This open access book challenges international policy ‘groupthink’ about lifelong learning. Adult learning – too long a servant of business competitiveness – should be reimagined as central to democratic society. Young adults, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, engage more in education and training, and learn more day-to-day at work, if provision is democratically organised and …
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has grown substantially since the term was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries (UNESCO, 2002). Since then, there has been a significant increase in the development, use and sharing of OER as more and more governments and institutions come to realise their value. OER can…
Instructors in today’s language classrooms face the challenge of preparing globally competent and socially responsible students with transcultural aptitude. As classroom content shifts toward communication, collaboration, and problem solving across cultural, racial, and linguistic boundaries, the teaching of culture is an integral part of foreign language education. This volume offers nontrad…
COVID-19’s impacts revealed that teaching writing online was no longer merely an issue of convenience or economic necessity—it was critical to public health and equity concerns as well. Now higher education faces one of its greatest historical challenges, expanding online offerings to fully engage and support students around the world. Gathering together educators who teach writing at colle…
Statistical machine learning (ML) has triggered a renaissance of artificial intelligence (AI). While the most successful ML models, including Deep Neural Networks (DNN), have developed better predictivity, they have become increasingly complex, at the expense of human interpretability (correlation vs. causality). The field of explainable AI (xAI) has emerged with the goal of creating tools and …
This book on self-directed learning (SDL) is devoted to original academic scholarship within the field of education, and is the 6th volume in the North-West University (NWU) SDL book series. In this book the authors explore how self-directed learning can be considered an imperative for education in a complex modern society. Although each chapter represents independent research in the field of s…
This open access book summarizes research being pursued within the SISCODE (Society in Innovation and Science through CO-DEsign) project, funded by the EU under the H2020 programme, the goal of which is to set up an analytical, reflective and learning framework to explore the transformations in initiatives and policies emerging from the interaction between citizens and stakeholders. The book pr…
Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it. Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first mill…
This insightful collection of essays explores the ways in which open education can democratise access to education for all. It is a rich resource that offers both research and case studies to relate the application of open technologies and approaches in education settings around the world. Global in perspective, this book argues strongly for the value of open education in both the developed …
Explores Shakespeare's representation of the failure of democracy in ancient Rome This book introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. It considers Shakespeare’s place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of me…