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Introducing the Global Educational Learning Observatory (GELO) and the Global Readiness Explorer (GREx): A framework and dashboard to investigate tech competence and culture
Abstract
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calls for immediate paradigmatic shifts in how educational institutions and the broader society address employment skills. A wide variety of local and global sources, including trade magazines, government sites, and pan-governmental sites, echo this urgent call, recommending increased emphasis on skills development in complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. The overarching aim of the Global Educational Learning Observatory (GELO) project is to develop a framework for creating an international network of institutions utilizing data-driven and science-informed evidence of best practices in online and mobile learning, while endeavoring to reach out to a large variety of individuals in formal and informal educational institutions globally. To achieve this, the project aims to (i) assemble a nucleus of formal educational institutions; (ii) construct the necessary tools to extend research on formal learning models; and (iii) reach into workplaces and more public spaces to integrate with informal learning settings. The primary source of data derives from a customizable dashboard, the Global Readiness Explorer (GREx), and a variety of quantitative tools that may be implemented within it. In addition, local initiatives and the development of overarching policies will require the use of qualitative and mixed methodologies for the collection and analysis of textual, video. and other types of artifacts to supplement the quantitative data. In GELO, partner institutions can use the broad range of data types to make decisions about course and professional learning offerings in response to the needs identified through analysis of the data. The results of this project will allow the project team to use digital technology tools to more fully explore informal learning settings around the world as a means of transforming our common understandings of traditional, institutional, and more contemporary, lifelong learning trends.
... This article documents the COVID-19 teaching and learning transition project or CTLTP, an attempt to assess some of the problems that students encountered during the transition. The assessment was done using various quantitative tools that had previously been used to; a) investigate student digital skill and competency levels, the Digital Competency Profiler or DCP [1], b) a survey designed to explore student readiness for online learning, the fully online learning community survey or FOLCS [2], and c) a tool that was commissioned for this project to examine student perceptions of their learning environment before and during the pandemic, the COVID Teaching and Learning Experiences Survey or CTLES [3]. ...
... The GREx dashboard (https://grex.eilab.ca) [1] is preeminent among these tools, as it provides access to various surveys and simultaneously displays visualizations, interpretations and other participant responses to each tool. The key objectives that are baked into the GREx dashboard include (i) measuring digital competencies in individuals or groups who are both within and outside of established, formal educational institutions, including the workplace and other, more informal settings; (ii) providing access to tools that measure digital competencies and readiness for online learning for individuals, including those living in marginalized, remote or Indigenous communities; and (iii) using digital technology tools as a means of transforming societal understanding of education and learning. ...
... This article documents the COVID-19 teaching and learning transition project or CTLTP, an attempt to assess some of the problems that students encountered during the transition. The assessment was done using various quantitative tools that had previously been used to; a) investigate student digital skill and competency levels, the Digital Competency Profiler or DCP [1], b) a survey designed to explore student readiness for online learning, the fully online learning community survey or FOLCS [2], and c) a tool that was commissioned for this project to examine student perceptions of their learning environment before and during the pandemic, the COVID Teaching and Learning Experiences Survey or CTLES [3]. ...
... The GREx dashboard (https://grex.eilab.ca) [1] is preeminent among these tools, as it provides access to various surveys and simultaneously displays visualizations, interpretations and other participant responses to each tool. The key objectives that are baked into the GREx dashboard include (i) measuring digital competencies in individuals or groups who are both within and outside of established, formal educational institutions, including the workplace and other, more informal settings; (ii) providing access to tools that measure digital competencies and readiness for online learning for individuals, including those living in marginalized, remote or Indigenous communities; and (iii) using digital technology tools as a means of transforming societal understanding of education and learning. ...
The increased drive towards digital economies, coupled with the transition to online modes of educational access and work during the COVID-19 global pandemic, necessitated a heightened focus on being able to assess digital competencies. Organizations such as the World Economic Forum and Conference Board of Canada state that developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills are vital for individuals to adapt to increasingly digitized and digitalized spaces in a rapidly changing world. The Global Readiness Explorer Project (GREx), a customizable, comprehensive digital toolkit for individuals, institutions, and organizations, offers potential users sets of assessment tools that can provide feedback and insights while using specific indicators regarding digital competency and readiness to engage in fully online learning environments. GREx can also be utilized to develop additional tools to meet the needs of potential users. Utilizing the GREx toolkit, The COVID-19 Teaching and Learning Transition Project (CTLTP) was intended to examine the potential effects of a rapid shift to online teaching and learning at a medium-sized technical university in Ontario. The university espouses a technology-enhanced learning environment using various digital tools. While there were several fully online social and health sciences programs, even before the pandemic, most students learned in physical classrooms and laboratories. This project invited these students, new to fully online learning environments, to participate in responding to three surveys that probed their digital and fully online learning skills and asked about the transition that they experienced during the pandemic. Participants recorded significant negative effects regarding the move to the fully online environment; however, additional research needs to be conducted to determine what lies behind the negative participant perceptions.
