Jan Herrington

Jan Herrington
Murdoch University · School of Education

PhD

About

209
Publications
182,586
Reads
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11,115
Citations
Additional affiliations
March 2009 - present
Murdoch University
July 2003 - February 2009
University of Wollongong
January 1995 - present
Melbourne Water

Publications

Publications (209)
Article
Full-text available
Employing emerging technologies in learning is becoming increasingly important as a means to support the development of digital media literacy. Using a theoretical framework of authentic learning and technology as cognitive tools, this paper examined student responses to the infusion of emerging technologies in a large first year teacher education...
Article
Full-text available
INFLUENCED by constructivist educational theory and advances in technology, there is increasing interest in authentic activities as a basis for learning in both face-to-face and Web-based courses. Whereas traditionally, real-world activities have primarily served as vehicles for practice of skills or processes that are taught using traditional inst...
Article
This paper describes a research study that investigated foreign language student engagement in reflective practice through reflective portfolios. Over the course of one academic semester, students in an Italian as a foreign language course at an Australian university and selected target language native speaker mentors interacted and collaborated wi...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Over the past decade Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies and perspectives have been mandated across the Australian national curriculum and all teachers are now required to demonstrate strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and have a broad knowledge of Aboriginal histories, cultures and languages....
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Open education resources (OERs) are becoming more widely used in education to support continuous access to learning tools and resources. However, OERs' potential goes beyond the simple provision of content to potentially form the foundation of a new way of learning. This paper explains some of the affordances and issues associated with the use of o...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This research study was undertaken to investigate innovative solutions for building the ICT capacity of student teachers in an effective way, using student-centered, interactive and engaging learning environments and innovative teaching practices. The research was conducted within the context of a large first year semester unit for teacher educatio...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Over the last decade, mobile and social media (MSM) tools have been in a constant flux. A growing ecology of tools and affordances have enabled multiple types of user actions and abilities never witnessed or imagined before. Educators all around the world are actively exploring and investigating learning and teaching design and approaches to harnes...
Article
Full-text available
Over the last decade, mobile and social media (MSM) tools have been in a constant flux. A growing ecology of tools and affordances have enabled multiple types of user actions and abilities never witnessed or imagined before. Educators all around the world are actively exploring and investigating learning and teaching design and approaches to harnes...
Article
Full-text available
Mobile and social media over the last decade has created significant shifts in society: how we communicate and collaborate, and in learning and teaching. This paper discusses a study that investigated how mobile social media tools and affordances could be harnessed to facilitate a student-determined learning experience (heutagogy). A design-based r...
Article
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The work of Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) in Australian schools is complex and multifaceted, and yet it is often misunderstood, or worse, devalued. Added to this, the conditions of employment for many AEWs is often insecure, with minimal pay, few opportunities for career progression or meaningful professional development. Despite this there c...
Article
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Achieving communicative competency in English classes has been a key goal in contexts where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). During this process, however, integrating the difficulty and complexity of real life tasks into classroom teaching has often been disregarded. Lack of opportunities for authentic language use often results in le...
Article
Full-text available
Knowledge obtained in higher education through de-contextualised tasks and activities often remains “inert” and learners cannot readily transfer understanding to novel contexts. Nowhere is this more evident than in learning a foreign language. Typical language interaction exercises in class do not mirror real-life language use and such activities m...
Book
Research plays a powerful role in shaping effective teaching and learning experiences. By demystifying the research process, Research for Educators assists readers to develop and use research skills in a range of educational contexts. This introductory text steps the reader through the research process from identifying an initial question for resea...
Article
In addition to providing a useful repository for learning products, ePortfolios provide enhanced opportunities for the development of advanced learning skills. It can be argued, however, that ePortfolios are not being implemented effectively towards fulfilling this important function. This paper presents an investigation of an ePortfolio environmen...
