Contents:
1. Introduction: Political Research Methods - what does this mean? Part 1: Quantitative Research 2. Introducing Quantitative Research - how to interpret data sources 3. Using Surveys in Research 4. Analysing Official Data Part 2: Qualitative Research 5. Introducing Qualitative Research - why and when numerical analysis is not enough 6. Using Interviews in Research - accessibility and interpretation 7. Evaluating Existing Research 8. Content Analysis Part 3: Doing Your Own Research 9. A Guide to Writing a Dissertation in Politics 10. Information Sources

This text contains a range of issues relating to the use of ICT in the classroom. It is devised to build on knowledge already gained on ITT courses and encourage students and newly qualified teachers to consider and reflect on the issues, so that they can make reasoned and informed judgements about their teaching skills.

Novel trends and innovations have enhanced contemporary educational environments. When applied properly, these computing advances can create enriched learning opportunities for students. Mobile Technologies and Augmented Reality in Open Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest academic research on the integration of interactive technology and mobile applications in online and distance learning environments. Highlighting scholarly perspectives across numerous topics such as wearable technology, instructional design, and flipped learning, this book is ideal for educators, professionals, practitioners, academics, and graduate students interested in the role of augmented reality in modern educational contexts.

Instructors at universities face many of the same concerns. They have to prepare and organize their courses, teach those courses and provide assignments, assess the learning of the students, and then evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching style. Even though these experiences are common, learning environments in higher education are increasingly diverse, and this diversity impacts every aspect of the institution. ""Technology and Diversity in Higher Education: New Challenges"" provides current and effective educational practices, and examines new challenges involving emerging technologies in increasingly diverse learning environments. This book studies current knowledge on how students learn, and the application of that knowledge to technology.

In thispa per, we describe the key lessons from an earlier HCI Educators' conference, held in Limerick in 2006, on 'inventivity' - a term coined to highlight the confluence of inventiveness and creativ ity. There is a distinction between being creative andbein g artistic. HCI education, in terms of creative inventiveness, is not just about artistically pleasing user inte rfaces, but also about solutions that are innovative. We can know much about creativ ity and inventiveness. However, tobe able to teach and train students so that th ey can be creatively inventive, we believe that it would be helpful if educators themselves have personally experienced this. With this in mind, we organised the follow up conference HCIEd 2007 Creativity: Experiencing to Educate and Design. Inventivity was coined to refer to the notiono f inventing creative and innovative solutions. This term was also intended tomean that such solutionsb e more than 'creative', artistic or appealing interfaces as designed by artistic or 'creative types' of people. It was also intended to reflect the creativeness of the solutions that had to be invented. One reason for emphasising this as pect at the conference was that, in HCI design it is easy to mis interpret the focus ofHCI d esign solutions - which should notad dress just visualisation and interaction design, but also address how that visualisation and interactioncreativ ely repr esents and simplifies the complexities in work thatpe ople engage in.

During the 1970s, the South African Department of Information attempted to manipulate and neutralize the international media treatment of South Africa. This programme was later exposed in what became known as the Information scandal. Meanwhile in Europe and North America, anti-apartheid campaigners increased pressure on the South African regime.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, learners of all ages have had to quickly adapt to learning through digital media as traditional ways of teaching become obsolete. Educators did not have a clear digital strategy in mind before the COVID-19 pandemic as they primarily relied on these traditional ways of teaching and disseminating knowledge. As phygital learning opportunities are emerging thanks to the growing EdTech economy, educators now have the opportunity to reform the school system, bringing in more innovation while reducing costs, broadening access to resources, and improving the quality of the teaching provision. EdTech Economy and the Transformation of Education is a cutting-edge reference that examines successful digital transformation in educational settings as well as the tools available to do so and the competencies and skills needed for the future. The book paves the way for phygital or blended long-term solutions. Covering a range of topics such as online education, learning processes, and digital transformation, this reference work is ideal for researchers, administrators, policymakers, academicians, practitioners, scholars, instructors, and students.