... The development and validation of original scales will likely be required to address inter-agent and innovation readiness. Researchers of the EILAB at Ontario Tech University have developed the Global Readiness Explorer (GREx)platform as a potential host infrastructure(vanOostveen et al. 2019). However, achieving robust operationalisation will require industry partnerships and validation studies relating survey measures to performance data generated in digitalised manufacturing environments. ...
Within Industry 4.0 research, the spotlight shines on technological and organisational challenges. This study shifts the focus to worker readiness, beginning with an analysis of twenty-three models to establish the state of research. Findings demonstrate that existing models are mostly early-stage proposals addressing competences featured in mainstream 21st-century and digital-competence frameworks. Worker-level factors explicitly aligned with emerging cyber-physical systems receive little attention. To construct a worker-readiness model calibrated to the needs of Industry 4.0, the authors devised a research procedure based on a two-phase integrative review of 135 publications. Firstly, they deployed an activity-system apparatus to produce a structured description of the target environment. Secondly, major worker competence groupings, aligned with this target, were extracted, tagged and reduced to five dimensions. The resulting model consolidates prior research and introduces two original competence groupings addressing human-machine partnering and decision-making in Industry 4.0. This study is a foundational step by the Educational Informatics Lab, Ontario Tech University, Canada, toward deploying a global online profile tool for generating, analysing and aggregating worker readiness profiles. This cross-disciplinary project will help researchers, educators, corporate trainers, human resource managers, policymakers, and systems designers more effectively diagnose the readiness of workers for Industry 4.0.
Within Industry 4.0 research, the spotlight shines on technological and organisational challenges. This study shifts the focus to worker readiness, beginning with an analysis of twenty-three models to establish the state of research. Findings demonstrate that existing models are mostly early-stage proposals addressing competences featured in mainstream 21st-century and digital-competence frameworks. Worker-level factors explicitly aligned with emerging cyber-physical systems receive little attention. To construct a worker-readiness model calibrated to the needs of Industry 4.0, the authors devised a research procedure based on a two-phase integrative review of 135 publications. Firstly, they deployed an activity-system apparatus to produce a structured description of the target environment. Secondly, major worker competence groupings, aligned with this target, were extracted, tagged and reduced to five dimensions. The resulting model consolidates prior research and introduces two original competence groupings addressing human-machine partnering and decision-making in Industry 4.0. This study is a foundational step by the Educational Informatics Lab, Ontario Tech University, Canada, toward deploying a global online profile tool for generating, analysing and aggregating worker readiness profiles. This cross-disciplinary project will help researchers, educators, corporate trainers, human resource managers, policymakers, and systems designers more effectively diagnose the readiness of workers for Industry 4.0.
Learning to learn and learning to cooperate are two important goals for individuals. Moreover, self regulation has been identified as fundamental to prevent school failure. The goal of the present study was to assess the interactions between self-regulated learning, cooperative learning and academic self-efficacy in secondary education students experiencing cooperative learning as the main pedagogical approach for at least one school year. 2.513 secondary education students (1.308 males, 1.205 females), 12–17 years old (M = 13.85, SD = 1.29), enrolled in 17 different schools belonging to the National Network of Schools on Cooperative Learning in Spain agreed to participate. They all had experienced this pedagogical approach a minimum of one school year. Participants were asked to complete the cooperative learning questionnaire, the strategies to control the study questionnaire and the global academic self-efficacy questionnaire. Participants were grouped based on their perceptions on cooperative learning and self-regulated learning in their classes. A combination of hierarchical and κ-means cluster analyses was used. Results revealed a four-cluster solution: cluster one included students with low levels of cooperative learning, self-regulated learning and academic self-efficacy, cluster two included students with high levels of cooperative learning, self-regulated learning and academic self-efficacy, cluster three included students with high levels of cooperative learning, low levels of self-regulated learning and intermediate-low levels of academic self-efficacy, and, finally, cluster four included students with high levels of self-regulated learning, low levels of cooperative learning, and intermediate-high levels of academic self-efficacy. Self-regulated learning was found more influential than cooperative learning on students’ academic self-efficacy. In cooperative learning contexts students interact through different types of regulations: self, co, and shared. Educators should be aware of these interactions, symmetrical or asymmetrical, because they determine the quality and quantity of the students’ participation and achievements, and they are key elements to prevent school failure.
