Volume 19 (2016): Edizione 1 (July 2016)

With the excessive use of social media in the 21st century, attempts to integrate social media within higher education have also increased. In this area, research has been particularly focused on the aspects of students, rather than the instructors. This study puts the emphasis on the instructors with the aim to explore their use of social media in educational settings. Their respective teaching preferences were explored, from a pedagogical perspective, with the help of a Social Media Toolkit. The toolkit was developed to guide instructors that want to integrate social media in their teaching. This study was designed as a descriptive study and quantitative data was collected from 583 instructors from 39 countries. The participants responded to four main questions in an online environment. Results revealed that instructors mostly prefer to teach their subject at the applying and understanding levels. They frequently use text-based materials and design their courses as problem-based or on a presentation model. They mostly prefer to assess students using alternative methods based on their performance, like portfolios, group works, etc. whilst classical methods were also preferred. Overall findings indicated that any instructor from any discipline or culture can transform courses onto a social media platform thanks to many different and varied features provided by social media tools.

Distance Education (DE) theorists have argued about the requirement for a theory to be comprehensive in a way that can explicate many of the activities associated with DE. Currently, Transactional Distance Theory (TDT) (Moore, 1993) and the Theory of Instructional Dialogue (IDT) (Caspi & Gorsky, 2006) are the most prominent theories, yet they still do not represent a unified and comprehensive theory for DE. This paper provides a review of the existing literature on DE theories and identifies potential gaps in theorising distance education. Building on Giddens’ (1984) work, an innovative approach to theorising DE is proposed through the conceptualisation of the Adapting Structuration Theory In Distance Education (ASTIDE) model as a means to explicate DE operations and practices at the institutional and national/international level. It also presents evidence, from a larger study, of the necessity of a comprehensive model such as the ASTIDE constructed through an investigation into the DE systems of developing and developed countries.

The Pygmalion Effect is the positive form of self-fulfilling prophecy and shows how teacher expectations influence student performance. According to this phenomenon, higher expectations can lead to an increase in performance. In this research qualitative methodology was adopted both in data collection, and in analysis, in order to investigate the impact of the Pygmalion Effect in distance adult learning. Observation was held in two Contact Sessions of the Postgraduate Module for Open and Distance Education (EKP65) of the School of Humanities at the Hellenic Open University (HOU). Also, 22 interviews were conducted, 6 with Tutors/Advisors and 16 with students of the same Postgraduate Module. The data analysis indicates that both Tutors/Advisors and postgraduate students shape form their expectations based on the behaviour as reflected in their first contact (telephone contact, face-to-face contact, written contact through the CV). Expectations originally are positive, though this could change due to mismatched following behaviour. Tutor’s expectations are expressed in verbal and non-verbal ways both in written and face-to-face communication. However, it is the non-verbal behaviour - and mainly the encouragement and the support towards the students - that influences their positive mood and attitude towards the learning object and distance learning itself. In conclusion, not to reject the educational trend according to which the adult learner has developed selfmotivation, we accept that Tutor’s expectations reflected in encouragement and support towards the student may influence the learning process.