This book clarifies the direction of business innovation using new ICT such as the Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones, and cloud computing through a series of case studies on successful trials and advanced businesses in the Asia-Pacific where many industry sectors have been growing successfully in the 21st century. ICT has been playing an important role in value creation for customers and in profit generation for providers, contributing to various service innovation and business innovation. Now, digitalization using IoT and AI provides solutions to address various issues in the human society, which is transforming services and businesses in the 21st century. “What is the direction of the business innovation using new ICT?” is a highly concerned question for business researchers and practitioners. Aiming to answer the question, this book conducts a number of cases studies in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, as well as Australia. Among the studies, there are 4 cases from ICT providers, 4 cases from traditional and services, and 6 cases from new ICT applications and businesses. Each case analyzes social needs and human desires, new value created, roles of new technologies, processes and difficulties in developing new businesses, the relationship among customers, providers, and stakeholders, value chain co-creation and optimization, factors of success, and business models. Finally, the direction of business innovation with new ICT in the Asia-Pacific is suggested by summarizing the findings from the case studies through the lens of the theoretical analysis in service science.

Technical and vocational education and training at technical schools are major contributing factors in combating poverty, unemployment, and inequality. The primary purpose of technical and vocational education and training is to prepare students and learners for the world of work and for a smooth transition from education institutions into the workplace. As the Fourth Industrial Revolution continues to create more radical changes in the labor market, experts are calling for a reform of education, including vocational education and training and adult and professional education. New Models for Technical and Vocational Education and Training is an essential scholarly research book that examines TVET and CET colleges and programs that provide intermediate skills to enhance students’ chances of employability and entrepreneurship in Industry 4.0. The book explores knowledge in respect to workforce preparation, digital skills development, teaching and learning of TVET, flexibility and articulation of TVET to respond to work-integrated learning, and reskilling and upskilling to avoid skill mismatches. It is ideal for TVET schools, academicians, curriculum designers, managers, training officers, administrators, vocational professionals, researchers, and students.

This is an open access book. Covering both theories and practices in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) teacher development, this book provides up-to-date discussions and recommendations on issues relating to TVET teacher development in the digital age. It caters for the needs of in-service teachers and trainers, as well as TVET leaders who want to upscale their professional learning and development in terms of vision, knowledge, expertise, and industry skills needed in the transition to the digital era. What is particularly useful to TVET teachers/trainers are the proposed competency development framework, competency indicators, and the assessment instrument. Drawing on extensive research regarding TVET teachers’ competency development and today’s industry needs, the proposed framework and indicators can be readily used to inform the self-assessment of one’s professional competency level, so as to plan one’s career trajectory accordingly. Teachers and trainers may also find the exemplary cases of teachers’ professional development from various countries inspiring and motivating. The book also serves as a useful reference for TVET leaders, administrators and teacher trainers. The book's competency framework, indicators, and strategies are an adaptable reference for planning professional development policies, evaluation mechanisms, and programs for teachers.

The Encyclopedia of Female Pioneers of Online Learning is the first volume to explore the lives and scholarship of women who have prominently advanced online learning. From its humble origins as distance education courses conducted via postal correspondence to today’s advances in the design and delivery of dynamic, technology-enhanced instruction, the ever-evolving field of online learning continues to be informed by the seminal research and institutional leadership of women. This landmark book details 30 preeminent female academics, including some of the first to create online courses, design learning management systems, research innovative topics such as discourse analysis or open resources, and speak explicitly about gender parity in the field. Offering comprehensive career profiles, original interviews, and research analyses, these chapters are illuminating on their own right while amounting to an essential combination of reference material and primary source.

Higher education has changed significantly over time. In particular, traditional face-to-face degrees are being revamped in a bid to ensure they stay relevant in the 21st century and are now offered online. The transition for many universities to online learning has been painful—only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing many in-person students to join their virtual peers and professors to learn new technologies and techniques to educate. Moreover, work has also changed with little doubt as to the impact of digital communication, remote work, and societal change on the nature of work itself. There are arguments to be made for organizations to become more agile, flexible, entrepreneurial, and creative. As such, work and education are both traversing a path of immense changes, adapting to global trends and consumer preferences. The Handbook of Research on Future of Work and Education: Implications for Curriculum Delivery and Work Design is a comprehensive reference book that analyzes the realities of higher education today, strategies that ensure the success of academic institutions, and factors that lead to student success. In particular, the book addresses essentials of online learning, strategies to ensure the success of online degrees and courses, effective course development practices, key support mechanisms for students, and ensuring student success in online degree programs. Furthermore, the book addresses the future of work, preferences of employees, and how work can be re-designed to create further employee satisfaction, engagement, and increase productivity. In particular, the book covers insights that ensure that remote employees feel valued, included, and are being provided relevant support to thrive in their roles. Covering topics such as course development, motivating online learners, and virtual environments, this text is essential for academicians, faculty, researchers, and students globally.

