A cornerstone activity in undergraduate organic laboratories revolves around students running instrumental analysis on their products and interpreting their spectra. They are left to link the theory they have learned in lecture to practical spectral interpretation. Students often memorize benchmark interpretations of peaks, such as the broad…

Students from many different subject areas are required to study statistics as part of their qualification. The Open University developed a statistics module which could simultaneously be studied by students from a variety of different disciplines, by engaging them with topics which are of interest to everyone, namely money, education and health,…

Quick and real-time plotting equations using the Winplot software can be employed to create accurate hybrid atomic orbitals without complicated scripting. Performing this task on their own, students can more easily understand and remember hybrid atomic orbitals, in terms of shape and orientation.

Written expression is a neglected but critical component of education; yet, the writing process--from prewriting, to writing, and postwriting--is often an area of struggle for students with disabilities. One strategy to assist students with disabilities struggling with the writing process is the use of computer-based technology. This article…

This paper reports on the ongoing international project "System architecture for ICALL" and the progress made by the Swedish partner. The Swedish team is developing a web-based exercise generator reusing available annotated corpora and lexical resources. Apart from the technical issues like implementation of the user interface and the…

Virtual learning environments constitute current information systems' category for electronically supported training and development in (higher) education(al) and vocational training settings. Frequently expected advantages of using virtual learning environments refer, for instance, to the efficiency, individuality, ubiquity, timeliness and…

This paper describes how we can move from a single Learning Management System sc. as Sakai, Blackboard, Moodle, or Desire2Learn to a cooperating collection of networked learning content and tools. The move from a single silo of functionality to the ability to use tools from anywhere on the web will greatly increase the variety of tools available…

This article presents key steps in the design and analysis of a computer based problem-solving assessment featuring interactive tasks. The purpose of the assessment is to support targeted instruction for students by diagnosing strengths and weaknesses at different stages of problem-solving. The first focus of this article is the task piloting…

Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) methodology uses Web-based tools to gather student responses to questions on preclass reading assignments. However, the technological requirements of JiTT and the content-specific nature of the questions may prevent some instructors from implementing it. Our own JiTT implementation uses publicly and freely available…

Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems provide personalized educational content to learners. However most of them do not support the functionality of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the reusability of their courses is hard work. On the other hand some LMS support SCORM specifications but do not provide adaptive features. This article…

One of the key issues in e-learning environments is the possibility of creating and evaluating exercises. However, the lack of tools supporting the authoring and automatic checking of exercises for specifics topics (e.g., geometry) drastically reduces advantages in the use of e-learning environments on a larger scale, as usually happens in Brazil.…

The prototype of a guided practice application was developed to instruct year 13 biology students in the process of DNA replication. The application uses a high degree of interaction to engage the student in a guided exploration and problem solving exercise. An evaluation revealed that the students showed considerable enthusiasm and significant…

Distance education course designers working alone often do not have the luxury of fully developing their instruction before releasing their courses to students. The Individual Iterative Instructional Design (I3D) model is useful for educators who both develop and present their distance learning instructional units in areas ranging from higher…

This article develops an environment for mobile e-learning that includes an interactive course, virtual online labs, an interactive online test, and lab-exercise training platform on the fourth generation mobile communication system. The Next Generation Learning Environment (NeGL) promotes the term "knowledge economy." Inter-networking…

Discusses the importance of accurate graphic presentation and describes graphs available on "LabQuest" computer software. Highlights include graphing conventions; prerequisites for computer graphing; bar graphs; pie graphs; stacked bar graphs; line graphs; x/y graphs; scatter graphs; box plots; stem and leaf graphs; best fit graphs; and…