Students’ ability to integrate learning across contexts is a critical outcome for higher education. Often the most powerful learning experiences that students report from their college years are those that prompt integration of learning, yet it remains an outcome that few educators explicitly work towards or specify as a course objective. Given that students will be more successful in college (and in life) if they can integrate their learning, James Barber offers a guide for college educators on how to promote students’ integration of learning, and help them connect knowledge and insights across contexts, whether in-class or out-of-class, in co-curricular activities, or across courses and disciplinary boundaries. The opening chapters lay the foundation for the book, defining what integration of learning is, how to promote it and students’ capacities for reflection; and introduce the author’s research-based Integration of Learning (IOL) model.The second section of the book provides practical, real-world strategies for facilitating integration of learning that college educators can use right away in multiple learning contexts. James Barber describes practices that readers can integrate as appropriate in their classes or activities, under chapters respectively devoted to Mentoring, Writing as Praxis, Juxtaposition, Hands-On Experiences, and Diversity and Identity. The author concludes by outlining how to apply IOL to a multiplicity of settings, such as a major, a single course, programming for a student organization, or other co-curricular experience; as well as offering guidance on assessing and documenting students’ mastery of this outcome.This book is addressed to a wide range of educators engaged with college student learning, from faculty to student affairs administrators, athletic coaches, internship supervisors, or anyone concerned with student development.

"Students' ability to integrate learning across contexts is a critical outcome for higher education. Often the most powerful learning experiences that students report from their college years are those that prompt integration of learning, yet it remains an outcome that few educators explicitly work towards or specify as a course objective. Given that students will be more successful in college (and in life) if they can integrate their learning, James Barber offers a guide for college educators on how to promote students' integration of learning, and help them connect knowledge and insights across contexts, whether in-class or out-of-class, in co-curricular activities, or across courses and disciplinary boundaries"--

With the future of education being disrupted and the onset of day-to-day uncertainties and challenges that have to be solved quickly, teachers are now turning to professional development communities/support communities where they can share and learn about effective practices to use in the classroom. While transitioning to blended or online learning and keeping up with the technological advances in education, these communities provide an essential backbone for teachers to rely on for support and updated knowledge on what educational practices are being utilized, how they are working, and what solutions have been found for the ever-changing climate of education. Research on the benefits and use of these communities, as well as on the latest educational practices, is essential in teacher development and student learning in the current culture of a rapidly changing educational environment. The Research Anthology on Facilitating New Educational Practices Through Communities of Learning contains hand-selected, previously published research that provides information on the communities of learning that teachers are currently involved in to seek the latest educational practices. The chapters cover the context of these communities, the benefits, and an overview of how this support is a necessary tool in today’s practices of teaching and learning. While highlighting topics such as learning communities, teacher development, mentoring, and virtual communities, this book is essential for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in how communities of practice tie into professional development, teacher learning, and the online shift in teaching.

