This volume explores new ideas about globalised virtual learning environments and in particular the implications for learners, teachers and institutions.
This book opens up a fruitful conversation by and between invited academics from Europe and Latin America on the features of online learning in higher education. The authors analyse online education from interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical reflections to reveal the existing tensions and turning this book into a valuable artifact on how learning is shaped when technology comes in-between diverse geographical and social contexts. Like any other human activity, e-learning can be seen as a context-dependent educational system with many objects in mutual interaction. Applying a cultural psychology perspective to this provides new answers to questions such as: How can cultural psychology shed new light on online learning? Why do students and academics still opt for classic classes? What inner boundaries are pushed when studying online? How can online learning be influenced by affect? How do teachers and students mold their identities when they move in and out of online environments? This book reveals the existing tensions, resistances and appropriation strategies that students and academics from diverse backgrounds and places go through when attending online learning courses in higher education and furthermore shows how these theoretical frameworks can be successfully applied to practice.
"This book's purpose is to inform educators and instructional designers of issues and cultural misunderstandings that could hinder the effective transfer of knowledge when e-learning is exported to other cultures. Addressing these cultural challenges will enhance the effectiveness of e-learning, thereby supporting the societal benefits of increased access to education at a global level"--Provided by publisher.
In 1996 the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began an Internet-based teaching program, allowing students across the United States - and the world - to earn a Master's degree from a distance. The program, known as LEEP (Library Education Experimental Project), has been an outstanding success, and as an early innovation in Internet use, provides important lessons on how to flourish in an online environment. Learning, Culture and Community in Online Education brings together significant new research on online education, using the LEEP program as a model to reveal a wealth of information about innovative online practices. Contributions by administrators, philosophers, faculty, librarians, technical staff, and researchers in the traditions of education, computer science, folklore, information science, and sociology, reveal the many perspectives to be taken into account when creating and maintaining distance learning programs. More than an analysis of the LEEP program, this book is an essential introduction to the variety of social and educational phenomena that occur within the socio-technical environments that support online learners.
Culture plays an overarching role that impacts investment, planning, design, development, delivery, and the learning outcomes of online education. This groundbreaking book remedies a dearth of empirical research on how digital cultures and teaching and learning cultures intersect, and offers grounded theory and practical guidance on how to integrate cultural needs and sensibilities with the innovative opportunities offered by online learning. This book provides a unique analysis of culture in online education from a global perspective, and offers:* An overview of the influences that culture has on teaching, online learning, and technology* Culture-sensitive instructional design strategies and teaching guidelines for online instructors and trainers * Facilitation and support strategies for online learners from different cultures * An overview on issues of design, development, communication, and support from a cross-cultural perspective* An overview of how online education is perceived, planned, implemented, and evaluated differently in various cultural contextsWritten by international experts in the field of online learning, this text constitutes with a comprehensive comparative introduction to the role of culture in online education. It offers essential guidance for practitioners, researchers, instructors, and anyone working with online students from around the world. This text is also appropriate for graduate-level Educational Technology and Comparative and International Learning programs.
"This book brings together researchers who study and professionals who design and deliver online training across cultures in both higher education and corporate training settings to share paradigms, perspectives, insights, best practices, challenges and best practices"--Provided by publisher.
Online learning has been touted as one way of reducing the cost of higher education while simultaneously addressing the increasing demand for educational opportunity and providing access to hitherto “left out” populations. Many universities are defying tradition by offering completely online degrees for global participants. As such, research is needed to improve the design of online and virtual learning environments to ensure that they are inclusive and culturally adaptive for the global education marketplace. The Handbook of Research on Cross-Cultural Online Learning in Higher Education shares paradigms, perspectives, insights, challenges, and best practices for the instructional design and delivery of cross-cultural adult web-based learning experiences and examines adult learner characteristics and competencies critical for the design of these applications. The content within this publication covers trending topics including virtual learning, culturally adaptive environments, and online education and is intended for instructional designers, faculty, administrators, students, and researchers.
In the current educational environment, there has been a shift towards online learning as a replacement for the traditional in-person classroom experience. With this new environment comes new technologies, benefits, and challenges for providing courses to students through an entirely digital environment. With this shift comes the necessary research on how to utilize these online courses and how to develop effective online educational materials that fit student needs and encourage student learning, motivation, and success. The optimization of these online tools requires a deeper look into curriculum, instructional design, teaching techniques, and new models for student assessment and evaluation. Information on how to create valuable online course content, engaging lesson plans for the digital space, and meaningful student activities online are only a few of many current topics of interest for promoting student achievement through online learning. The Research Anthology on Developing Effective Online Learning Courses provides multiple perspectives on how to develop engaging and effective online learning courses in the wake of the rapid digitalization of education. This book includes topics focused on online learners, online course content, effective online instruction strategies, and instructional design for the online environment. This reference work is ideal for curriculum developers, instructional designers, IT consultants, deans, chairs, teachers, administrators, academicians, researchers, and students interested in the latest research on how to create online learning courses that promote student success.
The third edition of this award-winning Handbook continues the mission of its predecessors: to provide a comprehensive compendium of research in all aspects of distance education, arguably the most significant development in education over the past three decades. While the book deals with education that uses technology, the focus is on teaching and learning and how its management can be facilitated through technology. Key features include: Comprehensive coverage that includes all aspects of distance education, including design, instruction, management, policy, and a section on different audiences. Chapter authors frame their topic in terms of empirical research (past and present) and discuss the nature of current practice in terms of that research. Future research needs are discussed in relation to both confirmed practice and recent changes in the field. Section one provides a unique review of the theories that support distance education pedagogy. Section six includes a unique review of distance education as a component of global culture. This book will be of interest to anyone engaged in distance education at any level. It is also appropriate for corporate and government trainers and for administrators and policy makers in all these environments. Recipient of the 2013 IAP Distance Education Book Award