle the difficulties in PBL implementation. Yet little is known about designing these platforms and how they facilitate the PBL learning process and management. In the current study, we conducted a multiple case survey study on 16 PBL learning platforms in English and Chinese, collected data on their features and functions, categorized them according to their services provided, and analyzed how they tackle the implementation challenges. Additionally, we identified four trends in PBL development as pedagogy, the skills, and competence required for teachers and students to successfully carry out PBL via e-learning platforms and provide suggestions to improve and refine the platform design for educational technologists and related stakeholders. The limitations of this study and the future research direction are included.

This study proposed a robot-assisted digital storytelling approach to reduce hospitalized children's anxiety about intravenous injections and to improve their therapeutic communication and therapeutic engagement. In order to verify the effectiveness of the robot-assisted digital storytelling approach, a randomized controlled study was implemented. A total of 47 children from a regional hospital were randomly assigned to an experimental group ( = 21) and a control group ( = 26). The experimental group adopted the robot-assisted digital storytelling approach in health education for intravenous injections, while the control group received video-based health education. The study results indicated that the proposed robot-assisted digital storytelling approach not only reduced the children's anxiety, but also had positive effects on children's communication about intravenous injections, emotions during hospitalization, and therapeutic engagement. As a consequence, it is suggested that educators and researchers consider adopting robot-assisted digital storytelling to facilitate nursing clinical health education for children.

The pandemic has catalyzed a significant shift to online/blended teaching and learning where teachers apply emerging technologies to enhance their students' learning outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has gained its popularity in online learning environments during the pandemic to assist students' learning. However, many of these AI tools are new to teachers. They may not have rich technical knowledge to use AI educational applications to facilitate their teaching, not to mention developing students' AI digital capabilities. As such, there is a growing need for teachers to equip themselves with adequate digital competencies so as to use and teach AI in their teaching environments. There are few existing frameworks informing teachers of necessary AI competencies. This study first explores the opportunities and challenges of employing AI systems and how they can enhance teaching, learning and assessment. Then, aligning with generic digital competency frameworks, the DigCompEdu framework and P21's framework for twenty-first century learning were adapted and revised to accommodate AI technologies. Recommendations are proposed to support educators and researchers to promote AI education in their classrooms and academia.

Welcome to this special issue, focussing on teachers' digital competencies in Higher Education. The articles in this special issue explore the question of how digital competencies in higher education are conceptualized after the Great Online Transition, during and after the pandemic. A few of the topics addressed in the special issue are: new competency frameworks, the issue of disciplines and artificial intelligence and looks into the future of higher education learning and teaching. In this preface to the special issue, we first present a brief introduction to the context and the problem statement. We then provide a summary of each of the ten papers included in this special issue, we present how they are related and how each article makes a unique contribution to the main goal of the special issue. Finally, the implications are discussed together with suggestions for future research.

There is little consensus about the nature of teachers' digital competencies in Higher Education. Moreover, existing digital competence frameworks have largely been developed for teachers in secondary education. In response to this, the current study focuses on developing and validating a framework of digital competencies for teachers in Higher Education. First, a review was conducted to determine the state of digital competence research regarding dimensions and definition of digital competence. In a next step, similarities and differences between existing digital competence frameworks were identified. Based on the outcomes of the review and the framework comparison, a framework was developed in an iterative process through expert meetings with policy makers, experts in the field of educational technology, and validated with practitioners. The new framework includes four dimensions of teachers' digital competencies: (1) Teaching practice, (2) Empowering students for a digital society, (3) Teachers' digital literacy, and (4) Teachers' professional development. The resulting Higher Education Digital Competence (HeDiCom) framework will provide guidance and clearer expectations of teachers' digital competency. Ultimately, improving teachers' digital competencies will contribute to improving the quality of digital competencies of the students.

Future success for online teaching can be described in terms of competencies, the knowledge, skills, and affect and motivation that as component parts undergird successful performance, or in terms of competence, the behaviors that demonstrate ability to perform in an online setting. Either framing could aid higher education to consider how to foster online teaching excellence. Yet, considering this dichotomy instead as a continuum emphasizes a fruitful point in between to target for faculty professional learning. This linking, middle view, emphasizes the processes faculty use to recognize what the situation demands and make decisions about what to do and operationalize competencies into competence. This concept paper presents a set of conceptual principles that can serve as guidance to organize faculty decision making when integrating EdTech into higher education courses. Drawing on an existing dataset of interview data from two studies of faculty learning to integrate a new EdTech, instructors' experiences with each principle are illustrated. This provides opportunities to see how faculty organized decisions aligned with the principles and how faculty needs were met when principles described the project's support conditions. This approach shows how universities could benefit from framing EdTech support in terms of embedding representations to first build, then guide, technical and pedagogical knowledge and skill. Providing guiding principles may then motivate faculty to acquire and assemble those competencies in context-sensitive ways for instructional decision making.