The Internet and associated technologies have been around for almost twenty years. Networked access and computer ownership are now the norm. There is a plethora of technologies that can be used to support learning, offering different ways in which learners can communicate with each other and their tutors, and providing them with access to interactive, multimedia content. However, these generic skills don't necessarily translate seamlessly to an academic learning context. Appropriation of these technologies for academic purposes requires specific skills, which means that the way in which we design and support learning opportunities needs to provide appropriate support to harness the potential of technologies. More than ever before learners need supportive 'learning pathways' to enable them to blend formal educational offerings, with free resources and services. This requires a rethinking of the design process, to enable teachers to take account of a blended learning context.

The K-12 Educator's Data Guidebook is a comprehensive field guide for school professionals learning to use data. "Non-data people," rejoice! Requiring no prior proficiency in data tools and programming, this book validates the implicit challenges of learning to use data to empower educators and features original real-world examples from in-service educators to illustrate common problem-solving. Each chapter uses stories, humor, and a human approach to set the tone for a safe and fun learning experience. Through this highly practical foundation, everyday educators can better engage school initiatives, professional development, and instructional challenges that require competent data use for improving school systems.

Educators and education policy has increasingly acknowledged the value of creativity and creative approaches to education in particular. This book highlights a range of innovative teaching techniques successfully employed by teachers from a range of disciplines and education levels in order to share knowledge regarding creative education.

Gaming technologies have become effective learning tools within education. Gamification has the potential to increase engagement using real-time feedback on learning activities, which allows students to reflect on their completion and retention of a learned activity. Gaming Innovations in Higher Education: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference work featuring the latest scholarly knowledge on the application of different gaming techniques within education to make learning activities more enjoyable and successful. Including research on a number of topics such as virtual laboratories, interaction media, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students interested in the benefits of providing an entertaining and intellectually-stimulating learning environment. The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Comprehension Awareness Extrinsic Motivation Interaction Media Intrinsic Motivation Learning Disabilities Self-Determination Theory (SDT) User-Centered Design Virtual Laboratories

Clearly structured and illustrated with tables, charts and figures to help educators rapidly come to terms with exactly what they need to do when planning a new course (or giving a current course a well needed overhaul), this book is packed with tips to make course planning easy.

Two developments in recent years have converged to dramatically alter most conceptions of the teaching and learning process. First, technology has become increasingly interactive and distributed, such that individual learners have available the means to participate in incredibly complex networks of information, resources, and instruction. As these technological advancements facilitate interaction across classroom, university, and worldwide learning communities in both real-time and delayed formats, various instructional design and implementation problems spring forth. Second, the conventional teacher-centered model wherein knowledge is transmitted from the teacher to the learner is being replaced by social constructivist and learner-centered models of instruction. These new learner-centered models place emphasis on guiding and supporting students as they meaningfully construct their understanding of various cultures and communities.
As a consequence of these developments, teachers need guidelines from educational researchers about integrating collaboration and communication tools into their classrooms. This volume presents research on such collaborative technology as it facilitates, augments, and redefines academic learning environments. The studies illustrate how schools, teachers, and students are discovering, employing, and modifying the numerous new computer conferencing and collaborating writing tasks and tools, and their effects on social interaction and resulting student learning. Documentation is given that will help teachers to make decisions that productively transform learning environments.
Three key objectives underlie this volume:
*to discover some of the electronic collaboration tools and formats currently employed by teachers in schools and universities and to situate these within a five-level taxonomy of computer conferencing and collaborative writing tools and approaches;
*to examine some of the sociocultural learning variables embedded in the use of electronic collaborative tools and approaches; and
*to participate in a dialogue about the importance of student electronic social interaction and dialogue from a sociocultural perspective.
This is a must-read volume for all researchers, scholars, graduate students, and practitioners interested in such fields as sociocultural theory, process writing, cooperative learning, learner-centeredness, distance education, peer conferencing and tutoring, mentoring, electronic collaboration, problem- and project-based learning, collaborative writing, and educational reform.

