E-Simulations for educating the professions in blended learning environments

This chapter introduces digital, role-based simulations as an emerging and powerful educational approach for the professions and for broader workforce development purposes. It is acknowledged that simulations used for education, professional development, and training, have a long history of development and use. The focus is on digital simulations (e-simulations) situated in blended learning environments and the improved affordances of the newer digital media used via the web to enhance the value of their contribution to learning and teaching in professional and vocationally-oriented fields. This is an area which has received less attention in the whole “e-learning” literature compared with the voluminous body of knowledge and practice on computer-mediated communication, online community building, social networking, and various forms of online (usually automated) assessment. A framework of blended e-simulation design is outlined. The chapter concludes by examining what the future might hold for simulations in further and higher education, and ongoing work-based learning

A Close Look at Trust Among Team Members in Online Learning Communities

Trust is one of the important factors either fostering or damaging students’ online teamwork learning experience. Building trust among team members has become a necessary step for a successful collaboration experience. The purpose of the article was to understand students’ learning and teamwork experiences and further to investigate the relationships of learner-centered instructions, team trust, and social presence in an online learning community. Also, this article adds to the research on the role of social presence in promoting cognitive and affective trust. The results indicated there were positive correlations between learner-centered instructions and trust, between learner-centered instructions and social presence, and between trust and social presence. The study could provide suggestions for instructors teaching online courses for the implementation of learner-centered instructions and the importance of creating a social presence and building trust for students in a collaborative online learning environment

Constructing disciplinary inquiry communities through Web 2.0

This chapter explores the utility of Web 2.0 technologies for supporting independent inquiry-based learning, with a particular focus upon the use of blogs and social bookmarking tools. It begins by outlining the key issues confronting practitioners wishing to engage with such technologies before moving on to describe the approaches that were adopted in a range of first-year History seminar classes in two research-led universities in the UK. The chapter closes with an evaluation of the positive impact of the use of Web 2.0 on student learning and any drawbacks that were encountered. Web 2.0 is judged to have had a positive impact upon student engagement with course materials, encouraging student to conduct independent research outside of class and generating significant interactions between students and their peers as well as with tutors. Future avenues for research include investigations into how the use of such technologies can be scaled up for larger student groups and what impact summative assessment might have upon student engagement