Browsing by Author "Carr, Tony"

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    Designing online conferences to promote professional development in Africa
    (International Journal of Education and Development using ICT, 2016-08-17) Carr, Tony
    Online conferences have become an increasingly well accepted mode of delivery and interaction for professional development processes. This is partly driven by changing online conference designs, improved bandwidth and increasing takeup of internet services globally. The growth of online conferences is also in part a response to the travel costs, security fears, and ecological impacts related to traditional face to face conferences.. The e/merge online conference series on the use of educational technology in Africa is an example of how online conferences can enhance professional networking and development of practitioners and researchers. Such conferences can bring together professionals with shared practices, facilitate learning at the boundaries of overlapping communities of practice and bring African and global experiences into a shared conversation about new opportunities and local contexts.
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    e/merging across Africa: five papers on the use of educational technology in African Higher Education
    (Kennesaw State University, 2013) Carr, Tony
    This guest editorial comments on the rapidly changing environment for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in African Higher Education Institutions (HEI), introduces the e/merge online conferences and gives a brief introduction to the papers in the special issue.
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    Facilitating Online
    (2014-09-15) Carr, Tony; Jaffer, Shaheeda; Smuts, Jeanne
    The guide contains the course model, week-by-week learning activities, general guidance to the course leader on how to implement and customise the course and specific guidelines on each learning activity.Course intended for training educators as online facilitators of fully online and mixed mode courses. The Centre for Educational Technology (CET) produced a Course Leader’s Guide to assist educators and trainers who wish to implement a course on online facilitation within their institution or across several institutions.
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    Factors which aid or inhibit peer-to-peer interaction during Project Based Learning in a virtual high school for anxious school refusers: a case study in the United Kingdom
    (2016) Royston-Muirhead, Lee; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Carr, Tony
    The prevalence of adolescent school absenteeism due to severe bullying in the UK exceeds 16 000 young people, and the occurrence of anxious school refusers (including self-exclusion due to bullying) is a well-documented issue that transcends geographical borders. The research context for this study is a virtual school (Red Balloon of the Air) that provides educational, therapeutic and social support for some of these young people who are missing out on an education, many of whom have had difficult experiences with peers in previous educational settings. The aim of this case study was to investigate factors that aid or inhibit peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration during a Project Based Learning (PBL) activity in a virtual high school for anxious school refusers. A conceptual framework drawing on the works of Moore (1989), Curtis and Lawson (2001) and Murphy (2004) was developed to analyse the subsidiary research questions. The findings show that notable levels of peer-to-peer interaction were recorded in the chat transcripts from the PBL activity (31.9%), however this interaction did not constitute any notable form of collaboration in the small group activities where the highest concentration of peer-to-peer interactions were recorded. The factors that appear to aid peer-to-peer interaction include incorporating small group work, pairing newer students with more experienced students, and introducing blended learning opportunities whereby students interact face-to-face. In addition to this, on average an increased length of time at the virtual school seems to increase peerto- peer interaction, with the exception of students experiencing emotional difficulty during activities, and level of student choice resulting in students sometimes choosing to working alone. The role of the teacher in peer-to-peer interactions and supporting collaboration is a prominent theme, in particular how the use of technology increases the teacher's access to student conversations which could make the teachers more likely to intervene with solutions. Peer-to-peer interaction and social presence are a pre-requisite for collaboration, however as evidenced in this study the presence of both does not automatically mean collaboration will occur. The limitations of this study include that the findings are based on one PBL activity, which took place in the final weeks of the academic year with no links to the national curriculum. The findings of the study serve as a foundation for further research in the field.
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    Improving the Teaching Staff Capacity to Integrate EdTech in the Teaching and Learning Processes at Eduardo Mondlane University
    (2022) Mate, Marisa Jeremias; Cox, Glenda; Carr, Tony
    Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) has been implementing training courses in the use of technologies in the teaching and learning process. However, despite the efforts made by the university, the use of these technologies by lecturers at UEM is limited, particularly in faculties outside the main campus. In response to the above-mentioned problem, a new multifaceted, constructivist approach was implemented at UEM, referred to here as the EdTech sub-program. This thesis is the result of the investigation of the effect of the new approach to integrating educational technology at UEM. In 2019, a series of four workshops were piloted through the EdTech sub-program with the purpose of promoting the use of educational technology by lecturers in teaching and learning. This qualitative study was carried out in four faculties. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 participants: 15 lecturers, who took part in the workshops of the EdTech sub-program, distributed across four faculties (Education, Veterinary, Engineering and Sciences) and two members from the EdTech sub-program. Three theories have been explored in this study. The workshops were based on social constructivist learning theory where participants (lecturers) were encouraged to create learning activities in a real-world setting to design learning activities in an authentic context.. Despite this theory-informed workshop design, lecturers did not all change their practice. This can largely be explained by the fact that the participants are adult and had varied skills with educational technology; they felt their courses were too complicated to be delivered only online; assessment structures were not clear; and some lecturers were resistant to change. The second theory is adult learning theory. This theory focuses on the “characteristics” of adult learners and what they bring to the learning process in the form of their experiences, which helps to explain the diverse response to the workshop. Community of practice theory was used as the third theory to explain how some faculties were willing to embrace educational technology and had history with previous projects. In these examples participants shared understandings concerning what educational technology is and how they have motivated other colleagues to use it. Barriers can be overcome through collaboration between the most active users and the most resistant ones to motivate them to use and promote a community of practice of educational technology users. Key findings also indicate that there is a certain resistance among lecturers to the use of educational technologies, justified by the complexity of courses in some disciplines; however, there are also lecturers who rely on technologies in their teaching practices and report that the results are satisfactory and encouraging.
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    Investigating faculty-based communities of practice for technology-augmented pedagogical practices at Eduardo Mondlane University: A case of innovators and adopters
    (2022) Miguel, Elódia Júlia da Graça; Mayisela, Catherine Thabisa; Carr, Tony
    Institutional inhibiting factors, and lack of motivation and support at the University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) result in lecturers not teaching using technology-augmented approaches. This research study investigates how a faculty-based EdTech-UEM professional development model could potentially foster Communities of Practice (CoPs) for technology-augmented pedagogical practices in UEM faculties. One way of addressing the technology-augmented pedagogical practices is to understand motivations, pedagogical practices, support and barriers of lecturers to adopt them. Lecturers (innovators and adopters: early adopters and late majority adopters) who participated in the four workshops on EdTech professional development, reported instances of innovators exhibiting peer leadership in group-learning activities during the workshops. The CoPs theoretical framework was used to investigate social learning and support among the innovators and adopters. After the workshops, which coincided with the beginning of the pandemic, 18 lecturer participants of the workshops were purposefully selected, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the goal of better understanding the support needs among lecturers (innovators and adopters) after the workshops as well as discussing the best ways to overcome potential barriers and challenges in technology-augmented pedagogical practices and provide a conducive environment for the emergence of CoPs in the adoption of technology-augmented pedagogical practices. The workshops were before the pandemic and lecturers implemented what they learnt during the pandemic. It was serendipitous as the workshops helped them to prepare for ERT even it was not the aim of the initiative that completed before the pandemic started. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the empirical data was analysed through an interpretive approach. The interpretive method looks at how people make sense of their experiences, as well as how they construct and attribute meaning to their worlds. The result of the interpretive analysis was based on the description of qualitative themes formed and related from each other in multiple case studies of both innovators and adopters. The anonymity of their responses was guaranteed.