Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

Mapping out a research agenda for generative artificial intelligence in tertiary education

Jason M. Lodge, Kate Thompson, Linda Corrin — Thu, 04 May 2023 00:00:00 +1000

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. In this editorial, we outline some of the key areas of tertiary education impacted by large language models and associated applications that will require re-thinking and research to address in the short to medium term. Given how rapidly generative AI developments are currently occurring, this editorial is speculative. Although there is a long history of research on AI in education, the current situation is both unprecedented and seemingly not something that the AI in education community fully predicted. We also outline the editorial position of AJET in regards to generative AI to assist authors using tools such as ChatGPT as any part of the research or writing process. This is a rapidly evolving space. We have attempted to provide some clarity in this editorial while acknowledging that we may need to revisit some or all of what we offer here in the weeks and months ahead.

Conceptualisation, measurement and preliminary validation of learners’ problem-based learning and peer assessment strategies in a technology-enabled context

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +1100

This study attempted to conceptualise and measure learners’ perceptions of their collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment strategies in a technology-enabled context. Drawing on the extant literature, we integrate collaborative, problem-based and peer assessment learning strategies and propose a new model, the collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment (Co-PBLa-PA) conceptual framework, which forms the basis of a new psychometrically sound and conceptually based scale, the collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment strategies inventory (CO-PBLa-PA-SI). The development and validation of the CO-PBLa-PA-SI, based on the methodological and conceptual insights gained from prior research, involved identifying the following four scales: capacity to collaborate, readiness to engage, task-based interest and peer feedback usefulness. An item pool comprising of 16 items was established and verified by two panels of judges using a formalised card sorting procedure. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to validate the instrument of a small-scale (N = 164) study. The CO-PBLa-PA-SI scale showed strong construct validity and reliability with a Cronbach’s coefficient alpha ranging from .828 to .880, which suggested strong internal consistency. The resultant instrument is intended as a tool to reliably measure learners’ perceptions of their collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment strategies in a technology-enabled context.

Implications for practice or policy:

A psychometrically validated scale could be used by a growing community of academicians, educators and instructional designers to assess learners’ collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment strategies when using interactive technologies;
A systematically collected data set obtained from the CO-PBLa-PA-SI data may have practical implications in terms of informing teachers about appropriate instructional design practices for the enhancement of collaborative, problem-based and peer assessment learning strategies in technology-enabled settings.

Teaching and learning using 21st century educational technology in accounting education: Evidence and conceptualisation of usage behaviour

Mohamad Ridhuan Mat Dangi, Maisarah Mohamed Saat , Shukriah Saad — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +1100

Technologies are ubiquitous in the 21st century, and educators need to integrate relevant technologies into their teaching practices to meet stakeholders’ expectations and keep abreast with the accounting profession’s advancement. A mixed-method approach of quantitative and qualitative techniques was used in this study, with the latest version of the SPSS software (version 26) and NVivo software to analyse the data. The results depict the accounting educators’ usage efforts of 21st century educational technology tools and platforms; it is neither highly prevalent nor optimised. Future researchers could expand the investigation of 21st century educational technology by utilising the proposed constructs, model and hypotheses from this study’s qualitative findings. The study revives the stagnant educational technology literature in accounting education and explicates technology usage issues in accounting education, specifically in developing countries and the Asian region.

Implications for practice or policy:

Education ministries, higher education institutions, faculties, policymakers and academics should encourage educators to adopt and integrate 21st century educational technology into their practices.
The integration of 21st century educational technology in teaching and learning practice should align with individual attributes, technology characteristics and organisational factors.
Accounting educators must acquire technological competence through appropriate professional development and training programmes.

