Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning

In recent years, universities worldwide have experienced rapid changes with an immense impact, which have been influenced by technological progress and the social trends of digitalization. Like all other revolutionary changes, digital transformation involves intense adjustment/readjustment. University sustainability must be the active concern of all higher education institutions. Thus, the present research aims to analyse teachers' acceptance of new technologies and the impact on their wellbeing and university sustainability. The main objective was to analyse the acceptance of technology in special the e-learning opportunities and the wellbeing of teacher in an emergent country like Romania. To achieve our goal, we created a questionnaire based on the literature, and with the help of the technology acceptance model, we tested our hypotheses. The results indicate several discontents on the part of teachers concerning adapting to new technologies and even a personal discomfort in adapting to these new technologies. Thus, we can note that wellbeing significantly influences job satisfaction and teachers' involvement in sustainable development.

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The role of universities' sustainability, teachers' wellbeing, and attitudes toward e-learning during COVID-19

Present-day development of information technologies is making deeper and deeper incursions into all spheres of human activity, both social and economic. It is only natural that they greatly influence the educational industry, changing the approaches, methods and forms of education. Currently e-learning and distance technologies are being actively introduced into both academic and corporate education, as complementary to traditional forms. The efforts of teachers are aimed at finding effective models of blended learning. All this determines the relevance of the present study.
The abstracted article is aimed at developing frameworks of a distance learning model based on the use of modern learning management systems.
To obtain thorough and reliable results the authors make use of two research approaches: acmeological and competence-based. They review the features, the scope and use of the existing LMS platforms and work out tools for the development of e-learning system. In addition, they assess the compliance of e-learning tools with the preferences of X, Y and Z generation users.
The outcome of the research is the development of a universal competency that can be applied to the study of modern methods and approaches with reference to both academic teaching and learning, and to corporate training. It is quite apparent that pros and cons of the learning management system and its possibilities should be carefully studied and thoughtfully used. The effective e-learning requires constant monitoring of equipment, proper work of host servers and considering user-friendliness of the platforms. This is related to the fact that public educational organizations, including schools, colleges and universities, especially in low developed countries, prefer traditional teaching methods and are slowly moving to innovative models.
The research findings can be viewed as a step forward in creating user-friendly and flexible e-learning platforms, suitable for separate users, institutions and businesses. They can be applied for further assessment of existing learning models, especially for the younger generation, and for research and development of new strategies and methods of using learning management systems and platforms.

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Learning Management Systems in Academic and Corporate Distance Education

Technology Enhanced Learning has become more popular in recent times and many organizations and universities use it as a key instrument in various teaching and training scenarios. At the University of Technology of Graz, some courses require randomized quizzes where question variables can be assigned by arbitrary mathematical functions and this feature is missing in the current solutions. This article describes the development of a quiz application that can be integrated into Moodle by utilization of the Learning Tools Interoperability protocol (LTI). The PHP application is built to support programmable questions that can contain JavaScript and HTML code. Teachers are able to build interactive, randomized quizzes, in which the random variables can be assigned with complex mathematical functions. Furthermore, the application provides a programmable grading mechanism. With this mechanism, it is possible for students to self-assess their performance, as well as for teachers to formally assess their students' learning success automatically and send the results back to Moodle (or other LTI compatible consumer applications).

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Development of a Quiz – Implementation of a (Self-) Assessment Tool and its Integration in Moodle

It is estimated that by 2055 humans will have entered the fourth industrial revolution, a period where technology devices will replace or redefine the human workforce. In preparation, countries around the world have transitioned their educational practices to address the needs of the ever-changing global economy and technology advancements. This shift towards preparing a technology literate workforce is frequently referred to as 21st century skills, the implementation of curriculum which meets the projected needs of learners in the future workforce. Although educators are encouraged to integrate technology in training to better equip the learner in navigating the continuously evolving digital workspace, how this is done is less clear. The purpose of this chapter is to share an inclusive method of how educational systems can digitize constructivism with 21st century skills to ensure all students are prepared for the global workforce.

