Dedication

For my mother, a free spirit, who inspired me. I have followed in her footsteps.

Acknowledgements

A few people helped me change direction and find the work I love most.

At Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Professor Kaye Chon and Professor Haiyan Song believed in me, took me into their faculty and gave me the freedom to develop resources, tools and ideas. Those included the Second Life virtual campus and virtual hotel. Josie Szeto and Peter Duffy, of the university’s Educational Development Centre, backed my ideas and helped me find funding to build tools and apps for the university.

After I left the university in 2010, I moved into education consultancy. Eva Raute of GOPA Consulting and Véronique Meyers-Sotil of Luxembourg Development inspired and supported me there.

Here in Chiang Mai, I am grateful for the encouragement and example of John Ho (Alt Chiang Mai), Peter Richards (Harmony Hualin) and Martin Venzky-Stalling (Chiang Mai University and TEDEd).

I am also grateful to the many expert researchers and writers on LinkedIn whose work I value and have learned from.

My thanks also to Richard L. Wilson, who read the research early and wrote the review that opens this book.

The eleven papers behind this book are published openly in Future Science Archives and archived on Zenodo. I am grateful to both for making open, citable publication possible for applied education research.

This book was written with the help of AI tools, which drafted, checked and built much of it under my direction. Part Eleven explains who did what and what the checking found. Any errors that remain are mine.