The “Handbook for Distance Education” begins with a fourpage preface followed by an eleven page overview, both written by Dr. Michael Moore. The book is then divided into seven sections, each section containing several chapters (55 in total). Each chapter is written by a well known (previously published in The American Journal of Distance Education) author or collection of authors. The title of each section and the number of chapters found in each section is shown below:

Handbook of distance education

The amount of resources being poured by Western universities, companies, and governments into creating educational content to be exported (via the Internet) to other cultures is astounding. Those assigned to accomplish this task are left with the great challenge of meeting the needs of learners who come from cultures that are foreign to them, and who often have very different abilities and expectations than originally assumed. This study explores the cultural competence in the lived experience of 12 professionals who have been involved with such efforts. Often they have had to question their assumptions, recognizing flaws in their own thinking and in the organizations that support them, and tried to alter their practice accordingly. Their awareness of cultural differences and the importance and impact of these differences in their practice will be discussed.

http://adlawrence.blogs.wm.edu/files/2011/03/cultural-cometence-and-instructional-design.pdf

Cultural competence and instructional design: Exploration research into the delivery of online instruction cross-culturally

The recent re-emergence of serious games as a branch of video games and as a promising frontier of education has introduced the concept of games designed for a serious purpose other than pure entertainment. To date the major applications of serious games include education and training, engineering, medicine and healthcare, military applications, city planning, production, crisis response, to name just a few. If utilised alongside, or combined with conventional training and educational approaches, serious games could provide a more powerful means of knowledge transfer in almost every application domain. Serious Games and Edutainment Applications offers an insightful introduction to the development and applications of games technologies in educational settings. It includes cutting-edge academic research and industry updates that will inform readers of current and future advances in the area. The book is suitable for both researchers and educators who are interested in using games for educational purposes, as well as game professionals requiring a thorough understanding of issues involved in the application of video games technology into educational settings. It is also applicable to programmers, game artists, and management contemplating or involved in the development of serious games for educational or training purposes.

/pdf/serious-games-and-edutainment-applications-1s54wek53m.pdf

Serious Games and Edutainment Applications

Citizen science websites are emerging as a common way for volunteers to collect and report geographic ecological data. Engaging the public in citizen science is challenging and, when involving online participation, data entry, and map use, becomes even more daunting. Given these new challenges, citizen science websites must be easy to use, result in positive overall satisfaction for many different users, support many different tasks, and ensure data quality. To begin reaching these goals, we built a geospatially enabled citizen science website, evaluated its usability, and gained experience by working with and listening to citizens using the website. We sought to determine general perceptions, discover potential problems, and iteratively improve website features. Although the website was rated positively overall, map-based tasks identified a wide range of problems. Given our results, we redesigned the website, improved the content, enhanced the ease of use, simplified the map interface, and added features. We discuss citizen science websites in relation to online Public Participation Geographic Information Systems, examine the role(s) websites may play in the citizen science research model, discuss how citizen science research advances GIScience, and offer guidelines to improve citizen-based web mapping applications.

User-friendly web mapping: lessons from a citizen science website

This paper reviews past research that focused on questions of culture in distance learning. Of specific interest are the studies that examined the influence of culture on students’ learning and engagement in asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). The purpose of this review is three-fold: to present the state of knowledge concerning the questions of culture in distance learning, to highlight important methodological issues that past research has left unresolved, and to provide practical insights into teaching culturally and linguistically diverse online communities of learners. For these purposes, 27 studies are examined and the findings are reported under the following categories: What do studies focusing on questions of culture in distance learning tell us? What implications do they suggest for practice and future research? Also, the paper provides methodological insights for researchers who wish to investigate the cultural dimensions of distance learning in future studies.

/pdf/questions-of-culture-in-distance-learning-a-research-review-337htt22hg.pdf

Questions of Culture in Distance Learning: A Research Review

https://facultycenter.ischool.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/intercultural-internet.pdf

Intercultural Internet-based learning: Know your audience and what it values

/pdf/intercultural-internet-based-learning-know-your-audience-and-5964915tdu.pdf

Intercultural Internet-Based Learning: Know Your Audience and What They Value

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of Merrill’s five star system using award-winning online courses. We compared Merrill’s rubric with other recognized rubrics to explore the convergence of course awards with high scores on the Merrill’s system, and convergence of scores on the Merrill system with relevant scores on the other evaluation tools. This was an exploratory study which attempted to see how high-quality courses employ Merrill’s first principles of instruction. From our results we believe that Merrill’s first principles should be included in the myriad of criteria for determining online course quality. Award-winning courses tend to use Merrill’s first principles, and it seems likely that there is still significant room for improvement of even award-winning courses.

Joanne P. H. Bentley

Papers

Intercultural Internet-based learning: Know your audience and what it values

Intercultural Internet-Based Learning: Know Your Audience and What They Value

How Well Do High-Quality Online Courses Employ Merrill's First Principles of Instruction?

Learning Orientation Questionnaire correlation with the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument: A validity study

Instructional Design Issues for Current and Future Interactive Video Media.