Lifelong learning opportunities are readily accessible through the hybridization of digital learning contexts—from formal to informal—in today's globally networked knowledge society. As such, expanded learning opportunities generate a continuum of learning contexts and experiences mediated through digital technology. Consequently, there is an urgent need to actively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday learning that happens outside of the classroom, particularly the informal learning that is afforded through expanded and emerging digital contexts. The current research problem illustrates that expanded and emerging professional development scenarios require new pedagogical designs for empowering lifelong learners to harness the affordances of the web across both formal and informal contexts and practices. This study outlines ways in which students shape their learning ecologies in virtual contexts to support formal academic learning in online higher education. The paper presents qualitative results from a larger mixed methods interpretive case study. The multicase and multisite study examines three fully online graduate programmes in Education and Digital Technology during the 2017–18 academic year, collecting data in the form of online programme documentation, student interviews and online participant observation. Purposeful and criterion sampling were used to select 13 participants across three sites in Spain, the UK and the USA. The study was underpinned by a lifelong learning ecologies theoretical perspective to analyse learning processes across a continuum of practices and contexts. Findings illustrate how students conceive of, as well as how they organize their learning ecologies through a unique configuration of activities, digital resources and networked social support, indicating that academic programmes and teachers have an essential role in empowering student learning ecologies across contexts, recognizing past trajectories and supporting the development of valued disciplinary practices and perspectives across a continuum of learning.

Some authors have stated that university students born after 1982 have been profoundly influenced by digital technologies, showing different characteristics when compared to previous generations. However, it is worth asking if that is a current observable phenomenon. Are those students born after the 80s really more familiar with ICT tools than those born in previous generations? Do they show different study habits and learning paths? Different research lines (Kennedy, et al., 2010;Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Gros, García, & Escofet, 2012) highlight that scientific data is rarely used when discussing this generation's characteristics; however, none of them have proved in statistical terms that college students do not fit in the Net Generation characteristics and that their habits of ICT use in social and professional activities do not differ from older generations. The international research project, Digital Learners in Higher Education, seeks to develop a sophisticated and evidence-based understanding of university learners in different institutional contexts and the perception of cultures in their use of technology in a social and educational context. Data has been collected from four institutions in Canada and Spain: the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the University of Regina, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), and the University Rovira i Virgili. In order to develop this project, we used a multi-case study embedded design (Yin, 2009). The UOC's case is deeply analysed in this paper to affirm that the Net Generation is more speculative than real and that includes students' perception about this phenomenon, and guidelines are proposed in an eLearning context.

Considering the expansion of active pedagogies that consider the student as the centre of the teaching and learning process, their role during the assessment process cannot be overlooked. That implies a change in the teacher's role from a communicator of the student's mark to an open system in which teachers and students get involved in the learning process and develop online assessment skills. From a description of a concrete experience of continuous e-assessment in a subject at the UOC, this paper explores the advantages of the active role of students in the e-assessment of competency acquisition. In this subject, the student is assessed, using a project based learning methodology, from two dimensions provided by continuous assessment: on the one hand, the assessment of the process followed during the development of the activities based on the outcomes of each phase of the projects and process monitoring and, on the other hand, the assessment of the final outcome. Hence, students participate in both the assessment of the process and the final outcome. The process assessment, developed in the framework of teamwork, is produced in a self-assessment process in which both the student and peer participation in a work group are analysed, thereby developing a dynamic peerassessment. In addition, a process of reflection regarding teamwork is carried out at the end of each phase of the project, based on an interactive process among the members of the group. The evaluation of the results focuses on an interactive assessment based on the analysis of the projects developed by other groups at the final stage of the subject. In order to analyse the students' perception about the e-assessment methodology and their role during this process, a quantitative and online questionnaire was designed and administered at the final stage of the course. The results revealed a high level of satisfaction with the e-assessment activities of the course and an improvement of the learning process.

No abstract

No abstract