Online and virtual education is continually integrated in university classrooms. While online learning provides a more cost-effective alternative for students, educators must also analyze the psychology of online learners and identify ways to support their growth and development in their respective instructional settings. Student-Centered Virtual Learning Environments in Higher Education is a collection of innovative research that focuses on connecting contextual analyses of student-focused online instruction with quality assurance principles to improve higher education. Highlighting a range of topics including instructional design, professional development, and student engagement, this book is ideally designed for educators, software developers, instructional designers, educational administration, academicians, and students seeking current research on emerging principles and practices related to designing, implementing, and evaluating virtual teaching and learning.

Digitization has undergone a number of paradigm shifts where structures, processes, and behaviors have changed, including in education. Higher education faces major challenges both pedagogically and technically, but also provides great opportunities to design and teach for self-directed and motivated higher education with smart pedagogy. It is crucial that teachers identify the pedagogical and technological benefits to smart education in order to enhance student-centered learning. Virtual and Mobile Learning Activities in Higher Education is a pivotal reference source that focuses on virtual and mobile learning activities in higher education for student-centered learning and the ways that teachers can design and use different learning activities, both blended and mobile, for self-directed and motivated “smart” education. Additionally, the book examines how students perceive these activities and how the outcomes can be analyzed in use with adaptive, resource-enriched, and technology-embedded tools. Highlighting a broad range of topics including feedback activities, mobile learning, and self-assessment, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, programmers, software developers, administrators, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

The Development of Personal Learning Environments in Higher Education explores how today’s knowledge-based, learner-centered virtual platforms, which often limit teaching to a complimentary facilitation role, can compromise with the requirements and regulations of colleges and universities. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) driven by culturally responsive teaching and learner autonomy represent a shift in the higher education paradigm, but how can scholars, designers, administrators, and faculty ensure effective, institutionally compatible construction and management of these systems? This book offers forward-thinking insights into the variety of student-centered learning interactions, particularly culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies, that can be integrated into PLEs. Attending to quality assessment rubrics, the nuances of stakeholders’ needs, and theoretically sound frameworks, these cross-cultural, interdisciplinary chapters explore how leaders, instructors, technologists, and learners can form a precise yet flexible ecosystem to fully realize PLEs in which co-created, intercultural narratives yield rich, relevant digital learning experiences.

Learning methods for the twenty-first century will include those which are student-centered, learning-focused, and digitally enhanced. Teaching will become learning management; the lecturer will become a learning guide, and students will become learning inventors. This book provides chapters describing a number of methods to be used in higher education in the twenty-first century. Some methods have been in existence for a period of time; others are literally at the front edge of development. Trying them out, piloting them, and experimenting with them for the benefit of the student is well worth the effort. It is best to be as prepared as possible for future changes rather than waiting to see what is going to happen. Those who try and are successful will be the leaders in learning management of the near future. In the digital world, being at the leading edge has definite advantages. No matter which method is used, it should focus on the student as learner with the faculty member as a learning guide. To survive in the twenty-first century, students will need to become continuous learners, developing with changes at an exponential velocity. Educators need to keep this critical concept in mind.

As traditional classroom settings are transitioning to online environments, teachers now face the challenge of using this medium to promote effective learning strategies, especially when teaching older age groups. Because adult learners bring a different set of understandings and skills to education than younger students, such as more job and life experiences, the one-size-fits-all approach to teaching does not work, thus pushing educators to create a student-centered approach for each learner. The Handbook of Research on Student-Centered Strategies in Online Adult Learning Environments is an important resource providing readers with multiple perspectives to approach issues often associated with adult learners in an online environment. This publication highlights current research on topics including, but not limited to, online competency-based education, nontraditional adult learners, virtual classrooms in public universities, and teacher training for online education. This book is a vital reference for online trainers, adult educators, university administrators, researchers, and other academic professionals looking for emerging information on utilizing online classrooms and environments in student-centered adult education.

Learner-Centered Theory and Practice in Distance Education: Cases From Higher Education brings the voice of the learning sciences to the study and design of distance learning. The contributors examine critical issues in the design of theoretically and pedagogically based distance education programs. Eight distance education programs are described in enough detail to allow readers with different interests to understand the pedagogical approaches and the implications of implementing those approaches. Issues of theory, pedagogy, design, assessment, communities of practice, collaboration, and faculty development are discussed. Each section of the book includes: *a primary chapter written by an author or authors involved with a distance education program that reflects learner-centered principles; *a formal reaction to the chapter by a specialist from the learning sciences, educational evaluation and policy, administration, or the corporate sector with expertise in issues of distance learning; and *an edited transcript of the authors' discussion of the primary chapter held at a symposium at the Asilomar Conference Center. A final "summing up" section offers two perspectives--from leading scholars outside the fields of instructional design, evaluation, and the learning sciences--on the approaches and thinking reflected in the rest of the book. This book is essential for researchers, as well as all those engaged in delivering, supporting, or administrating distance education programs at the post-secondary level. The descriptions, strategies, and principles will inform the design of continuing education, as well as degree-based education and corporate education and training, and distance education programs for adults.

