There is a need to emphasise and educate future business leaders on emerging technologies' disruptive and transformative impact on business processes. Allen (2020) suggests the need for a digital mindset and tech literacy in business management education. In our study, we define cyber literacy and cyber ethical mindset emphasising the importance of informing future leaders in business schools about the ethical dilemmas arising while using these emerging technologies. Additionally, we highlight various ethical pitfalls of using technologies enabling disruption (TED). Further, we contribute to the understanding of cyber literacy, cyber ethics and business ethics, how to incorporate cyber ethics into the management curriculum, and why there is a need to integrate cyber ethics into management education.

Since the development of Open Educational Resources (OERs), different models regarding the usage of these resources in education have appeared in the literature. Wiley’s 4-Rs model is considered to be one of the leading models. Research based on Wiley’s model shows that using materials without making changes is the most common use. Compared to the extensive literature regarding OER usage in education, the literature barely deals with OER usage by instructional designers or training managers in corporations. The purpose of this research is to examine the OER usage of these two stakeholders, distinguishing between Little and Big OER repositories, in which Little OER repositories such as YouTube and Wikipedia aren’t necessarily designed to fulfill educational purposes. Findings show that these stakeholders almost use only Little repositories and that their usage level is higher than what is documented in the literature: they mostly Revise–modify the form of the resource, and Remix–combine different resources to create new ones. These differences can be explained by the fact that materials from Little OER repositories are raw materials, requiring further editing and adjustment. Significant differences between instructional designers’ and training managers’ usage of OERs were found regarding the Reuse level of resources from internal repositories and the Google Images repository, and the frequency of this Reuse.

There is a growing interest in the assessment of tangible skills and competence. Specifically, there is an increase in the offerings of competency-based assessments, and some academic institutions are offering college credits for individuals who can demonstrate adequate level of competency on such assessments. An increased interest has been placed on competency-based computer simulations that can assist learners to gain tangible skills. While computer simulations and competency-based projects, in general and particularly in management, have demonstrated great value, there are still limited empirical results on their benefits to e-learners. Thus, we have developed a quasi-experimental research, using a survey instrument on pre- and post-tests, to collect the set of 12 management skills from e-learners attending courses that included both competency-based computer simulations and those that didn’t. Our data included a total of 253 participants. Results show that all 12 management skills measures demonstrated very high reliability. Our results also indicate that all 12 skills of the competency-based computer simulations had higher increase than those that didn’t. Analyses on the mean increases indicated an overall statistically significant difference for six of the 12 management skills enhancements between the experimental and control groups. Our findings demonstrate that overall computer simulations and competency-based projects do provide added value in the context of e-learning when it comes to management skills.

Teaching object-oriented programming to students in an in-classroom environment demands well-thought didactic and pedagogical strategies in order to guarantee a good level of apprenticeship. To teach it on a completely distance learning environment (e-learning) imposes possibly other strategies, besides those that the e-learning model of Open University of Portugal dictates. This article analyses the behavior of the students of the 1st cycle in Computer Science while interacting with the object-oriented programming (OOP) discipline available to them on the Moodle platform. Through the evaluation of the level of interaction achieved in a group of relevant selected actions by the students, it is possible to identify their relevancy to the success of the programming learning process. Data was extracted from Moodle, numerically analyzed, and, with the use of some charts, behavior patterns of students were identified. This paper points out potential new approaches to be considered in e-learning in order to enhance programming learning results, besides confirming a high level of drop-out and a low level of interaction, thus finding no clear correlation between students’ success and the number of online actions (especially in forums), which reveals a possible failure of the main pillar on which the e-learning model relies.

The current rapid technological changes confront researchers of learning technologies with the challenge of evaluating them, predicting trends, and improving their adoption and diffusion. This study utilizes a data-driven discourse analysis approach, namely culturomics, to investigate changes over time in the research of learning technologies. The patterns and changes were examined on a corpus of articles published over the past decade (2006-2014) in the proceedings of Chais Conference for the Study of Innovation and Learning Technologies – the leading research conference on learning technologies in Israel. The interesting findings of the exhaustive process of analyzing all the words in the corpus were that the most commonly used terms (e.g., pupil, teacher, student) and the most commonly used phrases (e.g., face-to-face) in the field of learning technologies reflect a pedagogical rather than a technological aspect of learning technologies. The study also demonstrates two cases of change over time in prominent themes, such as “Facebook” and “the National Information and Communication Technology (ICT) program”. Methodologically, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of a data-driven approach for identifying discourse trends over time.

The characteristics of successful MOOCs were explored in this study. Thousands of student reviews regarding five xMOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) in the fields of software, science, and management were extracted from the Coursetalk website and analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods using the Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) Community of Inquiry (CoI) model. The 14 characteristics found to contribute to the success of MOOCs (e.g., teacher, atmosphere, exercise) were partitioned into the teaching, social, and cognitive presence elements. In addition, cluster analysis revealed five types of learners, based on the characteristics they mentioned for course success: atmosphere, exercise, teacher, exam, and unspecified. This divides learners into groups that may prefer social, cognitive, or teaching presence. The findings of this study negate the perception that xMOOCs mostly contain teaching presence elements. This research contributes to the understanding of characteristics that contribute to successful MOOCs and sheds light on the students, too. Listening to the voices of the students and the types of characteristics that they chose to mention, enables further exploration of their preferences and expectations regarding MOOCs and, accordingly, to future adaptation between students’ preferences and MOOC characteristics.

