Blended Learning. Enhancing Learning Success

This is an autobiographical account of a unique university that has been designed and implemented from scratch and is still in operation. The focus of this paper is not only to look back at past developments, but also to extract essences and principles for designing sustainable learning environments. To fulfill this purpose, the paper begins with the educational philosophy written at the time of the university’s opening in 2000. After that, eighteen years of the university’s educational practices and policies are summarized. Ultimately, the design of the learning environment as a whole will be discussed. It is argued that the challenge of effective design should be expanded from the conventional blend of real and digital classroom environments to a new perspective that coordinates space, activity and community. It is reasoned that this holistic perspective will contribute to future blended learning models for innovation in schools, organizations and society as a whole.

We explore the possibilities for evidence-based blended learning models that benefits both adult healthcare patients with chronic illness and also adults completing basic education programs designed to help them achieve high school equivalency with improved readiness for college and career. Ten chronic disease areas consume disproportionate percentages of healthcare resources. Adult education programs have become essential components of strategies to reduce education gaps and prepare unemployed or under-employed adults for college and career readiness. Consequently, in many countries these two populations of learners are critical to economic stability and sustained growth in technology-oriented careers. Ongoing research provided a model that combines emerging educational technologies and courseware in ways that allow customization of instructional strategies yet accommodate training in diverse content and skills. In this paper, we present the model and suggest a set of recommendations to improve educational support of adults with chronic diseases as well as to improve educational frameworks for adults preparing for college and career readiness.

With the development of mobile internet and devices, the flexibility and portability of digital learning have improved continuously. Students can interact with mobile devices to support blended learning in context-aware environment. In this study, an expert system named Plant-expert which can provide decision-making questions for students to acquire knowledge about plant classification was developed. To explore the learning effectiveness of Plant-expert, another app named Plant-general that only contains information pages of target plants was designed. An experiment has been conducted on a secondary school biology course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental group with 46 students using Plant-expert in campus with target plants and the control group with 47 students using Plant-general in the same campus. We conducted pre-test, post-test and delayed test to evaluate learning achievement of students and used the Paas (1992) cognitive load rating scale to measure the mental effort of students invested into blended learning activities. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can improve the learning achievements of the students, and not increases mental effort.

The main objective of the article is (1) to introduce the adaptive model of e-learning, which was designed by the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic, and (2) to present and discuss results of two researches conducted within the model and focusing on self-study activities reflecting learners’ sensory preferences in learning English. In both researches, data were collected by standardized English grammar tests, by VARK questionnaire and non-standardized pre-tests and post-tests. Four hypotheses were tested; two of them focusing on the role of learner’s sensory preferences, other two ones examining the support of visual and aural study materials in listening comprehension and reading comprehension. Results were not statistically significant; however, slight impact of visual materials in reading comprehension and aural materials in reading comprehension was detected.

Blended learning has become standard in foreign language instruction, particularly in acquiring English grammar. The main objective of the article was to find out whether blended approach enhances the process of acquiring new knowledge. The research was conducted at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, and the research sample consisted of 61 part-time bachelor students Data were collected in three phases: (1) face-to-face pre-testing to monitor entrance knowledge before the process of blended learning starts, (2) post-testing1 applied after the blended approach and (3) final face-to-face post-testing2 administered at the end of semester. Four hypotheses were tested to discover whether there exist statistically significant differences in test scores. The results entitle the described blended learning to be applied as appropriate approach to acquiring English grammar in ESP.

According to the theories of interest and self-determination in education psychology, students’ academic performance will be positively affected by situational interest and learning motivation. For improving the design of an engineering course at the City University of Hong Kong in a blended learning environment, we apply these two theories to form a new conceptual model and verify it through an experimental study in which a total number of 61 undergraduate students participated during a whole 13-week course. In this study, we aim at finding out how situational interest can be cultivated. The data analysis results show that the learning motivation can further cultivate the situational interest on top of the individual interest, and the perceived usefulness of instructional design can enhance students’ learning satisfaction and learning motivation. Our findings make theoretical contributions by combining these two theories and demonstrate the importance of these theories on the instructional design.

Gamification in education can be supported with digital technologies, which offers the instructor the benefits of both face-to-face traditional instruction and online learning. But gamification is not a universal panacea. Applying gamification in education is not as easy as in other fields; regular practice of combining gamification elements with learning content might make students be distracted by game elements. In this study, gamified math lessons are designed and applied in an elementary school to tackle problems existed in gamification in education. Then the fun-based gamified instructional designing method and fun-based design principles have been put forward. Whether ARCS motivation strategies used in the class reflects teachers’ role and design in the gamified activity. As a result, videos of the gamified math class have been analysed. From the results, it is found that differentiated teaching method by corresponding technology facilitates students’ comprehension and connection between game rules and knowledge point.

