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------------------------ CALL FOR CHAPTERS ----------------------
MANAGING LEARNING IN VIRTUAL SETTINGS: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT
A book edited by Antonio Dias de Figueiredo and Ana Paula Afonso
and published by Idea Group, Inc.
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2003
You are cordially invited to contribute a chapter to this coming book.
INTRODUCTION
In spite of massive technological progresses, the practices of education
have remained almost unchanged for the last two centuries. Inspired by the
machine paradigm of the Industrial Society, education was viewed as an
industrialized way of "delivering" knowledge. Now, as learning and
education extend into cyberspace, and the dawn of the Knowledge Society is
announced, we seem to be unable to break away from those outdated
practices, into practices that value community, interaction, context,
organic processes, variable geometry, complexity, flux, change, and many
other attributes that radically distinguish our era from that of our
industrial-age ancestors. Attempts to improve education at the distance
through the use of technology, namely e-learning, suffer from the absence
of sound educational paradigms that could, indeed, support genuine
renewal.
OVERALL OBJECTIVES OF THE BOOK
The book attempts to contribute to this renewal by pointing out that
beyond the delivery of information, that is, of "content", we need to take
systematically into account interaction and activity, the learning
"contexts", the completely renewed social and cultural environments that
education is calling for and technologies are now capable of delivering.
The general goal is to discuss the basis of a broad framework for the
development and management of virtual learning communities, enriched with
contributions from domains as diverse as flexible cognition, situated
learning, communities of practice, computer supported cooperative
learning, organizational learning, knowledge management, and many others.
We expect to place emphasis on the role of context in building
environments for e-learning and to open up new avenues in understanding
the influence of contextual issues on learning.
Our main interest lies in the interactions among members and between them
and the learning context itself: how they relate and co-develop, how they
influence learning, how their creation can be fostered. The challenge
underlying the project is that of achieving a balanced combination of all
the dimensions and components of the learning architecture, where the need
for one dimension cannot be fulfilled at the expense of the others. A
framework for the design of learning contexts, with contributions from a
broad range of spheres of human activity, is needed to provide a deeper
understanding of how a specific design serves the different requirements
of the learning architecture of a learning community for e-learning.
POSSIBLE TOPICS
We envisage the publication of an interdisciplinary work that rests
strongly upon the views of experts coming from different scientific
domains, such as education, information systems, psychology, sociology,
anthropology, management and organizational studies. To this end,
recommended topics include, but are not limited to:
- Development and management of virtual communities of practice.
- Key dimensions of learning contexts.
- Educational platforms for contextual learning.
- Business models for e-learning.
- Affective behavior in virtual environments.
- The social structure of communities of practice.
- Scenarios for web-based learning.
- Contextual assessment and the role of peers.
- Quality management in learning contexts.
- Knowledge management and learning communities.
- Managing organizational learning.
- Motivational factors in the deployment of virtual communities.
- School resistance to the adoption of web-based learning.
- Ethical issues in the management of learning in virtual contexts.
- Case-Studies.
- Research in Progress related to the subject.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE
University educators and educators in general; university administrators;
researchers; e-learning system managers; instructional designers;
e-learning based professional companies; corporate training organizations
and departments, general audience with an interest in e-learning. This
book is expected to raise the scholarly recognition that content makes
little sense in the absence of well designed contexts.
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before September
15, 2003, a 2-5 page manuscript proposal clearly explaining the concerns
of the proposed chapter and how it relates to the mission of this book,
including a tentative contents table. Authors will be notified by October
1, 2003 about the status of their proposals, and authors of accepted
proposals will be sent chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters
are expected to be submitted on or before December 15, 2003. All submitted
chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind basis. The book is scheduled
to be published by Idea Group, Inc., publisher of the "Idea Group
Publishing", "Information Science Publishing", and "IRM Press" imprints by
early 2005.
WORLD WIDE WEB
For this book project, a website has been established which provides the
Call for Chapters and all announcements and additional information.
IMPORTANT DATES
- Chapter Proposal Due: by September 15, 2003
- Proposal Acceptance Notification: by October 1, 2003
- Full Chapters Due: by December 15, 2003
CONTACT INFORMATION
Please send all inquiries and submissions to the Editors:
Prof. António Dias Figueiredo
Department of Informatics Engineering
Polo II of the University of Coimbra
3030-194 Coimbra, Portugal
Tel.: (+351-239)790021
Fax: (+351-239)701266
e-mail: adf@dei.uc.pt
http://www.dei.uc.pt/~adf/adfeng.htm
or
Ana Paula Afonso
Centre for Informatics and Systems - UC
Department of Informatics Engineering
Polo II of the University of Coimbra
3030-194 Coimbra - Portugal
Tel.: (+351-239)790022
Fax: (+351-239)701266
e-mail: apa@ci.uc.pt
http://www.dei.uc.pt/~apa
--Antonio Dias de Figueiredo <adf@dei.uc.pt>
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