Creating teacher-authored materials can be a challenging task for a variety of reasons. While relying on coursebooks to provide a ready-made structure to our classes, we often design our own materials to meet some of the specific needs and interests of our learners. Teachers usually approach the task of materials development through intuition and…

This paper reviews 12 research-based principles for how to design computer-based multimedia instructional materials to promote academic learning, starting with the multimedia principle (yielding a median effect size of d = 1.67 based on five experimental comparisons), which holds that people learn better from computer-based instruction containing…

Universities have become accustomed to steady growth in their online programs. When the COVID pandemic began, most also faced the related challenge of a sudden need for emergency remote teaching. This article explores the development of concise demonstration videos to support online and remote faculty at a large Hispanic-serving Research 1…

For the everyday education of students in schools, objects are made available to teachers that illustrate subject matter and make it comprehensible. These objects are created to make something visible, so that it can be presented, worked on, and understood. This article starts from the assumption that didactic objects are not neutral media: In the…

This paper makes the strong claim that for multimedia to have any significant effect on education, the educational multimedia applications must be designed by the teachers of those classes. The arguments supporting this claim are presented in the headlines: curriculum, software, hardware and evaluation. The paper begins with an introduction which…

This is a critical phase for Open Educational Resources (OER) movement: on one side the number of OER is increasing rapidly, and on other side debates about quality of OER-based courseware are heating up. These debates emanate from the fact that OER-based courseware are supposed to help users to follow a logical learning path and get an engaging,…

While researchers are examining the role of playing games to learn, others are looking at using game design as an instructional tool. However, game-design software may require additional time to train both teachers and students. In this article, the authors discuss the use of Microsoft PowerPoint as a tool for game-design instruction and the…

Attentiveness to and transparency about the methodological implications of the level of analysis selected for peace and conflict exercises constitute essential elements of good game design. The article explores the impact of level of analysis choices in the context of two key portions of exercises, scenario construction and role specification. It…

This paper attempts to present a critical review of the current state of English language education in schools in India in view of the prevalent pedagogical policies and practices. Different types of schools in the different school systems and typologies of teaching situations, the diverse nature of curriculum, syllabi, materials development, and…

This paper reviews the issues of concern in writing scale development in English as Second Language (ESL) settings with an intention to provide a useful guide for researchers or writing teachers who wish to develop or adapt valid, reliable and efficient writing scales considering their present assessment situations. With a brief discussion on the…

The Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) was used to identify processes of teacher learning during the collaborative design of curriculum materials in the context of curriculum innovation. Nine published studies from six different countries about teachers' collaborative curriculum design were analyzed to…

The paper describes the considerations that were taken into account in the development of a tentative English language textbook evaluation checklist. A brief review of the related literature precedes the crucial issues that should be considered in developing checklists. In the light of the previous evaluation checklists the developers created a…

Mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones, are increasingly being utilised as tools for education, with tablets such as the Apple iPad being introduced into many classrooms. These devices are seen as enablers of learning through a fun, interactive interface; however the process of producing a pedagogically valid, yet entertaining…

In collaboration with preservice elementary teachers and in-service kindergarten teachers, the authors engaged in small-scale, demand-side production of educational software focused on numeracy skills. That is, the authors built applications designed to address children's specific learning needs as they surfaced in the classroom and were…

Remix is touted as one of the most important practices within the field of open educational resources (OER). But remixing is still not mainstream practice in education and the barriers and limitations to remix are not well known. In this article we discuss the design and development of a print and web-based booklet created to introduce the topic…