This is a bonus and short chapter that covers mobile computing, social media, and virtual and digital education. As the terms digital, virtual, and cyber are now so much an integral part of daily business operations and of daily individual lives, the purpose of this chapter is to focus on exposition of the full-blown digital and virtual age with the focus on the diversified trend in modern education. The trend in this new phenomenon of education spans a spectrum of instructor led sessions, distribution of content via online platforms to the administration of tests, and class sessions of discussions. Sections and subtopics tackled in this chapter include:
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The Motivation: Clearly, the advent of the Internet has been a propeller to diversity in all aspects of life; and the educational infrastructure is a testament of that. The impellation of diversity is catalysed by catalysts such as the need to operate under the constraints cost efficiency and effectiveness, borderlessness or globalisation and operational flexibility. Needless to state that, the growing need for global networking and socialising is on the rise and vehicles for such need such as mobile computing, for e.g., the iPhone and the iPad, Facebook, and Twitter are entrenched in learning environs today. This section provides this stance.
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Some Existing Terminologies Relating to eLearning: In this section, presented are some of terms in respect of the repertoire of eLearning used in this chapter Online Learning (OnlL), Cyber Learning (CL), Digital Learning (DigL), Virtual Education (VirtE), and Virtual Learning (VirtL).
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The Essence of eLearning or Virtual Education: As the demand on virtual education rises, the need for the development of accommodating software has also risen. With the aid of these software and platforms, the virtual environment or classroom allows for the use of a combination of technologies. These technologies depending on their nature, in turn allow for instant communication or not between the learners and the educator or educators partaking in the session. Readers are driven through this section in effort to provide enlightenment in this regard.
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The Amalgamation of Social Media at Higher Educational Institutions: As witnessed, the current generation is a generation of social media. As such, mobile computing and the what knots are a part and parcel of this generation. This is witnessed the classrooms and elsewhere across the globe. Whether this amalgamation renders positive results in the classroom is included in the subject of this chapter.
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The Classification of Diverse Higher Educational Institutions: A typification of this is the Carnegie Classifications, a classification framework developed by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education that has been used to recognise and describe diversity in higher education in the United States of America for the past forty years.
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Summary: This section provides a brief expository on the key purpose of the classification of framework is to represent and control differences or diversity in institutions and also in the design of research studies in order to ensure fair representation of sampled institutions, faculty, and students.
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Key Terms and Definitions: Some of the key words together with their definitions are presented under this section.