This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2010, held in Barcelona, Spain, in September/October 2010. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 150 submissions. The book also includes 10 short papers, 26 poster papers, 7 demonstration papers and one 1 invited paper.

Collaborative learning has become an increasingly important part of education, but the research supporting it is distributed across a wide variety of fields. This book aims to integrate this theory and research and to forward our understanding of collaborative learning and its instructional applications.

CSCL has in the past 15 years (and often in conjunction with Springer) grown into a thriving and active community. Yet, lacking is a comprehensive CSCL handbook that displays the range of research being done in this area. This handbook will provide an overview of the diverse aspects of the field, allowing newcomers to develop a sense of the entirety of CSCL research and for existing community members to become more deeply aware of work outside their direct area. The handbook will also serve as a ready reference for foundational concepts, methods, and approaches in the field. The chapters are written in such a way that each of them can be used in a stand-alone fashion while also serving as introductory readings in relevant study courses or in teacher education. While some CSCL-relevant topics are addressed in the International Handbook of the Learning Sciences and the International Handbook of Collaborative Learning, these books do not aim to present an integrated and comprehensive view of CSCL. The International Handbook of Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning covers all relevant topics in CSCL, particularly recent developments in the field, such as the rise of computational approaches and learning analytics.

Virtual teams are work arrangements where team members are geographically dispersed and work interdependently using electronic communication media to accomplish one or more organizational tasks. Over the past several decades, there has been an explosive growth in organizational use of virtual teams to organize work. In the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for faster time to market, low cost, and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Organizations are increasingly investing in virtual teams to enhance their performance and competitiveness. However, there are unsolved issues of design and implementation of collaboration technologies for virtual teams and their collaborative convergence. Collaborative Convergence and Virtual Teamwork for Organizational Transformation is an innovative collection of research that analyzes and discusses successful organizational transformation that requires a holistic understanding of the issues linked to team and workplaces, communication and integration, technological barriers, and sociocultural factors. The chapters highlight topics such as collaboration technologies in virtual teamwork, collaboration technologies’ impact on organizational transformation, as well as web-based tools, collaborative learning tools, group decision support systems, workflow automation systems, and more. This book is ideally intended for business professionals, managers and practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the latest research in virtual teamwork and its impact on organizational transformation.

This book investigates e-learning practices at American and Australian institutes of higher learning, their status quo, best-practice examples, and remaining issues. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, it combines three studies – two using quantitative methods and a third using qualitative methods – in order to gauge the status quo of e-learning. The first study addresses the dominant cultural dimensions, revealing that the main explanation for the results may be the fact that most suppliers of the Australian university’s e-learning system had an East Asian cultural background and predominantly traditional perspectives on learning. In Study 2, the findings indicate that the levels of e-learning practice at the Australian and US universities surveyed were above average, although the American university was ranked higher in terms of e-learning practices. In turn, Study 3 investigates current problems in e-learning practice on the basis of four aspects – pedagogy, culture, technology and e-practice – and determines that cultural sensitivity and effective cultural practices show room for improvement, while key technological challenges and issues like faculty polices, quality, LMS, and online support need to be overcome. In general, the outcomes suggest that it is essential for the Australian university surveyed to further develop and update its e-learning system, especially in terms of e-practice, using the same technologies that pioneering countries like America are employing. Indeed, the combination of adopting patterns successfully used in other countries, and adjusting them to the Australian culture, represents the best strategy for educational decision and policy makers. This book provides the basis for designing a culture-sensitive framework for higher education e-learning practice in American and Australian contexts. Moreover, students’ and teachers’ experiences with e-learning in a comparative higher education context can help higher education instructors and university managers to understand how e-learning relates to, and can be integrated with, other experiences of learning and teaching.

This book is an edited volume of case studies exploring the uptake and use of computer supported collaborative learning in work settings. This book fills a significant gap in the literature. A number of existing works provide empirical research on collaborative work practices (Lave & Wenger, 1987; Davenport, 2005), the sharing of information at work (Brown & Duguid, 2000), and the development of communities of practice in workplace settings (Wenger, 1998). Others examine the munificent variation of information and communication technology use in the work place, including studies of informal social networks, formal information distribution and other socio-technical combinations found in work settings (Gibson & Cohen, 2003). Another significant thread of prior work is focused on computer supported collaborative learning, much of it investigating the application of computer support for learning in the context of traditional educational institutions, like public schools, private schools, colleges and tutoring organizations. Exciting new theories of how knowledge is constructed by groups (Stahl, 2006), how teachers contribute to collaborative learning (reference to another book in the series) and the application of socio-technical scripts for learning is explicated in book length works on CSCL. Book length empirical work on CSCW is widespread, and CSCL book length works are beginning to emerge with greater frequency. We distinguish CSCL at Work from prior books written under the aegis of training and development, or human resources more broadly. The book aims to fill a void between existing works in CSCW and CSCL, and will open with a chapter characterizing the emerging application of collaborative learning theories and practices to workplace learning. CSCL and CSCW research each make distinct and important contributions to the construction of collaborative workplace learning.

The 21st century has brought about changes in every aspect of life through ubiquitous technology and Internet-based social media. The distances between cultures and continents have narrowed, the world has become flat, and multicultural work-teams composed of members from different countries have become a daily reality in global businesses. However, in many ways these global changes in work practices have only just begun to have an impact on education. To better prepare students for the information age, researchers and policy makers largely agree about the skills needed for shared knowledge construction. Indeed, the education systems in several different countries have begun to integrate these skills into teaching and learning and are placing a strong emphasis on their implementation (Melamed et al, 2010; Resta et al, 2011). In 2015 the OECD PISA exam for the first time, included assessment of collaborative problem-solving in its country-by-country comparison. Collaborative learning is not a trivial challenge nor is it intuitive for all teachers and learners. One must acquire and practice the essential skills in order to successfully work in a team. Consequently it is essential to train teachers in collaborative teamwork, as they must serve as role models for students. In addition, new tools and practices become available at a rate that outpaces the abilities of many higher education institutions to adopt and implement. This book surveys the current state of the field and provides theoretical guidance and practical examples to help meet the gaps in research, development and practice.

While the creation and adoption of new technologies has increased in recent years, the educational sector often limits technology use. Despite this, many researchers are convinced of the vital role that technologies can play in learning and teaching. Student Reactions to Learning with Technologies: Perceptions and Outcomes brings together recent research findings about the views and expectations of students when including technologies in their studies. The chapters in this book suggest that the use of technologies in teaching not only makes learning more interesting but also offers possibilities for variations in the learning processes. While this book does not offer irrevocable opinions and definitive views or insights, it provides a useful lens for viewing the world of students and providing insights into the possibilities for accessing and conducting similar research.