collaborative learning

WikiSym 2012 is pleased to be collocated with Ars Electronica this year.  Ars Electronica is an annual festival that has been occurring since 1979 and helps explore the intersection of art and technology. Thousands of people attend this event, and should make for a vibrant and exciting atmosphere in Linz.

Interactive learning environments invite a broad spectrum of participation. On one end of are interactive models of complex phenomena. For example in science learning, simulations of natural and artificial (mechanical, electrical, etc.) phenomena can be an effective way to represent complex relationships underlying a scientific law. On the other end, social learning environments stimulate discussion of ideas and clarification of issues by a process of collaborative inquiry, often guided by more knowledgeable people (e.g. teachers, mentors, and parents). Whereas individual learning refers to the difference between what a learner can perform independently compared to what he or she previously could perform only by guidance (“knowledge in the head”), social learning refers to what a group of learners can produce together as well as the process leading up to it (“knowledge in the world”).

Social media have enabled interactive learning environments to more fully reach the “social end” of the spectrum, whereas advances in user interface and interaction techniques for ubiquitous computing and mobile devices have improved access to and manipulation of models of scientific phenomena. It is when users become content producers and not merely consumers of information and the power and control are shifted from designated experts to a broader network of competent practitioners that the learning potential of social media will be fully realized. Thus, we feel that by combining interactive models with social sharing (or applying wiki principles to interactive learning environments) may prove invaluable in designing collaborative learning systems. In other words we aim for multiple perspectives on collaborative learning as a design activity.

Objective of the Book

This book will present an edited collection of accounts, issues and case studies written essentially by practitioners in adult education who have firsthand experience of attempting to define, develop, implement or evaluate personalised learning technologies in integrated formal and informal eLearning environments for adult lifelong learners within their practice in a vast range of scenarios. The accounts will describe, from a variety of perspectives, what the practitioner was trying to achieve through the use of such learning spaces and how and why they went about trying to achieve such personalisation exploiting the synergy of the integration of formal and informal eLearning. The accounts will also present reflections on what went well and what authors would do differently as well as providing grounded guidelines. The content will also include institutional and organisational changes and perspectives on the culture and management changes required as a consequence of introducing and implementing environments which are seen as counter institutional.

The book will have three main sections: Technological Issues, Pedagogical Issues and Infrastructural and Cultural Issues. The section on technological issues will present descriptions of the tools and platforms which practitioners are using, outline their strengths and weaknesses and highlight issues that need to be considered when planning to implement integrated formal and informal eLearning environments for adult lifelong learners. The section on pedagogical issues will present descriptions of the different ways in which practitioners have attempted to use integrated learning technologies and give personal examples which illustrate both the potential and drawbacks that the new learning systems provide as a consequence of integration. The third section will bring sections one and two together by considering the major infrastructural, cultural and organisational issues if integrated formal and informal eLearning environments are going to affect any change in the institutional regime. This third section will effectively bring together the pedagogical issues with the technical issues for consideration on an institutional level. It would be expected that chapters had a balance of theory, practice, methods and case studies.

Target Audience

The potential audience of this book will be academics, teachers, tutors, trainers, administrators, resource managers, learning technologists and researchers involved in or within the field of eLearning development, implementation and delivery.

This book will be of particular value to learning technology practitioners in adult education who wish to inform their own practice. It will present pros and cons of the value of using integrated formal and informal eLearning environments within tertiary education and enable practitioners to make informed decisions about how they might change or expand on their own practice within this area.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Adult education and…

• lifelong learners’ characteristics and learning profiles
• models for the detection of adult lifelong learners’ learning styles
• scaffolded self-regulated and personalised learning
• empowering adult lifelong learners

Integrated formal and informal eLearning environments for adult lifelong learners and…

• implications and challenges of the concept of PLE
• implications and challenges of the shift from LMS to PLE
• integration models
• affordances, implications and challenges of their technological architectures
• learning standards, metadata and interoperability of web-based educational systems
• learners’ profiles sharing and portable personal profiles
• adaptive mechanisms for implicit personalisation of learning
• Social Semantic Web tools for personalisation, trustworthiness and assessment on the collection of resources
• web services for knowledge representation, retrieval, creation
• mobile and ubiquitous learning
• synchronous learning
• virtual worlds
• augmented reality and environmental markers or sensors
• evaluation
• assessment
• organizational and institutional issues

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before September 30, 2012, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified byOctober 15, 2012 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by January 31, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Submissions website: http://www.elearningplace.it/call-for-chapters/ (pleaseregister to submit your chapter proposal and upload Word documents only).

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This book is anticipated to be released in 2013.