The Four C's, Constructivism, and Digitizing Curriculum: An Inclusive Approach to Teaching Transferable Skills

Today, it is almost impossible to implement teaching processes without using information and communication technologies (ICT), especially in higher education. Education institutions often use learning management systems (LMS), such as Moodle, Edmodo, Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard Learn, and others. When accessing these systems with their personal account, each student’s activity is recorded in a log file. Moodle system allows not only information sav-ing. The plugins of this LMS provide a fast and accurate analysis of training sta-tistics. Within the study, the capabilities of several Moodle plugins providing the assessment of students' activity and success are reviewed. The research is aimed at discovering possibilities to improve the learning process and reduce the num-ber of underperforming students. The activity logs of 124 participants are ana-lyzed to identify the relations between the number of logs during the e-course and the final grades. In the study, a correlation analysis is performed to determine the impact of students' educational activity in the Moodle system on the final assess-ment. The results reveal that gender affiliation correlates with the overall perfor-mance but does not affect the selection of training materials. Furthermore, it is shown that students who got the highest grades performed at least 210 logs dur-ing the course. It is noted that the prevailing part of students prefers to complete the tasks before the deadline. The study concludes that LMSs can be used to pre-dict students' success and stimulate better results during the study. The findings are proposed to be used in higher education institutions for early detection of stu-dents experiencing difficulties in a course.

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Using Learning Analytics to Predict Students Performance in Moodle LMS

The modern education system in most countries is built on providing equitable education opportunities to all people, regardless of the limitations they have. There are no significant problems in primary and secondary inclusive education, while most traditional higher education models are not sufficiently adapted to the needs of people with learning disabilities. Thus, it has been replaced by a blended learning model built on new digital learning environments in recent years. The aim of the article is to study the blended learning environment of inclusive educa-tion systems in China and Russia. The article presents the findings of a “The Global Learner Survey”, conducted on behalf of Pearson in May 2019 by The Harris Poll. The survey involved over 11,000 learners aged 16-70 across nine-teen countries. Additionally, statistics on the higher education development in Russia and China were used. The analysis of the current state of higher education in Russia and China, as well as the development of a blended learning environ-ment, shows the positive effect as that it allows students with limited educational opportunities to integrate into the educational and public life of the university and implement all types of rehabilitation along with the educational process.

https://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jet/article/viewFile/16013/8167

Blended Learning Environments in Inclusive Education at the University

The melanocortin system consists of five G protein–coupled receptors (MC1R-MC5R), the bidirectional endogenous ligands (MSH and Agouti families), and accessory proteins (MRAP1 and MRAP2). Accumulative studies of vertebrate species find high expression level of melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) in the dermal melanocyte and elucidate the essential roles in the skin and fur pigmentation, morphological background adaptation, and stress response. The diploid amphibian Xenopus tropicalis (xt) has been utilized as a fantastic animal model for embryonic development and studies of physiological cryptic colouring and environmental adaptiveness. However, the interaction of xtMc1r signaling with xtMrap proteins has not been assessed yet. In this study, we carried out in silico evolutionary analysis of protein alignment and genetic phylogenetic and genomic synteny of mc1r among various vertebrates. Ubiquitous expression of mrap1 and mrap2 and the co-expression with mc1r transcripts in the skin were clearly observed. Co-immunoprecipitation (ip) and fluorescent complementary approach validated the direct functional interaction of xtMc1r with xtMrap1 or xtMrap2 proteins on the plasma membrane. Pharmacological assay showed the improvement of the constitutive activity and alpha melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) stimulated plateau without dramatic alteration of the cell surface translocation of xtMc1r in the presence of xtMrap proteins. Overall, the pharmacological modulation of xtMc1r by dual xtMrap2 proteins elucidated the potential role of this protein complex in the regulation of proper dermal function in amphibian species.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2022.892407/pdf

Yaqun Zhang

Papers

Using Learning Analytics to Predict Students Performance in Moodle LMS

Blended Learning Environments in Inclusive Education at the University

Pharmacological Modulation of Melanocortin 1 Receptor Signaling by Mrap Proteins in Xenopus tropicalis