Technology Enhanced Learning and Cognition

The use of technology in learning has increased dramatically. Training and education is now utilizing and almost integrated with the World Wide Web, podcasts, mobile and distant learning, interactive videos, serious games, and a whole range of e-learning. However, has such technology enhanced learning been effective? And how can it better serve training and education? E-learning must be 'brain friendly', so it optimizes learning to the cognitive architecture of the learners. If...
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The use of technology in learning has increased dramatically. Training and education is now utilizing and almost integrated with the World Wide Web, podcasts, mobile and distant learning, interactive videos, serious games, and a whole range of e-learning. However, has such technology enhanced learning been effective? And how can it better serve training and education? E-learning must be 'brain friendly', so it optimizes learning to the cognitive architecture of the learners. If technology enhanced learning promotes the formation of effective mental representations and works with the human cognitive system, then the learners will not only be able to acquire information more efficiently, but they will also remember it better and use it. Technology should not be the driving force in shaping e-learning, but rather how that technology can better serve the cognitive system. This volume, originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 16:2 (2008) and partly in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:1 (2009), explores the research frontiers in cognition and learning technology. It provides important theoretical insights into these issues, as well as very practical implications of how to make e-learning more brain friendly and effective.