This article presents work in progress exploring social constructivism within Mode Neutral, and how various conditions impact upon the student experience. Mode Neutral's three dimensions--curriculum design, the role of the tutor and communication for learning--are affected by the conditions that can vary in any given context. The authors realise…

This article examines the common genre of the usability study in technical communication courses and proposes the incorporation of computer and video games to ensure a rhetorical focus to this genre. As games are both entertaining and educational, their use in the technical communication classroom provides a new perspective on multimodal…

Computer-assisted assessment offers many benefits over traditional paper methods. However, in transferring from one medium to another, it is crucial to ascertain the extent to which the new medium may alter the nature of traditional assessment practice or affect marking reliability. Whilst there is a substantial body of research comparing marking…

Constructivist pedagogical approaches have become common in many science curricula. However, while sciences such as physics and chemistry lend themselves to compelling opportunities for interaction (explosions, reactions, objects in motion), certain systems sciences are more challenging for learners to engage with on a short time scale. Applying…

This article presents a review of seven national governments' online collections of adult literacy-related research. This study explored the type of learning associated with official web spaces by asking the following research questions: (1) What kind of research do these governments present on their websites? (2) How is the presentation…

This article intends to investigate the challenges of e-learning implementation with an emphasis on education innovation. The Botswana government imports technology rather than developing it in-house through or in association with a well-developed national research and development (R&D) centre. In simple terms, e-learning is the delivery of…

E-learning is an accepted and commonly used component in tertiary education. However, success would appear to remain variable. Effective e-learning is a concept which sometimes eludes even the most reputable of online educators. It is an issue which plagues both the corporate and education fields and which is frequently aggravated by the numerous,…

This article scopes some of the key political elements in the higher educational use of the read/write web, or Web2.0 as it is commonly known. It investigates ways in which these tools can be used to enhance deliberative democracy, the associations between individuals and their capability for decision-making. The structuring of spaces in which…

This article addresses the continuing digital divide in public education, one that defines itself largely along geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural lines. The article refutes the idea that the digital divide is dwindling due to increasing access to technology within the United States, instead focusing on digital literacy and cultural barriers…

This article uses a multiple literacies theory framework to explore the processes of "becoming" technologically literate through a year-long ethnographic study of two Master of Education pre-service second language teachers, a Latina woman and an African American woman, who learned how to use computer technology to teach Spanish at a large…

E-learning on the Internet is constituted by the options that this global technology gives the user. This article explores these options in terms of the lifestyle choices and decisions that the learner will make about the virtual worlds, textual meanings and cultural groupings that they will find as they learn online. This is a non-linear process…

Interactive fiction has great potential for use in schools, providing engaging and empowering opportunities for learning and literacy. Experiences with interactive fiction provide two key components lacking in contemporary storytelling mediums: autonomy (the ability to act and change on its own) and interactivity (or the ability to think and react…

This text weighs the ethical consequences of a virtual education that posits a learning community based on the free exchange of ideas and the economy of knowledge cultivating the circulation of ideas. It explores the ethical implications of a virtual educational enterprise characterised by exchanges that do not take place face to face but are…

This article explores the development and evaluation of the graduate-level Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU) programme in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2001 through to 2004. It outlines the history of the ECDVU and the establishing of a Sub-Saharan programme for future leaders in the early childhood field guided by the key principle…

Although the term "blended learning" is widely used, this article argues against it. Two arguments are advanced. The first is primarily philosophical, although it has several pragmatic implications. It proposes that "blending" either relies on the idea of dichotomies which are suspect within the context of learning with technology or else becomes…