Article
This paper describes the use of two different risk assessment strategies during the design and development of a complex authentic task-based e-learning program developed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The first strategy involved the use of expert reviewers and the second strategy employed the engagement of a risk assessment expert facilita...
Article
The storage, transportation and distribution of time and temperature sensitive pharmaceutical products (TTSPPs) such as vaccines within the appropriate temperature conditions are important public health concerns. The personnel who handle pharmaceutical products must have high levels of expertise so they can take actions to ensure that the TTSPPs ar...
Article
Full-text available
Heutagogy is a relatively new learning and teaching framework. Heutagogy advocates student centred learning and teaching strategies where the learning is directed and determined by the learner. At the time when heutagogy was conceptualised as a teaching framework (in 2000), the web was still in its infancy. More than a decade later, the web has evo...
Article
Authentic learning is a pedagogical approach that situates learning tasks in the context of future use. Over the last two decades, authentic learning designs have captured the imaginations of innovative educators who see the approach as a means to enable students to develop robust knowledge that transfers to real-world practice. Authentic learning...
Article
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Teaching in higher education in the 21st century can be a demanding and complex role and academic educators around the globe are dealing with questions related to change. This paper describes a new type of a professional development program for teaching faculty, using a pedagogical model based on the principles of authentic e-learning. The program...
Article
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Authentic learning pedagogy not only allows students to engage in realistic tasks using real-world resources and tools, but it also provides opportunities for students to learn with intention by thinking and acting like professionals as they address real problems. This paper describes a research conducted in a first year university course, where so...
Chapter
Full-text available
In the rapidly globalizing 21st century knowledge society, multicultural understanding plays a major role. However, what do we mean by “culture” in the educational context, what aspects have or should have an impact on our learning environments, and might some of these assumptions direct the development of our learning environments in an unintended...
Article
Full-text available
This study sought to determine the critical elements of an authentic learning activity, design them into an applicable framework and then use this framework to guide the design, development and application of work-relevant assessment. Its purpose was to formulate an effective model of task design and assessment. The first phase of the study identif...
Chapter
Full-text available
As more and more children bring personal mobile devices to school, schools struggle to formulate policies that acknowledge their power as learning tools. Until quite recently, policy often simply prohibited the use of mobile phones in any form while on school grounds, despite parental approval for students to carry them for personal safety and conv...
Article
Studies show that affordances of social media have not yet been fully exploited in the promotion of authentic e-learning in higher education. The e-Learning of the Future project (2009-2011) has met these challenges through working life mentoring using social media. In this paper, we examine the planning and implementation of social media in nine p...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In the three short years since the release of the iPad, it has become the object of substantial investment in a number of areas of education. This investment is driving the need for significant research into mobile device related teaching and pedagogy. The focus of this paper is on the first iteration of a design-based research study, which is info...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
One major element of supply chain management education is helping learners to grasp the complexity, the challenges, and the efficient management of the multiple dimensions in supply chains. Each decision made can ‘ripple’ through supply chains and have serious repercussions that may include causing millions of dollars in damage or triggering a chai...
Article
Full-text available
The challenge to provide engaging, effective learning environments for university students is perhaps greater now than ever before. While the ‘anytime, anywhere’ online learning environment appeals, students also need a learning environment that encourages and retains their engagement. A new teacher-education program with an explicit focus on appli...
Article
Full-text available
In the three short years since the release of the iPad, it has become the object of substantial investment in a number of areas of education. This investment is driving the need for significant research into mobile device related teaching and pedagogy. The focus of this paper is on the first iteration of a design-based research study, which is info...
Article
Full-text available
One major element of supply chain management education is helping learners to grasp the complexity, the challenges, and the efficient management of the multiple dimensions in supply chains. Each decision made can 'ripple' through supply chains and have serious repercussions that may include causing millions of dollars in damage or triggering a chai...
