Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an…

Virtual environments (VEs) are growing in popularity among educators and have unique potential for online learning. This paper describes the unique characteristics of VEs that make them an effective venue for online learning due to increased environmental presence. Unique characteristics of VEs include nature of visual stimuli, control of the…

Technological innovation undoubtedly offers many potential benefits for education and the assessment of learning, which have been acknowledged elsewhere. One area that is relatively under-researched relates to the practice of how assessors interact with longer texts that are presented on screen. This is an important area of study because there…

The technological developments of the late 20th century opened up a whole vista of possibilities, both social and professional, that transformed millions of lives around the world. However, for the Millennial Generation, or people born in or after 1980, it also had a profound effect on shaping how they view and interact with their world: their…

The author begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition, new games like…

The primary market research outlined in this paper was conducted by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer to identify critical technology needs for people with learning disabilities. Based on the research conducted, the underlying context of these technology needs is Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The paper…

As the potency of science and its impact upon society grow, the need for a humanistic perspective on science education becomes ever more urgent. Although there is not a consensus about a humanistic conception of science education, this monograph presents a normative conception of humanistic science education, which places primacy on the notion of…

The global nature of the new information and communication network has been questioned because of the obvious exclusion of developing countries in the development of the contemporary structure. Leaving aside the troublesome term "developing countries", it is still very obvious that the poorer southern countries are in a different…

It is not uncommon today to hear university leaders and students lament higher education's failure to more fully capitalize on its investments in information technology (IT), especially in support of residential instruction. While instructional technology's potential is being realized in isolated pockets of innovation, its impact at the…

The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the process and products of education is difficult to assess for a number of reasons. In brief, education is a complex system of interrelationships, of checks and balances. This context is not a neutral backdrop on which teaching and learning are played out. Rather, it may help, or…

The Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) and the field of philosophy of education seemed like a natural junction in this author's life. They provided a means by which he could begin to think about the relations between education and his own experiences as a student and teacher, and philosophy. Peters has been editor of…

This article explores Web 2.0 in interactive learning environments. Specifically, the article examines Web 2.0 as an interactive learning platform that holds potential, but is also limited by learning styles and cultural value preferences. The article explores the issue of control from both teacher and learner perspectives, and in particular the…

The integration of online technologies in educational practice is rendering new opportunities for teaching and learning. It is known that instructors who have taught fully online courses have acquired new skills and have had the opportunity to implement novel pedagogical practices in the online environment. However, it is unclear whether direct…

The context of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is changing dramatically. Today, Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and MySpace are used ubiquitously in the general population, and Virtual Worlds are becoming increasingly popular in business, for example via simulations in Second Life. However the capacity of Virtual Worlds is…

This paper reflects a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the JISC Innovation Support Centres, CETIS and UKOLN. The research underpinning the report makes use of the NMC's Delphi-based process for bringing groups of experts to a consensus viewpoint, in this case around the impact of emerging technologies on teaching,…