Existing educational systems built for cooperative and collaborative activities are most often based on the client/server paradigm of distributed computing. This article shows that a new model for distributed computing, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), provides new opportunities for building distributed educational applications. It begins by reviewing general…

Motivating students to master the basics in any field is a demanding task. In technical education, while the direct benefit--almost certain, well-paying employment--is obvious, the challenge is to keep students' interest high. Absent that, the technical workforce lacks skilled replenishment, and the possibility of being overtaken by competition…

This paper presents an analysis of papers delivered at the ICALT 2004 conference, in order to understand the current research issues relating to Learning Objects (LOs). The major research results are summarized, and the papers are classified according to the definition of LO used and the approach taken (technical, pragmatic or pedagogic). The…

The development and use of computer assisted learning (CAL) materials in the life sciences is well established and, in the UK at least, significant resources have been provided to enable this. Some years on from when the major investments took place teachers are facing the problem that the technologies used to develop and deliver the CAL programs…

The American education system and its rigorous accountability and performance standards continually force educators to explore new ways to increase student achievement. The improvement in computer technology and intelligent computing systems may offer new tools for student learning and higher academic achievement. These systems have the potential…

Report #32 in this series has considered the special attention required to make online collaborative tools fully accessible. The particular challenge for software developers is to optimize the accessibility of online education for persons with disabilities. In the process, the software's efficiency for all users is likely to be increased. The…

The growth of the Internet has greatly increased the demand for server-side programming courses at colleges and universities. Students enrolled in such courses must be provided with server-based accounts that support the technologies that they are learning. The process of creating, managing and removing large numbers of student server accounts is…

Higher education (HE) is becoming a big business, with huge investments in IT technology supporting online learning. With the awareness of the knowledge economy has come a growing consciousness that HE constitutes a large industry or economic sector in its own right. In a marketing fashion, we understand that some customers present much greater…

Today's incoming freshmen, born in 1988, have never known a time when the Internet and personal computers were not ubiquitous. They expect "what I want, when I need it, wherever I happen to be, on whatever workstation I have available." Many industries already meet this demand--entertainment (legal or pirated), cable TV, digital video recorders,…

While recent CSWE standards focus on the need for including more relevant technological content in social work curricula, they do not offer guidance regarding how it is to be assessed and selected. Social work educators are in need of an analytic model of computerization to help them understand which technologies are most appropriate and relevant…

To help students understand the real-world applications of calculus, our calculus students all take part in a lab. This is not another "computer lab" but a lab where the students perform experiments and then collect and analyze the data. The students are able to verify for themselves many of physical claims that are left as theory in…

The continuous technological progress of the past few decades affords a different orientation to the teaching-learning process, which is useful and advantageous when mathematical concepts are transmitted. This article pursues two different aims. The first one is to examine the present state of the traditional process in relation to the concepts of…

The Nielsen/Net report Ratings 2000, reported that in 2002, online usage at work jumped 17 percent year-over-year, driven by female office workers. Nearly 46 million American office workers logged onto the Web, the highest peak since January 2000. It was also predicted that the number of students using the Internet was expected to reach 13.5…

The last decade has brought about a major change in higher education. Course design has developed from a craftsmanship-like process to a structured production, which involves interdisciplinary teams and requires more complex communication skills. This conceptual article introduces E[superscript 2]ML--Educational Environment Modeling Language--a…

In the past, graphic calculators have been sophisticated and exciting tools for higher mathematics, but few would have considered using them more than occasionally with younger students. All this has now changed with the growing range of software Apps now available for Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus calculators. These Apps are more like computer…