Balancing the Tension between Digital Technologies and Learning Sciences (Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age)

This volume focuses on the implications of digital technologies for educators and educational decision makers that is not widely represented in the literature. While there are many volumes on how one might integrate a particular technology, there are no volumes on how digital technologies can or should be exploited to address the needs and propel the benefits of large-scale teaching, learning and assessment.

Dirk Ifenthaler (dirk@ifenthaler.info; www.ifenthaler.info) is Professor and Chair of Learning, Design and Technology at University of Mannheim, Germany and UNESCO Deputy Chair of Data Science in Higher Education Learning and Teaching at Curtin University, Australia. His previous roles include Professor and Director, Centre for Research in Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia, Manager of Applied Research and Learning Analytics at Open Universities, Australia, and Professor for Applied Teaching and Learning Research at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a 2012 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, at the University of Oklahoma, USA. Dirk’s research focuses on the intersection of cognitive psychology, educational technology, data analytics, and organisational learning. His research outcomes include numerous co-authored books, book series, book chapters, journal articles, and international conference papers, as well as successful grant funding in Australia, Germany, and USA. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Technology, Knowledge and Learning, Senior Editor of Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Learning Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Education.

Demetrios G. Sampson (sampson@unipi.gr) is a Professor of Digital Systems for Teaching and Learning at the Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece.. He is the co-author of 350 articles in scientific books, journals and conferences, and the editor of 15 books, 35 special issues and 40 international conference proceedings. He has received 10 times Best Paper Award in International Conferences. He has been a Keynote/Invited Speaker/Lecturer in 100 International/National Conferences and/or Postgraduate Programs around the world. He has been project director, principal investigator and/or research consultant in 70 Research and Innovation projects with external funding at the range of 16 M€.  He has supervised 155 honors and postgraduate students to successful completion. He has developed and delivers the first MOOC on the use of Educational Data Analytics by School Teachers (Analytics for the Classroom Teacher), offered by the edX platform which has attracted more than 18000 participants from 160 countries around the world since October 2016.  He served as Editor-in-Chief of one of the first open access journals in educational technology, the Educational Technology & Society Journal, 2003-2018. He has also served or serves as Member of the Steering Committee and/or Advisory and/or Editorial Board of 25 International/National Journals, in various leadership roles in 75 International Conferences and at the Program Committee of 550 International/National Conferences. He is the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award (July 2012) and named a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society in recognition of his contribution to the field of Learning Technologies (January 2013). He is also the recipient of the Golden Nikola Tesla Chain Award of the International Society for Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP) for "International outstanding achievements in the field of Engineering Pedagogy" (September 2018).

Pedro Isaías (pedro.isaias@unsw.edu.au) is an associate professor at the Information Systems & Technology Management School of The University of New South Wales (UNSW – Sydney), Australia. Previously he was an associate professor at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Before moving to Australia, he was also an associate professor at the Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University) in Lisbon, Portugal, where he was responsible for several courses and director of the master degree program in Management / MBA. Pedro was director of the master degree program in Electronic Commerce and Internet for 10 years. He is co-founder and president of IADIS – International Association for Development of the Information Society, a scientific non-profit association. He holds a PhD in Information Management (in the specialty of information and decision systems) from the New University of Lisbon. Author of several books, book chapters, papers and research reports, all in the information systems area, he has headed several conferences and workshops within the mentioned area. He has also been responsible for the scientific coordination of several EU funded research projects. He is also member of the editorial board of several journals and program committee member of several conferences and workshops. Currently he conducts research activity related to MIS in general, and more specifically Learning Technologies, Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, Digital Transformation, e-Business and WWW related areas. He has more than 160 journal articles, book chapters and books to his credit and has received over 2985 citations resulting in an h-index of 26 (Google Scholar, November 2020).