Projects play an important role in modern enterprises, not only as arenas for corporate renewal and capability integration, but also for the development of leadership capacity. As a consequence, the area of project management is becoming increasingly important for universities and management educators. Previous research and reports, however, have given severe critique to much of the project management education for its lack of relevance and rigor – but offered surprisingly little guidance as to what to do to deal with the problems. In this paper, our aim is to contribute to the current debate about project management education for practicing managers. We draw on more than ten years of experience from two senior-level education programs to show how educational practices can be developed to stimulate knowledge co-production between practitioners and academia. We suggest a model based on a “social twist” of experiential learning theory and discuss six learning modes of how to rejuvenate, stretch and improve project management education.

The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into the educational curriculum has been promoted as a key step in bridging the digital divide. Despite considerable growth in the numbers of computers acquired by schools in Kenya in recent years and the sacrifices made to finance these, there has been little evaluation of their effectiveness. Consequently, this research seeks to redress this by examining the impact of ICT projects in educational institutions in Kenya. Teaching staff, current students and former students together with their parents were surveyed. Key informants were also interviewed to establish the current policies concerning ICT in education in Kenya. An absence of educational software was found, as was the lack of Internet access and use of e-mail. Some 35-40% of secondary school teachers had never used a computer. The research revealed tangible benefits to students from exposure to ICT. It was also found that exposure to computers in schools influenced the career choices of former students. It was concluded that reform of the telecommunications sector is necessary to hasten the rollout of computer technology in educational institutions in Kenya. At school level, the key issues which arose included staff training, mainstreaming of ICT across the curriculum and provision of adequate ICT equipment.

Interest in the instructional application of virtual worlds, such as Second Life (SL), has grown substantially. However, little information is available about effective instructional activities using virtual worlds. This case study illustrates lessons learned from a pilot integrating SL into a two-semester English course at a large southwestern US university. A building activity was implemented in the first semester, and based on qualitative and quantitative formative evaluation results and additional planning, the instructional activity for the second semester was modified. These changes substantially enhanced students' learning experiences. Eight general and five discussion/debate-specific best practices discussed for implementing SL in college-level courses include capitalising on social interactions and establishing a clear connection of activities with learning objectives. This study demonstrates the importance of combining careful instructional design with ongoing assessment when implementing emerging technologies. It also indicates that course learning goals and students' needs should be considered first and foremost when adopting new technologies for instruction.

The call to change seems to be a constant in education. In second language education, a constellation of changes have been proposed and, to some extent, implemented. This constellation of interconnected changes can perhaps best be termed a paradigm shift, with this paradigm fitting under the general
umbrella of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The concept of paradigm shift usefully offers one means of making such connections between the changes linked to CLT. The article attempts to put the CLT paradigm shift into perspective as an element of larger shifts from positivism to postpositivism
and from behaviorism to cognitivism. This article describes eight changes that fit with the CLT paradigm shift in second language education. These eight changes are: learner autonomy, the social nature of learning, curricular integration, focus on meaning, diversity, thinking skills, alternative assessment, and teachers as co-learners. The authors argue that in second language education, although the CLT paradigm shift was initiated many years ago, it still has been only partially implemented. Two reasons for this partial implementation are: (1) by trying to understand each change separately, second language educators have weakened their understanding by missing the larger picture; and (2) by trying to implement each change separately, second language educators have made the difficult task of change even more challenging.