Personalisation has emerged as a central feature of recent educational strategies in the UK and abroad. At the heart of this is a vision to empower learners to take more ownership of their learning and develop autonomy. While the introduction of digital technologies is not enough to effect this change, embedding the affordances of new technologies is expected to offer new routes for creating personalised learning environments. The approach is not unique to education, with consumer technologies offering a 'personalised' relationship which is both engaging and dynamic, however the challenge remains for learning providers to capture and transpose this to educational contexts. As learners begin to utilise a range of tools to pursue communicative and collaborative actions, the first part of this paper will use analysis of activity logs to uncover interesting trends for maturing e-learning platforms across over 100 UK learning providers. While personalisation appeals to marketing theories this paper will argue that if learning is to become personalised one must ask what the optimal instruction for any particular learner is? For Vygotsky this is based in the zone of proximal development, a way of understanding the causal-dynamics of development that allow appropriate pedagogical interventions. The second part of this paper will interpret personalised learning as the organising principle for a sensemaking framework for e-learning. In this approach personalised learning provides the context for assessing the capabilities of e-learning using Vygotsky's zone of proximal development as the framework for assessing learner potential and development.
This article notes the difficulty in defining cyberterrorism and several problems associated with identifying the potential misuses of the Internet and the World Wide Web by terrorist groups. In particular, the use of digital steganography has recently been identified as an emerging and alarming trend by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This technological innovation is used as a case study of the complexities surrounding cyberterrorism, its definition, and how democracies can deal with these advances in communication technology. Supplementing this discussion is a review of the various social, regulatory, and legal forms of social intervention related to controlling electronic communications. The conclusion of this article includes an analytical framework from which additional research into these issues could be conducted and suggests how policy solutions for said complexities could be formulated.
Purpose: To present a cross-cultural analysis of information literacy and library use among Latino and white undergraduates in an American university.Design/methodology/approach: A large-scale, random sample survey of information literacy skills, and library instruction experiences and attitudes was undertaken at a large public university in the United States.
Findings:More white students accessed the Internet from home than Latino students; however, both spent an equal amount of time searching the Internet and library databases. Latino students used the physical library more than white students. More Latino than white students had formal library instruction. Over two thirds of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their research skills contributed to their academic success. Latino students did not perform as well as white students on the test questions on information literacy knowledge.
Research limitations/implications:While an argument over the relative merits of an objective test of information literacy versus direct assessment of student work is beyond the scope of this study, it would be worthwhile to undertake to see if the results would be different.
Practical implications:Given the differences in test scores despite more Latinos attending library instruction, improvements in outreach, pedagogy, and assessment methodologies may be needed.
Social implications:As there are over 220 Hispanic-Serving Institutions of higher education in the United States, these findings could be applicable to other libraries.Originality/value: Few if any researchers have compared test scores on information literacy knowledge and library use based on a cross-cultural analysis.
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