I have more than twenty years of experience in teaching and learning on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for educational purposes gained during my academic degrees and my work experience in a variety of UK Universities. My research interests include the influence of educational technology in the teaching and learning process and especially on how people learn, how people can be facilitated to learn and how technology design assist people to learn.
This questionnaire could be used to explore the difference beteen Facebook and Instagram users in... more This questionnaire could be used to explore the difference beteen Facebook and Instagram users in problematic use and well-being. Questions about the number of received "likes" and Facebook friends/Instagram followers as well as the importance of "likes" and Facebook friends/Instagram followers allow researchers to further compare the two social media platforms.
This study compared student learning engagement from two UK departments exploring their participa... more This study compared student learning engagement from two UK departments exploring their participation in face-to-face and synchronous online learning environments. Overall, 446 undergraduate students from Psychology (soft/non-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline) and Electrical Engineering and Electronics (EEE) (hard/STEM discipline) completed an online questionnaire over the second semester of the 2020–2021 academic year, where the teaching was mainly online. The questionnaire included validated scales regarding teaching and students’ characteristics and an open-ended question regarding the role of learning environments. There was a significant difference between the two learning environments in both departments, with most of the students believing that they were better engaged with their learning process in face-to-face environments (quantitative analysis). Additionally, the thematic analysis of student qualitative responses revealed that online stud...
Despite the high expectation of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to accelerate meaningful edu... more Despite the high expectation of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to accelerate meaningful educational innovations for more interactive learning and teaching, resistance to changes exists, and innovations are fading over time. How to promote widespread and steady adoption of VLE enabled innovations remains an open question. This study uses mixed methods to examine 13 years of VLE logs, archival documents, and interviews with 51 teachers to investigate two research questions: What is the threshold stage of the institutionalisation process of VLE enabled innovation, and how does the innovation become institutionalised in the threshold stage? We found that the majority VLE enabled innovations (such as virtual classrooms and interactive quizzes) were abandoned or faded before the new or changed learning and teaching practices were fully habitualised. The empirical results show that individual cognitive divergence and collective consensus could promote habitualised institutional leverage through a threshold process, namely, meaning-making. These findings extend our understanding of the cognitive mechanism, and we suggest that universities provide continuous facilitating and teacher support, both on technological use and pedagogical design, to help teachers develop the meaning of the action as a priority. Research significance and implications to the educational transformation in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.
The Virtual Brain Viewer provides the visual support to Psychology students for the cognitive and... more The Virtual Brain Viewer provides the visual support to Psychology students for the cognitive and biology topics. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) has been applied to this learning material.
The aim of this questionnaire is to explore the connections of digital device usage, digital capa... more The aim of this questionnaire is to explore the connections of digital device usage, digital capabilities (JISC elements, cogntive dimension, technical dimension and social emotional dimension), employability awareness and self-regulation. The part of cognitive, technical and social emotional dimensions have been inspired by Ng's (2012) work Ng, W. (2012) Empowering Scientific Literacy Through Digital Literacy and Multiliteracies, Nova Science Publishers: New York.
ABSTRACT Computer-assisted teaching and the learning environments that support it, have risen rap... more ABSTRACT Computer-assisted teaching and the learning environments that support it, have risen rapidly in the agenda of Higher Education over the recent years. In various educational institutions nowadays more and more teachers make an effort to adopt information technology to their tutorials, assessment methods and laboratory sessions in an attempt to improve students’ motivation and performance. This integration facilitates the teachers to prepare quite flexible teaching approaches and meet the diverse students’ learning needs and expectations. Computer-assisted teaching usually includes multimedia instructional formats, such as animation, video and simulation, and/or virtual learning environments such as WebCT and Blackboard. Parameters which influence the effectiveness of computer-assisted teaching are the design and the integration of the electronic materials into courses, the learners’ characteristics, their needs and expectations for the courses and the teachers’ characteristics in terms of web-based professional development. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the views of chemistry students on the use of computer-assisted teaching and teachers’ efforts to incorporate blended learning in their lectures. By purposely choosing examples from science education, which combines lectures and practical work, we describe the students’ opinion on computer-assisted teaching and then use this feedback to demonstrate how teachers can build a successful computer-assisted course. We further examine the correlation between the electronic learning material and the students’ background knowledge and the characteristics that allow them to adapt it into their learning style. Finally, we show how the teacher can effectively use his electronic material resources into blending learning activities, which involve a combination of face-to-face interactions and technologically mediated interactions between students and teachers.