Article
It is now widely accepted that the transmission of disciplinary knowledge is insufficient to prepare students leaving higher education for the workplace. Authentic learning has been suggested as a way to bring the necessary complexity into learning to deal with challenges in professional practice after graduation. This study investigates how South...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A key challenge for university professionals is to identify how to construct more interactive, engaging and student-centred environments that promote 21st century skills and encourage selfdirected learning. Existing research suggests the use of real-life tasks supported by new technologies, together with access to the vast array of open educational...
Conference Paper
While increasingly large numbers of students are choosing to enrol in distance modes of learning at university, many are poorly supported, left to struggle with mainly text-based resources while their on campus counterparts are well supported with a range of personal and technology-based supports. In this paper, we describe a first year compulsory...
Article
Full-text available
This paper describes lessons learnt whilst using an online peer review system in an undergraduate unit for pre-service teachers. In this unit, students learn to use information technologies as part of their future teaching practice. The unit aims to foster graduates who become lifelong reflective educators by providing opportunities to explore and...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past few decades there has been a substantial swing among higher education practitioners towards a more constructivist approach to learning. Nevertheless, it is still evident that many instructivist models are widely used in both classroom and online learning environments. A key challenge for educators is linking learner needs, pedagogy an...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract: The implementation of authentic learning elements at education institutions in five countries, across eight online courses in total, is examined in this paper. The International Virtual Benchmarking Project (2009-2010) applied the elements of authentic learning developed by Herrington and Oliver (2000) as criteria to evaluate authenticity...
Chapter
Regardless of whether one thinks of today’s higher education students as “digital natives” or members of “Generation Me,” it is obvious that traditional instructional methods are failing to engage them adequately in developing the kinds of higher order learning outcomes necessary in the 21st Century. These outcomes should encompass the conative lea...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper addresses the largely ‘inauthentic’ pedagogical approaches in current classroom and distance-learning environments, and will propose a methodology that utilises existing technologies to provide an immersive and authentic experience in education; that is to bridge the gap between the academic perspective and the real-world requirements. I...
Conference Paper
In the rapidly globalizing 21st century knowledge society, multicultural understanding plays a major role. However, what do we mean by “culture” in the educational context, what aspects actually have or should have an impact on our learning environments, and might some of these assumptions direct the development of our learning environments in an u...
Article
Full-text available
A strong body of evidence exists around the power of authentic learning as a pedagogical model to support learning for the future. In recent years, with the increased understanding and focus on authentic learning theory, the educator’s toolkit has continued to grow. Mobile technologies have also undergone rapid change during this time, including th...
Conference Paper
Tampere University of Applied Sciences has developed a postgraduate certificate program for teaching in higher education that is currently being implemented at Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates. In the design of the program, the principles of authentic e-learning (Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver 2010) have been used as a guidel...
Article
Full-text available
Design principles are fundamental to the conduct of educational design research (or design-based research) studies, a research approach that is becoming more widely used in educational technology research and pedagogy. In this paper, we argue that design principles can be used to guide the design and development of learning environments in higher e...
Article
Full-text available
The analysis of student access to learning management systems and web-based lecture capture systems is a growing area of interest for teachers in higher education wishing to improve the student learning experience. The data trails left by students as they engage in these environments can be accessed and analysed for meaning. This paper describes a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper is a report on the preliminary findings of two on-going studies conducted on graduate level courses for pre-service teachers. A survey was used to gather student perceptions about using Skype and written tutor reflections obtained for evidence of perceived advantages and disadvantages of using Skype to build a community of learners. Cons...
Article
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More and more, social technologies and virtual work methods are facilitating new ways of crossing boundaries in professional development and international collaborations. This paper examines the peer development of higher education teachers through the experiences of the IVBM project (International Virtual Benchmarking, 2009–2010). The e-benchmarki...
Article
Full-text available
Maintaining essential contextual conditions in TESOL classroom in order to achieve authenticity have been the target for many researchers. During this process, however, the difficulty and complexity of real life tasks have been disregarded. As a result, knowledge gathered at school through decontextualised school type activities often remains 'iner...
