From 2004-2007, the University of Memphis carried out the NSF-funded Tri-P-LETS (Three P Learning Environment for Teachers and Students) project to improve local high-school computer science curricula. The project reached a total of 58 classrooms in eleven high schools emphasizing problem solving skills, programming concepts as opposed to syntax,…

Provides a succinct guide to building a home page. Overview includes the main Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) tags, plus examples of their use; forms and clickable maps; new HTML 3.0 tags; and pointers to sites that contain HTML editors, graphics, backgrounds, and music. Five figures illustrate the text. (JKP)

This study investigates differences between collaboration methods in two summer enrichment classes for students entering the sixth grade. In one treatment, students used pair programming. In the other treatment, students engaged in frequent collaboration, but worked on their own computer. Students in the two treatments did not differ significantly…

Chemical process simulation is one of the most fundamental skills that is expected from chemical engineers, yet relatively few graduates have the opportunity to learn, in depth, how a process simulator works, from programming the unit operations to the sequencing. The University of Calgary offers a "hands-on" postgraduate course in…

The projects Xmath (Bringslid and Canessa, 2002) and dMath (Bringslid, de la Villa and Rodriguez, 2007) were supported by the European Commission in the so called Minerva Action (Xmath) and The Leonardo da Vinci programme (dMath). The Xmath eBook (Bringslid, 2006) includes algorithms into a wide range of undergraduate mathematical issues embedded…

A number of studies emphasized the need to capture learners' interaction patterns in order to personalize their learning process as they study through learning objects. In education context, learning materials are designed based on pre-determined expectations and learners are evaluated to what extent they master these expectations. Representation…

Existing adaptive e-learning methods are supported by student (user) profiling for capturing student characteristics, and course structuring for organizing learning materials according to topics and levels of difficulties. Adaptive courses are then generated by extracting materials from the course structure to match the criteria specified in the…

Merrill proposes First Principles of Instruction, including a problem- or task-centered strategy for designing instruction. However, when the tasks or problems are ill-defined or complex, task-centered instruction can be difficult to design. We describe an online task-centered training at a land-grant university designed to train employees to use…

Fundamental concepts and definitions of electronic learning (eLearning) continue to emerge, and theories of eLearning that have been advanced thus far cover an array of academic perspectives including training and education, learning and knowledge, and technology and applications to specific market segments. Any study of the effectiveness and…

Using animated visualization tools has been an important teaching approach in computer science education. We have developed three visualization and animation tools that demonstrate various information security concepts and actively engage learners. The information security concepts illustrated include: packet sniffer and related computer network…

This paper introduces Ontoolsearch, a new search system that can be employed by educators in order to find suitable tools for supporting collaborative learning settings. Current tool search facilities commonly allow simple keyword searches, limiting the accuracy of obtained results. In contrast, Ontoolsearch supports semantic querying of tool…

Since the explosion in multimedia computing, educators have been trying to work their way towards integrated human-computer interaction. Consequently, a large number of multimedia tools have been created, always following the trend of simpler and easier multimedia development. After outlining the transition from hardcore programming to modern…

Purpose: This paper aims to sketch the emerging notion of auto-adaptive software when applied to e-learning software. Design/methodology/approach: The study and the implementation of the auto-adaptive architecture are based on the operational framework "ActiveTutor" that is used for teaching the topic of computer science programming in first-grade…

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a new technology that is currently being extolled by many industry experts and software vendors. Potentially it represents a platform independent language for sharing information over networks in a way that is much more seamless than with previous technologies. It is extensible in that XML serves as a "meta"…

The findings from an after-school program entitled Game Design through Mentoring and Collaboration (GDMC) funded by the National Science Foundation's Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. A total of 139 middle and high schools students in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to learn the basics of…