Using Social Media to Facilitate Instruction and Increase Marketing in Global Higher Education

The technological revolution of the past two decades has changed global higher education, particularly with the impact of social media. There are two primary functions of social media in higher education: instruction and marketing. Social media offers higher education students an array of options to socialize, network, stay informed, and connected, but technology proficiency may not be the same for instructors. As social media use by students becomes more established, educators in higher education pursue methods to parlay expertise in instruction into increased opportunities to advertise and market higher education institutions. Social media's impact of instruction in higher education is undeniable. The next major focus is on social media as a robust recruiting instrument to increase enrollment in global higher education.

Learning Management System Under Digital India Program

To foster continuous learning in governance, it is imperative to use technology in such a way that learning and knowledge exchange becomes a normal engagement without external interventions (http://digitalindia.gov.in/newsletter/2016_july/index.php). Web- or computer-based learning is easy, anytime and anywhere. It has in fact become a well-established, diversely applicable practice through a software application, known as learning management system (LMS). The LMS designed for e-governance under Digital India initiative is unique and one of a kind; it takes forward the vision of competency-based learning and is a tool to deliver right knowledge and skills to right personnel. LMS deployed by National e-Governance Division serves as a tool for learning and training the government officials and other stakeholders involved in planning, developing, implementing, monitoring, and sustaining governance in Government of India. This chapter broadly discusses the significant facets of the LMS like its prominent features and framework, key benefits, services rendered, and the outcomes and impact as a consequence of its structured implementation.

Marketing Micro-Credentials in Global Higher Education

Now that society has assumed a global focus, supported by technology, higher education institutions are asked to offer the highest quality education, especially technology skills and competencies, to a widely diverse audience at a cost that can be supported by society. Credentialing is a new concept in higher education advocated for use in the acknowledgement of coursework typically completed online. Credentialing provides a method of accrediting content knowledge rather than course credit for specific knowledge. The award of a credential has been an accepted form of authenticating the official completion of a higher education course of study. Credentials are often used in other forms of education. Yet, credentials have not been widely accepted for use in higher education because they do not fit the traditional model of awarding degrees for program of study completion. However, credentialing is now being examined for wider applications in higher education.

An Educational Tool for Digital Electronic System Synthesis and Optimization

Considering the complexity of today's digital electronic systems, it is crucial to have open-source electronic design automation (EDA) tools specifically developed for educational purposes. Such tools can easily be modified to meet the demands of the course being taught and they can be configured to expose the intermediate steps during the design process. This chapter presents an educational EDA tool to help students better understand and implement fundamental concepts in digital electronic design and synthesis courses. The tool receives an intermediate format that represents the target system behavior and a set of constraints as input, and generates the representation of the actual circuit using high-level electronic components such as functional units, memory, and steering logic components available in its technology library. It considers execution delay, area, memory space consumption, and reliability constraints. The user is able to interact with the tool during the design process and select the algorithms to perform various synthesis and optimization tasks.

Global Governance of Science

This chapter draws attention to the role of education technologies within the entire issue of the global governance of science considered here to be of growing importance for the present world development. Introducing the notions of the global knowledge world and the knowledge society, the author presents the vision of the management of science as of an international task and one of development goals. He analyses the relationship of science and bureaucracy establishing a kind of a systematization for the decision-making process related to science and explains his point of view that the global governance of science could be based on the activities of international bodies and structures of intergovernmental nature (IIGOs), most importantly of UN and UNESCO, and of non-governmental character (INGOs). Taking into account various aspects of internal and external management of science, the author points out that the global management of science appears to be a life necessity due to the growing need to jointly search for global scientific responses to the global problems, new risks, and challenges that mankind is facing. In conclusion, some ideas are expressed and proposals given to foster the goal of the global governance of science.

Designing and Analyzing Social Dynamics for Sustainable Educational Development

This chapter details the basic design of the social processes involved in the five-level negotiation game “Surfing Global Change” (SGC). Through its communicational design, this web-based game elicits characteristic collaborative behavior in student groups, which is then statistically analyzed by using several sets of university students. The architecture of SGC has already been explained in other articles and gives a framework for “game-based learning” along five interactive game levels. The web-based arena of interaction induces student collaboration; the quality of which is assessed here. The statistical analyses suggest that the SGC game rules didactically enhance anticipated processes of social self-organization. Motivation for a good grade (function of collected rewards) in this sense impacts team size, attitude towards work, and individual affinity for sticking to personal convictions. The rules trigger two distinct processes: social dynamics in the class and the striving for course grades; these targets do not necessarily match.

Interrelationship Between Pedagogy, Theories, Objectives, and Features

As students bring their own devices, there is a growing demand to leverage the benefits of these devices and foster the use my own device attitude. The effective inclusion and the widespread use of mobile learning practices have not yet been realized. Educational institutions still find it difficult to shift their pedagogical culture to a mobile one. Few studies have clearly shown how they underpin their mobile learning app design with learning theories. This chapter aims to provide the details of the pedagogical aspects of designing a mobile learning environment, shifting the culture to a mobile format, through the design, development, and evaluation of MyFeedBack, a mobile app for enhancing formative and summative assessment feedback. It presents the interrelationship between pedagogy, learning theories, the objectives, and features of the mobile learning platform.

Innovative Approaches for Realization of Electronic Textbooks and Didactic Tests

The implementation of information technology (IT) in the process of studying different subject areas, the realization of the possibilities of the educational information interaction, and the potential of the allocated informative resource of the local and global networks are main tasks for the contemporary lecturer. By solving these tasks, the intellectual potential of the learner can be developed and not only habits for self-acquisition of knowledge can be attained but also skills for obtaining, processing, transmition, and production of the necessary information. The authors' purpose is to showcase the rich capabilities of some freely available web applications and platforms such as the content management system (CMS), in particular CMS Drupal for the creation of educational web sites and electronic learning materials. Some of the newest specialized applications such as Google Forms and LearningApps for creating electronic tests and integrating the educational game approach to IT training have also been explored.

Management Training Insights Emerging From Spiritual Concerns

Traditional management training stresses what could be called the impersonal aspects of organizational life. Managers come to see people as one part of a greater overall organizational system that they can create, control, and change as needed. People become assets to allocate and control. The more personal aspects of peoples' lives are ignored at best and dismissed at worst. By reshaping or rethinking management training to include the more personal, even spiritual, side of workers, today's managers will see both productivity improvements as well as more engaged employees. Insights emerging from spiritual concerns can help organizations understand the content and intent of their current training programs in new ways. Such insights even suggest new categories of issues that can drive management training efforts. With this new understanding, managers can prepare themselves to help workers be productive and useful while also helping them find meaning and personal fulfillment in the work.

The Turbo Principle in Sustainable and Developmental Learning Design

This chapter conveys two key success strategies for complex, self-guided interdisciplinary learning: (1) rhythmizing as a theatrical tool (regarding organization along time) and (2) multi-perspectivism as a tool allowing the organization regarding viewpoints (in the space of perceptions). While the first can be achieved by a suitable script of the didactic process, the second can be supported by seating orders, the arrangement of tables, and allocation of roles to role-playing learners. The meaning of “roles” in game-based learning is analyzed, based on both literature and interdisciplinary teaching experience. As an example of role-based and game-based learning, this chapter analyzes the temporal dynamics of several social dimensions of learning in the case of the five-level negotiation game “Surfing Global Change” (SGC, © G. Ahamer).