This study explores whether learning management systems (LMSs) enable faculty course developers to use the reconfigurable characteristics of the software to implement the seven principles of effective teaching (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). If LMSs are to be considered pedagogically effective, these systems must help engage faculty in effective…

In October 2012, Microsoft will release the commercial version of its next operating system, presently called "Windows 8." This version represents a significant departure from the past. Microsoft wants this operating system to meet user needs regardless of physical platform (e.g., desktop, notebook, tablet, mobile phone). As part of this mission,…

Online recordings of lectures provide students with anytime-anyplace access to lectures. Research shows that students prefer courses accompanied by online recordings and an increasing number of universities provide recorded lectures. This paper presents the results of a study into the use of recorded lectures at two universities in the…

Students in all areas of computing require knowledge of the computing device including software implementation at the machine level. Several courses in computer science curricula address these low-level details such as computer architecture and assembly languages. For such courses, there are advantages to studying real architectures instead of…

The pmg add-on package for the open source statistics software R is described. This package provides a simple to use graphical user interface (GUI) that allows introductory statistics students, without advanced computing skills, to quickly create the graphical and numeric summaries expected of them. (Contains 9 figures.)

This article describes how the author applied principles of universal design to hybrid course materials to increase student understanding and, ultimately, success. Pulling the three principles of universal design--consistency, color, and icon representation--into the author's Blackboard course allowed her to change the types of reading skills…

This article surveys research in the areas of aesthetics and design, usability, visual aesthetics in education, and recent statistics related to online education. The focus of the article is on defining the role of visual content and aesthetics in the user interface and exploring what importance aesthetics and visual content have to education.…

Learning Analytics can provide powerful tools for teachers in order to support them in the iterative process of improving the effectiveness of their courses and to collaterally enhance their students' performance. In this paper, we present the theoretical background, design, implementation, and evaluation details of eLAT, a Learning Analytics…

The literature has frequently highlighted the usefulness of podcasting in higher education; however, there is an important gap between the theory on good practice in higher education and empirical studies about podcasting. With this in mind, we carried out an empirical study on an undergraduate degree course in Information Systems Management. The…

Program animation systems have not been as widely adopted by computer science educators as we might expect from the firm belief that they can help in enhancing computer science education. One of the most notable obstacles to their adoption is the considerable effort that the production of program animations represents for the instructor. We…

Software for text processing and presentation design is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Nevertheless, it is difficult to find a good solution for collaborative writing of technical course material, allowing the creation of high quality lecture notes and presentation slides from a single source. This article presents a new editing framework…

The culture of the young may, in fact, be a harbinger enticing us to follow a pathway from which will emerge the re-conceptualized educational practices of this new century. The culture of those older will, no doubt, strive to maintain the more golden aspects of their now historical learning experiences. One of the tasks of all educators, but…

Speech technology--especially automatic speech recognition--has now advanced to a level where it can be of great benefit both to able-bodied people and those with various disabilities. In this paper we describe an application "TalkMaths" which, using the output from a commonly-used conventional automatic speech recognition system,…

Web-based courses and programs have increasingly been developed by many academic institutions, organizations, and companies worldwide due to their benefits for both learners and educators. However, many of the developmental approaches lack two important considerations needed for implementing Web-based learning applications: (1) integration of the…

More recent motivational research focuses on the identification of effective techniques for enhancing instructional design and meeting the needs of diverse student populations (Wlodkowski R. J., 1981). Learning-motivation researchers are applying some of the same theories and concepts found to be effective in industry to the development of…