Book
Full-text available
This work arises from the joint AARE/ACDE National Education Research Futures Summit in February 20101. Following the initial discussion and significant interest in eResearch potential in educational research, AARE/ARDEN decided to explore this topic further and agreed to convene eResearch Task Group. The main task for the group was to produce an i...
Article
Full-text available
The outcomes of educational systems continue to lag far behind expectations at all levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Meanwhile, the sheer amount of educational research published in refereed journals has expanded enormously. There is an obvious disconnect between the educational research papers published in professional journals or presente...
Article
Full-text available
Studies show that affordances of social media have not yet been fully exploited in the promotion of authentic e-learning in higher education. The e-Learning of the Future project (2009–2011) meets these challenges through working life mentoring using social media. In this paper, we examine the planning and implementation of social media in five pro...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The analysis of student access to learning management systems and web-based lecture capture systems is a growing area of interest for teachers in higher education wishing to improve the student learning experience. The data trails left by students as they engage in these environments can be accessed and analysed for meaning. This paper describes a...
Article
Full-text available
Increasing flexibility in higher education is being provided to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Technologies such as lecture-capture systems have been employed by many universities to provide on-demand access to recorded lectures. This paper describes research into how students engage with lecture-capture technologies such as Lectopia as...
Article
Full-text available
An effective online learning community requires the development of social presence, as this helps learners to project themselves online and feel a sense of community. A literature review found that cultural preferences are important in developing relationships online, which may explain why some learners in international contexts may not participate...
Article
Full-text available
The outcomes of educational systems continue to lag far behind expectations at all levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Meanwhile, the sheer amount of educational research published in refereed journals has expanded enormously. There is an obvious disconnect between the educational research papers published in professional journals or presente...
Article
PurposeUpdating professional knowledge is a central tenet of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and professional reading is a common method health practitioners use to update their professional knowledge. This paper reports the level of professional reading by Medical Radiation Science (MRS) practitioners in Australia and examines organisati...
Article
Full-text available
the widespread proliferation of computer games for children as young as six months of age, merits a reexamination of their manner of use and a review of their facility to provide oppor-tunities for developmental play. this article describes a re-search study conducted to explore the use of computer games by young children, specifically to investiga...
Article
Full-text available
The old adage, 'We teach as we have been taught' places a great deal of responsibility on the current generation of online teachers, to teach in a manner that is worth replicating. This paper describes the development of a course in online teaching and learning, available only in online mode, that models the approach to teaching and learning that i...
Article
PurposeThe Internet is an important information source for health practitioners providing immediate access to the most current health and medical information. Factors limiting practitioner access to the Internet have been identified and the literature shows that access to the Internet varies across and within health professions. There is therefore...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper discusses preliminary findings of the study of computer game design in relation to current understanding of imaginative play and its developmental value for young children. The crucial role of children's play in their development is well documented. A number of criteria, which are essential in building a foundation for children's cogniti...
Chapter
At the classroom level, contexts for learning are often limited in the experiential component. Teachers and trainers feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of inventing authentic learning contexts, and creating tasks that truly reflect the way knowledge would be used in the real world (Herrington et al. 2004). However, there are growing numbers of exam...
Article
Full-text available
Professional learning is an important process in enabling teachers to update their pedagogical knowledge and practices. The use of online technologies to support professional learning has a number of benefits in terms of flexibility and scalability. However, it is not clear how well the approach impacts on teachers' classroom practices. This articl...
Article
Full-text available
Regardless of whether one thinks of today's higher education students as "digital natives" or members of "Generation Me," it is obvious that traditional instructional methods are failing to engage them adequately in developing the kinds of higher order learning outcomes necessary in the 21st Century. These outcomes should encompass the conative lea...
Article
Full-text available
AbstrAct In this chapter the authors discuss two central themes: the changing nature of literate activity brought about by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and suggestions for how educators could respond to this guided by principles of authentic learning. The access many young people have to ICT has resulted in new forms of literac...
