Online and virtual education is continually integrated in university classrooms. While online learning provides a more cost-effective alternative for students, educators must also analyze the psychology of online learners and identify ways to support their growth and development in their respective instructional settings. Student-Centered Virtual Learning Environments in Higher Education is a collection of innovative research that focuses on connecting contextual analyses of student-focused online instruction with quality assurance principles to improve higher education. Highlighting a range of topics including instructional design, professional development, and student engagement, this book is ideally designed for educators, software developers, instructional designers, educational administration, academicians, and students seeking current research on emerging principles and practices related to designing, implementing, and evaluating virtual teaching and learning.

This book aims to develop a situative educational model to guide the design and implementation of powerful student-centered learning environments in higher education classrooms. Rooted in educational science, Hoidn contributes knowledge in the fields of general pedagogy, and more specifically, higher education learning and instruction. The text will support instructors, curriculum developers, faculty developers, administrators, and educational managers from all disciplines in making informed instructional decisions with regard to course design, classroom interaction, and community building and is also of relevance to educators from other formal and informal educational settings aside from higher education.

As traditional classroom settings are transitioning to online environments, teachers now face the challenge of using this medium to promote effective learning strategies, especially when teaching older age groups. Because adult learners bring a different set of understandings and skills to education than younger students, such as more job and life experiences, the one-size-fits-all approach to teaching does not work, thus pushing educators to create a student-centered approach for each learner. The Handbook of Research on Student-Centered Strategies in Online Adult Learning Environments is an important resource providing readers with multiple perspectives to approach issues often associated with adult learners in an online environment. This publication highlights current research on topics including, but not limited to, online competency-based education, nontraditional adult learners, virtual classrooms in public universities, and teacher training for online education. This book is a vital reference for online trainers, adult educators, university administrators, researchers, and other academic professionals looking for emerging information on utilizing online classrooms and environments in student-centered adult education.

This book aims to develop a situative educational model to guide the design and implementation of powerful student-centered learning environments in higher education classrooms. Rooted in educational science, Hoidn contributes knowledge in the fields of general pedagogy, and more specifically, higher education learning and instruction. The text will support instructors, curriculum developers, faculty developers, administrators, and educational managers from all disciplines in making informed instructional decisions with regard to course design, classroom interaction, and community building and is also of relevance to educators from other formal and informal educational settings aside from higher education.

Digitization has undergone a number of paradigm shifts where structures, processes, and behaviors have changed, including in education. Higher education faces major challenges both pedagogically and technically, but also provides great opportunities to design and teach for self-directed and motivated higher education with smart pedagogy. It is crucial that teachers identify the pedagogical and technological benefits to smart education in order to enhance student-centered learning. Virtual and Mobile Learning Activities in Higher Education is a pivotal reference source that focuses on virtual and mobile learning activities in higher education for student-centered learning and the ways that teachers can design and use different learning activities, both blended and mobile, for self-directed and motivated “smart” education. Additionally, the book examines how students perceive these activities and how the outcomes can be analyzed in use with adaptive, resource-enriched, and technology-embedded tools. Highlighting a broad range of topics including feedback activities, mobile learning, and self-assessment, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, programmers, software developers, administrators, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

The Development of Personal Learning Environments in Higher Education explores how today’s knowledge-based, learner-centered virtual platforms, which often limit teaching to a complimentary facilitation role, can compromise with the requirements and regulations of colleges and universities. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) driven by culturally responsive teaching and learner autonomy represent a shift in the higher education paradigm, but how can scholars, designers, administrators, and faculty ensure effective, institutionally compatible construction and management of these systems? This book offers forward-thinking insights into the variety of student-centered learning interactions, particularly culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies, that can be integrated into PLEs. Attending to quality assessment rubrics, the nuances of stakeholders’ needs, and theoretically sound frameworks, these cross-cultural, interdisciplinary chapters explore how leaders, instructors, technologists, and learners can form a precise yet flexible ecosystem to fully realize PLEs in which co-created, intercultural narratives yield rich, relevant digital learning experiences.

The movement away from teacher-centered toward student-centered learning and teaching (SCLT) in higher education has intensified in recent decades. Yet in spite of its widespread use in literature and policy documents, SCLT remains somewhat poorly defined, under-researched and often misinterpreted. Against this backdrop, The Routledge International Handbook of Student-Centered Learning and Teaching in Higher Education offers an original, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the fundamentals of SCLT and its discussion and applications in policy and practice. Bringing together 71 scholars from around the world, the volume offers a most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the fundamentals of SCLT and its applications in policy and practice; provides beacons of good practice that display how instructional expertise manifests itself in the quality of classroom learning and teaching and in the institutional environment; and critically discusses challenges, new directions and developments in pedagogy, course and study program design, classroom practice, assessment and institutional policy. An essential resource, this book uniquely offers researchers, educators and students in higher education new insights into the roots, latest thinking, practices and evidence surrounding SCLT in higher education.