This book examines the significance and meaning of undergraduate online learning using a hermeneutic phenomenological study, asking what is lost when there is no face-to-face contact and exploring the essence of technology itself. Drawing on data from undergraduate students across various higher education institutions, including both interview recordings and written reports of their lived experiences, the author seeks to uncover the essence of the phenomenon by engaging with themes around the philosophy of technology and the purpose of post-secondary education, using Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology as a crucial interpretive lens. Rather than offering generalized conclusions, it presents a basis for further understanding of the experience of online learning and ultimately asks whether the efficiency afforded to undergraduates by online classes or degrees can ever replace what is learned in a classroom with other people. Providing a novel approach to the topic of online learning, which centers the concept of experience, and drawing links to current conditions and pedagogy in online higher education, it will appeal to scholars working across education and philosophy with interests in higher education, technology and education, phenomenology of education and philosophy of education.

This book examines four distinct areas of education that suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asian and African regions, and tackles the challenges and barriers that came as a result of the shift to online learning. Presenting perspectives from China, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the UAE, chapters frame research within the context of "innovation experiences" to explore transformative learning theory, and set out the ways in which leaders, educators, students, and parents adapted to learning during the pandemic. Foregrounding four central topics (challenges and barriers; teaching and learning; assessment; educational technology; and interactive learning environments), the volume provides globally relevant findings and implications for the effects of the pandemic on learning in these regions, and furthers the field of educational technology more broadly. Topics covered range from teaching and leading in the online learning environment to educational technology and the interactive learning space. Sharing innovative experiences to aid progression and share best practice for online learning moving forward, the book will be highly relevant to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of higher education, online and eLearning, and technology in education.

This book provides a scholarly investigation of the new era we have entered, in which platforms can replace or profoundly modify educational systems, and questions the role of educational policy in this new stage of platform-based digital technology. The contributors explore important questions around who controls these transformations, what form they are taking, what the balance between national education policies and Big Tech education solutions should be, as well as whether there should be a public platform in every education system that digitally expands learning, and what evidence there is that learning will be more efficient using these platforms. The first part provides a selection of empirical studies on the new digital educational policy, and an analysis of the real opportunities and concerns that governments face in this regard, while the second offers reflections on the processes of platformization and the role of the state in this new digital world. Uniquely examining the temporal evolution of these changes and taking a theoretical, political, and epistemological approach, it crucially opens pathways for dialogical and diverse critical thinking about profound problems and possibilities. Gathering purposeful thinking that creates space for design solutions and rethinking educational systems considering these new technological artefacts, it will appeal to researchers and specialists in the fields of educational technology and educational policy.

This book offers a multimodal perspective on how to design meaningful learning experiences with digital technologies. Digital education is of increasing importance in today’s digital society and the editors bring together international thought-leaders and well-established academics across geographical regions to explore the topic. The book addresses the need to design learning with digital technologies, especially in a post-pandemic environment where blended learning has become ubiquitous. The book is organised around five themes: designing learning, digital learning designs, digital learning with embodied teaching, digital learning interactions, and digital multimodal literacies. The chapters focus on digital technologies as multimodal semiotic resources and the educational implication of each theme is drawn out from illustrative cases across contexts of learning. Essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students, this book offers state-of-the-art thinking on how educators can design new learning experiences for students through the meaningful and effective use of digital technologies. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This edited collection presents a Nordic perspective on intensified discussions concerning digitalization and digital competence in the current trends of educational work. Using a multidisciplinary and holistic approach, the book compares Nordic countries’ attitudes towards the digitalization of education and demonstrates the Nordic region’s position as digital front-runners in a European and a global context. The book provides up-to-date cases and future-oriented perspectives on digitalization and digital competence in educational work. Chapters use empirical data gained from policy documents, interviews, and questionnaires to present nuanced discussions, theoretical perspectives, and implications for the future of digitalization in education. Ultimately, this book’s reach far exceeds that of its Nordic contexts and will be of use to postgraduate students, researchers, and scholars across the globe involved with digital education, teacher education, and educational policy and politics more broadly.