“Digital campus” is an inevitable school pattern of its development in the information age. Under the guidance of the state and localities, some experiences have been gained in the promotion of school informatization with application-driven as the basic principle or working principle. In the present study, digital campus in the first batch of information pilot units of the Ministry of Education was taken as representatives, and their practice was analyzed to understand the nature of application-driven. Meanwhile, this paper further introduced the typical experience of digital campus construction and application driven by three forces—problem-driven, demand-driven and idea-driven. These experiences can provide references for schools in different development stages and different levels of development. Furthermore, the article analyzed issues of the aforementioned different types of power-driven, and proposed suggestions such as highlight the development of “human” ability, give full play to the advantages of “cloud computing”, as well as emphasize network security and localization management and services.

Blended learning, which spreads the edges of online learning to off-line service, has combined the advantages of face-to-face learning and pure online learning and brought vigor to E-learning. The paper is based on the findings of an investigation on college students’ willingness to provide and use off-line functions of an online learning platform. The difference in users are expected to be revealed for offering better category of resources and adaptive functions. To get a clear idea of the influence factors of blended learning and help the design of an individualized online learning platform, the paper will give some analysis about the possibilities and feasibility of blended functions of the platform.Based on the results of descriptive analysis, Levene test, single factor ANOVA and the crosstab chi-square test, differences appearing in gender and grade need attaching importance to and taking care of. It is proved that learners in universities are willing and competent to take the instructional role to help each other in E-learning. As for how to achieve the blended process in E-learning in higher education, suggestions are offered as to build a location based system(LBS) and an inner-campus communication society on the learning platform. Knowing and accepting the difference, the design of the platform is also optimized to assist learners as well as to improve blended learning experience in the process.

Nowadays, information technology (IT) is widely used in learning in various ways, such as searching information from the internet, open-source learning methods like Moodle, Blackboard, and instant message applications like WhatsApp and WeChat, distance learning etc. The advances in information technology have significantly changed ways of teaching and learning in higher education. A number of researches investigate the acceptance of using technology based on various kinds of models, such as Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) or Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) models [1–3]. However, there is a lack of literature talking about the direct antecedents of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on the behavioural intention and using behaviour of information technology in a learning context. This research is going to investigate the direct influence of culture on the use of information technology in learning in Hong Kong’s Higher Education based on cross-cultural research literature, in which [4] widely cited dimensions of national culture, namely masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance. Five specific hypotheses are then formed to investigate how these dimensions influence the behavioural intention and the actual behaviour of information technology in learning. The results show that there is no relationship between masculinity/femininity and behaviour intention in using information technology in Hong Kong’s Higher Education. However, individualism/collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance will affect behavioural intention in using information, while behavioural intention will have an effect on actual behaviour in using information technology in Hong Kong/s Higher Education.

First-year students are vulnerable to dropout as they make the challenging transition into university life. Students with a strong sense of belonging to their peers are more likely to persist. Various types of interventions aiming at improving the social-emotional well-being of students have been proposed in the literature. Getting students to work together in a non-trivial task, in particular, can conjure interpersonal interaction opportunities. This paper aims to postulate that digital storytelling group assignment is an effective intervention for fostering sense of belonging among first-year students. The key features of the group assignment, the design of the evaluation methodology, and the findings of the study are de-scribed in the paper. The sense of belonging of first-year students was found to increase significantly during the period of the group assignment. In addition, the group assignment was found to be most effective if it was administered in the first few weeks of study. The flexible nature of digital storytelling makes blending into any course straightforward.

The paper describes a study of visual learning in a network environment, which includes a new instructional model, the STILE (situation, tools, interaction, lucubration, evaluation) model which is based on Problem Based Learning (PBL). We describe the process of blended learning through a teaching experiment which offers a good reference to teachers. We then describe how this model can be carried out in a network environment efficiently. The experimental results show that visual learning in a network environment can improve the learning effect, which promotes students’ learning from passive to active and leads to a better communication and reflection. This study also shows the effects on improving teachers’ professional development. One aim of this study is to develop students’ 4C (Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Collaboration, Communication and Creativity) abilities through a series of activities both offline and online. The other aim is to enrich the theory of visual learning based on network environment and to implement the application of visual technology and the concept of personalized learning into practical teaching.

