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Academic education entails that students engage in open-ended assignments. Global education entails that students interact in projects with peers world-wide. The logistic challenge of offering academic project work to a large, heterogeneous student body, while keeping instructor workload manageable, is daunting. Project relays on the PRESTO software platform meet this challenge. In a project relay, students work in a virtual peer group on assignments that are organized in successive steps, where each step is peer reviewed. Unlike a regular peer review, the reviewing students revise the work they have reviewed. They then add the next step to it, and pass the improved-and-extended work on to another student. The PRESTO software fully automates the relay workflow, facilitates defining, monitoring, and grading projects, and has been adapted for use in LTI-compliant MOOCs. Since 2013, over 20 project relays have run in several courses at Delft University of Technology. Evaluations show that a project relay realizes the intended learning outcomes, but can at times be stressful for students. This prompts ideas for further pedagogical and technical improve¬ments.

Digital networked society is learning in various platforms, in different ways and at selected time and pace. What are the preferences of members of digital and networked society for the learning platforms? What resources should be used to better fulfil nowadays learner expectations? And how higher education institutions are preparing for that? These are the main research questions of this research. In order to answer the research questions, the theory analysis and quantitative research were performed. The results of the research findings of the preferred learning ways and requirements for virtual learning platform of the online learners who speak Lithuanian are discussed in the paper.

Abstract


The meteoric growth in on‐line education has focused attention on virtual learning communities.


Critics suggest that the on‐line learner suffers isolation resulting from diminished interaction with others and thus question the quality of the on‐line educational experience.


A case study is presented of an American MBA programme at the University of Wisconsin‐Whitewater that compares interactions in on‐line and traditional learning communities.


Evidence is presented which suggests that on‐line students score higher on measures of interaction than traditional students. Furthermore, interaction is important in predicting effectiveness of courses regardless of mode of delivery. This suggests that interaction can occur in on‐line courses and is important in designing such offerings.


Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Der Beitrag enthält einige Betrachtungen über den Nutzen und die Probleme von virtuellen Seminaren in den Hochschulen. Die deutschen Universitäten unternehmen zwar verstärkt Anstrengungen, multimediale Anwendungen in Forschung und Lehre zu integrieren und virtuelles Lernen im Bildungsangebot fest zu verankern, jedoch bestehen nach Ansicht des Autors immer noch erhebliche Mängel sowohl in der technischen Ausstattung als auch in der didaktischen Aufbereitung. Er beschreibt die Unterschiede zwischen virtuellen und realen Seminaren, der weniger in den vermittelten Inhalten oder Lehrformen, sondern in der Lernsituation besteht. Virtuelle Seminare bieten vor allem neue Möglichkeiten des Lernens und können die Beschränkungen von unterfinanzierten und überfüllten Hochschulen aufheben. Sie erfordern jedoch einen hohen technischen Betreuungsaufwand, und den Studierenden fehlen die notwendigen personalen und sozialen Kontaktmöglichkeiten. Das computergestützte Lernen in virtuellen Seminaren kann daher kein Ersatz, sondern nur eine Ergänzung der konventionellen Lernformen sein. (ICI2)

Online training is demanded in the ubiquitous society we live in, and this is especially true if we consider the current situation at universities due to the Government issuing a state of alarm decree which requests all citizens to remain at home. The goal of this study is to determine the opinion of university students from different Spanish campuses on e-learning platforms, by the means of a descriptive and correlational study design, with N = 431. The results reveal that there is still a long road ahead to ensure that these tools work optimally to enable professors to fully exert their teaching profession. We can conclude that the online teaching system needs to be improved regarding the technical service that the university offers.

The use of state-of-art immersive technologies enhanced undergraduate students' motivation to learn. The main variables for the comparative analysis are the opinions of surveyed students for three academic terms and the perception of motivation as an engine for learning. The data used for this article comes from undergraduate students at a Mexican university, Tecnológico de Monterrey, during January 2019 up to June 2020. The virtual activity designed for fostering motivation for is called: Welcome to Ur, Mesopotamia. The activity consists of a recreation of the ancient city of Ur using 3D animation and virtual reality goggles. Each student was able to travel back on time and explore by foot the streets, temples, and palaces of the Mesopotamian city. The courses where the educational experiences took place, "Sustainable Cities and Communities" and "Citizenship and Democracy" reported higher satisfaction and motivation to learn that those courses that did not use the virtual tool. The use of technological tools helped students to have better understanding of the academic content. The students reported feeling motivated to learn more about political history due to the immersive learning activity.

Online training is demanded in the ubiquitous society we live in, and this is especially true if we consider the current situation at universities due to the Government issuing a state of alarm decree which requests all citizens to remain at home. The goal of this study is to determine the opinion of university students from different Spanish campuses on e-learning platforms, by the means of a descriptive and correlational study design, with N = 431. The results reveal that there is still a long road ahead to ensure that these tools work optimally to enable professors to fully exert their teaching profession. We can conclude that the online teaching system needs to be improved regarding the technical service that the university offers.

This chapter explores the challenges of learning analytics within a virtual learning infrastructure to support self-directed learning and change for individuals, teams, organizational leaders, and researchers. Drawing on sixteen years of research into dispositional learning analytics, it addresses technical, political, pedagogical, and theoretical issues involved in designing learning for complex systems whose purpose is to improve or transform their outcomes. Using the concepts of 1) layers - people at different levels in the system, 2) loops - rapid feedback for self-directed change at each level, and 3) processes - key elements of learning as a journey of change that need to be attended to, it explores these issues from practical experience, and presents working examples. Habermasian forms of rationality are used to identify challenges at the human/data interface showing how the same data point can be apprehended through emancipatory, hermeneutical, and strategic ways of knowing. Applications of these ideas to education and industry are presented, linking learning journeys with customer journeys as a way of organizing a range of learning analytics that can be collated within a technical learning infrastructure designed to support organizational or community transformation.