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The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

The authors speculate only about relatively short-term advances in special education for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Speculation is confined to the overlapping areas of core values, technologies, neuroscience, and law/policy. In core values, the authors hope to see a resurgence of commitment to special, effective instruction and to practice aligned with scientific evidence. It is hoped that technologies will advance practices in instruction, improve the uses of artificial intelligence in teacher training and teaching, and encourage the appropriate use of artificial reproduction to avoid disorders. Neuroscience, it is hoped, will yield more reliable and helpful classification of disorders, better and more useful imaging, and more effective treatment of a variety of emotional, behavioral, and academic problems. In law and policy, the authors hope the Supreme Court's Endrew case will result in greater focus on challenging, appropriate education. Law and policy should also encourage trauma sensitivity in education, make whole-school approaches to trauma sensitivity the priority, and avoid universal trauma screening. Students' and families' legitimate interests in confidentiality and data privacy should be protected in newly constructed information-sharing infrastructures.

Health-care professionals undergo numerous training programs each year in order to fulfill licensure requirements and organizational obligations. However, evidence suggests that a substantial amount of what is taught during training is never learned or transferred back to routine work. A major contributor to this issue is low training motivation. Prior conceptual models on training transfer in the organizational sciences literature consider this deficit, yet do not account for the unique conditions of the hospital setting. This chapter seeks to close this gap by adapting conceptual models of training transfer to this setting that are grounded in organizational science. Based on theory and supplemented by semistructured key informant interviews (i.e., organizational leaders and program directors), we introduce an applied model of training motivation to facilitate training transfer in the hospital setting. In this model, training needs analysis is positioned as a key antecedent to ensure support for training, relevant content, and perceived utility of training. We posit that these factors, along with training design and logistics, enhance training motivation in hospital environments. Further, we suggest that training motivation subsequently impacts learning and transfer, with elements of the work environment also serving as moderators of the learning-transfer relationship. Factors such as external support for training content (e.g., from accrediting bodies) and allocation of time for training are emphasized as facilitators. The proposed model suggests there are factors unique to the hospital work setting that impact training motivation and transfer that should be considered when developing and implementing training initiatives in this setting.

Transient climate sensitivity relates total climate forcings from anthropogenic and other sources to surface temperature. Global transient climate sensitivity is well studied, as are the related concepts of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response (TCR), but spatially disaggregated local climate sensitivity (LCS) is less so. An energy balance model (EBM) and an easily implemented semiparametric statistical approach are proposed to estimate LCS using the historical record and to assess its contribution to global transient climate sensitivity. Results suggest that areas dominated by ocean tend to import energy, they are relatively more sensitive to forcings, but they warm more slowly than areas dominated by land. Economic implications are discussed.

This chapter describes five disciplinary domains of research or lenses that contribute to the design of a team tutor. We focus on four significant challenges in developing Intelligent Team Tutoring Systems (ITTSs), and explore how the five lenses can offer guidance for these challenges. The four challenges arise in the design of team member interactions, performance metrics and skill development, feedback, and tutor authoring. The five lenses or research domains that we apply to these four challenges are Tutor Engineering, Learning Sciences, Science of Teams, Data Analyst, and Human–Computer Interaction. This matrix of applications from each perspective offers a framework to guide designers in creating ITTSs.

Despite the seminal works of authors like Bartlett, Ghoshal, Nohria, Doz, Williamson, among others, because they focused on mature multinationals, newcomers in international markets find scarce information about the design and implementation of international operations networks. In this paper we analyze the internationalization process of Brazilian and Chinese firms to understand the evolution of their networks, a process influenced by factors inexistent in studies about developed country multinationals, namely global production networks (GPNs) and country-of-origin effects. The key characteristics of their international operations networks seem to be well described by a stage-based approach where emerging country multinationals start as local optimizers and then evolve by taking different strategic positions within the GPN to which they are connected. That upgrading is possible when the implementation of the international operations network reaches a certain level of maturity.

In this chapter, we examine employee prosocial rule breaking as a response to organizations’ unfair treatment of customers. Drawing on the deontic perspective and research on third-party reactions to unfairness, we suggest employees engage in customer-directed prosocial rule breaking when they believe their organizations’ policies treat customers unfairly. Additionally, we consider employee, customer, and situational characteristics that enhance or inhibit the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational policy unfairness and customer-directed prosocial rule breaking.

Higher education has seen an unprecedented amount of change in recent decades, with technological advancements impacting on the very essence of teaching and learning. As there are an abundance of digital tools available to educators, it can be a challenge to select the most appropriate online platforms to incorporate into the classroom. This chapter discusses the topic of digital storyboarding by providing a case study of how the author adopted the online platform Storyboard That to enhance student engagement and co-creativity within a UK higher education institution. The chapter debates the benefits and challenges of technology-enhanced learning as part of a blended approach, and concludes with advice for educators wishing to adopt digital storyboarding within their own educational context.

Educators who work in K-12 educational settings have only begun to make sense of the many consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has had for students. Months of remote teaching and learning have made one thing quite clear; the academic, physical, and mental health benefits of in-person schooling are difficult to replicate through online learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the importance of social emotional learning (SEL) as children have experienced substantial reductions in social contact with peers while attending school remotely. Given the profound impact this past year has had on children’s social emotional (SE) health, it has never been more important for educators, parents, and caregivers to support student’s SE health. While it may be tempting to put student’ SE well-being on the back burner as we scramble to make up for lost learning; we stand at a crossroad. We can radically weave SEL into the school day to ensure students continue to develop critical SE skills in a socially distanced world or we can fall back on business as usual.

Malnutrition is widespread and affects about one-third of humanity. Increasing production and consumption of vegetables is an obvious pathway to improve dietary diversity, nutrition and health. This chapter analyses how climate change is affecting vegetable production, with a special focus on the spread of insect pests and diseases. A thorough literature review was undertaken to assess current global vegetable production, the factors that affect the spread of diseases and insect pests, the implications caused by climate change, and how some of these constraints can be overcome. This study found that climate change combined with globalization, increased human mobility, and pathogen and vector evolution has increased the spread of invasive plant pathogens and other species with high fertility and dispersal. The ability to transfer genes from wild relatives into cultivated elite varieties accelerates the development of novel vegetable varieties. World Vegetable Center breeders have embarked on breeding for multiple disease resistance against a few important pathogens of global relevance and with large evolutionary potential, such as chili anthracnose and tomato bacterial wilt. The practical implications of this are that agronomic practices that enhance microbial diversity may suppress emerging plant pathogens through biological control. Grafting can effectively control soil-borne diseases and overcome abiotic stress. Biopesticides and natural enemies either alone or in combination can play a significant role in sustainable pathogen and insect pest management in vegetable production system. This chapter highlights the importance of integrated disease and pest management and the use of diverse production systems for enhanced resilience and sustainability of highly vulnerable, uniform cropping systems.