While online learning continues to be a rapidly expanding field of research, analyzing data allows educational institutions to fine tune their curriculum and teaching methods. Properly utilizing the data, however, becomes difficult when taking into account how socio-technical systems are used, the administration of those systems, default settings, how data is described and captured, and other factors. Methods for Analyzing and Leveraging Online Learning Data is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the application of data in online education for improving a system's capabilities and optimizing it for teaching and learning. This publication explores data handling, cleaning, analysis, management, and representation, as well as the methods of effectively and ethically applying data research. Tying together education and information science with special attention paid to informal learning, online assessment, and social media, this book is ideally designed for educational administrators, system developers, curriculum designers, data analysts, researchers, instructors, and graduate-level students seeking current research on capturing, analyzing, storing, and sharing data-analytic insights regarding online learning environments.

The potential to integrate augmented reality into educational settings has led to the development of myriad programs for implementing these transformative technologies into education. However, the transformative learning processes possible for learners can best be developed through integration in immersive virtual learning environments. The integration of augmented reality (AR) technologies into education involves matching the potential of AR with the most effective instructional model for immersing learners in the learning process. With current research focused heavily on blended or online learning, augmented reality fits right into the new technologies and trends that are being developed and utilized on a consistent basis. There is a need for research that provides detailed curriculum guides, templates for designing virtual worlds, evaluation processes, and immersive learning procedures that can be utilized to provide the best educational environment for student success. Implementing Augmented Reality Into Immersive Virtual Learning Environments provides current research for the integration of transformative new technologies into multiple educational settings. Examining the why, what, and how of integrating augmented reality into immersive virtual learning technologies, this book covers various educational settings, such as nursing education, sports coaching, language education, and more. While highlighting the benefits for virtual reality, its role in remote learning, the logistics of simulation, and branches of it such as gamification, this book is ideally intended for teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, IT specialists, educational software developers, researchers, academicians, and students interested in integrating augmented reality in educational programs.

iPads are powerful tools for engaging students, encouraging creativity, stimulating critical thinking, and making significant strides in learning. This book is part of a two book set that will allow educators to realize the full potential of the iPad. Over 200 highly rated apps are covered with specific ideas for classroom activities and teaching strategies. Descriptions include ideas for using iPads in classrooms where each student owns an iPad, as well as where there is just a small number of iPads or even just a single device. The first chapter of this book supports the effectiveness of iPads, focusing on what the iPad is, why is should be used and how it can be used. Then two chapters are dedicated to apps that are valuable for all subject areas. The last three chapters focus on apps appropriate for use in the humanities classrooms. In consideration of education budgets, all the apps are free or low cost. The information in this book is appropriate for K12 teachers, university professors, media specialists, K12 administrators, parents and students.

The use of media to create and maintain a public presence has become a ubiquitous aspect of daily life. Such interactions should be used to enhance other aspects of life that have become heavily technology-driven, such as education. Enhancing Social Presence in Online Learning Environments is a critical scholarly publication that explores the different perspectives of public latency and the creation of electronic educational formats that mimic the experience of traditional classrooms. Featuring a wide range of coverage on topics that include active learning, teacher authority, and computer-mediated communication, this publication is geared toward educators, professionals, school administrators, researchers, and practitioners in the field of education.

Technology enhanced learning takes place in many different forms and contexts, including formal and informal settings, individual and collaborative learning, learning in the classroom, at home, at work, and outdoor in real life situations, as well as desktop-based learning and learning by using mobile devices. Environments range from desktop-based learning systems such as learning management systems, which present learners with learning material and activities, to mobile, pervasive, and ubiquitous learning environments which are used in real life settings and enable learners to learn from real learning objects. In each of these forms and contexts, adaptive and intelligent support has potential to contribute in making such learning environments more personalized, user-friendly, and effective in supporting learners in learning. Intelligent and Adaptive Learning Systems: Technology Enhanced Support for Learners and Teachers focuses on how intelligent support and adaptive features can be integrated in currently used learning systems and discusses how intelligent and adaptive learning systems can be improved in order to provide a better learning environment for learners. This book provides academics as well as professional practitioners innovative research work for enhancing learning environments with adaptively and intelligent support in different contexts and settings, ranging from provision of courses and assessment in formal desktop-based learning systems to learning environments that support collaborative, informal, ubiquitous learning.

In the past, interactivity has often been studied from the perspective of a particular subject area. Much effort has been expended on classifying and topologizing interactivity from the perspectives of media studies and information science. However, there is a lack of consolidated effort to relate these studies and to connect theoretical and empirical research with the practice of e-learning. Interactivity in E-Learning: Case Studies and Frameworks provides a comprehensive examination of interactivity, combining key perspectives from communication and media studies, distributed cognition, system affordances, user control, and social interaction. This new approach offers a holistic view of interactivity, which is useful for researchers working in the fields of communication and media, educational media, e-learning, and instructional technology.

