Student engagement is understood to be an important benchmark and indicator of the quality of the student experience for higher education; yet the term engagement continues to be elusive to define and it is interpreted in different ways in the literature. This paper firstly presents a short review of the literature regarding online engagement in the higher education environment, moving beyond discipline-specific engagement. It then presents a conceptual framework which builds upon recurring themes within the literature, including students’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. The framework was developed by adopting a constant comparison method to analyse the literature, and to search for and identify current and emerging themes. The framework identifies indicators for five key elements of online engagement, and the authors propose that the framework provides a guide for researchers and academics when exploring online engagement from a conceptual, practical and research basis. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for practice, outlining how the framework might be used to reflect critically upon the effectiveness of online courses and their ability to engage students.
This article reports on teachers' experiences of ICT training in rural areas of Nepal. It discusses aspects of policy documents to help understand the Nepali educational context, before highlighting the challenges of establishing and maintaining infrastructure and professional learning opportunities across a country with challenging terrain and extreme environmental conditions. It then examines teachers' perceptions in five rural primary schools about their experiences of training to use modern educational technologies in instructional activities. The findings indicate that none of the teachers received training in the use of ICT in their initial teacher education and that the Government has allowed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to provide ICT infrastructure and training for rural schools and teachers. Although this is a small study, it offers insights into the gap between policy and practice and highlights the contextual challenges of Nepal's attempts to operate on a global educational level and the challenges for teachers.
This paper discusses issues that relate to student mobility and implications for teachers and guidance officers. Whilst there has been a tendency to locate problems associated with mobility in the children themselves or in their families, it is argued that this is not a particularly productive approach. Taking lessons from recent literacy understandings and using data from a study about the children of itinerant fruit pickers, this paper takes a broader perspective, recommending that school personnel widen their focus to include an examination of school practices and to consider equity implications for mobile students. (1999) show that the Australian population is highly mobile. Although information about the numbers of children changing schools is not readily available, the ABS reported that in 1999 alone 358,401 people moved interstate and 12.6 per cent (45,327) of these were school age children between the ages of five and 14 years (ABS, 1999). If students who move schools intrastate and those over 14 years of age were added to these figures, it would appear that student mobility is a significant issue for schools and educational systems.
Mobility and educational implications Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] internal migration dataDespite the evidence of the mobility of Australian school students, educational itinerancy has not been widely researched. However, in much of the research that is available, mobility has been perceived as having a negative impact on children and their school experiences. Research in Australia and the United States, for example, has argued that, for students, itinerancy may result in disrupted social and academic development
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