This paper concerns sustainable approaches to design for learning, emphasising the need for designs to be able to thrive outside of the protective niches of project-based innovation. It builds on the "in medias res" framework and more specifically on a forward-oriented approach to design for learning: one that takes a pro-active design…

Students' imprudent use of social media might threaten their employability and undermine their emerging professional identities. Most professions acknowledge that any benefits of social media must be balanced against its potential to negatively affect workers' professional lives and the public trust. Professional bodies have developed social media…

This article reports on part of the author's PhD action research study. It examines the complexity of features that social media and Web 2.0 offer when combined with face-to-face teaching and learning. Action research was used to help redesign the learning programs of XXX's thirteen Middle Years classes over an eighteen month period. These…

While much of the e-learning development at universities in the past 15 years has been on institutionally supported Learning Management Systems (LMSs), alternative educational technologies are being taken up following the rapid growth in emerging technologies, including social networking sites (SNSs). While teachers may choose educational…

While the Internet has been described as fundamental to higher education students, social and leisure internet tools are also increasingly being used by these students to generate and maintain their social and professional networks and interactions. Rapid technological advancements have enabled greater and faster access to information for learning…

This article discusses the development of the online spaces that were used to create a learning framework: a student-centred framework that combined face-to-face teaching with online social and participatory media. The author, as part of her Doctoral research study, used action research as a mechanism for continual improvement as she redesigned…

Views about the role of Facebook and other social networking sites in education are extremely varied. Facebook threatens academic success and yet "certain kinds of Facebook use" can support study; indeed, Facebooking students may perform better than their unwired peers (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007). Facebook is emphatically a…

There are significant privacy, intellectual property, copyright and disclosure risks associated with the ill-considered use of social networking sites, however, the implementation of regulatory actions may also undermine the social and emerging educational utility of social networking sites for young people. Inevitably the burden of dealing with…

This paper examines the use of CMC in both Japanese and English dominated "domains" by Australian learners of Japanese. The natural, social online communication of 12 Australian university students with 18 of their Japanese contacts was collected for a period of up to four years, resulting in a corpus of approximately 2,000 instances of…

The introduction of a social software blog space called the Trading Room in an undergraduate finance unit generated a great deal of activity to support student learning. A subsequent evaluation of this innovation, viewed through the lens of Activity Theory, demonstrated that students perceived high value in the opportunity it provided for them to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential and the challenges of successful integration of ePortfolios and graduate attributes into the curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: An argument is presented about the positioning of ePortfolios, and their links to graduate attributes, that draws upon the experiences of working with…

Purpose: There is much hype about academics' attitude to Wikipedia. This paper seeks to go beyond anecdotal evidence by drawing on empirical research to ascertain how academics respond to Wikipedia and the implications these responses have for the take-up of Web 2.0+. It aims to test the hypothesis that Web 2.0+, as a platform built around the…

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce an enterprise-wide Web 2.0 learning support platform--SNAP, developed at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Pointing to the evolution of the social web, the paper discusses the potential for the development of e-learning platforms that employ constructivist, connectivist,…

There is a growing demand for advice about effective, time efficient ways of using ICT to support student learning in higher education. This paper uses one such area of activity--networked learning--as a context in which to outline a novel approach to educational design. The paper makes two main contributions. It provides a high level view of the…

The learning needs of older adults living in rural Tasmania, Australia, and the potential of online technologies to foster local literacy and community well-being were examined. The study used a qualitative inquiry strategy that included visits to three sites to investigate the literacy and numeracy implications of senior citizens' use of online…