Situational awareness and mashups are two key factors influencing the success of situational language teaching. However, traditional situational language teaching cannot smoothly conduct relevant learning activities in changing learning context. This study developed a situational mashups system for detecting users' context and proposed a research…

Vygotsky saw mental and cultural development as "mediated" by artefacts, including tools and signs. He used his "genetic method" to investigate higher cognitive processes in historical context. These insights are foundational to sociocultural theory, which is widely used in education research. However, since Vygotsky,…

Field trips have been acknowledged as valuable learning experiences in geography. This article uses Kolb's (1984) experiential learning model to discuss how students learn and how field trips can help enhance learning. Using Kolb's experiential learning theory as a guide in the design of field trips helps ensure that field trips contribute to…

English is one of the most spoken languages in the world and widely accepted as a foreign language in many parts of the world. However, though there has been a high demand for English as a foreign language in the 21st century, it has still been taught or learned through traditional methods and conventional pedagogical approaches. In the digital…

The research reported in this paper is part of an ongoing investigation into the design of a technology-enhanced learning environment that draws from approaches embodied in the situated learning theory. In this learning context, Second Life machinima (animated artefact filmed in a 3D virtual environment) is used as an anchor to mediate authentic…

In the last decade, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) has gained an undeniable momentum. However, it is an easy trap to confuse download and registration rates with actual learning and interest in the adoption and reuse of OER. If we focus solely on access, we cannot differentiate between processes of mere information foraging and…

Virtual worlds are an important tool in modern education practices as well as providing socialisation, entertainment and a laboratory for collaborative work. This paper focuses on the uses of virtual worlds for education and synthesises over 100 published academic papers, reports and educational websites from around the world. A taxonomy is then…

According to Wikipedia "Automation is a step beyond mechanism." Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was founded on the claim that a…

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,…

This study describes the empirical test of a theoretical model of knowledge building with wikis that was recently introduced by Cress and Kimmerle. The underlying assumption of this model is that both learning (as an internal, individual process) and knowledge building (as the creation of public knowledge) are based on the interplay between an…

Success in today's globalized, multi-dimensional, and connected world requires individuals to have a variety of skill sets--i.e. oracy, numeracy, literacy, as well as the ability to think spatially. Student's spatial literacy, based on various national and international assessment results, indicates that even though there have been gains in U.S.…

As distance education continues to expand within the United States so does the amount of faculty concern in regard to student cheating. The purpose of this paper was to explore the concept of eCheating in web-based course environments and review the need for and the types of alternative assessments found in these environments. This paper will also…

Emerging from recent mobile technologies, mobile learning, or m-learning, is beginning to offer "stunning new technical capabilities" in education (DiGiano et al., 2003). This new genre of learning is viewed as a revolutionary stage in educational technology. However, ubiquitous computing technologies have given rise to several issues. This…

This study explores the web-navigation practices of adult learners in higher education and re-conceptualizes the concept of the organizing circumstance of self-managed learning, originated by Spear and Mocker (1984). The theoretical framework draws on funds of knowledge theory from a cultural historical perspective and elaborates a Vygotskian…

This article considers various learning theories, applied to three key transforming areas in adult education in general, and distance learning in particular: the andragogical issues, the technical issues, and the cultural issues. Cultural Dimension Indexes from Hofstede (1997) are appended. (Contains 1 chart.)