Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2017, 33(2).  
 

 
 

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Editorial: Volume 33 Issue 1 
 
In this issue, eleven articles present diverse ideas within three main synergistic themes: teacher education, 
blended learning, and mobile technology.   

Teacher education has been a key area of research in the past decades, and is the focus of the first four 
articles. Given the prominent role of teachers in shaping the nation’s future, it seems imperative that 
considerable effort and attention is invested in teacher education and development, to cultivate adaptive, 
skilful, and knowledgeable teachers who are ready to take on the challenges of the classroom. With 
technology being an integral part of teaching and learning, researchers are investing in how technology 
shapes and benefits teaching. However, as rightfully pointed out in the first article by Becuwe, Roblin, 
Tondeur, Thys, Castelein, and Voogt, it is a daunting task for teacher educators to model effective 
integration of technology. To find ways for bringing together teaching and technology, these researchers 
adopted a Delphi study aimed at synthesising the knowledge and views of various stakeholders about the 
conditions for the successful implementation of teacher educator design teams (TeDTs) for ICT integration. 
Some important conditions were identified by the researchers, such as: (1) the creation of an atmosphere of 
trust, and (2) responsible participants with a shared TPACK goal over the long run - which is key to the 
collaboration process. These conditions are useful for institutions to consider when implementing TeDTS 
for ICT integration. 
 
Echoing the need to model effective integration of technology, Chai, Tan, Deng, and Koh also argued that 
teachers should be competent at designing lessons that harness technologies. They further pointed out that 
teachers’ beliefs about learning, combined with their design dispositions, design practices, and relevant 
factors of TPACK are essential drivers of teacher engagement in designing lessons. Using a survey method, 
these researchers found that teachers’ beliefs about learning and their design capacities shifted along with 
their TPACK efficacy. They also identified factors that could possibly affect teachers’ competencies in 
designing meaningful lessons. Such findings may help to explain the critical role of teachers’ beliefs in 
lesson design. 
 
In a more contextualised study, Lin and Xie investigated the effect of employing tagclouds as anchors to 
support pre-service teachers’ knowledge construction in small groups. Not only did the researchers 
conclude that group discussions with learner-generated tagclouds could facilitate knowledge construction, 
they also found that tagclouds as anchors for group discussions successfully guided and mediated the 
interactions among participants, and supported meaningful and active participation. Along a similar vein, 
on the importance of interaction, Smits and Voogt conducted a study on the impacts of two groups of 
online teachers’ asynchronous messages on students’ learning. The researchers suggested the importance 
of addressing the group, neutral acknowledgement, specific praise, elaborate content, and online personality 
for student satisfaction. Both Lin and Xie’s, and Smits and Joke’s studies may generate interest among 
researchers regarding the possibility of combining the technology with the strategy of effective 
asynchronous messaging, and subsequently transferring the success of their findings to research situated in 
the student context. 
 
The next three articles explore the second theme, blended learning. Performing social network analysis of 
the most cited blended learning articles around the world, the journals in which the articles were published, 
and the citation and publication patterns for each, Spring and Graham present a broad overview of the 
current impactful conversations about blended learning. These researchers found a huge disparity in citation 
patterns around the world. They also reported that while blended learning research from North America is 
predominately cited more frequently worldwide, there is a growing trend in blended learning research 
elsewhere. The researchers point out that it would be beneficial to have stronger communication and 
collaboration within the blended learning field, especially as more blended learning research is conducted 
on various continents and in differing learning contexts. 
 
Along the same line, Crawford and Jenkins discussed 3 years of sequential findings about teacher-led 
research on the innovative pedagogical approach using a combination of blended learning and team 
teaching strategies. The researchers suggested that face-to-face and online components need to be 
complementary and interdependent to be successful, and that there are benefits from combining the blended 
learning and team approach. With the tendency of institutions to be quick to invest in blended learning 



Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2017, 33(2).  
 

 
 

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without understanding its complexities, Crawford and Jenkins’s study offers valuable advice on effective 
implementation. They conclude that investigations into learner satisfaction and intention are necessary to 
sustain the use of blended learning.. 
 
