Session 3 (Weeks 5-6): Emerging eLearning Trends in Higher Education

Session 3 focused on eLearning trends in higher education. E-learning is becoming increasingly prominent in tertiary education. The learning environment in the higher education has enlightened and renowned by learning analytics, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), mLearning, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Makerspaces and eAssessments.

Learning analytics

It involves measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place. Learning analytics promotes learning environment using big dataset around learner activity and digital footprints left by student activity (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/learning-analytics-in-higher-education). Learning analytics can improve learning practice by transforming the ways we support learning processes. The University of the South Pacific (USP) has been utilizes Dashboard and Business Intelligence System (DIBS) as a learning analytics system. USP is a regional university in the south pacific region proceeding well with eLearning technologies with regional countries and around the world. The tertiary education data from DIBS has been used by various faculties for mapping their programmes. Benefits to students: Learning analytics can help students see and reflect on their behavior in constructive ways to help them manage their progress toward their learning goals. A student-directed analytics framework has the potential to help students monitor their behavioral patterns, track changes over time, and compare their progress toward learning goals against both absolute and normative standards based on peer data.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

The predominance of mobile devices and an emerging passion between youngsters for accessing to digital resources have given impetus to an initiative in the education sector in recent years to encourage students to bring their personally owned devices to class for learning (Cheng, 2018). The perception of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) has its origins in the corporate community and now used in the universities. My students use their BYOD to access and participate in online quizzes, activities and discussion forum. They also use social networking tools in their BYOD to communicate with their project groups. Similarly, mLearning or mobile learning is extensively used in our learning and teaching environment. It refers to the use of portable devices such as mobile phones, laptops and tablets with wireless networks in it for learning (EDCAUSE 2018).  BYOD can provide students with enriched opportunities featuring the following elements (M-U-S-I-C) (Cheng, 2018):

Multimodal: students can easily access different types of learning resources such as videos, audios, PDFs, Webpages, and etc.
Ubiquitous: students can easily learn anytime and anywhere.
Student-centred: students can easily set their own learning pace by choosing what to learn and when to learn.
Interactive: students can interact more with their teachers, with peers and with learning content.
Collaborative: students can easily share learning resources and exchange ideas with each other to co-construct knowledge.
BYOD can also benefit teaching in the following ways (T-O-P-I-C) such as Teacher-facilitated, One-to-one, Pedagogically-varied, Interactive and Customised (Cheng, 2018).
Makerspaces
Makerspaces is a collaborative workspace, it could become a bridge between universities and industry, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers. Makerspaces, also known as hackerspaces, hack labs, and fab labs, are open-access spaces where tools, machines and knowledge are shared with the purpose of implementing an idea (Pernía-Espinoza et al., 2017). The physical locations with equipment that students can use to undertake Do It Yourself (DIY) movement, an open-source philosophy that intends to democratize the technology becoming accessible to everyone (Hatch, 2013; Pernía-Espinoza et al., 2017). As a result, many universities are now having joint efforts under the Higher Education Makerspaces Initiative. This can be incorporated in my course where the students can form collaborative networks with other students, teachers and organizations for their project work.
eAssessments
Assessment drives learning. The advancement of technology and e-learning systems urge a high demand for ways and means of assessing students in such a system (Brink and Lautenbach, 2011; Appiah and van Tonder, 2018). Assessment is indeed a very important aspect of the teaching and learning process in any higher education institution (Lafuente et al., 2014; Appiah and van Tonder, 2018). My course SC356 utilizes assessments such online quizzes and activities. Another eAssessment that can be incorporated in my course is a formative eAssessment on group project data analysis. eAssessment has the potential to assist the university in tackling several strategic issues such as personalised feedback offer global delivery of quality learning opportunities, allow student profiling with links to targeted team based support, can facilitate student induction and diagnostics and enhance efficiency and even reduce costs. Nevertheless, it also has some challenges such as not quick and easy to produce, have considerable investment costs, require rigorous testing and have a technical underpinning that can be a barrier to academic staff. 
Similar to other sessions in ED403, this session has also enriched my knowledge on utilizing eLearning in higher education especially in STEM. Besides, the knowledge obtained used to develop an eAssessment and associated marking rubric for my course. My University USP has been doing well in eLearning with their regional countries along around the world however there were dew challenges has been observed such as investment costs, internet connectivity and requirement of rigorous quality assurance.
References
Appiah, M. and van Tonder, F. 2018. E-Assessment in Higher Education: A Review. International                Journal of Business Management and Economic Research, 9: 1454-1460.

Brink, R. and Lautenbach, G. 2011. Electronic assessment in higher education. Educational Studies, 37: 503-512.

Cheng, G. 2018. Design and Analysis of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Pedagogies in Higher Education. International Journal of Learning and Teaching. 4: 15-19.

EDUCAUSE. 2018. Mobile Learning. Viewed at https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/mobile-learning

Hatch, M., 2013. The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers, 1st ed. McGraw-Hill Education.

Lafuente, M., Remesal, A. and Valdivia, A.M. 2014. Assisting learning in e-assessment: a closer look at educational supports. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39:443-460.

Pernía-Espinoza, A., Sodupe-Ortega, E., Peciña-Marqueta, S., Martínez-Bañares, S., Sanz-García, A. and Blanco-Fernández, J. 2017. Makerspaces in Higher Education: the UR-Maker experience at the University of La Rioja. 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances, HEAd’17. Universitat Polit`ecnica de Val`encia, Val`encia. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd17.2017.5400.

Wong BTM. 2017. Learning analytics in higher education: an analysis of case studies. Viewed at                  https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/AAOUJ-01-2017-0009