This study examined the phenomenon of academic dishonesty among university students. It was based on Pavela’s (1997) framework of types of academic dishonesty (cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, and facilitation) and distinguished between digital and “traditional”- analog dishonesty. The study analyzed cases of academic dishonesty offenses committed by students, as well as the reasons for academic dishonesty behaviors, and the severity of penalties for violations of academic integrity. The motivational framework for committing an act of academic dishonesty (Murdock & Anderman, 2006) and the Self-Concept Maintenance model (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008) were employed to analyze the reasons for students’ dishonest behaviors. We analyzed 315 protocols of the Disciplinary Committee, at The Open University of Israel, from 2012-2013 that represent all of the offenses examined by the Committee during one and a half years. The findings showed that analog dishonesty was more prevalent than digital dishonesty. According to the students, the most prevalent reason for their academic dishonesty was the need to maintain a positive view of self as an honest person despite violating ethical codes. Interestingly, penalties for analog dishonesty were found to be more severe than those imposed for digital dishonesty. Surprisingly, women were penalized more severely than men, despite no significant gender differences in dishonesty types or in any other parameter explored in the study. Findings of this study shed light on the scope and roots of academic dishonesty and may assist institutions in coping effectively with this phenomenon.

Aim/Purpose: As online video lectures rapidly gain popularity in formal and informal learning environments, one of their main challenges is student retention. This study investigates the influence of adding interactivity to online video lectures on students’ attention span. Background: Interactivity is perceived as increasing the attention span of learners and improving the quality of learning. However, interactivity may be regarded as an interruption, which distracts students. Furthermore, adding interactive elements to online video lectures requires additional investment of various resources. Therefore, it is important to investigate the impact of adding interactivity to online video lectures on the attention span of learners. Methodology: This study employed a learning analytics approach, obtained data from Google Analytics, and analyzed data of two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that were developed by the Open University of Israel in order to make English for academic purposes (EAP) courses freely accessible. Contribution: The paper provides important insights, based on quantitative empirical research, on: integrating interactive elements in online videos; the impact of video length; and differences between two groups of advanced and basic learners. Furthermore, it demonstrates how learning analytics may be used for improving instructional design. Findings: The findings suggest that interactivity may increase the attention span of learners, as measured by the average online video lecture viewing completion percentage, before and after the addition of interactivity. However, when the lecture is longer than about 15 minutes, the completion percentages decrease, even after adding interactive elements. Recommendations for Practitioners: Adding interactivity to online video lectures and controlling their length is expected to increase the attention span of learners. Recommendation for Researchers: Learning analytics is a powerful quantitative methodology for identifying ways to improve learning processes. Impact on Society: Providing practical insights on mechanisms for increasing the attention span of learners is expected to improve social inclusion. Future Research: Discovering further best practices to improve the effectiveness of online video lectures for diverse learners.

Aim/Purpose: This paper presents some of the issues that academia faces in both the detection of plagiarism and the aftermath. The focus is on the latter, how academics and educational institutions around the world can address the challenges that follow the identification of an incident. The scope is to identify the need for and describe specific strategies to efficiently manage plagiarism incidents. Background: Plagiarism is possibly one of the major academic misconduct offences. Yet, only a portion of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) appear to have well developed policies and procedures aimed at dealing with this issue or to follow these when required. Students who plagiarize and are not caught pose challenges for academia. Students who are caught pose equal challenges. Methodology: Following a literature review that identifies and describes the extent and the seriousness of the problem, procedures and strategies to address the issue are recommended, based on the literature and best practices. Contribution: The paper alerts academics regarding the need for the establishment of rigorous and standardized procedures to address the challenges that follow the identification of a plagiarism incident. It then describes how to streamline the process to improve consistency and reduce the errors and the effort required by academic staff. Recommendations for Practitioners: To ensure that what is expected to happen takes place, HEIs should structure the process of managing suspected plagiarism cases. Operationalization, workflow automation, diagrams that map the processes involved, clear in-formation and examples to support and help academics make informed and consistent decisions, templates to communicate with the offenders, and data-bases to record incidents for future reference are strongly recommended. Future research: This paper provides a good basis for further research that will examine the plagiarism policy, the procedures, and the outcome of employing the procedures within the faculties of a single HEI, or an empirical comparison of these across a group of HEIs. Impact on Society: Considering its potential consequences, educational institutions should strive to prevent, detect, and deter plagiarism – and any type of student misconduct. Inaction can be harmful, as it is likely that some students will not gain the appropriate knowledge that their chosen profession requires, which could put in danger both their wellbeing and the people they will later serve in their careers.