For helping us deliver timely decisions to our authors, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher would l... more For helping us deliver timely decisions to our authors, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher would like thank the following individuals who contributed reviews from 2010 through June 2011. We applaud your efforts and dedication to the community. ... Educ Inf Technol (2011) 16:321–322 DOI 10.1007/s10639-011-9172-x ... Pavlo Antonenko Aasim Azooz Konstantinos Baltzis Moshe Barak Georges-Louis Baron M. Bessagnet Mithun Bhaskar Ben Blake T. Brinda Cathy Burnett Ana Paula Couceiro Figueira Eva Dakich Bill Davey Lin Deng Helen Drenoyianni ...
Although virtual learning environments (VLEs) have long been forecasted to accelerate the educati... more Although virtual learning environments (VLEs) have long been forecasted to accelerate the educational revolution, their adoption by teachers and students has not always been as effective as is expe...
This IR spectra simulation is an educational software which includes a wide range of chemical com... more This IR spectra simulation is an educational software which includes a wide range of chemical compounds supporting real digested IR spectra. When you unzip the folder, click on the "IR spectra simulation" exe file to run the program. Inside the folder entitled "Tasks for students" you can find three recommended sets of activities. In the case of the use of software for any purposes, it is expected that the publication source will be properly cited.
Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on e-Learning, 2019
The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend... more The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend with pedagogical components. The aim of this study is to examine how digital learning tools could enhance first year modules supporting blended learning approaches. Two psychology modules are used as examples to discuss two different blended approaches and study student engagement with learning process by exploring their performance on online activities under the perspective of module design, students' engagement with formative and summative assessments, and digital literacy. The digital learning tools that supported the two blended learning approaches were wikis, blogs, online tests. This investigation was conducted for two subsequent years in a UK Psychology School in which a large number of students were enrolled. The total number of students who participated in this investigation for the 2016-2017 academic year was 407 and for the 2017-2018 academic year was 405. In the first example, an academic performance comparison was conducted between the students who have been engaged with online formative activities and those students who have attended the face-to-face classes only in a transferable skills module. In the second example, a compulsory online continuous assessment process was followed to support a first-year psychology module aiming to enhance student learning on biology topics. This article discusses how students might engage with online formative and summative activities in association with their performance and how different assessment types alongside with the use of different digital learning tools might enhance blended learning environments. Findings of this study suggest that teachers should connect formative with summative assessments in order to increase student performance and they should consider blended learning approaches under the perspective of pedagogical principles and continuous assessment in order to increase student engagement with their learning process.
The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own di... more The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own digital devices into a lecture theatre. A total of 361 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Liverpool who used at least one digital device during lecture time fully completed an online questionnaire (159 first-, 124 second- and 78 third-year psychology students) during the 2018–2019 academic year. Although all the three years of undergraduate students brought laptops and/or smartphones into a lecture theatre, there was no significant difference in academic performance over the years of studies. The findings have linked student multitasking processes in a lecture theatre to Social Cognitive Theory principles (reciprocal interactions between behaviours, learning environment, and individuals). There was a significant difference between the three years regarding the use of applications and student characteristics after controlling for the different types of devices. Student...
This questionnaire could be used to explore the difference beteen Facebook and Instagram users in... more This questionnaire could be used to explore the difference beteen Facebook and Instagram users in problematic use and well-being. Questions about the number of received "likes" and Facebook friends/Instagram followers as well as the importance of "likes" and Facebook friends/Instagram followers allow researchers to further compare the two social media platforms.
