In general, teaching languages can prove difficult to most without suitable teaching materials and instructors. Fortunately, e-learning courses make student learning of both language and culture easier through information communication technologies. Learning Culture and Language through ICTs: Methods for Enhanced Instruction offers students, instructors, and researchers an authoritative reference to the current progress of language and cultural e-learning. A high quality collection for libraries and academicians, this book covers pertinent topics such as second language learning and computer learning principles.

Intended to promote the innovative use of technology in education and promote educational advances all over the world, this volume brings together 16 best-practice cases on technology-enhanced educational innovations. Experts from Turkey, Tunisia, Cyprus, Italy, Malaysia, China, India and Finland have contributed to these cases, highlighting the current state-of-the-art in the use of technology in education in their respective counties. Topics include best practices for designing smart classrooms, effective use of tablets and interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments, digital learning spaces, game-based learning, synchronous cyber classrooms, micro-courses, among others. The book offers an essential resource on emerging technologies and the educational approaches currently being pursued in different countries to foster effective learning.

This book focuses on the interplay between pedagogy and technology, and their fusion for the advancement of smart learning environments. It discusses various components of this interplay, including learning and assessment paradigms, social factors and policies, emerging technologies, innovative application of mature technologies, transformation of curriculum and teaching behavior, transformation of administration, best infusion practices, and piloting of new ideas. The book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in reforming teaching and learning methods by promoting smart learning environments. It also facilitates discussions and constructive dialogue among various stakeholders on the limitations of existing learning environments, the need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promoting best practices, leading to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments.

This book addresses main issues concerned with the future learning, learning and academic analytics, virtual world and smart user interface, and mobile learning. This book gathers the newest research results of smart learning environments from the aspects of learning, pedagogies, and technologies in learning. It examines the advances in technology development and changes in the field of education that has been affecting and reshaping the learning environment. Then, it proposes that under the changed technological situations, smart learning systems, no matter what platforms (i.e., personal computers, smart phones, and tablets) they are running at, should be aware of the preferences and needs that their users (i.e., the learners and teachers) have, be capable of providing their users with the most appropriate services, helps to enhance the users' learning experiences, and to make the learning efficient.

This book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners, and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in the reform of the ways of teaching and learning through advancing current learning environments towards smart learning environments. It facilitates opportunities for discussions and constructive dialogue among various stakeholders on the limitations of existing learning environments, need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promotion of best practices, leading to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments. This book also focus on the interplay of pedagogy, technology and their fusion towards the advancement of smart learning environments.

Game-based learning environments and learning analytics are attracting increasing attention from researchers and educators, since they both can enhance learning outcomes. This book focuses on the application of data analytics approaches and research on human behaviour analysis in game-based learning environments, namely educational games and gamification systems, to provide smart learning. Specifically, it discusses the purposes, advantages and limitations of applying such approaches in these environments. Additionally, the various smart game-based learning environments presented help readers integrate learning analytics in their educational games and gamification systems to, for instance, assess and model students (e.g. their computational thinking) or enhance the learning process for better outcomes. Moreover, the book presents general guidelines on various aspects, such as collecting data for analysis, game-based learning environment design, system architecture and applied algorithms, which facilitate incorporating learning analytics into educational games and gamification systems. After a general introduction to help readers become familiar with the subject area, the individual chapters each discuss a different aim of applying data analytics approaches in educational games and gamification systems. Lastly, the conclusion provides a summary and presents general guidelines and frameworks to consider when designing smart game-based learning environments with learning analytics.

This book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners, and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in the reform of the ways of teaching and learning through advancing current learning environments towards smart learning environments. It facilitates opportunities for discussions and constructive dialogue among various stakeholders on the limitations of existing learning environments, need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promotion of best practices, leading to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments. This book also focus on the interplay of pedagogy, technology and their fusion towards the advancement of smart learning environments.  

This book focuses on the interplay between pedagogy and technology, and their fusion for the advancement of smart learning environments. It discusses various components of this interplay, including learning and assessment paradigms, social factors and policies, emerging technologies, innovative application of mature technologies, transformation of curriculum and teaching behavior, transformation of administration, best infusion practices, and piloting of new ideas. The book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in reforming teaching and learning methods by promoting smart learning environments. It also facilitates discussions and constructive dialogue among various stakeholders on the limitations of existing learning environments, the need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promoting best practices, leading to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments.

This book focuses on the interplay between pedagogy and technology, and their fusion for the advancement of smart learning environments. It discusses various components of this interplay, including learning and assessment paradigms, social factors and policies, emerging technologies, innovative application of mature technologies, transformation of curriculum and teaching behavior, transformation of administration, best infusion practices, and piloting of new ideas. The book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in reforming teaching and learning methods by promoting smart learning environments. It also facilitates discussions and constructive dialogue among various stakeholders on the limitations of existing learning environments, the need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promoting best practices, leading to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments.

Intended to promote the innovative use of technology in education and promote educational advances all over the world, this volume brings together 16 best-practice cases on technology-enhanced educational innovations. Experts from Turkey, Tunisia, Cyprus, Italy, Malaysia, China, India and Finland have contributed to these cases, highlighting the current state-of-the-art in the use of technology in education in their respective counties. Topics include best practices for designing smart classrooms, effective use of tablets and interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments, digital learning spaces, game-based learning, synchronous cyber classrooms, micro-courses, among others. The book offers an essential resource on emerging technologies and the educational approaches currently being pursued in different countries to foster effective learning.