This volume presents 64 abstracts of keynote and parallel paper presentations of the Irish National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning's (NAIRTL) conference on the theme of flexible learning. The Flexible Learning conference was a joint initiative by NAIRTL and the Learning Innovation Network. The keynote presentations can be accessed via hyperlinks as video recordings. Authors were encouraged to have their papers peer-reviewed. The 64 abstracts are: (1) Keynote Speech: The Open Education Revolution (Richard Baraniuk); (2) Keynote Speech: Flexible Learning: The European Context (Michael Horig); (3) The Use of Information and Communication Technology in Irish Language Learning and Teaching: WIMBA Voice Tools as Gaeilge (Riona Ni Fhrighil); (4) A Framework for the Comparison of Virtual Classroom Systems (Daniel McSweeney); (5) E-Portfolio for Language and Intercultural Learning: The Lolipop Experience (Fionnuala Kennedy); (6) Review of Common Synchronous, Live Online-Classroom Tools (Arnold Hensman); (7) Getting There from Here: Learning to Use Readily Available Technologies to Engage Learners and Enhance Learning (Liam Boyle); (8) The Perceived Impact of Peer Education on an Occupational Therapy Student Cohort (Clodagh Nolan, Carmel Lalor, and Paula Lynch); (9) A Student-Led Approach to Personal and Professional Development--A Case Study of a Level 9 Module in Professional Development for Graduate Engineers (Carol O'Byrne); (10) Interdisciplinary Study and Integrative Learning--A Search for Evidence (Aileen Malone); (11) Linking Assessment Methods with Innovative Teaching and Learning Strategies in Postgraduate Nursing Education (Lorraine Murphy and Frances Finn); (12) Making Connections: The Use of Ethnographic Fieldwork to Facilitate a Model of Integrative Learning (Michelle Finnerty); (13) Guiding Student Learning Using Programmed Research Projects (Oisin Keely, Michael Carty, Iain MacLabhrainn, and Andrew Flaus); (14) Social Work within a Community Discourse; Integrating Research, Teaching and Learning on the Master of Social Work (MSW) Programme (Catherine Forde and Deborah Lynch); (15) The Building Expertise in Science Teaching (BEST) Project (Cliona Murphy, Janet Varley and Paula Kilfeather); (16) Developing Teaching in an Institute of Technology (Marion Palmer); (17) The Effects of an Innovative Peer Learning Programme on Undergraduate Science Students (Jennifer Johnston and George McClelland); (18) The Merits of Blogging; Its Usefulness as a Pedagogical Tool (Siobhan O'Sullivan and Hugh McGlynn); (19) Flexible Learning or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology (Laura Widger); (20) The Establishment and Evaluation of a National Online Clinical Testing Repository for Surgical Trainees and Students (Seamus McHugh, Mark Corrigan, Athar Sheikh, Arnold Hill, Elaine Lehane, Conor Shields, Paul Redmond, and Michael Kerin); (21) Operations Management Online at Dundalk Institute to Technology (Angela Short); (22) Integrative Learning: What Is It--and Why Is It More Important Than Ever? (Bettie Higgs, Shane Kilcommins, Tony Ryan, Alan Booth and Angela Smallwood); (23) The Development of a Theoretical Model of Integrative Learning for Use in Professional Programmes (Irene Hartigan, Siobhan Murphy, Nuala Walshe, and Terry Barrett); (24) Teaching Teachers How to Teach: Implementing Research in the Science Classroom (Sarah Hayes and Peter E. Childs); (25) Promoting Healthy Behaviour Choices: Understanding Patient Challenges By Undertaking a Personal Behaviour Change Task (Frank Doyle, Anne Hickey, Karen Morgan, Ian Grey, Eva Doherty, and Hannah McGee); (26) Integration of Technology in Mathematics and Science Teaching and Learning (Teresa Bradley, Leah Wallace and Liam Boyle); (27) Learning from Engagement of Cross-Disciplinary Lesson (Dolores Corcoran, Sinead Breen, Maurice O'Reilly and Therese Dooley); (28) Using Blogs to Foster Reflective Practice for Professional Development of Teaching Staff in Higher Education (Martina Crehan and Muireann O'Keeffe); (29) Towards a Standardised, Student-Centred Approach to Continuous Assessment: A Case History of GMIT Letterfrack (Kate Dunne, Pauline Logue-Collins and Angelika Rauch); (30) Virtually There (Michael Goldrick); (31) Art Works! (Marian McCarthy); (32) Moving Laboratory Work into the Cognitive Domain (Maeve Scott); (33) Learning Enhancement through Peer Support (Carina Ginty and Nuala Harding); (34) Designing Research Posters: A Workshop (Imogen Bertin); (35) Flexible Learning and Online Language Portfolios (Houssaine Afoullouss); (36) Blended Not Scrambled: Pedagogic Design for the 21st Century College Student (Leo Casey); (37) The Role of the WEBINAR in Flexible Continuous Professional Development (Brian Mulligan); (38) Student Ownership of Assessment as Integrative Learning (Kevin Howard); (39) Approaches to Learning of Postgraduate Healthcare Professionals in an Outcomes-Based Curriculum (Pauline Joyce); (40) The Use of Learning Journals in Legal Education as a Means of Fostering Integrative Learning through Pedagogy and Assessment (Shane Kilcommins); (41) Innovative Teaching through Video Games: Literature Review and Best Practice (Patrick Felicia); (42) Universal Design for Learning--The Benefits of Technology Enhanced Learning for Students with Disabilities (Patricia Kearney and Elaine O'Leary); (43) Promoting Flexible Learning through Negotiation (Lorraine McGinty); (44) Technology Based Teaching and Learning: E-Law Summer Institute, UCC (Fidelma White and Louise Crowley); (45) Evaluation of Interactive Video Based Scenario to Teach Professionalism to Medical Interns (Bryan Butler and Michelle McEvoy); (46) Flexible Learning Opportunities for Teachers in the 21st Century (Michael Hallissey); (47) Group Projects in the Information Technology Curriculum: Towards Best Practice (Brendan Lyng and Catherine Lowry O'Neill); (48) A Multidisciplinary Approach for Science Learning (Eilish McLoughlin and Odilla Finlayson); (49) Integrative Learning and Technoculture: What's at Stake? (James Cronin, Daniel Blackshields, and Julianne Nyhan); (50) Exploring the Synergy between Pedagogical Research, Teaching and Learning in Introductory Physics (Leah Wallace); (51) The Impact of Education Level and Type on Cognitive Ethical Development (Elaine Doyle and Joanne O'Flaherty); (52) A "Whole Discipline" Approach to Enhancing Research in the Undergraduate Geography Curriculum (Niamh Moore-Cherry, Susan Hegarty, Ruth McManus, Kay MacKeogh, and Shelagh Waddington); (53) Instructional Videocasts: Facilitating Learning in a Mobile World (Robert Hickey); (54) What Do Students Think About Technology? (Shelagh Waddington, Una Crowley, and Conor McCaffery); (55) Chance Favours the Prepared Mind: Strategies to Enhance Educational Research Experiences (Etain Kiely, Gail Cummins, Rowan Watson, Margaret Savage, and Orla Walsh); (56) Essential Considerations in Implementing an E-Learning Strategy at Institutional Level (John Dallat and Brendan Ryder); (57) The Experiences of Engineering Students Working in Multidisciplinary Project Teams (Sivakumar Ramachandran, Timm Jeschawitz, and Denis Cullinane); (58) Integrated, Interprofessional Education for First Year Undergraduate Medical, Physiotherapy and Pharmacy Students (Judith Strawbridge, Celine Marmion, and John Kelly); (59) Preparing for Success: A Study of How Targeted Skills-Based Workshops Can Effectively Aid First Year Students to Bridge the Gap between Second and Third Level Learning (Natasha Underhill, Lyndsey EL Amoud and Seamus O'Tuama); (60) Using Learning Agreements to Facilitate Integrated Learning (Jane Creaner-Glen and Mary Creaner); (61) Development of a Patient Safety Online Programme for Doctors (Siobhan McCarthy, Ciaran O'Boyle, Dermot O'Flynn, Alf Nicholson, Ann O'Shaughnessy, Irene O'Byrne-Maguire, and Ailis Quinlan); (62) Student Services, a Key Aspect of the Provision of Flexible Learning in Higher Education Institutions (Josephine O'Donovan and Terry Maguire); (63) Use of Laboratory-Scale Wastewater Treatment Plants for Undergraduate Research, Training and Teaching (William Fitzgerald and Lil Rudden); and (64) Building Bridges Instead of Walls: Academic Professional Development through Inter-Institutional Collaboration (Nuala Harding and Marion Palmer). This document also includes 71 "Poster Abstracts." (Individual papers contain figures, tables, and references.).