In recent years, immersive interactive technologies are becoming more and more mature. A large number of schools actively carry out virtual experimental teaching and establish virtual laboratories. As a kind of immersive interactive technology, virtual reality technology is attracting increasing attention in education. This paper describes the characteristics of immersive VR, hardware and software types, summarizes the different forms of VR used in teaching and discusses the principles of biological virtual experiment construction in other research. Taking the teaching content of ‘structure of eyeball’ in middle school biology textbook as a case, this research designs and develops a virtual experiment courseware - Miraculous eyeball. The research suggests that to construct outstanding teaching experiments of VR not only needs mature equipment and technologies but also requires a combination of decent teaching theories and tactics.

The paper covers two main areas that intertwine each other: content development of e-courses and recommender system with blended learning concept that spans over both themes. This paper approaches the educators’ question on how to enhance learning, in this case from the perspective of improvement of students’ learning performance by proper guiding in the virtual platform. There were two influencing stimuli for innovative changes in the e-courses on culture, geography and history of English speaking countries within the frame of Management of Tourism bachelor programme. Firstly, a recommender system was designed so that the great amount of study materials in the e-courses could be properly reorganized and clarified. The second stimuli was connected with the change of language subjects status from compulsory to voluntary subjects and inevitable drop of students’ language competences and interest in language subjects because economic and managerial subject became preferential. Since the e-learning platform doesn’t allow implementation of the advance recommendation system which enables, for example, algorithm for calculating the weight of documents, it was necessary to create a similar model using the available resources as the analyses of student attendance and number of downloads and evaluation. The result is an effective model that does not require a more advanced e-learning portal and, to a smaller amount, can be done by the instructor manually, and provides effective content filtering in the e-course. Students appreciated the fact that they do not have to decide which material is sufficient for their study. Appropriateness of the model was demonstrated by reduced failure rate.

Some non-native speakers struggle with lectures conducted in English. It may be hard for them to pick out key messages when reading books or lecture notes. Microsoft PowerPoint has an “add notes” feature. We propose to use it to attach lecture notes to individual slides instead of compiling all lecture notes in a conventional book form. Students learn key points from slides and detailed explanation from slide-based lecture notes. A suitable learning approach, deep or shallow, can be chosen according to personal learning goal on a slide-by-slide basis. Student-centered learning is empowered to a high level of granularity in a blended learning environment. Lecturers may update slide-based lecture notes more effectively and efficiently than separate sets of slides and lecture notes.

Assessment literacy refers to educators’ understanding of the principles and practices of sound assessment. It has been considered as a critical professional requirement in educational system since it to a great extent affects students’ learning. However, research has shown that both pre-service and in-service teachers are weak in assessment literacy and lack confidence to implement effective assessment. The main reasons of unsatisfactory assessment literacy among teachers are the limited pre-service assessment education and a lack of research on the pedagogies on assessment education. To enrich effective practice of assessment literacy education, a blended deep learning approach for educating teacher assessment literacy was applied in this study. The strategy combined a face-to-face component for content-based teaching and an online learning component for process-based teaching. The online learning component with the focus on peer assessment engaged participants in a deep learning of assessment. Participants expressed that they had obtained an in-depth understanding on assessment literacy and particularly on peer assessment. They had developed better confidence and are willing to implement peer assessment in their future teaching. This study provides a case of using a blended learning approach on assessment education for reference.

This paper reports an evaluation of the use of mobile devices by nursing students in clinical practicum. In this learning environment, nursing students have to apply their nursing skills and follow specific clinical procedures in real-life situations. Following the Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME), this study involved a total of 265 nursing students taking part in a questionnaire survey and 20 nursing students and relevant staff participating in interviews, showing their views, experiences and perceptions of the use of mobile devices for studying nursing materials and conducting clinical assessment in the practicum context. The results indicate their overall satisfaction of the mobile learning practice, in particular for the ubiquitous access of materials for situated learning in wards, and the effectiveness of supporting teachers to keep track of students’ learning progress. Areas of improvements were also identified, which emphasise the network connectivity of devices, user training and technical support for the use and maintenance of the devices.

