Abstract:

Interest in supporting Technologically Enhanced Learning (TEL) has grown dramatically over the past decade. TEL provides institutions of higher education with valuable opportunities for their staff to create an improved, interactive, more inclusive learning environment. The key motivation for the inclusion of educational technologies in the curriculum is undoubtedly the desire to increase student engagement and learning. This entailed substantial and structural curriculum changes associated with the redesign and production of TEL resources. To assist with this, the increasing use of various forms and tools of technology for multiple representations of content ensure their applicability to the various interests of students. This paper presents the results of the practical application of TEL in a broader context using approaches adopted to demonstrate the role of technology in enhancing the learning experience and how the enhancement can be measured in the field of ICT, Data Science, electronic journalism, physics, linguistics. Findings are based on differing forms of evidence collected to demonstrate enhancement, comparative analyses of variations between TEL and non-TEL student groups and evaluation methods. Also, as teaching and learning too often focuses on rather specific applications of technology, there are attempts to generalize the findings for different educational purposes.

The authors consider three levels of potential benefits that TEL can bring:
Efficiency - existing processes run more cost-effective, faster, in a robust or scalable manner.
Enhancement - improving existing processes and results.
Modernization - a positive change in existing processes, based on modern trends in education.

The implication of this study for educators is to carefully consider the assessment which has been used to determine "achievements" or "improvements" in learning, the extent to which they were appropriately matched for the enhancement being sought. The limitations of the experimental methodology and directions for future research are also presented for consideration.

Keywords:

TEL, ICT, enhancement, assessment, virtual laboratories, Data Science, courses.