This title focuses on electronic learning communities created through the development and use of the Internet for instruction and training. Chapters focus on philosophies, background, reviews, technologies, systems, tools, services, strategies, development, implementation and research.

Advances in technology are increasingly impacting the way in which curriculum is delivered and assessed. The emergence of the Internet has offered learners a new instructional delivery system that connects them with educational resources. ""Advances in Web-Based Education: Personalized Learning Environments"" covers a wide range of factors that influence the design, use and adoption of personalized learning environments, and it shows how user and pedagogical considerations can be integrated into the design, development and implementation of adaptive hypermedia systems to create effective personalized learning environments.

There is a growing recognition in the learning sciences that video games can no longer be seen as impediments to education, but rather, they can be developed to enhance learning. Educational and developmental psychologists, education researchers, media psychologists, and cognitive psychologists are now joining game designers and developers in seeking out new ways to use video game play in the classroom. In Learning by Playing, a diverse group of contributors provide perspectives on the most current thinking concerning the ramifications of leisure video game play for academic classroom learning. The first section of the text provides foundational understanding of the cognitive skills and content knowledge that children and adolescents acquire and refine during video game play. The second section explores game features that captivate and promote skills development among game players. The subsequent sections discuss children and adolescents' learning in the context of different types of games and the factors that contribute to transfer of learning from video game play to the classroom. These chapters then form the basis for the concluding section of the text: a specification of the most appropriate research agenda to investigate the academic potential of video game play, particularly using those games that child and adolescent players find most compelling. Contributors include researchers in education, learning sciences, and cognitive and developmental psychology, as well as instructional design researchers.

The Internet serves as an essential tool in promoting health awareness through the circulation of important research among the medical professional community. While digital tools and technologies have greatly improved healthcare, challenges are still prevalent among diverse populations worldwide. Emerging Technologies and Work-Integrated Learning Experiences in Allied Health Education is a critical scholarly resource that examines constructivist teaching methods and active learning strategies in allied health education to enhance student knowledge and prepare them for the digital age. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as e-learning, microscopic morphology, and virtual reality, this book is geared towards researchers, academicians, medical professionals, and upper level students interested in the advancement and dissemination of medical knowledge.

Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: The Role of Context discusses the basis for the development and management of learning contexts, with contributions from many diverse domains. It stresses the dimension of context in a world dominated by a focus on the dimension of content while explaining the development of balanced, organic and successful learning environments and strategies. ""Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: The Role of Context"" emphasizes the role of context in the development and management of virtual learning environments and opens up new threads in clarifying the influence of contextual issues on learning.

Within the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we are living in a technologically advanced society, and students and teacher educators need to be adequately prepared to succeed within this progressive society. Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an edited volume that situates teaching and learning for the 21st century within diverse contexts globally so that teacher educators could make sense of their professional knowledge, curriculum, classroom contexts and diverse students. This book intends to frame and explore the different responsive and innovative pedagogies that are used for embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Additionally, it aims to clarify some key concepts (for example blended learning, coding, digital, E-Learning, Internet, M-Learning, simulation and tools) in addition to other issues that surround teaching and learning for the 21st century. The book also exemplifies authentic case studies located within global contexts focusing on: the 21st-century curriculum, the 21st-century classroom environment, teachers in the 21st century and students in the 21st century. Contributors from around the world (Australia, Indonesia, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania and the United States of America) share their innovations in education by interrogating research experiences and examples of good practice.

Moving beyond the 'Web 2.0' and 'digital native' rhetoric, this book addresses the complex experiences of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in a world embedded with interactive and participatory technologies. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, it investigates EFL learners' behaviours concerning digital technology, and guides exploration into their contextually mediated choices and learning practices in the '2.0' era. The argument is developed on the basis of the findings of a mixed sequential study that focused on 1485 Chinese undergraduates' use and non-use of online tools and applications outside the English classroom. Particular attention is paid to the role of context and agency when understanding their learning choices and behaviours in the context of digital technology. In particular, the book acknowledges the explanatory power of agency in the minority instances of 'good practices' among these EFL learners. At the same time it demonstrates that for most learners, use of the current web is limited and mostly non-interactive. The barriers to '2.0' transfer are largely contextual and the so-called 'communicative opportunities' and 'participatory culture' in particular did not fit into the learners' sociocultural context of (language) learning. Overall, the compelling argument proposes that the technology-facilitated changes in EFL practices are a 'bottom up' process that is taking place in day-to-day situations and constrained by the learning context within which the learner is situated. Based on these arguments, the book provides a framework that challenges the existing beliefs about (language) learning with online technology, and that contributes to our understanding of how context mediates EFL learners' behaviours surrounding digital technologies. It is a valuable resource for teachers, researchers and policy makers, providing them with insights into using digital technology to stimulate 'good learning practices' outside the classroom.

