This book provides a comprehensive overview of the organizational models of distance and online learning from an international perspective and from the point of view of economic planning, costing and management decision-making. The book points to directions for the further research and development in this area, and will promote further understanding and critical reflection on the part of administrators, practitioners and researchers of distance education. The experiences and perspectives in distance education in the US are balanced with those in other areas of the world.

This volume offers a detailed case study of the internationally acclaimed online programmes in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, UK. It distils over a decade of online teaching experience and student feedback, providing guidance for instructors developing their own online offerings. Today, many universities are actively encouraging their teaching staff towards the development of: * online programmes (programmes to be taught entirely online) and/or * online units (units to be incorporated into "blended" programmes taught partially online and partially face-to-face). Unfortunately, the staff tasked with the development of online learning rarely have access to the expertise that they need to help them utilise their teaching skills to their full potential. Technical assistance may be provided by the university e-learning department, but pedagogical and practical help - the support of colleagues with many years' experience teaching online - is lacking. Written by experts, the book provides an invaluable guide for those wishing - or being compelled - to establish their own online courses within the humanities.

As families are looking for better ways to educate their children, more and more of them are becoming interested and engaged in alternative ways of schooling that are different, separate, or opposite of the traditional classroom. Homeschooling has become ever more creative and varied as families create custom-tailored curricula, assignments, goals, and strategies that are best for each unique child. This presents a multitude of challenges and opportunities for information institutions, including public, academic, school, and special libraries. The need for librarians to help homeschool families become information and media literate is more important than ever. This collection of essays provides a range of approaches and strategies suggested by skilled professionals as well as veteran homeschool parents on how to best serve the diverse needs and learning experiences of homeschooled youth. It includes information on needs assessments for special needs students, gifted students, and African American students; advice on how to provide support for the families of homeschoolers; case studies; and information on new technologies that could benefit libraries and the homeschooler populations that they serve.

A clear and concise course design is integral to effective student learning in units of study; however, unit design can be a daunting task for academics. Effective Unit Design for Higher Education Courses is a practical resource based on theoretical foundations, designed to assist both professional course designers and academics with varied levels of curriculum design and development experience or background in higher education units and courses. This book provides a variety of practical advice, skills and resources to assist academics in designing curriculum that focuses on enhancing student learning. Readers are given a range of evidence-based developmental tools that challenge some of the currently accepted conventions behind unit design. Appropriate for any skill level, this book is designed to provide an accessible and structured process to design or revitalise high-quality units of study. Chapters cover a range of topics including developing assessment methods, strategies for providing feedback and evaluating unit design. The book has been structured to follow a design process, but as unit design is non-linear, chapters can be read in any order depending on interest or need. An essential guide for curriculum designers of all skill and experience levels, this book will appeal to all higher education academics tasked with an aspect of unit design.

E-portfolios are a valuable learning and assessment tool. They can serve as an administrative tool to manage and organise work, to present course assignments and act as the medium for learners to record their learning goals, outcomes and achievements. They encourage personal reflection and involve the exchange of ideas and feedback.

Using technology in this way supports students' abilities in using and exploiting technology for professional and personal purposes, enabling any time, any place learning and peer learning and facilitating the provision of tutor feedback.

e-Portfolios is a comprehensive, practical guide for lecturers and staff developers who need to know more about the development of purposeful e-portfolios for supporting students in reflecting on their learning.

Blended and online learning skills are rapidly becoming essential for effective teaching and learning in universities and colleges. Covering theory where useful but maintaining an emphasis on practice, this book provides teachers and lecturers with an accessible introduction to e-learning.

Beginning by exploring the meaning of 'e-learning', it supports tutors in identifying how they plan to use technology to support courses that blend online and face-to-face interactions. Illustrated by a range of case of studies, the book covers:

• designing quality, appropriate effective and online learning
• efficient and sustainable e-learning activity
• providing appropriate feedback to learners
• devising student activities and sourcing learning resources
• managing online and offline interactions

Packed with practical advice and ideas, this book provides the core skills and knowledge that teachers in HE and FE need when starting out and further developing their teaching course design for blended and online learning.

What is accessibility? Who needs it? Often, accessibility is defined narrowly, with emphasis on physical limitations. Accessibility needs, however, come in many forms, from vision and hearing impairment, to developmental disorders like Autism, to psychiatric conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and PTSD. Unfortunately, accessibility does not come with a simple set of checkboxes. It is a philosophy and practice that embraces social, physical, and informational elements. Universal design does not come in the form of a quick and easy guide. It is a philosophy. To implement it completely requires more than just screen readers and video captions. Creating Accessible Online Instruction Using Universal Design Principles introduces the need for accessibility in online education and library services and the framework of universal design for learning. It takes a scoping, rather than a purely technical, approach. It will help you not only o create accessible content, but with how to communicate with students in an accessible manner. This LITA Guide covers: accessibility law, Universal Design for Learning and Web Content Accessibility guidelines, and communication and educational research and theory. The content is interspersed with practical examples and case studies.