Still casting a research lens over blended learning, Al-Azawei, Parslow, and Lundqvist’s study - one of 
the few examining the technology acceptance model (TAM) in Arabic populations – extended TAM by 
incorporating e-learning self-efficacy, perceived satisfaction and learning styles into the model. Unlike 
prior TAM literature, this research highlights the integration of perceived satisfaction and technology 
acceptance in accordance with psychological traits and learner beliefs. Overall, the model achieved an 
acceptable fit and successfully integrated intention to use (ITU) and perceived satisfaction (PS). However, 
psychological differences did not indicate positive impacts on learner satisfaction and e-learning adoption. 
According to the authors the findings add to the body of literature regarding the soundness of TAM across 
cultural differences. 
 
The final four articles investigate mobile learning, an area of research experiencing rapid growth. Both 
using the technique of structural equation modelling, Gan and Balakrishnan, as well as Huang, Tang, Lee, 
and Yang generate interesting findings about mobile learning. For instance, Gan and Balakrishnan argue 
that the reason for using mobile technology in classrooms with large numbers of students is to facilitate 
interactions among students and lecturers. Extending the TAM, these researchers found that students’ 
perceptions of how comfortable they feel about the mobile tools, whether they enjoy using these tools in 
the classroom, and their perceptions of whether they provide useful information for learning, determines 
whether they accept or reject mobile technology. However, the researchers also found that the findings of 
previous research on perceptions of ease of use and usefulness were not significant predictors in this case. 
The findings could suggest a shift of TAM-related research findings when applied to mobile technology. 
 
Congruent with Gan and Balakrishnan’s study, Huang, Tang, Lee, and Yang were interested in 
investigating elements that could improve mobile learning outcomes. Their findings suggested that 
continuance intention has a positive influence on mobile learning performance, whereas perceived 
playfulness has a limited influence. However, the authors cautioned that the importance of perceived 
playfulness in learning outcomes should not be underestimated, because if learners enjoy mobile learning 
and would like to adopt it, it is possible that a positive learning performance will result. 
 
Lai and Smith took a different approach to research related to mobile learning, examining students’ 
understandings of informal learning in connection to formal learning. Using a mixed method approach, 
they conducted their study with postgraduate, undergraduate, and first-year students. Interestingly, the 
undergraduate and first-year interview participants reported that they engaged in informal learning to 
support their formal learning, while the postgraduate participants made arbitrary links between their 
informal learning and formal learning. While it was found that all three groups employed the same digital 
technologies, such as mobile phones, to engage in informal learning, differences between the groups were 
found.  For example, first-year students make heavy use of social media while postgraduate students tend 
to draw on traditional forms like seminars.  
 
Although there is increasing research in the area of mobile technology, studies on mobile technology 
enhanced with digital pens have only recently begun to appear. In the last article, Maclaren, Wilson, and 
Klymchuk used design-based research to conduct their research in the context of mathematically intensive 
engineering contexts. They highlighted the strong preference of students for the use of pen-enabled tablet 
PCs as a delivery technology. Researchers keen to further research pen-enabled mobile technology may be 
interested in exploring whether the same sentiment is found, and whether there are substantial benefits to 
students’ learning, when digital pens alongside mobile technology are used in other learning contexts. 
 
Chwee Beng Lee 
 
Acknowledgements 

The production of AJET is a team effort. The lead editors Chwee Beng Lee, Eva Heinrich and Michael 
Henderson work with a dedicated team of associate editors who facilitate the reviews and author 
revisions. The associate editors are: Associate Professor Shirley Agostinho; Dr Thomas Donald 
Cochrane; Dr Helen Farley; Associate Professor Paul Gruba, Associate Professor Lina Markauskaite; Dr 



Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2017, 33(2).  
 

 
 

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Stephen Marshall; and Dr Petrea Redmond. Behind the scenes we also have two wonderful copyeditors: 
Kayleen Wood and Antonina Petrolito. And finally, but not least, we need to thank our large number of 
expert reviewers who ensure our articles are of high standard and offer valuable new understandings in 
the field. 
 
 
 


	Editorial: Volume 33 Issue 1