With constant explorative research on educational technologies, it remains important to have a detailed understanding of the implementation of these innovations. Cases on Educational Technology Implementation for Facilitating Learning blends together vital research and advancements on educational technologies into one comprehensive collection; while structuring the information to make it accessible for implementation into the classroom. Academics, professors, and educators will find this casebook especially useful for integrating new aspects of technology into their programs.

Digital content and learning technologies are now the norm at all levels of education. However, there is evidence to suggest that this digital shift is on a spectrum and the spectrum impacts learners in different ways. This means that some instructors who seek to integrate digital content may do so using traditional teaching methods while others use innovative practices to engage learners. Those who integrate innovative digital practices align their instructional practice with theories to facilitate student-centered pedagogies that support and improve the depth and scope of student learning. A primary characteristic of student-centered learning is facilitating collaborative learning using digital content and learning technologies to engage students as well as to enhance meaningful learning. The Handbook of Research on Facilitating Collaborative Learning Through Digital Content and Learning Technologies provides K-20 educators with alternative pedagogical and andragogical models that are innovative and incorporate digital content and learning technologies that promote constructive learning. Further, this book explores the relationship between constructivist learning, digital content, and learning technologies. A primary argument in this book is that constructivist teaching strategies such as collaborative learning coupled with digital content and purposeful learning technologies could benefit student learning in ways that are different from those practiced in traditional, non-digital learning environments. Covering topics such as instructional design, self-efficacy, and library engagement, this major reference work is an essential resource for pre-service teachers, teacher educators, faculty and administrators of K-20 education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

