Online learning has been widely adopted in higher education but there is a need to better understand the nature of student engagement with online courses. For example, there are questions about whether students engage with courses as educators intend and what features of online courses engage students to enhance learning. Bringing together student…

In Australia, where initial teacher education is offered both on-campus and in a fully online mode, future primary-school generalist teachers study teaching across the school curriculum. This includes the arts curriculum where opportunities for future teachers to engage in authentic arts learning themselves are generally seen as essential for…

Inclusive education in Australia has resulted in a concerted push for the differentiation of pedagogical teaching approaches by educators across Kindergarten to Year 12 (K-12) learning environments. Such approaches have been shown to meet a diverse range of learner needs found in today's classrooms. While progress is evident at the primary and…

The emergence of online environments has changed the landscape of educational learning. Some students thrive in this learning environment, but others become amotivated and disengaged. Drawing on self-determination theory, we report the findings of a study of 574 undergraduate business students at an Australian higher education institution on their…

The proportion of Australian students enrolling in a fully distance, online mode has been increasing over the past decade across a range of courses, including initial teacher education (ITE). The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the need to teach and design courses in ways that successfully engage students online. This research set out to…

How can educators create learning activities and tasks, or modify existing tasks, to support general ambitions for high quality online learning? This document provides some advice to respond to this in the form of seven specific ways to improve online learning in a subject. The focus is on providing ways in which educators can, relatively easily…

Inquiry-based representation-focused approaches in science education have shown promising outcomes when students engage in knowledge building via an active process of constructing, coordinating, and evaluating representations. To date, much of the existing research around these approaches has taken place in pre-digital classrooms, but the…

Microcredentials enable a digital transformation of educational offerings that build skills of learners and the capability of organisations; however learners struggle with balancing study on top of work and family commitments unless they are motivated and self-regulated in their learning. Designing microcredentials that intrinsically motivate…

Innovative changes to online teaching practices are becoming increasingly important with the rise of e-learning across the higher education sector. Such innovations ideally become part of teaching repertoires rather than reverting to prior approaches. This study investigated the sustainability of a centralised approach to online learning design.…

Despite evidence of practices that support online students in university learning, promoting engagement and building a student sense of belonging continue to be a challenge. To enhance student engagement, a suite of evidence-based learning design strategies was incorporated across online units of study in initial teacher education programmes at a…

Purpose: This paper reports on how micro-learning design principles are being trialled in an Australian and a Malaysian university to make online courses more accessible and attractive, and a more positive experience, with the aim of increasing student success. Central to this approach is segmenting materials into "bite-size" instalments…

Higher education informatization (HEI) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the use and integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. This paper provides a bibliometric and visual analysis of the research trends, patterns, and topics in this field. Using the Web of Science database, the authors…

Digital education, now common in higher education, is particularly evident in the expansion of blended and fully online offerings at universities. Central to this expansion are educational developers, staff who support teaching and learning improvement in courses they do not themselves teach. Working closely with staff, students, and the…

At the very beginning of social distancing in Australia, just before school closures in early March 2020, two academics in the field of educational technologies sought a way to quickly support teachers during the sudden shift to online education. This article provides an overview of the rapid rollout of a series of videos developed to build…

This study was conducted to present a comprehensive model for designing e-learning in Medical education. This qualitative study was performed in three stages. First, we used the "critical review" approach proposed by CarnWell to synthesize a conceptual model from studies that employ e-learning in Medical education. In the second stage,…