The emerging field of advanced distance education delivers academic courses across time and distance, allowing educators and students to participate in a convenient learning method. "Methods and Applications for Advancing Distance Education Technologies: International Issues and Solutions" demonstrates communication technologies, intelligent technologies, and quality educational pedagogy as the most essential requirements for advancing distance education for both teaching and learning. A significant research collection for the advancement of distance learning initiatives, this Premier Reference Source assists academicians, practitioners, and researchers in finding answers to important issues needing addressed for a successful distance education. Twenty-four chapters include: (1) Chapter 1: Automatic Digital Content Generation System for Real-Time Distance Lectures (Masami Iwatsuki, Norio Takeuchi, Hisato Kobayashi, Kazuo Yana, Hiroshi Takeda, Hisashi Yaginuma, Hajime Kiyohara and Akira Tokuyasu); (2) E-World: a Platform for the Management of Adaptive E-Learning Processes (Filomena Ferrucci, Giuseppe Scanniello and Genoveffa Tortora); (3) An Efficient and Effective Approach to Developing Engineering E-Training Courses (Judy C.R. Tseng, Wen-Ling Tsai, Gwo-Jen Hwang and Po-Han Wu; (4) A SCORM Compliant Courseware Authoring Tool for Supporting Pervasive Learning (Te-Hua Wang and Flora Chia-I Chang); (5) An Ontology-Based E-Learning Scenario (Wen Ying Guo); (6) Adaptive Synchronization of Semantically Compressed Instructional Videos for Collaborative Distance Learning (Dan Phung, Giiuseppe Valetto, Gail E. Kaiser, Tiecheng Liu and John R. Kender); (7) Refining the Results of Automatic E-Textbook Construction by Clustering (Jing Chen, Qing Li and Ling Feng); (8) Chinese Brush Calligraphy Character Retrieval and Learning (Yueting Zhuang, Xiafen Zhang, Weiming Lu and Fei Wu); (9) Grounding Collaborative Learning in Semantics-Based Critiquing (William K. Cheung, Anders I. Morch, Kelvin C. Wong, Cynthia Lee, Jiming Liu and Mason H. Lam); (10) Improving The Usefulness Of Learning Objects By Means Of Pedagogy-Oriented Design (Giuliana Dettori, Paola Forcheri and Maria Grazia Ierardi); (11) Adaptive Animation of Human Motion for E-Learning Applications (Frederick W.B. Li, Rynson W.H. Lau, Taku Komura, Meng Wang and Becky Siu); (12) eWorkbook: an On-Line Testing System with Test Visualization Functionalities (Gennaro Costagliola and Vittorio Fuccella); (13) Choosing MOODLE: An Evaluation of Learning Management Systems at Athabasca (Brian Stewart, Derek Briton, Mike Gismondi, Bob Heller, Dietmar Kennepohl, Rory McGreal and Christine Nelson); (14) Enhancing the IMS QTI to Better Support Computer Assisted Marking (Damien Clark and Penny Baillie-de Byl); (15) Streaming of Continuous Media for Distance Education Systems (Ali Dashti and Maytham Safar); (16) How Did They Study at a Distance? Experiences of IGNOU Graduates (Manjulika Srivastava and Venugopal Reddy); (17) Ubiquitous Computing Technologies in Education (Gwo-Jen Hwang, Ting-Ting Wu and Yen-Jung Chen); (18) An eLearning Portal to Teach Geographic Information Sciences (S. Grunwald, B. Hoover and G.L. Bruland); (19) A Changed Economy with Unchanged Universities? A Contribution to the University of the Future (Maria Manuela Cunha and Goran D. Putnik); (20) Rationale, Design and Implementation of a Computer Vision-Based Interactive E-Learning System (Richard Y. D. Xu and Jesse S. Jin); (21) Supporting Learners' Appropriation of a Web-Based Learning Curriculum (Dorothee Rasseneur-Coffinet, Georgia Smyrniou and Pierre Tchounikine); (22) Development of a Web-Based System for Diagnosing Student Learning Problems on English Tenses (Gwo-Jen Hwang, Hsiang Cheng, Carol H.C. Chu, Judy C.R. Tseng and Gwo-Haur Hwang); (23) Inhabited Virtual Learning Worlds and Impacts on Learning Behaviors in Young School Learners (Chi-Syan Lin, C. Candace Chou and Ming-Shiou Kuo); and (24) Research and Practice of E-Learning in Canada 2008 (Rory McGreal and Terry Anderson.