Blended learning has been widely used in the field of education. Previous studies revealed that peer evaluation was an effective way to implement blended learning. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the effects of peer evaluation on learning achievements in blended learning environment. The meta-analysis was conducted by integrating the quantitative findings of 23 empirical study from 2008 to 2017. The results indicated that the peer evaluation activity had a medium effect on students’ learning achievements. Further, the present study analyzed the effect sizes of seven moderating variables. It was found that writing essays had the highest impacts on students’ learning achievements. The anonymous evaluation was more effective than non-anonymous evaluation. Providing training for peer raters and teacher involvement produced the higher effect size. In addition, the effect size did not differ among different kinds of software and school levels. Social science learning domain yielded the better effect size than other learning domains. Finally, the results and future work were also discussed in detail.

Automatic assessment of computer programming exercises offers a number of benefits to both learners and educators, including timely and customised feedback, as well as saving of human effort in grading. However, due to the high variety of programs submitted by students, exact matching between the expected output and different output variants is undesirable and how to do the matching properly is a challenging and practical problem. Existing approaches to address this problem adopt various inexact matching strategies, but typically they are unscalable, incapable of expressing a diversity of program outputs, or require high level of expertise. In this paper, we propose Hierarchical Program Output Structure (HiPOS), which provides higher expressiveness and flexibility, to model the program output. Based on HiPOS, we design different levels of matching rules in the matching rule hierarchy to determine the admissible program output variants in a flexible and scalable manner. We conducted experiments and compare our approach of automatic assessment to human judgement. The results show that our proposed method achieved an accuracy of 0.8467 in determining the admissible program output variants.

Language skills are the most important academic skills for children. This study involved the development and implementation of a mobile synchronous peer-tutoring system for learning Chinese (iPTC) that provided various scaffolding tools facilitating children’s Chinese language learning in a face-to-face context. Forty-eight fifth-grade students participated in the study. The results indicated that students benefitted from iPTC use, as demonstrated by improved achievement in Chinese characters. Students had positive attitudes toward online peer learning. Girls showed significantly stronger positive attitudes than did boys. The results also indicated that the peer-tutoring tools facilitated fifth graders’ peer tutoring behavior.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of smart classroom-based instruction on students’ learning engagement and internet self-efficacy. A quasi-experiment study was conducted using a sample of 96 freshmen from a university in central China. While students in one class employed the smart classroom-based instructional approach, students in the other class employed the traditional one. Students in both classes studied the course of literature texts reading for three months. Students’ pre- and post- surveys showed that the students with the smart classroom-based instructional approach had a significantly higher level of learning engagement and internet self-efficacy than did the students with the traditional one, which indicated that using smart classroom can increase students’ learning engagement and internet self-efficacy when cooperated with an appropriate instructional approach.

For the purpose of improving the students’ comprehensive practical ability in economic and management undergraduate education, we have designed a Virtual Company Program supported by E-learning space (ELS), using the strategy of role-playing collaborative learning. This study focuses on the students’ collaborative learning experiences in this program, and investigates learners’ perception of collaborative process, learning output, and supports of E-learning space. It found that most students gained a good learning experience in this activity, during which E-learning space played an important role in resource support, collaborative support and evaluation support. But they also met some troubles due to their different knowledge background, unconsciousness of seeking help and failure to use collaborative tools. Suggestions are put forward to promote the depth of interaction and generation of collaborative process.

To promote the performance of cooperative learning, this study proposes an online multi-user real-time co-reading system. Through this platform, it assists the teacher and students to increase the coordinative degree of learning activities such that the flipped learning can be seamlessly performed inside or outside the classroom. The multi-user real-time co-reading system is based on the skill of WebSocket to let learners simultaneously watch streaming videos on YouTube almost without delay. This can provide the teacher to guide the student watching the learning video and then get back the feedback from whole class or cooperative groups. According to the feedback, the teacher is able to understand immediately the students’ learning condition so that the teacher can adjust the learning material to improve students’ learning effect and interest. When students have a learning problem, they can discuss or share the ideas with other members in the chatroom. In addition, the greatest feature of the system is the grouping mechanism different from Skype and JoinNet. The teacher can rearrange cooperative groups based on students’ learning condition by their learning feedback from system to give an ideal grouping such that most of students can take higher advantage during their flipped learning.

Word learning is the one of most fundamental steps for English as Second Language (ESL) students. However, it is a challenge to understand each individual student to provide them with personalized learning experience, since it is difficult to identify various variables like learning style, language proficiency, knowledge background for each learner in an e-learning system. To address this issue, we propose an integrated framework to depict the individual vocabulary proficiency by using the implicit and explicit profiles. The explicit user profiling gives the control of users to specify and modify their vocabulary proficiency so that the users will have a sense of ownership of their personalized data, whereas the implicit user profiling is a non-intrusive method which can record and update the proficiency of learners without explicit manually input from users. In this paper, we attempt to integrate these two kinds of profiles to build a powerful learner profile for personalized vocabulary learning. Furthermore, the preliminary empirical results validate the effectiveness of the integrated framework.

