-------  Call for Papers for IRRODL Special Issue -----------

Special Issue on Technology Enhanced Information Retrieval and Processing for Online Learning
(http://maiga.athabascau.ca/editors/IRRODL-Special_Issue-2012-IR.html)
in
The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (SSCI Journal)
(http://www.irrodl.org/n)

Online learning has been developed for over decades and has become
an important tool for education. Many tutors design web-based
teaching materials and share them in the learning management systems.
Learners develop knowledge from those materials, tutor supports, and
the collaborations with other learners in distance in the online learning
environment and platforms. While information technology changes rapidly
and the variety of online learning activities increase, especially with the aid of social network and Web 2.0 tools that  are available to instruction designers, we may need to consider how to provide learners personalized pedagogical service which can help them learn more efficiently. In order to have such personalized
service, both course contents and learner's characteristics need to be well analyzed.
How to retrieve useful information from learning materials, data stored in
the learning management systems, and discussions and interactions among learners and how to design and use information retrieval technologies to improve
learner's online learning performance become interesting and important topics.
The purpose of this special issue is to explore how models, theories, and solutions of information retrieval and content analysis can be used in online
learning and what benefits users can receive from such systems and agents.

Guest Editors (in alphabet order):
Dr. Maiga Chang, Dr. Rita Kuo, Dr. Gene Loeb, Dr. Bolanle Olaniran

Suggested topics: We cordially invite authors to submit high quality manuscripts for any application domain as long as the core of the manuscript belongs one or more of the following:
- Affect sensing from text
- Credibility and reliability of data
- Culture in information retrieving
- Data archiving and retrieval
- Data/Text mining in a learning content
- Evaluation models for NLP/IR/IE/Ontology-based research and systems
- Human computer interaction issues and challenges that NLP/IR/IE/
 Ontology-based solutions for online distance learning
- Individual knowledge acquisition from user behavior analysis
- Information retrieval and extraction algorithms
- Information retrieving and processing computing tools, systems and
 applications for online learning
- Intelligent tutoring agents/systems based on NLP, Information Retrieval
 (IR), Information Extraction (IE), and Ontology
- Knowledge navigation in learning content
- Knowledge construction
- Learning content analysis by semantic web technology
- Leaning content organization and knowledge management
- Learning style and learning preferences in data retrieval
- Mobile dissemination and retrieval
- Multi-agent based information processing systems and applications
- Not-so-successful cases and the lessons learnt
- Ontology learning
- Practical experiences in using & deploying NLP/IR/IE/Ontology-based
 research for online learning
- Questioning and Answering applications and systems
- Social Network Analysis based of content and of activities
 occurring in Web 2.0 applications
- Social networks and interactions in learning communities
- Successful cases of applying NLP/IR/IE/Ontology-based research to
 online learning
- Web 2.0, 3.0, X.0

Important dates and manuscript guidelines:
All submissions have to follow International Review of Research in Open and Distance
Learning (IRRODL) research article guidelines (and should be submitted online by April 30, 2012. All submissions will be reviewed by at least three peer reviewers, the final camera-ready manuscripts have to be revised by the author(s) according to reviewer comments before resubmitting by June 1, 2012. The important dates are:

- Submission deadline: April 30, 2012
- Review result notification: July 15, 2012
- Revised manuscript submission deadline: August 31, 2012
- Acceptance notification: September 30, 2012
- Final camera-ready manuscript submission deadline: October 31, 2012

IRRODL research article guidelines at:
http://www.irrodl.org/miscfiles/documents/IRRODL_Research_Article_Guidelines.pdf

Please submit your article to the IRRODL site at http://www.irrodl,org, after registering as an author and hopefully also offering to be a reviewer by clicking the reviewer category in the enrollment form and noting your area of research expertise.

For queries, please contact Dr. Maiga Chang (maiga.chang@gmail.com)