E-portfolios are a valuable learning and assessment tool. They can serve as an administrative tool to manage and organise work, to present course assignments and act as the medium for learners to record their learning goals, outcomes and achievements. They encourage personal reflection and involve the exchange of ideas and feedback.

Using technology in this way supports students' abilities in using and exploiting technology for professional and personal purposes, enabling any time, any place learning and peer learning and facilitating the provision of tutor feedback.

e-Portfolios is a comprehensive, practical guide for lecturers and staff developers who need to know more about the development of purposeful e-portfolios for supporting students in reflecting on their learning.

"Finding Your Online Voice" offers a thought-provoking discussion of innovative approaches to technology-based distance education. Editor J. Michael Spector focuses on how highly experienced teachers conceptualize and organize online classes. Best practices and guidelines for effective online teaching as well as a set of instructor skills specific to online learning environments are featured in the volume. Distinguished researchers recount stories from a richly detailed, personal viewpoint on topics such as:
*teaching orientations and philosophies;
*approaches to learning and instruction;
*orientation to and uses of technology;
*models and methods of technology-based teaching; and
*reflections and self-assessments.
This work is appropriate for professors, students, and professional practitioners working in the areas of distance education and educational technology. It is intended as a primary resource in courses on technology integration.

This revised and updated edition of Open and Distance Learning in the Developing World sets the expansion of distance education in the context of general educational change and explores its use for basic and non-formal education, schooling, teacher training and higher education. Engaging with a range of topics, this comprehensive overview includes new material on: non-formal education: mass-communication approaches to education about HIV/AIDS and recent literacy work in India, South Africa, and Zambia schooling: new research projects in open schooling in Asia and subsaharan Africa, and interactive radio instruction in South Africa the impact of new technology and globalisation: learning delivered through the internet and mobile learning the political economy: international agencies, the role of private sector, and funding. With its critical appraisal of the facts and examination of data about effectiveness, this book provides answers to problems and poses key questions for the consideration of policy makers, educational practitioners and all professionals involved in implementing and delivering sustainable open and distance learning.

In recent years there has been a resurgence in the use of video in teaching and training contexts, due to technological advances that enable good quality moving pictures through CD-Rom, DVD and broadband Internet. This book offers advice and assistance to a growing group of teachers and trainers, technical and support staff in the most effective deployment of video and multimedia in open and distance learning.
A bridge between research and practice, "Designing Video and Multimedia for Open and Flexible Learning" discusses:
- what to teach on video and how to teach it
- when to choose and how to use other media for teaching
- a framework of pedagogic design principles for video and multimedia
- practical development advice for interactive multimedia
With insights into the comprehensive process of designing, developing and managing distance learning materials, this book will appeal to readers with varying interests and responsibilities, including course development, educational Video, Audiovision and interactive Multimedia design, as well as to students of general video and multimedia production.

This is a comprehensive, practical guide to the most effective use of video and multimedia in open and distance learning. Illustrated throughout, it considers pedagogic design principles for the highest quality learning material, covering:

• what to teach on video and how to teach it
• when to choose and how to use other media for teaching
• a framework of pedagogic design principles for video and multimedia
• practical development advice for interactive multimedia.

With insights into the comprehensive process of designing, developing and managing distance learning materials, this book will appeal to those involved in course development, educational video, audiovision and interactive multimedia design, as well as to students of general video and multimedia production.

Transforming Universities with Digital Distance Education explores the ways in which higher education stakeholders can apply and leverage the benefits of online learning. Systems-wide access, scale and quality are achievable goals but require forms of teamwork and financial modelling beyond those at the instructor or programme level. This book's organisational view tackles the systems and practices that will help senior managers and decision-makers guide an entire institution away from dysfunction-incremental progress, insufficient capacity, high costs and generic products-and towards the macro-level implementation and operations of effective online pedagogies.

Virtual Reality in Curriculum and Pedagogy explores the instructional, ethical, practical, and technical issues related to the integration of immersive virtual reality (VR) in school classrooms. The book's original pedagogical framework is informed by qualitative and quantitative data collected from the first-ever study to embed immersive VR in secondary school science, ICT, and drama classrooms. Students and scholars of technology-enhancing learning, curriculum design, and teacher education alike will find key pedagogical insights into leveraging the unique properties of VR for authentic, metacognitive, and creative learning.

