Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming a significant, mission-driven trend within educational literature. To help address rising costs, instructors and designers are looking to OER to effectively replace traditional instructional content, which requires more than just identify and replace. Drawing from 51 OER studies conducted in countries…

Videos, made by teachers to meet specific learning outcomes, are a feature of the technological enhanced learning revolution that is sweeping through higher education. Pedagogical research into teaching videos has been broadly positive and focussed on their benefits for students' experience as well as how specific features of films can enhance…

The present study analyses the use of Twitter in the course Social Media and Digital Learning, taught as part of a master's programme at Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (Spain). The main purpose of the use of this resource was to develop a learning community. This was implemented through the micro design of activities. A mixed…

We explore how small-format laptops ("netbooks") have been used within evidence-based investigations undertaken by secondary school students, to what extent these are suitable for effectively supporting learners across different locations and contexts, and their implications for open learning. Over the course of seven trials with 300…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the pedagogical suitability of using cell phones to enhance learning through social interaction in distance education. Social interaction was used as a conceptual framework to explore the potential for using "MXit"--a cell-phone instant messaging system--to support and enhance learning for distance…

This paper presents and discusses the initial findings of a mobile language learning project undertaken in the context of an undergraduate distance-learning French language programme at The Open University (UK). The overall objective of the project was to investigate students' experiences when using their own portable devices for additional…

This paper describes the implementation of an online discussion forum as a means of facilitating case-based learning in an intermediate financial accounting course. The paper commences with a review of case-based learning literature and the use of online discussions as a delivery platform, linking these pedagogical approaches to the emerging needs…

Microblogging as a form of expression has gained momentum recently: a widely popular version is Twitter, which began by asking "What are you doing?" While posts responding to this question were often inane and ephemeral, microblogging can still be harnessed for research purposes. This paper reports on a case study with eight participants…

Discusses the results of an interview survey of 21 students enrolled in an Open University (Great Britain) course with a resource-based structure. The study examined use of CD-ROM materials, use of computer-mediated-communication as an information source, use of the Internet, and attitudes toward resource-based learning. (PEN)