Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify staff skills and competencies on which Chinese open universities should focus their professional development activities in order to enhance the quality of open and distance learning (ODL) in China. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from surveys of 220 academic and academic-related…

Teachers' educational philosophies regulate their curriculum-design orientations, shaping their teaching decisions and practices. However, theoretical assumptions in this relationship were not tested empirically in different contexts. To this end, this cross-sectional survey design study aimed to examine the relationships between teachers'…

This article contributes to a long-standing conversation about the implementation of service-learning by proposing an updated revision for the 21st century: critically engaged civic learning (CECL). The term service-learning is problematic as it invokes inequitable power dynamics that inherently privilege one group over another, with more…

Developed first in the late 1990s by the Centre for Applied Special Technology, the pedagogical framework known as "Universal Design for Learning" (UDL) has drawn increasing investment from K-12 and post-secondary institutions. The promoters of UDL often frame the approach as being "based in neuroscience," and further as an…

The present research aimed to examine the effectiveness of the ADDIE model as used in teaching online in the LMS of Blackboard® and its facilities such as discussion boards, forums and blogs for improving the creative writing skills of EFL college students. The researcher utilized a quasi-experimental method, involving a pretest, posttest and…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics are likely to have a significant long-term impact on higher education (HE). The scope of this impact is hard to grasp partly because the literature is siloed, as well as the changing meaning of the concepts themselves. But developments are surrounded by controversies in terms of what is technically…

Little studies have been conducted on the question of the use of augmented reality technology in the education field. The effects of augmented reality technology on the educational environment of tertiary students need to be further explored. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of augmented reality technology in…

When learning a new concept, should students engage in problem solving followed by instruction (PS-I) or instruction followed by problem solving (I-PS)? Noting that there is a passionate debate about the design of initial learning, we report evidence from a meta-analysis of 53 studies with 166 comparisons that compared PS-I with I-PS design. Our…

The impact of the medical curricular reform on anatomy education has been inconclusive. A pervasive perception is that graduates do not possess a sufficient level of anatomical knowledge for safe medical practice; however, the reason is less well-studied. This qualitative study investigated the perceived challenges in learning anatomy, possible…

Bullying and cyberbullying are global phenomena negatively impacting on children's and young people's (CYP's) mental health and wellbeing and affecting their school social experiences and learning outcomes. Many interventions and prevention approaches have been employed over the decades, most impacting differentially, with some success in certain…

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic raises a question about the role of national curriculum frameworks in acquiring and applying knowledge about hygiene and prevention of disease. For curriculum designers, this means determining what children of different ages should learn about these topics and how they should develop and apply this knowledge.…

The argument of this theoretical paper is that the existence and availability of suitable digital curriculum resources, accelerated by the recent pandemic, have required a revision of the pedagogical landscape in terms of ways in which students can be empowered to (co-)design their own curriculum trajectories. For this purpose, I argue, students…

Despite the fact that the majority of museum visitors are often very young children, much research in museums focuses on pre-teen learners (ages 8-12). Our goal in this study was to investigate the behaviors of children aged 5-8 during a visit to a science exhibition. We aim to develop a methodology to assess children's levels of engagement with…

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment grounded in the learning sciences and neuroscience. In this article, the author proposes a mathematical version of UDL called UDL Math. She describes three classrooms that include students with disabilities in meaningful mathematics and explores how the…

The importance of chemistry practical work in enhancing students' performance and 21st-century skills has been highlighted in the literature. However, Malaysian Matriculation chemistry lecturers were lack of knowledge in the 21st-century pedagogies and practiced the cook-book recipe teaching style which proved ineffective in enhancing students'…