Instructional Technologies: Cognitive Aspects of Online Programs provides insight into creating and utilizing successful online educational technologies and programs. Discussing the generalities of Web-based education and the specific technology applications and organizational support necessary to sustaining these programs, this important book is useful to scholars and students as they venture into this new educational arena.

Educators are increasingly using web sites in place of traditional content media and instructional approaches such as texts and lectures. This new teaching philosophy has led to a myriad of questions concerning instructional design principles, learners' cognitive strategies, human-Internet interaction factors and instructional characteristics of Web media that transverse political, geographic, and national boundaries. Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web-Based Education is a compendium of materials by noted researchers and practitioners that addresses national and international issues and implications of Web-based instruction and learning, offering suggestions and guidelines for analyzing and evaluating Web sites from cognitive and instructional design perspectives.

The book explores a cognitive load perspective on instructional guidance. Cognitive load theory is focused on instructional design implications and prescriptions that flow from human cognitive architecture, and it has become one of the leading theories of instructional design. According to this theoretical perspective, the purpose of instructional guidance is to reduce learner potential cognitive overload by providing appropriate information in the right time and in a suitable format. As the learner’s level of prior knowledge is considered as the main factor influencing this decision, the effect of learner prior knowledge on effectiveness of instructional methods (the expertise reversal effect in cognitive load theory) provides the basic framework for the book. The fully-guided direct instruction and minimally-guided inquiry (discovery or exploratory) learning are often discussed in instructional psychology literature as examples of approaches with opposed degrees of guidance provided to the learners. This book considers the whole range of the levels of guidance (including intermediate levels) and approaches the problem of balancing learner guidance from a cognitive load perspective. The significance of this approach is in applying our current knowledge of human cognitive architecture to develop an integrated instructional approach bringing together the best features and advantages of direct instruction and inquiry learning. Both direct instruction and inquiry learning approaches have been around for long time, and their proponents can produce evidence of their effectiveness. This evidence needs to be treated within the context of appropriate learning goals in specific instructional settings for specific types of learners. This book provides an unbiased theoretical framework for managing learner instructional guidance and working principles for selecting appropriate levels and methods of instructional guidance (e.g., sequences of exploratory problems and explicit instruction; forms and levels of embedded guidance; and adapting methodologies) optimal for learners at different levels of prior knowledge.

E-Commerce and M-Commerce Technologies explores the emerging area of mobile commerce. The chapters in this book look specifically at the development of emerging technologies and their application in Internet commerce. From E-business to mobile database developments, this book offers a compilation of readings that will prove useful to individuals and organizations in the academic study and research surrounding mobile commerce as well as in the practical application of these technologies.

Now established as an effective tool in the instructional process, multimedia has penetrated educational systems at almost every level of study. In their quest to maximize educational outcomes and identify best practices, multimedia researchers are now expanding their examinations to extend towards the cognitive functionality of multimedia.""Cognitive Effects of Multimedia Learning"" identifies the role and function of multimedia in learning through a collection of research studies focusing on cognitive functionality. An advanced collection of critical theories and practices, this much needed contribution to the research is an essential holding for academic libraries, and will benefit researchers, practitioners and students in basic and applied fields ranging from education to cognitive sciences.

Distance Learning Technology, Current Instruction, and the Future of Education: Applications of Today, Practices of Tomorrow provides present and prospective directions of online education from various research fields, reporting on discussions from students, faculty members, researchers, and practitioners.

"This set of books represents a detailed compendium of authoritative, research-based entries that define the contemporary state of knowledge on technology"--Provided by publisher.