The essence of this second edition, under the revised title Teacher as Traveler: Enhancing the Intercultural Development of Teachers and Students, is to examine the development of intercultural competence through various dimensions of student travel, study abroad and intercultural encounters. Cushner, who has traveled with students and teachers to all seven continents for more than 40 years, uses his firsthand experiences as the foundation to introduce essential concepts related to cross-cultural communication and intercultural interaction and to point out strategies educators can employ to enhance intercultural learning. This second edition reflects the considerable research that has occurred in recent years that has helped us better understand the impact and design of international travel experiences that have the potential to enhance intercultural development. In addition to updated research, the chapters examine new study abroad initiatives while looking closely at the critical role that guided teacher-led experience plays in facilitating intercultural growth and development.

The pioneers who started the world's first open universities flew by the seat of their pants. Their successors, now launching and reshaping open-learning programmes in the internet age, no longer need to.
Drawing on forty years' experience of implementing open and distance learning, this book will guide decision makers - in the private and public sectors - about how they can teach and train more students, more effectively, learning from the successes and avoiding the failures of the past. The book is richly illustrated with case study materials from varied international experiences, and the main issues covered include:
Pedagogical options - teaching materials, student-support and tutorial arrangements
Administrative options - single-mode/dual-mode institutions, recruitment strategies, communication structures
Collaborative options - market alliances, public-private partnerships and the necessary conditions for success
Funding - capital and recurrent expenditure, factors for cost-effectiveness
Quality control, accreditation and assessment - awarding credits and monitoring the quality of the institution
This book is written for anyone planning to develop programmes or projects of open and distance learning, either through an educational institution or for training in the private, corporate or NGO sector.

This book investigates the intersection of gender and distance education from a feminist perspective and explores their contemporary innovative interfaces in Indian and international contexts. The key issues raised here include a re- investigation of the democratizing potential of distance education from a gendered perspective (especially in developing countries such as India), feminist pedagogical perspectives on the notion of transactional distance, the relationship between masculinity and gerontology from the perspective of non- traditional modes, and the interrelationships between gender and social media from a distance education perspective. As opposed to the conventional, physical classroom, the virtual classroom often occupies a de- privileged space in feminist pedagogical discussions, since it appears to align itself less easily with feminist praxes which encourage a free, intellectual exchange between teachers and students. By opening up various facets of the relationship between gender, distance education and feminist pedagogy, the book foregrounds the critical need to re- visit preconceived, unfavourable assumptions about this relationship and proposes mutually productive inter-linkages. It does so in the context of contemporary circumstances defined by the increasing use of virtual technology, the ongoing need for democratization of higher education and the constraints posed by consumerist trends. Lucid and topical, this Focus volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of higher education, open and distance education, feminist pedagogy, gender studies, feminism, masculinity, and women's studies as well as practitioners and policymakers working in the education sector.

The book asks readers to adopt a critical and comprehensive view of education (pre-K to lifelong learning) as existing both within classroom walls, and in the surrounding world, including communities and workplaces. It presents an integrated view of online learning, community schools, communiversities, and learning through work. Our educational systems are organized in ways that make this integration difficult. We have elaborate systems of formal instruction--academies, schools, universities, and training institutes--all to facilitate learning within the walls. At the same time we have ample opportunities for learning in the wild. Unfortunately these systems diverge to the point that they do little to support learning that allows us to draw from both of the realms of knowledge. But it is possible to bring together learning within the walls with that beyond the walls. Moreover it is crucial to make these connections in the world of today. In order to bring together the classroom and daily life we need an educational system that does that as well.The book provides a coherent account of how schooling can and should relate to learning beyond the classroom walls.

Online and Distance Social Work Education: Current Practice and Future Trends provides a comprehensive presentation on the evolution, current status and future direction of distance learning and online education in the social work profession. Documenting the current state-of-the-art, this book demonstrates the power of distance learning and online technology and addresses future trends in web-based social work education. Written by widely recognized experts, the chapters represent an authoritative statement of the present state-of-the-art in the application of technology to contemporary social work education. The insights of these experts will be of great interest to students and faculty in the 798 accredited social work programs in the United States. They are creating a revolution in the profession which will forever change the nature of education for professional practice. Authored by widely recognized educators on the cutting edge of technological innovation, this text will be relevant to social work students and educators in baccalaureate, masters and doctoral programs in the USA and internationally. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Teaching in Social Work.

