Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources is a practical guide that assists faculty and institutions looking to adopt and implement open educational resources (OER) and to foster meaningful, effective learning experiences through the course design process. Chapters loaded with tips, case examples, and guidance from practitioners advise readers through each step necessary for sustainable OER initiatives, from preliminary planning and course redesign through teaching, learning, and faculty development. Written by two authors with direct experience in training higher education professionals to use OER, this is a comprehensive resource for faculty, instructional designers, course developers, librarians, information technologists, and administrators hoping to rethink and refresh their curricula by moving beyond traditional textbooks. An authors' website expands the book with resources, templates, and examples of implementation models, including faculty development workshop OER materials that can be adopted by readers.

While some people look back on school as the 'best days of your life', for others the experience can be unpleasant and gruelling. Learning without School is a practical handbook for parents who want to educate their children at home but are unsure that they have the skills and know-how required to give their child the best education possible. This book explains what home education is; the advantages and disadvantages of choosing this route; how to begin home educating; what you need to do and how to help your child adjust; and how home education affects children's social skills and friendships. It also covers technical aspects, such as the curriculum, core subjects, exams and timetables. Ross Mountney also considers children with 'learning difficulties' or 'special needs' and how to approach home education differently for this group of children. Each chapter contains a summary of key points, useful websites, hints and tips and real-life case studies. This practical guide offers indispensible support for parents who are considering home education for their child, and includes a broad philosophy of education that will interest all parents and professionals involved in education and child welfare.

Allow your children to experience the adventure, freedom, and wonder of childhood with this practical guide that provides all the information, inspiration, and advice you need for creating a modern, quality homeschool education. Inspired by the spirit of Henry David Thoreau-"All good things are wild and free"-mother of five Ainsley Arment founded Wild + Free. This growing online community of mothers and families want their children to receive a quality education at home by challenging their intellectual abilities and nurturing their sense of curiosity, joy and awe-the essence of a positive childhood. The homeschool approach of past generations is gone-including the stigma of socially awkward kids, conservative clothes, and a classroom setting replicated in the home. The Wild + Free movement is focused on a love of nature, reading great books, pursuing interests and hobbies, making the entire world a classroom, and prolonging the wonder of childhood, an appealing philosophy that is unpacked in the pages of this book The Call of the Wild and Free offers advice, information, and positive encouragement for parents considering homeschooling, those currently in the trenches looking for inspiration, as well as parents, educators, and caregivers who want supplementary resources to enhance their kids' traditional educations.

When the internet became a viable instructional delivery medium, online learning began to rapidly expand. Shortly thereafter, the need for online teaching approaches promptly emerged. As web-based technologies evolve rapidly, online planning and teaching skills are becoming even more necessary prerequisites for online teaching. Utilizing a 5-Stage Learning Model for Planning and Teaching Online Courses: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a cutting-edge scholarly publication that combines the instructional system design approach (ISD) with the current and emerging instructional technologies for planning and teaching effective and successful online courses. It also offers recommendations that focus on best practice experiences for engaging online students and motivating them to be active participants in an online class. Highlighting a range of topics such as data analysis, educational collaboration, and student engagement, this book is essential for instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational software developers, academicians, teachers, administrators, researchers, and students. It can also be used by training specialists who are employed by universities, cooperation, or government agencies and charged to develop and teach online classes of professional development or web-based military training.

Advocates have positioned service-learning as a real-world, real-time opportunity for students to encounter academic knowledge in a meaningful and relevant manner. Service-learning in higher education settings offers a powerful alternative to traditional models of teaching and learning. Students are encouraged to develop links to local institutions, volunteer their time, and create a special bond between the university and the community in which they live. Service-learning has become a very popular alternative to standard courses in higher education and is gaining significant popularity. This book takes a serious look at the unintended consequences and alternative conceptualizations of this mode of learning and explores what it could offer us in the future.

Constructing Online Work-Based Learning Placements offers a step-by-step approach to understanding and applying the principles of design and delivery in online work-based learning (WBL) placements for students. A crucial component of employability strategies for higher education students, WBL placements are increasingly in need of adaptation to respond to today's rapidly expanding online work environments. This evidence-based book explores the emergent properties and additional value that online WBL placements provide to student learning and employability prospects, focusing on effective pedagogy, design, planning and implementation. The book also presents the Peer Enhanced e-Placement (PEEP), a pioneering, positively evaluated and award-winning online WBL placement model that is underpinned by pedagogical research and theory. The PEEP has been adapted and adopted by numerous higher education teams organising online WBL placements, and the case example included in these pages will guide readers through their own implementation and collaborations.

"Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda" offers a
systematic overview of the major issues, trends, and areas of priority
in online distance education research. In each chapter, an
international expert or team of experts provides an overview of one
timely issue in online distance education, summarizing major research
on the topic, discussing theoretical insights that guide the research,
posing questions and directions for future research, and discussing the
implications for distance education practice as a whole. Intended as a
primary reference and guide for distance educators, researchers, and
policymakers, "Online Distance Education" addresses aspects of
distance education practice that have often been marginalized,
including issues of cost and economics, concerns surrounding social
justice, cultural bias, the need for faculty professional development,
and the management and growth of learner communities. At once soundly
empirical and thoughtfully reflective, yet also forward-looking and
open to new approaches to online and distance teaching, this text is a
solid resource for researchers in a rapidly expanding discipline.

Olaf Zawacki-Richter is professor of educational
technology at the University of Oldenburg, and also teaches in the
online Masters of Distance Education and E-Learning program offered
jointly by the University of Oldenburg and the University of Maryland,
University College. Terry Anderson is professor and
researcher in the Technology-Enhanced Knowledge Research Centre at
Athabasca University. His research interests focus on interaction and
social media in educational contexts. He is the editor of "The
Theory and Practice of Online Learning," 2nd ed., winner of the
2009 Charles E. Wedemeyer Award.

HomeschoolPsych 2nd Edition: Preparing Christian Homeschool Students for Psych 101 and the accompanying Student Workbook are all a busy homeschooling mom (or dad) need. Prepare student to recognize the worldview assumption underlying modern Psychology s theories and schools-of-thought and introduce them to the study of God s greatest creation the human mind from a distinctly Christian perspective. Since the first edition was published in 2008, thousands of homeschoool students have used Homeschool Psych to study psychology from a Christian perspective.