This study examines the effects of interactive and learning structures enabled by different Learning Management Systems (LMS) on satisfaction and learner engagement in online courses. An LMS can support or hinder active engagement, meaningful connections between segments of the course, easy communication, and formative feedback by making it easier…

The purpose of this study was to create and evaluate personalised virtual learning spaces (PVLSs) in a course that was previously delivered face-to-face only. The study addressed three related questions: (1) Can a PVLS successfully be introduced into a course where IT has not previously featured? (2) Can the PVLSs be used to enhance the assessment…

Researchers increasingly suggest that accessibility remains a prominent issue across the World Wide Web (www). This study raises awareness about issues of access in higher education. This qualitative research design utilized a listserv that invited university based webmasters to use freeware to evaluate the overall accessibility of their…

Educational technology and instructional design research has focused on evaluating interventions and innovations in terms of their effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal. While such indicators of learning outcomes are important, designers should also strive for engaging, socially just, and transformational instruction. To illuminate the…

Authorware is Macromedia's powerful feature-rich tool for courseware development. Version 6.5, released in September 2002, introduces new features for usability, extensibility, and accessibility. New usability enhancements include improvements to script functions and liberal use of drag-and-drop operations. First-time users should beware that they…

A political science professor at James Madison University (VA) constructed a Web page to support an undergraduate course in government. This article defines Web-site goals and audience, reviews other sites, and discusses organization of Web links and technical choices for HTML editor, page layout and use of image, audio, and video files. Stresses…

While the use of a search engine to find secondary sources is now a commonplace practice among undergraduate writers, recent studies show that students' online searches often lead to materials that are wholly or partially unsuitable for academic purposes. Accordingly, this project set out to determine whether using a more specialized search…