Emerging educational technologies
E. A. Salimi
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The ever-changing and enigmatic future is taking form through a continuous wave of worldwide trends, advancements, and revolutionary ideas. Moreover, the rapid spread of the coronavirus and subsequent lockdown measures have accelerated the pace of technological advancements, ...
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Background and Objectives: The ever-changing and enigmatic future is taking form through a continuous wave of worldwide trends, advancements, and revolutionary ideas. Moreover, the rapid spread of the coronavirus and subsequent lockdown measures have accelerated the pace of technological advancements, significantly impacting multiple facets of our existence, employment, and connections. In the realm of learning, there has been an astounding and rapid transition from conventional classrooms to virtual platforms and groundbreaking advancements. Consequently, it becomes imperative for mankind to acknowledge and evaluate the profound influence of these developments, specifically within the domain of education. This innovative research project seeks to investigate the impressive capabilities of metaverse technology in addressing an unforeseen hurdle. Its main aim is to examine the deep influence of extended reality technologies on future education and assess if incorporating metaverse technology in learning will transform the higher education, generating notable progress and enhancing the quality of instruction.Materials and Methods: The study aimed to comprehensively understand the research topic and its context by gaining insight into the participants’ perspectives and experiences. To achieve this, a qualitative research was used with 63 purposefully selected participants. The participants included Iranian male and female EFL university professors, EFL university students, educational technology specialists, and futurists in science and technology. Data was collected by conducting focused-group discussions and episodic narrative interviews, as well as utilizing narrative inquiry methods on the Telegram network. Data collection continued until saturation was achieved, resulting in 25 participants for interviews and 38 individuals for narrative inquiry. To analyze the data and identify recurring themes, thematic analysis was conducted, involving initial coding, focused coding, and axial coding.Findings: Findings revealed that metaverse technology plays a crucial role in the field of education and has a significant influence on higher education. Surprisingly, while analyzing the data, four main categories were identified, surpassing initial expectations. These categories include: 1) Empowering experiences: XR heightens sense of immersion, presence, and agency; 2) The immersive power of XR: Boosting enjoyment, interest, motivation, and self-efficacy; 3) Exploring boundaries of perception: XR triggers the illusion of body ownership and embodiment in virtual environments; and 4) The metamorphosis of the self: XR revolutionizes attitudes, behaviors, cognition, and physical body. Each of these categories represents the impacts of metaverse on future education. Understanding and embracing XR’s impact on education is vital for educators, as harnessing the metaverse’s potential benefits can greatly enhance teaching and learning experiences through more captivating and immersive environments.Conclusions: The outcomes of this research carry significant implications for policymakers, educators, managers, leaders, practitioners, and all stakeholders involved in the field of education. They provide valuable insights into global trends, emerging technologies, innovations, and developments, and how they will likely shape the future of higher education. Given the rapid advancements in technology and the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it is crucial to embrace these technologies and implement necessary changes in learning and teaching method to improve the quality of education. The hope is that this study will be a trusted source and offer guidance to future generations, helping them meet the evolving requirements of education.
Emerging educational technologies
E.A. Salimi; M. Rezaei Ghahroudi
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The idea that the world is facing global emerging trends, technologies, and innovations lead the world to experience an uncertain, complex, and unstable future. Therefore, of the many diverse, controversial, and attractive challenges humankind deal with today, the most intense ...
