ICST Transactions on E-Education and E-Learning
Scope:
Education is one domain that has accompanied civilization through the centuries, adapting its tools to fulfill the expectations of the students and the needs of the teachers. Such tools can be as obvious and traditional as pencils and a notebook, or as complex and innovative as websites and multi-user virtual environments. Typical in-person learning environments, such as classrooms and meeting rooms, are at times not the best solution to enable and maximize a student’s ability to learn. Although they do fulfill their purpose of giving students the possibility of reaching course material and instructors, they also create a barrier that cannot be easily overcome.
Web-based instruction and multi-user virtual environments break the time-limited barrier innate to typical lectures and explore, through innovative technologies, a concept as old as humankind: socialization and the feeling of belonging to a community. Many universities, public institutions and private businesses are projecting themselves on the Internet and in virtual worlds to reach the customer at any time, giving them the idea of virtual presence that cannot be delivered through a simple website. This observation sparks the idea that is at the very foundation of this publication.
This journal wants to become a central repository of information about the utilization of on-line education through web-based instruction and multi-user virtual environments as a key element in education. As we dive into the information available about this topic, we can find several conferences and many websites that discuss this topic, but few resources that systematically organize the knowledge available. With this journal we wish to create such a metaphorical pole of attraction that will serve as a one-stop resource to teachers, researchers and practitioners who wish to access information of high quality and broad coverage.
Topics to be discussed in this journal focus on (but not limited to) the following concepts:
1. Teaching / Educational Models and Frameworks
2. Accessibility and usability of web-based instruction in the classroom
3. Best Practices
4. Developing courses and content to be used in on-line educational environments
5. Student engagement
6. Experiments
7. Impacts of on-line on traditional teaching and learning strategies
8. Cost analysis
EIC's keywords:
Teaching, Multi-User Virtual Environments, Learning, Classroom Extension, Teaching Practices, Education Research, Distance Learning, Instructional Technologies, Computer-Based Training, On-line Education,