The rapid development of wearable technology has led to the expectation that people will apply technology to physical education. But for an independent device, there is a problem that needs to be solved, that is, how to apply it to the PE class. In this research, we design a model using wearable devices to collect data and give feedback in time, and to help teachers grasp students’ exercise load timely, so as to ensure students’ training safety and promote scientific and effective evaluation. Using this model, the experiment was carried out in the primary school of Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province to verify the rationality of the design.

The paper proposes an interactive feedback portfolio (IFEP) system with iBeacon technology which is used in classroom to support the flipped classroom learning activities. The use of the IFEP system aims at promoting high interaction in classroom learning, which consists of APPs students used and web-interface functions teachers utilized. Students enable the APP in their smart phones and then the APP scan iBeacon devices. The detection statuses of iBeacon devices in classrooms can be automatically recorded in the cloud space. As a result, students’ presence in classroom can be obtained automatically. Teachers can use another function the IFEP system offers to promote the interaction in classroom via displaying questions on the front screen in classroom. Meanwhile, it pushes (multicasts) these questions to students’ smart phones via web-socket technology. Subsequently, students employ APP to feedback their responses to these questions. During collecting students’ responses, the system also exhibits the temporary results of students’ responses on screen and displays count-down time signal. This way can inspire students’ interaction and interest to join the quiz-like activities. Teachers can quickly get the results of responses for students’ answers. These results including students’ presence in classroom and correction rates students’ responses can be readily analyzed for their correlations on learning performance in the future. Moreover, teachers can quickly obtain students’ learning achievements in classroom and then teachers may adjust their instructional strategies.

Traditional English teaching in China pays insufficient attention to phonetics teaching and usually leads to learners’ poor pronunciation. With the rapid development of the Automatic Speech Evaluation (ASE) technology, many applications are designed to help learners improve their pronunciation. However, no formal conclusion has been made on the effectiveness of ASE-based “imitating-speaking” with immediate feedbacks in English phonetics learning. This study analyzes the validity of the ASE-based “imitating-speaking” by using Fluent English as the tool of the two-month experiment. 64 learners in China are chosen as the subjects and they are divided into an experimental group and a control one. The result turns out that ASE-based “imitating-speaking” helps to improve learners’ pronunciation and intonation. Moreover, on the basis of the result of the experiment, the study sums up some relative teaching and learning strategies that are employed in this phonetics learning method.

With the popularity and convenience of smart phones and Internet, more and more users participate in MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) via mobile phones or tablet computers. Thus how to design MOOC for mobile learning deserves theoretical study and practical exploration. Based on the review of related literature and the assessment of the APPs provided by six mostly used MOOC platforms, we proposed six guidelines for the mobile MOOC design, i.e. clear navigation, simple layout, linear display, harmonious coloring, smooth video, and full interaction. To verify the rationality of those guidelines, we designed a corresponding survey to investigate the learners’ perception and attitude toward the six guidelines implemented in one MOOC in China. The analysis of the survey result demonstrates that the MOOC learners believed those guidelines are valuable in mobile MOOC design and helpful for MOOC learning.

Open educational resources or OER have been recognized as a major source of learning materials for university students. This paper investigates the students’ perception on the usefulness of OER with a focus on comparing the perceived usefulness between full-time and distance-learning students, based on a survey carried out at the Open University of Hong Kong in the academic year 2017–18. It is found that both full-time and distance-learning students generally consider OER useful for learning purposes, especially for using the resources to supplement the existing course materials and to get more resources for doing assignments and projects. On different types of OER, open courseware, course materials and e-books are mostly perceived as very useful or useful by both full-time and distance-learning students, while more distance-learning students than full-time students also consider open online courses, tutorials, and open online learning tools and platforms very useful or useful. For both full-time and distance learning students, accuracy and comprehensiveness are key concerns of using OER for learning purposes.

