The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has made blended learning widely accepted, followed by many studies committed to blended learning outcomes and student attitudes. Few studies have, however, focused on the summarized effect of blended learning. To complement this missing link, this study meta-analytically reviews blended learning outcomes and student attitudes by including 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and 70 effect sizes. It concludes that blended learning outcomes are significantly higher than the traditional learning outcomes with a medium effect size, and learners hold significantly more positive attitudes toward blended learning than traditional learning with a medium effect size. Blended learning may be promising, and information technology scientists may focus on the development of more advanced and effective devices to improve blended learning effectiveness.

With the development of information technologies, many learners opt to stay home receiving various forms of online education such as massive open online courses (MOOC). However, many learners and instructors complain that MOOC-based learning effectiveness has been dampened by many factors. Through a meta-analysis using Stata/MP 14.0, this study reveals that MOOC-based learning outcomes can be significantly influenced by eight factors, i.e. behavior intention, learning engagement, students’ motivation, perceptions, satisfaction, performance, self-regulation, and social networks across the world. Future research could reveal more influencing factors pivoting on the forum improvements, as well as the effect of social presence on MOOC-based learning outcomes.

The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has led students to frequently use social media to receive education, which brought about both positive and negative learning outcomes (Oliveira et al., 2022). To address the issue of integrating social media into education, this study conducted both quantitative and qualitative studies using VOSviewer and CitNetExplorer. The qualitative study through CitNetExplorer, involving 1780 publications, concluded that while social media might have gained popularity in education based on the classic theoretical framework of the zone of proximal development, there might be many challenges such as teacher resistance, data privacy, costs, and ethical and social issues. Besides, this study conducted bibliometric analyses using VOSviewer (N = 1841) to identify the top cited authors, organizations, documents, references, sources, countries, and keywords with high occurrences based on the citation networks. In the future, researchers could enhance the studies on how to guide students and teachers to properly integrate social media into education.

In this special pandemic time, many learners have been forced to stay at home receiving education through mobile learning applications and social media such as Facebook. It is thus meaningful to meta-analytically review the studies on Facebook-assisted learning outcomes in different countries or regions to provide constructive suggestions for improvements on mobile learning. Through a meta-analysis using Stata 14.0, this study concludes that the Facebook-assisted learning approach may improve learning interaction, learning performance, social presence, engagement, psycho-motor, and overall skills in different countries or regions, although there are still different results and even controversial issues. The controversies lie in different findings in Taiwan, Switzerland, and UK, where no significant results are revealed regarding the use of Facebook for educational purposes. Future research could examine the construction of a sustainable online learning model, the classic theory, gender differences, and other mobile applications.

This paper examines part-time English teachers’ experiences in higher education in Macau, focusing on their motivations, challenges, and career pathways in an environment marked by flexibility and precarity. Through qualitative interviews with seven part-time instructors, the research investigates themes such as online teaching practice, the balance between the conflicting demands of teaching and research, and collegiality. The findings elucidate the dualities of part-time employment, where autonomy and flexible scheduling are paired with job insecurity, limited career advancement, and emotional strain. The study calls for institutional support, revised evaluation frameworks, and collaborative cultures to enhance the well-being and professional development of part-time instructors. Addressing these dynamics would enable higher education to productively utilize the knowledge of part-time educators towards enhancing educational quality and the regional development agenda.