This study compared student learning engagement from two UK departments exploring their participa... more This study compared student learning engagement from two UK departments exploring their participation in face-to-face and synchronous online learning environments. Overall, 446 undergraduate students from Psychology (soft/non-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline) and Electrical Engineering and Electronics (EEE) (hard/STEM discipline) completed an online questionnaire over the second semester of the 2020–2021 academic year, where the teaching was mainly online. The questionnaire included validated scales regarding teaching and students’ characteristics and an open-ended question regarding the role of learning environments. There was a significant difference between the two learning environments in both departments, with most of the students believing that they were better engaged with their learning process in face-to-face environments (quantitative analysis). Additionally, the thematic analysis of student qualitative responses revealed that online stud...
Despite the high expectation of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to accelerate meaningful edu... more Despite the high expectation of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to accelerate meaningful educational innovations for more interactive learning and teaching, resistance to changes exists, and innovations are fading over time. How to promote widespread and steady adoption of VLE enabled innovations remains an open question. This study uses mixed methods to examine 13 years of VLE logs, archival documents, and interviews with 51 teachers to investigate two research questions: What is the threshold stage of the institutionalisation process of VLE enabled innovation, and how does the innovation become institutionalised in the threshold stage? We found that the majority VLE enabled innovations (such as virtual classrooms and interactive quizzes) were abandoned or faded before the new or changed learning and teaching practices were fully habitualised. The empirical results show that individual cognitive divergence and collective consensus could promote habitualised institutional leverage through a threshold process, namely, meaning-making. These findings extend our understanding of the cognitive mechanism, and we suggest that universities provide continuous facilitating and teacher support, both on technological use and pedagogical design, to help teachers develop the meaning of the action as a priority. Research significance and implications to the educational transformation in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.
The Virtual Brain Viewer provides the visual support to Psychology students for the cognitive and... more The Virtual Brain Viewer provides the visual support to Psychology students for the cognitive and biology topics. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) has been applied to this learning material.
The aim of this questionnaire is to explore the connections of digital device usage, digital capa... more The aim of this questionnaire is to explore the connections of digital device usage, digital capabilities (JISC elements, cogntive dimension, technical dimension and social emotional dimension), employability awareness and self-regulation. The part of cognitive, technical and social emotional dimensions have been inspired by Ng's (2012) work Ng, W. (2012) Empowering Scientific Literacy Through Digital Literacy and Multiliteracies, Nova Science Publishers: New York.
ABSTRACT Computer-assisted teaching and the learning environments that support it, have risen rap... more ABSTRACT Computer-assisted teaching and the learning environments that support it, have risen rapidly in the agenda of Higher Education over the recent years. In various educational institutions nowadays more and more teachers make an effort to adopt information technology to their tutorials, assessment methods and laboratory sessions in an attempt to improve students’ motivation and performance. This integration facilitates the teachers to prepare quite flexible teaching approaches and meet the diverse students’ learning needs and expectations. Computer-assisted teaching usually includes multimedia instructional formats, such as animation, video and simulation, and/or virtual learning environments such as WebCT and Blackboard. Parameters which influence the effectiveness of computer-assisted teaching are the design and the integration of the electronic materials into courses, the learners’ characteristics, their needs and expectations for the courses and the teachers’ characteristics in terms of web-based professional development. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the views of chemistry students on the use of computer-assisted teaching and teachers’ efforts to incorporate blended learning in their lectures. By purposely choosing examples from science education, which combines lectures and practical work, we describe the students’ opinion on computer-assisted teaching and then use this feedback to demonstrate how teachers can build a successful computer-assisted course. We further examine the correlation between the electronic learning material and the students’ background knowledge and the characteristics that allow them to adapt it into their learning style. Finally, we show how the teacher can effectively use his electronic material resources into blending learning activities, which involve a combination of face-to-face interactions and technologically mediated interactions between students and teachers.
For helping us deliver timely decisions to our authors, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher would l... more For helping us deliver timely decisions to our authors, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher would like thank the following individuals who contributed reviews from 2010 through June 2011. We applaud your efforts and dedication to the community. ... Educ Inf Technol (2011) 16:321–322 DOI 10.1007/s10639-011-9172-x ... Pavlo Antonenko Aasim Azooz Konstantinos Baltzis Moshe Barak Georges-Louis Baron M. Bessagnet Mithun Bhaskar Ben Blake T. Brinda Cathy Burnett Ana Paula Couceiro Figueira Eva Dakich Bill Davey Lin Deng Helen Drenoyianni ...