Learning spaces are an increasing area of debate in higher education studies, as universities attempt to develop holistic forms of education that connect epistemological areas. Focusing on faculty-student collaborative learning in residential colleges in Singapore, this book carefully examines how we can enable students to grow and develop, not just as workers for the global marketplace but also as unique individuals. Showcasing the diversity of programs and initiatives that contribute to student learning outcomes, the volume draws upon the real-world experiences of educators and students. Contributors examine the benefits and challenges of crafting and implementing innovative programs and activities focused on the technologies of learning, interdisciplinary thinking, experiential learning, community engagement and authenticity. Students, working with one another, their teachers and community partners, also play a pivotal role in co-creating their learning journeys. The chapter authors provide their critical reflections on how the experiences and lessons learnt may apply to other learning spaces in higher education (including online and blended spaces). This edited volume will be relevant to any educator, researcher or student interested in creative learning spaces, and innovative programmes and activities that bring together students, educators and community partners.

Online Learning and Its Users: Lessons for Higher Education re-examines the impact of learning technologies in higher education. The book focuses particularly on the introduction and mainstreaming of one of the most widely used, the virtual learning environment (VLE) or learning management system (LMS). The book presents an activity theoretic analysis of the VLE's adoption, drawing on research into this process at a range of higher education institutions. Through analysis and discussion of the activities of managers, lecturers, and learners using the VLE, lessons are identified to inform future initiatives including the implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). A replicable research design is included and explained to support evaluation and analysis of the use of online learning in other settings. The book questions accepted views of the place of technologies in higher education, arguing that there has been a repeated cycle of hype and disappointment accompanying the development of online learning. While much research has documented this cycle, finding new strategies to break it has proved to be a more difficult challenge. Why has technology not made more impact? Are lecturers going to be left behind by their own students in the use of digital technologies? Why have we seen costly and time-consuming failures? This book argues that we can answer these questions by heeding the lessons from previous experiences with the VLE and early iterations of the MOOC. More importantly, we can begin to ask new and different questions for the future to ensure better outcomes for our institutions and ultimately our learners. - Presents institution-wide analysis of the adoption of a key educational technology for higher education, validated across multiple sites, to support deeper understanding of the use of learning technologies in context - Describes Activity Theory and presents a replicable model to operationalise it for investigations of the use of online learning in higher education and other settings - Provides a unique perspective on the historical experience of VLE adoption and mainstreaming to identify important insights and essential lessons for the future

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.

Gain a clear understanding of what effective teachers do—and how successful students learn Over the past 20 years, a greater concentration on research aimed at both teaching and learning has revealed that “chalk and talk” teaching, copying notes, and “cookbook” practical lessons offer little challenge to students. Teaching in the Sciences: Learner-Centered Approaches steers the learning process away from traditional modes of instruction to a more student-centered, activity-based curriculum that makes science relevant, engaging, and interesting. This innovative book helps educators bring out the best in their students—and themselves—by identifying and meeting students’ needs and providing environments that encourage active, strategic learning. Helpful tables and figures make complex information easy to access and understand. Rather than focusing on teaching methods that merely deal in the content of life science, Teaching in the Sciences: Learner-Centered Approaches promotes a deep learning designed to develop critical and skilled learners. This collection of frank and thoughtful empirically based papers places greater emphasis on learning environments and social interaction patterns, assessment processes, and perceptions of students and teachers in a range of learning and teaching settings in the life sciences. The book presents strategies for mentoring and assessing students, assessments of learning outcomes, innovative approaches to curriculum design, constructivist approaches to teaching science, how to use technology to support learning, and practical examples of learner-centered teaching that mark important steps on a journey to transform the learning process. Teaching in the Sciences: Learner-Centered Approaches examines: using broadband videoconferencing for distance learning in tertiary science assessing for learning in the crucial first year of university studies using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in molecular science applying ICT to provide student feedback teaching biostatistics in the environmental life sciences developing metacognition and problem-solving skills in students the evolution of metAHEAD, an online resource that supports strategy development and self-monitoring in problem solving the development of a problem-based learning approach (PBL) for students in environmental science and natural resource management and much more! While largely centered on the context of undergraduate science instruction, Teaching in the Sciences: Learner-Centered Approaches is filled with valuable lessons for all educators working with students in the pursuit of powerful, effective, and lasting learning.