Call for Articles to be published in a Special Issue of the International
Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning (IJCEELLL,
a UNESCO journal) on the theme "Internet based learning and the future of
education".
Internet based learning is gaining immense popularity and is claimed to provide
newer and better avenues of providing education, for instance, the increased
ease, speed and scope of communications enabling fast and easy updates, wider
audiences and easily available expertise from all over the world. The new tools
of the Internet have provided new opportunities to the educators, for example,
harnessing multiple representations, without relying on a computer programmer.
The Internet also provides a much better infra-structure for co-operative and
collaborative activities among both the students and the educators as well as
between them. The education based on printed textbooks is bound to be out of
date and will increasingly face questions about its relevance in a world that is
changing at an ever faster pace. The Internet provides a just-in-time capability
for the educators to present up-to-date material to the students and the
motivational effect of this cannot be under estimated.
But is this new power of technology an unmixed blessing? An immediate
consequence of opening the classroom to the wide world is to throw away the
commonality that creates cohesive and homogenous groups with similar outlook to
life based on cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. The old pedagogies that
periodically adjusted to keep pace with the gradually evolving societies in
different parts of the world will no longer be suitable and new pedagogies that
equally motivate and appeal to the wide-spread and diverse student populations
will have to be developed. Globalisation brings a new dimension to the
curriculum needs, problems of local and regional variations and quality related
issues such as standardisation, validation and accreditation. There will be even
more pressing need for greater adaptivity and better customisation of the
courseware - the two aspects where the currently available material is generally
considered to be less than satisfactory.
Is there a good appreciation of the true potential of the Internet as well as
the associated problems or is there a degree of 'opportunism' in the rush to
project the Web as a solution without having described the current and emergent
problems?
We invite discussion on these and related issues with a view to better
understand the emerging trends in educational thinking and the shape of
education to come.
Special issue guest editors:
Kinshuk
Information System Department
College of Business, Massey University
Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North
New Zealand
Email:
kinshuk@ieee.org
Ashok Patel
CAL Research & Software Engineering Centre
Bosworth House, De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, United Kingdom
Tel/Fax: +44 116 257 7193
Email:
apatel@dmu.ac.uk
Jointly with
Piet Kommers, Associate Editor (IJCEELLL)
Important dates:
Deadlines for extended abstracts: Friday June 11, 1999
Our comments on extended abstracts: Friday July 2, 1999
Deadlines for full papers: Friday September 17, 1999
Our comments on full papers: Friday October 22, 1999
Final version: Friday November 26, 1999
Submission procedure:
The extended abstracts should be around 1000 words and should address one or
more aspects relating to the theme of the special issue. They should be sent by
email to both the guest editors (
kinshuk@ieee.org and
apatel@dmu.ac.uk or one
copy by fax to +44 116 257 7193 in case of problems with email ) by Friday June
11, 1999. Your submissions will be considered on first come-first served basis
allowing for more flexible planning of your further work. We encourage you for
early submission at each stage.
Please provide following details with each submission:
- Author(s) full name(s) including title(s)
- Job title(s)
- Organisation(s)
- Full contact details of the corresponding author including email address,
postal address, telephone and fax numbers
General details about the journal are available at:
http://www.mscp.edte.utwente.nl/ptk/
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