The purpose of this paper is to discuss performance in postgraduate education in Sweden and Scotland. Drawing on two cases, the paper considers three themes: differences in students' performance by study mode, differences in students' performance by length of study, and finally comparing performance by study mode between modules in Scotland with an entire programme in Sweden.

Research findings in recent years provide compelling evidence of the importance of encouraging student control over the learning process as a whole. The socially based tools and technologies of the Web 2.0 movement are capable of supporting informal conversation, reflexive dialogue and collaborative content generation, enabling access to a wide raft of ideas and representations.

Unbundling is the process through which products previously sold together are separated into their constituent parts. In higher education, this dynamic has been driven primarily by financial motivations, and spearheaded by the for-profit sector, but also has pedagogical motivations through its emphasis on personalisation and employability.

Online educational content is becoming increasingly popular in higher education. In prior studies it has been reported that students prefer weblectures with a visible lecturer over weblectures consisting of audio and slides only. Anticipated was that the amount of attention students pay to a weblecture is relevant for this preference. A study was conducted to see whether lecturer-visibility was related to reported attention for a weblecture. Lecturer's appeal was expected to be a moderator in this relation.

The call to integrate technology into education can be used as a starting point for educators' professional growth. Looking at teacher preparation and professional development as much more than technology training, this research bridges the literature and practice of faculty development in educational technology with adult education's transformational learning theory. Research conducted in graduate education courses in educational technology reveals themes of change in their perspective of their profession and educational practice. Technology learning can sometimes be intimidating or frustrating. This article highlights the study's significance of adult learning theory for teachers' professional development and classroom practice particularly in learning to cope with new knowledge bases and incorporating them into practice.

Faculty development efforts for supporting online instructors represent a growing concern for higher education administrators. Providing online faculty with enriching experiences designed to improve practice, combat isolation, and share knowledge and resources is a challenge. This review examines the use of a community of practice (CoP) approach for online faculty support. The literature was reviewed with a focus on finding the faculty voice by extracting results from research studies on the use of professional development CoPs. Six themes of faculty perception of benefit emerged from the review and are discussed along with the pros and cons of three delivery methods for CoPs. The research supports the idea that collaborative faculty groups provide fertile ground for processing ideas and co-creating new knowledge, where productive conversations between eLearning faculty help improve teaching by identifying strengths, discussing challenges and finding solutions.

The sense of belonging in online learning community is an important index to measure learners' degree of emotional participation. In this paper., the influencing factors on the sense of belonging in online learning community are analyzed and its model for learners' sense of belonging is constructed. Text mining., collaborative filtering., visualization and other technologies will be used to mine learning characteristics of learner in the model. Furthermore., the model will recommend learning resources., guide learning path to learner and so on.

This study tested 3 instructor presence features in learning from video lectures: dynamic drawings, eye contact with the camera, and instructor visibility.

This study addressed several outcomes, implications, and possible future directions for blended learning (BL) in higher education in a world where information communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly communicate with each other.

"Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment."

This report examines new models of professional development that will expand your mind to a new vision of the future of education. Online professional development for administrators, teachers and school leaders will help build new models of schools--both online and blended--and better serve today's students during an information revolution in a global society.

The essential e-learning design manual, updated with the latest research, design principles, and examples e-Learning and the Science of Instruction is the ultimate handbook for evidence-based e-learning design.

Western universities receive strong scores on student-staff interaction, while those in Japan are rated highly on applying students' learning to the 'real world'

learning scientists have found that they must develop technological tools, curriculum, and especially theories that help them systematically understand and predict how learning occurs. Such design research offers several benefits: research results that consider the role of social context and have better potential for influencing educational practice, tangible products, and programs that can be adopted elsewhere; and research results that are validated through the consequences of their use, providing consequential evidence or validity (Messick, 1992).

I do not use the term neoliberal here lightly, it is one of those terms which is so widely and loosely used that it is in danger of becoming a detached signifier. What I mean by it here is 'a complex, often incoherent, unstable and even contradictory set of practices that are organized around a certain imagination of the "market" as a basis for the universalisation of market-based social relations, with the corresponding penetration in almost every single aspect of our lives' (Shamir, 2008, p. 3).

Exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with the concepts of community and communication in online higher education, this paper reconsiders the intention to replicate face-to-face learning and teaching strategies in online learning environments. Rather than beginning with the assumption that face-to-face education is the prototype for quality, the authors appraise the online learning environment as a unique medium which, by its nature, necessitates unique communication, community-building, teaching and learning strategies. This paper proposes an in-depth analysis of the potential unique affordances associated with online learning contexts as existing in their own right. The concepts of community and communication are explored in relation to online Communities of Practice (CoPs). The nature of face-to-face and online learning contexts are considered, especially in the light of the possibility of redefining "face-to-face" within the online realm, in addition to physical learning contexts. The paper identifies unique ways in which online communication (in the context of learning) is different from face-to-face communication, and consequently four ways in which this can be an advantage for students; namely, there is a measure of social egalitarianism, emphasis on verbal/written proficiency, time for reasoned response, and social agency. The paper provides grounding for further research into strategies that forge rich online learning experiences and suggests an empirical study as a next step.

Using survey responses from more than 2,800 colleges and universities and IPEDS data for 4,891, this study is aimed at answering fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education some of which include: Who Offers Online (Distance) Courses? How Many Students are Learning Online (at a Distance)? Is Online Learning Strategic? Are Learning Outcomes in Online Offerings Comparable to Face-to-Face? Do Students Require More Discipline to Complete Online Courses? Is Retention of Students Harder in Online Courses? and What Will Drive the Future of Higher Education? The survey analysis is based on a comprehensive sample of active, degree-granting institutions of higher education in the United States.

E-learning has gained much focus from educators and researchers, with many extolling e-learning over traditional learning. Despite this focus, implementation of e-learning systems often fails. The purpose of this paper is to consider a range of barriers, impacting the success of e-learning implementations, yet to the best of the authors' knowledge no conceptual framework is able to consolidate existing research. In the research article in press EURODL Shaw, Rawlinson, Sheffield (2020) we aimed to consolidate a conceptual framework

More about Design-based research

We offer a review of recent research and opinions. We include more formal research-based and "grey" literature around transformation in education - at a watershed moment of challenge, change and turmoil - for the UK Higher Education sector and its relationship with Europe. Juxtaposed on the changes in the UK and European political and educational ecologies, is the turbulence of the morphing of Open and Distance Learning into the much higher profile Online and Digital Education, and its place and contribution to achieving preferred and viable futures in the world. We explore the wicked problem of defence and stasis in the university sector despite the huge drivers for change. We explore ways in which learning with and from the future can be encouraged. We anticipate opportunities for universities to reimagine and adopt their roles in changing environments and to make challenging, developing and disruptive contributions to the online world and to offer advantage, benefit and foresight to their students and staff.