Zoom in: Open educational resources for informal online learning during COVID-19 and beyond

Guy Cohen, Anat Cohen — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +1100

Institutions, organisations, and policymakers use open educational resources (OERs) to promote student equity and social inclusion. The global COVID-19 crisis highlighted the need for lifelong learning and underscored the importance of the higher education system in this endeavour. This study describes informal learning among adults through OERs, during the COVID-19 crisis, distinguishing between employed and unemployed individuals and between professional and personal development. A questionnaire distributed during the COVID-19 lockdown focused on three themes: (1) types of OERs used for learning during this period; (2) perceived OERs’ usefulness; and (3) changes in OER use due to the crisis. Our findings revealed group differences in types of OERs used and in changes brought about by COVID-19, as well as within-group differences based on personal characteristics. Only a few participants reported using massive open online courses (MOOCs). Moreover, videoconferencing usage increased despite low perceived usefulness ratings, pointing to a change in informal learning modes. This exploratory research provides insights into the preferences of individual groups. These insights may be used to reduce socioeconomic disparities, especially among those who have lost their jobs, and to develop effective models for open education.

Implications for practice or policy:

Enhancing the discussions about the future of open education by reflecting a wide picture of OERs use.
Redesigning OERs for the labour market by distinguishing between employed and unemployed, and professional and personal development.
OER preferences according to personal characteristics can be used to achieve better engagement with learning.

Learning technology as contested terrain: Insights from teaching academics and learning designers in Australian higher education

Amos Zhiqiang Tay, Henk Huijser, Sarah Dart, Abby Cathcart — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +1100

Learning and teaching is no longer the exclusive domain of teaching academics and is increasingly reliant on third-space professionals, in particular learning designers. The sharing of the design of the learning and teaching space is underlined by the increasing collaboration between teaching academics and learning designers. This qualitative study explores how these two key stakeholders understand learning technology, which is critical to shaping the teaching and learning process in contemporary higher education. Foucauldian discourse and power were employed as the theoretical lens to analyse semi-structured interviews with 12 teaching academics and 5 learning designers at a large Australian university. Although learning designers and teaching academics share a mutual interest in improving the learning and teaching process, the findings also revealed five discourses where practice was contested: centralisation, surveillance, institutional homogenisation, responsibility, and efficiency. This article calls for a new focus on the collaborative aspect of the learning design and teaching process that is constantly (re)negotiated between these two main stakeholders.

Implications for practice or policy:

Teaching academics and learning designers should develop practices that recognise the collaborative nature of learning technology in higher education.
Universities should develop practices and policies that reduce tensions within the five identified discourses of learning technology to ensure a more collaborative teaching academic-learning designer relationship.

Time distortion in student YouTube use: The effects of use motivation, personality, and pattern of use on study efficiency

Tanya McGill, Jane Klobas, Sedigheh Moghavvemi — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +1100

This paper examines study efficiency and time distortion experienced by student users of YouTube. Using multi-group structural equation modelling on data from 792 Malaysian university students, the study identified links between YouTube use motivation, conscientiousness (a personality trait), time distortion, and perceived study efficiency. It also shows how these characteristics and the links between them varied when students were grouped by pattern of use, defined (using two-step cluster analysis) as occasional, regular, or problematic. Time distortion had a negative effect on perceived study efficiency, but conscientiousness counteracted this effect - particularly for occasional users, the only group with positive perceived study efficiency in this study. Motivation to use YouTube for learning was not associated with time distortion, whilst using YouTube for escape and entertainment increased motivation. Occasional users were less motivated than others to use YouTube for these purposes and therefore less likely to experience the entertainment use flow on effects of time distortion to perceived study efficiency.

Implications for practice or policy:

Motivating students to use YouTube for learning is unlikely to reduce study efficiency.
Use of diagnostic tools to understand a student's pattern of social media use, as well as motivation for use, personality and sense of time distortion, could help advisers identify reasons for low study efficiency.
Digital literacy education focused on increasing self-discipline and goal-orientation could help students reduce poorly controlled use of social media for entertainment and escape, and hence improve study efficiency.