Article
Full-text available
The chapters of this e-book comprise the pedagogical and research endeavours of a team of academics in higher education who worked with mobile learning devices over two years on a project entitled New Technologies: New Pedagogies project: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning. The project endeavoured to take an inno...
Article
Full-text available
This chapter describes the experience of using iPods with preservice early childhood educators in an introductory ICT course. The approach taken was to use the mobile devices, not as the object of study in themselves, but as cognitive tools to be used to complete a complex and authentic task. Students used the iPods in groups to create digital stor...
Article
Full-text available
The creation of a virtual benchmarking model as a tool for professional development of teachers is examined in this article. The process employed authentic learning criteria as reflection and dialogue tools in a peer review of e-courses. The learning space the virtual benchmarking process provided and its effectiveness in supporting professional de...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss an expansion of the Special Education Bulgaria (SEB) internet community that is required to pilot software created by the European Union's (EU's) Sixth Framework integrated project, TENCompetence. Design/methodology/approach SEB is the product of a two‐year research project designed to create a susta...
Article
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This paper describes a major development and research study that investigated the use of mobile technologies in higher education. The project investigated the educational potential of two ubiquitous mobile devices: Palm smart phones and iPod digital audio players (mp3 players). An action learning framework for professional development was designed...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Recent research and learning theory provides a wealth of thought, ideas and strategies to inform the design and implementation of learner-centered, realistic and ,effective learning ,environments. ,This chapter ,proposes guidelines,for designing ,authentic ,learning ,environments ,for higher education,that can be applied,across a range,of...
Article
Full-text available
Theories of play have identified many ways in which play may advance children's development. Yet, much traditional childhood play is being replaced by time spent on computer play. However, such computer programs are often produced without theoretical foundation, using animations, colour, sound, and surprise as the basis of their design rather than...
Chapter
Recent research and learning theory provides a wealth of thought, ideas and strategies to inform the design and implementation of learner-centered, realistic and effective learning environments. This chapter proposes guidelines for designing authentic learning environments for higher education that can be applied across a range of disciplines and i...
Article
Full-text available
Research and development for an Internet-facilitated distributed community of practice (DCoP) for special education in Bulgaria is in its final phase. The DCoP is called Special Education Bulgaria. Results from the needs assessment indicated that special education researchers, practitioners, and parents in Bulgaria would benefit from such a communi...
Article
Full-text available
Investigating the role of ePortfolios and online courses in a community of practice: Assisting Bulgarian special educators with lifelong competency development, Research and development for an Internet-facilitated distributed community of practice (DCoP) for special education in Bulgaria is in its final phase. The DCoP is called Special Education B...
Article
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THE DEVELOPMENT of immersive learning technologies in the form of virtual reality and advanced computer applications has meant that realistic creations of simulated environments are now possible. Such simulations have been used to great effect in training in the military, air force, and in medical training. But how realistic do problems need to be...
Article
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Technology use in classrooms is often employed for all the wrong reasons—such as convenience, pressure from school administrators, the belief that students need to be entertained, and so on. In this article, the authors argue that technology presents the opportunity to employ powerful cognitive tools that can be used by students to solve complex an...
Article
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Authentic learning designs have been explored for some time now and have frequently been shown to provide learning settings that provide many meaningful contexts for learning. These meaningful contexts provide not only encouragement for students to learn but also a raft of learning enhancements including higher-order learning and forms of learning...
Article
Full-text available
Special Education Bulgaria (SEB) is a CoP that is facilitated by a website. It’s central purpose is to connect extant geographically-dispersed special education communities in Bulgaria. The website, www.specialeducationbulgaria.com, has been updated progressively throughout three phases of research and grown from an initial group of 20 users to mor...
Article
The affordances of online learning technologies have enabled more widespread development of learning environments that facilitate the exploration and solving of complex and realistic problems. In this paper, we describe the design of a real world geography problem, embedded within a web environment that is facilitated by an onsite excursion for dat...