This book provides tips to teachers for moving toward active learning by using simulation and gaming. The book is a rare reference for teachers who wish to initiate active learning by applying many real experiences from world experts in simulation and gaming. This cumulative wisdom comes from cutting-edge trials reported at the 49th International Simulation and Gaming Association's annual conference in Thailand 9-13 July 2018. The importance of changing teachers' one-way lecture approach to that of active learning has been commonly understood for several decades and has been promoted especially in recent years in Asian universities. Simulation and gaming meets the requirements of such teaching programs, especially for active learning, but there are few books or references on how to gamify a lecture. This book serves as a guide to facilitate that change. The author recognizes the duty to provide readers with fixed directions toward simulation and gaming in the next generation, which have still not been fully elucidated. Developing a simulation and gaming culture and making it sustainable in the next decade are the purpose of this book.

Language teachers, social studies teachers, and school library media specialists will find this resource invaluable for providing lessons and activities in critical thinking for students in grades 7-12. It is filled with over 200 primary source Internet sites covering the Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Latin languages. Each Web site will help reinforce language skills while providing students with interactive lessons on the unique culture of the peoples who speak the language. The next best thing to visiting the country itself

For each of the 56 primary Web sites, a site summary is given describing its contents and usefulness to teachers and school library media specialists. Site subjects may include: a country's radio or news program; the history of a country and its visual arts, including museums; foods eaten by the people who speak this language and recipes on how to prepare them; ceremonies, customs, and sports enjoyed; geography of the countries who speak this language; and sites to help practice the language itself. Following are a list of questions and activities which students can prepare orally or in written form, and at least four more related Web sites are provided for further study. Using this book will not only help students increase their language skills, but it will also open up the entire culture, to enable students to experience it just as if they were visiting

This monograph provides a comprehensive research review of intelligent techniques for personalisation of e-learning systems. Special emphasis is given to intelligent tutoring systems as a particular class of e-learning systems, which support and improve the learning and teaching of domain-specific knowledge. A new approach to perform effective personalization based on Semantic web technologies achieved in a tutoring system is presented. This approach incorporates a recommender system based on collaborative tagging techniques that adapts to the interests and level of students' knowledge. These innovations are important contributions of this monograph. Theoretical models and techniques are illustrated on a real personalised tutoring system for teaching Java programming language. The monograph is directed to, students and researchers interested in the e-learning and personalization techniques.

Focuses on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one's own understanding, communicates it to others, and enables collective intelligence. The authors see mapping software as visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible - and critically, disputable. With 22 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners (5 of them new for this edition), the reader will find the current state-of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on knowledge maps for learning and teaching in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to knowledge maps for information analysis and knowledge management in professional communities, but with many cross-cutting themes: * reflective practitioners documenting the most effective ways to map * conceptual frameworks for evaluating representations * real world case studies showing added value for professionals * more experimental case studies from research and education * visual languages, many of which work on both paper and with software * knowledge cartography software, much of it freely available and open source * visit the companion website for extra resources: books.kmi.open.ac.uk/knowledge-cartography Knowledge Cartography will be of interest to learners, educators, and researchers in all disciplines, as well as policy analysts, scenario planners, knowledge managers and team facilitators. Practitioners will find new perspectives and tools to expand their repertoire, while researchers will find rich enough conceptual grounding for further scholarship.

The world of education is being radically altered with the change being driven by technology, openness, and unprecedented access to knowledge. Older correspondence-style methods of instructional delivery are passe and "classroom adapted to the web" approaches to learning are often ineffective and do little to harness the transformational potential of technology. E-Learning scenarios, mobile technologies, communication and information access, and personal learning environmentsare becoming mainstream and, as a result, control of the learning process is shifting away from institutions and into the hands of learners. This volumes promotes a forward-thinking agenda for research and scholarship that highlights new ideas, deep insights, and novel approaches to "unconstrained" learning.

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Whether utilizing electronic tools for K-12 classrooms, learning management systems in higher education institutions, or training and performance improvement for business organizations, technology maintains an important aspect in the delivery of education and training in both school and non-school settings. Cases on Educational Technology Planning, Design, and Implementation: A Project Management Perspective provides strategies for addressing the challenges and pitfalls faced when planning, designing, and implementing learning and educational technology projects. The case studies in this publication aim to provide instructors, practitioners in K-12 and higher education, business managers as well as students interested in implementing education technology projects.