This book explores the integration of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT into higher education for instructional and communication purposes. The author emphasizes the responsibility of higher education institutions to equip students with advanced skills for writing with AI assistance, and prepare them for an increasingly AI-driven world. Offering numerous practical tips, the book demonstrates how universities can increase student success, and stem the rising cost of higher education by employing AI tools. The chapters discuss streamlining tasks such as grading, providing feedback, and handling administrative duties, to show how educators can be enabled to focus on more meaningful aspects of their work. The author also reflects on the philosophical and ethical considerations and potential pitfalls of relying on AI in higher education, including concerns about academic integrity and the importance of human input in the learning process. The author offers a responsible and informed approach to incorporating the new powerful tools into the academic landscape. This volume will be a key resource for higher education faculty and administrators seeking to navigate the complex intersection of AI and writing.

Eugen Fink's deep engagement with the phenomenon of play saw him transcend his two towering mentors, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, to become a crucial figure in early 20th-century phenomenology. The Phenomenology of Play draws on Fink's concept of play to build a picture of his philosophy, from its foundations to its applications. The book's three sections focus on the building blocks of Fink's phenomenology of play, how his work maps onto the broader history of philosophy, and finally how his writing can be applied to contexts from education and care to politics and religion. This rich account of Fink's contribution to theories of play demonstrates its immense value and fundamental importance to human existence. Relating Fink's work to that of his contemporaries and predecessors like Husserl, Heidegger, Schiller, Gadamer, Nietzsche and Sartre shows the range and importance of his ideas to modern European thought. The Phenomenology of Play also features newly translated material including notes from conversations between Fink and Heidegger, and Fink's own essay 'Mask and Cothurnus' on ancient theatre – which shed new light on his philosophical enquiries.

Employing a unique generational approach, this book critically assesses social media in educational contexts across all educational levels: from primary and secondary schools to further and higher education, proposing a schema for social media literacy (SML). Using research obtained from fieldwork observations conducted in online teaching groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews with teachers and educators on the topic of social media and education, chapters interrogate the historical relationship between educator and learner, and use the frame of expert methodology to understand what educators themselves consider important about social media and education relative to their sectors. Bringing together current literature from education, learning and media technologies, along with longstanding debates around technological influence, chapters also draw on audience and communication studies, psychology and arts and humanities at a time when many different disciplines are trying to understand what social media means to our society. This interdisciplinary volume will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates in the fields of technology in education, media literacy, and critical digital media. Practitioners involved in the sociology of education will also find the book of use.

Distance learning is becoming increasingly prevalent in educational settings around the world as it provides more flexibility and access to classes for students and educators alike. While online classrooms are proving to be popular, there is a significant gap in the personalization and humanization of these courses. The Handbook of Research on Humanizing the Distance Learning Experience features empirical research on promoting the personalization of online learning courses through presence, emotionality, and interactivity within digital classrooms. Highlighting best practices and evaluating student perceptions on distance learning, this handbook will appeal to researchers, educators, course designers, professionals, and administrators.

Over the last 30 years, Singapore has developed a system of higher education that is the envy of many other countries and regions. How has Singapore developed such a highly performing education system? Was it planned? Was it mere luck? Written by Arnoud De Meyer, who is widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent management educators and leaders in higher education, the book focuses on Singapore as an in-depth case study of how to build a system of higher education, and specifically a portfolio of highly differentiated and diversified universities. He worked closely together with Jovina Ang during the preparation of the manuscript. This book is unique because it showcases several case studies of the emerging system of higher education, and it was written based on insights drawn from interviews with the key decision-makers and actors in the system from the past 20 years, including ministers and permanent secretaries of the Ministry of Education, and presidents and chairmen of the six universities. The success of this system can be attributed to several factors: the clarity of purpose of the decision-makers, with clear targets in cohort participation rate, commitment to significant funding for education and research, discipline of an intelligent and well-implemented governance system, flexibility in adjusting plans, and rapid and adaptive learning from overseas partners. In the last few chapters, the authors look at the future of the system and postulate how it should be adjusted to the changes in Singapore and the world. This unique book on educational strategy would be of particular interest to educational specialists and policy-makers in emerging countries who want to build a system of higher education, policy-makers in mature industrialised countries who are faced with the challenge of revamping their system of higher education, strategists who are interested in dynamic capability building and philanthropists who want to use education as an equaliser of social status.