Social Media for Ubiquitous Learning and Adaptive Tutoring Introduction

The popularity and influence of social media have been continuously expanding worldwide, and a similar trend is visible in educational settings. Social media tools have been reportedly used for a variety of educational purposes and in wide-ranging contexts, bridging formal and informal, as well as individual and collaborative learning. Currently, the trend is toward the integration of social media services with mobile and ubiquitous learning and adaptive educational technologies. To provide an overview of this interplay by reviewing the applicable techniques and relevant works in the area, we supplement this editorial with a tutorial survey. In particular, the following three main topics are examined and studied here: ubiquitous learning via social media services, intelligent tutoring in adaptive e-learning, and multimedia enabled social learning. The authors also introduced the articles featured in this special issue on social media for learning. © 1994-2012 IEEE.