Maggi Savin-Baden

• University of Worcester

This reflection provides an introduction to, and reflection on, the new text Rethinking Problem-based Learning for the Digital Age (Savin-Baden and Fraser, 2024). It begins by telling the story and rationale for the creation of the book and then provides an overview of the text of the whole. The next section discusses the purpose of the book, and t...

The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction provides a clear, concise and well-grounded introduction to the concept of the Metaverse, its history, the technology, the opportunities, the challenges and how it is having an impact almost every facet of society. The book serves as a standalone introduction to the Metaverse, as an overarching summary of the...

The marketing landscape has changed in a concrete and abstract ways since the foundations of marketing theory and practice emerged in the twentieth century. The proliferation of digital technology, globalization, concerns for the environment and other micro and macro shifts have sparked cultural, economic and political instability that show little...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This chapter explores the landscape of postdigital theologies beginning by contextualising them in relation to posthumanism, transhumanism, Artificial Intelligence and the postdigital. Although it is already clear that digital technology is having an impact on the practical areas of ministry and mission within religious institutions, relationships...

Background Many people with spinal cord injury (PW-SCI) in the Gaza Strip in Palestine are discharged from inpatient rehabilitation with limitations in their ability to meet basic needs, and reach their full potential. There is limited evidence of how clinicians can promote occupational justice for PW-SCI. Purpose To describe participants’ perspec...

This article draws upon the authors’ previous work on the opportunities and challenges learners face as they move into, through, and out of transitional learning spaces. The authors argue that equipping students to locate themselves with/in the tensions of learning is imperative, especially in postdigital learning environments. Teaching in ways tha...

This collectively written article explores postdigital relationships between science, philosophy, and religion within the continuum of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment. Contributions are broadly classified within four sections related to academic fields of philosophy, theology, critical theory, and postdigital studies. The article re...

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic injury associated with functional loss and life-threatening complications. Many people with SCI in the Gaza Strip of Palestine are discharged from inpatient rehabilitation to the community while still lacking many daily life skills. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) seeks to test the impac...

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic injury associated with functional loss and life-threatening complications. Many people with SCI in the Gaza Strip of Palestine are discharged from inpatient rehabilitation to the community while still lacking many daily life skills. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) seeks to test the impact...

This chapter suggests that challenge of the postdigital human is to recognize the ways in which balance must be brought to bear, to realize the ways in which technologies such as algorithms, machine learning, and facial recognition and facial verification can foster injustice. It begins by exploring conceptions of the postdigital, and what it means...

Covid 19 Government failure

Failure of Covid interventions

This paper explores ethical conundrums and virtual humans through building upon a post-Kantian framework, and one emerging from what is known as New Materialism. It begins by presenting the recent research and literature on virtual humans and suggesting that the central ethical conundrums that need to be examined are those of agency and values. The...

Since its inception in the 1980s, problem-based learning (PBL) has developed in diverse ways worldwide, yet there has been relatively little mapping of its theories, practice, or disciplinary differences. This has led to confusion within the academic community about which constellation to adopt, or what would be the best fit for a given curriculum....

Introduction Occupational therapy patient education is an acknowledged intervention that may enable clients with spinal cord injury to improve performance of activities of daily living. Many spinal cord injury individuals return to the community with inadequate activities of daily living skills due to short length of stay in inpatient rehabilitatio...

This chapter presents research on the use of pedagogical agents as a tool to support the learning of skills related to the transposition of formulae. Participants from diverse backgrounds were recruited from those being taught on a compulsory mathematics course and allocated to one of three conditions. Each undertook a one-hour training session on...

To date the research and practice of problem‐based learning (PBL) in digital spaces is both wide and varied. In particular, the use of PBL both online and in virtual worlds appears to prompt a re‐consideration of what counts as effective learning within the boundaries of current curricula structures, unsettling established spatial practices and edu...

The use of virtual assistants such as Siri that provide voice and conversational interfaces, the growth of machine learning techniques to mine large data sets and the rise in the level of autonomy being given to computer-controlled systems all represent shifts in artificial intelligence that are enhancing the creation of digital immortality. The gr...

This paper demonstrates a practical dimension to the discussion about threshold concepts. Threshold concepts have thus far mostly been acknowledged to elucidate learning processes mainly connected to theoretical concepts. By exploring situations that prompted experiences of autonomy and authenticity in clinical learning, findings showed how a pract...

This paper presents the results of a three-year study that examined academics’ espoused and actual practices in validation or approval events of UK degree courses. The study used narrative inquiry to explore academics’ accounts. The paper provides a literature review and then presents the findings which indicate that often procedural processes inte...

This chapter takes a broad view of education and include formal and informal interprofessional learning (IPL), serendipitous learning. It views Interprofessional education (IPE) and IPL as focused on improving professional practice, care, and services to support and enhance the lives of individuals, communities, and populations. The chapter argues...

Serious Games (SG) have been shown to have instructional potential and a number of formal models, frameworks and methodologies have emerged to support their design and analysis. The Activity Theory-based Model of Serious Games (ATMSG) facilitates a systematic and detailed representation of educational SG describing how game elements are connected t...

The research on Virtual Humans has been increasingly adopted, adapted and tested in educational settings and the research indicates that they are of value as mentors and guides for students. It is evident from the literature that the term Virtual Humans tends to be used as an overarching term that include other terms such as Chatbots, Autonomous Ag...