Advances in technology are making virtual education a force behind the educational policies and programs being developed for use in today's colleges and universities. And, the faster the technology advances and changes, the more opportunities and requirements there are within organizations to adapt and implement these technologies in support of their ongoing missions to create effective and efficient environments. Virtual Education: Cases in Learning and Teaching Technologies examines the challenges and issues that universities face when implementing and utilizing virtual education technologies.

This book examines research on creative thinking, both current and historical. It explores two dimensions of human thought (time and space) and two modes of thinking (conscious and unconscious) as well as both left and right brain functions and artistic and scientific creative activities. The book proposes a "Double Circulation" model of creative thinking and argues that imagery thinking, intuitive thinking and logical thinking are main parts of creative thinking and that dialectical thinking and horizontal-vertical thinking are the guides for highly complex problem-solving thoughts and strategies.The book focuses on education and psychology and also covers how to use ICT to promote students' creative thinking skills. Researchers will benefit from the "Double Circulation" model, which provides a new perspective on conducting creative thinking research. The book is also a valuable resource for graduate students in the fields of educational technology and psychology and for all readers who are interested in creative thinking.

This book introduces state-of-the-art research on simulation and serious games for education. Based partially on work presented at the 3rd Asia-Europe Symposium on Simulation and Serious Games (3rd AESSSG) held in Zhuhai, China as part of the 2016 ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Consortium and Applications in Industry (VRACI 2016), it includes a selection of the best papers from both. The book is divided into three major domains of education applications that use simulation and serious games: science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education; special needs education; and humanity and social science education. A valuable resource for researchers and developers in simulation and serious games for education benefit from this book, it also offers educators and professionals involved in training insights into the possible applications of simulation and serious games in various areas.

Virtual schools are a result of widespread changes in knowledge about learning, in available technology and in society. Virtual schooling is growing in popularity and will continue to attract students because of the benefits it offers over traditional schooling. Stakeholders in virtual schools need information to guide their decisions. For the foreseeable future, virtual schools will continue to meet diverse student needs, and to evolve in response to further change. Development and Management of Virtual Schools: Issues and Trends brings together knowledge of virtual schools as a reference for scholars and other groups involved in virtual schools. The chapters review best practice from concept and development, through implementation and evaluation.

Innovations in Mobile Educational Technologies and Applications presents a collection of knowledge on the developments and approaches of mobile educational technology. Bringing together points of view from both technological and pedagogical practices, this book aims to enhance interest in nontraditional approaches to learning.

Web-based school collaboration has attracted the sustained attention of educators, policy-makers, and governmental bodies around the world during the past decade. This book sheds new light on this topical but ever so complex issue. Drawing on a wealth of theoretical and empirical work, it presents the various models of available school twinning programs and explores the cultural, political, and economic factors that surround the recent enthusiasm regarding collaborative initiatives. Moreover, the book critically examines teachers' and students' experiences of web-based school collaboration. In particular, it develops a realistic perspective of the range of challenges they face and identifies the host of technological and non-technological issues that can shape participation in collaborative programs.

In the field of computer aided language learning (CALL), there is a need for emphasizing the importance of the user. ""User-Centered Computer Aided Language Learning"" presents methodologies, strategies, and design approaches for building interfaces for a user-centered CALL environment, creating a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the field. ""User-Centered Computer Aided Language Learning"" acts as a guide to help educators, administrators, professionals and researchers find the basis of a framework for the development and management of CALL environments that are enriched with MAN domains and take into account interaction and activity, which go beyond the basic linguistic elements of the field.

Exploring online learning through the lens of synchronous and asynchronous instructional methods can be beneficial to the online instructor and to the course designer. Understanding the underlying theoretical foundation is essential to justify both types of instructional pedagogies. Learning theory as it applies to online environments encompasses myriad techniques and practices. Exploring Online Learning Through Synchronous and Asynchronous Instructional Methods is an essential scholarly book that provides relevant and detailed research on the applications of synchronous and asynchronous instructional pedagogies and discusses why they are critical to the design and implementation of contemporary online courses. Featuring an array of topics such as student engagement, adaptive learning, and online instruction, this book is ideal for online instructors, instructional designers, curriculum developers, course designers, academicians, administrators, e-learning professionals, researchers, and students.

This text addresses methods of evaluating technology in education and covers such topics as: how we know if technology works; collaborative learning; learner-centred design; multiple stakeholder needs; and that data that influence educational technology policy.

This book presents the current state of the art in the field of e-publishing and social media, particularly in the Arabic context. The book discusses trends and challenges in the field of e-publishing, along with their implications for academic publishing, information services, e-learning and other areas where electronic publishing is essential. In particular, it addresses (1) Applications of Social Media in Libraries and Information Centers, (2) Use of Social Media and E-publishing in E-learning (3) Information Retrieval in Social Media, and (4) Information Security in Social Media.