The Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries' Website has a case of TMI: too much information organized by librarians for librarians. Finding relevant information about various library services, including the 24/7 Distance Learning Support Line, and access points to scholarly resources is often cumbersome, and given the limited time and staffing…

Videoconferencing is a low-cost, high-reward tool for engaging stakeholders in participatory design and usability testing for online Extension products. This article details how we used the videoconference program BlueJeans to facilitate the redesign of the Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System database and highlights the…

Many states and school districts are rethinking how they do educational assessment. A few are going further: attempting to build "balanced," "comprehensive," or "next-generation" assessment systems. At the same time, practitioners and researchers have long mulled the purposes and parts such systems should have. But…

M-learning has enhanced the e-learning by making the learning process learner-centered. However, enforcing exam security in open environments where each student has his/her own mobile/tablet device connected to a Wi-Fi network through which it is further connected to the Internet can be one of the most challenging tasks. In such environments,…

Coastal Pacific Doctor Associates (CPDA) is a multi-physician medical practice located along the west coast. CPDA decided to replace their inadequate and outdated medical office system during a time of tremendous restructuring in the medical software industry. In their impatience, CPDA chose an electronic medical record (EMR) and practice…

For decades, academia has been hampered by what appears to be preference for opacity and obfuscation. In an article published in this magazine three years ago, "The Vocabularies of Higher Education" (Gaston, 2014), the author lamented the welter of terms and acronyms that has accumulated over many decades, particularly within the current…

IRIS is a new Current Research Information System (CRIS) developed by Cineca to upgrade and replace two previous solutions that have been used by Italian universities in the last 10 years. At the end of 2015, sixty-three Italian institutions are using IRIS. One of the main components of IRIS is DSpace-CRIS, an open source solution that can also be…

This article discusses the accessibility of two content management systems, Berkeley Electronic Press's Digital Commons and OCLC's CONTENTdm, widely used in libraries to host institutional repository and digital collections content. Based on observations by a visually impaired student who used the JAWS screen reader to view the design and display…

There is now a preponderance of evidence suggesting that the types of online course management software (OCMS) used in purely online undergraduate college courses, do not meet the needs of younger immature students. These students often lack the learning skills necessary to succeed in such courses, nor do the popular OCMS include the vigilance…

The way that information users select information and news sources is impacted upon by the way that information providers package their material. This packaging has the potential to reinforce already-held beliefs and diminish social diversity. A group of scholars convened at iConference 2016 in a session for interactive engagement to discuss how…

In the last decade, e-learning has been a standard part of the educational process at all types of schools--primary, secondary, and high schools. When used, e-learning can achieve significant savings not only in terms of time as well as operating costs. However, e-learning is also often criticized. This is mainly due to direct absence of teachers…

Reusable educational resources became increasingly important for enhancing learning and teaching experiences, particularly in the medical domain where resources are particularly expensive to produce. While interoperability across educational resources metadata repositories is yet limited to the heterogeneity of metadata standards and interface…

Reliable and consistent time series are essential to any kind of economic forecasting. Skills forecasting needs to combine data from national accounts and labour force surveys, with the pan-European dimension of Cedefop's skills supply and demand forecasts, relying on different international classification standards. Sectoral classification (NACE)…

This paper introduces a test sign-up application developed for a math department at a university. The requirements, design, and final software product are presented, along with one very important unexpected problem that arose after completion of the work--the system to be implemented and maintained by the client was not compatible with the…

The design of online learning environments is a complicated process because it entails the use of technological tools to mediate the various forms of interaction situated in the learning process. One possible way to help reduce such complication inherent in various forms of interaction is to look at design as a problem-solving activity. This means…