Some adult learners are self-directed, but most benefit from ongoing guidance and support from educators--even more so in technology-rich environments. The purpose of this column is to explore ways to leverage digital tools to enhance collaborative learning experiences among adult educators and learners. Rather than aim for mastery of a digital…

Curriculum and professional standards mandate that digital technologies are used in schooling, and consequently, universities are required to prepare pre-service teachers for this in initial teacher education degrees. In response, one Australian university developed an inquiry-based collaborative approach, called creative inquiry. Feedback from…

Technology to support collaborative learning has come a long way. Interactive tabletops support collaboration when correctly integrated in activity design. While these devices can now, in principle, be purchased by the general public, wide adoption in schools is hindered by their high cost and lack of mobility. In this paper, we analyze the…

John Dewey argued that for education to be democratic, it is important for students to be not merely spectators but also participants in learning. Teachers sometimes find personal computing devices to be distracting or to contribute to passivity rather than activity in the classroom. In this essay we examine the question of whether a student's…

This paper explores the feature of dynamicity (a composite of temporal and local properties) in research on collaborative digital writing (CDW) in academic writing assignments. The paper traces the ways in which current research typically approaches CDW and identifies the underlying elements of current and technological inquiry in this field:…

In an age of ready access to people, online spaces and information, canonized formal knowledge acquisition is being disrupted. The emergence of socially constructed knowledge based on connected learning is democratising education and re-framing how formal and informal learning is considered. What we currently understand connected learning to be is…

Nurturing twenty-first-century competency is one important agenda in this era, especially in developing collaborative learning and critical thinking skills. Yet, facilitating such a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment is challenging. Although several technological platforms from past research studies were developed to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework as a six-stage guided implementation for educators to embed Canva (an online design tool) into their marketing subjects to encourage super-skills of the 21st century including stronger collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication which in turn increases a…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of student collaboration and use of technology as a means of teaching; not cheating. For many years, education has centered on the concept of individual students working on problems alone, memorizing some random facts, and then regurgitating the information to the teacher in the form of a test.…

This paper presents the concept of silent discussions and offers insight into how the method can support linguistic autonomy, accessibility, and student accountability. It also outlines techniques used to improve discussion outcomes in secondary and other classrooms. Silence, while seemingly counterintuitive in classrooms and other spaces where…

Isolation is a consideration for many writers and is a term that has become synonymous with the pandemic. Perhaps this explains why the focus for much practice and research on writing development from a learning development and academic literacies context has traditionally focussed upon in-person support. Digital writing practices offer…

This article explores the multifaceted role of Facebook in second language (L2) classrooms, with an emphasis on English language teaching and learning. Through Facebook's widespread popularity and its integration into educational settings since its launch in 2004, this article aims to address the gap by examining the benefits and teaching…

Mobile devices are ubiquitous, but their potential for adaptive educational interventions remains largely untapped. We identify three key promises of mobile interventions for educational research and practice: 1) intervening when it is most beneficial (i.e., "just-in-time adaptivity"), 2) estimating causal effects of interventions in…

In the 2023-24 Speak Up Research facilitated by Project Tomorrow®, 75% of high school students and 66% of middle school students say their principal use of technology in class is to complete an online quiz or assessment. While online testing provides many benefits to educators and schools in terms of efficiency and potentially greater access to…

Purpose: This paper aims to present a practical guide for designing effective synchronous online teaching to support student engagement. Design/methodology/approach: This practical guide was developed by drawing insights from literature and our own practical experiences. Findings: This paper developed BEST principles (i.e., Building positive…