Despite the large lecture courses commonly found in colleges, the essence of learning is essentially a one-to-one dialogue between a tutor and learner. As such, the Internet has now made individual learning practical and cost effective to a degree never before possible. ""Cases on Online Tutoring, Mentoring, and Educational Services: Practices and Applications"" examines the rapidly developing sector of online educational services for individuals involved with e-tutoring and e-mentoring. Providing real-world examples through a critical mass of the most sought after research, this publication offers an in-depth analysis of how learning and knowledge acquisition occurs.

Within the past decade, many higher education institutions have begun to offer degree programs online, but there are a lack of resources for institutions to rely on when choosing to introduce an online program. With the prevalence of technology in education, the importance of providing quality distance education programs cannot be ignored. Ensuring Quality and Integrity in Online Learning Programs is an essential reference source that delves into the requirements and essential technologies needed to create and encourage effective and inclusive online educational programs. The book examines and offers best practices for all factors that contribute to building quality online programs including faculty buy-in and training; student motivation, interest, and retention; program planning, pedagogy, and design; program administration; and the use of appropriate and up-to-date technology. Administrators, educators, online program directors, instructional designers, curriculum developers, faculty, researchers, and students will benefit from the emerging research contained within this publication.

The world of education has changed drastically in recent years, mostly due in part to the new technologies being developed implemented. Recent technological innovation has altered the way educators approach teaching and learning. New approaches to teaching are inherently important for any teacher, faculty member, or corporate trainer involved with the application of technology-based resources for instruction and learning. Advancing Education with Information Communication Technologies: Facilitating New Trends offers an overview of how research in ICT provides a new framework for education. Focusing on the development and design of successful education programs, this book offers solutions, best practices, and emerging trends in integrating technology into the traditional and online classroom.

For many years, there has been a quest to discover the best teaching and learning methods in order to strengthen the classroom and the mind. Researchers now know more than ever before about the brain's impact on learning, historical triggers that lead to deep learning, and how to scale education with technology. Yet much of what is known is under-utilized in the classrooms of today, if leveraged at all. Education 3.0 and eLearning Across Modalities showcases effective practices based on innovative initiatives, research, and practitioner experiences from the past two decades. The effective practices of multi-modal learning, which are well known to practitioners but largely unknown to the general academic, are explained in detail while making each technique approachable and attainable regardless of institution, size, or modality. Covering topics such as distance learning, modern learning technologies, and learning innovation, this book is essential for teachers, educational software developers, IT consultants, instructional designers, curriculum developers, graduate students, undergraduate students, academicians, administrators, higher education faculty, and researchers.

With the rapid availability of information, it becomes essential to keep pace with this availability as well as process the information into knowledge that has real-world applications. Neuroscientific methods allow an approach to this problem based on the way that the human brain already operates. Over the centuries and through observation and trial and error, we already know a great deal about how we can teach and learn, but now we can verify this with scientific fact and discover previously unknown aspects of brain physiology. These observations of brain functioning have produced many learning theories, all of which have varying degrees of validity. These theories, in turn, give birth to theories and models of instructional design, which also have varying degrees of validity. A Conceptual Framework for SMART Applications in Higher Education: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly publication that explores how the brain acquires and processes information to turn information into knowledge and the role of SMART technology and how it combines and integrates visual and aural data to facilitate learning. The book also discusses ways to apply what is known about teaching to how the brain operates and how to incorporate instructional design models into the teaching and learning process. Highlighting various topics such as neurogenesis, smart technologies, and behaviorism, this book is essential for instructional designers, online instruction managers, teachers, academicians, administrators, researchers, knowledge managers, and students.