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Background and Objectives: The idea that the world is facing global emerging trends, technologies, and innovations lead the world to experience an uncertain, complex, and unstable future. Therefore, of the many diverse, controversial, and attractive challenges humankind deal with today, the most intense and critical is understanding the effect of the new technology revolution in various fields, especially in education. Recently, the Covid-19 pandemic and its subsequent quarantines have created a significant technological leap in the modern life landscape, leading to drastic and unexpected changes in education. As Covid-19 is a force to make the transition from face-to-face to online education, this study seeks to investigate whether distributed ledger technologies can help successfully tackle this new and major challenge. In this light, the researchers of the present study aimed to examine the impacts and implications of these technologies on the education system to see if they would improve the quality of education in the future.Methods: The current study was conducted adopting a qualitative approach to provide in-depth insights and experiences of the participants. The target population of the present research included sixty-three males and females from five groups of people including higher education policymakers, teacher training instructors, information and communication technology specialists, educational technology experts, and future researchers of the educational system recruited through purposive sampling. The required data were collected through different types of interviews and narrative analysis which was conducted through WhatsApp network. The interview was selected since it was practically more convenient than other qualitative research instruments. This instrument, due to its nature, could provide a trustworthy contextualized and deep understanding of the research issue. Narrative analysis was used as the second fruitful instrument due to the centrality and impressive role digital environments play in human life. Since time and space constraints have reduced face-to-face interactions, such a flexible and attractive instrument could provide an interactive and collaborative environment for participants to tell their stories either synchronically or Asynchronically. The process of data collection continued until saturation was reached, based on which 25 interviews were conducted and 38 members participated in narrative inquiry. To analyze the data and for the themes to be extracted, thematic analysis including initial coding, focused coding, and axial coding was conducted.Findings: The results of the data analysis led to the following themes extracted: curriculum diversity, assessing students' academic performance, quality management of learning achievements, recording management of learning outcomes, academic certificate administration, and lifelong learning. Each of the themes represents one of the blockchain implications in future education. The analysis of the interviews and narrative inquiry indicated that Blockchain, due to its specific features such as security, trust, transparency, immutability, privacy, integrity, authentication, robustness, accountability, and decentralization, plays a critical role in transforming future education.Conclusion: The results of the present study can inform policymakers, educators, managers, leaders, practitioners, and all stakeholders of the education system, especially higher education, of the global emerging trends, technologies, innovations, and developments and their effects on future education. Now that the day-to-day penetration of technological advancements coincides with the Corona virus epidemic around the world, it is necessary to apply technologies and take all necessary changes to recreate the education system in order to take a step towards improving the quality of education. It is hoped that the present study will be a reliable source for further future researches on education.
Teacher Education
E.A. Salimi; M.M. Safarzadeh
Abstract
Background and Objective:Globalization and moving towards an interconnected international community has been facilitated through major changes in the field of technology such as the advancement of digital communications and the continuous transfer of large volumes of data around the world and the advances ...
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Background and Objective:Globalization and moving towards an interconnected international community has been facilitated through major changes in the field of technology such as the advancement of digital communications and the continuous transfer of large volumes of data around the world and the advances in the transportation industry for easy and fast transportation of passengers and goods. This globalization has created a level of interaction between people of different nationalities, cultures and ethnicities that is not comparable to the past. Although successful communication in the past has been one of the most important features of an effective social interaction, in recent years, this fruitful communication has become a vital feature. The present study, using a one-of-a-kind questionnaire, investigated Iranian English language teachers’ attitudes toward the phenomenon of language education glocalization for the first time. Methods: The participants of the study had different academic, age, teaching experience, and gender backgrounds. The study was conducted in two phases in the first of which a validated questionnaire was designed and developed. In the second phase, the questionnaire was employed to collect the information regarding the preferential attitudes of the teachers and descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. Findings: The results of the questionnaire data analysis revealed that the teachers believe that there is no more only American or British English. There are, however, also varieties of English which have their own independent growth and special features according to the needs of their users. Furthermore, they think that the glocal needs of the users must be met in the process of English language education glocalization. Likewise, the teachers are for the idea that language education should not only be at the service of reflecting the native speaker English variety and culture, but it should serve all cultures to play their equal role in intercultural communication. Conclusion: Helping teachers to find their real role in their profession, the findings of the study increases the perception of language education glocalization leading to a more appropriate education program planning. The results of these studies can inform educators of teachers about their individual abilities and help to design and implement educational programs as well as possible. Access to teachers' attitudes and abilities can also help policymakers and syllabus designers develop and implement instructional materials to better perform their tasks.
English teaching
E.A. Salimi
Abstract
This study aims at investigating the effect of applying non-verbal communication and body gesture in the process of learning second language. Communication among individuals to share their beliefs, feelings and opinion entails both verbal and non-verbal aspects. While non-verbal communication includes ...
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This study aims at investigating the effect of applying non-verbal communication and body gesture in the process of learning second language. Communication among individuals to share their beliefs, feelings and opinion entails both verbal and non-verbal aspects. While non-verbal communication includes indirect behavior of body gesture, language is the indispensable part of Any verbal communication. A number of 60 EFL learners were recruited from a private English language institute to participate in the present study. They were, then, randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups. Each group was instructed 15 English words. The treatment lasted 6 sessions in one month. The experimental group was taught using body gesture and pictures, while control the group was instructed with the use of verbal techniques. Learners in both groups were tested orally to check their progress. The findings revealed that there is a significant difference between the two groups outperforming experimental over the control group. A Likert-scaled questionnaire was also distributed among learners. Then, the data collected were analyzed using SPSS and their mean scores revealed their positive attitudes toward using non-verbal communication in L2 teaching and learning.