Although virtual learning environments (VLEs) have long been forecasted to accelerate the educati... more Although virtual learning environments (VLEs) have long been forecasted to accelerate the educational revolution, their adoption by teachers and students has not always been as effective as is expe...
This IR spectra simulation is an educational software which includes a wide range of chemical com... more This IR spectra simulation is an educational software which includes a wide range of chemical compounds supporting real digested IR spectra. When you unzip the folder, click on the "IR spectra simulation" exe file to run the program. Inside the folder entitled "Tasks for students" you can find three recommended sets of activities. In the case of the use of software for any purposes, it is expected that the publication source will be properly cited.
Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on e-Learning, 2019
The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend... more The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend with pedagogical components. The aim of this study is to examine how digital learning tools could enhance first year modules supporting blended learning approaches. Two psychology modules are used as examples to discuss two different blended approaches and study student engagement with learning process by exploring their performance on online activities under the perspective of module design, students' engagement with formative and summative assessments, and digital literacy. The digital learning tools that supported the two blended learning approaches were wikis, blogs, online tests. This investigation was conducted for two subsequent years in a UK Psychology School in which a large number of students were enrolled. The total number of students who participated in this investigation for the 2016-2017 academic year was 407 and for the 2017-2018 academic year was 405. In the first example, an academic performance comparison was conducted between the students who have been engaged with online formative activities and those students who have attended the face-to-face classes only in a transferable skills module. In the second example, a compulsory online continuous assessment process was followed to support a first-year psychology module aiming to enhance student learning on biology topics. This article discusses how students might engage with online formative and summative activities in association with their performance and how different assessment types alongside with the use of different digital learning tools might enhance blended learning environments. Findings of this study suggest that teachers should connect formative with summative assessments in order to increase student performance and they should consider blended learning approaches under the perspective of pedagogical principles and continuous assessment in order to increase student engagement with their learning process.
The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own di... more The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own digital devices into a lecture theatre. A total of 361 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Liverpool who used at least one digital device during lecture time fully completed an online questionnaire (159 first-, 124 second- and 78 third-year psychology students) during the 2018–2019 academic year. Although all the three years of undergraduate students brought laptops and/or smartphones into a lecture theatre, there was no significant difference in academic performance over the years of studies. The findings have linked student multitasking processes in a lecture theatre to Social Cognitive Theory principles (reciprocal interactions between behaviours, learning environment, and individuals). There was a significant difference between the three years regarding the use of applications and student characteristics after controlling for the different types of devices. Student...
Traditional teaching strategy has been mainly supported due to the grown number of students in Hi... more Traditional teaching strategy has been mainly supported due to the grown number of students in Higher Education compared with others teaching approaches based on inquiry, discovery and problem. Main characteristics of the traditional teaching approach are the minimal involvement of the teacher and the minimal needs of resources such as time, space and equipment. However, this strategy has been criticised as placing very little emphasis on thinking and being unrealistic in its portrayal of scientific instrumentation. As there has been a remarkable rise in the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in university teaching, it is essential for teachers to identify the benefits of computer-based applications along with the flexibility that they offer in order to construct an effective teaching strategy. The combination of the instructional material, learning theories, pedagogical aspects, computer-based educational tools and the range of the mixture between different modes of learning is required by teachers in order to adopt their own teaching strategy. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate teaching procedures based on blended learning by using examples from chemical education. Blended learning is becoming increasingly popular in Higher Education, as the combination of face-to-face activities with technologically mediated interactions promotes a flexible and motivating learning environment. In this work we will present an example of a comparison between two different integration approaches by using two different computer-based educational tools (a simulation and a real-time application) on the same course which reveals the flexibility of ICT and their influence on teaching and learning. We will also demonstrate how with the integration of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) into laboratory education teachers could facilitate their teaching approach according to their own and their students’ needs. The teaching approaches in all the examples are interpreted in terms of the university facilities, courses’ aim and objectives, teachers’ role, learning outcomes and students’ actively participation in the courses.