Technological pedagogical content knowledge: Exploring new perspectives

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +1100

Recognising the challenges involved in understanding the knowledge that teachers need to develop to use technology in their teaching dynamics, we examined the prior research that has not clearly revealed strategic changes for teacher preparation in the digital age. The goal was to expand on the current understandings of the nature of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK/TPACK) and provide a launchpad for future research by teacher educators as they contemplate revisions in the education of teachers to better prepare them for teaching in the digital age. To do so, we conducted qualitative meta-synthesis research. Within this context, we identified interpretations and comprehensions that pushed us forward in defence of new perspectives on the nature of this knowledge, regarding the comprehension of TPCK/TPACK as a transformative and homogenous knowledge; TPCK/TPACK’s levels of development, including a new first level; and the need for and challenges of redesigning teacher education.

Implications for practice or policy:

To better prepare teachers to teach, teachers’ educators should understand TPCK/TPACK as a homogeneous and transformative knowledge.
Teachers’ training programmes should realize that often teachers are not aware of the of the possibilities of using technologies to teach.
Teachers should have access to continuous learning to keep developing their own TPCK/TPACK during their entire career.
Teachers and teachers’ educators should understand TPCK/TPACK developing as a continuous and individual process and not as something standardised.

University students’ competences in ICT: A view from the education domain

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +1000

Contemporary university students face the knowledge society, where mastering information and communication technologies (ICT) is an essential requirement to form part of this society. The objective of our study was to validate a basic ICT competences model made up of three ICT competence subsets (technological, pedagogical and ethical) influenced by various personal and contextual factors. For this purpose, a cross-sectional explanatory correlation design was used, with a sample of 646 university students from the University of Valencia (Spain), collecting the information through a questionnaire. A multiple indicators and multiple causes model was used to validate the students’ ICT competences model. The results revealed that ICT competences form a single set made up of three subsets of competences: technological, pedagogical and ethical. An asymmetrical explanatory relation was found between the technological and pedagogical competences on the one hand and between the ethical and pedagogical competences on the other hand. The factors gender, area in which the degree is taught and the frequency of using a computer with the Internet impacted on the three subsets of competences. The model shows the complexity of university students’ ICT competences, with training in ICT competences being an important element to consider.

Implications for practice or policy:

University leaders have to include the three ICT competence subsets in the curriculum.
University teachers must promote the three ICT competence subsets in their classes.
Instructional designers and educational technologists should include the three ICT competences subsets in their training plans.

Home-campus nexus: The shift to homebased smart e-learning

Thu, 04 May 2023 00:00:00 +1000

This article outlines the trajectory of China’s higher education and its strategy of pioneering a brand-new smart e-learning environment that has functionally molded China into a hybrid educational hub. This paper chronicles the almanac of China’s offline campus education, depicting how it technologically evolved into an e-learning home-campus nexus. A sequential mixed-methods design was employed to shed light on students’ readiness levels toward China’s newly implemented smart e-learning platform for tertiary education. The psychometric analyses of the Smart e-Learning Questionnaire and other parametric statistical tests were performed using the Rasch measurement model. Overall, there is strong evidence to suggest that the in-depth qualitative interviews captured more nuanced accounts of the participants’ perceived reasons for their moderate level of readiness towards their novel home-campus e-learning course delivery. Evacuated campuses and virtual lessons have become the cliched representation of this pandemic. It is critical that e-learning offerings be contextualised in practical ways to invigorate equitable teaching strategies that can improve e-learning and support the success of China’s higher education learning model for the post-pandemic agendum.

Implications for practice or policy:

This research investigated home-campus e-learning as a higher education learning model for the post-pandemic agendum.
The homebased smart e-learning prototype proposed in this study is framed as a learning delivery modality for advancing the latitude of digital literacy among higher education students.
The deployment of the next-generation 5G internet connectivity and the implementation of hybrid smart e-learning platforms, draw clear implications for policymakers and practitioners to model after these insightful strategies.