The use of learning management systems (LMS) has grown considerably in universities around the world. LMSs can offer a great variety of channels and workspaces to facilitate information sharing and communication among participants in a course. One of the most commonly used is Moodle, a free learning management system enabling the creation of powerful, flexible and engaging online courses and experiences. A course can consist of a number of lessons. Each lesson consists of reading materials; activities such as quizzes, tests, surveys, and projects; and social elements that encourage interaction and group work among students. This study investigated how often students used a mobile phone to access various activities on Moodle. The students' point of view is important since they are the main users of the offered teaching technique and can cooperate in implementing and improving an e-course as a very important stakeholder in the e-learning process. A survey on self-reported usage was filled by 122 university students in a course offered by the faculty of Preschool Education at the University of Crete. Follow-up interviews were conducted to solicit students' perceptions on mobile access to Moodle and the underlying reasons. The results show significant differences in students' usage of various Moodle activities via mobile phones. Students' responses also suggest that Moodle is used merely as an electronic document repository and not as an effective learning tool due to the limitations of mobile access on usability and reliability.
The introduction of STEM education, and specifically the implementation of educational robotics (ER), has drawn researchers’ attention and has shown that teachers play a crucial role in leading this innovation. The present study concerns in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers, focusing on their perceptions and attitudes about ER use in daily teaching practice. The data were collected via a questionnaire (N = 201) and explored using latent class analysis, which detected distinct clusters/profiles of participants based on their pattern of responses. Two clusters were identified: Cluster1 was relatively homogeneous, including those who share a positive attitude towards ER, while Cluster2 was heterogeneous, comprising participants with inconsistent responses and expressing negative and skeptical thinking. The cluster memberships were associated with external covariates, such as age, years of teaching experience, and variables measuring their technological competencies. The results showed that teaching experience and age were negatively associated with cluster1-membership, while educational robotics knowledge was positively associated. The findings are interpretable, and the implications for education are discussed considering the current literature.
The mass influx of refugees into Europe since 2013 and their educational challenges have increased the need for high-quality refugee education. One proposal for addressing these challenges was to leverage mobile devices for educational purposes (mobile learning). Although significant research has been done in this field, mobile learning’s effectiveness on different social groups has yet to be explored. The present review paper aims to outline: (a) the factors that challenge refugee education, (b) the use of smart mobile devices by the refugee population, (c) the conflicting views about the effect of mobile learning in refugee education, and (d) the proposed characteristics for mobile refugee applications as found in the literature. A juxtaposition of refugee needs with the characteristics of mobile learning apps is attempted. By surveying the literature, the present paper concludes that mobile learning seems beneficial for refugees in two ways: providing refugees access to education and improving the quality of the provided refugee education. However, it is not a one-solution-fits-all regarding their education. At the end, future research proposals are included.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.