Search results

Increasing constraints on personnel and resources have led to a focus on alternative methods of transmitting knowledge to novices, whether university students or newly hired staff. This chapter focuses on one such alternative through the use of a technology-based educational delivery system (TBEDS). Prior research has addressed individual components of technology-supported systems or performed experiments of limited time and direct external relevance to the participants, but has not addressed the effect of a holistic approach to technology-based learning on users. This study capitalizes on a unique, holistically designed TBEDS to longitudinally examine the impact of systems on novices' procedural knowledge acquisition under conditions of actual usage. The longitudinal data also illustrates the role of user-determined experiential practice on achievement as moderated by comfort with technology. The findings indicate a strong relationship between the use of a TBEDS for repeated experiential practice and procedural knowledge acquisition. Individual components of effort (quantity of problems attempted, frequency of practice sessions, and quality of practice) are examined, with quantity being significantly positively related to performance, as is quality when the user is accountable to an external authority for that quality.

This chapter explores the different ways we share our research. The ways in which we are productive, again, help shape the tools in which productivity occurs. Archiving, storing, and sharing are crucial within the field of digital humanities and offer interesting perspectives on how we as humans share information with one another. The focus in this chapter is also on specific tools like timelines, e-portfolios, and the new generation of presentation applications.

Recent studies suggest that many of today's students are highly proficient in their use of digital media and are developing new learning styles heavily dependent on social media and the Web. Theories of social learning seem to address these new learning styles, which are interest and friend driven, and occur in contexts that are outside of class and within the flow of students’ everyday lives. Social learning emphasizes participation, group interaction, and utilizing collaborative environments. This chapter explores how using social media, specifically class blogs (WordPress) and microblogs (e.g., Twitter) together, help achieve social learning. Internet-based learners have various levels of proficiencies, competencies, and adoption rates. Strategies and best practices are explored to address how social media can be utilized by educators to accommodate the heterogeneity of digital learners and engage new styles of learning.

Social media such as Facebook thrive with the arrival of Web 2.0. This chapter merges traditional social network analysis (SNA) with symbolic interactionism (SI) to create a hybrid method of SNA to allow researchers to study the sociability found in Facebook. The discussion begins with identifying a common ground of SNA and SI, found in Georg Simmel’s work, and then develops methodological procedures to locate cliques in Facebook networks. A visualization technique is also suggested to further single out the social forms found in Facebook.

This chapter outlines some theoretical, historical and analytical themes covering national, trans-national and international trends in open education. It starts by looking at the social, economic and political drivers for education systems in general, and how openness has been used to widen access through attacking the iron triangle of education: access, quality and cost (open as a door). It then looks at the more recent technological and ideological developments that have aided openness (open as a book); including the central role that open licensing of digital materials (open as a right) has played in changing the social and economic drivers of education and in particular open educational resources. Next, it looks at the importance of open innovation, social innovation and communities of practice for open education (open as a relationship) and includes a comparison between the development of open source software and the development of open educational resources. It goes on to consider the impacts of all these on national and international policy (open as a border) before reviewing the social and economic role of open education from the perspectives of lifelong learners, students, educational institutions and educational publishers (open for business in the future). The chapter concludes by forecasting possible trends in open education for the next 15 years.