A comprehensive resource to sustainability and its application to the environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security sectors Sustainability fills a gap in the literature in order to provide an important guide to the fundamental knowledge and practical applications of sustainability in a wide variety of areas. The authors – noted experts who represent a number of sustainability fields – bring together in one comprehensive volume the broad range of topics including basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and the socio-economic aspects of sustainability. In addition, the book covers applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, as well as carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects. Sustainability addresses the challenges the global community is facing due to population growth, depletion of non-renewable resources of energy, environmental degradation, poverty, excessive generation of wastes and more. Throughout the book the authors discuss the economics, ecological, social, technological and systems perspectives of sustainability. This important resource: Explores the fundamentals as well as the key concepts of sustainability; Covers basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and socio-economic aspects, applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects; Argues the essentiality of sustainability in ensuring the propitious future of earth systems; and Authored by experts from a range of various fields related to sustainability. Written for researchers and scientists, students and academics, Sustainability: Fundamentals and Applications is a comprehensive book that covers the basic knowledge of the topic combined with practical applications.

This book explains the concept of education divide in rural India and identifies various factors that shape and sustain such a divide. In doing so, it also discusses a range of attempts undertaken to bridge the education divide. Subsequently, the book has attempted in providing a socio-technical framework towards optimally deploying social technologies for addressing the issue of education divide of marginalized communities. The proposed framework offers a transition from traditional content-centric, teacher-centric and centralized education ecosystem to a connection-centric, learner-centric and decentralized education ecosystem of the socio-digital age. It demonstrates how Internet-enabled digital platforms, based on the principles of sharism and mass collaboration using social technologies, could help to solve one of the greatest problems facing the world: mitigating the extant education divide by delivering quality education to underprivileged sections of society. The book also presents empirical validation of the proposed framework to show how a community-driven blended learning platform can mobilize the dormant knowledge capital of domain experts to teach underprivileged rural Indian children, as well as help form communities of practice to enable lifelong learning for the rural adult population. The book closes by pointing out the challenges involved in building an equitable education ecosystem using social technologies and ultimately the possibility of creating a fair and equitable society. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the domain of education who want to transform education ecosystems by using technological and process-related innovations to improve educational practices for underprivileged sections of society.

This book comprehensively covers the evolution of advanced learning pedagogy and innovative technologies like open educational resources and blended learning models. It specifically talks about the future of technology-enhanced learning and how advanced technology and government policies together are trying to impact learning outcomes globally. Nowadays in a flexible learning environment, technology plays a significant role in higher education systems. Both educators and students are playing prominent roles in its successful implementation. Advanced learning pedagogy by using technology has not only changed teaching procedures but has also evolved the relationship among multiple stakeholders. The content of the book is neatly segregated into four parts. Part I covers the concept and evolution of digital learning and education technology. This part examines the role of technology in higher education and proposes a toolkit for personalized learning and continuous assessment. Parts II and III creatively represent the innovative teaching techniques and learning models under advance learning pedagogy. Chapters under parts II and III are specially designed to present the more simplistic view of various technology-based advanced learning models and resources like flipped classes, gaming designs for e-learning, etc. Part III of the book also extensively covers various case studies/instructor’s stories of technology enabled learning experiences. Part IV focuses on the evaluation of advance learning pedagogy and tools. It also covers the future of information in learning (like formative analytics) and improved learning outcomes using technology and government initiatives in the form of various future oriented education policies like the Digital Action Education Plan (2021–2027). The wide-ranging content also covers the challenges of implementation of advanced learning pedagogy and offers recommendations to overcome such challenges. The book will grab the attention of the modern (IT-enabled) instructor’s fraternity, and students and researchers in the area of technology and education. The book can be further used by policymakers and educational-technology startups to formulate and design technology-based higher education teaching policies and procedures which are indeed helpful in measuring learning outcomes.