Learning model and academic ability are important considerations in developing students' skills including metacognitive skills in biology learning. The study aimed to investigate the effect of open inquiry on the metacognitive skills of students in different academic abilities. The study was quasi-experimental research, using the equivalent post-test only with control group design. The subjects of the experiment comprised 60 eleventh grade students. The samples were randomly assigned in a 2x2 factorial design. Two learning models were compared: open inquiry and conventional models, and two academic abilities: high and low. The students' metacognitive skill was measured by an essay test integrated with academic achievement measurement, as well as an application of a learning journal as selfassessment. The result of a 2-way ANOVA test confirmed the metacognitive skills of students with high and low academic abilities in experiment class was significantly higher than those students in control class, but not for their interactions. Accordingly, the implementation of inquiry-based learning appears to be an effective strategy among students with different academic abilities.

The expected skill to face the 21st century is the level of thinking that involves high order thinking concept known as metacognition, which is also believed as a notable predictor on retention. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of open inquiry model combined with a learning journal on metacognitive skills and retention of students with low and high learning achievement levels. This study was quasi-experimental research, using the equivalent post-test only with control group design. The subjects of the experiment comprised 60 eleventh grade students. The samples were randomly assigned in a 2 x 2 factorial design. Two learning models were compared: open inquiry and conventional models, and two learning achievement: high and low. The metacognitive skills and retention of students were measured by an essay test integrated with achievement test. The result of a 2-way ANOVA test confirmed that open inquiry with learning journal has a significant effect on metacognitive skills and retention of students with different learning achievement levels. Open inquiry with learning journal appears to be an effective strategy among students with high and low learning achievement levels.

The provision of appropriate educational technologies can be an advantage of higher education institutions in terms of marketing, or branding, and for managing and supporting students' learning. These kinds of technologies evolve rapidly, and it is therefore sensible for educational institutions to explore the impact of innovative (or emerging) technologies prior to their broad adoption by the mainstream in order to create an early competitive advantage. The purpose of this research was to examine the current trends and impacts of emerging educational technologies that are expected to be in most higher education institutions. In this research, the information extracted from the literature was collected through a scoping literature review. In addition, the Technology Hype Cycle by the Gartner group was employed for identifying the emerging key technologies for education. In addition to the literature review, the interviews were carried out as semi-structured conversations with ten university lecturers from different universities across Thailand to find out the current trends of using and impacts of emerging educational technologies on teaching, learning and creative inquiry in higher education. The results from the literature review part suggest that there are twelve emerging educational technologies which can be grouped into four sets representing the current trends in educational technology development which are: 1) multimode or multichannel technologies for learning, 2) social learning technologies, 3) cloud-based learning technologies and, 4) ICT interoperability. However, according to the results from the interviews with Thailand university lecturers, it is suggested that seven emerging educational technologies which are 1) open source learning repositories, 2) social learning platforms, 3) cloud email, 4) EMNS, 5) learning stack, 6) unified communication and collaboration technologies, and 7) student retention CRM, now have profound impacts and the impact will be more in the near future and need more development to suit their current work. From the analysis, these emerging technologies are appropriate for the context of Thai universities in terms of project budgets, manpower, and time constraints.

At present, digital technology is being applied worldwide to teaching and learning, and it is evolving at an accelerating pace. Accordingly, preparing students for such disruptive changes of teaching and learning require instructors who have proper knowledge and skills such as digital literacy or even TPACK, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. The purpose of the present study was to investigate Thai higher education instructors' digital literacy at higher education institutions in the context of Thailand. Moreover, we investigated the instructors' TPACK and their teaching practices influenced by their digital literacy. The present study stands on mixed methods approach. The data were collected from a variety of institutions with the help of online questionnaires as well as in-depth interviews. In addition, class observation was also employed. For quantitative part of data collection, the 111 higher education instructors participated in the present study as they responded to the questionnaire through online survey using google forms. These participants represented the instructors in higher education institutions across Thailand. For qualitative data collection, voluntary seven instructors were individually interviewed and asked for permission to their class teaching observation. The participants consisted of three male and four female instructors from different geographical areas in Thailand. Participants were diverse in all three main groups: two from social science, four from science and technology and one from health science. All participants have consistent education backgrounds which relate to their work fields. Participants' teaching and researching experiences were in range of 5 -15 years. In analyzing the obtained data, basic statistics such as mean, S.D. and percentage were used for quantitative data analysis, whereas for qualitative data, content analysis technique was employed as a key method. The results reveal that the instructors showed moderate level of digital literacy and more than half of the participating instructors exhibited some key fundamental digital skills and literacy. However, the instructors express their TPACK and teaching practices at moderate to low levels. They recognized the importance of TPACK, and some challenges and difficulties. The findings suggest that there is still a need for specific training for enhancing their digital literacy and TPACK in order for them to utilize digital technologies for improving their teaching practice more effectively.

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