As part of e-learning, adaptive systems are more specialized and focus on the adaptation of learning content and presentation of this content. An adaptive system focuses on how knowledge is learned and pays attention to the activities, cognitive structures, and context of the learning material. The adaptive term refers to the automatic adaptation of the system to the learner. The needs of the learner are borne by the system itself. The learner did not ask to change the parameters of the system to his own needs; it is rather the needs of the learner that will be supposed by the system. The system adapts according to this necessity. Personalization and Collaboration in Adaptive E-Learning is an essential reference book that aims to describe the specific steps in designing a scenario for a collaborative learning activity in the particular context of personalization in adaptive systems and the key decisions that need to be made by the teacher-learner. By applying theoretical and practical aspects of personalization in adaptive systems and applications within education, this collection features coverage on a broad range of topics that include adaptive teaching, personalized learning, and instructional design. This book is ideally designed for instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational software developers, IT specialists, educational administrators, professionals, professors, researchers, and students seeking current research on comparative studies and the pedagogical issues of personalized and collaborative learning.

This book contains a comprehensive treatment of advanced LaTeX features. The focus is on the development of high quality documents and presentations, by revealing powerful insights into the LaTeX language. The well-established advantages of the typesetting system LaTeX are the preparation and publication of platform-independent high-quality documents and automatic numbering and cross-referencing of illustrations or references. These can be extended beyond the typical applications, by creating highly dynamic electronic documents. This is commonly performed in connection with the portable document format (PDF), as well as other programming tools which allow the development of extremely flexible electronic documents.

Is the emerging digital multimedia culture of today transforming the textbook or forever displacing it? As new media of transmission enter the classroom, the traditional textbook is now caught up in a dialogue reshaping the textual boundaries of the book, and with it the traditional modes of cognition and learning, which are bound more to language than to visual form. Most of the important work in the past two decades in the field of curriculum has focused on the culture of the textbook. A rich literature has evolved around textbooks as the traditional object of instructional activity. This volume is an important contribution to this literature, which focuses on the actual making of a textbook. This design process serves as a metaphor that suggests new paradigms of learning and instruction, in which text content is but one component in a multidimensional information space."The Visual Turn" is an exploration along the border of this new learning space transforming the traditional center of instruction in the classroom.

This highly focused and practical book looks at the issues involved in integrating learning technologies within teaching and learning. With in-text activities to encourage readers to think about what they do, the book demonstrates how academics can improve their teaching using technology. It raises issues about the educational value of using technology and considers the pressures forcing change in higher education. The book covers a wide range, from making lecture aids to creating multimedia resources, and includes discussion of: +educational perspectives+developing new teaching strategies for larger student groups+using computers to deliver teaching and learning resources+using computers to communicate with and between students.This book can stand alone or can be used in conjunction with Technology In Teaching And Learning. The two books cover all aspects of transforming teaching using technology. This book covers the educational issues.

This book is an introduction to the issues and practicalities of using multimedia in classrooms - both primary and secondary, and across a range of subject areas. The book draws on material from a range of case studies and focuses on areas of concern for teachers and researchers.
Using IT effectively continues to be a problem for many teachers, and there is still a long way to go toward organising this properly. The book takes a thorough look at IT in the school, discussing and examining issues such as:
* IT and the National Curriculum
* foreign language teaching
* differing curricular needs
* opportunities and constraints of groupwork
* talking books and primary reading
* ways in which multimedia supports readers.
The book also looks at some of the more philosophical issues such as the implications of home-computers and the limits of independent learning, and the notion of "edutainment" - the relationship of motivation and enjoyment to learning.
Finally, the book makes comparisons across the curriculum and between primary and secondary sectors and raises questions about the future of IT in schools, arguing that teachers should make a significant contribution to decisions about future development.


eBook available with sample pages: 0203441303

Beyond the Online Course: Leadership Perspectives on e-Learning addresses a need for the growing body of professionals who are called upon to lead the online/distance learning efforts at their various organizations. It will also be of interest to those wishing to prepare for leadership positions or who are engaged in research and study of issues "beyond the online course." The book brings together scholarly and practice-based writings from the pages of the Quarterly Review of Distance Education and Distance Learning for Educators, Trainers and Leaders.

