In this paper, we present an extended evaluation of a course recommender system designed to support students who struggle in the first semesters of their studies and are at risk of dropping out. The system, which was developed in earlier work using a student-centered design, is based on the explainable k-nearest neighbor algorithm and recommends a…

Two critical problems facing the software (S/W) industry today are the lack of appreciation of the full benefits that can be derived from Software Verification and Validation (V&V) and an associated problem of shortage of adequately trained V&V practitioners. To address this situation, the software V&V course curriculum at the author's…

This article discusses best practices for evaluating open source software for use in library projects, based on the authors' experience evaluating electronic publishing solutions. First, it presents a brief review of the literature, emphasizing the need to evaluate open source solutions carefully in order to minimize Total Cost of Ownership. Next,…

The purpose of this paper is to develop e-portfolio evaluation criteria which will be used to review the Blackboard LMS e-portfolio being used at one Higher Education (HE) institution in the UK as evaluation criteria for reviewing e-portfolio provision does not exist in the literature. The approach taken was to initiate a wide literature search…

Like anything else, there are good fundraising campaign Web sites and bad fundraising campaign Web sites. The author took a closer look at fundraising campaign sites to see if her intuitive judgments about these could be translated into a logical, research-supported set of best practices. She set up a study that gauged the ease of use and…

The book provides best practices from online educators who are engaged in online teaching and program development in Christian higher education. It also explores the distinct aspects of teaching and developing online courses and programs from a Christian perspective and within Christian higher education institutions. As such it is can serve as a…

Is open source business intelligence (OS BI) software ready for prime time? The author thoroughly investigated each of three OS BI toolsets--Pentaho BI Suite, Jaspersoft BI Suite, and Talend Open Studio--by installing the OS BI tools himself, by interviewing technologists at academic institutions who had implemented these OS BI solutions, and by…

There is no shortage of online learning platforms available today. Whether it is Blackboard (www.blackboard.com), Desire2Learn (www.desire2learn.com), Sakai (www.sakaiproject.org), Moodle (www.moodle.org), Angel Learning (www.angellearning.com), Datatel (projected to be a CMS player in Q4 2008; www.datatel.com, or another product, chances are that…

With the expansion in quantity of full-text content material made available through online database subscriptions, aggregator services, and over the Internet, the need for print materials seems to have diminished over recent years. Growing, too, are the numbers of students taking advantage of distance learning opportunities, scattered miles and…

Audience response systems (ARS) or clickers, as they are commonly called, offer a management tool for engaging students in the large classroom. Basic elements of the technology are discussed. These systems have been used in a variety of fields and at all levels of education. Typical goals of ARS questions are discussed, as well as methods of…

The identification and integration of reusable and customizable CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) may benefit from the capture of best practices in collaborative learning structuring. The authors have proposed CLFPs (Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns) as a way of collecting these best practices. To facilitate the process of CLFPs…