Technology Enhanced Professional Learning

Technology-Enhanced Professional Learning addresses the need for continuous workplace learning that derives from the emergence of new, specialized, and constantly changing work practices. While continuous learning is fundamental to enabling individuals to function in and productively shape contemporary workplaces, digital technology is increasingly central to productive workplace practice. By examining the intersection of human learning processes, emergent work practices, and patterns of use of digital technology to support learning and work, this edited collection brings the disparate fields of professional learning and technology-enhanced learning together to advance theory and practice in both realms.

This book addresses the issues confronting educators in the integration of digital technologies into their teaching and their students’ learning. Such issues include a skepticism of the added value of technology to educational learning outcomes, the perception of the requirement to keep up with the fast pace of technological innovation, a lack of knowledge of affordable educational digital tools and a lack of understanding of pedagogical strategies to embrace digital technologies in their teaching. This book presents theoretical perspectives of learning and teaching today’s digital students with technology and propose a pragmatic and sustainable framework for teachers’ professional learning to embed digital technologies into their repertoire of teaching strategies in a systematic, coherent and comfortable manner so that technology integration becomes an almost effortless pedagogy in their day-to-day teaching. The materials in this book are comprised of original and innovative contributions, including empirical data, to existing scholarship in this field. Examples of pedagogical possibilities that are both new and currently practised across a range of teaching contexts are featured. ​

This book presents a mobile technology capacity building framework that offers academics, students, and practitioners involved in workplace education a deeper understanding of, and practical guidance on, how mobile technology can enhance professional learning. Approaching professional and workplace learning as a hybrid space in which work, learning and technology meet, the book discusses the value of mobile technology in shaping professional education, particularly during student placements. The framework focuses on staying professional and safe, considering issues of time and place, planning learning activities, initiating dialogue, networking, creating learning opportunities on-the-go, and deepening reflection. It is designed to assist students and their educators to use mobile technology knowledgeably and responsibly, and to help bridge the gap between university learning and workplace practice. This book also contributes to a better understanding of the interconnectedness between learning, practice and technology. It demonstrates how to enhance learning and working with mobile technology by drawing on two perspectives: the ‘professional-plus’ and the ‘deliberate professional’.

"This book goes beyond traditional discussion on technology enhanced learning provides research and insights on increasing the efficiency of learning for individuals and groups, facilitating the transfer and sharing of knowledge in organizations, and understanding of the learning process by exploring links among human learning, cognition, and technologies. "--Provided by publisher.

Over the past decades a new form of professionalism has emerged, characterized by factors of fluidity, instability and continual change, leading to the necessitation of new forms of professional development that support agile and flexible expansion of professional practice. At the same time, the digitization of work has had a profound effect on professional practice. This digitization opens up opportunities for new forms of professional learning mediated by technologies through networked learning. Networked learning is believed to lead to a more efficient flow of complex knowledge and routine information within the organization, stimulate innovative behaviour, and result in a higher job satisfaction. In this respect, networked learning can be perceived as an important perspective on both professional and organizational development. This volume provides examples of Networked Professional Learning, it questions the impact of this emerging form of learning on the academy, and it interrogates the impact on teachers of the future. It features three sections that explore networked professional learning from different perspectives: questioning what legitimate forms of networked professional learning are across a broad sampling of professions, how new forms of professional learning impact institutions of higher education, and the value creation that Networked Learning offers professionals in broader educational, economic, and social contexts. The book is of interest to researchers in the area of professional and digital learning, higher education managers, organizational HR professionals, policy makers and students of technology enhanced learning.

This book explains how educational research can inform the design of technology-enhanced learning environments. After laying pedagogical, technological and content foundations, it analyses learning in Web 2.0, Social Networking, Mobile Learning and Virtual Worlds to derive nuanced principles for technology-enhanced learning design.

"Addressing the gap between technology skills and the application of those skills in educational settings, this text offers strategies for using technology to facilitate the teaching and learning experience. Recommendations and practical advice on how to integrate teaching strategies with supporting media technology are provided. Methods such as online teaching, hypermedia instruction, and blended technology learning are explained from theory to practice."

Technology-Enhanced Professional Learning addresses the need for continuous workplace learning that derives from the emergence of new, specialized, and constantly changing work practices. While continuous learning is fundamental to enabling individuals to function in and productively shape contemporary workplaces, digital technology is increasingly central to productive workplace practice. By examining the intersection of human learning processes, emergent work practices, and patterns of use of digital technology to support learning and work, this edited collection brings the disparate fields of professional learning and technology-enhanced learning together to advance theory and practice in both realms.