In this volume the authors document examples of programmes/courses/activities that are designed intentionally to build students' capacity to be integrative thinkers and learners. In doing so they try to analyse and name the learning that is taking place, and so make it visible to the reader. The work is intended as a resource for all those involved in teaching and student learning in Higher Education and beyond. The ultimate goal is to ensure that students in higher education can make meaningful connections within and between disciplines, for example by integrating on-campus and off-campus learning experiences, and tying together and synchronising different perspectives and ways of knowing. This paper contains the following chapters: (1) Drawing on Medical Students' Representations to Illuminate Concepts of Humanism and Professionalism in Newborn Medicine (C. Anthony Ryan); (2) Integrative Learning in a Law and Economics Module (John Considine); (3) Making Connections for Mindful Inquiry: Using Reflective Journals to Scaffold an Autobiographical Approach to Learning in Economics (Daniel Blackshields); (4) Integrative Learning on a Criminal Justice Degree Programme (Sinead Conneely and Walter O'Leary); (5) The Use of Learning Journals in Legal Education as a Means of Fostering Integrative Learning through Pedagogy and Assessment (Shane Kilcommins); (6) Beyond Wikipedia and Google: Web-Based Literacies and Student Learning (James G.R. Cronin); (7) Archetype or for the Archive? Are Case Histories Suitable for Assessing Student Learning? (Martina Kelly, Deirdre Bennett and Suin O'Flynn); (8) The Arts in Education as an Integrative Learning Approach (Marian McCarthy); (9) Assessing the Role of Integrated Learning in the BSc International Field Geosciences (IFG) at University College Cork, Ireland (Pat Meere); (10) The Confluence of Professional Legal Training, ICT and Language Learning towards the Construction of Integrative Teaching and Learning (Maura Butler); (11) Integrative Learning with High Fidelity Simulation and Problem-Based Learning: An Evaluative Study (Nuala Walshe, Sinead O'Brien, Angela Flynn, Siobhan Murphy and Irene Hartigan); (12) Facilitating Learning through an Integrated Curriculum Design Driven by Problem-Based Learning: Perceptions of Speech and Language Therapy (Catharine Pettigrew); (13) Building Student Attributes for Integrative Learning (Bettie Higgs); and (14) End-Game: Good Beginnings are Not the Only Measure of Success (C. Anthony Ryan, Bettie Higgs and Shane Kilcommins). Each chapter contains tables/figures and references.

International Perspectives on Knowledge Integration explores theoretical conceptions and methods and reports on original research and good practices for fostering knowledge integration in pre-service teacher and higher education.

The constant evolution of technologies and media can have an impact on learning environments, even to the extent of creating new ones. The problem with this constant evolution is that it requires significant resources and time for educators, students, and even researchers, to integrate these technologies into learning environments to create richer learning experiences for students. Ideally, these augmentations of learning environments should lead to improved learning outcomes as a result of the methods used. However, merely using methods based on new technologies and media does not necessarily lead to improved learning outcomes. Indeed, they may even impact learning outcomes negatively. The aim of this dissertation is to address both of these issues. In it we discuss several projects that facilitate the integration of media and technology by simplifying and speeding up the accomplishment of both the concept and action required. Similarly, we recognized the importance of evaluation of the impact of these new methods and also created systems and techniques to facilitate this evaluation. The vision represented by this body of research is that as new methods using new technology and media are continually evaluated for their impact, only those that actually augment learning environments are continued. This feedback loop ideally should lead to a continuing improvement of learning environments and a good understanding of the interaction between learning environments and the methods used for learning.

A major theme of this book is the use of computers for supporting collaborative learning. This is not surprising since computer-supported collaborative learning has become both a widespread educational practice and a main domain of research. Moreover, collaborative learning has deep roots in Asian educational traditions. Given the large number of researchers within this field, its scope has become very broad. Under this umbrella, one finds a variety of more specific topics such as: interaction analysis, collaboration scripts (e.g. the Jigsaw script), communities of practice, sociocognitive conflict resolution, cognitive apprenticeship, various tools for argumentation, online discussion or collaborative drawing tools (whiteboards), collaborative writing and the role of facilitators. Most research work on collaborative learning focuses on interactions rather than on the contents of environments, which had been the focus in the previous decades of learning technology research. However, there is no reason to focus on one aspect to the detriment of the other. The editors are pleased that the selected papers also cover multiple issues related to the storage, representation and retrieval of knowledge: ontologies for learning environments and the semantic web, knowledge bases and data mining, meta-data and content management systems, and so forth. This publication also reveals a growing interest for non-verbal educational material, namely pictures and video materials, which are already central to new popular web-based applications. This book includes contributions that bridge both research tracks, the one focusing on interactions and the other on contents: the pedagogical use of digital portfolios, both for promoting individual reflections and for scaffolding group interactions.