In order to effectively use games in the classroom, teachers and parents need to agree on games' positive functions toward students' learning, decide and select good educational games relevant to content and tasks in the classroom, and disseminate their acquired knowledge into the teaching field. As part of an international dialogue between researchers in educational technology, Gaming for Classroom-Based Learning: Digital Role Playing as a Motivator of Study investigates whether games can motivate students to learn and improve their knowledge and skills. This collection of research aims to inform classroom and pre-service teachers of the potential of games for improving teaching and learning.

Rethinking Children and Research considers the way people approach research into childhood and children's lives and examines the debates concerning the forms and goals of such research.Theoretical and practice-based perspectives are discussed in the context of recent key developments in research theory and philosophy of children. Mary Kellett promotes the idea that researchers should listen to the voices and perspectives of children as experts on their own lives, and offers insights and guidance on approaches to research design, implementation and presentation.Recent debates and developments are considered, including ethics, approaching research with children from a child-rights framework, and rethinking the power dynamic within research relationships with children.Rethinking Children and Research is essential for studying childhood and undergraduate or postgraduate level, and will be of interest to all involved with research into childhood and children's lives in the areas of education, health and social services. >

As new and emerging technologies continue to become more familiar to educators and the education system, the vast opportunities for web-based learning has transformed the ideals of the traditional classroom. Pedagogical Considerations and Opportunities for Teaching and Learning on the Web concentrates on theory, application, and the development of web-based technologies for teaching and learning and its influence on the education system. This book would be of particular interest to academics, professionals, and researchers interested in the best practices of virtual learning environments.

This monograph presents the challenges, vision and context to design smart learning objects (SLOs) through Computer Science (CS) education modelling and feature model transformations. It presents the latest research on the meta-programming-based generative learning objects (the latter with advanced features are treated as SLOs) and the use of educational robots in teaching CS topics. The introduced methodology includes the overall processes to develop SLO and smart educational environment (SEE) and integrates both into the real education setting to provide teaching in CS using constructivist and project-based approaches along with evaluation of pedagogic outcomes. Smart Learning Objects for Smart Education in Computer Science will appeal to researchers in CS education particularly those interested in using robots in teaching, course designers and educational software and tools developers. With research and exercise questions at the end of each chapter students studying CS related courses will find this work informative and valuable too.

Hypermedia and multimedia have penetrated the world of computer games, Internet, and CD-ROM based reference manuals. However, the fields of education, schooling, and training ask more specific benefits from them. This book provides practical approaches to transform these media into learning tools. Crucial helping steps include the migration from expository to exploratory learning strategies, the integration of collaborative learning practices in plenary and individualistic teaching styles, and the evolution from test-driven to experience-oriented training.
This volume has three goals:
* to discuss the concepts of hypermedia, multimedia, and hypertext and review pertinent research lines;
* to provide guidelines and suggestions for developing multimedia applications; and
* to place technology within a broader context of education and training through a discussion of rich environments for active learning (REALs).
The book takes a developmental focus to helpf readers set up and manage the process of developing a multimedia application. It is not a technical or a how-to manual on working with video, sound, digitized graphics, or computer code. The text takes a unique approach to the idea of media-- viewing media as delivery systems: if video is called for, use it; if sound will help in an application, use it. The fundamental guidelines presented here are usually "not" media specific. Media works only within the strategies with which they are used.
Aimed at practitioners--people who teach about or develop multimedia and hypermedia applications--this volume carefully examines the main components and issues in developing applications. It provides suggestions and heuristics for sound, fundamental design processes.