Aim/Purpose: This study examines differences in credit and noncredit users’ learning and usage of the Plant Sciences E-Library (PASSEL, http://passel.unl.edu), a large international, open-source multidisciplinary learning object repository. Background: Advances in online education are helping educators to meet the needs of formal academic credit students, as well as informal noncredit learners. Since online learning attracts learners with a wide variety of backgrounds and intentions, it is important understand learner behavior so that instructional resources can be designed to meet the diversity of learner motivations and needs. Methodology: This research uses both descriptive statistics and cluster analysis. The descriptive statistics address the research question of how credit learners differ from noncredit learners in using an international e-library of learning objects. Cluster analysis identifies high and low credit/noncredit students based on their quiz scores and follow-up descriptive statistics to (a) differentiate their usage patterns and (b) help describe possible learning approaches (deep, surface, and strategic). Contribution: This research is unique in its use of objective, web-tracking data and its novel use of clustering and descriptive analytic approaches to compare credit and noncredit learners’ online behavior of the same educational materials. It is also one of the first to begin to identify learning approaches of the noncredit learner. Findings: Results showed that credit users scored higher on quizzes and spent more time on the online quizzes and lessons than did noncredit learners, suggesting their academic orientation. Similarly, high credit scorers spent more time on individual lessons and quizzes than did the low scorers. The most striking difference among noncredit learners was in session times, with the low scorers spending more time in a session, suggesting more browsing behavior. Results were used to develop learner profiles for the four groups (high/low quiz scorers x credit/noncredit). Recommendations for Practitioners: These results provide preliminary insight for instructors or instructional designers. For example, low scoring credit students are spending a reasonable amount of time on a lesson but still score low on the quiz. Results suggest that they may need more online scaffolding or auto-generated guidance, such as the availability of relevant animations or the need to review certain parts of a lesson based on questions missed. Recommendation for Researchers: The study showed the value of objective, web-tracking data and novel use of clustering and descriptive analytic approaches to compare different types of learners. One conclusion of the study was that this web-tracking data be combined with student self-report data to provide more validation of results. Another conclusion was that demographic data from noncredit learners could be instrumental in further refining learning approaches for noncredit learners. Impact on Society: Learning object repositories, online courses, blended courses, and MOOCs often provide learners the option of moving freely among educational content, choosing not only topics of interest but also formats of material they feel will advance their learning. Since online learning is becoming more prolific and attracts learners with a wide variety of backgrounds and intentions, these results show the importance of understanding learner behavior so that e-learning instructional resources can be designed to meet the diversity of learner motivations and needs. Future Research: Future research should combine web-tracking data with student self-report to provide more validation of results. In addition, collection of demographic data and disaggregation of noncredit student usage motivations would help further refining learning approaches for this growing population of online users.

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of faculty and student perceptions of the importance of resource, interpersonal, information, systems, and technology management competencies in the hospitality industry Background: The increasing complexity and technological dependency of the diverse hospitality and tourism sector raises the skill requirements needed, and expected, of new hires making education and competency development a strategic priority. Identifying the skills needed for hospitality graduates to succeed in a sector that is continuously being impacted by digitalization and globalization must be a continual process predicated on the desire to meet ever-changing industry needs. This study seeks to update and further explore an investigation started a decade ago that examined the skills and competencies valued by hiring managers in the hospitality industry. Methodology: The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), comprised of representatives from business, labor, education, and government, developed the framework, of workplace competencies and foundation skills used in this study. This research used a survey methodology for data collection and descriptive and inferential statistical methods during the analyses. The data for this study were collected from faculty, staff, hospitality industry stakeholders, and students of a Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management located at a small eastern Historically Black University (HBU). An electronic survey was sent to169 respondents and a total of 100 completed surveys were received for an overall return rate of 59%. Contribution: This study provides research on a population (first-generation minority college students) that is expanding in numbers in higher education and that the literature, reports as being under-prepared for academic success. This paper is timely and relevant and can be used to inform hospitality educators so that they can best meet the needs of their students and the companies looking to hire skilled graduates. Findings: The findings of this study indicate there is inconsistent agreement among academicians and students regarding the importance of SCANS-specific competencies in hospitality graduates. At the same time, there is no argument that industry skills will be critical in the future of hospitality graduates. Overwhelmingly, participating students and faculty found all of the SCANS competencies important with the highest ranked competencies being interpersonal skills, which, given the importance of teamwork, customer service skills, leadership, and working with cultural diversity in the hospitality industry, was expected. Additionally, participating students indicated their strong agreement that internships are effective at building professional skills. Finally, the hospitality students included in this study who were enrolled in a skill-based curriculum were confident that their program is preparing them with the necessary skills and competencies that they will need for their future careers. Recommendations for Practitioners: Higher education hospitality programs should be exploring the skills valued by industry, teaching faculty, and the students to see if they are being satisfied. Recommendation for Researchers: This research should be expanded to additional institutions across the United States as well as abroad. This particular research protocol is easily replicated and can be duplicated at both minority and majority serving institutions enabling greater comparisons across groups. Impact on Society: Several reports identify gaps in the 21st century skills required for the workplace and the effectiveness of higher education in preparing graduates for the workforce. This study helps to propel this discussion forward with relevant findings and a research methodology that is easily replicable. Future Research: A follow-up study of employers is currently being conducted.