+ 2-5 Page Proposal Deadline: July 10, 2008 (EXTENDED)
+ Book Title: Architectures for Distributed and Complex M-Learning Systems: Applying Intelligent Technologies
+ Keywords: Mobile e-Learning, Distributed e-Learning, Architectures, Frameworks, Ubiquity, Pervasiveness, Technology-enhanced Learning
+ A book edited by IGI Global
+ Editors: S. Caballe(1); F. Xhafa(2); T. Daradoumis(3); A. A. Juan(4);
INTRODUCTION
Over the last decade, the needs of educational organizations have been changing in accordance with increasingly complex pedagogical models and with the technological evolution of e-learning environments with very dynamic teaching and learning requirements. In particular, these needs involve extending and moving to highly customized learning and teaching forms in a timely fashion. Each educational organization would need to incorporate its own pedagogical approach, target a specific learning goal, and utilize its specific resources. Educational organizations' demands also include a cost-effective integration of legacy and separated learning systems from different institutions, departments and courses, which, in turn, should be implemented in different languages, supported by heterogeneous platforms, and distributed worldwide.
In addition, new e-learning environments must provide advanced enablement for the distribution of learning activities and the necessary functionalities and learning resources to all participants, regardless of where these participants and resources are located, and whether this location is static or dynamic. The aim of new e-learning environments is to enable the learning experience in open, dynamic, large-scale and heterogeneous environments. As a result, ubiquity and pervasiveness have become essential requirements to support formal and informal learning and to allow all learning community members, from a variety of locations, to cooperate with each other by means of a large variety of technology-enhanced equipment. To this end, distributed and mobile learning (m-learning) have come to play a major role in this context by taking advantage of the extensively used mobile and wearable technology (such as podcasting) to provide anywhere, anytime learning.
From this standpoint, one of the main challenges in the development of modern e-learning systems is to overcome important non-functional requirements such as scalability, flexibility, ubiquity, availability, pervasiveness, interoperability, and the integration of different, heterogeneous, and legacy learning systems. These requirements represent a great challenge to the success of the latest trends in software development. Unfortunately, in literature regarding this topic, there is an important gap of architectural solutions that provide appropriate software infrastructure to build the emergent and complex e-learning systems that satisfy the current distributed and m-learning needs.
OVERALL OBJECTIVES OF THE BOOK
+ To explore the state of the art of software architectures and platforms used to support distributed and mobile e-learning systems.
+ To identify and publish worldwide best practices and case studies regarding development and use of architectural solutions for emergent e-learning systems.
+ To share theoretical frameworks and architectures adopting ubiquity and pervasiveness to support communities of learning practice.
+ To show experimental results from systems and applications using e-learning architectures and frameworks to support real learning practices.
+ To provide business and academic communities with a base text that could serve as a reference for software architects and developers as well as computer sciences undergraduate/graduate courses.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Experimental and solid architectures and frameworks supporting learning practices from the era of distributed and mobile e-learning can be used by industry and educational institutions which are fully involved in the new generation of e-learning systems and applications. Moreover, the theoretical models of these architectures might form part of the curricula of undergrad/graduate courses in the Computer Science degree, in particular those courses related to software engineering, software development techniques and management of software projects. Indeed, the comprehensive view and illustrative examples will make the book interesting for university teaching purposes, such as lecturers and institutions involved in software engineering practices.
This book is recommended (but not restricted) to the following audience:
+ Domain developers and software architects
+ Software developers in the e-learning and m-learning domain
+ Software project managers involved in e-learning
+ Lecturers and attendance of engineering software courses and practices
+ Researchers involved in emergent learning systems and applications
+ Researchers involved in distributed systems for e-learning
RECOMMENDED TOPICS INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE FOLLOWING
+ Software architectures and platforms for advanced learning systems
+ Conceptual and computational architecture solutions for emergent m-learning
+ Ontology-based frameworks and strategies in support of ubiquity and pervasiveness
+ Architecture standards, interoperability and reusability (SOA, MDA, PLA)
+ Architectural support for communities of learning practices and collaborative learning systems
+ Distributed and mobile learning management systems
+ Grid technology for distributed and m-learning
+ Case studies and evaluation of the architecture impact on m-learning practices
+ Surveys of m-learning frameworks adoption and results in education
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before May 26, 2008, a 2-5 page manuscript proposal (Word) clearly explaining the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by June 15, 2008 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by October 15, 2008. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. The book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global, http://www.igi-global.com, publisher of the Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference) and Medical Information Science Reference imprints.
Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded by e-mail to any of the book editors (indicate subject: Architectures for Distributed and Complex M-Learning Systems).
IMPORTANT DATES
+ 2-5 Page Proposal Deadline: May 26, 2008
+ Proposal acceptance: June 15, 2008
+ Full Chapters Deadline: October 15, 2008
+ Review Results: December 20, 2008
+ Revised Chapters Deadline: January 20, 2009
+ Notification of final acceptation/rejection: February 15, 2009
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