Towards The Virtual University Or Distance Education From Theory To Practice

Towards the Virtual University Or Distance Education - from Theory to Practice

Towards the Virtual University

Executive Editor: Mihai Jalobeanu, National Research and Development Institute for Isotopic and Molecular Technology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. This book aims to bring together the work of a number of online learning specialists from around the world, to offer the reader a global view of current and recent research and practice in electronic learning from a variety of disciplines and contexts. Some of the chapter authors indicate the likely directions e-learning may be headed in the next few years. In addition, this book is aimed at informing all those working within online learning and distance education of best practice. The content of this book will be of particular interest to university academics, researchers, college educators, K-12 teachers, education administrators and distance education students. It will also be useful as a text for those studying the management and delivery of distance education and e-learning, and indeed will be of interest to those working in all areas of education. The core of our book, the section entitled Projects and Tools, consists of research reports originally presented at the Romanian Internet Learning Workshop (RILW), an annual international conference series held in Romania between 1997 and 2001, and described in the first chapter of the volume. These projects focus on the development of instructional concepts and tools for technology-based learning environments encompassing diverse fields and disciplines from Educational Science through Intercultural Education and Foreign Languages to Beam Physics.

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

"Neither an academic tome nor a prescriptive 'how to' guide, The Theory and Practice of Online Learning is an illuminating collection of essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex field of distance education. Distance education has evolved significantly in its 150 years of existence. For most of this time, it was an individual pursuit defined by infrequent postal communication. But recently, three more developmental generations have emerged, supported by television and radio, teleconferencing, and computer conferencing. The early 21st century has produced a fifth generation, based on autonomous agents and intelligent, database-assisted learning, that has been referred to as Web 2.0. The second edition of "The Theory and Practice of Online Learning" features updates in each chapter, plus four new chapters on current distance education issues such as connectivism and social software innovations."--BOOK JACKET.