This is an essential resource for anyone designing or facilitating online learning. It introduces an easy, practical model (R2D2: read, reflect, display, and do) that will show online educators how to deliver content in ways that benefit all types of learners (visual, auditory, observational, and kinesthetic) from a wide variety of backgrounds and skill levels. With a solid theoretical foundation and concrete guidance and examples, this book can be used as a handy reference, a professional guidebook, or a course text. The authors intend for it to help online instructors and instructional designers as well as those contemplating such positions design, develop, and deliver learner-centered online instruction.

Empowering Online Learning has 25 unique activities for each phase of the R2D2 model as well as summary tables helping you pick and choose what to use whenever you need it. Each activity lists a description, skills addressed, advice, variations, cost, risk, and time index, and much more.

This title is loaded with current information about emerging technologies (e.g., simulations, podcasts, wikis, blogs) and the Web 2.0. With a useful model, more than 100 online activities, the latest information on emerging technologies, hundreds of quickly accessible Web resources, and relevance to all types and ages of learners--Empowering Online Learning is a book whose time has come.

This book explores issues related to people, policy, and places of teaching and learning resulting from the trend towards dual and multi-mode provision of distance education. It explores reasons for the trend as well as some of the opportunities and challenges which may arise. In many developing countries, demand for higher education provision outstrips the supply of full-time places; while in many developed countries the cost of full-time provision means that distance and online provision may be more accessible than full-time provision. At the same time, the growing use of online learning platforms has generally resulted in more flexible forms of provision. Consequently, an increasing number of higher education institutions now offer dual (contact and distance or online) or multi-mode (contact and distance and online and other) forms of provision. This volume helps to navigate this changing distance education landscape. The chapters in this book were originally published in Distance Education.

Originally published as a special issue of the Middle School Journal, this book presents integrative curriculum as a foundational element of the middle school. By addressing the current gap in literature on curriculum integration in the middle grades, this text explores how learning can be organized around authentic concepts or questions which cut across disciplines and speak to young adolescents. Providing a current, nuanced, and comprehensive review of what it means to embrace and implement an interdisciplinary and integrative curriculum, the volume considers how educators can create and deliver a high-quality integrative curriculum which is enjoyable, challenging, and inclusive. Examples of implementation in teacher preparation programs and middle grade classrooms showcase integrative approaches and illustrate how curricula have been key in tackling social inequities, increasing engagement with STEM, and supporting collaboration. This text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics and libraries in the field of Middle School Education, Curriculum Studies, Teacher Education, Theories of Learning, and STEM Education.

This book examines the state of the Open and Distance Learning (ODL)-based secondary education in India. ODL-based education has been a key resource for children in India who can neither cope with nor avail of regular schooling opportunities due to economic, health and disability, or other constraints. The volume uses large-scale empirical data collected from various Indian states and a sensitive theoretical framework to study the equity, efficiency, and effectiveness of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and the State Open School (SOS). Highlighting the roadblocks and barriers in terms of its reach, inclusion, and delivery, particularly to the marginalised, this book explores whether ODL has a potential of being a sustainable and effective option at the secondary and senior secondary level in India. Thus, it seeks to generate policy discourse around delivery mechanisms and effectiveness of ODL in developing countries. First of its kind, this comprehensive volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of education, education policy, public policy, and political studies.

Education as a concept has long been taken for granted. Most people immediately think of schools and colleges, of classes and exams. This volume aims to highlight non-formal education (NFE) in its various forms across different historical and cultural contexts. Contributors draw upon their experience as educators and researchers in comparative education and sociology to elucidate, compare, and critique NFE in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA. By mapping out NFE's forms, functions, and dynamics, this volume gives us the opportunity to reflect on the myriad iterations of education to challenge preconceived limitations in the field of education research. Only by expanding the focus beyond that of traditional schooling arrangements can we work towards a more sustainable future and improved lifelong learning. This book will appeal to researchers interested in non-formal education and comparative education.

All types of organisations have recognised the growing demand for open and flexible learning programmes. With the increased emphasis on new ways of learning, and the rapid move towards open and online courses, this practical guide will help those involved overcome the challenges they face. This guide provides user friendly advice and support for those currently involved with open learning and those considering it for the first time.
"500 Tips for Open and Online Learning" aims not only to save you time but also to enhance the quality of the learning experience which learners will draw from open and online learning. The book is divided into six sections which cover:
* What is Open and Online Learning, why use it and how?
* How to set up Open and Online learning programmes
* Designing new resource materials
* Putting technology to work
* Supporting open learners
* Assessing open learning
This practical book will be an invaluable resource, providing immediate and accessible help to the increasing number of people now under pressure to design, support and deliver open learning programmes. This book will appeal to tutors, trainers, managers of learning resource centres and curriculum developers who are already involved in, or thinking about starting to use, aspects of open learning.