This book addresses main issues concerned with the future learning, learning and academic analytics, virtual world and smart user interface, and mobile learning. This book gathers the newest research results of smart learning environments from the aspects of learning, pedagogies, and technologies in learning. It examines the advances in technology development and changes in the field of education that has been affecting and reshaping the learning environment. Then, it proposes that under the changed technological situations, smart learning systems, no matter what platforms (i.e., personal computers, smart phones, and tablets) they are running at, should be aware of the preferences and needs that their users (i.e., the learners and teachers) have, be capable of providing their users with the most appropriate services, helps to enhance the users' learning experiences, and to make the learning efficient.

This book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in reforming teaching and learning methods by transforming today's learning environments into smart learning environments. It will facilitate opportunities for discussions and constructive dialogue between various stakeholders on the limitations of current learning environments, the need for reform, innovative uses of emerging pedagogical approaches and technologies, and sharing and promoting best practices, which will lead to the evolution, design and implementation of smart learning environments. The focus of the contributions is on the interplay and fusion of pedagogy and technology to create these new environments. The components of this interplay include but are not limited to: Pedagogy: learning paradigms, assessment paradigms, social factors, policy Technology: emerging technologies, innovative uses of mature technologies, adoption, usability, standards, and emerging/new technological paradigms (open educational resources, cloud computing, etc.) Fusion of pedagogy and technology: transformation of curricula, transformation of teaching behavior, transformation of administration, best practices of infusion, piloting of new ideas.

This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design. This issue contains 10 outstanding contributions from the International Conference on E-Learning and Games, Edutainment 2011, as well as 14 regular papers which were partly selected from national conferences. The topics covered are game engine, using games to teach, identifying player emotion states, assessing the effects of educational games to multi-touch interaction, natural user interface, and virtual reality. Generally, the papers present a large number of examples of edutainment applications, giving more evidence on the high potential and impact of edutainment approaches.

This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design.

The 27 papers of this volume deal with virtual humans; graphics rendering and 3D animation; games and 2D animation; and digital media and its applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on E-learning and Games, Edutainment 2011, held in Taipeh, Taiwan, in September 2011.

The 42 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 130 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on: augemented and mixed reality in education; effectiveness of virtual reality for education; ubiquituous games and ubiquitous technology & learning; future classroom; e-reader and multi-touch; learning performance and achievement; learning by playing; game design and development; game-based learning/training; interactions in games; digital museum and technology, and behavior in games; educational robots and toys; e-learning platforms and tools; game engine/rendering/animations; game-assisted language learning; learning with robots and robotics education; e-portfolio and ICT-enhanced learning; game-based testing and assessment; trend, development and learning process of educational mini games; VR and edutainment.

With the widespread interest in digital entertainment and the advances in the technologies of computer graphics, multimedia and virtual reality technologies, the new area of "Edutainment" has been accepted as a union of education and computer entertainment. Edutainment is recognized as an effective way of learning through a medium, such as a computer, software, games or AR/VR applications, that both educates and entertains. The Edutainment conference series was established and followed as a special event for the new interests in e-learning and digital entertainment. The main purpose of Edutainment conferences is the discussion, presentation, and information exchange of scientific and technological developments in the new community. The Edutainment conference series is a very interesting opportunity for researchers, engineers, and graduate students who wish to communicate at these international annual events. The conference series includes plenary invited talks, workshops, tutorials, paper presen- tion tracks, and panel discussions. The Edutainment conference series was initiated in Hangzhou, China in 2006. Following the success of the first (Edutainment 2006 in Hangzhou, China), the second (Edutainment 2007 in Hong Kong, China), and the third events (Edutainment 2008 in Nanjing, China), Edutainment 2009 was held August 9-11, 2009 in Banff, Canada. This year, we received 116 submissions from 25 different countries and regions - cluding Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, and USA.

Game-based learning environments and learning analytics are attracting increasing attention from researchers and educators, since they both can enhance learning outcomes. This book focuses on the application of data analytics approaches and research on human behaviour analysis in game-based learning environments, namely educational games and gamification systems, to provide smart learning. Specifically, it discusses the purposes, advantages and limitations of applying such approaches in these environments. Additionally, the various smart game-based learning environments presented help readers integrate learning analytics in their educational games and gamification systems to, for instance, assess and model students (e.g. their computational thinking) or enhance the learning process for better outcomes. Moreover, the book presents general guidelines on various aspects, such as collecting data for analysis, game-based learning environment design, system architecture and applied algorithms, which facilitate incorporating learning analytics into educational games and gamification systems. After a general introduction to help readers become familiar with the subject area, the individual chapters each discuss a different aim of applying data analytics approaches in educational games and gamification systems. Lastly, the conclusion provides a summary and presents general guidelines and frameworks to consider when designing smart game-based learning environments with learning analytics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS 2019, held in Kingston, Jamaica, in June 2019. The 14 full papers and 13 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. In the back matter of the volume 4 poster papers are included. They deal with the use of advanced computer technologies and interdisciplinary research for enabling, supporting, and enhancing human learning.

With great pleasure we would like to present the third volume of the journal Trans- tions on Edutainment. This journal, part of the Springer series Lecture Notes in C- puter Science, is devoted to research and development in the field of edutainment. Edutainment, also known as educational entertainment or entertainment-education, denotes all forms of entertainment designed to educate as well as to provide fun. This approach is motivated by the growing demands on individuals for life-long learning and the need to integrate effective learning opportunities throughout life. As such, edutainment has attracted increasing interest in the last few years. The first 12 articles of this issue represent a selection of outstanding contributions from Edutainment 2009, the 4th International Conference on E-Learning and Games held in Canada, in August 2009. The main purpose of the Edutainment conferences is the discussion, presentation, and information exchange of scientific and technological developments in the new community. These 12 papers cover mainly the topic of using games to stimulate learners' learning motivation, i. e.