慕课给军队远程教育带来的机遇与挑战

慕课(MOOC),又称大规模在线开放课程,是近年来远程教育领域出现的一种新兴在线学习模式。它正影响着全球高等教育的改革与发展,也给军队远程教育带来了难得的机遇和诸多挑战。它不仅为军队远程教育提供了改革的思路和技术参考,而且向军队远程教育的网络课程资源、公开性和交互性、安全保密教育、远程学习者提出了高要求。     

Refugees and online education: student perspectives on need and support in the context of (online) higher education

ABSTRACT

Online education and in particular Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often regarded as a way to solve global educational challenges. In this article, we highlight the students’ uptake of such a ‘digital solution’. Presenting initial findings from a research project in Germany, we situate our investigation in the specific context of digital educational offers for refugees, using Kiron Open Higher Education as an example. Kiron has designed an innovative academic model, with MOOCs at its core, to ease refugees’ access into higher education. Drawing from student data of 1375 Kiron students we look at students’ actual usage of the offer and the accompanying support services as well as the difficulties refugee students face while navigating online higher education. Results show, amongst others, rather low completion rates in the online courses and point to a much more nuanced picture of how students make use of the offer – putting online education as an easy, straightforward formula to the integration of disadvantaged students into question.     

网络远程教育的实践与探索——浅谈中国人民大学网络教育的教学与管理

中国人民大学作为开展网络远程教育的试点高校之一,在实践中建立和逐步完善网络远程教育的运行模式、教学模式和管理模式,为网络远程教育在中国的全面开展做了积极的探索与努力。随着社会的不断前进,中国的网络远程教育也面临着理论与实践存探究的艰巨课题。     

Preliminary evidence of a relationship between the use of online learning and academic performance in a South African first-year university accounting course

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the use of online learning resources and academic performance in an Accounting 1 course conducted at a South African Higher Education Institution. The study employed a quantitative analysis over three academic years comparing the collection of end of year marks and the time spent online. The results provide preliminary empirical evidence to show that students who spent more time online significantly improved their course mark. Although much accounting-based educational research exists on the use of computers, there is a dearth of research testing any relationship between the use of online learning material and performance. While the results are preliminary and have some limitations, they are useful to students, teaching instructors and administrators, and provide a platform for future research into the value of using online learning in accounting.     

The relationships between Chinese higher education students' epistemic beliefs and their judgmental standards of searching for literature online: undergraduate versus graduate comparisons

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between Chinese higher education students' epistemic beliefs and their judgmental standards of searching for literature online. Data were collected from 449 higher education students (152 college students and 297 graduate students) in Beijing via two self-reported questionnaires: one was the Epistemic Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ), including four scales (Innate/Fixed Ability, Learning Effort/Process, Authority/Expert Knowledge, and Certainty of Knowledge); the other was the Online Judgmental Standards of Searching for Literature Questionnaire (OJSSLQ), consisting of six scales (Multiple sources, Authority, Content, Quantitative Indicators, Clarity, and Ease of Access). Through exploratory factor analyses, this study confirmed the reliability and validity of the EBQ and OJSSLQ. Further analyses indicated that there were significant differences between college and graduate students for the Content and Ease of Access judgmental standards of searching for literature online whereby graduate students had higher standards for these two factors, but there were no differences for the other factors. Correlation analysis between the EBQ and OJSSLQ was conducted for the college and graduate students. An interplay between the students' epistemic beliefs and their evaluative standards of searching for literature online was found. For example, the results indicated that both college and graduate students with the epistemic belief that learning requires great efforts and processes (Learning Effort/Process) had the tendency to judge the academic information by the standards of Authority and Content (i.e. checking the authority of literature or carefully reading the content). This study also found that epistemic beliefs might increasingly play a role in the students' judgmental standards of searching for literature online as they progressed into advanced study.