Videos are an increasingly popular medium for supporting learning in various educational settings. Nowadays, newly designed video-based environments contain enhanced tools that allow for specific interactions with video materials (such as adding annotations and hyperlinks) which may well support generative learning and conceptual understanding. However, to exploit the potentials of such enhanced tools, we need to gain a deeper understanding on the learning processes and outcomes that go along with using these tools. Thus, we conducted a controlled laboratory experiment with 209 participants who were engaged in learning a complex topic by using different enhanced video tools (annotations vs. hyperlinks vs. control group) in different social learning settings (individual vs. collaborative learning in dyads). Findings revealed that participants who learned with hyperlinks and participants in collaborative settings created hypervideo products of higher quality than learners in other conditions. Participants who learned with annotations assessed their knowledge gain higher and had higher results in conceptual understanding when they experienced low cognitive load. With our study we contribute new original work to advance cognitive research on learning with enhanced video learning environments. Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.

In the rush for the Covid-19 pandemic's online transition, the pursuit of quality online learning was frequently overshadowed by the urgency of emergency instruction online. As blended and online teaching became an integral part of education, there emerged a need to investigate how faculty coped with this transition and what competencies they might be acquiring. In this paper, we report on international research about higher education faculty's elicited dispositions and needs while they engaged with online teaching (OT), as these shape aspects of teacher competencies for integrating technology. This study aims to identify factors that shaped faculty competencies as pandemic restrictions forced transitions to OT. Snapshot surveys were conducted at two different phases of the pandemic, i.e. during the acceleration phase and the stasis one, approximately twelve months later. The surveys inquired about internal (e.g. enthusiasm and resolutions) and external (e.g. support) factors of faculty's OT perceptions during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic, enabling monitoring of the phenomenon beyond the assessment of the first response to the emergency. Results revealed different patterns of dispositions and diverse uses of technological affordances to foster online learning. These patterns were also found to differ over time, highlighting conditions possibly enabling or hindering the development of competencies for OT during different phases of the pandemic. One important finding is that there was a change from internal confidence to institutional support being a strong predictor of intentions to continue OT, over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Disciplines in Higher Education have their own interpretations of what is essential knowledge that influences what is taught, how teaching occurs, and the role of digital tools. Disciplinary culture is dynamic and evolving, informed by disciplinary research and technology improvement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital solutions enabled ongoing teaching when undergraduate courses could not be taught on campus, in lecture theatres, seminar rooms, laboratories, or in the field. Using digital tools and changes in teaching practices has created a context where Higher Education teachers must consider how future learning and teaching should occur. To explore this, a cross-discipline team used appreciative inquiry framed in complexity theory to examine how teaching in undergraduate programmes is changing in the digital age and implications for Higher Education teachers. The research identifies how digital technologies influence undergraduate programmes in Applied Statistics, Computer Science, Critical Indigenous Studies, Geography, and Information Systems. Analysis of the case studies identified how disciplinary culture, context, and technology combine to influence pedagogical practice and digital capabilities needed to teach in undergraduate programmes. We conclude that Higher Education teachers require capability in appropriate pedagogical practice that aligns with disciplinary culture and the technologies available.

Privacy is a central issue in the digitalization of society and directly concerns all Internet users. Privacy education is part of the picture of a more just digital society: it aims at making users more aware of the importance of their data and of the technical and financial tools and processes that involve their personal data. Nonetheless, privacy education is confronted with a paradox: while people perceive the importance of privacy, they seldom take action to actually protect their personal data. iBuddy is a narrative simulation-based session inspired by research evidence about the privacy paradox and aims to (a) enhancing awareness and (b) promoting the uptake of privacy-safe behaviors for secondary and higher students (age range 11-20). The paper presents the design and development of the simulation and of the following modular debriefing, as a case study in evidence-based collaborative instructional design and in the instructional used of digital technology. The evaluation of iBuddy, which combined a post-session satisfaction and perceived learning survey ( = 978) and a follow-up survey ( = 124), provides insights in the novel domain of privacy education. Results suggests that iBuddy sessions are engaging, effective and conducive to medium-term behavioral change, thus indirectly confirming the design assumptions about how to tackle the privacy paradox through a simulation-based approach.