Handbook of Research on Collaborative Learning Using Concept Mapping

Educators are now seeking new methodologies to respond to the demand for personal education and knowledge acquisition and production. Concept mapping, a powerful learning and teaching technique, provides these educators with new methods that are beginning to be implemented at all educational levels in many institutions worldwide. The Handbook of Research on Collaborative Learning Using Concept Mapping presents innovative educational and learning models that meet current complex educational demands, providing educators and teachers, as well as researchers, tutors, and students with a comprehensive understanding of the current research and trends of both theory and pedagogy in e-learning, involving collaborative learning and concept mapping. Compiling authoritative studies from an interdisciplinary network of education and instructional technology experts, this reference collection is essential to academic and research libraries and to a full range of stakeholders in the research and practice domains of education.

Patricia Lupion Torres has been a professor at PUCPR (Pontifical Catholic University of Parana/Brazil) since 1982. She was Head of the Education Department from 1994 to 1998 and again from 2003 to 2005. She was the coordinator of Research and Assessment of the Distance Learning Department from 2002 to 2003. She was also a lecturer at UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina/Brazil) on the Media and Knowledge Masters Course from 1999 to 2002. A Pedagogue, she is a Specialist in Psycho-pedagogy and in Sociological Theories and has a Master in Education from PUCPR. She took her doctorate on Media and Knowledge at UFSC. She was on the Board of Directors of PUCWEB from 2003 to 2005. She is currently the Pedagogical Coordinator of the National Service on Rural Learning SENAR-PR. She manages projects on the use of virtual learning environments for distance learning in Higher Education, teaches the Masters and Doctorate in Education Courses at PUCPR whilst is the Director of Distance Learning at the same institution.

Rita de Cássia Veiga Marriot (BA, MED) is a member of the academic staff in the Department of Hispanic Studies and at the Centre for Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham (UK) where she is a Portuguese language tutor. She has lectured at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR) and at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) in Brazil in subjects including EFL, ESP, collaborative learning online, translation studies, new technologies in education in the Department of Languages and the Department of Education at graduate and postgraduate levels, and has also given teacher training courses related to computer assisted language learning at CELIN (UFPR s Language Centre). She is currently a doctoral student in e-learning and language acquisition in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham (UK).