The use of learning analytics in ICT-rich learning environments assists teachers to (re)design their learning scenarios. Teacher inquiry is a process of intentional and systematic research of teachers into their students´ learning. When teachers work in small groups or communities and present results of their practice more interpretations are generated around the use and meaning of this data. In this workshop paper we present preliminary research about four dimensions of learning analytics (engagement, assessment, progression, satisfaction), and their visualization as teaching analytics, that are hypothesized to be relevant to help teachers in the (re)design of their learning scenarios. Moreover, we evaluate teachers’ acceptance of exchanging these types of analytics within their teaching community. A workshop for blended MOOCs design (N=20 participants) showed that although all the analytics dimensions were valuable, assessment data was the most useful dimension for (re)designing while data about the engagement of students was the less useful. Educational practitioners also showed interest in knowing a combination of specific data (e.g. achievements related with the satisfaction of students). Last, most participants expressed their willingness to share visual learning analytics related to their designs with their colleagues. The role of contextual information to interpret the learning analytics was recognized as important.
Cross-cultural studies using Hofstede’s national scores to operationalize his five cultural factors at an individual level
suffer from ecological fallacy, and those using self-report scales treat cultural factors as unidimensional constructs and
provide little or no evidence of the construct validity and measurement equivalence of these scales. This paper reconceptualizes
Hofstede’s five cultural factors as ten personal cultural orientations and develops a new 40-item scale to measure them. It
also establishes the validity, reliability, and cross-cultural measurement equivalence of the new scale, and discusses its
advantages over other scales.
KeywordsCulture-Horizontal–vertical-Individualism–collectivism-Long-term orientation-Masculinity–femininity-Power distance-Uncertainty avoidance
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing everything - from the way we relate to each other, to the work we do, the way our economies work, and what it means to be human. We cannot let the brave new world that technology is currently creating simply emerge. All of us need to help shape the future we want to live in. But what do we need to know and do to achieve this?
In Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab and Nicholas Davis explore how people from all backgrounds and sectors can influence the way that technology transforms our world. Drawing on contributions by more than 200 of the world's leading technology, economic and sociological experts to present a practical guide for citizens, business leaders, social influencers and policy-makers this book outlines the most important dynamics of the technology revolution, highlights important stakeholders that are often overlooked in our discussion of the latest scientific breakthroughs, and explores 12 different technology areas central to the future of humanity.
Emerging technologies are not predetermined forces out of our control, nor are they simple tools with known impacts and consequences. The exciting capabilities provided by artificial intelligence, distributed ledger systems and cryptocurrencies, advanced materials and biotechnologies are already transforming society. The actions we take today - and those we don't - will quickly become embedded in ever-more powerful technologies that surround us and will, very soon, become an integral part of us.
By connecting the dots across a range of often-misunderstood technologies, and by exploring the practical steps that individuals, businesses and governments can take, Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution helps equip readers to shape a truly desirable future at a time of great uncertainty and change.
Despite the importance of promoting socially responsible citizenship in the Internet age, there is a paucity of research on how digital citizenship or digital citizens might be defined and/or investigated. This study found 4 major categories that construct digital citizenship: Ethics, Media and Information Literacy, Participation/Engagement, and Critical Resistance. Based on these comprehensive and interconnected categories of digital citizenship, the author argues that digital citizenship needs to be understood as a multidimensional and complex concept in connection with an interrelated but non-linear relationship with offline (place-based) civic lives.
The concept of a digital generation has been dominating the public discourse on the role of digital media in young people’s lives. Issues concerning a digital generation is closely linked to questions about how we develop an education system that is able to face the challenges of the 21st Century. A growing field of research, inclined to raise awareness of present and future challenges for our education system, is ‘media/digital literacy’. This article examines research within ‘generation studies’ and public constructions of young people and digital media. Further the article presents some developments within ‘new literacy studies’ and different aspects of ‘competencies for the 21st Century’. Next, the article reflects different approaches to studying these competencies, based on different empirical data, both from my own research and that of colleagues. Towards the end the important question of inclusion and exclusion is raised. The objective is to explore some issues of importance for future development of media literacy, the educational use of digital tools and critical considerations of a digital generation. A key part of the article is the elaboration of five dimensions representing different focus areas of research on school-based studies of media literacy.
Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? This book argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions.
As the boundaries between life online and offline break down, and we become seamlessly connected to each other and surrounded by smart, responsive objects, we are all becoming integrated into an "infosphere". Personas we adopt in social media, for example, feed into our 'real' lives so that we begin to live, as Floridi puts in, "onlife". Following those led by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, this metaphysical shift represents nothing less than a fourth revolution.
"Onlife" defines more and more of our daily activity - the way we shop, work, learn, care for our health, entertain ourselves, conduct our relationships; the way we interact with the worlds of law, finance, and politics; even the way we conduct war. In every department of life, ICTs have become environmental forces which are creating and transforming our realities. How can we ensure that we shall reap their benefits? What are the implicit risks? Are our technologies going to enable and empower us, or constrain us? This volume argues that we must expand our ecological and ethical approach to cover both natural and man-made realities, putting the 'e' in an environmentalism that can deal successfully with the new challenges posed by our digital technologies and information society.
This paper describes the initial stages of an attempt to profile competencies related to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in an educational setting, along distinct dimensions. Items were selected and adapted from existing literature, and an initial classification yielded four orders of competency. This was then submitted to judges for validation and a subsequent questionnaire was administered to 19 teachers. A first look at the results has shown that competency levels are low and a further correlation analysis of the results has shown that 4 orders of competency can be clearly identified.
This chapter describes how Web 2.0 technologies, especially social software, can be used to support student self-regulated learning in higher education contexts. Selected examples that demonstrate how instructors can integrate social software into course design to facilitate student self-regulation are provided.
Background/Context
Soon after the United States Department of Education began making changes to the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) system, education librarians concluded that there was a need for a fresh approach to addressing education information needs. Considering the importance of information systems in education, they agreed that a new subdiscipline of education should be promoted called education informatics. This subdiscipline would incorporate new technologies and learning strategies to enhance the capture, organization, and utilization of education information. Some of the information challenges facing the discipline of education are: gaps in existing information resources; lack of a centralized body of education information experts to influence the development of new education resources; scarce resources for the development of concepts, models, theories, and techniques related to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for learning and teaching; minimal understanding of how people access and use education information and digital information resources, services, systems, environments, and media for learning; and lack of support for international and cross-cultural collaborations in education informatics.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
The creation of a subdiscipline within the field of education that examines issues that fall at the intersection of education information and information technology is critical. Once there is a broader recognition of the existence of this subdiscipline, it is likely that research funding will increase, specialized expertise will be expanded, and new programs and systems related to education information will be developed.
Research Design
The research design for this article is an analytic essay.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The process of becoming an established discipline of education informatics could be advanced through an invited symposium. Grounding it in schools of education would establish an academic identity. Such an interdisciplinary field needs attention from funding agencies and research leadership; acceptance by faculty and students; and systemic implementation in universities. The establishment of a “center” for education informatics would address problems that require many resources, incubate new programs, facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration, and attract outside funding. There is a need for a journal of education informatics that has a broader scope than educational technology. A research agenda could include the development and evaluation of concepts, models, theories, and techniques related to the use of ICT for learning; ways in which people use digital information resources, services, systems, environments, and communications media for learning; whether information literacy educators give adequate attention to teaching all aspects of information literacy; and how international and cross-cultural collaborations in education informatics can be supported.
Objective. The literature on gender and technology use finds that women and men differ significantly in their attitudes toward their technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences do not always translate into actual disparities. We examine the yet-neglected area concerning gender differences with respect to Internet-use ability. In particular, we test how self-perceived abilities are related to actual abilities and how these may differ by gender.
Methods. We use new data on web-use skill to test empirically whether there are differences in men's and women's abilities to navigate online content. We draw on a diverse sample of adult Internet users to investigate the questions raised.
Results. Findings suggest that men and women do not differ greatly in their online abilities. However, we find that women's self-assessed skill is significantly lower than that of men.
Conclusions. Women's lower self-assessment regarding their web-use skills may affect significantly the extent of their online behavior and the types of uses to which they put the medium. We discuss the implications of these findings for social inequality.
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