In S. Abramovich (Ed), Computers in Education, New York: NOVA Science Publishers. ISBN: 978-1-62100-621-3, pp. 93-119., 2012
The transition from the industrial age to the information age has led universities worldwide to p... more The transition from the industrial age to the information age has led universities worldwide to prepare students to keep up with current technological developments. Teachers who wish to use and integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into their curriculums and courses should be aware of the technological capabilities in combination with the quality of education that technology offers. In almost all universities, classrooms are equipped with Personal Computers (PCs), Internet access, video projectors etc. that allow teachers to present their teaching materials on a large screen in the classroom. Additionally, in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), animations, virtual simulations, videos etc. are embedded in online/distance courses in order to facilitate teaching and learning. This chapter demonstrates the influence of ICT on teaching and learning starting from the conditions in a typical classroom and expands to a virtual classroom. The objectives of this chapter are to explain how the major technological developments are embedded into teaching and learning, which are the major benefits of their use in education and what is the role of psychology and pedagogy in the teaching and learning process. The quality of Higher Education is related to the adopted teaching strategy, the students’ learning experience, students’ and teachers’ attitudes and styles, learning content etc. The way in which students learn by using ICT, how educational tools facilitate learning and the teachers’ and students’ role in the technology adaptation are some of the significant points that are addressed this chapter. Rapid developments in technology, such as three-dimensions monitor screens and virtual reality immersive systems, could generate significant changes to teaching and learning. Before, however, universities should even begin to contemplate utilising such advanced technologies into their curriculums several key considerations need to be addressed first, which we will attempt to illustrate in this chapter.
This chapter describes important issues regarding research students’ participation in a virtual c... more This chapter describes important issues regarding research students’ participation in a virtual community. Within a virtual community, university staff can communicate with research students without geographical/space constraints, and research students can exchange views, materials and experience with their peers and/or academics in a flexible learning environment. Students’ participation in Virtual Communities is mainly based on socio-emotional and informational motivations. Initially, this chapter describes the conditions of research in a traditional environment and the role of students and academics in it, along with the role of pedagogical and psychological aspects in Virtual Communities. Examples from a University Virtual Community developed in a Virtual Learning Environment and a Facebook™ closed group will be presented. Apart from discussion forums, blended learning activities also increase students’ engagement in Virtual Communities. Technical issues and difficulties based on different learning environments, and university members’ experience and familiarity with technology are highlighted and discussed.
13th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation -ICERI2020, 2020
The rapid development of the Internet has vividly enhanced academic practices related to teaching... more The rapid development of the Internet has vividly enhanced academic practices related to teaching and learning processes. Consequently, the development of learner's academic skills (literacy capabilities such as thinking, communicating ideas, and intellectual work), as well as the pattern of working, thinking, communicating and learning in Hight Education (HE) context has changed dramatically [1]. Developing such skills and knowing how to; search, authenticate and critically evaluate material allow students to support their learning process [2]. Learners' characteristics in an e-learning context along with the intentions, behaviours and strategies influence how they utilise technology to suit their learning (e.g., self-regulation and academic performance) [3]. A three-dimensional framework has studied digital capabilities under the perspectives of Technical (e.g., connection and use of devices and their peripherals), Cognitive (e.g. ability to think critically in the search, evaluate and produce digital information) and Social-emotional (e.g. ability to use the Internet for communication, collaboration and learning) purposes [4]. The aim of this investigation was to gain an insight into how University student digital capabilities and independent learning have been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Overall, 357 UK undergraduate students (141 Psychology and 215 Veterinary Sciences students) across the first three years of the programmes completed an online questionnaire. The survey elicited a wide range of interesting responses on students' use of digital devices, engagement during lecture time and independent learning, preferences, and attitude to digital technologies as well as the extent their teachers used digital tools in their teaching. The major contribution of this investigation to the digital literacy area and examination of student views concerning the move of teaching from a traditional to a completely online environment. This main finding of this study is directly connected to digital "Visitors and Residents" (V&R) model [5], as the students' attitude towards digital learning and their skills have not affected by the COVID-19 lockdown period.
