Extension educators are increasingly using online resources in their program design and delivery. Usability testing is essential for ensuring that these resources are relevant and useful to learners. On the basis of our experiences with iteratively developing products using a testing service called UserTesting, we promote the use of fee-based…

Educational technology continues to expand with multi-user virtual environments (e.g., Second Life™) being the latest technology. Understanding a virtual environment's usability can enhance educational planning and effective use. Usability includes the interaction quality between an individual and the item being assessed. The purpose was to assess…

Using 3D virtual environments for educational purposes is becoming attractive because of their rich presentation and interaction capabilities. Furthermore, dynamically adapting the 3D virtual environment to the personal preferences, prior knowledge, skills and competence, learning goals, and the personal or (social) context in which the learning…

The paper analyzes three major problems encountered by our team as we endeavored to turn problem solving examples in the domain of programming into highly reusable educational activities, which could be included as first class objects in various educational digital libraries. It also suggests three specific approaches to resolving these problems,…

In this article, Annick Janson and Robin Janson introduce research from the Microsoft New Zealand's Partners in Learning Programme by documenting the impact of digital learning objects (DLOs) on educational practice. Janson and Janson describe the impact of DLOs on the teaching practice of a primary school in New Zealand, tracing the effects of…