What can we learn from the Past about Future Technological Trends in Adult Education?

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the past two decades of technology use in adult education with the intention of providing a critical lens with which to view future technological trends in adult education. The article begins with a brief summary of technological trends, such as the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web, that have influenced adult education over the past two decades. Political, economic, social, and pedagogical issues that have influenced the use of technology in adult education are also discussed and possible solutions to these issues are outlined. The article concludes with an attempt to extrapolate future technological trends that could influence the direction of adult education in the decade to come.

A Learning Platform For The Introduction Of Remote Sensing Principles In Higher Education In A Blended Learning Collaborative Environment

The purpose of this study was the creation of a pedagogy inclusive electronic platform for the introduction of Remote Sensing principles to University students. In Universities throughout the world, there is a constant research about new and more flexible ways of teaching and organizing learning in all thematic areas. Environmental Remote Sensing is the measurement from a distance, of all the spectral features of the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. These measurements are usually made by instruments carried by satellites and they are processed to create information concerning regional and global environmental issues. Remote Sensing is an interdisciplinary thematic area that evolves in a very fast manner. This course has been taught at the Physics Department of the University of Athens in the traditional lecture-based manner until now. This study describes the design, development, pilot application and formative evaluation of the learning platform proposed. The indices derived for the educational proposal’s evaluation demonstrated that the platform has a very good potential to support learning in the area of Remote Sensing and act as an interactive digital repository of knowledge that may enhance students’ learning and facilitate the organization and management of the course.

Student and Teacher Perspectives Testing a System for Adaptive e-Learning

Personalization is becoming a mandatory requirement in Web-based Education and long distance learning in general, representing a flexible way of learning the exact amount of knowledge to reach a given learning goal. This approach saves time and money and it is particularly suited for life-long learning. The drawback is that the teacher has to produce some effort to prepare didactic material and while research in this field proposes several intelligent systems providing personalization with advanced didactic strategies, teacher’s point of view is less considered. In this chapter we extend our previous work that aimed to build an adaptive system for education called LS-Plan, taking into account both teacher’s and student’s needs. In particular we carried out a comprehensive evaluation of the system embedded into an Adaptive Educational Hypermedia called Lecomps5, in order to experiment and prove the added value of the system.

Towards an Effective ICT-based University Learning

The principles and practices of university learning are being subject to critical reconsideration from new approaches to adult teaching and a growing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs in adult learning have an ambivalent effect. On the one hand, they offer potential improvement in on-line communicative activities and the transmission of codified or explicit knowledge. On the other hand, they can reduce socially- and interactive-mediated tacit teaching and learning. Thus, the crucial criterion for effective and complementary use of ICTs in adult andragogy is whether they enable time and interactive social space for the tacit dimension of teaching and learning. This chapter analyzes these issues by comparing how two young universities in Spain have dealt with these effects of ICTs in relation to the tacit and interaction challenging dimensions of learning and teaching.

Analyzing functionalities of Course Management Systems

In this chapter the authors offer a faculty perspective on desirable features of a Course Management System (CMS) to teach a course efficiently and effectively. This paper is the result of our Web teaching experiences over a period of ten years using three different CMS platforms. We develop a list of necessary functionalities that a CMS must provide web-based or web-enhanced learning. The authors anticipate that this paper could help guide software developers in developing appropriate CMS tools and would help institutions to gain greater insight into the selection of an appropriate CMS for effective Web-based or web-enhanced education (WBE), also called hybrid education. The discussion could also assist current and future Web course instructors by increasing their awareness to take advantage of many features that might exist in their CMS.

A Case Study of Ontology-Driven Development of Intelligent Educational Systems

This article presents a case study of ontology-driven development of intelligent educational systems. Following a review of literature related to ontology development, ontology-driven software development, and traditional software engineering, we developed an ontology-driven software development methodology appropriate for intelligent ontology-driven systems which have ontologies as key execution components, such as e-Advisor, and which is biased toward an integration of incremental and iterative ontology development and downstream Model Driven Architecture for development of software components.

The Effectiveness of Scaffolding in a Web-Based, Adaptive Learning System

This study combined ideas from learning hierarchy and scaffolding theory to design a web-based, adaptive learning system to investigate the effectiveness of scaffolding for elementary school students having different levels of learning achievement. The topic chosen for learning was the Three States of Water. A quasi-experiment was conducted. In this experiment, students were divided into three groups: control group (without scaffolds), experimental group A (scaffolds providing by on-line conversation) and experimental group B (scaffolds providing by face-to-face conversation). The experimental results showed significant improvement for students after they had studied using the web-based, adaptive learning system. Specifically, scaffolds in the form of face-to-face conversations greatly enhanced the learning of high-achievement students. However, there were no significant differences between the low-achievement students with or without the provision of scaffolds. It was also discovered that the web-based, adaptive learning system could help students develop their learning responsibility.

The Role of Adult Education in Online Delivery of Career and Technical Education

As online education continues to grow, there is a consensus that online courses and programs should be designed based on the needs of adult learners. This premise is also relevant to growing career and technical education (CTE) programs offered online. However, much of the literature in online CTE lacks implicit connections to emerging notions of adult development and learning. This article provides an overview of the status of online education in CTE offered in higher education, and discusses adult learning development as a means to inform curriculum design and instruction. The article concludes with an outline of emerging trends bridging adult learning and online education relevant to career and technical education.

Teaching with Technology

Successful teaching with technology in adult education stems from many factors. Technology is only used to enhance learning. Not only are teachers of adult learners required to study the tools related to the use of technology, but are also required to study the nature of knowledge, the nature of learning, constructivism and various kinds of teaching philosophies. Without thorough knowledge of these factors, successful teaching with technology cannot occur in adult education, let alone other educational fields. This article is comprehensive concerning successful teaching with technology in adult education because it also addresses the interrelationships between the use of technologies and the teaching and learning process.

Learner-Centered Teaching and the Use of Technology

This article explores the use of various learning technologies as tools for facilitating learner-centered teaching. The article offers another perspective on the scholarship of teaching with technology—through discussion of various theoretical models of learner-centered teaching, the role of technology on the student/instructor relationships, the impact on technology in different educational settings and contexts, and learners’ cultural differences. The article concludes with a brief discussion of future trends, cautions, and speculations related to technology use in learner-centered teaching.