ECEL 2019 18th European Conference on e-Learning, Copenhagen, Demark, 2019
The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend... more The adoption of technology to a University curriculum is challenging and requires a complex blend with pedagogical components. The aim of this study is to examine how digital learning tools could enhance first year modules supporting blended learning approaches. Two psychology modules are used as examples to discuss two different blended approaches and study student engagement with learning process by exploring their performance on online activities under the perspective of module design, students' engagement with formative and summative assessments, and digital literacy. The digital learning tools that supported the two blended learning approaches were wikis, blogs, online tests. This investigation was conducted for two subsequent years in a UK Psychology School in which a large number of students were enrolled. The total number of students who participated in this investigation for the 2016-2017 academic year was 407 and for the 2017-2018 academic year was 405. In the first example, an academic performance comparison was conducted between the students who have been engaged with online formative activities and those students who have attended the face-to-face classes only in a transferable skills module. In the second example, a compulsory online continuous assessment process was followed to support a first-year psychology module aiming to enhance student learning on biology topics. This article discusses how students might engage with online formative and summative activities in association with their performance and how different assessment types alongside with the use of different digital learning tools might enhance blended learning environments. Findings of this study suggest that teachers should connect formative with summative assessments in order to increase student performance and they should consider blended learning approaches under the perspective of pedagogical principles and continuous assessment in order to increase student engagement with their learning process.
During the time of COVID-19 lockdown over spring 2020, universities shifted teaching from on-camp... more During the time of COVID-19 lockdown over spring 2020, universities shifted teaching from on-campus blended learning to an emergency remote fully online approach. The aim of this study was to compare Psychology and Veterinary Science undergraduate students’ academic performance with their responses on a self-reported questionnaire regarding their digital capabilities, individual’s characteristics, and the role of environment on their independent learning process over the first COVID-19 lockdown period. Social-Cognitive Theory was adopted to conceptualise students’ behaviour, individuals’ characteristics, and learning environment with their academic performance to a learning framework. A total of 303 students from both disciplines (133 Psychology and 170 Veterinary Science undergraduate students) participated in this study by completing an online questionnaire after following the teaching shift from blended learning to full remote online approach at a UK University during the 2019–2020 academic year. Differences between students’ responses were identified due to their discipline’s curricular structure, students’ study behaviours (i.e., being exposed to unrelated learning activities), and students’ cognitive effort to think critically in the search, evaluation and managing of digital information. Students with high level of self-regulation and digital capabilities were able to keep focused and engaged during the lockdown. Although universities and teachers were “forced” to shift their teaching approach due to the unfortunate disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, most students have coped with the changed teaching delivery mode relatively easy with minimum guidance. However, teachers should further consider how digital technologies could enhance students’ learning flexibility promoting critical thinking.
Citation: Limniou, M. The Effect of Digital Device Usage on Student Academic Performance: A Case ... more Citation: Limniou, M. The Effect of Digital Device Usage on Student Academic Performance: A Case Study.
British Educational Research Association (BERA) Conference 2021, 2021
Over the past two decades, technology has provided new pedagogical opportunities for knowledge ac... more Over the past two decades, technology has provided new pedagogical opportunities for knowledge accessing and information sharing with greater student-centeredness (Gordon, 2014; Lai & Bower, 2019). Most Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), however, are very cautious of technology adoption, suspicious of the potential educational transition (e.g. teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness, face-to-face to online/blended learning), and thus lack of systematic understanding of the ongoing educational revolution (Brown, 2015; Collins & Halverson, 2008; Salmon, 2019). The emerging digital education keeps disrupting traditional education with an increasingly nontraditional student population (Brown et al., 2020). Under the high pressure of the forced, rapid educational transitions during the current pandemic, lots of unexpected challenges and problems (e.g. digital inequality, technology constraints and pedagogical chaos) shocked the unprepared HEIs (Sandars et al., 2020; Watermeyer et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020). The worldwide crisis brought extra pressures to the HEIs stakeholders in different countries; nevertheless, it exposed the underlying contradictions and discrepancies in a short period, and thus provides great opportunities to accelerate the context-based investigation towards the better management of technology adoption and educational transition in gaining HEIs’ competence in the changing world. From the institutional perspective, both technology adoption and the educational transition could lead to the creation of the new educational institutions, which