The concept of digital immortality has emerged over the past decade and is defined here as the continuation of an active or passive digital presence after death. Advances in knowledge management, machine to machine communication, data mining and artificial intelligence are now making a more active presence after death possible. This paper examines...

It has been suggested that a covert Turing Test, possibly in a virtual world, provides a more level playing field for a chatbot, and hence an earlier opportunity to pass the Turing Test (or equivalent) in its overt, declared form. This paper looks at two recent covert Turing Tests in order to test this hypothesis. In one test (at Loyola Marymount)...

There has been much recent discussion about student engagement in higher education, and in the last few years a number of authors have undertaken extensive international research on the topic, which has been summarized in a number of literature reviews. However, to date, there has been relatively little in-depth exploration of student engagement in...

This paper presents a study that was undertaken to examine human interaction with a pedagogical agent and the passive and active detection of such agents within a synchronous, online environment. A pedagogical agent is a software application which can provide a human like interaction using a natural language interface. These may be familiar from th...

In this paper, we suggest that portrayal of research is often undervalued and seen as ‘unwork' (Galloway, 2012). Portrayal is often seen as an issue that is relatively straight forward by qualitative researchers, and invariably refers to putting the findings of the study together with excerpts from participants and usually, but not always, some int...

In this paper we argue that arts-related research provides greater or diverse opportunities to represent and portray data di erently and suggest that these ways are underutilized. For example, for many researchers legitimacy comes through the use of participants’ voices in the form of quotations. However, we argue that this stance towards plausibil...

Virtual worlds are relatively recent developments, and so it is tempting to believe that they need to be understood through newly developed theories and philosophies. However, humans have long thought about the nature of reality and what it means to be “real.” This paper examines the three persistent philosophical concepts of Metaxis, Liminality an...

This chapter examines four papers that have been influential in the use of virtual worlds for learning, but also draws on a range of other research and literature in order to locate virtual world learning across the landscape of higher education. Whilst there is sometimes a misconception that research into learning in virtual worlds is very new, th...

Chatbots, known as pedagogical agents in educational settings, have a long history of use, beginning with Alan Turing's work. Since then online chatbots have become embedded into the fabric of technology. Yet understandings of these technologies are inchoate and often untheorised. Integration of chatbots into educational settings over the past five...

Arts-related research uses an aesthetic dimension to interrupt, disrupt, and create space for discussions about dominant discourses in research and practice. It does this in ways that other research approaches do not, enabling studies to be conducted and received by new and diverse audiences beyond the academic, promoting democratized knowledge and...

"This is a book that I am going to have to own, and will work to find contexts in which to recommend. It cuts obliquely through so many important domains of evidence and scholarship that it cannot but be a valuable stimulus" -Hamish Macleod, University of Edinburgh. Digital connectivity is a phenomenon of the 21st century and while many have debate...

In a world where students are increasing digitally tethered to powerful, 'always on' mobile devices, new models of engagement and approaches to teaching and learning are required from educators. Serious Games (SG) have proved to have instructional potential but there is still a lack of methodologies and tools not only for their design but also to s...

This paper presents findings from a large-scale study which explored the socio-political impact of teaching and learning in virtual worlds on UK higher education. Three key themes emerged with regard to constructing curricula for virtual world teaching and learning, namely designing courses, framing practice and locating specific student needs. The...

Arts-related research is research that uses the arts, in the broadest sense, to explore, understand and represent human action and experience. In this book we outline the principles and practices of arts-related inquiry and provide both suggestions about conducting research in the field as well as case study examples. The ideas presented here have...

This study examines autonomy in learning, related to medical and health care students perception of learning and development in clinical education. An understanding of the ways in which students learning and professional development is facilitated by autonomy, and a qualitative different understanding of the concept is vital for future development...

There is wide consensus internationally amongst scientific communities that Inquiry-Based Learning can be employed to foster acquisition of clearly defined, 'certain' knowledge such as the conceptual foundations of a scientific discipline. Alternatively, it can be used to engage students with uncertainty, multiple perspectives and contestation thro...

Introduction To date, a range of qualitative studies have been undertaken in intervention effectiveness, but none has synthesized such studies within the occupational therapy mental health literature. This research article presents a qualitative research synthesis that identifies those interventions used by occupational therapists, internationally,...

It would seem that emerging communication technologies are disrupting and changing societal norms and conventions. The literature suggests central to making sense of the unique qualities of cyberspace are understandings of such social networks, veracity and the differences between online and offline behaviour. We propose that as pedagogical agents...

Blended learning in which online education is combined with face-to-face education is especially useful for (future) health care professionals who need to keep up-to-date. Blended learning can make learning more efficient, for instance by removing barriers of time and distance. In the past distance-based learning activities have often been associat...

There are many textbooks that cover a range of arts-informed inquiry and explore its use in different disciplines. However, this chapter will draw on case study material from a number of international projects in order to show how arts-related research may be used effectively in diverse disciplines and complex contexts such as areas of poverty, dis...

In this chapter the reasons for deciding to use arts-related research will be considered . This includes formulating a purpose for the research in terms of considering the research question, together with an appropriate type of arts-related inquiry. The importance of researcher positioning and collaboration with other research team members will als...

This chapter explores more recent forms of art, such as digital art, and also examines the new and different ways in which arts-related research is combining new media in order to undertake research, such as (digital) métissage and digital a/r/tography. The chapter begins by delineating a/r/tography, digital arts, and digital métissage, and providi...