Introduction
The
emergence of Web 2.0 triggered a general trend towards global online social
interactions and hence, has brought sociology into the global interactive
picture. From an educational viewpoint, this phenomenon created issues relating
to individual and social learning for the internalisation and externalisation of
information and knowledge in both formal and informal educational settings.
Studies on social relationships, interactions and engagement between the
e-learning participants, as well as practices and activities with the use of
tools for the purpose of learning appear to present contradictive results.
Some answers to these issues and concerns lie in the principles of
computing and, in particular, social computing. Social computing is concerned
with the intersection of social behaviour and computational systems. In
interactive educational technology, this intersection is related to context
awareness. Specifically, context awareness includes determining if the context
is organisational or cultural and the context surrounds learning activities on
the interface. In other words, methods, learning activities, tools, and
evaluation are highly interconnected.
Overall Objectives of the
Book
The main objective of this book is to bring together, in one book,
contributions on the topic of Educational Social Software for Context-Aware
Learning. The key objective is to look into the socio-cultural elements in
educational social computing focused on design and theory where learning and
setting are intertwined. A significant portion of the book will also focus on
real life case studies where such evaluations have been applied and validated.
The book not only will report first experiences and debates, but also aims to go
beyond the current state of the art by looking at future prospects and emerging
applications.
As such, the book will be of great use to those who study,
design, construct, moderate, evaluate and maintain educational social software
in organizations, e-learning, eBusiness, e-government and other related domains.
The Target Audience
Since the ultimate goal of the suggested
methodologies is the use of the results of successful interventions, the target
audience is everyone who owns, develops, evaluates and moderates educational
social software - including individuals, universities, other organizations or
companies.
RECOMMENDED TOPICS
Recommended topics include, but are
not limited to, the following:
• Introduction: Introduction to Educational
Social Software and its application to Context Aware Learning; state-of-the-art
in existing social software educational uses; Educational Social Software needs
and opportunities • Collaborative Methods and Human Interaction: collaborative
learning methodologies and techniques; guides for theory to practice.
•
Learner-Computer Interaction: users as learners and learners as users, issues on
user/learner dual identity.
• Analysis: multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary approaches as in query-based techniques (interviews, focus
groups, surveys); content and discourse analysis; ethnographic methodologies and
fieldwork; ethnotechnology; social network analysis.
• Design: Conceptual
and detailed educational social software design; ontologies; human-human and
human-computer interaction in social networks; collaborative learning design;
design to enhance ideas sharing and co-creativity; participatory design;
prototyping (paper/electronic); screen design; learning architecture; design of
collaborative learner/user-friendly schemes and features; learners with special
needs; other innovative design approaches.
• Educational Social Software
Technologies: social networks and infrastructures for learning and knowledge
sharing; innovative learning systems; intelligent tutoring systems; educational
software applications and games; simulations; educational devices and
interfaces; personalized and adaptive learning systems; tools for peer-to-peer
formative and summative assessment; computer support for peer tutoring.
•
Evaluation: Tools and evaluation techniques; usability-learnability-utility
evaluation; multidisciplinary evaluation; frameworks to apply results into
practice • Educational Social Software Applicability: primary and secondary
education, higher education, lifelong learning and research.
• Case
studies
• Special Topics: future trends
SUBMISSION
PROCEDURE
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before
April 30, 2008, a 2 page (maximum) chapter proposal clearly explaining the
mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will
be notified by May 31, 2008 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter
organizational guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by August
31, 2008. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double blind review
basis. The book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group
Inc.), www.igi-global.com, publisher of the Information Science Reference
(formerly Idea Group Reference) and Medical Information Science Reference
imprints in 2010.
Inquiries and Submissions can be forwarded electronically
(Word document) or by mail to:
Niki Lambropoulos
eLearning &
Online Communities Architect, Research student London South Bank University
London, UK
e-mail: niki@lambropoulos.org
homepage:
http://nikilambropoulos.org
Margarida Romero
eLearning & Lifelong
Learning Specialist, Research student Université de Toulouse II, CNRS UMR-5263,
France
e-mail: mail@margarida-romero.com
homepage:
http://www.margarida-romero.com/
Fax: +33 488 049 414
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