include new rules, understanding and associated practices (Scott, 2008). As Greif (2006, p. 17) argued: “Beliefs, norms, and organizations inherited from the past will constitute part of the initial conditions in the processes leading to new institutions.” Institutionalization, as the central focus of institutional theory, assimilates the innovations into the organizational structure in a stable manner (Miles et al., 1987), thus making innovative educational practices available to a broader community and more widespread within the university (Nworie, 2015; Surry & Ely, 2002). In Tolbert and Zucker’s (1996) institutionalization model, technological change is one of the predictors (Anderson & Tushman, 1990) to the diffusion of innovations and the start point of a better understanding of the institutionalization process. However, although the prevailing institutional scholars used this theoretical model to successfully examine and illuminate social practices in different areas, the research attention in higher education is very limited (Meyer & Rowan, 2006; Miles et al., 1987; Reay et al., 2013). On the other hand, the emerging technology adoption theories (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; Venkatesh et al., 2003) focused on variance-based theorizing more than process-based theorizing, and paid little attention to the connection between technology adoption and educational transition (Kirkwood, 2014; Marangunić & Granić, 2014; Mortenson, 2016; Salas, 2016; Turner et al., 2010). The above phenomenon and literature address the importance of complementing the substantive theories by investigating the underlying mechanisms of technology-enhanced educational change and to provide more effective strategical implications to educators, policymakers and practitioners. This paper adopted grounded strategy (Charmaz, 2014; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991) with mixed methods in a longitudinal case study (Eisenhardt, 1989; Langley, 1999; Yin, 2018) to a Sino-British joint venture international university. The main purpose of this study is to explore the theoretical structure grounding from the original cultural and historical context-based data and to seek new theoretical relationships (Creswell, 2012; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Miles & Huberman, 1994) concerning the research question: how does technology adoption interact with the educational transition in the process of institutionalization? Specifically, this study collected data from three data sources: 14 years’ archival documents, 13 years’ Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) user behaviour logs and over 200 hours’ interviews with 50 faculty members in various roles, including the Executive President of the University, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Director of Centre for Academic Affairs, Dean of Institute of Leadership & Education Advanced Development, Director of Centre for Knowledge and Information and Head of Centre for Educational Technology. As a result of the grounded data analysis, the research team inferences the process of institutionalization with a sustainable dynamic cycle, transforming endogenous contradictions to exogenous opportunity: (1) technology adoptions disrupt current education practices while enabling the online/blended learning innovations; (2) online/blended learning innovations debilitate the teacher-centredness while enhancing the student-centred instructional design and the cultural-cognitive habitualization; (3) Student-centredness decentralize the technology adoption while enriching the face-to-face learning experiences; (4) Face-to-face teaching practices dampen the online/blended learning innovations while embedding teacher-centredness; (5) Teacher-centredness discourage student-centredness while empowering technology adoptions. This paper bridged and expanded the extant research by integrating the institutional theory and technology adoption theory in the Higher Education setting. Practical implications were provided to assist other HEIs to advance their technology adoption and educational transition in gaining organizational competence.
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting 2021, 2021
The recent pandemic emergency has brought technology to the forefront of instructional changes an... more The recent pandemic emergency has brought technology to the forefront of instructional changes and innovations for online and hybrid learning in Higher Education. Universities might have gained digital resilience by the integration of technology into their programmes over the past years and it might be valuable for Universities to shift their services/operations from a blended approach to an emergency remote/hybrid one. Despite the longstanding recognition of the importance of technology for learning and teaching purposes, very little attention has been given to the technology’s impact on educational institutionalization process. This longitudinal case study examines the role of technology in the educational change before the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how possible is for a University to shift between different approaches. Research data was collected from a new international university in China with quick development and frequent changes from 2006 to 2019. We argue that teachers and students’ understanding of learning and teaching changes over time through their educational experiences mediated by the use of technology at the concrete level and the psychological level. This study proposes a new institutionalization process model and highlights a key stage, namely dual mediation, which enriches the interpretation of educational institutionalization by integrating the institutional theory and technology-mediated learning theory. The implications provide strategic guidelines for university leaders, policy makers and educators to incorporate technology more effectively and get better preparation for the dynamic uncertainties in the changing education environment.
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