Review Article
Malek Turki Jdaitawi, Ashraf F Kan'an
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 14, Issue 1, Article No: ep332
ABSTRACT
In higher education settings, students are required to use their own devices to record attendance interact with classes through online systems and other learning-teaching sources such as timetables, virtual learning environment. Real opportunity to use digital technology such as augmented reality AR technology have been used in several fields, uncovering diverse benefits regarding its usage. However, further research is needed to understand exactly how the AR enhance students learning. Focusing on individuals with special needs, AR is being used in higher education for the last few years to enhance physical, cognitive, personal, and social abilities. This systematic review presented an overview of the usage of AR technology in the special needs area in higher education literature published between 2011 and 2020 and focused on research indexed in 8 international databases. 36 studies were included for review. The results indicate that the majority of research showed positive outcomes as the AR technology proved to be effective with students with disabilities. The results also showed that AR technology was mostly used in intellectual disability setting. Finally, the result evidenced that AR assists students in enhancing their social skills, social relationships and their engagement. The results from this systematic review provide valuable information regarding to enhance individual with special needs. Future empirical research should ensure that all research is included, including settings, level of students and data collection methods such as quantitative and qualitative.
Keywords: special needs, disability, augmented reality, systematic review
Research Article
Daniel Otto, Nadine Schroeder, Daniel Diekmann, Pia Sander
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 13, Issue 4, Article No: ep325
ABSTRACT
For almost 20 years, Open Educational Resources (OER) are an integral part of the debate about the digitisation of education. However, the empirical landscape of OER research is vivid and largely obscure. This article reviews the state of international empirical research on OER to reveal trends and gaps and, in this manner, identify possible desiderata for further research. We use a systematic mapping approach to examine the empirical English-speaking research landscape from 2015 to 2019. The results reveal that research primarily concentrates on the higher education sector while only a few studies are available for the school and other educational sectors. In terms of research methodologies, quantitative approaches are prevalent, with most of them being survey-based. The main research interests of the empirical studies lie in the perception of OER and the barriers to their use in educational practices. Open textbooks as a form of OER and their comparative cost advantages or qualitative comparability with traditional educational material constitute an emerging research field that is almost exclusively located in the U.S. Research gaps exist regarding the usability and user-friendliness of OER repositories. Addressing these gaps could support the numerous initiatives in different countries to establish and equip repositories. Additional gaps for empirical research were identified regarding the effects of the use of OER on pedagogical approaches and established educational practices.
Keywords: Open Educational Resources, OER, systematic mapping, empirical research, review
Review Article
Rakesh Kumar Meet, Devkant Kala
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 13, Issue 3, Article No: ep312
ABSTRACT
Advent of internet has a revolutionary impact on every sector of economy and so is with the education sector, which has witnessed the evolution of online education through scalable educational technology, namely, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The purpose of this paper is to summarize the pool of available knowledge related to MOOCs in the scholarly literature, published during the period 2013–2020. One hundred and two available published studies in peer reviewed journals & conferences searched in major academic databases have been reviewed and presented in the systematic literature review. The findings have been divided under the various research themes of MOOCs including geographical contribution of MOOC studies, citation trends, prominent research themes, theoretical frameworks and methodological rigor in the existing scholarly works. The results demonstrate that most empirical research were conducted by the researchers having affiliation to institutions based out of United States followed by institutions in the developing economies of China and India. The most focused area of research in MOOCs is on MOOC adoption. Limited research has happened on poor MOOC completion status, the instructor-related topics and on democratization of MOOC. Thrust areas of MOOC researches and future research directions are also discussed.
Keywords: Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), e-learning, online education, educational technology, technology adoption, literature review
Research Article
Nuri Kara
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article No: ep295
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review on the use of serious games in science education between 2016 and 2020 years. A total of 39 articles were included from Science Citation Index- Expanded (SCI-Expanded), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) listed in the Web of Science database. The results showed that experiential science was the most emphasized subject area in the articles. The results also indicated that learning/academic achievement was the common examined topic in the articles. For the research designs, more than half of the articles implemented quantitative research design. Considering the data collection tools, achievement tests were the most used data collection tool. Regarding the use of sampling methods, convenience sampling was preferred in more than half of the articles. Secondary and primary school students were the most used sampling groups. The sample size of 31-100-person group was commonly chosen in the articles. Considering the data analysis methods, a majority of articles implemented descriptive analyses methods. It was also found that computer game was the most used game type. Regarding the game genres, adventure was the most preferred one in serious games.
Keywords: serious games, educational games, science education, literature review