The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has been widely used in blended and online educational research, more recently being applied also to social media settings. This paper explores the learning community created in such a social media-based educational environment, using an extended version of CoI, which includes four components: cognitive…

Students can become disengaged from marketing material if they cannot see the direct application. Marketing material needs to be applied to a meaningful business task to engage and motivate students. This article introduces the Kickstarter Active Learning Project--an innovative semester-long project in which students create a Kickstarter…

The research question in this paper is how a Field Learning Video Blog (FLvlog) has to be designed in order to optimize learning processes taking into account changed everyday communication habits of students. The system is designed to meet pedagogical as well as functional requirements for learning in fieldwork settings. The main difference to…

As more and more library and LIS education migrates to the online environment, college and university faculty are called upon to expand their pedagogy. Interactivity has been cited as one factor in attracting and retaining students in online courses and programs. LIS educators can reach outside the online learning management system (LMS) to…

On the basis of the Research Project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education under the title "Design, production and evaluation of a 2.0 learning environment for faculty training in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)" (EDU2009-08 893), experts have used the external competence coefficient to evaluate the…

Cloud computing technologies, such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live, have the potential to enhance instructional methods predicated on constructivism and cooperative learning. Cloud-based application features like file sharing and online publishing are prompting departments of education across the nation to adopt these technologies.…

Proper planning and assessment surveys of projects for academic library Web sites will not always be predictive of real world use, no matter how many responses they might receive. In this case, multiple-phase development, librarian focus groups, and patron surveys performed before implementation of such a project inaccurately overrated utility and…

So many communications channels, so little time and, usually, so few resources is the situation today's communicators face. Educational institutions, places steeped in history and tradition, "have been slow to react." But while the communications channels have changed, the fundamentals of communication haven't. Maintaining perspective about…

The authors describe how content-based multimedia search technologies can be used to help learners find new materials and learning pathways by identifying semantic relationships between educational resources in a social learning network. This helps users--both learners and educators--to explore and find material to support their learning aims.…

This article discusses how the idea of higher education students as producers of knowledge rather than consumers can be operationalised by means of student research projects, in which processes of research archiving and analysis are enabled through the use of semantic technologies. It discusses how existing digital repository frameworks can be…

The mounting wealth of open and readily available information and the accelerated evolution of social, mobile and creative technologies call for a re-conceptualisation of the role of educators: from providers of knowledge to designers of learning. This call is reverberated by the rising trend of research in learning design (LD). Addressing this,…

The success of Web 2.0 inspires e-learning to evolve into e-learning 2.0, which exploits collective intelligence to achieve user-centric learning. However, searching for suitable learning paths and content for achieving a learning goal is time consuming and troublesome on e-learning 2.0 platforms. Therefore, introducing formal learning in these…

Following a review of the online delivery of distance education programs within the School of Information Studies (SIS) program at Charles Sturt University, a team of academics worked with an external consultant to design a purpose built SIS Learning Centre in Second Life (SL), a 3D virtual world environment in which people (via their avatars) may…

Recent years have seen a surge in the use of intelligent computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) tools for improving student learning in traditional classrooms. However, adopting such a CSCL tool in a classroom still requires the teacher to develop (or decide on which to adopt) the CSCL tool and the CSCL script, design the relevant…

"Cloud computing" refers to the use of computing resources on the Internet instead of on individual personal computers. The field is expanding and has significant potential value for educators. This is discussed with a focus on four main functions: file storage, file synchronization, document creation, and collaboration--each of which…