Using educational technology as an institutional teaching and learning improvement strategy?
Increasingly, educational technology is identified as crucial to addressing many scale issues around higher education learning and teaching. However, such projects are often run with the technical project goals achieved but the educational goals unrealised. Further, in an age of austerity, all investments must be closely scrutinised as to their efficacy in meeting their intended goals. To what extent can educational technology be used as a management tool to enable and promote institution-level change in learning and teaching as a strategic goal? This paper reports on use of the Resources, Activity, Support and Evaluation (RASE) model at an Australian university in its move from an incumbent to a new ‘learning management system’ coupled with judicious use of inflection points introduced to drive educational change across a whole institution and to model and report on that change.
Dawn or dusk of the 5th age of research in educational technology? A literature review on (e-)leadership for technology-enhanced learning in higher education (2013-2017)
The aim of this article is to establish the extent to which the concept of e-leadership has taken off as a lens through which to study leadership for technology-enhanced learning (TEL) in higher education. Building on a previous study conducted in 2013, this article thus covers an exploratory review of the literature for the period 2103-2017. It analyses 49 articles which explore both the specific concept of e-leadership as well as other work dealing more generally with leadership and organisational change for TEL in higher education. The findings show that while none of the empirical studies identified in the literature refer explicitly to e-leadership, there are a number of interesting insights to be found in the theoretical articles. The results also highlight the widely different interpretations and applications of the concept of e-leadership and the consequent need for the definition to be refined. The paper concludes with recommendations for further multidisciplinary research at the intersection of the fields of educational technology and educational management, focusing on values, strategy, organisation and leadership interactions at meso level, the economy and public policy at macro level, and teaching and learning at the micro level, as well as for research in Leadership Development for TEL.
The Effect of Summarizing Strategy on Reading Comprehension of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners
Reading comprehension plays a significant role in educational success. In spite of its importance, students still have difficulties in understanding texts. One solution to the problem of poor reading comprehension is the learning of reading strategies. The current study examined the effect of summarizing strategy on reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Sixty-one students were selected and randomly divided into two control and experimental groups. The homogeneity of their proficiency level was established using a TOEFL proficiency test. All students in both groups participated in a reading comprehension test as pretest. The experimental group utilized summarizing strategy three times a week typically 45 minutes in duration for ten weeks. After each two week instruction, an immediate posttest was administered. At the end of the treatment, a post-test was administered to both groups. The findings of the study indicated that summarizing strategy has a significant effect on learners’ reading comprehension.