This book attempts to offer not just a bird's-eye view of the communities of designers project, but also to help identify broad themes and issues that can inform discussions and policies of technology integration at other institutions.

This book offers a thorough and comprehensive review of the lessons learnt from the award-winning 'English in Action' English language teacher development programme, which ran in government primary and secondary schools across Bangladesh from 2008 to 2017. Over the course of nine years the programme involved 51,000 teachers and 20 million school students, demonstrably raising standards of teachers' classroom practice and students' English language attainment, and won the British Council ELTON Award for Local innovation (2013) and Times Higher Education Award for International Impact (2107). The sixteen chapters explore the programme in detail, looking at both the successes and the challenges encountered throughout its course, including the strategies used to address the challenges. The key innovative factors of the programme include: * a positive choice to build on the existing context, such as the lives and experiences of local teachers and the demands of a nationally determined curriculum; * teacher learning taking place in the teachers' own classrooms; * a focus on learning the 'how' of communicative language teaching through reflective practice and peer support; * the use - within a carefully constructed pedagogy - of affordable, readily-available mobile phone technology; * the use of mediated authentic video * a model of teacher development at very large scale that provided a successful alternative to the'cascade'model; * a partnership with government institutions to ensure that improved practices are maintained beyond the life of the Programme.

This book explores Ambient Intelligence as applied to the classroom, while especially focusing on the use of personalized education to optimize the learning process. In the years to come, the dynamics of learning spaces in higher education will need to evolve and adapt to a constantly changing digital society, as learners and educators alike attune their learning competences and teaching skills. Ambient Intelligence is another way that Artificial Intelligence is being utilized in a plethora of real-world situations, amongst which classrooms and other learning spaces offer fitting settings and ideal environments for employing this assistive technology. The book presents a complete and novel approach to deploying the Ambient Intelligent Classroom, based on three interrelated aspects - the Social, the Technological and the Educational, - in order to provide a rich three-dimensional learning environment. This book is intended for education technologists and AI researchers, as well as for those tech-savvy readers interested in applying technology to the future of learning spaces. Educators in particular will find valuable insights and guidelines on how to shape the evolution of their own classroom.

Advancements in technology in modern societies have resulted in an abundance of new educational tools and aids. Analyzing the effects of different mobile educational applications can provide insight into how technology can promote or discourage purposeful learning among students and educators alike. The Handbook of Research on Mobile Technology, Constructivism, and Meaningful Learning is a crucial scholarly resource that examines the use of newly-developed technology on classroom education. Featuring pertinent topics that include collaborative learning, social media integration, virtual reality, and critical thinking dispositions, this publication is ideal for educators, academicians, students, and researchers that are interested in expanding their knowledge on recent trends and technologies that are enhancing the educational field.

Mobile phones have become an integral part of society, as their convenience has helped democratize and revolutionize communication and the marketplace of ideas. Because of their ubiquity in higher education, undergraduate classrooms have begun to utilize smartphones and tablets as tools for learning. The Handbook of Research on Mobile Devices and Applications in Higher Education Settings explores and fosters new perspectives on the use of mobile applications in a classroom context. This timely publication will demonstrate the challenges that universities face when introducing new technologies to students and instructors, as well as the rewards of doing so in a thoughtful manner. This book is meant to present the latest research and become a source of inspiration for educators, administrators, researchers, app developers, and students of education and technology.

It is necessary for online teaching designers and developers to understand the roles played by open source products in developing and supporting an online learning system. Utilizing Open Source Tools for Online Teaching and Learning: Applying Linux Technologies covers strategies on using and evaluating open source products for online teaching and learning systems. By going through each phase of the development process, this book provides comprehensive coverage on the application of open source products to meet the goals and objectives of instructional technology.

This book addresses the links between climate change and the threats it poses to sustainable development, from a distance education perspective. Discussing current trends and challenges in sustainable development education, climate literacy and innovations in climate change education, it contributes to the global debate on the implementation of education for sustainability. It also assesses the role that e-learning can play in this process, addressing pedagogical concepts as well as the wide range of technological options now available.