This book describes and understands the many factors that influence a person’s behavior towards digital technologies, and how that affects the person’s potential to benefit from digital society. The ability to adapt to these new technological environments - and the extent to which an individual embraces them - has become critical to an individual’s well-being and quality of life, the underlying assumption being that only by effectively engaging with digital technologies can the user accrue...

This book investigates how media literacy can be used to help people understand, identify and respond to online misinformation.Drawing on a three-year research study that examined the everyday media experiences and abilities of more than 4,400 adults, this book presents an in-depth look at how individuals experience and interpret misinformation across a range of topics. It argues that we need to learn to “live with” misinformation and outlines the skills, knowledge and critical thi...

Filling The Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. It argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism, rather than being a driver of new behaviours as newer technologies are often said to be. Both the explosive growth of social media and the corresponding reconfiguration of the web f...

Understanding and demonstrating the effectiveness of efforts to improve the lives of those living in poverty is an essential part of international development practice. But who decides what counts as good or credible evidence? Can the drive to measure results do justice to and promote transformational change – change that challenges the power relations that produce and reproduce inequality, injustice and the non-fulfilment of human rights? The Politics of Evidence and Results in Internatio...

Life without the internet, a very new technology, seems almost unimaginable for most people in western nations. Today the internet is intrinsic to media and communications, entertainment, politics, defence, business, banking, education and administrative systems as well as to social interaction. The Internet disentangles this extraordinarily complex information and communication technology from its place in our daily lives, allowing it to be examined anew.Technology has hi...

Educational systems worldwide are facing an enormous shift as a result of sociocultural, political, economic, and technological changes. The technologies and practices that have developed over the last decade have been heralded as opportunities to transform both online and traditional education systems. While proponents of these new ideas often postulate that they have the potential to address the educational problems facing both students and institutions and that they could provide an opp...

Based upon George Ritzer's McDonaldization of Society thesis and incorporating aspects of social theory, this book examines the introduction of care management to social work practice. Donna Dustin analyzes care management as an example of the managerial application of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control to social work practice. These principles, put to good use in organizations that produce tangible outputs at a profit, are being increasingly applied in non-profit public...

This unique addition to the Success in Research series addresses the importance of understanding and achieving impact for the purposes of gaining research funding and reporting achieved impact for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).The book includes contributions from researchers and researcher developers who feel that impact is ill-defined and poorly understood despite its prevalence in policy documents, websites and institutional activities. This succinct and cohesive text d...

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.A must-read for practitioners, policy-makers, scholars and students in the field of education.

Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the future of education, including social media usage, new norms of knowledge, privacy, copyright, and MOOCs.How are widely popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram transforming how teachers teach, how kids learn, and the very foundations of education? What controversies surround the integration of social media in students' lives? The past decade has brought increased access to new media, a...

Within the field of academic development, the last twenty years have seen a great expansion of published research into practice and the further development of theoretical approaches. This growth in the scholarship of academic development matches a growth in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Advancing Practice in Academic Development draws on these evolving scholarships to advance professional practice in academic development, addressing questions such as: .

How should you prepare for the first day of class? How can you encourage all students to participate in discussions? How do you ensure disabled students can take part in field work? Increasingly, universities are drawing from a less traditional group of students – international students, disabled students, part time students, and mature students. This book offers specific, practical advice on the issues that teachers encounter when teaching in a diverse classroom. Inclusion and Diversi...