Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty ...from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of student experience.
Approaching the topic with stories that elicit empathy, compassion, and care, Veletsianos relays the diverse day-to-day experiences of online learners. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides. Veletsianos also draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned.
The elusive nature of online learners' experiences, the book reveals, is a problem because it prevents us from doing better: from designing more effective online courses, from making evidence-informed decisions about online education, and from coming to our work with the full sense of empathy that our students deserve. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students—who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.
This handbooks series aims to integrate knowledge of communication structures and processes. It is global in orientation, dedicated to cultural and epistemological diversity as well as different ...scholarly approaches. The series features volumes on 'messages, codes and channels', 'mode of address: communication situations and context', 'methodology in communication science' and 'application areas'. The latter features volumes devoted to a large range of specialist areas of communication science. The series as a whole aims at meeting the needs of undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and researchers across the area of communication studies.
The political campaign is one of the most important organizations in a democracy, and whether issue or candidate specific, it is one of the least understood organizations in contemporary political ...life. This book is a critical assessment of the role that information technologies have come to play in contemporary campaigns. With evidence from ethnographic immersion, survey data, and social network analysis, Howard examines the evolving act of political campaigning and the changing organization of political campaigns over the last five election cycles, from 1996 to 2004. Over this time, both grassroots and elite political campaigns have gone online, built multimedia strategies, and constructed complex relational databases. The contemporary political campaign adopts digital technologies that improve reach and fundraising, and at the same time adapts their organizational behavior. The new system of producing political culture has immense implications for the meaning of citizenship and the basis of representation.
Innovation and technological change show different rates, types and trajectories depending on the sector in which they take place. Agents and institutions of a sector all exert a major influence on ...innovation. With contributions from nineteen experts in their field, this book proposes the framework of the 'sectoral systems of innovation' to analyse the innovation process, the factors affecting innovation, the relationship between innovation and industry dynamics, the changing boundaries and transformation of sectors, and the determinants of the international performance of firms and countries in different sectors. Innovation in a sector is considered to be affected by three groups of variables: knowledge and technologies; actors and networks; and institutions. In addition to the general framework, this book examines innovation in six major sectors in Europe including pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, telecommunications equipment and services, chemicals, software, machine tools and services.
Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor ...functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market. This book also seeks to illuminate what actors/groups are mostly benefited by the digitalization/digital transformation and which actors/groups that are put at risk by it.This book takes its point of departure from a 2016 OECD report that contends that the impact digitalization has on the future of labor is ambiguous, as on the one hand it is suggested that technological change is labor-saving, but on the other hand, it is suggested that digital technologies have not created new jobs on a scale that it replaces old jobs. Another 2018 OECD report indicated that digitalization and automation as such does not pose a real risk of destroying any significant number of jobs for the foreseeable future, although tasks would by and large change significantly. This would affects welfare, as most of its revenue stems from taxation, and particularly so from the taxation on labor (directly or indirectly). For this reason, this book will set out to explore how the future technological and societal advancements impact labor conditions.The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching and controversial take on how various aspects of the labor market can be (and are) affected the ongoing digitalization trend in a way that is not covered by extant literature. As such, this book intends to cater to a wider readership, from a general audience and students, to specialized professionals and academics wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the possible future developments of the labor market in light of an accelerating digitalization/digital transformation of society at large.
This book focuses on the impact of digital media use for political engagement across varied geographic and political contexts, using a diversity of methodological approaches and datasets. The book ...addresses an important gap in the contemporary literature on digital politics, identifying context dependent and transcendent political consequences of digital media use. While the majority of the empirical work in this field has been based on studies from the United States and United Kingdom, this volume seeks to place those results into comparative relief with other regions of the world. It moves debates in this field of study forward by identifying system-level attributes that shape digital political engagement across a wide variety of contexts. The evidence analyzed across the fifteen cases considered in the book suggests that engagement with digital environments influences users' political orientations and that contextual features play a significant role in shaping digital politics.
Convergenomics Lee, Sang M.; Olson, David L.
2010, 20160513, 2010-02-01, 2016-05-16, c2010
eBook
Convergenomics is about the megatrends that are shaping how people behave and organizations work. In this insightful analysis, Sang Lee and David Olson describe how globalization, digitization, ...changing demographics, changing industry mix, deregulation and privatization, commoditization of processes, new value chains, emerging new economies, deteriorating environment, and cultural conflicts have led to what they define as a convergence revolution. Lee and Olson discuss this convergence revolution from the perspectives of technology, industry, knowledge, open-source networking and bio-artificial convergence, and they explain how human systems are transformed by what they have named convergenomics. Understanding convergenomics can lead to innovative strategic approaches and, the authors contend, more agile businesses are already employing these approaches to become and remain competitive and to generate greater value in a world radically changed by e-commerce. Business leaders and 'students' of strategy at all levels will learn from this book how revolutionary developments can be embraced rather than feared, and how technology that is potentially frightening in its complexity can be harnessed and used to enable productive collaboration and gain competitive advantage.
In mid-May 1997, a financial crisis erupted in Asia after an attack by private investors on the baht, the Thai currency. The crisis spread quickly across the region, where investor confidence ...plummeted, resulting in massive capital outflows, stock market collapses, high unemployment, and even insurrection. The Asian 'economic miracle' that had stimulated so much awe and even dread, now invoked pity and apprehension in greater measure. The contributors to this volume investigated change in the innovation and production systems of Asian states in response to economic and political upheaval. They conducted empirical studies of several regional industries - autos, semiconductors, and hard disk drives - and seven different national economies: China, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan. In the face of crisis and global competition, the Asian states superimposed change at the margins, seeking unique technohybrid solutions to build capabilities to compete in local, regional, and even global markets.
Innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) fuels the growth of the global economy. How ICT markets evolve depends on politics and policy, and since the 1950s periodic overhauls of ...ICT policy have transformed competition and innovation. For example, in the 1980s and the 1990s a revolution in communication policy (the introduction of sweeping competition) also transformed the information market. Today, the diffusion of Internet, wireless, and broadband technology, growing modularity in the design of technologies, distributed computing infrastructures, and rapidly changing business models signal another shift. This pathbreaking examination of ICT from a political economy perspective argues that continued rapid innovation and economic growth require new approaches in global governance that will reconcile diverse interests and enable competition to flourish. The authors (two of whom were architects of international ICT policy reforms in the 1990s) discuss this crucial turning point in both theoretical and practical terms.
Financial technology-or fintech-is gaining in popularity globally
as a way of making financial services more efficient and
accessible. In rapidly developing China, fintech is taking off,
catering to ...markets that state-owned banks and an undersized
financial sector do not serve amid a backdrop of growing
consumption and a large, tech-savvy millennial generation. It is
becoming increasingly likely that some of China's fintech firms
will change the way the world does business. In China's Fintech
Explosion , Sara Hsu and Jianjun Li explore the transformative
potential of China's financial-technology industry, describing the
risks and rewards for participants as well as the impact on
consumers. They cover fintech's many subsectors, such as digital
payment systems, peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding, credit card
issuance, internet banks, blockchain finance and virtual
currencies, and online insurance. The book highlights the
disruption of traditional banking as well as the risks of fintech
and regulatory technology. Hsu and Li describe major companies
including Alipay and Tencent, developer of WeChat Pay and a
wealth-management business, and other leading fintech firms such as
Creditease, Zhong An Insurance, and JD Finance. Offering expert
analysis of market potential, risks, and competition, as well as
case studies of firms and consumer behavior, China's Fintech
Explosion is a must-read for anyone interested in one of the
world's breakout sectors.
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