The recent development of authentic language data called corpora has made it possible for linguists to create more reliable dictionaries and do linguistic research. The resources are valuable in that they help students learn various lexical and grammatical patterns such as collocations. However, corpora are not used as mainstream teaching materials at schools. It is assumed that for those who haven’t had sufficient online language learning experiences, such as Japanese students, it could be difficult to appreciate the efficacy of these resources. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted regarding how students view the utilization and efficacy of these online language resources. This study aims to assess the utility of the corpus driven web-interface, SkELL (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) through students’ own evaluations of the tool, as part of an English course at their Japanese university. The major benefit observed by the students was the freedom to access a very large amount of raw English language data, which they can use to investigate various lexical and grammatical combinations related to their studies without additional cost. While the learning curve for SkELL is not as steep as traditional corpus tools, detailed guidance from instructors remains necessary to ensure students are able to take full advantage of the platform.

ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is crucial to enhancing the quality of higher education by improving students’ learning effectiveness and enriching their learning experiences. People are now concerned about the quality, efficiency, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI) of how ICT is applied in higher education. Performance evaluation is an effective way to solve this problem, with the exceptional advantage of promoting sustainable development. In this paper, a 4-Dimension Performance Evaluation Model and corresponding course-related Performance Evaluation Indicator System in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) case are proposed to evaluate how ICT is applied in higher education. Our case study with three MOOCs shows that our model and indicator system are helpful in measuring the current status of ICT in higher education while providing suggestions and directions to help the course become more “mature” and lead it to a new stage.

This paper presents the rationale, design, development, implementation and evaluation of a case study utilizing the lab rotation model of blended learning for teaching computational thinking in Chinese higher education. The principles of computational thinking were integrated into an entry level course that is required among all college students, entitled Fundamentals of College Computing. A mixed method research approach was utilized to examine students learning outcomes and perception of the instructional process among 114 first year college students. The results showed that the teaching approach was successful at improving students’ computational thinking, particularly on the method and ability dimensions. Recommendations for promoting college students’ computational thinking, as well as teaching strategies for implementing this type of a unique lab rotational approach in China are discussed.

This study investigated secondary students’ level of information literacy in China, as well as examined parents’ and teachers’ influence toward students’ information literacy. The survey method was employed on a sample of 3172 students, 2035 parents, and 851 teachers to examine personal beliefs, attitudes, and technology usage. Students’ information literacy was assessed via a web-based examination and the main findings were as follows: (1) a large percentage of students’ overall level of information literacy was average or low; (2) teachers’ Internet self-efficacy positively predicted students’ information literacy, while teachers’ in-class ICT usage negatively predicted students’ information literacy; (3) parents’ Internet attitudes positively influenced students’ information literacy. Based on the findings, suggestions for improving students’ information literacy were discussed.

This paper deals with the issue of computer literacy development in elderly people in the local intergeneration project. The project is at the crossroads: continue conducting courses in the traditional way or updating the content of courses and learning environment to reflect the changes in technologies and society. Researchers have been involved into the project for the second year and are currently participating in the preparatory phase of suggesting solutions. The aim of the paper is to describe learning environment of current courses, define its weaknesses and justify its unavoidable update. Potential ways to the solution on virtual platform will be proposed for further consideration and implementation at the meeting of directors of involved primary schools with the municipality authority of the city of Hradec Králové. Data stem from the primary and secondary sources. Results are important for authors of the updated courses, as they are considering shift from computer-based learning environment to web-based environment with the study materials online. Schools that organize courses for seniors do not use LMS or any other tools for sharing of materials; they use printed materials. The paper brings a set of potential solutions on updating organization of courses like Clasroom in G+ , or on-line communities.

Ageing is becoming a big social issue nowadays. For example, in 2000 the percentage of older individuals aged 65+ years reached 12.4% worldwide. In 2030, this number should rise to 19% and in 2050 to 22%. Therefore there is a need to prolong an active life of older people, especially by implementing nonpharmacological approaches. And current technological devices and services can assist them in this process. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the use of the Internet among older people in the Czech Republic with respect to their age. The key methods exploited in this study include a questionnaire survey, statistical processing of data collection, as well as evaluation of both empirical and theoretical findings on the research issue. The results indicate that the age is a decisive factor in the use of the Internet by seniors. In fact, the use of the Internet falls with the declining age with the breakthrough age 75+ years. Generally, older people use the Internet for communication purposes with the help of e-mail, the most frequent ICT tool for this generation group. The results also suggest that older people should be trained in the use of the Internet since the training may help them overcome both psychological and social barriers, which represent the constraints in their use of the Internet. Particularly the last presidential election in the Czech Republic has shown the need for education, as the seniors were the most vulnerable group in the area of spreading Fake-news.