Current Volume – In progress – Education Thinking follows the rolling publication model: articles are published on an ongoing basis all over the year, as soon as they are ready.

Education Thinking, ISSN  2778-777X – Volume 1, Issue 1 – 2021

literature review

Enhancing Learners’ Autonomy With E-Portfolios And Open Learner Models: A Literature Review

Sacha Kiffer, Éric Bertrand, Jérôme Eneau, Jean-Marie Gilliot, Geneviève Lameul

This article considers how e-portfolios improve learner autonomy in higher education, especially when using open learner models (OLMs). OLMs are artificial-intelligence-built representations of interactions between learners and instructional environments, where learners have access to data about their interaction patterns. The analysis is based on a review of 24 research articles. Results suggest that e-portfolios improve learner autonomy, especially by strengthening self-reflection capabilities. The review also identifies areas of e-portfolio and OLM research that require further investigation.

Pages 1–9 / Publication date: 9 March 2021 / View HTML full text /  Download full-text PDF

literature review

A Review of Zoom Utilization in Higher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Lesly R. Krome

The COVID-19 pandemic stunned the world in 2020 resulting in governmental lockdowns bringing a halt to traditional face-to-face classes in the field of education (Czeisler et al., 2020). Institutions of higher education scrambled to find a means to remotely instruct students and the Zoom Video Communications conferencing tool was found to be a valuable piece of technology with which to do this. Following the transition to online classrooms, a wide array of research has been published regarding the experiences of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic through Zoom and similar conferencing software. A total of 32 peer-reviewed journal articles were identified as addressing the subject of higher education instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic using the Zoom conferencing tool. These articles were analyzed, and four main areas of investigation were identified: transitioning to the online classroom, comparison of online learning with teaching face-to-face, evaluation of online classroom experiences, and recommendations/best practice. A general theme surrounding the quality of online instruction was also recognized.

Pages 11–26 / Publication date: 8 May 2021 / View HTML full text /  Download full-text PDF